While Still We Live (45 page)

The captain and his friend came over to her, while the men sat on the floor, smoked the last of the cigarettes, and waited with eyes which saw beyond the room into their own personal tragedies. It was as if they strengthened themselves by remembering the evil that had been done to them and their land.

The captain said, “Miss Matthews, you are our worst problem. What are we to do with you?”

“I can go back to Warsaw and make up an elaborate story
of an escape from you, as you once suggested,” Sheila said unhappily. Back to Warsaw and Dittmar, and Captain Streit, and the weaving of a further net in which she herself would at last be caught. There was no escaping from Captain Streit: she wasn’t clever enough.

The two men exchanged glances. It’s strange how every nation thinks that foreigners are mad, Sheila thought. She said “I must reach Madame Aleksander and the head of my department. The last he heard of me was that I was summoned to Gestapo headquarters to identify a body. He will be rather worried.” And then she ought to warn Olszak too to tell him that Dittmar had been doing too much thinking.

The white-haired man smiled, with his lips, at her choice of phrase. His eyes never smiled, it seemed.

“I will let him know. And Madame Aleksander will be taken from the flat in Warsaw, and she can meet you and the boy. It will be arranged. But I, for one, would not advise you to go near Warsaw.”

Sheila was watching the grey eyes, flecked with brown: that was one of the reasons why they looked like granite. “If it can’t be arranged...?” she asked slowly.

“We can try. We have a better chance than you have. You and the boy will travel with one of the men to the camp, and wait there. Captain Wisniewski will take good care of you until we hear from Warsaw what you are to do.”

“Is he there?” Sheila asked quickly, and then was angry with herself. But the white-haired man didn’t seem to notice her embarrassment.

Suddenly the captain said to Sheila, breaking his worried silence, “Were you quite sure that the man was a spy? You
didn’t misinterpret his expression?”

“I am sure. He was in sympathy with me, because he thought I was a German. He left as quickly as he could so that the Germans would be here before dawn. I was to be shot then. He knew that.”

“Yes, he was in great haste. At the time, haste seemed natural if the village were to be raided before the dawn came. But now, with your interpretation, this haste seems to point to the man’s guilt. I was wrong about Korytów; you were right. You may be right about the man Galinski. We shall not know, until he returns either with ammunition or with German soldiers.”

The white-haired man said, “You have decided to leave here, anyway. It is better to leave now than to wait for confirmation of Pani Matthews’ suspicions. If he isn’t a spy, then the others can be directed to Wisniewski’s camp when they return here. If he is a spy, you cannot save Dutka, or your man who went with Galinski. Perhaps you cannot even save the scout whom Thaddeus sent to watch their progress. Not unless Thaddeus reaches them before Galinski leads Dutka and your man into a German trap.” At the mention of Thaddeus’ name, Sheila looked round the crowded room. Now she realised she hadn’t seen him since Jan and Stefan and the other survivors from Korytów had arrived. She felt that Thaddeus’ action was a gesture of atonement: he would blame himself for Korytów. The captain might have believed her, if Thaddeus hadn’t been so much against her.

The captain was saying, “The scout should already be in position. His short cut takes little more than half the time to reach the road.”

“Are you sure Dutka won’t take his party by a short cut, too?”

“He always sticks to the path at night. He isn’t a woodsman.”

“Galinski might persuade him to risk a short cut. If he is a German, he will search for the quickest way.”

“Yes, there’s that to worry about too. In that case, our scout would be useless and Thaddeus has gone in vain.”

“I advise leaving at once, Captain Reymont. Your men are ready.”

The captain nodded, looked at his watch again, gave his last orders. The outposts stationed in the woods were given their warning to move. Their answering bird call proved that they had heard it and were obeying. As the men in the forester’s house started to move out of the door, Sheila wakened Stefan. And then she remembered that she, too, had preparations for leaving to complete. She found her handbag, which had been placed on top of the oven, near the worn prayer-book. All the permits and identification papers would have to be destroyed. Anna Braun was dying. There was unbelievable pleasure in feeling the thick sheets of paper tear between her fingers. The British passport was the most difficult.

