While Still We Live

by Helen Macinnes

  She went towards the hospital hut. She heard Antoni’s voice saying, “Of all the damned nuisances...” as he packed a wooden case with his medical supplies in front of the door. There was Marian, giving instructions to a man fashioning a rough stretcher.

  “Two will have to be carried all the way. Your men know what to do?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” the man said abruptly, and silenced even Marian. Inside the hut, Franziska was packing the last things. “Don’t worry,” she was saying to her patients. “We’ll get you out of the forest at night. You’ll stay hidden in one of the villages till you are well enough to join us again.” She glanced at Sheila and said, “Well, here’s a fine how d’you do! We’ve all to begin over again.” She was almost weeping with anger.

  “What can I do?” Sheila asked.

  “Help get the stuff over to the pits. We are hiding it there in case we have to move.”

  Sheila seized a bark-covered bundle. “Where are the pits?”

  “Follow the crowd,” Franziska said.

  Antoni pointed out the way to her. “Over there through the trees. That’s our cache. Dog’s blood, isn’t this a damned nuisance? How the hell did it happen anyway? Is it true Jan Pietka is dead?”

  Sheila nodded. Marian quieted her husband’s language by saying, “Well, the Germans may not come. We may not have to leave this camp.”

  “Then we’ll have everything to take out of those holes in the ground again. I say it’s a damned nuisance, and that’s what it damned well is.”

  Marian had no reply. It wasn’t often that Antoni left her with none. She looked suddenly at Sheila. “Here, I’ll give you a hand with that,” she said, and lifted one end of the bundle. But she had the sense and the kindness to keep silent as they carried the heavy load to the pit.

  It was more of an underground cave than a pit. It had props to keep the roof from sagging, and the floor had been covered with boards to try to give it some dryness. Sheila and Marian watched their bundle stowed away with the few straw mattresses and furs and blankets.

  “The hens are what I’m worried about,” Marian said. “I won’t have them killed until we get the signal to move out.”

  “What about the goats and the horses?”

  “The last of the rearguard will use the horses. It may give them a chance.” She stopped as she saw Sheila’s face. “Don’t worry. He’s got nine lives. He’s only used up five of them so far.” She took the girl’s arm. “Did you hear the men when he said he would resign the command? That’s why they are for him. He’s always first in and last out. He never asks one of us to do what he can’t do himself. Come on, now. We’ll give Franziska a hand with parcelling up the wounded. They’ll have to be taken down near the edge of the forest right away. Can’t leave them to the last moment. Franziska’s going with them. Sort of funny, she’s leaving the way she came in. Didn’t she ever tell you?” And when Sheila didn’t answer, Marian plunged into the epic of Franziska: how she, as a nurse, had driven a horse and cart filled with wounded just one step ahead of the Germans for over a hundred miles. At the end of the war she had reached this district. By that time, only five men out of eleven were alive. “Machine-gunning, chiefly. Only those who could walk managed to get out of the cart in time to dodge. The villagers hid them, but after the war the enemy began searching the villages. So the villagers carried the five men here. Franziska came with them. Four of them are out in the forest now. The fifth one is that boy whose arm we had to amputate. That’s why Franziska’s worried about him. He’s been her special property, somehow.”

  As they reached the hospital door, Marian was congratulating herself on her ingenuity. She had talked without letting her tongue trip her up again. It may give them a chance. How could she ever have said such a thing? Good job Antoni hadn’t heard her.

  Antoni’s temper had recovered. His round face creased in a wide grin. “Well, this will be a good dress rehearsal, anyway,” he said to them as he finished packing the box. He added, “Sheila, they’ve been asking for you. Over at the Lodge.”

  He stood with Marian and watched the fair-haired girl turn silently and retrace her steps towards the Lodge.

  “Now what did you say to her? Only ten minutes ago her eyes were shining and she carried her head bravely. Look at her now: she’s back to her worrying again.” Antoni’s voice was so sharp that Marian stared at him.

