While Still We Live

Barbara said, “You know, you are looking better. I believe seeing people does you good. Perhaps you ought to get up soon, after all.”

  Sheila nodded happily. It was pleasant to share things, even air raids, with people.

  11

  THE EIGHTEENTH DAY

  Next day, when the sun was at its warmest, Barbara came for her hour’s visit to the apartment in Frascati Gardens and Sheila was allowed to have her clothes. Apart from a treacherous weakness in her legs, so that the first steps made her totter like a baby learning to walk, she managed to pretend she felt very well indeed. When she came into the strange living-room, she was telling Barbara cheerfully that all she needed was to move about and make her legs strong again.

  “Not too quickly, though,” Barbara admonished in such an unconscious imitation of her mother’s voice that Stevens, trying to shave off a thick growth of beard with a half-cupful of cold water, turned to give Sheila a grin.

  “What are you two laughing about?” Barbara asked tolerantly, and began transforming Stevens’ bed back into a couch again. Sheila only smiled. She walked determinedly, if slowly, towards the window. It was funny to see how like Madame Aleksander Barbara really was. Sheila wondered what traits she had inherited from her own mother and father. Or didn’t you inherit them if you had never lived with them? Uncle Matthews would tell her, some day, now that she knew enough to be able to question him intelligently. She felt suddenly so happy that she was ashamed. But all the worry and insecurity and pain of the last weeks were well worth-while, after all: some day, she could question intelligently. If she lived, she added; and looked down on the trees in the street.

  “It seems so untouched,” she said in surprise. “The parks are still beautiful.”

  “This district is the luckiest so far,” Stevens said briefly. He thought of the long lines of trenches which she couldn’t see from this window, trenches which yesterday had begun to be filled with dead bodies. The cemeteries could hold no more. He dried his face carefully, and turned on the radio.

  A man’s strong, encouraging voice filled the room. “The Mayor,” Stevens said. “You’d never guess he’s speaking from the ruins of his office, would you? Still works there.” He switched the knob around for a foreign station, and found a German one. Always German, he thought angrily: either German or jammed by Germans.

  “Oh, not that,” Sheila said, “not so much drama. Don’t they love to threaten? And if they don’t threaten, they gloat.”

  Stevens silenced her with, a hand. He held it there, suspended in the air, his head bent to one side, his eyes narrowing. He turned strangely, unbelievingly, to the two girls who weren’t even bothering to listen. Barbara was telling Sheila that Mr. Olszak said it would be perfectly all right if Sheila were to come and help Barbara with the children, once Sheila was strong enough. Suddenly, they noticed the American’s face. He was still listening.

  “Another ultimatum?” Barbara said scornfully.

  Stevens shook his head. He could hardly speak. Their curiosity turned chill.

  “The God-damned liars,” he was saying. “It can’t be true. It isn’t true. The—!” He seized his jacket as he moved quickly to the door. “Have to see if I can broadcast to America,” he said. “That was, a German report that the Russians entered Eastern Poland yesterday. Can’t be true.”

  He was out of the room before either of them could speak.

  “They’ve come to help,” Sheila was saying. “Perhaps it’s help.”

  They listened to the German announcer’s triumphant voice. Barbara shook her head slowly, and sat down on the nearest chair. This news had managed to do what the bombs and shells had failed to accomplish. The first tears since she had said goodbye to Jan Reska were streaming over her cheeks. She just sat there, crying quietly, gazing at the blue sky outside, as if all action and courage had been sapped from her veins.

  Sheila stared down at the street. Well, that was another prayer that hadn’t been answered: she had hoped so much, to the point of believing that it would come true, that help would come from the east. Perhaps this new invasion really meant only a defence of Russia before the Germans got too far to the east. And yet the German announcement was using the tone of victory. Even the element of surprise had made it more victorious. Yesterday, no one had known, no one had guessed what had taken place. Today, the Germans were the first to announce it. That doubled the weight of the blow. It made you feel twice as helpless. And helplessness could become hopelessness.

