While Still We Live

  Sheila flushed. “Well, he certainly has arranged it to his own taste in these last weeks.” Her embarrassment grew as Sierakowski’s smile deepened further. “Of course, he knows best—I suppose.”

  Sierakowski laughed at the tone of her voice, at her raised eyebrow. Then he sat and looked at her so gravely that she wondered what had brought that thoughtful look into his eyes. It was as if he were forming a decision about her.

  “I’m afraid I’m dealing with a rebel,” he said at last. But she knew that wasn’t what he had really been thinking about in that long pause. “Perhaps if you start your job before Olszak gets here, you will have more chance of persuading him. There’s a lot of weight carried by a successful fait accompli.”

  “And Captain Wisniewski?” Her words had been quite evenly spoken. And why not? Captain Wisniewski was in command of the camp: his permission was necessary. Her question had been merely a routine one. That was all, she thought, as she studied the coarse weave of the blanket over her knees. That was all she was going to allow it to be.

  “He will have no objections, I’m sure.” He still watched her thoughtfully as she looked up at the slight inflection in his voice. He was puzzled by the sudden unhappiness in her eyes.

  “Why do you want to stay?” he asked suddenly.

  Sheila felt as if she were under examination again. She answered directly and simply, “Because I’ve done enough escaping and running away. I’m going to stay—and—and—” She halted. This sounded so much like mere heroics.

  “Fight it out?” he suggested gently.

  “In any way I can—yes.”

  He thought, this girl was honest: she wasn’t a sensation-seeker, a wide-eyed romantic. She knew the dangers, she didn’t minimise them. And she could be of use.

  “Good,” he said with unexpected brevity, and rose to his feet. His salute as he left the hut was equally unexpected.

  Sheila stared at the rough ceiling’s shadows thankfully. Sierakowski had believed her. She had won an ally. Whatever decisions were made about her, he would be on her side.

  There were voices outside now. Darkness had come. Work was over for the day. We are gathering at the Lodge, she thought: how many of the raiding party have reached home? We...home...the words had come naturally: this new world was no longer strange. She watched the black square of night in the window’s frame, listened to the rustle of closely laced branches in the stirring wind. She thought of those others who were now moving back to the forest under cover of this darkness. When you hoped the way she hoped now, it was as if you prayed.

  30

  ADAM

  A calendar became a curiosity. Time was measured by sun and moon, by patrols and sentry duty and raids, by increasing frosts and colder winds. Winter was coming, and as nature prepared for her long sleep, the men in the camp prepared for winter. The raids, in the last few days left of autumn, were never-ceasing. Supplies, clothing, and food were snatched from under the sharp greedy German nose, were hidden nearer the forest for future needs. (“Nearer” meant within ten miles of the forest’s edge. The raids themselves, as far as Sheila could discover, pushed as far north as Lowicz, as far south as Cracow. It seemed as if man had regained the power of travel which nature had meant him to possess. These soldiers could cover ten miles as easily as if they were walking down the street to buy an evening paper.)

  Men who were resting between raids helped with the preparations in camp. Huts were enlarged and weatherproofed with bark and thatch. Fuel, dried, and as smokeless as could be found, was stored as carefully as gold. So were the sacks of rye and potatoes, the barrels (fashioned out of birchbark like the cooking pots and cups) full of salt meat. Animals, hunted or trapped, also gave them skins for winter clothes. The melted fat was used for cooking, for soap, for candles, and for greasing rifles. Nothing was wasted. Everything, like everyone, had its function. Life was primitive and simple; work was hard, the sense of danger was constant. But perhaps because there was no time to sit and brood, perhaps because each man had learned savagely and cruelly why they were fighting, for what end they were fighting, there was unity of a broad and deep kind.