  “Why, nothing at all,” she answered indignantly. She looked at the men carrying the camp equipment into the forest. “It’s going to be miserable sitting round here waiting, without warm food or bedding, until we get the signal to move. If we get it.”

  Antoni let her change the subject. “You’re getting soft again,” he said teasingly. “All the luxuries we’ve been having have softened you.”

  She looked down at her bare legs and broken shoes, at her darned skirt and her reddened hands. She drew the coarse shawl more closely round her shoulders. She smiled, and said, “Do you ever think back to our flat in Warsaw, Antoni? I wonder how the new lace curtains are—and that new tiled stove we got last spring—and that pretty rug you bought me for the bedroom in July? Funny: we took ten years before we got all the things we wanted for our house. I had just got all the colours right, and the little extra tables, and you’d got the pictures you wanted and that new bookcase. And then the Germans came. And there’s a German doctor working in your office, with all the equipment we bought before we could buy my rose-covered chairs. And his family is sitting on the chairs now, and eating off our good mahogany table, and walking over my polished floors. His wife has my linen cupboard, and all the rows of sheets and pillowcases that I embroidered myself, every stitch of them. He’s got your X-ray apparatus and your instruments and all your notes on those special treatments you were giving your diabetics.” She paused. “Well that’s the way it goes.”

  Antoni took her roughened hand. “Do you ever wish you hadn’t come here with me when Wisniewski asked me?”

  “Antoni! The idea!” And then she laughed. “Do you think I’d let you out of my sight with all these pretty girls around?”

  Antoni curved his arm round the thickening waist and gave it a light squeeze. “That’s my Marian,” he said. “You’re the best and the prettiest girl in Poland. And that means in the world.”

  “Antoni!” She gave him a rough quick embrace and pushed him away. The woman of forty laughed like a girl. “Just hope they remember to water the window plants,” she added. Antoni stared at her. She was in Warsaw again.

  “You know what I wish, Antoni? I wish our home had been utterly destroyed by the bombs. There I was, patting myself on the back because we didn’t even have as much dust and splintered glass as our friends. Probably that’s the punishment I get for being so selfish—knowing that a German family owns it now.”

  Antoni said, “Better see that each man knows what food to take with him. Look after the kitchen. I’ll finish this job here. Franziska has been wrapping up the wounded. They’re practically ready to go.”

  “All right, my dear.” Marian moved off towards the kitchen. She halted and looked back for a moment. “Antoni, I’m going to get a haircut like Sheila’s.”

  “No!” said Antoni. “You’ll do nothing of the kind.”

  “It’s handier. And Sheila looks so pretty now, like a boy with long curls.”

  “No,” Antoni repeated firmly. He started rolling up a mattress, covering it with a rug of rabbit skins.

  Marian shrugged her shoulders, but there was a smile on her lips. She was humming to herself, a gay little polka tune, as she passed round the back of the Lodge to the place where the kitchen fires had been grouped. She looked through a window as she passed the Lodge. She had a glimpse of a thin-faced little man sitting on the edge of the table. She heard Sheila’s voice. There was something despairing in its tone.

  Marian’s song stopped. Her step slowed.

  At the “kitchen”—three small, scattered pits, with large flat roofs, a thick fallen trunk
smoothed off as a table—she found Zygmunt and another man in charge. Near them, a strange man and boy—their clothes still showing the signs of much travel—were eating some of the remains of last night’s supper and talking to Sierakowski between mouthfuls. They must be the newcomers who had arrived just before dawn along with that thin-faced little man. They looked half dead. Probably they had been pulled out of their sleep to come and eat while there was still time. A small, dishevelled grey dog was busily gnawing meat off a bone. He paused when Marian came up to the group, and held the bone firmly between his paws, his head cocked to the side, his ears and eyes alert.

  Marian laughed. “What’s this?” she asked half contemptuously.

  The boy said defensively, “He needs a bath. He looks fine when he’s white. Only, he’s been travelling. As soon as I give him a bath, he’ll look fine.”

