Page 205 - LEIBY

Chapter 26 205

Leiby a glimmer of hope. He ran back inside the building, raced
up the stairs to the second floor, and turned to the room next to
the office. He pulled out the thick rope that he always had with
him, tied it firmly around himself, and tied the other end to the
heavy table that he dragged to the window. Slowly, carefully, he
wriggled out of the second-floor window and placing his feet
on the wall of the room, succeeded in reaching the window of
the office. He shook the bars violently and was happy to notice
that they were rusty and half rotted away. Again, he pulled out
his pocketknife and sawed away at the bars. The sweat poured
down his face and dripped into his eyes, but after a few minutes
of relentless sawing, he let out a victory whoop. The bars were
cut, the window opened, and the office was his for the taking!

With cat-like flexibility he jumped inside, untied the rope from
around his body, and looked ruefully at the bright red welts that
adorned his waist. He glanced around the room and his gaze
fell on the half-full jar of sugar cubes on the table. Relieved,
he opened the jar and swallowed the cubes ravenously. When
he had finished them all, he discovered a thick piece of paper
stuck to the bottom of the jar. With some effort, he succeeded
in extracting the paper, which turned out to be a rolled-up
photograph. Leiby sat down on the large armchair that stood
in the corner of the room, stretched out comfortably, and begin
unrolling the picture. Suddenly he noticed that the large map
of Eretz Yisrael that had always hung on the wall opposite
where he sat had been removed and replaced with a map of
Poland. Beside it was a picture of the famous eagle, emblem
of Poland, and a crude drawing of the Polish leader Shikorsky.
His eyes fell on the documents strewn around the table, and he
spotted a scribbled map of the refugees’ escape route: Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Austria, and finally Germany.

Slowly he unrolled the picture that he had found in the sugar
jar. He sniffed the air; the picture emitted the unmistakable
scent of fresh ink, obviously having been developed just a very
short time beforehand. It turned out to be a picture of the group
of refugees that had just left. Leiby whistled in disbelief. What