‘That’s the prison bell,’ said Joseph. ‘It’s a long time since it rang like that – when the last prisoner escaped.’
‘You’ve come to search for him?’ asked the old lady.
‘I am the prisoner,’ said Joseph. ‘I knocked out a guard and stole his uniform. Look – if you don’t believe me here’s my camp number burnt into my arm – ZAK 2473. I want you to hide me.’
The number convinced them that he was telling the truth. They knew that if they were found hiding him they would die. But they were brave people and did not hesitate.
Joseph slept in a warm bed that night for the first time for two years.
In the morning the old man went to work the luggage lift as usual. Before going, he arranged a danger signal. If there were any soldiers coming across in the cage, he would whistle three times. And he showed Joseph a hiding place in the woodshed.
While he was away, Joseph showed the old woman the tattered photos of his family. He had taken them out of his wallet so many times to look at them that they were creased and crumpled and finger-marked all over. He spoke about his wife and children, his school, his capture by the Nazis; about the shortage of food, the destruction everywhere, and the continual fear of arrest. Every day had brought news of more families being split up.
The old woman was moved by his story. While he was speaking, she began to think of ways in which she could help him. He looked starved and needed good food. She had a little cheese and oatcakes, a side of bacon hanging in the cellar, and the remains of a tin of real coffee saved from before the war.
Suddenly there was a loud bang on the door. Was it a search party? If so, why had the old man given no warning?
A voice called out in German.
There was no time to escape to the woodshed.
‘Quick – up there!’ The old woman pointed up the chimney. ‘There’s an opening on the right, halfway up.’
Joseph dived into the hearth and hauled himself up over the iron spit. The fire was only smouldering and there was not much smoke. He had not found the opening when the door burst open and two soldiers came in. While they searched the room, he stood very still, his legs astride the chimney. He wanted to cough. He thought his lungs would burst.
Suddenly a head peered up the chimney. It was the old woman. ‘They’ve gone upstairs,’ she said. ‘But don’t come down yet.’
She showed him where the opening was. He crept inside, coughing. He could see the sky through the wide chimney top above him.
He was congratulating himself on his good luck when he heard the soldiers return to the room below. With difficulty he controlled his cough.
‘What about the chimney?’ said a German voice. ‘Plenty of room to hide up there.’
‘Plenty of soot too,’ said the other soldier. ‘Your uniform’s older than mine. What about you going up?’
‘Not likely.’
‘Then we’ll send a couple of bullets up for luck.’
Two ear-splitting explosions. It seemed as if the whole chalet was falling down. Joseph clung on to his perch.
There was a great tumbling about his ears. He clung and clung and clung – till his fingers were torn from their grip, and he fell.
When he came to his senses, he was lying on the floor. The old woman was bending over him washing his face with cold water.
‘It’s all right – they’ve gone,’ she said. ‘The fall of soot saved you. The soldiers ran for it when the soot came down. They were afraid for their uniforms.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t have time to warn you,’ said the old man. ‘The soldiers had hidden themselves in the cage. I didn’t see them till it was too late.’
Joseph spent two whole weeks in the chalet. The old couple treated him like a son, sharing all they had with him. They fed him so well that his thin cheeks filled out and he gained several pounds in weight. They were simple, homely folk, and in their company his mind grew more peaceful than it had been for years. In the brutality of his prison life he had almost forgotten what kindness was.
He passed his time indoors, mostly eating and resting. More than once he was tempted to go outside. The spring sun beamed down all day long from clear skies. It melted the icicles that hung from the roof; it roused the first crocuses from the bare brown patches in the snow. But there was no sense in exposing himself, and he wisely stayed indoors. The nights were freezing, and he was glad of his warm blankets.
On the fifteenth night he left the chalet on the first stage of the long journey home. The moon was in her first quarter, and it was freezing hard. He was wearing the warm woollen clothes of a Polish highlander. The old man went with him as guide for three days till they were clear of the high mountains.
