Gabe - Seven.

Gabe

            For a few days after I kissed and fought with Erich, I kept to myself. Like always, I thought anyone who saw me would immediately know what I had done. The paranoia was a bitter aftertaste Leo had left with me, the constant fear that someone would discover my sick condition. Sick condition, that’s what he’d called it in the winter. I knew, logically, that he was wrong. Hersch and Jim hadn’t reacted so badly, when they found out back at Wellington’s, and Rebecca was thoroughly accepting. But secrecy still always felt like the safest option.

            I hated and missed Erich in turns. Those were a lonely few days, and when I thought about kissing him I wanted to call him on the radio and apologize for everything. Even just sitting next to him had felt so good; there were moments when all I wanted was to sit in the same room as him. But when I thought about Brigitte, I wished I could hit him. He had fucked her, or tried to f**k her, depending on how I looked at it. The thought made me ill. I didn’t even know what she looked like, but thinking about Erich touching her made me want to cry. I didn’t care if he still liked girls, I had decided, really I didn’t. I cared I he still wanted her, after she hurt him so badly. What if I had gone back to Leo after Wellington’s, if he was still alive? What would Erich have thought of that?

            Eventually, I wore myself out fixating on my issues with Erich. The head of my rooftop squad got sent out on labor two days in a row, so I was stranded with very little work to do. I could have spent time with Rebecca �" I didn’t feel nearly so embarrassed about Erich around her �" but she was making herself scarce.

Then one day, Jim dropped by with all these strange theological questions. He said the doctor had gotten him to thinking, though I don’t know why he thought I would know anything about Jewish spirituality. I hadn’t had a lot of answers for him. I knew very well what I believed, but I always had trouble articulating it to others. Still, Jim seemed to be dancing around a question I’d wrestled with before: don’t we each decide what God cares about or doesn’t care about?

I’d given the question plenty of thought, probably more than most. I was unquestionably Catholic, but I knew what my own religion said about people like me. I knew my Bible, which I loved so much and believed in so hard, said I was an abomination. Once, the parish priest in the village in Italy had preached on Leviticus during mass. He preached in Italian and read verses in Latin, so I didn’t know what he was saying, but at the end of my pew I saw Leo grimacing and digging his nails into his palms. Later, he told me he thought Leviticus and everything like it was rubbish, that if Christ and the Virgin and the saints had nothing to say about us, then the damn priest shouldn’t either. I thought so, too. I knew now that I couldn’t change what I was, but what I was was both homosexual and Catholic. I had to reconcile the two if I wanted to survive.

I wasn’t sure how to explain this to Jim, though. I don’t think I provided him with much insight. I didn’t know why he was suddenly so interested in God, anyway. Jim had always struck me as entirely unreligious. He didn’t need faith to be happy, not everyone does, and that was fine. It probably had something to do with the doctor he adored so much, or maybe with Rebecca, or both. They seemed to be the two biggest influences on his behavior, lately.

After talking with Jim, I thought hard about where I stood with God at the moment. It had been months since I attended a proper mass. Really, my attendance had been intermittent at best ever since my parents died. I went to the cathedral in the village in Yorkshire sometimes, after Wellington’s. But I felt like such an outsider, an orphan boy gone missing from the town for two years who turned up again to hole himself in his lonely mansion. Besides, the village cathedral was Church of England, not proper Catholic, as my Mum had never failed to remind me. Catholic enough for most Sundays, but my parents used to take me on the train all the way to York for long Catholic services whenever they could find the time.

Still, I felt bad, never going to mass. I decided to do something to remedy that, something that would maybe help me find some peace amid the misery of the ghetto and my problems with Erich: I wanted a spot to pray.

I only really needed candles. I’d come with my own relics. First, I had my rosary, which for what it represented was worth a thousand masses to me. It was evidence of what I’d overcome by faith so far, and it reminded me constantly of Leo. Not who Leo was, but what Leo believed: that God hadn’t made us this way only to turn His back on us. Leo had sworn on that rosary that we wouldn’t go to hell for loving each other, and I held onto that promise with everything I had.

