While Still We Live (30 page)

“I want you to leave here. Not to go back to England. I want
you to come to Switzerland with me. That’s where Olszak is sending me to meet one of your countrymen who’s waiting for me in Geneva. Then the people out there will have an idea of what is being done in here, and they can plan to help us fully.” His eyes hadn’t left hers. He was walking slowly towards her.

“Will you come too?”

She was silent, searching for something to say which wouldn’t hurt him, wouldn’t sound banal, wouldn’t embarrass her still more.

He had sensed something of the conflict inside her, and judged it part of her wide-eyed innocence. “Will you?” he repeated.

“I must stay here,” she said in desperation. “Madame Aleksander...”

“Look,” he said, “I’m trying to get past the little glacier wall of yours and tell you that I’m in love with you.”

Still she couldn’t bear to say to him, “But Steve, I don’t love you. Not enough. Not the way I want to feel. I wouldn’t be able to reason with you like this if I were in love with you.” Instead, she clung to the excuse of Madame Aleksander. “I must stay here,” she repeated. “I can’t leave yet.”

“Why?” His clever eyes narrowed. “And don’t say Madame Aleksander again.” His mouth had an angry line to it. “Has Wisniewski something to do with this?”

“Steve!” She was suddenly angry, too, and startled that she could be roused like this. “Steve, don’t be stupid, don’t be a complete—”

And then the door opened. Korytowski’s voice was saying gently, “Here we are, Teresa. See, they are waiting for us.” He urged his sister into the room as if she were a child.

Stevens relaxed his grip on Sheila’s arm. Together they stared at Madame Aleksander. Her white face was so thin, so quiet. The curve of high cheekbones was accentuated, the wide-set blue eyes were ringed with deep shadows. There was a straight line to the pale lips, a droop in the thin shoulders, a feeling of complete exhaustion in the slow movements. Her face, so taut, so smoothly moulded and expressionless, was a death mask of human emotions.

Sheila went towards her. The words, which she had worried over, just wouldn’t come out. Silently, she took Madame Aleksander’s hand. It was cold and thin and lifeless. As she led Madame Aleksander towards the bedroom, she looked at Stevens. He turned quickly away. Now, he was thinking, I’ll never be able to persuade Sheila to leave. He had seen her choice in that last look. Yet, as he accepted the decision, he resented it. If a girl loved a man, nothing would stop her from being with him if she got the chance. Sheila wouldn’t say “yes” unless she was positively sure. That was the reason just as much as Madame Aleksander. But why the hell wasn’t she sure? He stared at Professor Korytowski, who was finishing an interminable sentence.

“Yes,” Russell Stevens said in complete agreement, and hardly noticed the surprised look which passed over Korytowski’s face.

When Sheila returned from the other room, where she had left Madame Aleksander lying motionless on the bed pretending to sleep so that there might be no need to talk, Stevens was gone. Professor Korytowski found her responses to his efforts at conversation as peculiar as Stevens’ had been. She pulled herself guiltily away from her thoughts to listen to his news.

“...several attempts to break through the German circle and
fight their way out,” he was finishing.

“Any good?”

“Only as a diversion. Two nights ago, Wisniewski and five men made their escape through the German lines to coincide with such an attempt. Last night, half a dozen other officers left. So Wisniewski’s group is the first in our movement to start action.” There was quiet satisfaction in his voice.

Sheila’s interest quickened. There was the beginning of a smile, of a light in her eyes. “So, we’ve made a start,” she said. Wisniewski and his men had got through the German lines. She smiled happily. “We’ve made a start,” she repeated. The depression of the last two days unwreathed its cold mists. She began to feel and see clearly again.

But the sight of Korytowski’s sad face and stooping shoulders as he turned towards the door brought her back to the reality of Warsaw, of waiting in a slaughterhouse for the butchers to enter.

“I’m sorry, I...” she began.

“Sorry about what?” Korytowski paused at the door, and looked affectionately at the girl’s worried face.

“Uncle Edward...”

“Yes?”

“Uncle Edward, is it wrong to worry about one’s own emotions, or even to let oneself think of them, when there are so many more important things to worry about?”

