Winter Palace (6 page)

Gregor leaned over the bed, exchanged the double kiss of greeting, said, “You must be feeling better, if you are able to act the host while in a hospital bed.”

Alexander watched his crippled cousin settle carefully into the hard-backed hospital chair. “I confess to a great need for your wisdom, Gregor.”

“The Lord is the One to whom you should turn at such times,” Gregor said gently, reaching forward and grasping one of Alexander's waxlike hands. “Not another mere mortal.”

“I would if I could,” Alexander replied.

Jeffrey rose to his feet. “I'll be waiting outside if you need anything.”

“Stay,” Alexander said in his coarsened whisper. “Please.”

Gregor's attention remained fastened upon Alexander as Jeffrey seated himself. He asked his cousin, “You are having difficulty making this approach to your Lord?”

“Never have I felt more alone,” Alexander confessed weakly, “or my God more distant. At a time when I need Him most, He is not there. I can no longer find Him.”

Jeffrey would often think back to that moment and wonder, not at what he saw, but at what remained unseen. He looked upon Gregor, a man crippled and bent and in pain, his body twisted back and to one side so that the chair took every possible ounce of weight from his disabled frame. Yet that was not what Jeffrey
saw
.

Gregor did not answer directly. Instead, he paused and withdrew to a place Jeffrey could not fathom. He watched a man who lived in perpetual discomfort close his eyes and know a peace so total it shone from his face.

Gregor's creases of pain and sleeplessness and bone-weariness smoothed away in a moment of silent miracle, one so calm and natural that Jeffrey could identify it only by the ache of utter yearning that suddenly filled his own heart.

Gregor opened his eyes, and immediately his features returned to their earthly set. “The sixty-third Psalm was written after David was anointed by the prophet Samuel and proclaimed as Israel's future king,” Gregor said in his gently searching manner. “Yet after this promise from the Lord, David was still forced to wait. Wait and suffer and yearn
and doubt, straining some forty years before his inheritance could be claimed.

“I have seen you in the sanctuary, David said to the Lord. I beheld you there. He was speaking in the past tense, do you see? It was once so, and now is no more. He saw, he beheld, then again he walked along desert ways. For David, his promised divine inheritance contained vast stretches of isolation and loneliness and want.”

Gregor carefully shifted his weight forward, his gray eyes intense with understanding. “My dear cousin, I understand your pain. I too have traveled through lonely, empty stretches. Such an experience is common among believers. It is also common to misunderstand the reason for these periods and to miss the blessings that God bestows in such times.

“You must understand that what is happening to you is
not
punishment. Yes, you face difficulties which you have not brought upon yourself. Yes, you are burdened. Yes, God seems distant. But if you see this as punishment, you set yourself up for assault. Doubts will assail you, and fears, and desires to complain of how you have been unfairly treated by life. Nights are given over to anxiety, when fears chase you back and forth across the floor.”

He smiled gently at Alexander's nod of recognition. “At such times, it is most important not to doubt in the dark what you have learned in the light. On the bad days, you must live by the lessons gained in the good times. Remain confident and solid upon the rock.

“The desert, my cousin, is a time of testing. In the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, the Lord says we are taken into the desert to test our faith and to humble our hearts. He offends the mind in order to reveal the unseen. Your sense of order and balance and symmetry is shaken. You are thrown to your knees. The winds of change blast down from the heavens while darkness blankets your vision, and you
know
your strength alone is not enough.

“In such times, Alexander, you must cling to the rock and
cry aloud to the unseen One for strength to cover your naked weakness. And once you return from this testing, you are called to do one thing further: to
remember
. Learn, and then hold on to this gift of learning for all your days.”

He touched Alexander's hand. “A fruit tree that remains constantly in the light will never bear fruit. It is the tree that experiences the
normal
cycle of light and darkness that fulfills its divine purpose. Remember that in your trials, my dear cousin. And stay with God.”

