“Are you sure Dutka won’t take his party by a short cut, too?”
“He always sticks to the path at night. He isn’t a woodsman.”
“Galinski might persuade him to risk a short cut. If he is a German, he will search for the quickest way.”
“Yes, there’s that to worry about too. In that case, our scout would be useless and Thaddeus has gone in vain.”
“I advise leaving at once, Captain Reymont. Your men are ready.”
The captain nodded, looked at his watch again, gave his last orders. The outposts stationed in the woods were given their warning to move. Their answering bird call proved that they had heard it and were obeying. As the men in the forester’s house started to move out of the door, Sheila wakened Stefan. And then she remembered that she, too, had preparations for leaving to complete. She found her handbag, which had been placed on top of the oven, near the worn prayer-book. All the permits and identification papers would have to be destroyed. Anna Braun was dying. There was unbelievable pleasure in feeling the thick sheets of paper tear between her fingers. The British passport was the most difficult.
“If I may...” the white-haired man said gently, and held out his hand. He must have been watching her all this time. He ripped the resisting cover of the passport in two. “Would you like me to dispose of these where the Germans might think they were very clever in finding them? That would make them so proud of themselves.”
“Of course. I am supposed to be dead.” She laughed happily.
“Or worse than dead. Naturally, the barbaric Poles would either have murdered and buried you, or carried you away for further torture. Naturally, the same barbaric Poles would try to hide the evidence of your capture. But the Germans, being a superior race, cannot be misled by such petty tricks.”
“May I keep my bag, at least? Empty except for the comb and things like that?”
“Better throw everything away. If they think you left with a handbag safely under your arm, they won’t think so much of the destroyed papers which they will find.”
She gave him the bag slowly. Now I’m neither Anna Braun nor Sheila Matthews, she thought, as she watched the strong fingers rip the bag’s lining and break its clasp.
“Take off your jacket, too,” the quiet voice was saying. “The material is much too like Warsaw for a trip through the fields. The boy will give you his. Later, at a village, you can get appropriate clothes, and burn your blouse and skirt.”
He watched her transformation with approval. He picked up the jacket and the underslip which she had stuffed into its pocket. “When these are discovered, you will be in the headlines of all the Nazi papers.”
Sheila smiled grimly. “Yes. She died for her Führer.” The stranger laughed suddenly, so unexpectedly that the captain looked up in surprise and the few men remaining in the room smiled in sympathy. Sheila looked at the stranger’s transformed face. For a moment, she thought of the change in all these men: this was how this man should look, this was how all men should look. Not aged and sad and grim, but laughing honestly. His teeth were white and even. She thought of Russell Stevens. He had wanted her to go, to leave for a world where men could laugh every day. She had chosen to stay, and in choosing had chosen strain and sadness. Yet if she were now asked whether she regretted her choice, she would say, “No. Not now. This afternoon, lying on that bed, waiting to be shot—yes. But now—no.” For now, watching the strength as well as the sadness in these men’s faces, she felt herself a part of something bigger than ever an individual could be by himself.
Jan had brought Stefan over to them. “We travel together,” Jan said to Sheila, and then grinned good-naturedly. “Did you hear I’m to get a medal because I didn’t shoot you? I’m the hero who saved the camp.”
“How does that work out?” one of the men called over from the door. He was waiting for his time to leave.
“Well, if I had shot her then she wouldn’t have been here to see that fine recruit that Dutka brought in for you, would she?”
The man at the door said, “If they give you a medal, it will be a nursemaid’s one.” He grinned at Sheila and Stefan.
“I’ll get them to the Reapers quicker than any of you grown men can travel.”
“What do you bet on it? My knife to your dagger, eh?” The man’s time had come. He slipped through the opened door, and gave a last wave of his hand to the room.
“Jan, are you to get a medal?” Stefan asked, his excitement wakening him fully.
Jan smiled. “When we drive the Germans out of our land, we’ll all get medals. I’ll carve my own out of Himmler’s jawbone, and wear it on my hat.”