  It was the best kind of unity, Sheila thought as she studied the men’s faces in the Lodge each night. Work—except for the constant forest patrol—and the one meal of the day were over. The camp relaxed in the warmth of the large room, gathered together with tolerant, unforced friendship. Perhaps it was the cold wind rising outside, symbolic of loneliness and anger, that made officers and men appreciate these hours together. Perhaps men always enjoyed themselves when they got together after a good job well done. There was talk—plenty of it, for no one could accuse the Poles of lack of conversation. There were boasts and arguments and discussions and stories. There was singing, with verses invented to fit every man in the camp. Music and poetry seemed to be rooted and growing in every Polish heart. Even Jan, that prosaic silent man, could turn a rhyme to set the others laughing. It was the best kind of unity, for each of those men was still an individualist. You could see that in their reactions and unexplained prides. The engineer was still the engineer; the lawyer remained the lawyer; the farmer and landworker still belonged to the villages. But these differences were like salt and pepper in the flavour of a broth. The communal dish was all the better for their varied seasoning.

  Strangers still arrived in camp. Some stayed, and filled the gaps in its ranks after each raid. Others left: either they were better suited for another branch of the underground movement than for guerrilla fighting, or they had come for training in the camp’s methods before returning to their distant villages. There they in their turn would organise and adapt what they had learned, for the use of their own districts.

  The rest of Reymont’s band arrived. But Captain Reymont didn’t. Nor did Thaddeus. Jan had awaited their coming. Then suddenly he said one day, “They won’t come.” And he turned away in disappointment from the two ragged strangers who had come out of the forest. After that he stopped looking for newcomers. So did Sheila, but she kept thinking about Reymont. She owed him her life.

  “I don’t think he ever wanted to leave his own camp,” she said to Jan that night. Jan was silent. They were sitting in the Lodge. The shutters and doors were secure. The voices round them rose and fell with the rhythm of men who enjoyed themselves while they could. There had been food, there was vodka, there was story-telling, there was warmth, there was laughter. Hard faces softened in the candlelight, and coarse voices mellowed into music. Jan didn’t look up at her. He was fashioning a long stick, strong and pointed, into a spear-like weapon. “No?” was all he would say. But he believed her. Reymont had enjoyed his own command too much: he had been proud of it. Sierakowski had persuaded him that only in co-operation with a larger group was there any chance of permanent survival. So he had sent his men where opportunities were bigger. For this camp, here, with the work and united effort of so many men, seemed fantastically efficient and luxurious compared with Reymont’s camp. He had been a good leader, probably as good in some ways as Wisniewski, but he had worked on too small a scale. He had lacked Wisniewski’s vision.

  When she reached that conclusion, Sheila was startled at her own choice of words. Vision... She looked over at Adam Wisniewski sitting with his soldiers.

  This was the first evening he had spent at the Lodge since his return to the camp four days ago. He had been absent for over three weeks. This was the first time she had seen him since that morning she had arrived in camp. Or rather, she told herself as she averted her eyes and pretended to be watching Franziska, this was the first time she had allowed herself to see him. At the moment, she wished she were back in the loneliness of her hut, away from the warmth and life of the Lodge. Her will power was weakening: she was still telling herself that she must rise and leave, when Franziska came over to her.

  “Anything wrong, Sheila?”

  “No,” Sheila answered sharply. And then she saw she had hurt Franziska, and she added more gently, “Of course not.
”

  Franziska shrugged her shoulders and sat down beside Stefan. She, too, pretended. She listened to Stefan’s enthusiastic description of his work at the radio-hut with Sheila, of the new transmitter which was being perfected. But she wondered about these last few days and the change in her friend; she wondered what she had done to cause this feeling of separation. She listened to Stefan, but she watched Sheila, and Sheila seemed to be staring at the middle distance.

  Now Adam Wisniewski was listening to a story, his intelligent eyes on the teller’s face, his lips ready to laugh. Sheila had her second surprise then. He likes men, she thought; and men like him. She watched him, almost incredulously. And then she smiled at her naïveté. Hadn’t this camp been proof to her that Adam Wisniewski got on well with men? Hadn’t this been the reason why Olszak had chosen Wisniewski? Horses and women: proto-fascist...