Gregor rose slowly to his feet, smiling down at his cousin. “Now rest in His glorious peace, my brother in Christ. I will come to see you again this afternoon.”

“That was very beautiful,” Jeffrey told him as they crossed through the hospital's main lobby.

“Mmmm,” Gregor hummed distractedly, then pulled the world back into focus. “I'm sorry. What was it you said?”

“What you told Alexander in there. It was really inspiring.”

“Oh, thank you . . .” His mind remained elsewhere. Once through the main doors, Gregor ceased his limping gait to turn and face Jeffrey. “I was wondering if I might ask a favor.”

“Anything.”

“It is time that I go and visit my Zosha's resting place, but I find myself unwilling to go there alone. Would you be so kind as to accompany me?”

“Of course,” Jeffrey replied. Zosha was the name of Gregor's deceased wife.

Gregor offered a distracted smile. “I am indeed grateful, my young friend. This is most good-hearted of you.”

Jeffrey left him isolated in his contemplation and joined the ranks struggling to find a taxi in the misting rain. Once in the cab, Gregor gave the driver their destination, then lapsed again into silence. Some moments later he emerged to say, “Forgive me, please. I am sorry for being such poor company.”

“There's no need to apologize.”

“No, that is the blessing of true friendship in such
moments,” Gregor agreed. “I was recalling the distant past. Strange how vivid memories can become at these times. I was thinking of our escape from Poland. Or rather, the time leading up to our departure.”

“Alexander has mentioned your escape several times,” Jeffrey said. “I'm still waiting for the whole story.”

“Conversation would most certainly ease the burden of this journey,” Gregor assented. There was another long silence as the world shifted slightly to reveal a door long hidden within Gregor's mind and heart. “When Alexander had recovered from his imprisonment at Auschwitz,” Gregor then began, “he immediately joined the
Armia Krajowa
, the Polish Home Army, as the underground was called. Of course, he never actually spoke of it to us. The AK, as the army was known, was utterly secret. Even within the ranks themselves, the soldiers were known by code only, and each was sworn never to try to learn another man's true name. This was done so that if they were ever captured and tortured, they had less information to divulge. Of course, with my poor health, I was not permitted to join, much as I begged.

“As with most Poles, I came to know many of the activists within the local AK garrison. There were little signals you could detect if you looked carefully, such as a hint of pride and defiance against the overpowering German might, and the way they stood or looked or spoke. Alexander replaced the horror of his Auschwitz experience with this sense of secret strength, and I saw it in others. But I knew better than to speak of it, even to my dear cousin. I never had the opportunity to tell him how proud I was of him and his actions, or how much I lived through him. Or how, when he slipped away on a mission under the cover of night, he carried my fervent prayers with him. I never slept while he was out. Never. I spent the long night hours praying for his success and his safe return.”

The rain stopped, the clouds scattered, the sun turned the city air dank and sweltering. Traffic held them in a fumy
embrace. Gregor seemed scarcely aware of the steamy heat, the beeping horns, or their crawling progress.

“After the Nazis were defeated in Poland and the Russians swept in,” he continued, “the AK soldiers began to disappear. Nothing was said, no accusations were made, no evidence was found by anyone who was willing to speak aloud. But one by one, the young men and women I knew to have been in the underground began to vanish. I watched Alexander and saw how distressed he became by this, yet I was unable to broach the subject without his speaking first. And I worried for him more than I ever had under the Nazis.

“Then one night I awoke to the sound of his moving about, the same secret movements that had woken me so often before. This time I went to him. He told me that he and two friends were going to vanish before the Russians made them disappear permanently. Where was he going, I asked. He hesitated, then told me it would be best simply to trust him, and to believe he would one day return. We embraced, and he slipped from the room, and that was the last I saw or heard of my dear cousin for seven long months.”

“That must have been terrible,” Jeffrey said quietly.

“It was and it wasn't,” Gregor replied. “I missed him more than I thought it possible to miss another man. But it was also a time of great beauty, for that was when the Lord brought my Zosha into my life. By the time Alexander returned, I was a married man.”

