Mila 18 [antikvár]

Chapter OneJournal EntryAugust 1939This is the first entry in my Journal. Icannot help hut feel that the war will begin in a few weeks. If the lessons of the past threeyears are any barometer, something awesome is apt to happen ifGermany makes a successful invasion, what with three anda half millionJews iii Poland. Perhaps the tensions óf the moment are making me over-dramatic. My journal may prove completely worthless and a waste of time. Yet, as a historian, I must satisfy the impulse to record what is happening around me.alexander brandelDrops of late summer rain splattered against the high window which ran from the floor to the ceiling.The big room was violently Polish, in memory of one of the landed gentry who had kept it as a nest for his mistress of the moment during his visits to Warsaw from his estate. All evidence of female occupants had vanished. It was solid and leathery and mas-culine. lts former grandeur was somewhat qualified by a practical consideration that the present occupant was a working journalist with the particular slovenliness that goes with bachelorhood.Christopher de Monti was untidy but rather inoffensive about it. It was almost a pleasure for his housekeeper to clean up after him, for he had immaculate taste in records and books and tobacco and liquor and a wardrobe marked with the finest British labels.In One corner, next to the window, stood a banged-up typewriter and a ream of paper and an overfull ash tray.The single bedroom was formed by a deep alcove off the living room which could be isolated by drawing a pair of velvet drapes. A night stand beside the huge bed sported an ancient German table-model radio shaped like a church window. From the radio escaped the sad and foreboding notes of Chopin's Nocturne in A Flat.That was about all one heard on Radio Polskie these days; Chopin performed by Paderewski nocturnes.It seemed as though night was again to fall on Poland.Chris grumbled in a state of half sleep and half wakefulness and stretched his lean, wiry limbs to their fufi reaches and feit across the bed for Deborah. She was gone. His eyes opened and searched the dark corners of the alcove. Then he quieted as he heard her moving about in the other room.His hand groped automatically on the night stand and found the 10