by Ann Bridge
“Be careful to keep it from heat and light, my child, lest the film should spoil,” said Father Kowalski practically. Litka nodded; she knew about micro-films. “1 will,” she said. “I’ll be very careful.”
“You’d at least better get out of here with her, hadn’t you? Hope said now to the priest. “They saw you come in with me, so if the clothes work—and I’m sure they will—you’ll be able to go out again the same way.”
“Yes, I will do this—it is the best plan,” he answered.
But Father Kowalski was beginning to do a little thinking and planning on his own account. “And what shall you do, Mademoiselle?” he asked Hope.
“Just stay here, in this room, as long as ever I can,” she replied readily. “If everything works out all right I’d like them to have time to get clear away across the frontier, before I do anything, or make any move.”
He nodded. “Perfectly right. But afterwards?”
“Well, when I think it’s safe for them, I shall just go off and get hold of a man in our Consulate—he’s a friend—and get him to arrange a new passport for me, so that I can go back to my parents.”
“This is well—if it goes as you intend. But you realize that you may be involved in a disagreeable situation?—the Gestapo are apt to make themselves very unpleasant when they have been thwarted,” he said gravely. “I think you should consider this.”
“Oh, I’ll manage,” said Hope airily.
He shook his head a little, at that. But Litka woman-like, leapt to a practical aspect.
“If you stay so long you will have to eat!” she exclaimed. “Look—come here.” She led her to the press: “Here is tea, sugar, and apple; the bread is rather stale, I am afraid—I could not get out to buy more. This is the conserve; a friend made it. And here are three eggs—I got them for Maman, but she could not eat them. But with the butter you can make an omelette—this is the pan.”
That scanty larder and the brightly burnished omelette-pan almost moved Hope to tears, while at the same time she was ready to laugh at the idea of making herself an omelette—she who had never done much more than make coffee in her life! But she thanked Litka heartily; and then remembered the two boxes of chocolates. “You’d better take these,” she said. “I brought them for you. You’ll be glad of them on the drive—you won’t have much time to stop for food till you’re over the frontier.
Litka would only take one. “You too may be glad of some.”
But the priest had not finished his planning, which had wider aspects than Litka’s; he now intervened again.
“My child,” he said to Litka, “what about the burial? This must be attended to, and unfortunately I myself cannot do it—I ought to leave. Do you know a priest? Have you some friends who can arrange it for you when you are gone?”
Litka looked very disconcerted and ashamed.
“Oh Father, how could I overlook this! No—I do not know how to arrange it,” she faltered. “Not in the time! We have friends—but how do I know what happened to them last night? They may be gone—they may have been taken. Everything is so disrupted today,” said poor Litka, and burst into tears. “That I should think of leaving Maman unburied—what a creature can I have become?” she sobbed, burying her face in her hands.
The priest pulled a turnip watch out of his soutane, glanced at it, and turned sharply to the American girl. “Miss Hope, can you see to this? You are clearly destined to be the good angel of this family.”
“Yes, I’ll fix it—or I’ll get it fixed,” said Hope, glowing at this tribute. It was something to be Stefan’s good angel. “If I can’t stay to see to it myself I’ll make Bill do it.”
“Who is Bill?” the priest asked.
“That friend in our Consulate. I’ll put him on to the nuns at the Sacré Cœur; they’ll find a priest, and I’ll pay—at least, Father will.” She patted Litka’s shoulder. “Litka darling, don’t fret yourself—I’ll see to it all. The important thing is for you to get off, now. Come on, put on these things.”
As she spoke she fitted the little grey lambskin cap on to Litka’s curls, and then held out the coat; Litka snuggled into it, pulling the deep collar round her ears. “Ah, how warm! And how nice it smells! Gloves, too, to match!” she exclaimed, as Hope handed them to her. “And now, where is this palace where I shall find them?” she asked.
“It isn’t a palace at all, really,” Hope said. “That was just—just a code word. Do you know the bridge across to Csepel Island, down the Danube?” she went on rather hastily.
