While Still We Live

by Helen Macinnes

  “Used to hunt with Adam. Best guide in these parts. Best hunter too,” Madame Olszak explained to Sheila in a low voice. “Come, we’ll sit over at the window and let them talk. We’ll keep an eye on the path to the village.”

  Sheila followed the old woman obediently. She looked back at the two men now facing each other across the table—Wenceslas red-haired, round-faced, broad-shouldered, slow-speaking; Adam silently listening, his large dark eyes narrowing as his mind played with an idea, a smile glancing over the determined mouth as the idea developed possibilities. He had pulled a sheet of paper in front of him, spread out a map. Wenceslas leaned over the table on his powerful forearms, marking his points, with an upraised forefinger.

  Madame Olszak watched Sheila’s face. She touched her arm gently. “I know,” she said half sadly. “A man has two things: his work and his wife. A woman when she’s in love has only one. I know.”

  Sheila looked at her in alarm.

  “It’s all right: they’ll never hear us,” Madame Olszak smiled as she looked across at the two men. “They are in another world. I know.” She nodded philosophically over the patchwork quilt.

  At the end of the hour, Wenceslas rose to leave. He seemed to notice Sheila for the first time. “There was a message two days ago about her,” he said to Adam. Sheila’s heart missed a beat.

  Wenceslas’ tantalisingly slow voice went on: “Person accompanying Captain X to await further instructions. Full plan to follow.”

  Adam’s arm rested round Sheila’s shoulders. “Bring the message when it comes. As it stands. I’ll decode it, Wenceslas.” His voice was harsh.

  Wenceslas looked at them in surprise. “Right,” he said.

  “You’ve never told me your news, Wenceslas,” Madame Olszak said quickly, and led the red-haired man towards the door, listening gravely to the strange mixture of information: old Stefan was ill, badly this time; Maria’s cow had stopped giving milk; more shooting of hostages in Warsaw; Ladislaw’s younger daughter had a son, a ten-pound boy; Cracow professors had all been arrested and sent to concentration camps; five Germans at Zakopane had been caught in the snowstorm and frozen to death; the wolves were already prowling round the villages to the east—it was going to be a bad winter, more snow and bitter cold.

  Wenceslas halted in the doorway. “The captain may have a chance to hunt wolves when he goes east,” he said. “Think I’ll have to come with you as your guide, Captain. Ladislaw can look after the radio for a while. He’s always sticking his nose into it, anyway.”

  Adam smiled. “Wolf-shooting is out for the present, Wenceslas. German-shooting now.”

  “There’s no law against doing both,” Wenceslas suggested hopefully, but without success. “Well, I suppose when I took on this radio job I gave up hunting,” he added sadly, and concentrated on fixing his skis.

  “Plenty of hunting next summer when the camp has got to be fed, Wenceslas.”

  The grin came slowly back to Wenceslas’ red, round face. “I’ll be back in a day or two, no doubt,” he said and looked at Sheila.

  “Yes. I’ll have further instructions ready for the district, then,” Adam replied. His voice was business-like, but his grip on Sheila’s shoulders had tightened.

  The door closed. Sheila felt that it had shut out all her hopes.

  Madame Olszak picked up her needle once more.

  Neither Sheila nor Adam had moved.

  “She could stay with me,” Madame Olszak said softly. “Must she go?”

  Sheila felt her shoulder crushed. She knew the answer before he had spoken.

  “Yes.”

  Madame Olszak’s keen blue eyes looked at them sadly, but she nodded slowly as if in agreement. She rose and went slowly into the kitchen. “Must tell Veronika about the news from the village,” she said.

  Adam pulled Sheila round to face him.

  “It would have been easier to say ‘No’. That’s what I wanted to say...” He watched her eyes anxiously. The lines on his face had deepened.

  “I know,” she said. “It seems strange...but I love you all the more,” and the truth of her words was in her eyes.

  She ended the long silence with “When will the instructions come?”

