by Ann Bridge
“Anyway, we couldn’t drive at night without headlights, on this road—it may be all cluttered up with dead carts and things,” said Kirkland. “And if we show headlights they’d get us just the same. I think we’d better get on; across the frontier is the only place we’ll be really safe. How far is that, Talmey? Would you ask your friend?”
Talmey did so. The result was rather inconclusive.
“He says he doesn’t know exactly how far we’ve come because we made that detour, so he can’t say how far we are from Nish—but from Nish to the frontier is around 130 or 140 kilometres.”
“Let’s see what Miss Tita says,” said Kirkland, and addressed the girl in German. Tita was all for going on at once—
“They have cleaned the road for this time—probably they leave it for an hour or more, now.”
So they drove off again, Tita crossing herself as they passed the dead peasant lying by the roadside. At least they’d be able to get some more gas in Nish, Talmey said.
“Yes, and if we have no more hold-ups, we may be in Sofia by midnight,” said Mrs. Kirkland hopefully. So, as Lydia and her party had done twenty-four hours earlier, that oddly-assorted company drove on southwards through the clear music-haunted twilight of a Balkan evening in spring.
15
On that same morning Hope was awakened—about half-an-hour after the first bombs, falling on Belgrade, had aroused her Father—by a knocking on the door; a warder came in and dumped down a mug of watery synthetic coffee and two thick slices of dry bread which he carried in his fingers. “Be ready to go to the lavatory in half-an-hour,” he said, and went out again.
Hope, still sleepy, stared about her for a moment in bewilderment—at the stained and dirty walls of the cell, scribbled over here and there with remarks in Hungarian, Polish, and Yiddish; at the high barred window, with a blank whitewashed brick wall close opposite; at the stinking urine-bucket in one corner—and, finally, at the unappetizing meal lying, bread and all, on the dirty floor beside her bed. Then she burst into tears. Oh, it was all too awful! How would she ever get out?—no one, not a living soul, among all her friends, had any idea where she was. She was really quite broken at that point, and for a time sobbed bitterly.
Then her sturdy common sense asserted itself. One had to live—and she forced herself to eat the uppermost slice of bread, and to swallow the tasteless sugarless fluid in the mug. At least the gaoler’s dirty fingers hadn’t touched that! She was still rather famished; since her last dinner at home, nearly thirty-six hours before, all she had had to eat were the two eggs that she had boiled in the Moranskis’ kettle, with Lydia’s bread-and-butter, and a slice of that nasty prison bread last night. She was wise to eat; after it she felt better. Without her watch she had no means of judging the time, but it seemed to her much more than half-an-hour before the warder, his Arrow Cross badge conspicuous on his uniform, came back to escort her to the lavatory. He picked up the mug, and looked angrily at the rejected slice of bread.
“Ah, you Poles, how haughty you are!” he said. “Our bread is not good enough for you, I see! But you will learn in time! The Yugoslavs, haughty like you, have learned only this morning what it is to defy the Führer!”
“How have they learned this?” Hope asked, curious, as he thrust her unceremoniously out of the cell, shut the door, and led her along the passage.
“Their capital, Belgrade, has just been blown to pieces by the Luftwaffe. This morning! Nothing left of it! They had no flak, no planes, so there was no resistance.” He was jubilant. “They got their deserts all right. In there,” he said, opening a door—“and don’t be more than five minutes.” He slammed the door behind her.
In that horrible apartment, whose stench betokened its existence from far down the corridor, Hope had a flash of more horrifying terror than anything she had felt yet. If what the man said was true—and his gloating pleasure, Hungarian Szállascist as he was, sounded as if he at least believed it—what would have happened to Stefan, and to Litka and Jurek too, if they had spent the night in Belgrade, as they well might have done? She had no idea where they really meant to make for, once they were over the Hungarian frontier; most Poles went on down to Palestine via Istanbul, but they might have had other plans. Oh, please God they had gone! And, good Heavens, her parents! They were certain to have stopped the moment they found that she was missing, to make enquiries, to try to find her—they would have been trapped as well! In an agony, she drummed on the door with her fists.