“Yes—I went down that river-road once, with Jurek.”
“Well, just before you get to the bridge, right on the embankment, there is a Kis-Kocsma, a tiny little estaminet place. You can’t miss it—it stands all by itself, hanging right over the river. That’s where they’ll be.”
“What a funny place! And how come you to know it?” Litka asked.
“We went and talked there in the evening, after we’d all been up to the Hármashatár-hegy,” Hope said. She was thinking that if it had been she and not Litka who was going, she and Stefan would have been together again, if only for a moment, in that room whose walls had once seemed red as roses.
Litka said nothing. There was a little silence. At last—“Did Stefan say anything else, on the telephone?” Hope asked, in a small thread of a voice.
“Yes. He said to tell you to live happily ever after, like a Princess in a fairy-tale,” said Litka.
Hope swallowed a little. She tried to be practical, to put all that aside—glancing again at her watch, “You ought to go,” she said. “It’s really time. We’ve settled everything, I think. The car’s round the corner in Ferencz utca. Hurry along, Litka darling.”
Litka, all dressed up, looking so chic and pretty, flung her arms round her neck.
“It is too much, it is too wonderful, all you do for us! Goodbye, goodbye.”
“That’s all right,” said Hope briefly, kissing her. “But now hurry, do.” She turned to the priest. “Goodbye, Father.”
Father Kowalski didn’t take her outstretched hand. He said rather ceremoniously—“My daughter, I would wish myself also to thank you for what you are doing: for my country, and as a work of mercy—and to give you my blessing.”
“Please do, Father,” Hope said; she stood with bent head and folded hands while he gave it to her, slowly and audibly.
After that he shook hands, and went to the door—once more the two girls kissed and clung to each other. “And Stefan? Shall I say—” Litka began, and broke off.
“Yes, tell him—no, don’t tell him anything!” Hope said, the tears at last running down her face. She began to sob. Litka was silent for a moment or two, then she took Hope by the shoulders, and made her look at her.
“No, I do not need to tell him—anything! Nor he to tell you. You know what you know, both. But listen—in such times as these it is better to have even a little certain knowledge than much uncertain hope. Goodbye”—and she followed the priest out into the passage.
12
When the door had closed after them Hope remained for a moment or two standing quite still, on the spot where Litka had left her. Alone with the dead woman, in that room, she was aware of an immense sense of finality—and of loss: this was the end, or very nearly the end. But the end of what?—a little more than a month ago she had not so much as heard of the Moranskis! Oh, but all the same it was a real ending, and of something inexpressibly lovely and sweet. These people had come to fill her whole world, and to fill it with a richness, an intensity that was quite outside her experience. Somehow, for a few magical weeks she had as it were slid into their world of loss and poverty and danger and courage—and of Stefan’s love. But now it really was all over, except that she must stay in that world a few hours longer, to watch by the body of the little brave gracious old lady there on the bed, and see that she had decent burial—yes!—she, Hope Kirkland, was responsible for making the funeral arrangements for a Polish woman, whom she had come both
to admire and love. And she must stay in the Moranskis’ world—as Litka—long enough to ensure that the temporary Hope Kirkland, with Stefan and Jurek, got safely away.
That thought sent her to the window. She was just in time to see Litka and Father Kowalski emerge from the porte cochère, and pass unchallenged through the knot of police. Ah, what had she said?—Litka’s disguise was working all right! She saw them go up the street and round the corner, and then waited, peering cautiously through the worn dingy lace curtains, till she heard the familiar note of the Dodge engine and pulling back, now, the shabby darned fabric, she saw the pale grey car with the familiar Massachusetts number-plates flash down the Radolny utca. Good—the car hadn’t been interfered with; that was yet another fence crossed. As she let the curtain fall again she wondered where Litka would put the priest down: inside the cordon, or outside? It might be useful to him to get out under the wing of that passport and those papers; on the other hand his own—presumably—Polish papers might hold Litka up. On the whole Hope thought that he wouldn’t allow that risk, considering what was in Litka’s bag—he would leave the car before they reached the cordon, and manage somehow. She had already derived a strong impression that Father Kowalski, in common with most Poles, was pretty débrouillard. Anyhow, all that was out of her hands now, she thought; she had done what she could—they must carry on, as the priest had said. Pray God it all went all right.