  “What will Warsaw do?” she asked dully.

  “Do?” echoed Barbara, still unseeing. And then a fury seized her. “We’ll fight on. We’ll never stop fighting until we have Poland again. Not even if it takes twenty, thirty, forty years. We’ll fight on.” Her voice rose. Her face had paled, her neck flushed red. Her blue eyes were as hard and brilliant as granite caught in sunlight. Sheila switched off the radio and let her talk: it was the best thing for Barbara. Her courage was back, all the stronger because of her anger. At last she paused, and the two girls stared at each other. Only the loud ticking of a cheap alarm clock broke the silence.

  “You are so quiet Sheila,” Barbara said at last. “Don’t you feel anything?”

  “Feel?” Sheila walked slowly over to the couch. In the same low voice, she clipped out the words, “Damn and blast all politics to hell.”

  Barbara was gathering up her coat and basket. “I must go back to the children, to games of let’s pretend, where the bad men gets shot, and the good man lives, and all are happy ever after. I’ll come to see you tomorrow. Take care. You’ll soon be able to come and help with the children.” Her voice was normal, as if she had forgotten the last quarter of an hour. And then she began to laugh, a hysterical bitter laugh.

  “Eugenia,” she explained, “Brother Stanislaw’s wife... You never met her. But you’ve heard Aunt Marta on the subject... In the first week of the war she was in Warsaw, and then she found enough petrol—that kind of person always does: she approves of rationing except for herself—and she set out for the Aleksander house in Polesie, with her maid and trunks and jewels and best furs... She hadn’t enough room in the car for little Teresa or Stefan, although Stanislaw made her offer to take them with her. She almost embraced mother in relief when we said we preferred to have the children nearer Warsaw. We heard last week that she had a perfectly frightful journey; but she did arrive. In Polesie. And do you know where Polesie is? Right on the Russian frontier. It’s the only funny piece of news in a long time, but I dare say that to no one but you.”

  “What about Stanislaw?”

  “He’s in Warsaw. He resigned his diplomatic job last week and put on an armband and took his best hunting rifle. He’s over in Praga now, stalking Germans in suburban streets.”

  “Barbara, have you heard anything about Jan Reska?”

  Barbara shook her head for an answer, and then walked slowly out of the door. Her footsteps were slow and heavy on the wooden stairs.

  Sheila wished desperately that she had left that question unasked. She searched for something to read, but all Stevens’ best books had been burned along with his clothes in the suitcases. She found a battered Polish grammar. As long as she had to sit in here, she might as well learn something. She had a feeling that she was going to need as much Polish as she could master. Besides, a grammar made you concentrate, made you forget other things. Like a good Scot, she began at the beginning and methodically revised the earlier lessons which she had already learned. Now that she was sure of the right pronunciations, the words were easier to memorise than they had seemed in London last spring. She found she could recommend studying a foreign grammar book to anyone who had to sit through air raids.

  At six o’clock she was hungry, and picnicked on a strange assortment of food. Mr. Olszak had sent bread and butter today. Calf’s foot jelly and a peach came from Madame Aleksander, and the small bowl of milk had been brought by Barbara. Stevens had discovered some bouillon cubes for her. Uncle Edward had brought a thermos bott
le of soup, a small bottle of red wine, and a bunch of flowers. None of them had forgotten her, however busy and worried they were. And each item of food was now a luxury which not money, but time and trouble had discovered.

  As dusk came to the city, she didn’t bother either to light the candle or to draw the blackout curtains. She was suddenly as exhausted as if she had worked all day in the fields. She watched the red glow, deepening and widening in the smoke-covered sky—unaware that it was the Royal Castle which tonight was ablaze—until she had gathered enough energy to take herself to bed.

  * * *

  Outside, the eighteenth day of bombing, the tenth day of artillery bombardment, came to its close. People were still toiling in the numerous parks which had once been Warsaw’s pride. They were filling in the trenches which they had dug almost three weeks before, covering the corpses carefully and wearily with the soft, dry earth. The sisters in the burning hospitals pulled the wounded men into the courtyards, sheltered them with their bodies when a German plane swooped low to machine-gun the living mass.

