While Still We Live

  Sheila smiled at Uncle Edward’s idea of a prominent place to leave a message, and her smile broadened as she read it. In large scrawling letters he had printed, “Coffee and sugar in the small cupboard to your left in the kitchen. Bread in the tin box. Butter, milk, ham in the box of wire netting near the window. Matches at side of gas oven. Will be back before six. Important!—Stevens ’phoned. Suitcases at his apartment at Frascati Gardens. Telephone 6-5488. A Mr. Hofmeyer ’phoned twice. No message.” Then followed two drawings in the James Thurber technique: one shapeless figure was stuck by an angry-looking telephone, while an equally shapeless figure (“Do I look like that to him?” Sheila wondered) was stretched out on a table-like bed, with snoring signs above its head. (“And I don’t snore, either,” Sheila added.)

  She decided to have something to eat outside: that would save both time and Professor Korytowski’s food supply. But she would ’phone Mr. Stevens first of all. There was no reply. And then, after some hesitation, she decided to ’phone Mr. Hofmeyer. It was only polite, for one thing. For another, she might be in time to stop any alarmed telegram to Uncle Matthews. She had left the business leaflet somewhere in the bedroom. She opened the ’phone directory instead, H... HOFMEYER Adolf, HOFMEYER Bruno, HOFMEYER Helmut, HOFMEYER Sigurd... There was no HOFMEYER Johann. She couldn’t remember the name of the firm which he owned. She had to go back into the bedroom and search for the leaflet.

  Yes, his first name was Johann, all right. And his telephone number was 5-7177.

  She was surprised to be answered not by a secretary or a clerk, but by Mr. Hofmeyer, himself.

  “Sheila Matthews,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to hear your voice,” Mr. Hofmeyer replied in English. His voice sounded more British over the ’phone than it had sounded yesterday at Korytów. “You should have left Warsaw last night.”

  “The plane—”

  “I know. But there was a train.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Please leave as quickly as you can. How are you for money?”

  “I have a little.”

  “That won’t be enough. Call here, and you will find an envelope with money waiting for you. Come at once. Before four o’clock. There’s a last train around seven. Good luck.”

  Sheila had begun to thank him, but there was no reply, only a dead silence which told her he hadn’t waited for formalities. She replaced the receiver on its hook, thoughtfully. “Call here.” Surely that meant the business address. She looked at the crumpled leaflet, and on impulse searched for the name Kotowitz in the telephone book. It existed all right. The Old Square, 31. But its telephone number was not the one she had just used to find Mr. Hofmeyer. His must have been a private number, no doubt. Probably he hated the telephone as her Uncle Matthews did, and tried to discourage being ’phoned. She tried to visualise him as she had seen him yesterday evening. All she could remember was white hair, a squarish face, and the quick light footsteps. She realised suddenly that there had been a vague quality about him, an expressionless quality, so that it was hard to remember him. It was strange, for he hadn’t impressed her as being without determination or character. The least she could have done, she thought angrily, was to have paid more attention to someone who had taken so much trouble for her. She jammed the business leaflet into her handbag, grabbed her hat and gloves—it was too warm for a coat—and hurried out of the apartment. “Before four o’clock,” he had said. She hadn’t much time. She ought to get to the British Embassy and let someone know she was staying in Warsaw. That was the right thing to do, she supposed. And if the Embassy wouldn’t arrange to get money for her from her uncle, then she would have to fall back on Mr. Hofmeyer’s generosity. In normal times, she wouldn’t have had the courage to accept his offer. But this was, as Uncle Edward had said last night, a state of emergency. And her Uncle Matthews would see to it that Mr. Hofmeyer was not left out of pocket.

  Her thoughts kept her company into the courtyard, past its clumps of lilac trees, through the vault-like gateway. In the street outside, Henryk, the porter, was airing a terrier.

  “Good day,” he said, and burst into a long sentence. Sheila, snatched away from her plans of campaign, stared blankly at him. He wouldn’t understand English, but he might be able to understand German. Many people in Poland could. “Bitte?” she asked politely.

  He looked at her with sudden sharpness. “Don’t speak German,” he said in a low voice, and turned his interest to the dog.

  Neatly snubbed, Sheila thought. She had better try no more German on strangers today, even out of politeness. But as she picked her way across the heavy cobbled surface of the street, trying to avoid twisting a high heel in one of the deep cracks, she suddenly began to wonder. What was it he had said? “I don’t speak German,” or “Don’t speak German”? But what did it matter anyway? Either a concierge couldn’t talk German, or he was advising her not to speak in German. What did matter was the proclamation pasted across one of the pillars of the colonnade. She joined the small group of people round it.

  General mobilisation. Transport completely militarised. Horses, bicycles, cars to be commandeered. Every man on receipt of his mobilisation papers was to report at his district’s army headquarters within two hours. That was all. It ended with the date: “thirty-first of August, 1939.”

