Warsaw Requiem

by Bodie Thoene

  Harvey. St. Paul’s. Golden Gallery. Light wells. Ibsen and Churchill.

  Elisa leaned forward and looked around the sides of the sanctuary in search of Mr. Tedrick. Where was he, now that she needed him? Where was Tedrick? Whom should she tell, it not Tedrick? And what, exactly, should she tell? Could she be wrong? Had her imagination simply swirled away into the heights of absurdity?

  “What is it, Elisa?” Anna whispered with concern. “Are you all right?”

  Elisa nodded, and sat back. She continued to search the gathering for the enormous bulk of Tedrick.

  Once again she followed the gaze of Harvey Terrill skyward. Was someone on the gallery, planning to shoot Churchill?

  There was no more time to delay. Elisa stood and passed the violin to her mother. She did not know what she intended to do. She hoped that Tedrick would see her, that he would watch her walking toward Harvey Terrill. That he would see how pale she was, and know.

  Harvey nodded, with nervous pleasantness, strained at every muscle in his face and eyes. He glanced at his watch. Looking down at the floor and ignoring her approach, he began to walk slowly, too calmly back toward the grand entrance.

  He then saw Elisa start toward him. This was not right. He did not know what she knew, or guessed, or had figured out, but she was coming toward him instead of going up to play her violin. Something was wrong!

  The only thing Terrill could think of doing was to give the signal early. Now, in fact!

  He started for the west entrance along the south aisle, walking deliberately at first, then faster and faster as panic took hold. What if she signaled someone? What if she called to him to stop, shouted out for the crowd to run out of the church?

  Behind him, he heard Churchill being introduced. Speaker and showman that he was. Churchill was covering for any awkwardness at the change in program, going on smoothly, moving into his talk. “In this solemn hour it is a consolation to recall our repeated efforts for peace. Outside, the storms of war may blow and the lands may be lashed with the fury of its gales, but in our hearts this morning there is peace.”

  Not for long would there be peace! Just the time it took for Harvey to run out the door and down the steps to the statue of Queen Anne. Then there would be no peace in this place—in this whole nation—except the peace of the grave!

  ***

  “Close your eyes!” Peter shouted to Rachel as the horse picked its way through the rubble of a residential area.

  She saw a child’s broken doll. A hat beneath a brick. A photo in a broken frame. The scattered pages of a book. Aware that this was the death of something . . . someone . . . she closed her eyes and pressed back against Peter’s bony chest.

  She held on to the mane tightly as the horse picked up its feet in a more steady rhythm once again.

  “All right,” Peter instructed. “We are past it. Open your eyes.”

  She did so and saw a miracle. They trotted down an ordinary street, lined on either side with regular apartment buildings. The windows were taped but not broken. There were even a few red geraniums in window boxes. A few cars remained parked along the straight unbroken street that stretched out before them. The cars must not run, Rachel thought, or they would be with the Polish Army right now being blown to pieces!

  She and Peter seemed to be the only living souls on all that long expanse of city street. It was the street that led to the British Embassy, Peter explained. He would make sure she was taken care of, and then he would meet up with Captain Orde on the wharf of the Vistula. From there, he said, they would escape upriver.

  This is all like a story in a storybook, Rachel thought. Some other day she might like to sit and reach such an exciting fairy tale. But this was a real story—her own story—and so for now she wanted somehow to step out of the pages of this living hell and find a quiet place to sleep, to lay her head on Mama’s lap and pretend it was not happening!

  “Only three blocks,” Peter said, nudging the old house to a faster trot.

  Rachel did not reply. She felt no joy, no sense of relief at being so near to safety. She simply clung tighter to the horse’s mane. She raised her head only slightly as the deafening drone of Hienkel’s engine approached behind them. The horse did not quicken his step until the black shadow swooped down over them.

  Peter cried out with alarm as the plane banked low over the housetops and rolled to circle back over them for an easy kill!

  ***

  The orchestra has stopped. Some part of the program was now complete. Allan did not know exactly what the order of the service was, but he knew they were one step closer to Churchill’s speech.