“What is it? Time’s not up,” said the man. “However, if you’re ready, come on.”
A little of her wits came back to Hope. “How many planes bombed Belgrade?” she asked cautiously. “You can’t blow a whole city to bits with just a few.”
“Eight squadrons, I hear. Don’t you worry—it’s blown to bits all right. I expect the German divisions will be in there this morning, when the planes have finished with it. In you go, ungrateful Pole”—and he slammed and locked her door.
Back in her cell, Hope sat down on the bed and cried again. Her love for her parents was genuine; it had been submerged, as it were, by her love for Stefan and her determination to get him out at all costs—now it came to the surface once more, and remorse flooded over her. What had she done? Why hadn’t she left a note in the train to say she was going back—well, anything—and that she would join them by plane in Istanbul in a day or so? Then they would have gone on, and been safe. As it was she felt as if she had betrayed them to their deaths, and what is more, had made it certain that their last hours on earth would be full of horrible anxiety—she saw that now. Terrified, at last deeply ashamed, she knelt down on the filthy floor and prayed for their safety—and for that of the other three too.
The hours of the morning dragged along. Once she heard a church bell chiming—would that be for eight o’clock Mass, or nine, or ten? She tried to judge by the strength of the light on the wall beyond her window—ten, she guessed, but she couldn’t be sure. She sat thinking of her parents, reviewing her whole behaviour to them, even before she met the Moranskis. Not so good. She had been selfish, impatient; sometimes—to her Mother—actually unkind. And they were such darlings! These meditations led on to thoughts of Sam, and her behaviour to him. In that bleak hour of desolation, stripped of almost everything—down to her watch and her compact—she thought of Sam differently even from her thoughts of the previous afternoon; with quite a new tenderness, actually with pity. Oh, she didn’t want to treat everyone who loved her badly!—everyone but Stefan! And once again she knelt and prayed—now for Sam, and for herself and Sam. She was calmer and stronger afterwards; her own prospects seemed bleak indeed, but she felt able to face them with steadiness.
The key turned in the lock, and the door opened. “Come along, now.”
“Where to?” Hope asked.
“That’s no business of yours. To the interrogation, as it happens.”
Hope couldn’t restrain a slight trembling. Her two interrogations by Captain Revicsky had left her with a sick dread of them. But the thought came into her mind—perhaps at least I can find out what has really happened at Belgrade—and she followed the warder with a firmer step.
She was taken this time to a rather superior office, where a man in civilian dress sat at a big desk; Captain Revicsky was also there. The man at the desk looked a better type of person, at least he had not Revicsky’s mean weaselly face. He began almost soothingly—“Now, Miss Moranska, I wish to ask you some questions.”
He spoke in German—Hope decided to answer in English.
“I am not Miss Moranska—I am Miss Hope Kirkland, the daughter of Mr. John B. Kirkland of the National American Oil Company. I wish to see Mr. Hershey, of the American Consulate.” She saw that he understood, and went on—“And I want my wrist-watch back, that your men have stolen, and my handbag too.”
“If you are Miss Kirkland,” he answered, in fair English, “what were you doing, without papers, in the Moranskis’ flat?” He still spoke quite m
ildly, and Hope’s old spirit began to return.
“I was there because I chose to be. I don’t have to ask permission from the Hungarian police where I visit!” she said briskly.
“You have no papers—what proof can you give me that you are what you say?”
“Give me back my bag and my watch, and I’ll show you.”
The man at the desk spoke to Revicsky, who left the room. The moment he went out Hope said, earnestly, “Please tell me this—is it true that Belgrade was bombed this morning?”
“These chattering fellows!” the official said irritably, scowling at the warder—“They cannot keep their mouths shut. Yes, it is true.”
“Was there great damage?” she asked, twisting her hands.
“Enormous.” He eyed her keenly. “But why this concern? Is that where your brother, Major Moranski, has gone?”
“No—but my parents. Oh, dear God!” She began to cry.