He closed the door and came back into the room. He stood facing Sheila and placed his scarred hands on her shoulders so that she had to look at him. “As long as people are human they will always have personal emotions. We each inhabit two worlds: the public world of events, and the private world of
the mind. If we couldn’t smile now, then the Germans would have a total victory. If we can still keep some private emotions which they can’t invade, then it is a defeat to their purpose. There must be some moments of private happiness to help us live through so much misery.”

He moved once more towards the door, and as she still said nothing, he halted and added with one of his warmest smiles, “Because you see so much to make you sad, that doesn’t mean it is your duty to be unhappy. It isn’t heartless to say that, for none of us is ever going to forget those who have been killed or who have suffered. It is only those who forget who are heartless. But I don’t think anyone who has lived through these four weeks is going to forget. Ever.”

Sheila nodded. No one is going to forget, ever, she thought. Every life had been changed by these last four weeks, and these changes would remain throughout each life. For the major changes were not in the loss of possessions or in health; the major changes were in the mind. When men have suffered, they see more clearly and less arrogantly what they want from life.

“Does that answer your question, Sheila?”

“Yes.”

The worried look left Korytowski’s face. “I didn’t choose my words for your benefit, Sheila. I believe them, myself. I am glad if they helped. For I can never thank you enough for what you have done.” He glanced towards the bedroom and then the door shut quietly behind him. His slow steps diminished.

Now she was glad she had persisted in staying. His last words filled her with a strange happiness. And then she wondered why Uncle Edward had never married. What a fool some woman was, not to have fallen in love with him. And then she thought
of Andrew. And she thought of herself, and knew she was just such a fool.

She moved quietly to the bedroom door. Madame Aleksander’s pretence had become a reality. In sleep, the lines of her face had softened, and its peace had returned.

Sheila turned back to the living-room. The typewriter would be too noisy. Anyway, she had practised enough on it. She picked up Baedeker’s
Southern Germany,
and found section 46:
Munich and Environs
.

* * *

Sheila listened to the footsteps. Not Steve. Not Schlott. Not Bill. Not Casimir. Not even Uncle Edward coming back to tell her something he might have forgotten. She rose, remembering to stuff the Baedeker into the depths of Madame Knast’s knitting wools in her workbasket, and hurried to the door. The man was already in the hall. In its darkness, she made a guess that this was some kind of workman. Something in his voice touched her memory, but the question he asked about the owner of the apartment was matter-of-fact and harmless.

“Madame Knast?” she answered. “No, I’m afraid. I don’t know where she is. We think something must have happened to her.”

“Who’s responsible, then?”

“Mr. Stevens, I suppose. But he isn’t here at the moment. He rented the two front rooms.”

“Have to see what repairs are needed.”

“Oh.” How very prompt, Sheila thought. Did that mean some Germans were going to be billeted here? “You’d better make your inspection, then,” she said worriedly.

“You live here?”

“At present I am a—refugee. There are others, too. One is sleeping in the front bedroom. Please go very quietly, there. She is ill.”

Sheila re-entered the living-room, still worried. If Germans took this apartment block, what was going to happen to the people that lived here? (Later, she would have smiled at her naïveté. What happened to the dispossessed was no concern of the Germans.) And then she was aware that the workman had followed her. He was behind her, closing the door. She turned in surprise. The surprise became fear. God, she was saying to herself, dear God. Her legs couldn’t move. All she could do was to stand there, her heart thumping so heavily that the man surely must have heard it, her lips dry, her throat unable to swallow. God, she said again in her heart, dear God help me. For the test had come. The man moved forward, smiling and now unlimping. For all his workman’s clothes and his younger appearance, the man was Henryk.

“Surprised?” he asked mockingly in German.

She put a finger to her lips and pointed to the bedroom door. With a quick easy stride, he crossed over to the door, looked inside briefly, and nodded. “Asleep,” he said.

“She has been restless. Quiet. She may wake.” Sheila answered him in German.

“Who is she?”

“Madame Aleksander.”

“Ah, your late hostess.” He looked round the room. “You’ve been luckier than some of us. This isn’t too bad. How do you feel, now? Better?”