I also had my parents’ devotional scapulars, two from each saint, squares of fabric hanging on loops of string. I thought Mum and Da had been buried with their scapulars. They ought to have been buried with them. But I found the scapulars in front of our own shrine in the house, laid out in front of the statue of the Virgin. I’d taken them with me when I left, though neither set depicted my own saint. I appealed to my name saints, Gabriel and Raphael, and to Jerome, patron saint of abandoned children and orphans. But Mum and Da belonged to different orders. My mother’s scapular was to Our Lady of Mount Caramel, and my father’s to the archangel Michael. The archangel was a warrior, and I prayed to him for strength in the battle I would never be ready for. The lady was an advocate who interceded on her followers’ behalves after death. I thought I might need both of them soon. I felt safe parents when I carried my parents’ saints.

With the scapulars together and a few candles, I felt that I had put together a passable prayer altar. I could only light it up during the day, since Peter would kill me for having lights on at night, but I lit the candles and prayed whenever he was gone. I only made it a few days before Peter caught me �" I should have seen that coming �" but I felt safer and stronger with the altar there.

That’s were Peter found me on the day when he came and demanded my help, bent over my slapped-together shrine. By the time I knew he was there, he was cursing in Polish behind me. Sometimes he came and went from the butcher shop completely without my knowing; he could move that silently. I shot to my feet when I heard him, but it was already too late to cover my tracks.

Peter sputtered for a moment before he found his English. “What the f**k is this?” I had learned that though he didn’t know all English, but he knew f**k. “What the f**k have you done?” It was about the loudest I had ever heard him speak inside the butcher shop.

I wracked my brain for a lie, but came up blank. Peter had never paid me much mind, but he intimidated me anyway. I struggled to explain as he stomped towards me, pulling his own hair in exasperation and disbelief. “I’m Catholic,” was the unhelpful first thing out of my mouth.

“I can see that you are Catholic," he growled in his slow, deliberate English. “But why must you waste all our damned candles to be a Catholic?”

“Four were here already,” I explained, stalling. I failed to mention that the one I had taken from his room downstairs, since he seemed not to have noticed it was missing, anyway. “Rebecca gave me the others.” I badly didn’t want him to take my alter down, and I knew involving Rebecca was the best way to keep Peter calm placated. He never seemed to stay mad at her, and now I knew why. Jim had spilled everything, how he had started sleeping with Rebecca again even though he knew she used to be with Peter, the last time I spoke to him. He never could keep a secret

As I had hoped, Peter relaxed a little at the sound of Rebecca’s name. He scowled at me, but he didn’t sound so angry anymore. “Did she know what you would use them for?”

“No,” I admitted.

Peter frowned and crossed his arms. I had noticed he stood that way a lot, I thought so he could flex his noticeably muscular arms and puff out his chest. His red-brown beard was growing fast, and when he looked at me like that I felt like a child about to be scolded by an unhappy adult. “Put them out,” he said, finally, “and come with me.”

I did as he said, relieved he hadn’t ordered me to take it down. “Where are we going?” I asked, a little nervously.

“First I will show you something, then you will help me.” By the time I turned around, he was out the window on the fire escape.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and I didn’t dare go out there without an explanation. “What about the wall?” I called uncertainly after him. Peter’s butcher shop was located in a really unfortunate spot, on the outside edge of town. Hersch explained that back when the area was just the town’s Jewish quarter, Peter’s father had set up shop on the outskirts of town to keep the smell and slaughter away from the people. Now, the shop stood parallel to the wall, right within the line of sight of one of the guard posts.

Peter crouched down, peering exasperatedly at me through the window. “You think I am a fool, Moretti? The guard takes his meal at one in the afternoon every day. We have several minutes before he pays any attention to us at all.” ‘Several minutes’ hardly seemed like enough time to accomplish anything to me, but Peter always knew what he was talking about, so I followed him out onto the ledge.

The roof of the shop was a high vault, a big triangle with the point lobbed off. The ledge was within arms reach from the top of the fire escape, and Peter pulled himself up easily. He clearly didn’t expect the same of me, grabbing me by the wrist and heaving me up with his powerful arms. The vault of the roof was steep enough to provide us cover from the guard post on the wall.