  He picked up the transmitter and set it on the balustrade on the side facing the dome. Just as quickly he took it down again. What if he should accidentally knock it off with his excited, agitated movements? Perhaps the impact with the ground world send the signal to the explosives; perhaps not. Allan did not want to take any chances—not now, not when he was so close.

  He would go down in history! His name, his name, would ring down through time as the one who dealt oppression one of the greatest blows ever struck. Children would ask their grandparents where they were the day St. Paul’s was blasted!

  Allan’s hymn of self-praise was interrupted by the sight of someone running toward the cathedral. The man sprinted up the hill, dodging around other people on the sidewalk and darting in front of a bus when one side of the street became too crowded. People don’t run like that without a purpose. If this were simply a late arrival who did not want to miss Churchill’s speech, he would not be running this desperately, this doggedly.

  Allan pivoted sharply and grabbed the transmitter. He flicked the power switch on and was rewarded with an answering gleam from a small bulb lighting a dial that masked the device’s real purpose. Should he press the button now? Should he wait for Harvey’s signal?

  There was a clatter on the steps of the cathedral. Even before Harvey Terrill had appeared beside the statue, Allan knew who it was. He braced himself for the blast. Strange how he had never thought about how loud the explosion would be. He wondered if he should have brought some earplugs. Well, it was too late to worry about it now. With deliberately applied firmness, Allan pressed the transmitter button.

  ***

  Peter kicked the clumsy horse hard and pulled the one rein to the left. Urging the animal up three stone steps, he leaped from its back and grabbed Rachel to dash back into the archway of a small church. Peter slapped the big horse hard on the neck. There was no room to shelter it here. Its broad rump was sticking out as if to point to a target for the German airplane!

  “Get!” Peter roared at the horse. He flapped his arms as Rachel crouched down beside the door and covered her head. “Run! Stupid horse! Run!”

  The horse spun on its heel and trotted off down the road. The rein dragged along beside it. The booming roar of the double-engine plane filled every corner of the street. The burst of machine-gun fire popped a staccato dance as bullets sparked against the cobblestones at the heels of the animal.

  Rachel screamed as the roar echoed, and the plane climbed up above the city again. But the pilot had other things to do, apparently. He did not come back. The horse trotted a ways and then stepped on his rein again.

  Peter grabbed Rachel by her blouse and pulled her down the steps. He ran to the horse, took the leather strap of the rein but did not bother to climb back on the animal.

  There, in front of the British Embassy, stood a knot of desperate people clinging to the gates as a man in an English army uniform checked documents.

  Peter stopped across the street, removed Rachel’s blue folder from his pocket and gave it to her. “There. Go and be well.”

  She did not thank him, because she did not feel thankful. She nodded, fingering the folder. “Good-bye, then,” she said softly.

  “I can’t miss the boat.” Peter had already led the horse to stand beside a banister. He climbed the banister and leaped on the back of his mount. “Now ge
t going!” he shouted at her angrily. “Live!”

  Rachel nodded and turned toward the frantic people at the embassy gate. Peter did not wait to watch her enter. There was not enough time. She stopped in the middle of the street and watched him as he retreated back down the empty street.

  The big, slow horse did not vary his gait even though Peter kicked and flapped his arms wildly. “Get! Get going!” she could hear him shouting at the deaf animal. “Stupid horse! Hurry! Hurry!”

  The sun glinted briefly on his hair. He was like a clown—the high comedy of panic. Rachel smiled at his appearance in spite of herself. He looked as if he were trying to fly. Trying to make the aged horse of Dolek the milkman lift off and soar to safety above the dying city of Warsaw.

  “Live,” Rachel repeated the admonition to Peter. “Live and be well. Find your Promised Land, Peter Wallich.”

  One Jew! Would that one Jew who lived be someone like Peter? Ah, the Eternal must have a sense of humor it if is Peter alone among us who lives, she thought.

  Peter turned up a distant street on his way to the river and the fish market. Only then did Rachel pivot and walk slowly toward the desperate people who begged at the gates of Great Britain.