  There it was at last. There it was in the quiet, determined faces round her, in the men walking away to set their house and business in order before the two hours hung over them. Hofmeyer had said there was a “last train.” There must be a special one, then, for foreigners. But there was none for these people. Sheila felt her resolve tighten: all the arguments, for and against, why and why not, which had plagued her like a cloud of persistent mosquitoes ever since her sudden decision at the station last night, were swept away for good. She wanted to say to the strained face beside her, “Look, if you can stay here, so can I.” But she kept silent, edged her way out of the group, and walked towards Main Street. She wouldn’t have time to eat after all. She hadn’t time to ’phone Stevens again. She found a droshki, and drove to the British Embassy.

  When she arrived there, she felt helpless and unnecessary. Too many people were there. Too many men with urgent faces and decided steps were passing through the courtyard. They had serious business. She felt negligible. She hesitated for some minutes, and then entered the building. In the waiting room, there was a line of people, hurrying secretaries, busy men. This, she realised, was going to take hours. She looked at her watch and saw it was after half-past three. She left the building quickly, and no one even noticed her abrupt exit. She felt microscopic. After all, she told herself as she searched for another droshki, they would probably want to send her home. If they heard that she had practically no money left then they’d ship her off as a Distressed British Subject. Somehow, a D.B.S. didn’t sound so funny at this moment.

  A droshki, its horse too thin and old to be worried about his duty to the army, was coming along the avenue. Sheila left the railings, looked up at the imposing balcony, and said goodbye to the British Embassy. She would go to Mr. Hofmeyer. The droshki driver, an old man with his identification tag hanging at the back of his thin red neck, drove as urgently as he and the horse could manage. They were crossing the city to reach the older district in the north. In the gardens and pleasant green parks, men and women and children were digging.

  They had reached the Old Square, at last. As the cab rolled over the wide expanse of cobblestones, flanked on four sides by rows of gabled houses, Sheila looked at her watch, and found she was late. She determined not to worry: nothing she could do now would make her any earlier. She looked at the houses, tall and narrow in the late Gothic manner, with their fronts newly restored to their onetime glory. In the last twenty years, they had been reclaimed from the slums into which they had degenerated under foreign rule. She wondered which house was Number 31. The broadest of the houses had four-window façades, which was the sign that some three hundred years ago, or more, princes
had lived there. Those with three windows had housed nobles. Those with two had belonged to merchants. These social differences still remained in the carefully preserved façades, but the people behind the painted walls were now equal in lack of titles and of wealth. Some of the houses had long flourished as restaurants famed for this, or wine cellars famed for that. It was near one of them that the House of Kotowitz had its restrained medieval setting.

  A car was standing in front of the arched doorway. The entrance led past a small but intricately carved doorway, past a flight of handsome stone stairs leading to the apartments above, and ended inside a cobbled yard with chestnut trees. Sheila, thinking how strange it was that one always went too far when one was late, retraced her steps, to the carved doorway. That seemed the only possible entrance to the ground-floor shop. With difficulty, she discerned the name of Kotowitz written in elegant but faded lettering. The door opened easily, and she was in a room, bright with sunlight from the Square. It was more like an office than a shop. There was a large table, and a girl with a ledger. She looked up and scrutinised Sheila closely.

  “My name is Sheila Matthews. I believe Mr. Hofmeyer has an envelope for me.”

  The girl’s eyes widened. “Oh, yes!” she said. Then she rose and looked towards a door in the rear of the office. “You are to wait. I’ll get it.”

  Sheila waited. Then the rear door opened, and the girl returned. Behind her was a young man with a heavy, but pleasant, face. It had assumed a serious expression for the moment. The eyes were very business-like. Rising young executive, Sheila thought: well-polished shoes, neat pin-stripe suiting, hat in hand, and all.

  The young man was speaking. “Miss Matthews? I am sorry that the envelope has not yet arrived. Mr. Hofmeyer asked me to bring you to his house to save further delay.”

  Sheila looked at him uncertainly. He returned her stare too blandly, quite unaware of the puzzle in her mind. The girl had said, “I’ll get it.” This man said, “The envelope has not yet arrived.”

  “But is this not Mr. Hofmeyer’s house?”

  “This is his place of business,” the man said patiently. He reached for the door handle. Sheila looked at the girl, standing once more behind the table. There was a cold, hostile look in the girl’s eyes. Their enmity warned Sheila.

  “I am sorry,” she said with evident finality. She didn’t move. How the dickens did you say in Polish: “I haven’t much time. I have another engagement. Anyway, I don’t know who on earth you are and I am not going to accompany you to any strange house”? She was deciding on the correct phrases, and was just about to try a murderous version in desperation, when the young man moved away from the door, came over to her, and took a firm grip on her arm.

  She tried to shake herself free. “I have no time. I am sorry, I have no time,” she said in a mixture of anger and alarm.

