Thunder and Lightnings
Page 14
‘There’s no room to stretch.’
‘Rest your head against me and try and go to sleep. There, that’s better.’
‘It’s a better truck than the other ones,’ said Jan. ‘It’s got a stove in it. And we can scrape the coal dust off the floor. That’s why I chose it. When it gets dark they’ll light a fire and we shall keep warm.’
‘The stove’s right in the far corner. We shan’t feel it from here,’ said Bronia.
‘Stop grumbling, Bronia,’ said Ruth. ‘We’re lucky to be here at all. Hundreds of people were left behind at Posen – they may have to wait for weeks.’
‘Edek was lucky to come at all,’ said Jan. ‘The doctor wanted to send him back to the Warthe camp, didn’t he?’
‘He said you wanted fattening up, as if you were a goose being fattened for Christmas,’ laughed Bronia.
‘The doctor wouldn’t have let him come at all, if I hadn’t argued with him,’ said Jan.
‘They wanted to keep us all, didn’t they, Ruth?’ said Bronia.
‘It was because they wanted to look after us,’ said Ruth. And she thought with satisfaction how they had stuck to their point and persuaded the authorities to let them go. She smiled as she remembered the conversation she had overheard afterwards between the doctor and Mrs Borowicz, the welfare officer. ‘Those children insist on going to Switzerland – it’s their promised land – and we’ve no power to detain them,’ Mrs Borowicz had said. And when the doctor had remarked that Edek was too ill and would die on the way, she had disagreed. ‘He believes his father’s at the other end, waiting. Highly unlikely, of course, but there’s a sort of fierce resolution about the boy – about all of them – which saves them from despair, and it’s better than any medicine we can give him. Dope and drugs can’t equal that. We must let them go.’
Ruth looked at her brother. Bunched up against the side of the truck, he was staring out at the fields as they swept by. It was over two and a half years since she had last seen him. He was sixteen now, but did not look two and a half years older. So different from the Edek she remembered. His cheeks were pinched and hollow, his eyes as unnaturally bright as Jan’s had once been, and he kept coughing. He looked as if he could go on lying there for ever, without stirring. Yet at the Warthe camp they had described him as wild.
She looked at Jan. She was surprised how helpful and good-tempered he had been since Jimpy’s death in the scrum by the field kitchen. He had kept his sorrow to himself and not once referred to Jimpy since. Ruth could see that he was not entirely at ease with Edek yet. Did he resent his presence? There might be trouble here, for Edek must to some extent usurp the position that Jan had held, and Jan had a jealous nature.
She looked at Bronia. The child was asleep, her head in Ruth’s lap, a smile on her face. Was she dreaming about the fairy story that Ruth had been telling her, the one about the princess of the Brazen Mountains? Perhaps in her dream Bronia was the princess, flying through the sky on her grey-blue wings. Then the prince, who had searched for her seven long years, would be flying beside her, leading her to his mountain kingdom where they would live happily ever after. Fairy stories always ended like that, and Ruth was happy to think that Bronia was still young enough to believe that it was the same in real life.
Ruth sighed. She leaned back, her head against the side of the truck, and dozed.
And the train, with its long stream of trucks and carriages all crammed to bursting-point with refugees, rattled and jolted on towards Berlin.
In the evening the train stopped and was shunted into a siding. Everyone got out to stretch their legs, but no one went far away in case it started again. As the night came on and it grew colder, they drifted back to their carriages and trucks. Coal dust was scraped from the floorboards and wood collected from outside, and the fire in Ruth’s truck kindled. The refugees crowded round, stretching out their hands to the warmth.
It was the hour of the singer and the story teller. While they all shared what little food they had, a young man sang and his wife accompanied him on the guitar. He sang of the storks that every spring fly back from Egypt to Poland’s countryside, and of the villagers that welcome them by placing cart wheels on the treetops and the chimney stacks for the storks to build their nests on. A printer from Cracow told the tale of Krakus who killed the dragon, and of Krakus’s daughter who refused to marry a German prince. Others, laughing and making light of their experiences, told of miraculous escapes from the Nazis.
‘I had a free ride on the roof of a Nazi lorry,’ said one. ‘It was eighty miles before I was seen. A sniper spotted me from the top of a railway bridge, but he couldn’t shoot straight and I slid off into the bushes. The driver was so unnerved at the shooting that he drove slap into the bridge, and that was the end of him.’
