While Still We Live (55 page)

They covered the long journey in silence. The pace was too quick for any talking. The time was too late for explanations. Each hut, as they passed it, was empty. Ahead of them, they heard the faint birdcall once more. Only Adam’s firm grasp gave Sheila comfort. The long journey seemed short and easy. With him, anything would be easy.

They were near the Lodge now. Already they could hear men’s voices, words of command, directions.

Wisniewski halted suddenly, and pulled Sheila round to face him. The grim look on his face softened. He was looking at her with the old smile, half-mocking, half-serious.

“This may be a false alarm,” he said quietly. He was holding her shoulders so that she was forced to look up at him. “But we can take no chances. If it isn’t, then you stay, with the people in the camp, leave as they leave.”

“And you?”

“I’ll follow you later. Some of us must stay round the forest’s
edge. If the Germans come, we’ll retreat into its depths. If they follow us beyond Old Single, then Jadwiga’s story hasn’t worked, and we’ll have to do some shooting. By that time the camp will have dispersed. Each man knows where to go. You travel with Sierakowski.” He touched her hair. “Sheila, you will obey me?”

She nodded. Their arms were round each other. With her last, almost despairing kiss, she told him what he had left unasked. He kissed her again, suddenly, this time gently. Then they were walking quickly towards the camp.

Sheila saw the men, in numbers which she hadn’t even guessed, standing silently among the trees. They were armed and waiting. A look of relief came to the watchful eyes as they saw the Chief. “He’s here,” someone called. There was the beginning of a shout which Wisniewski silenced. Sheila, standing against a tree, watched him move towards the Lodge. He had jumped up on a table pulled out at its door. She heard his voice, crisp, cool. She watched the faces around her, straining eagerly for his words. They knew the plan which had been prepared for this day, he told them. Each group of men had its orders, each man knew what he was to do. To Sheila, standing so watchfully, came the revelation of still another Adam. Sierakowski and the other officers beside him seemed pale cold figures. Wisniewski had control of these men. He spoke well because he spoke briefly, simply, honestly. He had their respect and their loyalty, not because of the form of his words, but because of the sincerity which lay behind them. Even at the end of his short speech, when his voice said clearly and slowly, “As for the event, which may force us to leave this camp—I take full responsibility. But now, my first duty is to see
that we all get out of this mess. After that, when you are either in your new quarters or safely back here, you can appoint a new commander.”

Sheila missed a breath; and then relaxed as the men broke their silence with a derisive shout. “Pox to that,” a man beside her yelled. She could have hugged him in her relief.

Wisniewski said no more. He stood looking at the men for a moment, gave them a quick salute, and then leapt, down from the table. The priest was speaking now. The men knelt. Under the arches of bared boughs, under the cold blue sky, they knelt; their voices were like the voice of the wind through the trees, surging, unfathomable, free.

Now the men formed neatly, soldierwise, into prearranged groups, and the officers took their places with the men. And then the groups took their various directions into the forest. Adam had gone. Only the men who had been left to clear the camp remained. Sierakowski gave them their orders, standing beside the table outside the Lodge. There was a feeling of life and bustle, of great haste and urgency. Faces and voices were excited; movements were quick. But to Sheila the camp was already deserted.

She went towards the hospital hut. She heard Antoni’s voice saying, “Of all the damned nuisances...” as he packed a wooden case with his medical supplies in front of the door. There was Marian, giving instructions to a man fashioning a rough stretcher.

“Two will have to be carried all the way. Your men know what to do?”

“That’s why we’re here,” the man said abruptly, and silenced even Marian. Inside the hut, Franziska was packing the last
things. “Don’t worry,” she was saying to her patients. “We’ll get you out of the forest at night. You’ll stay hidden in one of the villages till you are well enough to join us again.” She glanced at Sheila and said, “Well, here’s a fine how d’you do! We’ve all to begin over again.” She was almost weeping with anger.

“What can I do?” Sheila asked.

“Help get the stuff over to the pits. We are hiding it there in case we have to move.”

Sheila seized a bark-covered bundle. “Where are the pits?”

“Follow the crowd,” Franziska said.

