The One Man (49 page)

Or maybe he was just imagining that.

Either way, he felt pride, somehow. Leo was on his way to England. With everything he held in his head. Strauss and Donovan would be pleased. He had done what he said. He had fulfilled his mission.

And
Leisa …
She was safe too. He had watched over her. Just as he'd always promised. He had kept his oath on that as well.

Doleczki.
He smiled. He had seen those dimples one last time as she smiled at him in the woods.
Don't be angry with me.
That was my vow all along. Our Mozart fit together one last time. Remember that. Keep it that way. Together.

No, it's not so bad at all.

He heard shouting. He couldn't tell if it was up close or far away. Or if his eyes were even open or closed. What did it matter now?
Aliyah.
Why did that of all words come into his mind? The first time he went up to read from the Torah. He'd made a promise to return one day. To the Holy Land.

“A man may compel his entire household to go up with him to the land of Israel,” Rabbi Leitner had said to him, “but may not compel a single one to leave.”

He dug his nails into the soft earth around him.

Papa, I told you, I will not leave.

It had been dark the night he went away; nerves grinding in his stomach. He stood somewhere between a boy and a man. “I don't want to go,” he begged his father as he dressed to go on his journey. “If I do, who will take care of her?”

“You
must
go,” his father told him. “I release you from your vow, Nathan. You can't protect her any longer.”

“But I can,” he said back defiantly.

“No. You can't.” His father shook his head. “Not any longer. With what is to come, only God can protect her now. But you have something even more important you can protect. You will take the
Mishnah
to a new home. In that way, you will protect us all, my son. Our history. Our tradition. Not only Leisa. Us all. For that, you have to go.”

“But, Papa…”

“What is good cannot be known in the short term, Nathan. Remember?” his father said. “It is a great honor.” He put his hands on Nathan's shoulders. “And they chose you, my son.
Here…”
His father took off his hat, his goose-felt bowler, and placed it on Nathan's head, adjusting it so that it sat just right. “This is rightfully yours now. Now you are really a man. And remember, a hat is not just a thing to wear, it's what you stand for. Who you are.”

A feeling as proud as the day he first stood at the bimah and read from the Torah ran through him. His father's goatee curled into a smile. He put his hand on Nathan's cheek. “Do you understand all this, my son? What I've told you.”

A soldier ran up to him on the ground. He pointed his rifle at Blum's chest, his finger on the trigger.

“Yes, Papa.” Blum stared into his father's eyes. “I think I understand.”

 

SEVENTY-SEVEN

THE EDWARD HINES, JR., VETERANS ADMINISTRATION HOSPITAL

“So I guess you know now”—the old man shifts in his chair and looks at his daughter with hollow, bloodshot eyes—“that the woman I held in the plane was your mother.”

His daughter nods, her hand firmly wrapped over his, tears forming in her eyes. “Yes.”

“I vowed never to let her go. And I didn't. I didn't let her go for sixty years.”

“Oh, Pop,” she says, taking his hand and bringing it softly against her cheek.

“She used her middle name, Ida, when we came to the States. And I guess it just stuck. All these years. As you understand now, there was a lot that took place there that we wanted to leave behind. We moved to Chicago just like her brother had. It was the only family either of us had.”

She's never heard this, any of this, the true story of how her father and mother met. She has only heard, without much explanation, that it was “in the camp.”

“Oh, Daddy.” She squeezes his hand.

It is after midnight now. The floor staff had let her stay on. The night nurse had looked in on them from time to time, taking his tray, bringing him his pills, but they let him finish his tale. He has been sitting up this whole time, years pouring out of him, years he had kept to himself, completely hidden, stopping only for a few sips of water when his throat grew dry.

Then he just sits there, and there is nothing more to say.

“So you see, I'm no hero. I couldn't even save the one man who saved me. This photo…” He picks up the one of the military officers presenting the Distinguished Service Cross. “This wasn't given to me. They were presenting it to his sister. To your mom. The only surviving family he had. You probably missed somewhere in that box, there's a little plaque, ‘To Nathan Blum, Lieutenant, U.S. Army.' He was the hero.” The old man shakes his head. “Your uncle … Not me.”

“I'm not sure, Pop.” His daughter shakes her head too. “From what I heard, I think you both were.”

“I don't know…” Her father sits back. “But I did give him the greatest honor I could think of…” He takes her hands. “And that was to give his name to you, pumpkin. At least I can finally tell you who you got your name from. Natalie.”

A sensation of pride surges through her. Her eyes glisten. She had never known. Natalie. After Nathan. Her uncle. “Thank you, Daddy.” She nods.

“I'm so sorry…” He shakes his head again as a tear winds down his cheek.

“Sorry for what?” She squeezes and kisses his hand.

“Sorry that all these years I couldn't tell you what was in my heart. What was always here. Every day.” He taps his chest. “In here.”

“That's okay.” She grabs a tissue to dab his eyes. “You did now.”

“We made a pact, your mom and I. I never picked up a chess piece again. And she … Well, as you know, maybe she played a little piano over the years. The clarinet…” He shrugs. “It just reminded her of everything she felt responsible for and wanted to leave behind. She did bring this back, though.” He reaches inside the cigar box and takes out the two halves of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, which had been taped back together. “So now you see, they're one. Seventy years it sat in there…” He looks at her and smiles. “You know that he was the real love of her life, her brother, not me.”

“That's not true. She adored you, Pop. You know that.”

“Well, she used to say that I had my own heartthrob too…” He picks up the white chess piece and holds it in his hand. “You know, there hasn't been a day when I haven't thought of her. When I haven't been heavy in my heart. All these years. That's the reason. You understand what I'm saying, don't you?”