“This will be your post,” Peter explained, sounding far too casual to put me at ease, still cowering behind the roof. Until now I had barely been allowed on the street, and now I was supposed to learn something on the roof? Had Peter lost his mind? “During the fight, I mean. You will be posted here with your rifle, to prevent soldiers from entering the shop.”

Why?” I hissed, terrified of being heard. “Why this shop?”

Peter pressed his lips together, apparently annoyed that I couldn’t keep up. “Because, the old tunnel out is right below the shop. The soldiers found it and sealed it when they chased Herschel out two years ago. Once we have the tools to open it, it will be the best way to lead people out of the ghetto during the fighting. But if the soldiers get inside the tunnel, they will be able to catch and corner those still in the tunnel, and follow it and find the exit on the other side, where many will be hiding.”

I swallowed, hit hard by my sudden responsibility. “Why me?” I asked, in a pitifully small voice.

“Several reasons,” Peter answered tersely. “Herschel has apparently promised the German to keep you safe, and this is a very well protected post.” He patted the slope of the roof. Peter frequently gestured this way, demonstrating what he meant in case his English was unclear, though it was nearly always perfect. At the mention of Erich, I felt like he had dropped a weight into my stomach. Erich was keeping me safe; he would always try to keep me safe.  “Also, you have proved very calm under stress, and your hands are the steadiest on the team.” It wasn’t a compliment, the way he said it, just a fact. I wasn’t sure whether I should feel proud. I figured Peter only liked me in comparison to Jim and Erich, both of whom he clearly hated. “Follow me. I will show you what to do.”

I was dismayed when Peter clambered to the flat top. I trusted him to know when the guard abandoned his post, but I did not have enough faith in him to believe he knew the comings and goings of every soldier on the ground and wall. “It is perfectly safe,” he called quietly down, sensing my unease. “See, I have not been shot!”

Nervously, I followed him to the top. “What’s up here?” I asked, my voice gone soft with fear.

“Your escape plan,” he said, getting to his feet. To me, he looked ten feet tall on top of that roof. “You see this pedal?” he asked, nudging a nearly invisible treadle among the regular roof tiles. I nodded. Without further explanation, Peter stomped down on the pedal. The roof opened up under him, and he fell out of sight.

            I scrambled over to the sudden, square hole in the roof. “Peter?” I hissed, peering into the shop. Peter sat on the edge of my bed, dusting himself off.

            “That,” he called up to me, “is your emergency procedure. If the Germans lay down heavy fire, you fall through the roof and out of sight. All the rooftop posts have similar systems. Jump down. Try to break your fall.”

            Jumping didn’t seem nearly as terrifying as staying on the roof. I swung my legs over the ledge, dropping feet-first into the room. The bed was stiff, not built for a soft landing. I landed hard on my legs with a groan. “Practice at night, when they cannot see you,” Peter advised, making his way to the stairs as I rubbed my aching shins.

            “But what will I do next?” I questioned anxiously, following him. “If the soldiers see me fall into the house, won’t they run in and find me and the tunnel?” I trusted that Peter had a second phase of his plan, but couldn’t foresee what it might be.

            Peter was already downstairs, digging for something behind the old shop counter. “That is what you will now help me with. Hear that?” he pounded on the floor, producing an echo. “Hollow, see? This building stands on small legs. My father used to drain the blood out of his workspace, down under the house.” I felt myself clam up, hoping Peter couldn’t see. He stood up and produced a hammer and a large saw, an action that failed to put me any more at ease. “There is a space under the house, a small… a…”

            “Crawl space?” I offered.

            “Exactly.” Peter handed me the hammer and carried his saw to the other side of the room, crouching down again a few feet away from the outside wall. “I will cut a hole in the floor, where you will hide in case of trouble. Then, as you are smaller than I, you will go under the house and pull out some boards for escape onto the street.” He was already sawing into the floorboards, apparently uninterested in my opinion of his system. “I have installed these in several houses already. It will not take long.”