On the afternoon of the second day they reached the edge of the snow line. Little rivers coursed down from under the snow. Wherever they trod, the ground was soggy and their boots squelched. But it was a joy to leave the snow behind and to see the snowdrops and crocuses everywhere. Lower down in the valleys the grass was already green, gay with primroses, violets, and wild daffodils.
In the gorge where the River Sanajec tumbles down between the steep wooded rocks to meet the great rivers of the plains, they said goodbye to each other. The old man took Joseph’s head between his hands, blessed him and wished him good fortune.
4
The Silver Sword
IT TOOK JOSEPH four and a half weeks to walk to Warsaw. He had lived in the city all his life and knew it well. But now, on his return, there was hardly a street he recognized and not an undamaged building anywhere. The place was as bleak and silent as the craters of the moon. Instead of proud homes, he found crumbling walls; instead of streets, tracks of rubble between mountains of bricks. Windows were charred and glassless. Public buildings were burnt-out shells.
In this wilderness people still managed to go on living. Joseph saw them wandering, pale and hungry-eyed, and vanish down paths of their own into the ruins. They had made their homes in cellars or had dug caves in the rubble. A few had even tried to make them look gay. A bomb gash in a cellar wall was draped with bright curtains. In another hole there was a window-box full of purple crocuses. Here and there a tree that had escaped blast damage sprouted with spring leaves.
But the only really lively place was the railway. The Nazis had to keep this clear, whatever the cost. Never had Joseph seen railway lines gleam as these did – eight lines of polished steel along which, day and night, the busy trains poured. Eastwards, with carriages of troops and trucks of ammunition, they carried war to Russia. Westwards they brought back the wounded to Germany, and sometimes rich plunder from the Ukraine.
Joseph spent three days finding the street where he used to live. The school and schoolhouse – his home – had disappeared.
There was a house opposite with a sign marked POLISH WELFARE. He made some inquiries there, but the people were new and could not help him. At another house he had better luck. He knew the woman who lived there – a Mrs Krause, who had had a child at his school some years ago. In a small back room he questioned her eagerly about his family.
‘The Nazis destroyed your school,’ she said.
‘What happened to my wife?’
‘They came for her in January last year, during the night. It was just after Dr Frank called for a million foreign workers to go to Germany. She’s in Germany, probably working on the land. I’m a member of the Polish Council for Protection and we tried to trace her, but without success.’
‘And the children – did they go with her?’ asked Joseph.
Mrs Krause turned away. ‘I don’t know anything about them,’ she said.
Joseph felt that she was hiding unpleasant news. He begged her to speak.
‘I know nothing,’ she said.
‘That’s not true,’ he said. ‘As a member of the Council, you must have found out something.’
At last, with a weary sigh, she told him all she knew. ‘On the night your wife was taken away, someone fired at the van from the
attic of your house. A tyre was punctured and one of the Nazi soldiers was hit in the arm. But they got away with the van all the same. An hour later they sent a truckload of soldiers with explosives. They blew the whole place up. The children have not been seen since.’
Joseph was too dazed to grasp all this at once, and Mrs Krause had to repeat it. She told him of the efforts made to trace them, but it was obvious that she believed them to be dead.
Without a word Joseph got up and went out into the street.
For the rest of the day he wandered among the ruins, too dazed to think. He spent the night in the burnt-out shell of a bus station. In spite of the rain which fell through the roof, he slept.
He spent the next few days searching among the ruins for his children, with a kind of hopeless despair. At night he returned to the home of the Krauses, who fed him and gave him a bed.
One night Mrs Krause said to him, ‘It’s no use your going on like this. Your children are not alive. The house was locked before the soldiers left, and they must have died in the explosion. If you want to go on searching, search for your wife.’
‘Germany’s a large place,’ said Joseph. ‘What hope should I have of finding her?’