“If I may...” the white-haired man said gently, and held out his hand. He must have been watching her all this time. He ripped the resisting cover of the passport in two. “Would you like me to dispose of these where the Germans might think they were very clever in finding them? That would make them so proud of themselves.”

“Of course. I am supposed to be dead.” She laughed happily.

“Or worse than dead. Naturally, the barbaric Poles would either have murdered and buried you, or carried you away for further torture. Naturally, the same barbaric Poles would try to hide the evidence of your capture. But the Germans, being a
superior race, cannot be misled by such petty tricks.”

“May I keep my bag, at least? Empty except for the comb and things like that?”

“Better throw everything away. If they think you left with a handbag safely under your arm, they won’t think so much of the destroyed papers which they will find.”

She gave him the bag slowly. Now I’m neither Anna Braun nor Sheila Matthews, she thought, as she watched the strong fingers rip the bag’s lining and break its clasp.

“Take off your jacket, too,” the quiet voice was saying. “The material is much too like Warsaw for a trip through the fields. The boy will give you his. Later, at a village, you can get appropriate clothes, and burn your blouse and skirt.”

He watched her transformation with approval. He picked up the jacket and the underslip which she had stuffed into its pocket. “When these are discovered, you will be in the headlines of all the Nazi papers.”

Sheila smiled grimly. “Yes. She died for her Führer.” The stranger laughed suddenly, so unexpectedly that the captain looked up in surprise and the few men remaining in the room smiled in sympathy. Sheila looked at the stranger’s transformed face. For a moment, she thought of the change in all these men: this was how this man should look, this was how all men should look. Not aged and sad and grim, but laughing honestly. His teeth were white and even. She thought of Russell Stevens. He had wanted her to go, to leave for a world where men could laugh every day. She had chosen to stay, and in choosing had chosen strain and sadness. Yet if she were now asked whether she regretted her choice, she would say, “No. Not now. This afternoon, lying on that bed, waiting to be shot—yes. But
now—no.” For now, watching the strength as well as the sadness in these men’s faces, she felt herself a part of something bigger than ever an individual could be by himself.

Jan had brought Stefan over to them. “We travel together,” Jan said to Sheila, and then grinned good-naturedly. “Did you hear I’m to get a medal because I didn’t shoot you? I’m the hero who saved the camp.”

“How does that work out?” one of the men called over from the door. He was waiting for his time to leave.

“Well, if I had shot her then she wouldn’t have been here to see that fine recruit that Dutka brought in for you, would she?”

The man at the door said, “If they give you a medal, it will be a nursemaid’s one.” He grinned at Sheila and Stefan.

“I’ll get them to the Reapers quicker than any of you grown men can travel.”

“What do you bet on it? My knife to your dagger, eh?” The man’s time had come. He slipped through the opened door, and gave a last wave of his hand to the room.

“Jan,
are
you to get a medal?” Stefan asked, his excitement wakening him fully.

Jan smiled. “When we drive the Germans out of our land, we’ll all get medals. I’ll carve my own out of Himmler’s jawbone, and wear it on my hat.”

* * *

The room was empty. Only the captain and Jan and Stefan and Sheila remained. The white-haired stranger had gone, as silently as he had come. She hadn’t even seen him leave.

The captain smothered the candle with his hand. “Better go now,” he said. “The other men have gone ahead to clear any danger out of your path.” He was looking at her, but
she couldn’t see his face in the room’s darkness. Through the opened door came a short path of faint moonlight. The shrewd night wind cut into the room’s thick warmth.

“And you?” she asked.

“I shall wait for Thaddeus and any other who gets back here. They must be told where to go.”

If there is any other, Sheila thought. If there is any Thaddeus.

“
Dowidzenia!
” Captain Reymont said quietly. Jan had already moved over the path of moonlight into the silvered grass.

“Goodbye,” she echoed, and gave the dark silhouette her hand. “Good luck!” He would need it.

“Good luck!” Stefan repeated.

Sheila followed Jan and Stefan round the edge of the clearing. The trees, now a wall of black bronze and white silver, shut out the forester’s house, and the man waiting in its darkness. If Thaddeus or the scout returned first he would have a chance. If the Germans got here before them, there was none.