“I—I don’t like this waiting.”

“It will soon be over. The first of October will see the
occupation begin. The sixth is the date set for the parade before the Führer. The Poles have to clear away the litter from the main avenues before then. Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

Sheila nodded. Gradually, she was becoming more calm. The first panic had passed without disaster. She could even look at the man with interest. It was incredible how he was still Henryk, and yet not Henryk.

“What are you staring at?” he asked, and sat on the edge of the table.

“You,” Sheila said frankly. “You are so much younger than I thought.”

That didn’t displease him. “You look better yourself. You were almost a corpse that last night on Czacki Street.”

“But they didn’t get us,” Sheila said slowly. Danger zone, she thought.

“They got Lisa.”

“Lisa?” She widened her eyes. She remembered in time that Lisa was Elzbieta’s true name.

“Yes. Shot. She wasn’t so lucky as you. We’ll get the men who did it, though. I have them listed.”

Sheila said nothing. She hoped he would think she was being sad about Elzb—Lisa.

“How did you manage it?” the quick voice asked.

“Lisa had been unconscious.” Danger, danger zone, she thought.

The man nodded.

“But of course you knew that, for I saw you in the shadows,” Sheila said. She watched Henryk’s expression with some satisfaction. “I was afraid that the policemen would see you too. It was a bad moment for me.”

Henryk only smiled approvingly. He was waiting for the rest of her story.

“Inside the police building, Lisa recovered. She suddenly broke away and tried to escape. She ran down the hall, and just then a bomb fell near by. The man who held me tried to stop Lisa as she passed us. The lights were dimmed. I tugged myself free just as he grabbed Lisa, and sidestepped into a doorway. It was an empty room. I saw another doorway. It took me into a small passage. Another doorway. And then the street. It was unlighted, but I rushed on. I heard yells from the passageway I had just left. And round the corner was a fire which the bomb had started, and I lost myself among the fire fighters and air wardens and people who had come to help. In the Main Street, I found a droshki. I took it to the French Embassy. Then I walked here. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be traced to the American’s flat. And I thought the police wouldn’t look for me in an American’s rooms.”

“What story did you tell him?”

“That I was in danger, from some German spies. That no one must know I was here.”

“And he believed that?”

“I decided him by fainting. And I was ill. He noticed that. I was in bed for nearly three weeks, and only the Aleksanders knew I was here. Barbara Aleksander came to nurse me. I think the Aleksanders persuaded him my story could be true. They were always talking of German spies.”

“Why didn’t you go to Nalewki instead of here? Why didn’t you let us know where you were?”

Nalewki. Nalewki. The Jewish quarter. Was that where Henryk and his friends had been in hiding? She looked squarely
at the man. He was asking too many questions. He had no right to do this, she suddenly realised: she was under Hofmeyer’s orders, not under Henryk’s. She said coldly, “I didn’t go to Nalewki for fear I had been allowed to escape so that I could be followed. And I didn’t let you know, because I was ill. I didn’t even know if you had been arrested or not. When I was well enough, I got a message through to Hofmeyer. That was all I needed to do.”

The man nodded slowly, as if he accepted that explanation.

Sheila drew a deep breath. Olszak had been right. He had said that once you start defending your life and your friends, you learned how to use your wits. He had said ideas came quickly, surprisingly. He had been right. Her confidence grew. She was actually smiling at the man. It wasn’t one of her friendliest smiles, but it was sufficiently assured.

“When did you see Hofmeyer?” he asked very casually.

What was this man trying to do, anyway? Had he been given one story by Hofmeyer, and now wanted to compare her version?

“He will tell you,” she said, with a show of temper. “I’m under
his
orders. And just what are you doing here today, anyway? Does Hofmeyer know?”

“What’s Hofmeyer to you?” he asked, his eyes veiled.

“What’s that to you?”

“Temper, temper.” He shook his head mockingly, but he was now on the defensive. He stopped his questions. He said, “Hofmeyer may not always be so powerful as you think, Anna.”

Sheila thought over that. She didn’t like it, just as she didn’t like the man’s way of watching her. She drew her ankles out of
sight, and covered her legs carelessly with her skirt.