* * *
The room was empty. Only the captain and Jan and Stefan and Sheila remained. The white-haired stranger had gone, as silently as he had come. She hadn’t even seen him leave.
The captain smothered the candle with his hand. “Better go now,” he said. “The other men have gone ahead to clear any danger out of your path.” He was looking at her, but she couldn’t see his face in the room’s darkness. Through the opened door came a short path of faint moonlight. The shrewd night wind cut into the room’s thick warmth.
“And you?” she asked.
“I shall wait for Thaddeus and any other who gets back here. They must be told where to go.”
If there is any other, Sheila thought. If there is any Thaddeus.
“Dowidzenia!” Captain Reymont said quietly. Jan had already moved over the path of moonlight into the silvered grass.
“Goodbye,” she echoed, and gave the dark silhouette her hand. “Good luck!” He would need it.
“Good luck!” Stefan repeated.
Sheila followed Jan and Stefan round the edge of the clearing. The trees, now a wall of black bronze and white silver, shut out the forester’s house, and the man waiting in its darkness. If Thaddeus or the scout returned first he would have a chance. If the Germans got here before them, there was none.
The sky with its fitful clouds and veiled moon was blotted out. Overhead were only the rustling, whispering leaves. The forest seemed alive. Sheila’s alertness increased. Inside four walls it had been possible to relax a little, to feel a supposed security. But here, in the nakedness of the night, every shadow and every whisper might suddenly become an enemy.
Jan had said, “Follow me. Do as I do. The boy walks last.”
In this way, like the men who had gone ahead of them, they crept through the woods. Through Polish land they crept, hunted through its forests and fields as if they, and not those who hunted them, had been its thieves.
When the woods ended, open land as flat and broad as a sea stretched in front of them. Its islands were solitary trees, a line of hazel bushes, a group of houses clustered together in solid blackness. Above them was limitless night: in this countryside the horizon was not where the earth rose in rugged folds to touch the sky, but where the sky reached down to join the straight line of farthest fields.
“We’ll follow the edge of the wood for a while, and then cut south,” Jan said. He was smiling. He was glad to see the plains again. The open fields and the wide sky were his country. He felt safer there.
They must have been more than a mile from the wood on the journey south, when the first distant shots echoed across the fields.
Jan stopped. He cursed softly. He stood, looking back at the wood, as if he were about to run towards there again. Sheila found she had taken hold of his sleeve. It was as if she were saying, “Don’t leave us. We are lost without you.”
He looked down at the girl’s anxious face. He cursed softly again, and turned away from the direction of the shots. They were closer together now, dull, distant, but unmistakable. Thaddeus and the captain, instead of escaping, must be shooting it out with the Nazis. The Germans must have come quickly: perhaps they had been waiting on the outskirts of the wood near Dutka’s village for “Galinski’s” return. For now the meaning of the stationing of the German patrol in the village just after “Galinski” ha
d arrived there became clear. The Germans were moving against guerrilla bands. This was the method they had devised: first a spy was sent to a village near any suspicious locality; then some troops, ostensibly as a road patrol. No wonder “Galinski” had not been discovered by the Germans when they searched the village. No wonder he and Dutka had been allowed to reach the wood without any trouble. And now Thaddeus and the captain were shooting it out, perhaps to give the rest of them time to scatter to safety.
Jan urged them on madly. They raced towards a group of darkened houses. Sheila, breathless, had no time to ask why this sudden speed should be so necessary. The Germans hadn’t followed them. Thanks to the captain and Thaddeus, the Germans were well occupied round the wood. But as they waited in the shadow of a long, low cottage and Jan rapped gently at a shuttered window, she began to guess the reason of Jan’s urgency.
“We are still too near the forest,” she whispered. “Should we stop here?”