‘She might escape, as you did,’ said Mrs Krause. ‘You must have known that something like this might happen. Did you never make any plans? Did you never fix a meeting place?’
Joseph thought for a moment. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact we did. We arranged that, if we were separated, we would try to make for Switzerland. My wife is Swiss, and her parents live there still.’
Mrs Krause took his hands in hers and smiled. ‘There’s your answer, then. Go to Switzerland, and with God’s help you will find her there.’
‘But the children – they may still be here,’ said Joseph.
He spent several more days looking for them.
One afternoon, while he was poking among the rubble of his old home, he found a tiny silver sword. About five inches long, it had a brass hilt engraved with a dragon breathing fire. It was a paper-knife that he had once given to his wife for a birthday present.
While he was cleaning the blade on his jersey, he noticed that he was not alone. A small ragged boy sat watching him keenly. He had fair wispy hair and unnaturally bright eyes. Under one arm he had a wooden box, under the other a bony grey kitten.
For a moment Joseph thought it was his son, Edek. Then he realized that he was too small for Edek.
He walked over and stroked the kitten. ‘What’s his name?’ he asked.
‘He hasn’t got a name. He’s just mine,’ said the boy.
‘What’s your name?’ said Joseph.
The boy pouted and hugged the wooden box under his arm. His eyes were shrewdly summing Joseph up. After a while, ‘Give me that sword,’ he said.
‘But it’s mine,’ said Joseph.
‘You found it on my pitch. This is my place.’
Joseph explained about his house and how this rubble was all that was left of it.
‘I’ll give you food for it,’ said the boy, and he offered Joseph a cheese sandwich.
‘I have plenty,’ said Joseph. He put his hand into his pocket, but it was empty. He looked at the boy’s sandwich and saw it was one that Mrs Krause had given him that morning, only rather grubby now.
‘You little pickpocket!’ he laughed. But before he could grab it back, the boy had swallowed most of it himself and given the rest to the cat, which was now purring contentedly.
After a while Joseph said, ‘I’m looking for my family. Ruth is the eldest – she’d be fifteen now, and tall and fair. Then Edek, he’d be thirteen. Bronia is the youngest – she’d be five.’ He described them briefly, told him what he knew of their fate and asked if the boy had seen them.
The boy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Warsaw is full of lost children,’ he said. ‘They’re dirty and starving and they all look alike.’
His words made him sound indifferent. But Joseph noticed that the boy had listened carefully and seemed to be storing up everything in the back of his mind.
‘I’ll give you this sword on one condition,’ said Joseph. ‘I’m not sure that my children are dead. If ever you see Ruth or Edek or Bronia, you must tell them about our meeting. Tell them I’m going to Switzerland to find their mother. To their grandparents’ home. Tell them to follow as soon as they can.’
The boy grabbed the sword before Joseph had time to change his mind. He popped it into the little wooden box, picked up the cat and ran off.
‘I’ll tell you more about them tomorrow,’ Joseph called after him. ‘Meet you here in the morning – and don’t let me down.’
The boy vanished.
5
The Goods Train
JOSEPH DID NOT expect the boy to keep his appointment with him in the morning. But he was there, sitting on the rubble with his cat and his wooden box, waiting for him.
‘It’s no use your trying to pick my pockets this morning,’ said Joseph, sitting down beside him.
‘You’ve pinned the flaps,’ said the boy. ‘But that doesn’t make any difference.’
Joseph moved away a couple of paces. ‘Keep your hands off,’ he said. ‘Now, listen. I’m starting off for Switzerland tonight. I don’t want to walk all the way, so I’m going to jump a train. Where’s the best place?’
‘You will be caught and shot,’ said the boy. ‘Or you will freeze to death in the trucks. The nights are bitter. Your hair will be white with frost, your fingers will turn to icicles. And when the Nazis find you, you will be stiff as the boards at the bottom of the truck. That is what happens to those who jump trains.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ said Joseph.
