While Still We Live

  “Are you all right, Sheila?”

  “Yes. I almost forgot to tell you one piece of good news. I have a job. That will earn enough to buy us food and clothes. You see, someone must make money. Uncle Edward has been robbing himself to provide for us, but he will get no more salary from the University. All the teachers are looking for jobs. Wasn’t I lucky to find this one?”

  Madame Aleksander looked doubtful. “What is it?” she asked slowly.

  She looked relieved when Sheila explained, although she still frowned.

  “But this man’s a German.”

  “Of German descent. He is Polish now.”

  “And he knows who you really are?”

  “Yes, he knows.” That was one truth which the dictaphone could repeat without condemning her.

  “Then either he’s a fool or a very brave man.”

  “He considers himself a Pole,” Sheila said, and Madame Aleksander gave a strange little smile.

  The bedroom door closed gently.

  * * *

  Sheila picked up the magazines which she had dropped, pretended to hum a song, folded the blanket, rearranged the table mat, moved a chair, and then sat down and stared at the walls. I just can’t bear the idea, she thought: I just can’t go on living here with this continual trap around me. She could guard herself; but Madame Aleksander? She still broke into a cold sweat at the innocent remarks this evening which, if they had been completed, might have disclosed enough to the Germans. As it was, Madame Aleksander was convinced that Sheila was heading for a nervous breakdown. She would be worrying now in that room, as if she hadn’t enough to worry about.

  Sheila jumped as the telephone bell rang. Was it tapped, too? Probably all telephones were.

  “Telephone, Sheila,” Madame Aleksander’s voice called.

  “Yes.” She went into the hall and lifted the receiver from the hook as if it exuded vitriol.

  It was Steve. She almost wept at the sound of his voice. She couldn’t speak.

  “Sheila, what’s wrong with you? It is you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say, is anything wrong?”

  “No.”

  “I wondered if you might have changed your mind. About coming. We are all gathered together in the Europejski, like sheep in a pen. We leave in an hour. There’s just time for you to join us.”

  “But I’ve got to stay here, Steve.”

  “Perhaps you feel you ought to, but there is no ‘got’ about it.”

  The operator’s voice said, “That is all the time allowed for a telephone conversation. Are you finished?”

  “No, damnation,” Steve said, “Sheila, listen—”

  The telephone went dead.

  Sheila had just re-entered the room when the bell rang again.

  This time it was Bill.

  “Steve wasn’t allowed to make any more calls. There’s a mob of us here. We are allowed one each. How are you Sheila?

  Sorry about that night. Remember?”

  “I hope Lilli’s well. I liked her.”

  “She’s a good kid. But say, Steve’s at my elbow. Why the hell don’t you come with us, and stop us all worrying? Schlott is here too. The Germans didn’t like his face. Just a minute, Sheila, Steve’s jabbering at my elbow.”

  There was a slight pause.

  “Sheila, he says, and this goes for all of us—”

  The operator’s voice said, “That is all the time allowed for a telephone conversation. Are you finished?”

  “Hell, no,” Bill said, “and you know that damned well.”

  “I’ll be all right. Don’t worry,” Sheila said quickly, as the telephone became blank sound.

  There was the same blankness in the living-room. First the Spaniard and the man from Vienna; then the Englishman and the Frenchman; now Bill and Schlott and Steve. She picked up the guide to Munich and started work on it once more. Work. Something to do. Something else to think about than a room which had become too neat and clean and quiet.

  It was dark now. The curfew would be on: anyone on the street was to be shot at sight. It was with relief that she heard the door open and Casimir’s voice calling triumphantly, “Got something.”

  There was a look of delight on his face. Not even the small piece of salt pork, which he laid on the table along with the two potatoes, could account for such exaltation. Sheila remembered the unexpected quietness of his entry. Usually his clatter on the staircase told everyone in this block of apartments that Casimir was returning. His face was flushed with running. His eyes were excited. He made a joke about Volterscot and laughed too heartily.

  “What is it, Casimir? What have you been up to?”

  The bedroom door opened, and Madame Aleksander appeared fully dressed.

