Tilting the Balance

“This is Hannah’s third, ” Sarah said reassuringly. “The first two were so simple I could have stayed here for them. ” Isaac started banging on the door again. “I’m coming, ” she told him again, this time following words with action.

“She’s right about that, ” Judah told Anielewicz after his wife had gone. “Hannah has hips like-” Having caught himself about to be ungallant, he shook his head in self-reproach. As if to make amends, he changed the subject “Would you care for a game of chess? ”

“Why not? You’ll teach me something. ” Before the war, Anielewicz had fancied himself as a chess player. But either his game had gone to pot after close to four years of neglect or Judah Ussishkin could have played in tournaments, because he’d managed only one draw and no wins in half a dozen or so games against the doctor.

Tonight proved no exception. Down a knight, his castled king’s position not well enough protected to withstand the attack he saw coming, Mordechai tipped the king over, signifying surrender. “You might have gotten out of that, ” Ussishkin said.

“Not against you, ” Mordechai answered. “I know better. Do you want to try another game? I can do better than that. ”

“Your turn for white, ” Judah said. As they rearranged the pieces on the board, he added, “Not everyone would keep coming back after a string of losses. ”

“I’m learning from you, ” Anielewicz said. “And maybe my game is coming back a little. When I’m playing as well as I can, I might be able to put you to some trouble, anyhow. ” He pushed his queen’s pawn to open.

They were in the middle of a hard-fought game with no great advantage for either side-Mordechai was proud of avoiding a trap a few moves before-when more pounding on the door made them both jump. Isaac shouted, “Doctor, Sarah wants you to come. Right away, she says. ”

“Oy, ” Judah said, cultivated manner for once forgotten. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “The game will have to keep, I’m afraid. ” He moved a pawn. “Think about that while I’m gone. ” He snatched up his bag and hurried out to the anxious Isaac.

Anielewicz studied the board. The pawn move didn’t look particularly menacing. Maybe Judah was trying to make him think too much… or maybe he really was missing something.

He looked at the board again, shrugged, and started to get ready to go to sleep.

He hadn’t even pulled his shirt off over his head when the thrum of aircraft engines, overhead made him freeze. They were human-made planes; he’d heard and hated that heavy drone for most of a month on end in 1939, when the Luftwaffe systematically pounded a Warsaw that could hardly defend itself. These aircraft, though, were coming out of the east. Red Air Force? Anielewicz wondered; the Russians had flown occasional bombing raids after Hitler invaded them. Or are the Nazis still in business over there, too? He knew German ground forces had kept fighting inside the Soviet Union even after the Lizards came; was the Luftwaffe still a going concern, too?

He went outside. If the bombers unloaded on Leczna, that was the worst place to be, but he didn’t think the little town was anybody’s primary target-and it had been a while since humans tried an air raid on Lizard-held territory.

Several other people stood in the street, too, their heads craning this way and that as they tried to spot the planes. Cloud cover was thick; there wasn’t anything to see. The pilots probably hoped the bad weather would help shield them. Then, off to the south, a streak of fire rose into the sky, and another and another. “Lizard rockets, ” somebody close by said in Polish-Zofia Klopotowski.

The rockets vanished into the clouds. A moment later, an enormous explosion rattled windows. “A whole plane, bombs and all, ” Anielewicz said sadly.

A streak of fire came out of the clouds-falling, not rising. “He’s not going to make it, ” Zofia said, her tone echoing Mordechai’s. Sure enough, the stricken bomber smashed into the ground a few kilometers south of Leczna. Another peal of man-made thunder split the air.

The rest of the planes in the flight droned on toward their goal. Had Anielewicz been up there and watched his comrades hacked from the sky, he would have reversed course and run for home. It might not have done him any good. More missiles rose. More aircraft blew up in midair or tumbled in ruins to the ground. Those that survived kept stubbornly heading west.

As the engines faded out of hearing, most people headed for their homes. A few lingered. Zofia said, “I wonder if I should be glad the Lizards are shooting down the Russians or Germans or whoever was in those planes. We live better now than we did under the Reds or the Nazis. ”

Mordechai stared at her. “But they’re making slaves of us, ” he exclaimed.

“So were the Reds and the Nazis, ” she replied. “And you Jews were quick enough to hop in bed with the Lizards when they pushed this way. ”

Her choice of language made him cough, but he said, “The Nazis weren’t just making slaves of us, they were killing us in carload lots. We had nothing to lose-and we didn’t see at the start, that the Lizards wanted only servants, not partners. They want to do to the whole world what the Germans and Russians did to Poland. That’s not right, is it? ”

“Maybe not, ” Zofia said. “But if the Lizards lose and the Germans and Russians come back here, Poland still won’t be free, and we’ll all be worse off. ”