  Barbara quieted the children. The night attacks would wake them from uneasy dreams, and they would start remembering their mothers and fathers. Some of them would still think that they were wandering alone in machine-gunned fields.

  Stevens had paused for a cigarette along with the Swede beside whom he worked nowadays. Their work tonight was useless. The precious flour in the largest bakery flared beyond all human effort. Neither man spoke any more as they worked, but they kept together.

  Over in the Praga sector, once a workers’ suburb across the Vistula River, Stanislaw Aleksander silenced the nagging worry about his wife with the machine gun to which he had been promoted.

  Edward Korytowski and Michael Olszak were busy with the cunning concealed doorway which they had made between two adjoining cellars. The printing press in one cellar was now completed, and hidden by protecting sandbags.

  Jan Reska lay in the shelter of an eastern forest beside men who were strangers to him. All his old comrades were lost. This was the fifth company he had fought with, and now it seemed as if they were to be surrounded, too. Here under the trees, they could rest from the bombers, perhaps think of some way to join with the survivors of still another division.

  Captain Adam Wisniewski had gathered the remnants of his cavalry platoon from the slaughter fields of the Poznan bulge, had led them silently at nightfall away from the west. The south, too, was in German hands. Their nearest hope was Warsaw. A knock at the darkened window of an isolated house brought them any food there was, perhaps a moment’s warmth by a stove, or in a barn where the exhausted men could rest. And then the alarm of a scout sent the half-sleeping men and the stumbling horses stealing away in the cold darkness once more.

  Eugenia, her furs and jewels quite forgotten in her misery, watched the earnest, angry face of the young Commissar as he berated the peasants who had dismantled the Aleksander house, who had dressed in their best clothes to celebrate the day when every man was his own master and need not work. They were as bewildered as Eugenia was unhappy. The big house was not theirs to plunder; it belonged to the State. Their gay clothes were useless: the State wanted workers soberly dressed, soberly thinking. Her face was a proud mask as she set off on the nightmare journey into an unknown country. Furs and jewels were useless to staunch the blood which oozed through the cracks in her hand-sewn shoes.

  In Kawka’s kitchen at Korytów, Aunt Marta lay in bed with Teresa and Kawka’s two little girls. The German officers in the Korytowski house grumbled at the lack of linen and silver, at the empty pantry shelves, at the kitchen’s disorder. Aunt Marta smiled grimly to herself, and listened to Teresa’s breathing. She would be all right, now, although her right hand would never play on a piano again. Stefan lay awake in Kawka’s room. He couldn’t sleep because he had so much thinking to do. What could he do to hurt Them most? He had seen what They had done to the village and to Wanda and Teresa. What could he do to Them?

  Andrew Aleksander lay in a cattle truck, his right leg shattered at the thigh. He listened to the moaning of the wounded men jammed into this evil-smelling box as the train lumbered slowly into Germany. It was strange how he persisted in living when he wanted to die. He had seen so many men, who wanted to live, die. If this truck was left unattended in sidings for eight hours, as it had been yesterday, perhaps he would. The body, crushed against his, twitched in a violent spasm and then lay still. The dead man’s arm was across Andrew’s mouth. He hadn’t the strength left to shake himself free.

  Madame Aleksander was attempting to rescue the few scraps of equipment still recognisable from the ruins of the operating theatre. She worked silently, trying not to think of the flames leaping greedily on the other side of the small courtyard where the western wing of the hospital had been set on fire. For one moment, the hot red light disappeared; the crackling and hissing and guns and roaring planes were silent. In the cool darkness, the family were around her. Teresa’s nose was crinkled over its freckles as she laughed; Stefan, large-eyed and silent and smiling; Andrew waiting for her to speak with one eyebrow slightly raised; Stanislaw, serious, worried, bitter, gentle; Barbara, her head thrown back, her eyes seeing some pleasant secret of her own... The fainting spell could only have lasted a moment, for when the faces had gone with the cool velvety darkness, the flames had come only a little nearer. Madame Aleksander looked up at the young Sister who had taken three steps to reach her where she had fallen on her knees. The girl moved over the rubble and dust with the grace that her training had made natural for her. Did she ever think of ballet, now? Madame Aleksander wondered. But then, there was so little time for thinking these days. So little time for sleep, and escape into dreams.