“Mr. and Mrs. Kirkland left for Istanbul two nights ago, so if they are your parents, you need not worry about them; they will have passed through safely yesterday morning.”
“No, they won’t,” Hope sobbed. “When they found I wasn’t with them they’d stop over, and try to find me—I know they would! They’d never go on without me.”
Her distress was obviously genuine, and the Chief of Police was rather shaken. He had not been perfectly satisfied with Revicsky’s account of the proceedings at the flat the day before, which was why he had arranged to see the girl himself. You were safe enough in dealing with Poles, but Americans were quite another pair of shoes; if there had been any confusion it would be extremely awkward. And hadn’t there been some report from the cordon on the southern road about a girl with an American passport coming in very early on the morning of the fifth? He must look into that: the officer there, being a German, would almost certainly have taken the name—unlike those fools on the door of the Penzio from which the two Poles they wanted so badly had somehow escaped. Though how they had got out through the cordon was a mystery. In any event, he must go carefully.
Captain Revicsky came back at this point with the watch and the handbag—he looked pleased when he saw that Hope was in tears. But she almost snatched the watch from him, and handed it to the Chief. “There you are—look at that.” On the back was engraved, in minute lettering: “Hope, from J. B. K.”, and the date.
“She could have stolen this—I expect she did,” said Revicsky.
“Yes, and I could have stolen my own handbag from myself too, couldn’t I?” Hope flashed, forgetting parents and tears in the zest of combat with that hateful, hateful man. “Here, look at this!”—she ferreted in the bag, pulled out her little lizard card-case, and slapped a card down on the table in front of the Deuxième Bureau Chief.
“We know already that the bag contains Miss Hope Kirkland’s cards,” that individual said smoothly; “but bags can change hands—cartes de visite are not the same thing as pièces d’identité.”
“Naturally. She took this when she took the watch,” said Revicsky sourly—“Took it, or begged it.”
His chief silenced him with a gesture, and turned to Hope.
“If you are really Miss Kirkland, as you maintain, why did you not leave with your parents the night before last? Or if you did leave with them, why did you return here?” (He was still worrying about that report, which he could only half remember, from the cordon.)
He spoke mildly, but Revicsky’s words and expression had put Hope’s back up.
“I don’t have to tell you that! I don’t have to tell you anything! I’ve lost my passport, but that’s not a crime. You get Mr. Bill Hershey from our Consulate round here—he’ll identify me fast enough. And then you can start apologizing! The worse you treat me, the worse it’ll be for you. You’re just being silly!”
In her anger her American accent, usually very slight, became marked, almost raucous. Would a Pole really speak like that? the Chief of Police wondered, uncomfortably.
“Ring up the American Consulate,” he said to Revicsky. “We must settle this affair. When you have Mr. Hershey on the line I will speak with him.”
Hope’s whole being glowed, expanded. If once Bill would come, she’d be out of this! She waited, in intolerable suspense. After a moment or two Revicsky came back—“Mr. Hershey is on the line, in the next room.”
Through the open door Hope listened to one half of the conversation that followed.
“We have a young lady here who insists that she is Miss Hope Kirkland, and we should be glad …”
She couldn’t of course hear Bill’s explosive interruption—“You’ve got her there? Well for Heaven’s sake! Her Father’s been like a madman down in Belgrade, trying to find out where she’d got to.”
She heard the Chief say, dubiously—“But we are by no means sure that it is Miss Kirkland; the circumstances are extremely suspicious.”
“Oh, make him come! He’ll soon settle it!” she exclaimed; Revicsky signed to her to be silent, even while Hershey was shouting down the telephone—“The Hell they’re suspicious! I’ll be right over. Hold onto her, for pity’s sake.”
When the Chief of Police came back into the room his manner was entirely altered. He murmured uncomfortably to Revicsky—“Mr. Hershey is coming here immediately; it seems that Miss Kirkland is missing.” Then he turned to Hope and offered her a chair, saying—“We await the gentleman from the American Consulate. But your presence in that Polish apartment still requires some explanation, if indeed you are Miss Kirkland.”