Gregor looked with sad fondness into the distance of his memories. “Perhaps the Lord whispered to our souls that we would only have those two short years together, and so we lost no time in lighthearted flirtation and simple chatter. Perhaps, too, we shared with such desperate openness because of who we were and what the times held for us.

“Zosha had experienced the Warsaw Uprising and arrived bearing the agony of having survived. Despite her past or because of it, we met, and we loved; that is the whole story of our lives together. We met, and the world sang with the
tragic beauty of two young people loving each other in a world with little room for love. We shared all we were and all we had and all we knew, and life became so enriched that each new dawn spoke of promises too great for one small day to enclose.

“Zosha was the answer to my every prayer, even the ones which I knew not how to place into words. She drank in the lessons I had learned from my studies of faith, and in taking them so wholeheartedly taught me the heavenly delights of earthly love, of what it meant for two to join as one.

“How Zosha came to be with me, ah, to have a miracle of such joy arrive in the midst of such chaos and turmoil! The trauma of her passage—my boy, you cannot imagine what Zosha went through before she joined me.” Gregor sighed and murmured, “Yet she came, my angel in earthly form. And she loved me. Ah, how that woman could love. I saw God more clearly in her eyes than ever in anything else contained within this world.”

He was silent for so long that Jeffrey thought his questions would have to wait for another time. But the taxi jolted to a stop at a light, and Gregor stirred himself and continued, “My Zosha spent the war years in Warsaw, until the time of the Uprising. The Warsaw Uprising was one of many tragedies during the war years, yet it held a special bitterness because of the Soviet treachery. The Red Army had promised our underground forces that they would come to our aid and push the Nazis from Polish soil once the battle for Warsaw began. Instead, they massed across the Vistula and watched the Germans pulverize our glorious capital and decimate the population.

“They stood and watched our people die, you see, because they never intended to let Poland be free. Every Polish patriot killed by the Nazis was one less that the Soviets would have to concern themselves with. Neither the promised soldiers nor the arms ever arrived. Half-starved AK soldiers faced the modern Nazi army with petrol bombs and sharpened
fence-staves and hunting guns and whatever weapons they could steal.

“The battle lasted two months and was nothing less than sheer butchery. During that time, Warsaw was a city apart. There were no supplies, little water, no electricity or oil. Then, when the city surrendered, the Germans ordered all survivors to leave their homes immediately, taking only what they could carry. Most of these people were starving and weak. They were forced to walk for two days. Along the way they were given nothing—no food, no water. There is no record of how many died in that trek of blood and tears. But my Zosha said that every step of the way was littered with the bodies of those who could not continue and were left where they lay.”

Gradually the taxi made its way beyond the cramped confines of central London. Streets broadened and lawns appeared and shops sprouted from low buildings. “German soldiers marched along either side of the road, with perhaps twenty meters between each soldier,” Gregor went on, “My Zosha was eighteen, walking with a girlfriend, and their two mothers walked a few paces away. Suddenly a man scrambled up from the hedge and, unnoticed by the Germans, began walking alongside them. He whispered that they had to escape immediately, to go with him right then; there was not a moment to lose. They of course replied that they could not leave their mothers, that they would be all right once they arrived at the prison camp.

“The young man whispered fiercely that they would not be allowed to stay with their mothers. Only the elderly were to be placed in the camp. All young girls were to be sent to the bomb depots near the front. These places were called death factories, the young man told them, because they were being bombed so often. There was no chance of survival. None.

“He was in the AK, this young man. He pulled them from the road, flung them down on the earth, and ordered them to stay there until he returned. He waited for the next soldier to pass, then was up once again and back in line, continuing
his death-defying mission of mercy. He never came back, that man.

“Later, once we had all arrived safely in London, we learned that what the young man had said was true. Virtually none of the women sent to the front ever returned. My Zosha never had a chance to thank that young man who had risked his life to save her. She never even learned his name.