  A shadow crossed Adam’s face. His voice was quiet, expressionless, almost as if he were talking to himself, getting his own thoughts into order. “A few days, perhaps. Perhaps a week. There’s a clever man at Zakopane who has helped us before. He would be the safest way. It depends if they can contact him and he is available. They must wait until he is. He’s safe.”

  Sheila’s body stiffened. She looked up at him. “That isn’t why you are sending me away? Because of safety?” There was a rebellious line to her mouth.

  Adam pretended to smile. He lied most innocently. “Of course not.” He silenced her with a long kiss. “Darling...”

  She said softly when she had enough breath to speak with, “I wish sometimes I were a man.”

  “Thank God you aren’t,” he replied with such fervour that she was forced to smile.

  “That’s better,” he said. “That’s how I like to see you. With a laugh on your lips... That’s how I first saw you. Remember?”

  “So long ago it seems. Before the war...”

  “Scarcely three months ago.”

  “How many more months before it all ends?”

  He was silent.

  “How long, Adam? Next year?”

  His arms tightened round her waist. He kissed her throat.

  “That’s my favourite corner, just there,” he said with a pretence of a smile. He kissed the soft curve where her neck and shoulder met. “One of my favourites,” he added.

  “How long, Adam? Surely next year.”

  “God knows.” He shook his head as if he were trying to free himself from his bitter thoughts. “But never too long, Sheila. Never too long for us to wait.”

  Never too long... It might be years, then. Years, her heart echoed despairingly. But her eyes met his, as he wanted them to do, and accepted that fact.

  * * *

  Four days later, Wenceslas returned.

  “Things are shaping up,” he announced. He handed the message which he had brought to Wisniewski with evident relief. “The priest made sure I got it down all correct,” he went on. “He’s been waiting with me each night at eight o’clock for it to come. I told him it was important. And last night it came. But I thought I’d wait until this morning before I brought it along. Time enough, I said to myself, to bring it in the morning.”

  Veronika finished her pretence of dusting the room. In the last four days she had dropped her hostility to Sheila. The foreign girl was going away. She wasn’t going to stay here and keep good men off their job. Much work any man would get done with her about the place.

  “Come into the kitchen,” she said with a sudden burst of tact. “I’ve got a nice bowl of hot soup ready to warm you, Wenceslas.”

  Madame Olszak had risen from her chair near the window. “I’ll come and hear all the news, Wenceslas,” she said.

  Sheila crossed over to the table where Adam, his forehead resting on his hands and his elbows on the table, was reading the coded message. She sat down quietly beside him. Without looking up, he reached for one of her hands and held it.

  “When?” she asked at last, certain he had finished reading the passage.

  He still didn’t look up. “Soon,” he answered. “Very soon.”

  She looked at the scrap of paper. It was a very innocent letter to a niece. Weather...family health...affectionate greetings... Your loving Aunt, Valeria.

  “And what does Aunt Valeria say?”

  “Your clothes are already waiting for you. Your papers and story will be given to you any day after tomorrow, when Aunt Valeria arrives with them.”

  “Here?”

  “No. At a small inn outside Zakopane.”

  She said slowly, “I should be there, ready to welcome Aunt Valeria when she does arrive.” She was trying desperately
to keep her voice calm.

  “Yes... I’ll take you to the inn. We’ll have to go carefully.” He gave her a twisted smile. “Strangely enough, that may be the most difficult part of the journey. After that, with the right clothes and papers, it will be safe—easier.”

  “I feel safer with you than with any papers, Adam, no matter how clever your Aunt Valeria is.”

  “He hasn’t made a mistake yet.” Adam’s voice was grim. He was convincing himself that this way would be safe.

  “He?”

  “Yes. Aunt Valeria is one of Number Fourteen’s best men. Thank God he’s on this job.”

  Her voice faltered. “Tonight we leave, then?”

  “Tonight.” Adam rose abruptly. He didn’t look at her again. He opened the door, slowly climbed the path they had cut in the deep snow. If I had wept, she thought, as she stared at the pool of pale gold at the threshold where the sun’s weak rays spread over the floor, if I had wept we never would have left for Zakopane. It was a relief that she could allow herself to weep now.