  “I thought you had gone to bed,” Sheila began in amazement.

  “I decided I was tired of bed. We’ve no time left to be ill now, anyway. I feel better when I am up. Now what have we got to cook this time, Casimir?”

  “Casimir’s been having some fun,” Sheila said. She tried to look severe, but the boy’s unabashed smile spoiled the effect.

  “What is it Casimir?” Madame Aleksander asked, with the authority of a woman who has brought up a family and instinctively knows what kind of voice to use.

  “Nothing,” Casimir began, “at least nothing much. Nothing as much as I’d like.” But his grin widened.

  And then Sheila remembered the dictaphone. She sat down heavily on the nearest chair and moistened her dry lips.

  “I just,” said Casimir, his pride beginning to need an audience after all, “I just—”

  “Sheila, what’s wrong with you?” Madame Aleksander hurried over to the girl.

  “I think I’m just weak with hunger. I would love some food. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, I believe I would. Even this.” Madame Aleksander looked at the piece of pork curiously. “Once I wouldn’t even have offered it to a dog.”

  But Casimir, having once decided to tell, was not to be cheated.

  “I tore down a poster,” he said. “One of those anti-British posters the Germans have been putting up everywhere. It showed a picture of the ruins, and Chamberlain’s face, and one of us pointing at him and saying ‘This is your fault.’ So I just ripped it right off the wall, and then we ran. Didn’t we, Volterscot?”

  “You shouldn’t have done it. I’m glad you did. But you shouldn’t have done it,” Madame Aleksander said slowly. “Did any German see you do it?”

  The boy shook his head, and Madame Aleksander’s look of anxiety disappeared. “Then that’s all right,” she added. “I’m glad you did it.”

  “Casimir, do you know what happens if you tear down posters?” Sheila asked.

  “Yes, I know. I saw the bodies today.”

  “What’s that?” said Madame Aleksander quickly.

  “Two boys tore some down last night. This morning six were shot in front of the wall. No one was allowed to remove their bodies all day.”

  “Where was this?”

  “In the centre of the town.”

  Madame Aleksander’s nostrils dilated. “Think they can terrorise us, do they? Think they can—”

  “Please, Madame Aleksander.”

  “I’ll go out and tear down these posters, myself.”

  “You’ll never reach Korytów if you do.”

  Casimir looked at Sheila anxiously. “You wouldn’t want these lies on the walls about England, would you?” he asked.

  Sheila hugged him suddenly. “I don’t want to see you shot, Casimir.”

  “Someone’s got to be,” the boy answered gravely. “If we don’t do these things, we will be slaves. You are glad I did it, Sheila? Are you glad?”

  Sheila tightened her grip on his shoulders, with an intensity that surprised them both. She nodded her yes. Casimir’s anxious little face cleared. He opened his mouth, but Sheila laid a finger across his. She pretended to laugh. “You’ve got to look after Madame Aleksander and me, you know
. So don’t go and get killed, Casimir. You won’t?” She kept the smile on her lips as she stared at the treacherous walls. She couldn’t bear this, she thought for the second time that evening. How many honest remarks might not condemn good friends? As she returned Madame Aleksander’s curious gaze frankly, she made up her mind what she was going to do. Hofmeyer would call it a sign of the amateur. A professional like Hofmeyer himself would either solve it in a more clever way, or be able to harden his heart. If her decision was an admission of defeat then here was one time when she would choose defeat.

  “Shall I cook supper?” Casimir asked eagerly. He was so like Volterscot, so anxious to please.

  “Yes, do,” Madame Aleksander said quickly, and Casimir lifted the small piece of pork and the two potatoes as if they were precious crystal. Volterscot trotted happily after him into the kitchen.

  Sheila didn’t look at Madame Aleksander. She hunted for a piece of paper and a pencil. Where was that stub which Schlott had used to draw diagrams of the city, so that she would not get lost? Had he taken it? She searched frantically, feeling Madame Aleksander’s eyes on her every movement. She was thankful that Madame Aleksander kept her silence. Silence was safety. She found the pencil at last, lying in a pot of dry earth which held a wilting aspidistra. She couldn’t find any paper, so she took one of the magazines. Above its title, she wrote in English, “I think this room is tapped for conversation, just as all telephone wires are now tapped. Do you understand what this means? I am not exaggerating.”