  She stood apart and looked at her own likeness on the page of the passport—black hair, serious blue eyes, unsmiling lips.

  Rachel scanned the crowd. Maybe three hundred were there. Surely someone among them—some girl or young woman . . . .

  Face after face, she studied those who pressed in and shouted for refuge. And then she saw her—a woman of perhaps twenty. She wore a white broad-brimmed hat that shielded her face. Her clothes were modern, stylish. She was shouting loudly, waving a Czech passport in the air. Her face was desperate. Czech passports meant nothing any longer, not since the Nazis had taken over in March.

  Rachel smiled and remembered what Papa had told her. “He who saves a life, saves the universe.”

  Yes. This woman might pass for her sister, even without the hat. Ah, but with the hat she could pass for the girl in this precious British passport that Rachel held.

  Rachel walked quickly to her, and she pulled her to one side. “This is yours.” Rachel extended the passport to her.

  “No,” said the woman. She is very pretty. Rachel thought.

  “Yes. It is yours. I saw you drop it. Now go in. Live and be well.” Rachel shoved it into her hands, then turned and ran back down the street, back through the broken city of Warsaw. She ran and ran. She would not look back until she reached the smashed square of Muranow.

  ***

  The sense of urgency that drove Murphy up Ludgate Hill was greater than the war, greater than the death of Doc Grogan, greater than the missing Lori. Elisa was at St. Paul’s, and Harvey Terrill was at St. Paul’s! That seemingly innocuous information filled him with a nameless dread he could not explain.

  He zigzagged across Fleet Street to miss a stretch of sidewalk blocked by a man unloading stacks of newspapers! GERMAN ARMY ATTACKS POLAND, the headlines screamed. CITIES BOMBED, PORT BLOCKADED!

  Almost there. The bulk of St. Paul’s dominated his path. From under the shadow of the west facade, the great dome itself was hardly visible. Only the lantern tower surmounted by the ball and cross could be seen from this low angle. Closer at hand, the bell and clock towers seemed to lean over the statue of Queen Anne.

  From the doors at the top of the steps, Harvey Terrill burst into view and ran down toward the statue. He spotted Murphy at the same instant and skidded to a halt. A hideous caricature of a smile played over his features—the grin of a corpse. “Murphy,” he said, and ran out of words.

  “Harvey,” Murphy demanded, “Lori was at TENS last night, wasn’t she? What’s going on here, Harvey? Who tipped off the Polish customs? Who’s Paul Golden?’

  “Not who, Murphy, what!” Elisa burst out with this exclamation as she dashed down the steps behind Terrill. ”St. Paul’s Golden Gallery. Light wells. It’s there, Murphy!” she shouted, pointing up at the lantern. “Whatever it was Grogan died trying to tell us, it’s up there!”

  Murphy grabbed Terrill’s forearm and spun him around with his hand twisted up beneath his shoulder blades. “Let me go!” Terrill cried. “It’s too late now. Too late!”

  “Too late for what?” Murphy demanded. “What is it, Harvey? Where’s Lori?”

  ***

  Nothing happened! Allan pressed his finger against the button again and again! He switched the power switch off and pushed the trigger button again. Still no result—no satisfying roar, no crashing bricks.

  He flicked the power switch back and forth. Maybe it was jammed! With each blink of the tiny light he pressed the firing button over and over. No screams of panic, no rush of smoke, no place in history!

  Allan began to tear the back off the transmitter. Maybe a loose wire? There was still time . . . if only . . . He tore off one fingernail, then another. No tools! Why hadn’t he brought tools?

  With bloody fingers, he raised the device over his head and smashed it down on the stones. No explosion agreed with his anger. Allan stamped on the radio with his heel, but the only destruction he caused was to the device itself.

  Wait! Perhaps there was another way. He dug into the satchel, tossing out film, light meter, camera strap. Under the false bottom was a pistol.

  There was still a chance. No alarm had yet been given. No sirens, no rush of people for exits. To be a living hero would have been nice, but to become famous as a freedom fighter—even martyrdom was not too high a price.

