While Still We Live

by Helen Macinnes

  She had asked to be told. She had been told.

  Antoni was saying, “If I told you more than you asked to know, it is only because we all should remember.” His voice was no longer the doctor’s voice. “If we don’t know, if we won’t listen or see, then we shall not remember. We shall forgive too soon, too easily, as we did before. And in the next war, we, the people who forget, will be destroyed even as Korytów.”

  In a gentler voice, he said to the still silent girl, “Go in and rest a while. You are cold. You must not get cold.”

  She didn’t move.

  “I’m sorry,” Antoni said miserably. “I shouldn’t have told you, after all.”

  “No. You should have. I had to know. We all have to know.” She was thinking of Dittmar, now. “I should have killed him,” she said.

  Antoni stared at her. She looked up suddenly and caught his expression.

  “A man who does evil because he is evil, I should have killed him.”

  “Come in now. We’ll rest for a space. Come in.”

  She shook her head. The beech tree was now one purple shadow. “I’m warm,” she said. “I’m all right Let me stay here.” She reached out her hand and touched his shoulder. “I thought they loved children,” she said sadly.

  “Who? The Germans? Yes, they love children: German children. They glorify youth: German youth. They talk sentimentally of motherhood: German motherhood. In the last war, the worst famines were in Belgium and Poland. Our starvation was caused not only by the blockade but by the Germans who ate all our cattle and grain and left us nothing. But did you ever hear of German Relief for starving people? Unless for German peoples?”

  Sheila’s halting voice said, “They suffered, too. Perhaps that is what twisted them.”

  “Yes, of course.” Antoni’s voice was bitterly sarcastic. “Think how they suffered and starved. That’s why they have so many rickety cripples in their armies today! And such small armies! And all because they suffered more than anyone else in the last war. Think of their countryside with its cattle and grain all stolen by invading troops. Think of their towns ruined in the battles fought on German soil. Think of all the rebuilding they had to do, with half of their population shot, and the other half working with bloated bellies. Don’t you see how their bodies have suffered through the terrible hardships and cruelties which the Allies forced on them when they invaded the Rhineland in 1914 without warning? What wrecks, what invalids they are! Why, the poor dear Germans have never done anything at all! Their land has been the cockpit of Europe where other more powerful nations came to fight and rape and steal. That’s why they have so few people in their country, today, compared to other countries of the same area! Don’t you see it all? Surely it must be clear to you. That’s why they have no industries, no factories, no well-equipped laboratories. That’s why they’ve no trade, why they can’t reach South American markets or the Danube. And all these German firms and salesmen you find throughout the world, even in India and other far places? Why they aren’t Germans at all! It’s only a capitalist lie, a stab in the back by Jews and Communists. They are merely—”

  Marian’s voice said cheerfully, “I got thirty eggs today. Isn’t that wonderful? If the hens don’t stop laying when the cold weather comes, we’ll be able to have one egg each every two weeks. Isn’t that wonderful?” She was watching Antoni’s sad face. There is something pathetic in a face which is sad when it seems made only for laughter. Marian said quickly, “You just can’t trust a man, can you? Turn your back fifteen minutes, and he’s talking to the prettiest girl in the district. That’s what I get for not taking my mother’s advice. ‘Marian,’ she said, ‘never marry a good-looking man. He’ll roast your soul.’” She placed a hand gently on her husband’s shoulder, and Antoni looked up at her as he patted it.

  He was smiling once more; a round faced little man, with kind eyes and spectacles that kept on sliding down his nose.

  “I hear that our outposts have just seen the first of our men coming back from the raid. There’s been a relay of signals from the edge of the forest. Better get things ready, Antoni. I’ve set Franziska to boiling water and sterilizing the knives.”

  Antoni rose. Now he was the capable doctor, moving quickly, neatly. He touched Sheila’s head as he passed her. “Keep your illusions about human nature,” he said. “Life is stark without them. It is wonderful to keep being broadminded.”