Antoni pointed out the way to her. “Over there through the trees. That’s our cache. Dog’s blood, isn’t this a damned nuisance? How the hell did it happen anyway? Is it true Jan Pietka is dead?”

Sheila nodded. Marian quieted her husband’s language by saying, “Well, the Germans may not come. We may not have to leave this camp.”

“Then we’ll have everything to take out of those holes in the ground again. I say it’s a damned nuisance, and that’s what it damned well is.”

Marian had no reply. It wasn’t often that Antoni left her with none. She looked suddenly at Sheila. “Here, I’ll give you a hand with that,” she said, and lifted one end of the bundle. But she had the sense and the kindness to keep silent as they carried the heavy load to the pit.

It was more of an underground cave than a pit. It had props to keep the roof from sagging, and the floor had been covered with boards to try to give it some dryness. Sheila and Marian watched their bundle stowed away with the few straw mattresses and furs and blankets.

“The hens are what I’m worried about,” Marian said. “I won’t have them killed until we get the signal to move out.”

“What about the goats and the horses?”

“The last of the rearguard will use the horses. It may give them a chance.” She stopped as she saw Sheila’s face. “Don’t worry. He’s got nine lives. He’s only used up five of them so far.” She took the girl’s arm. “Did you hear the men when he said he would resign the command? That’s why they are for him. He’s always first in and last out. He never asks one of us to do what he can’t do himself. Come on, now. We’ll give Franziska a hand with parcelling up the wounded. They’ll have to be taken down near the edge of the forest right away. Can’t leave them to the last moment. Franziska’s going with them. Sort of funny, she’s leaving the way she came in. Didn’t she ever tell you?” And when Sheila didn’t answer, Marian plunged into the epic of Franziska: how she, as a nurse, had driven a horse and cart filled with wounded just one step ahead of the Germans for over a hundred miles. At the end of the war she had reached this district. By that time, only five men out of eleven were alive. “Machine-gunning, chiefly. Only those who could walk managed to get out of the cart in time to dodge. The villagers hid them, but after the war the enemy began searching the villages. So the villagers carried the five men here. Franziska came with them. Four of them are out in the forest now. The fifth one is that boy whose arm we had to amputate. That’s why Franziska’s worried about him. He’s been her special property, somehow.”

As they reached the hospital door, Marian was congratulating herself on her ingenuity. She had talked without letting her tongue trip her up again.
It may give them a chance
. How
could she ever have said such a thing? Good job Antoni hadn’t heard her.

Antoni’s temper had recovered. His round face creased in a wide grin. “Well, this will be a good dress rehearsal, anyway,” he said to them as he finished packing the box. He added, “Sheila, they’ve been asking for you. Over at the Lodge.”

He stood with Marian and watched the fair-haired girl turn silently and retrace her steps towards the Lodge.

“Now what did you say to her? Only ten minutes ago her eyes were shining and she carried her head bravely. Look at her now: she’s back to her worrying again.” Antoni’s voice was so sharp that Marian stared at him.

“Why, nothing at all,” she answered indignantly. She looked at the men carrying the camp equipment into the forest. “It’s going to be miserable sitting round here waiting, without warm food or bedding, until we get the signal to move.
If
we get it.”

Antoni let her change the subject. “You’re getting soft again,” he said teasingly. “All the luxuries we’ve been having have softened you.”

She looked down at her bare legs and broken shoes, at her darned skirt and her reddened hands. She drew the coarse shawl more closely round her shoulders. She smiled, and said, “Do you ever think back to our flat in Warsaw, Antoni? I wonder how the new lace curtains are—and that new tiled stove we got last spring—and that pretty rug you bought me for the bedroom in July? Funny: we took ten years before we got all the things we wanted for our house. I had just got all the colours right, and the little extra tables, and you’d got the pictures you wanted and that new bookcase. And then the Germans came. And there’s a German doctor working in your office, with all
the equipment we bought before we could buy my rose-covered chairs. And his family is sitting on the chairs now, and eating off our good mahogany table, and walking over my polished floors. His wife has my linen cupboard, and all the rows of sheets and pillowcases that I embroidered myself, every stitch of them. He’s got your X-ray apparatus and your instruments and all your notes on those special treatments you were giving your diabetics.” She paused. “Well that’s the way it goes.”