Jan said, “You need proper clothes.” And that was all. But even before the sleep-dulled faces welcomed them into the long dark corridor which formed the hall, even before she and Stefan were being given peasant clothes and a bowl of thin soup, even before Jan disappeared as they swallowed the warm liquid and sat round the wooden kitchen table, she knew that her guess was right. Jan had done what he had wanted to do as soon as he had heard the shots. Jan had gone back to the wood.
“He will be here before dawn. He promised,” the peasant’s wife assured her and offered her some more soup. Sheila refused politely. Heaven only knew if she and Stefan were gobbling up the family’s ration for a week. She kicked Stefan adroitly on the shin as he seemed about to accept a second helping. He refused suddenly, and would not be persuaded again. The two little girls, flaxen-haired and wide-eyed with excitement, stood with their bare feet showing under their long white shifts, and stared. An older girl helped her mother serve the food. There was no sign of the woman’s husband. Sheila watched the broad-faced, broad-hipped woman moving so silently about the kitchen in her shapeless plaid nightgown. How often, in the last few weeks, had she taken strangers into her house and shared its warmth and food with them? Her placid face gave no answer.
At last the soup bowls were emptied to the last shred of cabbage.
“You and the boy can share a mattress in front of the stove,” the woman said. “It’s warmer here than in the bedroom next door. He is your brother?”
Sheila nodded. She was too tired for explanations.
“Poor souls,” the woman said to the wooden beam across the ceiling, “they’re dropping with sleep.” She lifted a candle from the table and said to Stefan, “Help your sister get the mattress. It’s next door. I’ll show you.”
In the next room, leading off the long corridor which ran the whole front length of the cottage, there was a striped mattress and a gay bedmat and high-piled pillows. But the room was cold, and Sheila changed her mind about suggesting she would sleep here after all. As she and Stefan pulled the bedding along the corridor to the kitchen, they heard the roar of motorcycles.
The woman blew out the candle, and they finished their task in darkness. The light in the kitchen had been extinguished too. The children were back in bed. The older girl sounded as if she were clearing the table of all signs of their meal. They felt their way to the stove by its warmth.
“Quietly,” the woman’s voice came through the darkness, as Sheila stumbled against a bench. “Open a shutter, Weronika.” The girl’s footsteps crossed the floor unerringly. A shutter was gently pushed aside, just enough to let the intense blackness give way to dim shadows.
“Remember,” the hushed voice from the corner bed was saying, “you are my niece and nephew from Lowicz. Your parents are dead. Your names?”
“Sheila and Stefan.” The words were out before Sheila could stop the boy from speaking.
“Sheila? What a strange name!” Weronika said. “It doesn’t sound Polish.” She was helping Stefan to straighten the mattress in front of the whitewashed stove. Then her bare feet ran towards the crowded bed. The children exclaimed and were hushed by their mother as Weronika climbed in and pushed them over to the wall. Then there was silence.
The motorcycles had swept through the village. Now they were followed by two cars. And then there was silence once more. Sheila shivered in spite of the warmth of the kitchen. She couldn’t stop worrying. Korytów...she would need to know what had happened there. She had failed, and she wanted to know just how far she had failed.
“Stefan,” she said softly. But the boy was already asleep. Steady breathing came from the corner bed. There was a nice placid sound in the unbroken rhythm. It was warm on the floor, and more comfortable than Sheila had imagined. Her last thought was one of amazement at the discovery, and then yawning loudly, without benefit of a restraining hand, she hugged her shoulders and closed her eyes.
* * *
When she awoke, the others were all moving about the kitchen. From her mattress she could see nothing but strong legs and bare feet.
“Well, she’s back with us,” a man’s voice said. It was Jan. She raised herself on her elbow. He and Stefan sat at the long table with their backs to the wall. They were eating again.
“It’s all right,” Stefan called. “Jan brought us some food.”
Sheila rose slowly. Cold sunlight filled the kitchen. The corner bed was stiffly neat. The woman and her children were dressed now as Sheila was, with wide black skirts and white blouses and sleeveless jackets and aprons. Like those which had been given to Sheila, their clothes were neatly patched and darned. Weronika was examining Sheila’s discarded skirt, holding it up in front of her.