  “What next?” Marian said. “Children and dogs. What next?” The stranger smiled, and the hard line of his jaw and gaunt cheeks softened. He had the strong body, the quiet large-boned face of a countryman. But his voice was not the voice of a peasant. He was saying, “We’ve more travelling to do, I hear. I shouldn’t bathe him just yet, Casimir.”

  “I want him clean before Sheila sees him,” said the boy. “She liked to see him clean. She was always telling me to go out and wash him.”

  Marian said, “You aren’t that Casimir, are you?... Why, I know all about you! And this is that dog? Where’s Madame Aleksander, then?”

  The man answered. “In a village called Dwór just northeast of here. She had to rest. She’ll be brought along here in a day or two.” He paused. “At least, she was to have been brought here in a day or two. She’s a nurse.”

  “Good. We shall need extra help, I expect.” Marian still couldn’t place the man. He wasn’t an Aleksander, and yet he seemed to know them all right. There was that touch in his voice. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Jan Reska. I used to live at Korytów.” There was a blankness about the words which said “And don’t ask any more questions.”

  Sierakowski said, “After you’ve eaten, you can help to get this kitchen eliminated. The thing to remember is not to destroy. Just remove things and hide them for future use.”

  “I’ll show them,” said Marian. “I’m going to see no food gets wasted.”

  “Good.” Colonel Sierakowski moved away.

  Marian said quickly, “If you could, Colonel Sierakowski, would you look in at the Lodge?”

  He halted and looked sharply at her serious face. “Very well, Pani Roszak.”

  “Now,” Marian said, “we’ll finish this job. And when everything’s done, we’ll clean the dog. And you can tell me how you got here.”

  “That’s a secret,” said Casimir. “We tried out a new way, and it worked,” he added, proudly.

  “Did it, now?” Marian said. She lifted the wicker lids off the food-baskets, while the three men and the boy started to take the fire to pieces. Marian pulled out the food carefully. “Wonder what’s the best way to divide this up?” she called to them. “How much food do you think a Pole would be allowed to travel with nowadays? I’m not up in the new regulations. How much could each of us carry, without arousing suspicion if we were caught and searched?”

  “Nothing,” Reska answered, “or next to nothing.”

  “What, don’t they even let us eat nowadays?”

  “Just enough to keep us from starving, not enough to let us live.”

  Casimir yelled over, “The best way to carry it is in here.” He pointed to his stomach.

  Marian stared at him. “I believe it is. We’ll have a big meal first, and pack what food is left after that. Here, Zygmunt, hobble around and tell everyone to come here as soon as they’ve finished their jobs.”

  Zygmunt said, “Hm. What about these bottles of vodka?”

  “They will keep. We can hide them.” She relented. “You can each have a drink, if Colonel Sierakowski allows it. That’ll keep you warm tonight. But the rest will be buried until we get back here.”

  “That’s a woman for you, always thinking of the future,” said Zygmunt in disgust. “Today we’re here, tomorrow we’re dead. Why worry?”

  Because, Marian thought, even if we are dead, there will be others who will come after us; even if we die, we’ve shown them the way, and they’ll follow it. The fight won’t stop just because we got killed. There are others who’ll take it up where we left off. There will be others who will come some day to use these supplies.

  “Really now, you don’t say!” she mocked. Well, if you laughed loudly enough you didn’t weep. She started counting the food supplies once more. If one man got a leg of a pheasant, would he get as much as another, who got a quarter of a rabbit? She began to hum the polka which had been running through her head all day. Somehow, she couldn’t stop thinking about Sheila.

  32

  THE DECISION

  The Lodge was dark and cold and empty. Sheila paused at the door, and looked for a moment at the stone fireplace. Its warm ashes were now scattered. Last night, there had been songs and laughter. Last night, she had sat over there with Adam and watched Jan and his spear-making with amusement. Accidents fell so sharply, brought tragedy quite beyond their proportion.

  And now the maps on the walls had gone, the papers on the table had gone, Adam had gone. “I’ll follow you,” he had said. The worry that had chilled her eyes was leaving her. Adam would follow her. He would find her. She could even manage to smile for Mr. Olszak. He was thinner and smaller, but he had lost none of his alertness.