‘I have seen it,’ said the boy.
‘Can’t be helped. I must risk it,’ said Joseph. ‘Better than going back to the place I’ve come from.’
‘I’ll take you to the bend where the trains slow down,’ said the boy. He jumped up and began running.
Joseph had a job to keep up with him. But the boy could run and talk and point out the landmarks and stuff food into his mouth and the cat’s, all at the same time.
Joseph tried to find out something about this extraordinary boy. What was his name? Where did he live? Were his parents still alive? But the boy would tell him nothing.
They came to the railway and followed the track past the station to a large bend. Here, beside a train shed, they sat down to watch.
‘All the trains slow down here,’ said the boy. ‘You will find no better place to jump on.’
They saw several trains pass westwards. One of them was a goods train, and it went more slowly than the rest. Would there be a goods train passing that way tonight? Joseph thought he could jump it without danger.
‘Let’s have something to eat,’ said Joseph, and he unpinned the flaps of his pockets. But his hands went straight through and came out into daylight. He looked at the boy watching the trains, still chewing. He looked at the cat, curled and purring in the boy’s lap. He knew where his sandwiches were now.
‘You little devil!’ he cried. ‘Just wait till I catch you.’
But the boy had vanished.
He didn’t see him again till after dark, after he had said goodbye to the Krauses and left their house for the last time. The boy was waiting for him at the bottom of the street.
‘Ssh!’ said the boy. ‘We must go by the back ways – it’s curfew time. If the Nazi patrols see us, they’ll shoot.’
‘What’s all that you’re carrying?’ said Joseph.
He looked closer and saw the boy’s ragged shirt was stuffed with long loaves, like monster cigars.
‘Mother in heaven! Where did you get all that lot from?’
‘I borrowed them,’ said the boy. ‘I know the canteen at the Nazi barracks. There’s plenty in the bakehouse there. Take them – you’ll be hungry.’
‘Ought to see me through to America, that lot,’ said Joseph, as he took them. ‘What about yourself? You’ve some appet
ite, if I remember rightly.’
‘I borrow for everybody,’ said the boy. ‘They always send me. I’m so small I can wriggle under the barbed wire. I run so fast the soldiers can never catch me, and if—’ He broke off suddenly. ‘Lie down. Patrol coming.’
They dropped behind a wall and lay flat till the patrol had passed. Then they hurried by the back ways to the railway. They almost ran into another patrol, and there were shots in the darkness. But the boy knew the ruins better than the patrol, and they got away.
They came to the bend where Joseph intended to jump, and they hid beside an empty warehouse. It was drizzling. The warehouse was littered with broken glass and charred timber. It was open to the sky except at one corner, where a strip of iron roof curled over. Under this they sheltered from the wet. A train clattered by, with a churning of pistons and a great hiss of steam. The long carriages clanked into the darkness, and the red light on the guard’s van faded.
Too fast for me, thought Joseph. I must wait for a goods train.
As they sat there waiting, Joseph said, ‘I have much to thank you for, and I don’t even know your name.’
The boy said nothing, but went on stroking the cat.
The drizzle turned to heavy rain. The drops danced on the roof, which creaked at every gust of wind. ‘Have you no parents?’ said Joseph.
‘I have my grey cat and this box,’ he said.
‘You won’t come with me?’ said Joseph.
The boy ignored the question. He was undoing the wooden box, and he took out the little silver sword. ‘This is the best of my treasures,’ he said. ‘It will bring me luck. And it will bring you luck, because you gave it to me. I don’t tell anybody my name – it is not safe. But because you gave me the sword and I didn’t borrow it, I will tell you.’ He whispered. ‘It is Jan.’
‘There are many Jans in Poland, what’s your surname?’
‘That’s all. Just Jan.’
Joseph did not question him further. ‘Stay here in the dry,’ he said, when it was time to go. But Jan insisted on going with him.
The Silver Sword Page 2