She nods, tears welling in her own eyes. “Yes.”

“She said to me, ‘Good wins out, Leo … Even in here.' Even in that hell we came out of. ‘Live out your life,' she said. ‘If only just for me.' And I have.” He looks at his daughter. “I've been a good father, haven't I, sweetheart?”

“Of course you have, Daddy. The best.”

“And a good husband?”

“Yes.” She takes his hand. “Sixty years.”

“And I provided for you all? We built a family. You, Greg, and the kids…”

“A beautiful one, Pop. You did.”

“That was the vow I made. In that plane. And I tried to live up to it every day.” He looks at the picture of the pretty blond woman in the boat, the rim of her white sailor's cap folded up and that beautiful smile. “None of us would have been here if it wasn't for her. You never would have been born. All the good things in my life would never have happened. I would have died there. So I guess she was right, in the end, about good.”

“Yes.” His daughter looks at the dog-eared photo. “She was right.”

“Here. You can keep this all now.” He hands her back the photo and the chess piece. “Maybe you'll tell the kids one day. When I'm gone. But now I'm a little tired. I think I've earned that nap. I think this is the latest I've stayed up since your mom and I took that cruise to the Caribbean and I won twenty-eight hundred bucks in the ship's casino.”

“I never heard about that one.” His daughter laughs with surprise.

“Your mom was mad. Never let me near a casino again.” He curls a smile. “But I always could count the cards pretty well.”

He tries to stand, and she takes him by his arm and helps him, a step at a time, over to the bed, where he eases onto his back and lets out a satisfied sigh. “Just move it down a little for me, pumpkin. The switch is over there. You know, when I finally get out of this place”—he winks at her—“we ought to pick up one of these for the house.”

“Of course, Pop. We'll put it on the list.” She depresses the lever and gently eases him back down.

“That's good.” He closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them, he catches her staring at him. “What?”

“It's just that I've loved you every day of my life, Daddy. But I've never been prouder of you than I am now.”

He nods, a satisfied smile creeping onto his face. “It's good to hear you say that, pumpkin. But now I'm gonna get my beauty sleep, if it's okay.”

“Of course it's okay.” She bends down and gives him a kiss. “I'll be back tomorrow.”

She takes her things and puts everything neatly back in the cigar box, staring a second at the photograph of the woman in the boat, whom she now had a name for, one last time. “Thank you,” she whispers to her softly.

Then she puts the photograph into the box with everything else and closes it, closes the story that their lives had sprung from, and goes to the door. She stops before turning out the light. “So I have to ask one more thing, Pop. Was it true?”

“Was what true, pumpkin?” he asks with his eyes closed.

“About your memory. We always knew you had a good one. I mean, you could certainly recite the entire Illinois Code of Civil Law by heart.”

“Was it true? Well, let me see now … As I recall, you were born on January twenty-second, 1955.” He puts his fingers to his forehead. “That was a Saturday, I think.”

“Of course it was a Saturday, Pop. I heard a million times, how I kept you from going to the Cubs game that day. You had front-row seats.”

“Oh. All right, all right … Guess I've gotten a little rusty in my old age.”

She smiles, about to reach for the light. “And you didn't tell me about all the formulas you brought back. Mendl's work. What happened to all that? Did it have the impact they hoped for?”

“Did it have the impact…?” He shrugs. “They said it changed the course of the war. History, for that matter. At first they were a little unsure what to do, what with Alfred and Nathan not being there. They brought me out to this place in New Mexico and I just started rattling things off … They had a staff of people taking things down fast as I could say them. Turns out, in the end, however, the Germans weren't quite as close to a bomb as anyone thought. Still, you know what, honey…?”

“What, Pop?”

Her father turns to her. “I never understood a single thing that old man said to me. I just took it all down and put it in here.” He taps his head. “Gaseous diffusion … Never made a lick of sense to me. Now, tax law, that I understand.” His words begin to grow faint. “Trusts, wills … Those things make sense. Know what I'm saying, hon…?”

She stands at the door for a while and he closes his eyes. In a few seconds he is asleep.

“Yes, Pop.” She turns out the light. “I think I know.”

 

EPILOGUE

On the wall of the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, New Mexico, there is a large plaque, just behind the life-size statues of General Leslie Groves and Robert Oppenheimer, in his iconic, soft brimmed hat, commemorating the scientists who as part of the Manhattan Project helped oversee the development of the atomic bomb and changed the course of modern history.

There are 247 names on the wall. Some are names everyone knows who has studied this chapter of history. Einstein. Fermi. Bohr. Teller. Others, Kistiakowsky, Morrison, Neddermeyer, Ulam: theoretical physicists, chemists, mathematicians. People of uncommon brilliance, whose contributions were essential yet whose names are not widely known.

Of all the names, only one never actually worked on the Manhattan Project. He died in Europe during the war, in a concentration camp, far from the laboratories of Los Alamos or Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the circumstances of his passing are cloudy. But his contribution, on the matter of gaseous diffusion, brought back by people of uncommon bravery, was thought by those who erected this tribute to be just as vital to the project's success as that of those who toiled every day in Los Alamos.

You can find him, if you kneel down, between McKibben and Morrison near the bottom of the third row.

Alfred Mendl.

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

My father-in-law, Nathan Zorman, was raised in Warsaw, Poland, and, in a shift of fate that no doubt saved his life, he left in early 1939 to come to the United States, just months before the war.

He never heard from anyone in his family again.

In 1941, when America entered the war, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and, because of his knowledge of languages, was placed in the Intelligence Corps.