            I stood the middle of the room, hammer in hand, not sure of what to do while he sawed a square into the floor. “Thank you,” I said self consciously, “you know, for doing all this.” Erich could try to protect me as much as he wanted; I would still be dead without Peter. Peter knew what it actually took to stay alive inside the ghetto.

            Peter grunted, “I have done this for many families. Perhaps your German will have you believe I am some power-mad war general, but all I want from this uprising is to keep my people alive.” He lifted his hastily cut trapdoor off the floor, dropping it behind him. Then he turned his unnervingly serious gaze on me. “The Nazis want to destroy every trace of my people from this earth. They want to destroy us, our descendants, and our ancestors. If at the end of this war even one Jew is left in the world, the Nazis will not have won. Every Jew living is a defiance of the Germans. Nothing is more important than that.”

My mouth felt dry. I don’t know if I had ever heard anyone say anything so profound about the war. “That’s very true,” was all I could manage.

He gestured to the hole, as if he hadn’t just laid out the thesis of his all-consuming life philosophy. “Get in.” No longer willing to question his leadership, I lowered myself into the gap in the floor. The space was oppressively small, not even two feet high. The air was dark and the air was thick, full of dust and mold and a dull tang of blood. I shuddered, and luckily Peter couldn’t see me. “Do you see the light?”

I looked to my left and right, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Just ahead of me, I saw slits of light from the street. “I do!” I called back.

“Good. Find the wall, take the back end of the hammer, and pry away the wall. There are only boards there, no house siding.”

“Got it!” I crawled on my stomach towards the light.

Peter’s directions were easier said than done, since I couldn’t locate the nails to pry out very efficiently in the dark. I searched blindly along the wall with my hands, hooking the hammer back around the loosest nail I could feel. “For whom do you light them?” The question came from above me.

“What?” I asked, yanking on the nail.

Peter sounded far away, even though he was essentially standing right on top of me. “The candles. I understand your Catholic practices. You light them in prayer for the dead, yes? And you have six candles.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about this with him, but I at least felt inclined to correct him. “Not only the dead,” I called, moving onto a second nail. “Just… just people in your life who need your prayers.” I’d tried specifically to get my hands on six candles.

“And whose candles do you light?”

I hesitated for a second, feeling uncomfortable. But it was remarkably easy to talk to him this way, through the floor, and I thought Peter might understand how vital faith was to surviving in a place like this. “My parents,” I started, surprisingly the easiest to talk about. “They died four years ago.”

I waited for a response from Peter, but he was quiet for a second. “I am sorry,” he said finally, quietly. “My father was killed four years ago, as well, and my mother is likely dead in the east. I have not heard from her in many years. But that is only two, Moretti. Who are the rest?”

“Hersch and Jim,” I answered quickly, also easy to admit. I heard Peter snort after Jim’s name, but he reserved his comment. “Erich, the German.” Saying his name out loud, to someone who didn’t know what we had been at Wellington’s, always made me anxious, paranoid that Peter could guess what we were from only the way I said Erich’s name. But he stayed quiet above me. “And another good friend, who also died.” Leo. I still prayed for Leo’s soul every day, on his own rosary.

            Peter was quiet for another long minute, though I heard him get up and stand closer to the hole in the floor. I had finished with two whole boards. Only one more, and I would have a workable door to the street. I heard Peter sit next to the trapdoor, his voice much clearer now. “We are not so different as I thought, Moretti.”

            I stopped prying nails, staring incredulously at the spot where I could tell he was sitting. “You’ve had it a lot worse for a lot longer, Peter.” I couldn’t even compare my plight to Peter’s; I had spent the last two years free, alone, in an estate.

            Peter sighed. “This is true, you would not exchange your life for mine. But loss is loss, and pain is pain, and faith is faith. And in these things, we are brothers.” I didn’t know what to say. Brothers. No one had ever called me brother, not even at Wellington’s. I kept pounding on the last nail, so I wouldn’t have to respond to him. “I appreciate that you have faith in a place like this, even if it is not faith to my God. Almost there?” He had heard the squeak of the boards as I shoved one aside, letting light from the street stream into my crawl space.