  Madame Aleksander’s brows knitted as she read the message. She looked sharply at Sheila and saw the girl’s desperation. She kept silent and, taking the pencil which was held out to her, wrote her reply among the list of contributors. “Yes. Do not worry. Now I understand. But is this possible?”

  On the bottom margin, Sheila wrote, “Yes. Believe me, yes. Trust me. Michael Olszak does, but never mention this to anyone unless you want to see me shot.”

  Madame Aleksander’s eyes widened. “Sheila!” they seemed to say. “Sheila!” But she still kept silent as the girl searched for the precious box of matches. Together they watched the title page curl into black tissue. And it was Madame Aleksander who crumbled its ashes into powder on the floor, all her housewifely instincts silenced.

  “We are just coming,” Madame Aleksander called to Casimir. Her voice was even. Her arm was round Sheila’s shoulder. She has the strength, now, Sheila thought: I now depend on her. And she didn’t care if Olszak or Hofmeyer were angry. She couldn’t go to Korytów, leaving Casimir and Madame Aleksander unwarned. After all, Herr Hofmeyer only pretended to serve the Nazis so that he could help their enemies. And that, Sheila decided, was exactly what she was doing now.

  Through the unboarded kitchen window, the chill wind of a wet night struck shrewdly. The lights were on once more in Warsaw, small flickering lights of candles and kerosene lamps. In the other kitchens which still stood, other women and children were gathered round pots of thin brew cooking slowly on the coal or wood stoves which had been resurrected. Casimir had “found” a small stove, had rigged a somewhat leaky pipe-chimney out of the window. Now he was blowing gently, carefully, on the small heap of glowing coals.

  “It’s 1916, all over again,” Madame Aleksander murmured. Sheila knew she wasn’t referring only to the cold, the scanty food, the feeble lights of the city. “But we’ll come through it.”

  And suddenly to Sheila, the sparse pinpricks of light in the darkness were no longer pathetic. In their tragedy was promise. Through the mist which covered her eyes, the lights seemed to grow and spread until they touched each other, and there was no darkness left. For a moment, there was only one blurred glow. She brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. The darkness and its meagre lights had returned. But the glow and the brightness remained in her heart.

  22

  NEW CLOTHES FOR OLD

  Casimir may have wondered why his bedtime followed supper so quickly that night, why Madame Aleksander and Sheila sat up late writing on magazine margins and burning discarded pages in the rusty stove in the kitchen, why they rose so early next morning and worked so silently about the flat, why he was given so many little tasks to do that he, too, had no time to talk. But, with the unexpected patience of the very young, who will trust infinitely if only their affection is answered, he obeyed all Madame Aleksander’s suggestions because he saw that it pleased her so much. He felt happy too, because she seemed to be quite better today. Her voice and all her movements weren’t ill any more. He whistled as he cut out muslin “windowpanes” and tacked them into place; the plywood boards, he had decided, were to be used as shutters for bitter weather and night-time.

  Sheila, as usual, wanted the dog to be washed. Madame Aleksander had said she was going to see her brother and then to visit the Kommandantur. Sheila said she would have to go out too, but she thought Volterscot needed one more bath before the weather got too cold.

  “But isn’t that his natural colour?” Casimir asked.

  “Not yet. He should be white. He will feel much better if he is really what he should be.”

  Casimir rose, still reluctant to leave the hinge he was trying to invent to make a neat shutter. “All right Sheila. If that makes him feel really better. But you are awful fussy about baths. Come on, Volterscot.”

  “We’ll all meet here again this afternoon,” Madame Aleksander called after the boy and his dog. “Take care, Casimir.

  To Sheila she said, “I am going out now. Are you coming?”

  “Not at the moment. I have some sewing to do.”