“That and the jumper and the boy’s jacket should be burned,” Jan said between generous mouthfuls of food.
“Such a waste. Such good material,” the woman said. She looked at the stained and torn pieces of clothing. “If they were washed... I could alter them and the Germans would never know them.”
“Then alter them quick,” Jan said.
“They ought to be destroyed,” Sheila suggested. She looked worriedly at the others, but no one wanted to hear her.
Weronika ran happily for her mother’s carved wood sewing box. “We’ll alter them first before we wash them,” the woman decided, “and then no one can recognise them when they are on the drying line.” She looked up at Sheila, who was watching her busy scissors doubtfully. “You must eat, for you will be leaving shortly. The cart will soon be ready for the journey. Hurry.”
As Sheila ate the simple meal which one of the flaxen-haired little girls put shyly down before her, Jan was talking to Stefan about his farm and a cow that had given him a lot of trouble. The woman added her advice on that subject as she stitched. There was only a feeling of peace in the neat room. In many ways it reminded Sheila of the forester’s hut. Only, its decorations were cleaner, its white-washed walls and ceiling were fresher. Its similar array of pictures and imitation flowers tacked along the overhead beam was brighter. And the same love of brightness and colour was in the cheap prints along the wall, in the striped bed cover and gay pillows piled high on the wooden bed. From her high place of honour, the Virgin Mary smiled down on them, in her robe as blue as the children’s wide eyes. A prayer-book had been laid neatly, reverently, so that its edges exactly paralleled the corner of the little table under the Madonna’s outstretched arms.
Jan rose suddenly. “Time to leave,” he said.
The woman gathered the new shapes of cloth together, spoke quickly to the children. They ran obediently out into the street. The girl, Weronika, stood with her fair head leaning against the door. Her blue eyes under their thick eyelashes and strongly beautiful brows were watching the children at play.
“It’s safe,” she called back over her shoulder.
The woman watched Sheila tie the yellow handkerchief round her head.
“Not that way. This way,” she said with a smile. Her tanned cheeks creased into fine wrinkles. She took the two long poin
ted ends of the kerchief in her thick, square-shaped hands. She knotted the scarf firmly. “Like that,” she added, and pushed Sheila gently towards the door. “Go,” she said, and then as Sheila tried to thank her, “You would do the same for me and mine.”
She was already bending to pick up the bedding from the floor as Sheila followed Jan and Stefan into the street Weronika turned back from the door, and gave them a shy sidewise smile. From the kitchen, her mother’s voice was telling her to clear the table and hurry up about it. The children in the street stared at them for a moment in the way that children do, and then remembered suddenly to go on with their game. Their high laughter was the last memory of that staunch house.
In front of the blacksmith’s open shed, an ancient horse was harnessed to a long boat-shaped cart. The blacksmith, standing well back in the black shadows of his shop, watched Sheila and Stefan climb into the low cart. Jan stooped for a moment, as if examining something beneath it, jammed his revolver quickly behind one of the slats, and lifted the reins. He gave a reassuring nod to the old man standing so silently within the shed, said quietly, “We’ll leave the horse and cart with the blacksmith at Rogów as your daughter arranged.” The old man, still silent, watched them drive away.
“He didn’t want us to take the horse,” Jan explained cheerily, “but his daughter persuaded him.”
“That was the woman who took us in, last night?”
“Yes. I knew her husband. We were in the army together.”
“Where is he now?”
“Killed. All the best men get killed.” And then with a sudden laugh, Jan added, “So I’ll live for many a day, yet.” He tilted his cloth cap forward to shield his eyes from the strengthening sunlight, and whistled quietly as the horse plodded forward.
* * *
The road they followed was broad and badly constructed. Its surface had churned into mud. It wound crazily southwards over a flat plain of harvested fields, with thin trees marking its way. Without the trees, the road might have lost its name as well as its direction.
While Still We Live Page 36