  “You look well,” he said as he took her hands. He looked keenly at her face. “Very well indeed. The forest agrees with you, I see.”

  “I am glad to see you,” she said simply. “I’ve wondered how everything has been in Warsaw.”

  “Not very good.” He let go her hands and walked back to the table. Sheila sat down on the bench. She rested her arms on the table: here it was where he used to work, the maps spread out in front of him just where her hand now touched the solid wood.

  “Some of our departments were almost blotted out before they could get started. Jan Reska’s, for instance. We’ll have to organise the teaching of the children in another way. The schoolteachers have been slaughtered. There’s no other word for it.” Olszak’s face was bitterly dark. Then he went on, forcing his voice to a cheerfulness he obviously didn’t feel, “However, other departments have been more fortunate. We’ve two secret newspapers, with good circulation. The hidden radio system is having excellent results. We have established several efficient routes for secret travel, and we are managing to keep our contact with friends abroad. On the whole, I should say we have a lot to be thankful for.”

  “What about Jan Reska?”

  “He’s come here. He feels he will do better as a fighter than as an organiser.”

  Sheila stared at Olszak blankly. “But Reska’s got brains. And he’s got courage. He’s liberal and sincere. He would be a good organiser.”

  “These qualities you mention are also needed in a good fighter. He himself doesn’t think he’s a good organiser. He wants action. I agree with him.”

  Then Reska had failed in his job. Olszak was letting him down as lightly as possible.

  It seemed as if Mr. Olszak was back in his old habit of reading her thoughts, for he said, “When this war is over I shall retire to the mountains. And I intend to write a study on what makes, or doesn’t make, a man capable of efficient leadership. It is nothing you can see on the surface. It may even be nothing you can explain. But I should like to try.”

  “When did Jan Reska come? I haven’t seen him.”

  “Early this morning. He travelled with Casimir and Madame Aleksander and a dog. Madame Aleksander insisted on the dog. It was madness. But both Casimir and Reska supported her view.” He shook his head with extreme disapproval.

  “Madame Aleksander?”

  “They had to leave her at one of the small villages northeast of the forest
. Dwór, it is called. She is resting there. She was supposed to continue the last part of the journey with a village guide, tomorrow.” He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, but that plan will have to be changed too. “She isn’t so very well at the moment. And the journey from Warsaw tried her strength sorely.”

  He paused. Then he said in the same even, purposely cold voice, “Edward Korytowski was imprisoned in Dachau. Then the Germans gave him the chance to head a Co-operative Council. He refused. He’s dead.”

  He paused again. “Andrew Aleksander is a prisoner of war in Westphalia. The camp is already notorious. We have proof that the prisoners are subjected to every kind of insult and beating. There have even been some cases of torture. There is little hope for prisoners of war in Germany if their country has no German prisoners of war. When the Germans hold the whiphand, they use it.”

  He paused again, And then, as if to try and dispel the horror in the girl’s eyes, he said, “But all my news is not bad. Hofmeyer is still safe and working well. Russell Stevens reached Switzerland, and accomplished his mission, and had an interesting conversation with your uncle.”

  “Uncle Matthews? Steve’s in London, then?”

  “They met in France, actually. Stevens, by the way, has accepted a job in Geneva. On your uncle’s advice. He is still fighting with us.”

  “I knew he would,” Sheila said. “Schlott and Bill?”

  “Fighting on, too. Each in their own way.”

  “I knew they would—at least, I hoped they would.”

  “What made you fear that they might not?”

  “Well, it would be only human to—well, relax or ease up or something. Once you felt out of danger, that is. Once you were away from the bombings and the massacres. It takes a lot of self-control for a hungry man to look at a roasted turkey and then choose dry bread instead.” She hesitated for a moment, and then added, “Uncle Matthews... Is he angry with me?”

  Olszak smiled openly. “Annoyed in some ways, perhaps. In other ways, he seems to be quite proud.”