With that she turned to the bed, and knelt down and said another prayer for the repose of Mme Moranska’s soul. When she got up she looked at the dead woman’s face. It was calm, peaceful, rather beautiful: in a way it had never been in life, not at least as Hope had seen it. Poor Mme Moranska—she had had a raw deal towards the end. But not at the end; she had died in peace, with the rites of her Church, and knowing the two young men to be safe. And she must have had a very happy life for many years, in that spacious dignified house in Poland, with her children growing up beside her, the kindly faithful servants, and her busy farmer husband, who also painted so well. Hope glanced towards the corner where M. Moranski’s canvases had always stood—they were still there. She pulled a chair towards the bed, and then went over and picked them up, sat down, and began to look at them. Moving the chair was quite involuntary—but to seek Mme. Moranska’s gentle company had been a natural impulse to many all through her life, and Hope felt it now.
It seemed rather chilly. She went to the stove—it was dying, and she had no idea where the fuel was kept. Oh for her snug grey lambskin! She looked round the room, seeking something to put on. There on the row of clothes-pegs, in the strange publicity that had always been such a piteous feature of that room, hung Litka’s old shabby check coat, made of the thin, smooth-surfaced, rather shoddy Central European tweed—she twitched it down off its coat-hanger and put it on. Goodness, there wasn’t much warmth in it!—how Litka must have frozen through the penetrating damp cold of a Budapest winter, with the river fogs searching into the very marrow of one’s bones. However, it was better than nothing. She reseated herself and took up the pictures again. There was the one of the house, that she and Stefan had talked about, and that had unloosed such a flood of recollections from his Mother. No—that could not be left behind—that Stefan absolutely must have! She would get it to Bill somehow, and Bill should send it on to Sam. Sam would arrange it—he must. And of course he would; Stefan and Jurek were friends of his, anyway.
Hope, like many people of nineteen, was not greatly given to introspection or analysis; she took her ideas and emotions pretty much as they came. But at this point even she was struck all of a sudden by a certain oddness in the fact that she should be so calmly and confidently relying on Sam, her fiancé, to get the picture to Stefan, with whom she was now in love in a way she had never been with Sam. Now at length after these last hectic days she had time to think quietly about it all: time, and circumstances tending to promote thought. That bare room where Mme Moranska’s small body lay among Tibor’s carnations—another young man!—was very silent; in the general drabness the basket of Herend flowers on the mantelpiece, that she had purchased simply to buy a few more minutes in Stefan’s company, seeing his face and hearing his voice, glowed like a spray of jewels; it got cold and colder. Everything was very strange. And in that cold, and strangeness, and silence, a new Hope Kirkland began to put her mind to work on everything that had happened in these last few weeks—on what they really meant, and on the problem presented by herself, and Sam, and Stefan.
Had she ever really been in love with Sam at all? That was the first question that she asked herself, prompted by some rather strong prickings of remorse on Sam’s account. She thought she was in love with him at the time—clever, solid, devoted, reliable Sam, who was so good, and such a darling. But if she had been properly in love with him, how could she so quickly have fallen for Stefan? That had been so utterly different: a singing wonder and delight that swept you off your feet. Their walk upon the Hármashatár-hegy, in that pink-and-silver world of oak-scrub, in the spring sunshine, and Stefan’s dark mobile face and deep eyes as he took her hand and said “Thank you, my unreal fiancée,” before he kissed her hand; their talk outside the Kis-Kocsma, and their rather silent session in it, drinking barack among the mortar and disorder; and most of all—was it possible that it was only yesterday afternoon?—those moments up under the walls of the Gellért Fortress.