It may seem odd that neither the Deuxième Bureau Chief nor Revicsky should have heard anything of all the enquiries that Bill had been making the day before, helped by Tibor. But those enquiries had been made of the regular Hungarian police, who dealt with straight indigenous crime and misdemeanour; the Deuxième Bureau were political police: in fact, as Stefan had told Hope in the Sörözö, the local Gestapo, at the moment dealing mostly with foreign suspects. The two organizations worked in water-tight compartments, and moreover there was considerable suspicion and dislike between them, on the part of the regular force anyhow; they didn’t at all care for this upstart Special Branch, manned by Szállascists and Schwabs, and gave them no particular help—as witness the behaviour of the village police who had housed Jurek’s cargo of Poles in their cells while the Deuxième Bureau men were vainly hunting for them. And after hearing that story from Belgrade about Hope having crossed the Yugoslav frontier, however phoney the message sounded, Bill had done no more.
It didn’t take him long to come round when he heard the incredible news that she was actually at the Deuxième Bureau, of all places—when he walked into the room, so big, so comfortable, and so American, the girl flew at him and flung her arms round his neck. “Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! I thought no one would ever come!”
He held her, patting her shoulder. “Hopey, what on earth are you doing here?” he asked. “What is all this?”
Between relief and reaction, she was almost sobbing. “Oh, take me away! Please take me away. They’re so horrible.” She shuddered, clinging to him with a grip that had desperation in it. Over her shoulder Bill addressed the Chief of Police in a voice with an icy edge.
“Can you explain to me just why you have arrested Miss Kirkland, one of our nationals?” Her state made that mild Middle-Westerner very angry.
Any uncertainty that the Chief of Police might have had about Hope’s identity had been instantly resolved when he saw her meeting with Hershey, but he did the best he could. He spoke very smoothly.
“Yes, Sir; certainly. She was found, without papers of any sort, in the apartment of some Poles who are wanted by the police.”
“Well, why didn’t you arrest the Poles, and not her?”
“The Poles had gone—how, we have no idea; someone must have connived at their escape.” He spoke with a certain emphasis. “But my men had seen this young lady, in this very coat that she is now wearing, enter the apartment twenty-four hours earlier; she never left it
, and indeed they saw her there at 2 o’clock yesterday morning.”
The outline of things began to take a misty shape in Bill’s mind. The times didn’t fit yet: Hope had only gone to the garage after 5 a.m. the previous day, and she couldn’t conceivably have got back from Kecskemét by 2 a.m.—but obviously there had been some sort of monkey-business going on. However, none of that mattered for the moment. When he spoke next it was more heartily, but very firmly.
“Well, Mr. Chief, there’s been some mistake somewhere. I don’t know what your men and their Poles have been up to, but this young lady is Miss Hope Kirkland, and she’s an American citizen; if you want to prefer any charge against her, you’d better come and see me about it at the Consulate. But I guess it’s rather a new kind of offence for a neutral to be visiting with Poles, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Mr. Hershey—for an American, yes. It is clearly a case of mistaken identity, though how it occurred I cannot understand. But with your permission, I should very much like to ask the young lady one or two questions.”
Hope burst out, at that.
“Bill, don’t let them! They’ve been bullying me and asking me questions for hours. Don’t let them start again—they don’t believe a thing I say! I don’t know where their Poles are, except the poor old lady that’s lying dead in the room. Oh, do please take me away from here!”
Bill said—“I think we won’t worry Miss Kirkland with any more questions now, Mr. Chief. You seem to have treated her pretty strangely already! You admit you’ve made a mistake, and that’s all there is to it. Good morning”—and he carried Hope off, clutching her restored bag and her wrist-watch.
Once in the car—“Hopey, what in the world have you been up to?” Bill asked. “What did you come back here for? And where did you get that coat?”
Hope giggled a little hysterically at the last question.
“Oh Bill, do you think I could have a drink or something before I start telling you? I am so tired.”