  Russell Stevens had been quite certain about all that. Would he be as certain if he lived in this camp for a week? Wouldn’t he be sitting there now, laughing along with Wisniewski? Probably, Sheila thought, he would be laughing at himself: for Steve was honest. Perhaps too quick to pin identification tags on people’s shoulders, perhaps too prone to simplify; but fundamentally honest. If Wisniewski had lived up to the label Steve had pinned on him, he would now be sitting in Warsaw or Cracow, collaborating with the Nazis. There he would have had women and horses and a comfortable house; there he would have seen the people who opposed him either killed or imprisoned. If this man were a fascist by inclination, he would have welcomed the chance to “cleanse” his country of the people he disagreed with. He wouldn’t be working with them, living with them, all political differences buried under the common battlefield. Fascists never buried politics. They kept them sharpened, like a dagger to plunge in your back. The Nazis were looking for a political stooge in Poland. They had searched among politicians, among generals, ambassadors, princes, landowners, professional men. Not one Pole had accepted the chance to gain the whole New Order and lose his own soul by working with the enemy. The reward for their refusal was always torture and death for themselves, imprisonment and persecution for their families. Yet, each week, the execution list of these men was growing. Nothing the Nazis could do would convince or persuade or force the Poles to become Nazis, or the allies of Nazis.

  If ever she were to see Steve again, she would argue this out with him. “Labels, Steve, are just misleading,” she would say. “They are meant for laboratory specimens, not for human beings. All the so-called ‘enlightened’ would have had Poland quite taped and labelled. Poland was ‘feudal’ Poland was ‘undemocratic,’ Poland was ‘fascist’. And now the Poles are giving a demonstration to the world of what honour and freedom really mean. If a country doesn’t love freedom, why should it die so willingly against oppression? Why doesn’t it jump on the German bandwagon and say, ‘Of course, we’ll co-operate’? The Germans gave it the chance to do that. They churned out propaganda on the radio—you heard it as well as me—about the stupid cowardly government which led the poor Poles into this war. They’ve slandered, they’ve even fabricated proof of the guilt of Polish leaders. They offered the Poles every opportunity to say, ‘We’ve been betrayed. We lost the battle because we’ve been betrayed.’ But the Poles won’t take that soothing excuse. Their honour is real, not just national vanity. And the more they refuse to co-operate, the more they suffer. Korytów, and the hundred other Korytóws, would be still standing today if the Poles would only co-operate. How many other countries, even the most democratic ones, would pay this price for their honour, Steve?”

  The voices swept in warm gusts around her. Above was the black shadow of the pointed roof, and the static animal heads peering down through the haze of smoke. Those beasts must have seen many a hunting party here. Now they were watching the strangest hunting party of all. She looked across to the priest, tall, thin-faced. He was listening to the man who had lost an eye. How unreal and yet real; how mad and yet sane!

  A voice, strong and confident, was speaking. She looked up, startled. There was no escape this time. “You look very serious.” It was Adam Wisniewski. He didn’t wait for a reply, but sat down cross-legged on the floor at her feet. Something in the ease of the gesture reminded her of the first time she had seen him. There were four or five answers she could give him: each sounded sillier than the other. She kept silent, and smiled.

  “That’s much better,” he said approvingly. He was watching her as he drew a package of cigarettes out of his pocket. He offered her one. He lit it carefully. Jan placed his cigarette behind his ear: he was concentrating on smoothing his spear point into sharp perfection.

  “I’ve almost lost the taste of a cigarette,” she said. She was annoyed with herself for her nervousness. She couldn’t seem to think of anything else to say.

  “So you do talk?” Wisniewski said slowly.

  She returned the long look which he gave her. (How unreal it is, she was thinking. We have at last spoken, and I find I have nothing to say.)

  “Occasionally,” he said gravely, answering for her. That made her laugh.

  “Actually,” he went on with a smile, “I think you’ve been avoiding me.”

  There was enough truth behind the light words to make Sheila lose the composure she had gathered so determinedly.