  The Sister’s graceful arm helped her to her feet.

  “Perhaps we should rest,” she said, looking at Madame Aleksander’s driven face.

  “Perhaps.”

  They worked on.

  12

  BARBARA

  Sometimes Sheila, when she had an interval free for thinking, would imagine that the last days of Warsaw were the very essence of Greek tragedy. You knew there could be no hope, no happy ending. Yet this knowledge did not end the suspense. The drama mounted steadily, intensely, until you felt that the human mind and body could bear no more; until the last scene reached the final anguish. For the very character of these people of Warsaw would not let them end their miseries. If they had been made of more selfish, worldly stuff, then they would have found an excuse long before the end to save themselves from the full course of the tragedy. Their pride, their nationalism, their courage, their fatalism made their actions inevitable. Even their individualism, which had served them so ill in the past, now strengthened their resistance. Their strong historical ties bound them to their decision. Above all, the vision of another captivity made life seem something not to be hoarded.

  The American, grey-faced and taciturn, had looked at her curiously for a moment when, under the influences of a plate of hot food, she had told him these thoughts. They had met for that promised dinner in the restaurant of the Hotel Europejski. Barbara, at the last moment, had been unable to come. One of the other nurses had sprained an ankle, and Barbara insisted on doing extra night duty with her children. She had also insisted that Sheila should go to the restaurant. Sheila, she had said with much truth, was still not completely well, was working too hard, was in need of a warm meal and a two-hour rest; and Russell Stevens would just be the right person to cheer her up. So Barbara had insisted. So had Stevens. And here Sheila was, trying to concentrate on a kind of soup made with boiled meat and rice which was the regulated and only choice in all the restaurants, trying to think of something to say which wouldn’t deal with the war. It was difficult.

  Stevens must have felt that too. He looked at his plate speculatively. “Ever eaten here, before?”

  “No. In June, Barbara and I ate at the smaller places.” She smiled. “We didn’t have any expense accounts, you know.”

/>   He laughed in spite of himself. “It’s a pity you didn’t see some of their chief places. Good food and wise. Boy, I lie awake and dream of them, now.”

  “This food is better than I’ve tasted in a long time.”

  “Which proves one of my theories. Good cooking is only the daughter of invention. The more disguises you have for food, the bigger chef you are. Now this stuff—” He jabbed at his plate with his fork. “Well, we all know just what kind of meat is left in Warsaw. I believe even cardboard would taste good if it had the proper seasoning and sauces.”

  “I’m too hungry to be disillusioned,” Sheila said. She tried not to think of the horse which had been machine-gunned today on the street near the children’s hostel. Nor to think of its skeleton, stripped bare, only an hour later.

  She tried very hard to look round the large room nonchalantly. “Not so many people here tonight,” she began, but the American’s amused smile stopped her.

  “I guess that was what you might call a light conversational gambit.”

  “There’s enough heavy conversation from those guns.” Sheila now gave up all pretence of not appearing to listen to the constant methodically timed shells. “Twenty hours, now,” she said. “Twenty hours without pausing for five minutes.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re still counting them?”

  “Why do I amuse you so much?” she demanded frankly and suddenly.

  He looked as guilty as a small boy caught inside a jam cupboard. “Not amuse,” he said. “There’s the wrong sound to that word.”

  “But you laugh at me. Half the time, you are laughing inside yourself. What’s so funny about me?”

  Stevens was taken aback. “You’ve got me all wrong,” he protested too vehemently. Amused? He wondered. Surprised would be nearer it. She surprised him into smiling. He was feeling cheerier than he had felt for almost a week now.

  “What have you been doing since you left the apartment?” he asked.