  Sheila smiled sadly. “Now you make me feel still more smug,” she said. “People like me who have never suffered—I mean in the way the people of Korytów and all the other millions of Poles are suffering—can afford to be broad-minded. You and the people who have really suffered must think people like me are not only smug, but callous.”

  “Only if you tell us that it is wrong to hate,” Antoni said. “That is callousness to the men who have been tortured to death, to the women who have been raped and the children who have been brutalised. That is callous and blind selfishness disguised as nobility. Let everyone think of himself as a villager in Korytów, and then if he does not hate the men who do these things, then he is truly broad-minded. If he can see his mother dragged off to destitution, his wife being forced to work German latrines, his daughter sent to German brothels, his son shot in the back or left dangling from a tree, his young children kidnapped and their minds distorted, his house burned, his lifework destroyed in a few short minutes, and can still honestly say, ‘I do not hate the men who do these things,’ then he has my respect. But I have none for those who only hear of those things, and still say so very nobly, ‘Of course, you should not hate.’”

  “Antoni, the men will start arriving,” Marian warned. “I’ll come over and help as soon as I get our patient in bed again.”

  Marian looked after him with a mixture of pride and sadness.

  “He was the kindest, happiest, best-natured fellow you ever met,” she said slowly. “He still is, to those who are human beings. Come on, here’s my arm. That’s the way. Stiff? You’ll soon be running about this place. Can you nurse?”

  “I could try to learn,” Sheila said.

  “Good. We need help.”

  “Are you and Franziska the only women here?”

  “In the camp. Yes. And that’s because we have work to do—plenty of it. When the men get leave, they go to the villages round the forest. No weapons or uniforms, then: they are just relatives from another village. When they first came here, all they did was to sit about the camp in their free hours, sit and stare at the forest. It worried me. But now they go to the villages. They’ve got girl-friends there, some even have wives now. That’s better. That’s more natural. Can’t sit about moping. That drives a man mad.”

  Marian had helped remove the wide black skirt and the bright petticoat. “Pretty, isn’t it?” she said. “We sent down to one of the villages for it when you arrived. You know, I wish they’d let me go on a raiding party sometime. I’ve got a list of things I need: just a few needles and some threads and an extra pair of scissors—I’m always losing mine—and some buttons and a few books and some real handkerchiefs. I always like a neat handkerchief; I hate these little scraps of cloth I’ve got to use nowadays. But you can’t ask the men to risk their lives for these small things. They’ve got to get rifles and ammunition and uniforms and food, and they’ve got to find good hiding places to cache them in. We don’t use much of the stuff we are collecting now. It’s for later, when we’ve enough trained men and our Allies start attacking from the west. Then we can help. Then we’ll show the world that Poland was not beaten in four weeks.”

  “Yes,” Sheila said. “Yes.” And she smiled. To think of the word victory, even a remote and faraway victory, cheered her. She stretched her body comfortably; bed, she decided, was a good place after all.

  “It’s just patience we shall need,” Marian said. “We won’t always have to live secretly in a forest.”

  Franziska’s running feet almost blotted out her words. “Three back,” she gasped delightedly. “N
o wounds.”

  Three, only three? Sheila watched the two women clasp each other in their joy. Marian’s keen eyes had noticed the expression on her face.

  “The men slip back as they slipped out, in twos and threes,” she explained. “You didn’t think we marched out in a column with flags flying, did you?”

  The two women laughed good-naturedly. They were so happy that they could laugh at the smallest thing.

  “Takes a raiding party two days to get out, and often a week to come back in,” Marian continued. “Now, I must dash over and hear the latest news. Franziska, fetch her some milk. And then she can get up for a warm supper this evening when the cooking starts. You’ve never told us your name, you know. It’s an English one, isn’t it? You talked English in your sleep.”

  “Sheila. Sheila Matthews.”

  Marian and Franziska repeated it solemnly, and then giggled at their efforts.