Another told of a long journey on the roof of a train.
‘I can beat that for a yarn,’ said Edek.
Everyone turned round to look at the boy slumped down at the back of the truck. It was the first time he had spoken.
‘I’ll tell you if you’ll give me a peep at the fire,’ he said. ‘And my sisters too. And Jan. We’re freezing out here.’
Ungrudgingly they made a way for the family – the only children in the truck – to squeeze through to the stove. Ruth carried Bronia, who did not wake, and she snuggled down beside it. Jan sat on the other side, with his chin on his knees and his arms clasping them. Edek stood up, with his back to the side of the truck. When someone opened the stove to throw in a log, a shower of sparks leapt up, and for a few moments the flames lit up his pale features.
‘I was caught smuggling cheese into Warsaw, and they sent me back to Germany to slave on the land,’ he said. ‘The farm was near Guben and the slaves came from all parts of Europe, women mostly and boys of my age. In winter we cut peat to manure the soil. We were at it all day from dawn to dark. In spring we did the sowing – cabbage crop, mostly. At harvest time we packed the plump white cabbage heads in crates and sent them into town. We lived on the outer leaves – they tasted bitter. I tried to run away, but they always fetched me back. Last winter, when the war turned against the Nazis and the muddles began, I succeeded. I hid under a train, under a cattle wagon, and lay on top of the axle with my arms and legs stretched out.’
‘When the train started, you fell off,’ said Jan.
‘Afterwards I sometimes wished I had,’ said Edek, ‘that is, until I found Ruth and Bronia again. Somehow I managed to cling on and I got a free ride back to Poland.’
Jan laughed scornfully. ‘Why don’t you travel that way here? It would leave the rest of us more room.’
‘I could never do that again,’ said Edek.
‘No,’ said Jan, and he looked with contempt at Edek’s thin arms and bony wrists. ‘You’re making it all up. There’s no room to lie under a truck. Nothing to hold on to.’
Edek seized him by the ear and pulled him to his feet. ‘Have you ever looked under a truck?’ he said, and he described the underside in such convincing detail that nobody but Jan would have questioned his accuracy. The boys were coming to blows, when the printer pulled Jan to the floor and there were cries of, ‘Let him get on with his story!’
‘You would have been shaken off,’ Jan shouted above the din, ‘like a rotten plum!’
‘That’s what anyone would expect,’ Edek shouted back. ‘But if you’ll shut up and listen, I’ll tell you why I wasn’t.’ When the noise had died down, he went on. ‘Lying on my stomach, I found the view rather monotonous. It made me dizzy too. I had to shut my eyes. And the bumping! Compared with that, the boards of this truck are like a feather bed. Then the train ran through a puddle. More than a puddle – it must have been a flood, for I was splashed and soaked right through. But that water saved me. After that I couldn’t let go, even if I’d wanted to.’
‘Why not?’ said Jan, impressed.
‘The water froze on me. It made an icicle of me. When at last the train drew into a station, I was encased in ice
from head to foot. I could hear Polish voices on the platform. I knew we must have crossed the frontier. My voice was the only part of me that wasn’t frozen, so I shouted. The station-master came and chopped me down with an axe. He wrapped me in blankets and carried me to the boiler-house to thaw out. Took me hours to thaw out.’
‘You don’t look properly thawed out yet,’ said the printer, and he threw him a crust of bread.
Other voices joined in. ‘Give him a blanket.’ ‘A tall story, but he’s earned a bed by the stove.’ ‘Another story, somebody! One to make us forget.’ ‘Put some romance in it.’
The stories petered out after a while. When all was quiet, and the refugees, packed like sardines on the floor of the truck, lay sleeping under the cold stars, Ruth whispered to Edek, ‘Was it really true?’
‘Yes, it was true,’ said Edek.
‘Nothing like that must ever happen to you again,’ said Ruth.
She reached for his hand – it was cold, although he was close to the stove – and she clasped it tight, as if she meant never to let go of it again.
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First published by Kestrel Books 1976
Published in Puffin Books 1978
Reissued in this edition 2016
Text copyright © Jan Mark, 1976
Illustrations copyright © Jim Russell, 1976
Cover illustration by Thomas Walker
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
ISBN: 978–0–141–36186–4
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