  * * *

  Madame Olszak came back into the room.

  “I knew someone had left a door open,” she grumbled. “Such a draught. This place is like ice.” She moved about, closing the door, jabbing at the fire with a poker, talking incessantly as she moved. Sheila was in control of herself by the time that Veronika and Wenceslas entered.

  “When?” Madame Olszak demanded suddenly.

  “Tonight.”

  “That’s what I expected.” Her voice was almost bad-tempered. She was angry with everyone, herself most of all.

  “Where are you going?” Veronika asked pityingly. Her hard face had softened.

  Sheila saw Wenceslas, behind Veronika, shake his head warningly.

  Madame Olszak had seen his advice, too.

  “None of our business, Veronika,” she said sharply. “Now you and I will start some cooking. We want a special supper this evening.” She followed the slow-moving Veronika towards the kitchen. “Wars, wars,” she was saying savagely. “People who should be together, bringing up the children God meant them to have, kept apart...separated... I’ve always cursed the men who started wars. I must die cursing them...never an end... never...” It was strange to hear Veronika suddenly burst into wailing tears. And then the kitchen door closed.

  “She’s all right, that Veronika,” Wenceslas said, “except she always wants to know everything. Well—” his round, good-natured face watched hers anxiously—“well... Think I’ll just wait here.” He sat down on the edge of a chair. “To see if the captain needs my help for tonight,” he explained unnecessarily. And then he looked upset: oughtn’t to have mentioned tonight, he thought. Pity she had to go. Yet no place for her here. The captain was travelling east. She would have to wait here. She couldn’t go with him there. That was certain. And the Germans might come to the village, might come to this house. As they had done before, and would do again. The captain wouldn’t have his mind on the job. He’d be worrying about her. Pity she had to go. No one’s fault but the bloody Germans. Always the bloody Germans.

  Wenceslas blew his nose violently. Then he was listening. “That’s the captain,” he said, and hurried to the window. “Walked his temper off, too, thank God. We’ll get down to business, now.” He looked anxiously at the girl. Funny how he kept saying the wrong things today. She was smiling, sadly, and he blew his nose again because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  They didn’t notice him much, anyway. Not even when he suggested the arrangements for tonight: a sleigh, a sure-footed horse, and the third-rate little road which ran almost parallel to the main road to Zakopane. The German patrols kept to the main road in this weather, but even so, the time to make the journey was between patrols. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the night patrols were out on the roads leading to Zakopane between ten and twelve, two and four. Methodical race, the Germans.

  They didn’t notice him much, but they had listened.

  “Today is Thursday,” the foreign girl said.

  And the captain said, his face the same cold mask that his wife’s was, “We set out at midnight then.”

  “I’ll have the sleigh waiting down by the last trees behind the post office,” Wenceslas said.

  He left them, then. They didn’t even seem to notice his going.

  40

  JOURNEY FROM ADAM

  The narrow, open platform of the small railway station was crowded. Uniforms, holiday clothes and farewells jostled each other. Military boots, smartly polished and ready for duty once more, trampled on the hardened snow beside the ski-boots of those whose furlough was not yet over. There were women, too. Women with confident eyes and voices, furs, lipsticks, and perfume strangely heavy in the crisp pine-scented air. The voices became louder, gayer. Backslapping, handshaking, good humour. Commands were kept for the thinly clad, overworked porters. These were Poles. Even the smartly dressed stationmaster and the man sitting in the warm ticket-office were Germans.

  Sheila buried her chin more deeply into the fur collar of her coat, as if to shield her neck from the cold wind. If fear caused seasickness, then she was liable to be violently seasick at any moment on the solid platform of Zakopane. The feeling of nausea, which had attacked her so suddenly this morning when she rose and thought of this journey had returned once again. German voices everywhere. German faces. She looked away from the crowd of well-fed, well-clothed bodies, stared at the village of Zakopane with its restaurants and hotels, its balconies and terraces, it summer villas and winter chalets strung across the lower mountain slopes. The Poles had been proud of their Zakopane. Perhaps that was why the oversized black swastika in its round white circle was displayed so prominently over the ice-stadium.