  “Such queer names foreigners have! I can’t think for the life of me how they can ever pronounce them,” Marian said, and gave Sheila a warm smile, and was gone to hear the news from the world outside.

  Sheila sipped the strong-tasting yellow milk from a square-shaped cup of bark.

  “Birchbark,” Franziska explained as she moved around the room, tidying its simple belongings. “It gives a strange taste at first, but you get used to it. We can even boil water in buckets made from it. The milk came from our goats. We have three of them, kept specially for our invalids. We’ve got hens. And last week, Zygmunt brought back two young pigs. We are fattening them up for Christmas. The only trouble is keeping the fox and the badger away.”

  “I’ve so much to learn,” Sheila said. “This life is all so strange.”

  “Oh, you get used to that too.” Franziska had almost finished her tidying: not that there was much to straighten. Life was decidedly utilitarian in this hut. There was another straw mattress on the ground with half of an army blanket neatly folded across its rough cover. The earth floor was hard-packed, swept clean. A natural wooden table, new-looking and stoutly made, was against one log wall. An equally new bench stood along the front of the table. There was no glass in the small window, only inside shutters. Franziska was now hanging Sheila’s strange clothes on one of the large wooden pegs driven into the wall at one side of the narrow door. On the wall beyond the door was a wooden crucifix.

  “It won’t be long before it is dark,” Franziska said, “and then we can go across to the Lodge to warm ourselves round the fire and have something to eat. Or don’t you feel strong enough, yet?”

  “Oh yes,” Sheila said quickly, “I’m all right. I wasn’t ill. Only exhausted. And now I’ve exhausted my exhaustion. All I want to do is to move about, and see, and do.” She smiled and said once more, “Everything is so strange.” It was a new world, she thought.

  “When I first came here, I missed everything I had been accustomed to think was a necessity. You will be surprised how very little is necessary in life, and how simply one can improvise. It becomes a kind of game—like keeping house or playing shops when we were children. Then you find yourself beginning to despise your old way of living, you begin to like this way. If I live to see the day when we return to our towns, I expect I shall miss this forest. Funny, isn’t it?”

  “A thousand years ago, most people lived in forests,” Sheila said, “for the forests were deep and thick all over Central Europe, then. Forests like this one.”

  “The Dark Ages,” Franziska said slowly. “I used to think that name meant people couldn’t read or write. But if they lived in forests, then there was darkness all around them.”

  “When I saw the churches of the Middle Ages, I used to think the people who had built them were still remembering the forests of the Dark Ages. The tall windows are like the winter trees, and the light strikes through them as if it were piercing a forest. Even the way the stone pillars branch into the curve of roof...”

  The two girls smiled together at their fancies. Then Franziska suddenly came over to her, saying eagerly, “Can you nurse?”

  Sheila stared at the anxious, affectionate face. “No,” she said in mild surprise. “But I can learn. It’s really a matter of not being lazy, isn’t it? Like being a good cook—just taking every trouble you can and not finding easy ways for anything?”

  “I’ll teach you. I’ll help you. Say you can nurse when they ask you. I’ll show you.”

  Sheila’s surprise deepened. Now that the sadness had gone from this girl’s face, Sheila thought of Barbara. Here was Barbara, a little older, a little less pretty, a little less decided. But here was Barbara.

  “Why?” Sheila asked gently.

  “Because I want you to stay here. I don’t want you to be sent to live in one of the villages. I want you to live here. You see—” Franziska’s quiet eyes were half-smiling now—“you see, it isn’t a husband I need. Antoni is wrong. In fact all the men would be insulted if they knew how little I wanted them—as men. Men wouldn’t understand that. But you do, don’t you? I just want someone who will talk with me, will laugh with me. Marian has her Antoni. I’ve felt so alone. But now we can work and talk together. Isn’t it strange how two women can spend an hour together talking about nothing really very important, and yet there is such a nice satisfactory feeling at the end of it? With men—well, either you are everything or you are nothing. Either they make you feel that you are being hunted like an animal, or that you are as unattractive as a stone wall. It’s—it’s disturbing. Either way.”