  ***

  “What’s too late?” demanded Murphy again.

  Terrill grew strangely silent. He looked intently at the bell tower, then the clock tower, as if he was confused. He stretched up on his toes to look at the lantern, standing as a sentinel against the peaceful sky. “I can’t understand it,” he mumbled.

  “Come on then,” said a grim-faced Murphy, dragging Terrill up the steps. “We’ll figure it out together.”

  Once inside the south aisle, Churchill’s voice was heard ringing into the thrust of his speech:

  “This is not a question of fighting for Poland. We must fight to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny. We must accept the challenge laid before us all by those who have so ably and courageously carried the torch of freedom.’Lift it high,’ their examples say. ‘Let no tyrant extinguish it.’”

  Tedrick met Murphy at the rear of the nave. “What’s all this?” he asked in a dark whisper. Terrill was almost limp in Murphy’s grasp, but he continued to shoot fearful and shuddering looks up at the dome.

  “Harvey knows something about what Grogan was trying to tell us. It has to do with the dome and the Golden Gallery . . . maybe Lori too.”

  “And it’s about today,” broke in Elisa. “He said Ibsen and Churchill too.”

  A young man came out of the doorway that connected with the clock tower. He started to cross the nave directly toward Tedrick, then spotted the small group standing in the shadows and pivoted to walk rapidly down the north aisle.

  When he reached a point opposite the stairway to the galleries, he increased his pace to job toward the opening. Terrill seemed to come out of his stupor at the sight. “Take me back outside,” he pleaded. “I don’t feel well, that’s all—I need air.”

  Elisa was the first to see the connection. “That man,” she said, pointing. “He’s going up into the dome!”

  ***

  Alarmed by the disturbance at the rear of the service, a policeman moved to block Murphy’s path to the stairs. No time to explain! With a move that would have done credit to a Penn State running back, Murphy faked the policeman out of position and dashed up the steps.

  The left-hand spiral of the shallow steps corkscrewed upward. Above him Murphy could hear the clattering feet of his unknown quarry. Churchill’s voice continued to follow upward:

  “Our war is not for material gain. It is a war for the rights of the individual, championed by individuals of the highest, most
resolute character. Shall we do less than they?”

  The painted, glossy black treads curled up and up around a central support pillar marred by centuries-old graffiti. T.S. 1776 was carved into the stone. G.C. 1815.

  The footsteps tapping over his head now retreated in volume. Finally, out onto a landing, Murphy found himself at the base of the dome, where the huge half-globe rested on arches above the rotunda. Churchill’s voice, echoing up from a hundred feet below, threatened to drown out the sounds of the other man’s passage.

  ”We must not underrate the gravity of our task . . .”

  There he was! On the far side of the Whispering Gallery, beneath the watchful gaze of a painted St. Paul, the small, delicate man disappeared into another doorway. He threw a look over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of Murphy’s pursuit, then increased the tempo of his flight.

  The audience reacted to the clattering footsteps overhead with annoyance rather than alarm. Churchill was saying, “We must expect dangers and disappointments . . .” Murphy ran past a scene of St. Paul’s shipwreck, around the gallery, and through the exit door. The stone steps grew steep, the passage narrow. He ran ten steps upward to a wider tread for a landing; every few landings a crude wooden bench. But there was no time to rest. Murphy panted with the exertion, and his leg muscles burned.

  ***

  One hundred eighteen steps upward from the Whispering Gallery, Allan Farrell burst into the outside air. He rushed around the circular walkway with its enclosing stone parapet. He no longer concealed his pistol but carried it in his hand as he ran.

  His plan was simple; he would ascend to the Golden Gallery, climb over the rail to where he could see a satchel of explosives concealed in a light well, and detonate the bomb by shooting the blasting cap.

  In the instant of his martyrdom, twenty pounds of explosive would erupt three hundred feet above the floor of the church. Maybe the other charges would go off from the concussion, or perhaps just the sudden loss of support on one side of the tower would make it collapse anyway.