Antoni took her roughened hand. “Do you ever wish you hadn’t come here with me when Wisniewski asked me?”

“Antoni! The idea!” And then she laughed. “Do you think I’d let you out of my sight with all these pretty girls around?”

Antoni curved his arm round the thickening waist and gave it a light squeeze. “That’s my Marian,” he said. “You’re the best and the prettiest girl in Poland. And that means in the world.”

“Antoni!” She gave him a rough quick embrace and pushed him away. The woman of forty laughed like a girl. “Just hope they remember to water the window plants,” she added. Antoni stared at her. She was in Warsaw again.

“You know what I wish, Antoni? I wish our home had been utterly destroyed by the bombs. There I was, patting myself on the back because we didn’t even have as much dust and splintered glass as our friends. Probably that’s the punishment I get for being so selfish—knowing that a German family owns it now.”

Antoni said, “Better see that each man knows what food to take with him. Look after the kitchen. I’ll finish this job here. Franziska has been wrapping up the wounded. They’re practically ready to go.”

“All right, my dear.” Marian moved off towards the kitchen. She halted and looked back for a moment. “Antoni, I’m going
to get a haircut like Sheila’s.”

“No!” said Antoni. “You’ll do nothing of the kind.”

“It’s handier. And Sheila looks so pretty now, like a boy with long curls.”

“No,” Antoni repeated firmly. He started rolling up a mattress, covering it with a rug of rabbit skins.

Marian shrugged her shoulders, but there was a smile on her lips. She was humming to herself, a gay little polka tune, as she passed round the back of the Lodge to the place where the kitchen fires had been grouped. She looked through a window as she passed the Lodge. She had a glimpse of a thin-faced little man sitting on the edge of the table. She heard Sheila’s voice. There was something despairing in its tone.

Marian’s song stopped. Her step slowed.

At the “kitchen”—three small, scattered pits, with large flat roofs, a thick fallen trunk smoothed off as a table—she found Zygmunt and another man in charge. Near them, a strange man and boy—their clothes still showing the signs of much travel—were eating some of the remains of last night’s supper and talking to Sierakowski between mouthfuls. They must be the newcomers who had arrived just before dawn along with that thin-faced little man. They looked half dead. Probably they had been pulled out of their sleep to come and eat while there was still time. A small, dishevelled grey dog was busily gnawing meat off a bone. He paused when Marian came up to the group, and held the bone firmly between his paws, his head cocked to the side, his ears and eyes alert.

Marian laughed. “What’s this?” she asked half contemptuously.

The boy said defensively, “He needs a bath. He looks fine when he’s white. Only, he’s been travelling. As soon as I give
him a bath, he’ll look fine.”

“What next?” Marian said. “Children and dogs. What next?” The stranger smiled, and the hard line of his jaw and gaunt cheeks softened. He had the strong body, the quiet large-boned face of a countryman. But his voice was not the voice of a peasant. He was saying, “We’ve more travelling to do, I hear. I shouldn’t bathe him just yet, Casimir.”

“I want him clean before Sheila sees him,” said the boy. “She liked to see him clean. She was
always
telling me to go out and wash him.”

Marian said, “You aren’t
that
Casimir, are you?... Why, I know all about you! And this is
that
dog? Where’s Madame Aleksander, then?”

The man answered. “In a village called Dwór just northeast of here. She had to rest. She’ll be brought along here in a day or two.” He paused. “At least, she was to have been brought here in a day or two. She’s a nurse.”

“Good. We shall need extra help, I expect.” Marian still couldn’t place the man. He wasn’t an Aleksander, and yet he seemed to know them all right. There was that touch in his voice. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Jan Reska. I used to live at Korytów.” There was a blankness about the words which said “And don’t ask any more questions.”

Sierakowski said, “After you’ve eaten, you can help to get this kitchen eliminated. The thing to remember is not to destroy. Just remove things and hide them for future use.”

“I’ll show them,” said Marian. “I’m going to see no food gets wasted.”

“Good.” Colonel Sierakowski moved away.

Marian said quickly, “If you could, Colonel Sierakowski,
would you look in at the Lodge?”