The sky with its fitful clouds and veiled moon was blotted out. Overhead were only the rustling, whispering leaves. The forest seemed alive. Sheila’s alertness increased. Inside four walls it had been possible to relax a little, to feel a supposed security. But here, in the nakedness of the night, every shadow and every whisper might suddenly become an enemy.

Jan had said, “Follow me. Do as I do. The boy walks last.”

In this way, like the men who had gone ahead of them, they crept through the woods. Through Polish land they crept, hunted through its forests and fields as if they, and not those who hunted them, had been its thieves.

When the woods ended, open land as flat and broad as a sea
stretched in front of them. Its islands were solitary trees, a line of hazel bushes, a group of houses clustered together in solid blackness. Above them was limitless night: in this countryside the horizon was not where the earth rose in rugged folds to touch the sky, but where the sky reached down to join the straight line of farthest fields.

“We’ll follow the edge of the wood for a while, and then cut south,” Jan said. He was smiling. He was glad to see the plains again. The open fields and the wide sky were his country. He felt safer there.

They must have been more than a mile from the wood on the journey south, when the first distant shots echoed across the fields.

Jan stopped. He cursed softly. He stood, looking back at the wood, as if he were about to run towards there again. Sheila found she had taken hold of his sleeve. It was as if she were saying, “Don’t leave us. We are lost without you.”

He looked down at the girl’s anxious face. He cursed softly again, and turned away from the direction of the shots. They were closer together now, dull, distant, but unmistakable. Thaddeus and the captain, instead of escaping, must be shooting it out with the Nazis. The Germans must have come quickly: perhaps they had been waiting on the outskirts of the wood near Dutka’s village for “Galinski’s” return. For now the meaning of the stationing of the German patrol in the village just after “Galinski” had arrived there became clear. The Germans were moving against guerrilla bands. This was the method they had devised: first a spy was sent to a village near any suspicious locality; then some troops, ostensibly as a road patrol. No wonder “Galinski” had not been discovered
by the Germans when they searched the village. No wonder he and Dutka had been allowed to reach the wood without any trouble. And now Thaddeus and the captain were shooting it out, perhaps to give the rest of them time to scatter to safety.

Jan urged them on madly. They raced towards a group of darkened houses. Sheila, breathless, had no time to ask why this sudden speed should be so necessary. The Germans hadn’t followed them. Thanks to the captain and Thaddeus, the Germans were well occupied round the wood. But as they waited in the shadow of a long, low cottage and Jan rapped gently at a shuttered window, she began to guess the reason of Jan’s urgency.

“We are still too near the forest,” she whispered. “Should we stop here?”

Jan said, “You need proper clothes.” And that was all. But even before the sleep-dulled faces welcomed them into the long dark corridor which formed the hall, even before she and Stefan were being given peasant clothes and a bowl of thin soup, even before Jan disappeared as they swallowed the warm liquid and sat round the wooden kitchen table, she knew that her guess was right. Jan had done what he had wanted to do as soon as he had heard the shots. Jan had gone back to the wood.

“He will be here before dawn. He promised,” the peasant’s wife assured her and offered her some more soup. Sheila refused politely. Heaven only knew if she and Stefan were gobbling up the family’s ration for a week. She kicked Stefan adroitly on the shin as he seemed about to accept a second helping. He refused suddenly, and would not be persuaded again. The two little girls, flaxen-haired and wide-eyed with excitement, stood with their bare feet showing under their long white shifts,
and stared. An older girl helped her mother serve the food. There was no sign of the woman’s husband. Sheila watched the broad-faced, broad-hipped woman moving so silently about the kitchen in her shapeless plaid nightgown. How often, in the last few weeks, had she taken strangers into her house and shared its warmth and food with them? Her placid face gave no answer.

At last the soup bowls were emptied to the last shred of cabbage.

“You and the boy can share a mattress in front of the stove,” the woman said. “It’s warmer here than in the bedroom next door. He is your brother?”

Sheila nodded. She was too tired for explanations.