  “...another two weeks’ leave in early spring,” a captain was saying to a tall blonde girl in well-cut skiing clothes. “We’ll have that in Berlin.”

  White teeth showed evenly against golden skin. “Let me know when, Franz. I’ll be back in Danzig next week. Usual address...”

  An immaculate major, thin-jawed, hawk-nosed, said to the pink-cheeked captain who kept slow pace with him: “Pity you must leave before you got any real skiing. Perhaps in a month or two...excellent in February.”

  “Yes. I was here last winter for the World Ski-championship. Some of the jumps reached eighty-five metres. I remember...” Their steady pace drew them out of Sheila’s hearing.

  A dark-haired anxious woman passed with a lieutenant. “... better, Walther. But are you sure you’re fit to rejoin your unit?”

  “Perfectly. Stop worrying, Lisa. Here’s Johann.”

  “Walther! Seeing your wife off? When do you leave? Monday? So do I. Good. We’ll travel together. Here are Martin and Sigurd and Frieda to say goodbye to your Lisa...” There was a torrent of phrases and laughter.

  Sheila waited patiently. The attack of sickness had passed. She watched the platform carefully. Soon, now. Surely soon. The train would be leaving in seven minutes. She walked a few paces across the platform, a few steps back. The clock was behind her now. She was standing in the right place. She tightened her hold on the book under her arm. Left arm...that was right. It was a novel in a dramatic jacket of Party colours—black, white, red. That was correct too. She pretended to ignore any glances in her direction from the unattached men near her. She was one of the wives, whose husband were still too ill to be able to come down to the station for a last parting. She was wearing the right clothes. “Quietly, but nicely dressed,” the man who had signed himself Aunt Valeria had said approvingly. “That and a purseful of money will ease the way. The German officials are always quick to differentiate between a woman and a lady. They admire the authority of good clothes. With your papers and escort, you probably will have a pleasant journey.”

  Pleasant... Sheila tried to swallow the nervous lump in her throat. She was holding the new handbag so tightly in her neatly gloved hand that she felt it was growing onto her, had indeed become a part of her arm. In the handbag was w
hat she valued more than the smart clothes or the money in her purse. In the handbag were the little pieces of paper which explained who she was, why she was here, where she was going—all so efficient with their flourish of signatures and authentic-looking stamps. Aunt Valeria had been pleased with them. “Beauties!” he had said and kissed them mockingly as he presented them to her with an imitation-official bow. Stop thinking of Aunt Valeria, she warned herself. Stop thinking of the ghostlike journey from Madame Olszak’s house to the inn outside Zakopane. Stop thinking of Adam...of the parting that had come so swiftly that it was over before she knew it had come... It was better that way. Neither of them could have endured a long drawn-out farewell...

  Five minutes. She walked a few paces once more. And then she saw him. A short, thick-set man with a heavy white face. Hair greying at the temples; black well-marked eyebrows; grey eyes, serious and thoughtful. His German uniform was carelessly worn, only to be excused by the insignia of the Medical Corps on his coat collar. A busy man, a hurried man, a man too preoccupied with the problems of medicine to be worried about the correct way to dress as a soldier. And an important man, to judge by the respectful salutes given him and acknowledged in his own way. He walked past her very slowly, buried deep in thought. The title of the book he carried was clearly shown against its white cover: System of Neuropathology. Newspapers were under his other arm, a bulging yellow cowhide briefcase in his hand. This was the man. And he had seen her, dressed in the fur-collared black coat, and the neat little green felt hat pulled down over one eye. But he didn’t seem to notice her.

  That was what she had expected. Aunt Valeria had gone over this routine so often with her, that she thought she would scream if he asked her to repeat it once again; but now she was glad of the care that had been taken. Now all she had to do was to follow the man in uniform, let him do the talking as he saw fit. The irritating lump in her throat was gone. Contact had been made. The first stage of the journey was already completed.