  “Yes,” Sheila could agree. “It’s disturbing. Either way.” Then they both laughed.

  Marian’s voice, talking, explaining, was outside the hut. She entered, her head turned to answer the man who followed her. It was the white-haired man who had come to Reymont’s camp, the man who was a colonel and served under a captain.

  “Well, you certainly sound much better,” he said.

  Marian said, “Franziska, Antoni needs you. Two more men have reached the camp. One has smashed his shoulder in falling off a roof.”

  Franziska picked up the empty cup obediently, and gave Sheila a parting smile.

  “Perhaps you will be needed, too,” the colonel suggested smoothly.

  “Yes, Colonel Sierakowski,” Marian said regretfully. The conversation between these two had promised to be so interesting... And then, as if to assert at least a little of her authority, “Now don’t you go tiring my patient. She’s doing very nicely.”

  “Yes,” the colonel said, and waited until the doctor’s wife had left the room. Then he pulled the bench across to Sheila’s bed. He obviously was not going to speak his information across the length of the room.

  He spoke in English. His voice was quiet, exceedingly business-like.

  “We sent a man to Warsaw. He got through. We’ve just had a brief, coded message. So your warning has been given into the right hands.”

  Sheila looked both relieved and puzzled.

  “We have a radio, of course,” he said quickly. “We can receive messages. Soon we shall be able to send them; we have an electrician here who is putting smuggled parts of a transmitter together. Anyway, we do know that our man got through and that he gave the message about you.”

  “I keep wondering what they’ll do with it.”

  “That will have been decided by this time. We will not know until Olszak arrives.”

  “Here?”

  “For a brief visit. A meeting of sorts, in other words. Some changes must be made in the organisation, changes to suit what we have learned from the Nazis. Their technique has changed in several ways from that of the German occupation in the last war. The Nazis have been even more cruel and ruthless than we had expected.”

  “Yes,” Sheila said, and thought of Korytów. “Yes.” It seemed as if anyone who had come under the power of modern Germany always found that the Nazis were worse than anyone had ever imagined. They were a perpetual shock. And the worst shock was to know that they were human beings. She met the man’s sad eyes and sai
d, “If they were some kind of monsters like robots or men from Mars, we could expect this ruthlessness. But I’ve come to hate them just because they are human beings like ourselves. That gives them no excuse at all for behaving the way they do.”

  “Quietly, quietly. Or we shall have Nurse Marian back here, saying I am upsetting her patient. Now, when Olszak arrives we shall hear, among other things, about your friend Madame Aleksander. He will also have discussed your future with the man whose secretary you were supposed to be. All you can do, now, is to get quite strong again, and then you’ll be able to do whatever Olszak has decided.”

  “I’d like to stay here.” It was out, quite unthinking.

  Colonel Sierakowski restrained a smile at her impulsive frankness.

  “I can’t go back to England,” she said in embarrassment. “Not now. If the Germans were to find out that a Sheila Matthews was living there, then the whole Anna Braun story would come crashing down. Wouldn’t it?”

  “Unless your recent employer can arrange a suitable ending to it.”

  She thought desperately for some reasonable explanation why she should stay here. There were obviously no passengers in the camp. Everyone had his job. Her face lighted up. With a woman’s instinctive leap in reasoning, she had found the solution.

  “Colonel Sierakowski, there’s no good pretending I’m a nurse. I can learn. But I’ve had no training. But there’s one thing I really could do. I could be your listener-in for foreign broadcasts. I could listen to American, British, French and German news. I could be here all the time to listen and make notes. You do need to know what’s happening abroad as well as in Poland, don’t you?”

  His rare smile appeared. “Of course,” he said. “We have had a man listening, but you would release him for active duty. Captain Wisniewski will be interested I’m sure, when he returns from the raid.” His smile deepened. “And then Olszak wouldn’t have to think up any more plans for you.”