While Still We Live

by Helen Macinnes

  “One moment!” the captain called after her. “Three things I want to know. Who is the man you called your chief—the friend of Korytowski?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Who is the man you called his assistant, the man who employed you?”

  “I can’t tell you that, either.”

  “Why did you say ‘Wisniewski’ down on the road?” Sheila caught her breath. She answered slowly as if trying to find for herself the reason why that name had come so spontaneously to her lips, “Your men called you rotmistrz. That meant you belonged to the cavalry. So did he.”

  “There are several cavalry officers of that name. Surely you didn’t expect me to know your Wisniewski.”

  “He was a horseman I thought you would know. Adam Wisniewski. He represented Poland at the international riding competitions. Surely you must know him if you are in the cavalry? I thought that if you knew him and saw that I knew him, then you wouldn’t shoot me at once. You’d give me a chance to explain. All I wanted was not to have a Polish bullet in me. It seemed a pity to die so—so unnecessarily. And then...” She hesitated, and looked sharply at the listening faces. Did the rest of these men really not understand English?

  “And then?” the captain repeated patiently.

  “Well, he is doing something of the same kind of fighting as you are. I suppose when I saw a cavalry officer leading a guerrilla attack I thought—at least I suppose I thought subconsciously of Adam Wisniewski.”

  “I think,” the captain said very slowly, “I think we have still more information to find out. Your story was not so complete as it seemed. Sit down. Just how do you know what Wisniewski is doing? When did you last see him?” Sheila looked at the man who still blocked the path. Jan had moved up obediently beside him.

  She said angrily, “I don’t believe you ever meant I was to leave. You still don’t believe me. Why did you tell me to go when you didn’t mean it?”

  “To see if you would go readily, eager to reach your German friends with the news that our camp was fifteen miles south of this point. I believe you more than I did ten minutes ago.”

  “But what about Korytów?” To the man whose girl lived at Korytów she said in Polish, “Korytów is to be destroyed by the Germans. Someone must warn the people to scatter to the woods, to other villages.”

  “I can handle my own men, thank you,” the Polish captain said in a hard voice. Then wearily, “Korytów will be your final test. I’ll send two men. If they don’t return or if they find no Germans arrive within forty-eight hours then we shall know you are too clever to live.”

  To the man whose girl lived at Korytów, he said, “Go with Jan. Warn the people. Then watch for two nights and two days to see if the Szwaby arrive. You know where to join us. We’ll wait for you there until the night after your watch is ended. Take great care. I may be sending you into a trap.”

  From the irritation in his voice, Sheila suddenly realised the risk the captain was taking. He was half-angry with himself that he should have listened to her. He was torn with doubts between a possible danger to Korytów, probable danger to his men, suspicion of such a story, belief in certain extraordinary details. To hold her as a hostage was the most generous thing he could afford to do. The broad-shouldered man obviously shared none of the part-belief which had been awakened in the captain. Sheila, listening to the captain’s worried voice, knew she should be thankful for even this small mercy. Her own irritation over the slowness of his decision vanished.

  Jan was looking at her. He said with a broad grin, “You wouldn’t make me dead, would you, miss?”

  Sheila shook her head. She was smiling, now. She said to the man who knew Korytów: “Find Pani Marta and the two children, Teresa and Stefan. Tell them they must go to Warsaw and Madame Aleksander. She is ill and alone at Frascati Gardens, 37. She needs them.” She opened her bag quickly and searched for her re-entry permit into Warsaw. “No good. Oh damn and blast and damn,” she said in English to herself. The permit was in the decided name of Anna Braun. “Tell Pani Marta she must swear she lived in Warsaw and was a refugee who is now returning. She must do that. Otherwise she won’t get in. Remember: Frascati 37.” The men nodded, looked to their captain for a sign of dismissal, and then moved silently towards the path back towards the road.

  “I’d almost believe she meant what she was saying if I hadn’t seen the results of so many German lies.” It was the broad-shouldered man who was speaking. He stood, compact and solid and watchful.