  “You’ve been busy,” she said with little originality. What a lack of wit and intelligence she was displaying! The cat had not only got her tongue: it had got her brain.

  He wasn’t smiling. Strangely enough, he wasn’t looking bored. He was watching her face very intently. He had watched her that way at Korytów when she talked to Steve at that last dinner in the Aleksander house. That look had been disconcerting then. Now it also made her happy.

  “You’ve been busy,” she repeated. That was true. And sometimes she had felt that he had been avoiding her too. Each avoiding the other, as though they were afraid of something they couldn’t avoid.

  “You yourself haven’t been exactly idle,” he was saying. “In fact, you’ve been too busy. Where’s the smile you used to have in your eyes?”

  “Had I?”

  “I remember when I first saw you. You were leaning out of a window, talking to old Felix. I recollect thinking, ‘That’s the way a woman should look, with a smile in her eyes and a soft word on her lips.’”

  “Felix,” Sheila said slowly. “‘My friend Felix,’ as Teresa used to say.”

  He was quick to notice the strained look on her face. “Come,” he said, with unexpected gentleness. “Come now.” He took her hand and gave it a reassuring grip. He turned to Jan and said, “What’s the spear for?”

  “Old Single,” Jan said without looking up. He was wetting his thick forefinger and running it along the wood.

  One of the men near them laughed. “He’s heard those brave stories about bears.”

  “A spear and a sabre,” Wisniewski said. “They are brave weapons against a bear, Zygmunt.”

  “If a man can fight a bear that way,” Zygmunt said disbelievingly.

  “It’s been done. It gives bear and man an even chance. When you face a bear that way, then you know it’s either him or you. That’s the most satisfactory way to kill.”

  “You might fight a bear that way. But not a boar. Old Single’s too clever,” Zygmunt said. “Why, he even knows just the limits where we are allowed to shoot. He’s been keeping down to the forest edge since we came here. He knows we dare not shoot him near there.”

  Jan said, “I’ll catch him.” He tapped the spear. “I haven’t met the pig yet that I couldn’t stick, Goering included.”

  Wisniewski was examining the spear. “It will need a crossbar just about there, as a grip.” He felt the spear, and then shook his head. “It’s strong, but not strong enough. Not for Old Single. He’s carried bullets about in his fat for several years now. You need steel for that job.”

  Jan grinned and patted the sheath of the long thin knife he now carried—as all the men did—at his waist. “Lit
tle sister will make sure. First big brother.” He pointed the spear like a javelin. “Then little sister.” He drew his finger across his throat with a quick slashing gesture.

  “How much would you bet on it?” said Zygmunt, with real interest.

  Jan’s fingers rubbed the side of his nose.

  “Careful,” Sheila said to Zygmunt warningly. “If you make a bet with Jan, that’s enough to make him win.”

  Wisniewski released her hand. She was all right again. She had stopped thinking about Korytów. He thought, it seems impossible that anyone as lovely as she is should be so unconscious of her power. He looked at her. And, for once, she accepted his challenge.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  Rather surprisingly, he didn’t accept hers. “Why do you stay here when you could go back to your own country?” he countered.

  “Why does Jan, who knows little about forests, want to brave Old Single?” she answered.

  Jan looked up at her quickly. “I’m learning,” he said resentfully. “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Some would say it’s because he’s mad.” Wisniewski’s hand on Jan’s shoulder turned the words into a compliment. “Or some would say he is proud, and never refused a challenge.” Adam Wisniewski was smiling now, watching her eyes with that very straight disconcerting look of his. “Or some would say he has courage.”

  “I’ve hardly that.” She was trying to laugh. “I scream at a rat, I’m afraid of snakes. I turn sick when I see blood. I’ve tried hard. But I still scream, I still turn sick.”

  “And the rat Captain Streit? And the snake called Dittmar?”

  Sheila looked at him in surprise. The brown eyes were amused, and yet, somehow, serious. She felt the blood rise in her cheeks, and she smiled uncertainly, and she felt a warm gentle surge in her heart.