            “Almost!”

            Another long pause, as I fiddled with the second board. “Moretti, will you also light a candle for the Resistance?”

            I pivoted back towards him, still on my stomach, and crawled back towards the hole in the floor. Coughing and heaving, I dragged my head and shoulders back out into the shop, where I could see Peter. He sat cross-legged next to the hole, looking thoughtful and sad. “You’ll have to let me have another candle,” I smiled, half-jokingly.

            Peter pressed his lips together against a smile; he never smiled. “We will see. Get back to the door,” he instructed. He could move seamlessly between philosophy and practicality, I realized. I dove back into the crawl space, heading towards the light again. I broke off the second and third boards, opening the space up to the street.

            “I did it!” I called excitedly up to Peter.

            I heard Peter clap his hands. “Excellent! Now make sure you can fit through the hole.”

            Unthinkingly following his orders now, I thrust my arms through the small door, braced my hands against the wall outside, and squeezed through. The ground was frozen, and patches of snow clung to the ground next to the building. The door was barely wide enough, but I dragged myself on my stomach into the street. When I stood up, my eyes adjusting to the light, I found myself in the alley between the butcher shop and the abandoned building next door. I stood up straight and grinned, proud of what I had accomplished.

            “Nicht bewegen. Ich werde dich erschießen.”

            I whirled around, a shout drying up in my throat as I turned to face the soldier with a gun at the end of the alley. Don’t move. I’ll shoot you. I didn’t even need my German to get the message. I put my hands in the air, completely defenseless and without an explanation.

“Nicht bewegen!” the soldier shouted again, though I had shown no signs of moving besides putting my hands up. Ice-cold terror and surging adrenaline burned through my veins, breath short, fight or flight. The soldier kept his pistol pointed at me, fumbling behind him in his pack for his radio. He mumbled angrily into it. I caught rebel, intruder, reinforcements, and butcher. Oh God, I had brought them right to Peter. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” I nodded, my throat closing around any possible response. “Come towards me,” he ordered in German.

I swallowed hard and did as he said. He hadn’t lowered his gun, but logically I knew he would have killed me already if he wanted to. I was more valuable to them alive than dead. I didn’t think about what would happen to me if I went with him; I just knew how much I did not want to die. I took a slow step towards him, wishing I could touch my rosary, wishing I hadn’t left the scapulars upstairs. Tears burned in my eyes, then froze on my cheeks, as my frantic mind latched onto the scraps of a prayer my mother used to say.

Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and earth, there are none that can withstand your power. O show me herein that you are my Mother. Sweet Mother, I place this cause in your hands. Sweet Mother, I place this cause in your hands. Sweet Mother, I place this cause in your hands.

The shot sounded like an explosion to me, bursting inside my ears like a bomb. I gave a strangled cry, fell backwards, certain I had been shot, certain that the pain would knock me out any second now.

I laid on the ground, chest heaving, clutching my rosary, and waiting for the pain for a few long seconds. The silence was deafening after the shot. With my heart pounding in my ears, I sat up on my elbows. I wasn’t bleeding. I wasn’t shot. But there was blood, splattered directly in front of me, and bone, and tissue, smeared red on the ground. Without looking around any further, I let the terror and disgust take over, turned my head, and vomited into the snow. I laid there, shaking and retching, for a second, until the sharp, pungent smell rocketed me back to reality. With dots clouding my vision and by heart racing and a bitter taste in my mouth, I lifted my head.

Peter stood behind the lifeless soldier, tucking an identical pistol into his back pocket. He was in the middle of saying something, something I certainly hadn’t heard.

“… Self defense, understand. He was going to kill me. You distracted him and I shot him because he gave me no choice. Your German will not accept it any other way. He will be angry enough for his dead comrade, without knowing I put you in danger as well. He will be angry enough to leave if he knows the truth, and we cannot lose him.” I took a few long, ragged breaths, which Peter must have interpreted as agreement. “Now help me move his body."