  “Enough, Thaddeus,” the captain said. He stared at the ground before his feet, and then looked suddenly at Sheila. His eyes were bitter. If you’ve lost me two good men, by God I’ll shoot you, myself, he seemed to say. For one moment Sheila thought he was going to recall the men and let Thaddeus have his way. He rose suddenly, and moving towards the other men gave them quick orders. They lifted the spoils they had won, wearing part of them, carrying the rest.

  An owl gave its sharp cry behind Sheila. She started. But it was the broad-shouldered man called Thaddeus. He repeated the mournful cry as she watched him, and then smiled in spite of himself at her amazement. From three places in the wood came the hoots of other owls, irregular, so natural, that Sheila thought of the three sentries stationed there only after she saw that the rest of the men were leaving the clearing. They scattered, walking singly or in pairs.

  The captain said, “I’m afraid I must burden you with my presence. Only keep silent. We have forty-eight hours for talking in the safety of our camp. That will be a pleasant way to pass the time.”

  “And if your men don’t return?” Sheila asked wryly.

  The officer smiled stiffly, too formally, as if she had made a remark in doubtful taste. “It will still have been a pleasant way,” he said calmly.

  The sharply pointing pines rustled in the wind. It was a sad wind, sighing and lamenting. The stars were remote and cold. The other men had vanished into the deep shadows of the wood. Sheila kept the steady pace of the man beside her, and his silence. Beyond the wood were long stretches of solitary fields. Beyond the fields were other woods. Beyond the woods were further fields. The distance was much longer than fifteen miles. Fifteen miles, he had said. Fifteen miles to the south. Yes, fifteen miles to the south for the Germans’ benefit. Fifteen miles to the south for her information if she were in German pay. Now she knew that they weren’t travelling due south, either.

  When dawn came, mist shrouded the endless plain behind them and the wide forest which lay ahead. Within the shelter of the first band of trees, the captain let her rest for ten minutes. And then her heavy feet were following his, deeper into the thickness of the forest. Once he caught her as she stumbled drunkenly against his side. After that, he kept a grip on her arm and helped her through the wet thick underbrush.

  “One more mile,” he promised her, looking at her white face. “A short one,” he added encouragingly. Sheila was too tired to answer. She was too tired to smile. She could only try to keep erect, to wade through the heavy white mist which swirled round her legs and hid her feet like the cold hungry surf of a surging sea.

  26

  THE SPY

  As they left the masses of russet-coloured honeysuckle, which, covering the ground, had dragged at their feet and twisted round their legs with the pull of a quicksand, Sheila heard the clear whistle of a bird. It came from behind the trees, near the path which the captain at last allowed himself to use. Once this path had been a cart-track, perhaps even a forest road. Now, fine green grass grew over the ruts at the edge, and led them with leisurely twists through the crowding roots of trees. The captain was hurrying once more, urging her on with concealed excitement, as somewhere ahead of them in this grey morning mist another bird answered. Then there were, suddenly, no trees. Just a stretch of frosted dew gleaming coldly. She heard men’s voices welcoming them. The captain was saying, “Well, we’ve made it. We’re the last, I see, but we made it,” and Sheila raised her eyes for the first time from the path
. The silver mist was rising. It unveiled the forest circling round this clearing, and the trees were scarlet and bronze and yellow. Sheila stood there, looking at the trees and the soft mist. It was like watching a curtain going up in the theatre, when you hold your breath at the unexpected beauty of the stage.

  The captain spoke.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Yes.” But she hadn’t known what he had said.

  He took her arm and led her to the small wooden house which stood close up against one side of the forest clearing. A long-handled axe with its edge buried in a broad stump stood at the door. A two-handed saw with rusted teeth rested on wooden pegs driven into the house wall under the broad overhang of roof. The captain pointed to the back of the house. “There’s a stream behind these trees. You can wash there. Then you can rest.”