  The two women exchanged smiles as if each knew what the other was thinking: how stilted and self-conscious the simplest phrases became if one was not sure of privacy. And then Madame Aleksander had also gone, and Sheila was left alone to put her plans into action. First, she must get in touch with Hofmeyer. Casimir had to be hidden, before the Germans arrested him. If she ’phoned that very private number, she could leave a message to be given to Hofmeyer when he visited that address.

  Yet, somehow, she wanted to reach Hofmeyer without delay. The problem about Casimir was urgent. Perhaps it was too late even now. Suddenly she thought of a way to telephone Hofmeyer at his office without arousing suspicion. She arranged her thoughts into a line of conversation, and the more she examined what she would say, the surer she was that this would be not only the quickest but the safest method. It was only natural that she should want some respectable clothes and a decent meal. Anna Braun would demand those things. And Sheila Matthews would be a more efficient person if she felt less like something the cat had dragged in. She looked like a beggar; she was beginning to feel like one. She urged her courage with these thoughts, and called the number 4-6636 before she could change her mind. She listened to the ’phone’s distant summons, and looked at her disreputable coat and her cracked shoes. Never again would she wonder why soldiers and sailors should keep their uniforms smart. Never again would she smile at button-polishing or deck-scrubbing.

  Hofmeyer sounded abrupt and busy. Her initial confidence ebbed slightly. He was probably going to be furious with her. Her first question about any further instructions sounded painfully weak. But perhaps it was that hesitancy which caught his attention. “What else?” he demanded.

  How pleasant and easy it would be if this were a normal world and she could say “Casimir’s in trouble. Please help him.” Instead, she said as Anna Braun might have said, “I thought I’d like a decent meal. I’m cold and depressed. What restaurants would you like me to use?”

  “So that’s it. How much money have you?”

  “Little, and it belongs to the housekeeping. I wondered if I might have an advance on salary? I need some clothes too. I lost all my luggage in one of the September fires.”

  “Call at this office and collect, some money, then. You can eat at the Europejski Restaurant.”

  “You mean I can go there alone?” Sheila hoped that her inflection on that sentence would, be enough to make Hofmeyer r
ealise she wanted to have one of those little walks with him.

  But he ignored the question. “You can choose some clothes from the bedroom wardrobes when you call here. You should have taken some yesterday, as I suggested: the best of them are gone now.” He turned away from the ’phone to talk quickly to someone else in the room.

  “Those clothes may not fit me,” Sheila said. She would rather wear her present rags than loot some unfortunate girl’s...

  “I see,” Hofmeyer said abruptly. She hoped desperately that his tone and manner were for the benefit of that someone else in the room. He was talking to the unknown man once more.

  “Are you there, Fräulein Braun? I am sending round one of our young men who will take you to one of the larger shops, together with entry pass and credit check. This is a great nuisance, Fräulein Braun.”

  “I am sorry, Herr Hofmeyer,” Sheila said meekly. She was beginning to wilt like a child under its parent’s disapproval.

  “My man will collect you in half an hour. His name is Hefner. He may seem Polish, but you can rely on him. He is a true German. Are you alone at the flat? All the better.”

  Well, Sheila thought as she replaced the receiver on its hook, she had tried to arrange a meeting, and all she got was a shopping tour. She began to analyse the conversation once more. No, she had made no slips. She couldn’t have risked anything more obvious. Surely Mr. Hofmeyer didn’t really think that she had troubled him only because of a meal and some clothes?

  After that, she worried about Mr. Hefner until he arrived punctually. Mr. Hofmeyer had warned her, at least. He may seem Polish... Don’t, Anna Braun, forget your catechism.

  Anna Braun answered the polite knocking on the outside door. The man was in civilian clothes. He was thin, blond and blue-eyed. With his broad brow, high cheekbones, wide mouth, straight nose, he might very well have been a Pole. His bow and greeting were also Polish. He had an excellent accent. He had obviously been given a description of her, for his identification card was already showing in the palm of his hand. Sheila slid hers quickly out of her bag. I would laugh, she thought, I would laugh if the price of a smile wasn’t a bullet against a stone wall. A sense of humour was costly, nowadays.