Minds less untutored than Hope’s have baulked at a clear definition of the “lyric love, half-angel and half-bird” which she was thinking about; indeed, except in poetry or music it can hardly be defined at all. But those who have known it recognize it for what it is, and Hope so recognized it now. It was curiously mixed up with other things as well; the way Stefan—and Litka and Jurek too—practically ate politics and action concerned with politics as their daily bread; whether politics nourished them or killed them, that was what they ate, what they lived with; and so it had been for them since childhood. And the girl recognized dimly that this also had drawn and attracted her; Stefan’s dark glance, whether tender, or, as so often, steely, was part of the bright eyes of danger, and had the strange compulsion that danger has; the whole thing made the texture of life richer. Politics at home weren’t like that: they were just speeches and conventions and nation-wide broadcasts—not being chased by bloodhounds as you tried to cross a frontier, or getting shot up while you were illicitly running soldiers out of internment camps. And though all this wasn’t “love” as such, it affected love, or helped love along, she thought to herself—realizing vaguely, under the stress of these experiences, what many people only learn much later, that all emotions supplement and deepen one another, and cannot be shut off in water-tight compartments.
She sat as it were staring at that idea for some time, once it had occurred to her; that it was true and valid she was certain, vaguely as she expressed it to herself. But where did it bring her out? Well—because of all this she certainly loved Stefan; and almost equally certainly she would never see him again. But—she came back to her original question—had she then ever loved Sam?
That took a long time to answer—so long that she began to feel hungry in earnest. She remembered Litka’s idea about the omelette, went to the press, and got out the loaf and butter; set the table for herself, lit the gas and put on the kettle. In that (since she could find no saucepan) she boiled two of the eggs, fishing them out with some difficulty and a long spoon; she broke them into a cup and ate them, American-fashion, with butter stirred in, munching a slice of bread the while. The bread might be stale, as Litka had said, but to her ravenous young appetite it all tasted wonderfully good. Then—with the same water in which she had boiled the eggs, for she had no idea where to get any more—she made some tea. There was no milk, and with the strangest of feelings of tenderness and recollection she took the little fruit-knife from her bag, and peeled and put into the glass some slices of green apple.
But all the while, cooking and eating this frugal meal, she went on thinking about Sam, and a
bout herself and Sam. Yes, she had loved him, in a way; really she had! He was so lovable—who could help it? But what a puppy-love it had been!—her love, she meant; concentrated almost entirely on fun and a good time, and on a lovable person who promoted fun and a good time. Oh goodness!—when she fell in love with Sam she knew nothing about anything! Now—uncertainly, tentatively, she worked away at her thoughts, trying to get them clear—now she began to see that her love for Stefan, all involved as it was with the impact of political events on human lives, had shown her quite a different sort of love: full and deep, demanding all the faculties of mind as well as heart. And from henceforth, for always, she could never be satisfied with a partner through life whose idea of love did not measure up to that standard, which had become her own. Of that she was, suddenly, quite certain. It was an essential thing.
She went back, on that realization, to Sam, thinking retrospectively about him. But look—he must have known and cared about these things too, cared about them tremendously—otherwise why would he, how could he have involved her, his beloved girl, in all this risky affair? It was quite true that she herself—prompted partly by her feeling for Stefan; she admitted that now, frankly—had carried the thing further when she decided to try to get the disability certificates from the Yugoslav doctor; but all those risks were really implicit in the situation, once Sam had planted the passports on her, and so got her mixed up with the Moranskis at all. It was what the commentators called “a calculated risk”: and Sam had exposed her, of all people, to it with his eyes open, in order to save Stefan and Jurek. So obviously he too must consider that kind of life, with danger for bread, the right way to live. But then—he wasn’t just what he had seemed, a good, kind, lovable, forthright American; he too must have become to some extent European, as she had done. Only she had become that largely because she had fallen in love almost at first sight—yes, even when she looked at his photograph on that worn passport!—with Stefan; whereas Sam—she giggled a little, aloud, at the idea, and then noticed the flower-strewn bed and checked herself—certainly had not. Sam had learned to care about Europe’s things for Europe’s sake, and for the sake of justice and freedom. Yes, it must have been that way.