  Sheila nodded. She passed Thaddeus, who didn’t even bother to look at her. Two other men were standing beside a wooden bench outside a small shed. They had been examining the pockets of the jackets and coats which they had taken from the Germans. The papers and documents and maps which they found were in neat groups on the wooden bench. Large pebbles were used as paperweights. These men, too, didn’t look at her.

  She followed the narrow path past them. Three men still unaccounted for. They might be on guard in the forest. Well, two of them might. The third was at the stream, stripped to the waist, washing his shirt and socks. A healing wound ran its red tongue down his side. A violent bruise, brown with purple shadows, spread over his shoulder. As he turned round, she saw the small cross hanging from a silver chain round his strong neck. He rose quickly from the edge of the pool, gathered the wet clothes in his hand, and passed her without a glance. Like the others, he had an even mixture of contempt and hate in his face. Sheila felt as a leper must feel when he approaches a village, hungry for a human word, and finds some scraps of food placed where he may reach them without contaminating others. She must learn to forget her old peacetime belief that people were innocent until you proved them guilty. In a war such as these men were fighting, everyone was guilty until proved innocent.

  She concentrated on the problem of washing. She was too sleepy. She was exhausted. She hadn’t any soap, any towel. The water was too cold. Any old excuse came tumbling into her mind, anything to pretend she didn’t have to get her clothes off and scrape herself clean. She could imagine the effect if she went back to the forester’s house and asked for a towel.

  “What, no towel, no bath salts, no powder for her ladyship?”

  As she knelt at the edge of the bank, where the stream, flowing slowly, had been dammed to form a round pool, and tested the water halfheartedly with a finger, she remembered how in the stifling air of burning Warsaw she used to dream of a clean cool stream and water which didn’t need to be carried in a pail. Now she had the stream: it was clean, so clean that she could see the gravel in the bottom, and it was certainly cool. The pool was almost waist-deep, the bushes and trees were thick enough to give at least the feeling of privacy. Perhaps the guards, no doubt posted to make sure she wouldn’t try to escape, couldn’t see her. Then she laughed at herself, and she, felt better. It was a long time since she had laughed at herself. She undressed quickly, shaking her clothes and hanging them on the scarlet and yellow leaves around her. She slipped hurriedly into the water before she could change her mind. It was very very cold. The morning’s frost still pierced it.

  When she hurried back to the forester’s house, carrying her wet underslip which had served as an inefficient towel, she found the captain, Thaddeus and two men examining the papers and weapons which they had won. The German coats and tunics and caps were piled on the corner bed.

  The captain looked up as she entered. “Why were you running?” he asked sharply.

  “Cold. Trying to get warm.” It was true. Her teeth were chattering. The men lost interest in her once more.

  It was, much to her surprise, Thaddeus who picked up a bayonet from the table, skewered a thick slice of sausage which lay there along with a bottle and some empty tins, and held it out towards her.

  She thanked him. He looked at her with little liking in his light grey eyes, and turned once more to the table. Then he looked up again at the girl now sitting on the edge of the wooden bench in front of the unlit stove, poured some vodka out of the bottle into a tin mug and came over with it to where she sat.

  “Drink this quickly.”

  In her nervousness, she gulped it so that she choked and coughed. He took the mug away from her, ignored her thanks, and went back to the table.

  The icy bath had chased sleep away. She was still exhausted, but her eyelids were no longer weighted down. She finished eating the hard sausage, and then spread out the wet petticoat over the bench beside her, so that it might have a chance to dry.

  “Better hang it outside,” the captain said unexpectedly. He spoke in Polish to one of the men—the man she had seen at the stream this morning—who rose and followed her to the door.

  “Where are your stockings?” the captain added quickly.

  “They were in shreds.”

  “You left them at the brook?”

  Now what have I done wrong this time? Sheila wondered. “Yes,” she said.

  The captain spoke, rapidly in Polish once more. The man took Sheila silently to the stream, picked up the stockings from where she had thrown them under a bush, and then led her back to the large linden tree at the side of the house. There, round a rope strung under its thick cover, she knotted the shoulder-straps of the underslip beside the row of toeless socks. A drying shirt filled with the breeze, and swung like a fat, headless, legless man.

  In the cottage, the men were now on their feet. The papers had been sorted and were being replaced in the tunic pockets.

  “Did she leave anything else lying about?” the captain asked.

  “No.”

  “Good.” To Sheila he said, “Rest on the bed.”

  “I—”

  “Get over to the bed. You’ll be out of our way, there.”

  Sheila went to the corner of the room where the high wooden bed stood. There was a very old, very faded striped mattress, and three equally ancient striped pillows in a hard neat pile at the head of the bed. She watched the men, sorting the clothes on the floor as if this were some kind of card game. A coat, a tunic, a cap, sidearms, here. A coat, a tunic, trousers, a cap, sidearms, there.

  “We need extra ammunition, and four more trousers. That’s all. Then we’ll be complete,” Thaddeus said with satisfaction. “We can get the trousers from the laundry-line at Brzeziny. There’s a garrison there.”

  The captain nodded. He had taken her torn stockings and thrown them on a pile of rubbish. “Bury them as usual,” he said to the man beside him.

  The insecurity of these men struck Sheila with renewed force. In this hidden house, with a depth of trees to give a margin of safety, there was still no security. Litter had to be buried. No fire was lit to give the warmth they needed. Everything had to be arranged so that, at the first alarm from an outpost, each man could seize his load and escape into the forest. Even the shirts washed free of bloodstains had to dry, not in the sunshine of the clearing, but carefully hidden from any passing plane under a broad tree. And none of these men sat in the sunshine: they couldn’t enjoy even that. They crossed the clearing by circling round it, keeping close to the cover of forest. Sheila looked round the ominously neat room. These men couldn’t relax, not even here at their headquarters. Their margin of safety was too narrow. She looked at the thin, tight faces, and she saw them clearly for the first time.

  * * *

  The hours passed slowly. The men ignored her; to them, she was either a treacherous danger or a necessary nuisance. The only words spoken to her were those telling her to eat or giving her permission to walk down to the stream. She knew she was as much guarded then—though tactfully, secretly—as when she lay on the coarse linen-covered mattress. She stared at the beam across the ceiling with its framed pictures and
painted flowers. She stared at the straight row of sacred pictures on the wall in their heavy wooden frames. She stared at the roughly carved figure of the Madonna with her blue painted gown, at the candles and crucifix on the broad ledge at the Madonna’s feet. She stared at the top of the tall whitewashed stove, followed with her eyes its simple design down from the ceiling to the bulge of cooking oven and the wooden benches fixed round it for a friendly hour on a cold winter’s night. On top of the oven, someone had spread a neat piece of newspaper: weeks ago, someone had spread it, intimating that the oven was no longer going to be used until he got back from the war. And on the newspaper, its edges neatly matching the square of the oven top, was a prayer-book. She stared at those things. She knew them all by heart, just as she knew the shape of the table with its square solid legs suddenly twisting into a soft curve as they reached the hard earth floor; or the shape of the wooden bench, built into the wall opposite the stove, with its curved end-arms and its attached footrest. She knew this house as if she had always lived here; as if she had been the one who had painted the flowers on the beam so proudly; as if she had let the stove die, and had raked it clean for a fresh start and had covered it with a newspaper headlining war, and had laid the Book on it with a prayer for a safe return.

  Then, to stop thinking about the forester who had not returned, she would sit up and stare at the open door and the patch of grass, no longer whitened with dew, but warm and fading in the autumn sunlight. Sometimes, when the men were not in the room, she would rise and walk to the window, and lean on its broad sill of dark wood, and look out over the empty flowerbox at the trees, and forget everything that worried and nagged her by watching their leaves. Their rich colours, so sharply divided and yet merging into each other, would stare back at her until she could only think of red and yellow and orange and purple and bronze and henna. It was strange that anything so violent should be so peaceful. And then the crisp air would end its deception and strike at her shoulders, bring a shiver to her spine, and she would go back once more to the high, boxlike bed. She would begin staring at the ceiling beam with its framed pictures and painted flowers.