  “I am sorry too,” the man said politely, but with equal conviction. “I’m afraid you must come.” He gave a nod to the girl who hurried promptly, eagerly, over to the window. She waved. Sheila remembered the waiting car.

  “What is this, anyway?” Sheila said angrily in English. She struck herself sharply free. She was hot with temper. She ran to the door. It was already opened. Two men, as neatly dressed as the man who had gripped her arm, stood there quite placid and immovable. They were broad enough to fill the doorway. Sheila halted, let her anger cool. She had to: she needed to think very clearly.

  “You must come with us,” the young man was saying. He was angry. He was rubbing his arm where she had hit him, and his eyes had narrowed and didn’t look at all so pleasant now.

  “Why?” Sheila’s voice was cold and hard She returned his angry stare with equal vehemence.

  “Security police. You may as well resign yourself. There is no choice for you but to come with us. And please don’t make any scenes. There is no need...a matter of routine.” He looked sharply at Sheila. “Do you understand what I say?”

  “I don’t understand anything.” But the word “police” had reassured her. She walked outside, shrugging off the young man’s arm. The girl at the table stared after her as if Sheila were a leper. Sheila found herself firmly wedged between two large men in the car which had been standing at the entrance to Mr. Hofmeyer’s place of business. She was quite convinced by this time that she wasn’t going to see Mr. Hofmeyer’s house either.

  5

  INTERROGATION

  The journey was as unpleasant as she expected. It was a hot afternoon. The men on either side of her filled most of the car’s seat. And whenever she tried to see a landmark to help her guess where she was being taken, the young man who sat opposite her would watch her keenly. When she relaxed, he watched her speculatively. He had relieved her of her handbag unexpectedly and very neatly, as she had left Mr. Hofmeyer’s office. He now held it determinedly if incongruously under his arm. It was a relief when the car’s speed slackened, and it stopped before a large square building of modern structure. She couldn’t recognise the street when they ushered her firmly across the pavement into the large doorway, and her heart sank still further. She tried to believe that foreigners straying about the city had to be counted like so many sheep. Probably the Security Police wanted to send her home to England. Probably. But her heart kept on sinking.

  The two bodyguards, their mission accomplished, had gone. She was left alone on a stone bench with the first young man. She found it difficult to restrain herself from fidgeting as she felt his eyes watching her closely. As they waited, their backs against an impressively panelled wall, their feet on the highly polished floor of intricate design, neither spoke.

  Hurrying men, worried men, men carrying papers which they still studied, men walking urgently from one doorway in the long hall to another, men and only men passed by. Most looked at her with a quick impersonal glance. Some nodded to the silent man beside her, and gave her a second look. There were other benches in the hall. Four other people sat there, as silently as she did, each with a neatly dressed, watchful man beside him. One of these people was a woman: a middle-aged, defiant-looking creature with a face carefully camouflaged to conceal the wrinkles, with expensive clothes cut to flatter the contours. Of the others, one seemed a prosperous business-man, one was a hotel porter, one was a workman with an excessively honest face. The three men shared the woman’s defiance. Sheila wondered if they were here for the same mysterious reason which had brought her to this place. She watched their faces, and she felt still more worried. No reason seemed to link together such a varied collection of people. They certainly were not British, nor Americans, nor Frenchmen.

  Sheila glanced at her watch nervously. It was almost half-past five. Ten minutes later, the man beside her rose and motioned her to enter the doorway which had just opened. The three men and one woman still sat and waited in the hall. They were getting restless now. The woman was trying hard not to cry.

  The room which Sheila entered was unexpectedly simple after the impressive entrance hall. Simple and business-like. So was the uniformed man with a dark moustache who sat at the desk, with a window behind him. On one side of him was a man in civilian clothes, seated, waiting with a notebook and an open fountain pen. On the other side of the desk stood another uniformed man, as neat and slender as a French general. An empty chair faced the desk, the three men, and the window. A series of office cabinets covered the wall on her left; to her right, there was nothing but a door leading to an adjoining room.

  Sheila determined to be equally business-like. She crossed the room quickly, sat down on the obvious chair, and looked at the man with the black moustache. He didn’t seem an unreasonable man: cold, perhaps, and impersonal; but not unreasonable. She waited while he adjusted his pince-nez and a black leather folder in front of him.

  He looked up suddenly at the young man who had escorted Sheila here. “Better get the Special Commissioner, if he is available,” he said. “He has had much to do with the case of Margareta Koch.” He transferred his look, as he pronounced the n
ame, to Sheila.

  She took a deep breath of relief, as the young man placed the handbag on the desk and went to look for the Special Commissioner. This, she told herself, was nothing else than a complete mistake. Well, it would soon be cleared up.

  She said with a smile, “May I speak in English? My Polish is very weak.”

  “Any other language you can speak?” the man with the black moustache asked very gently.

  “French, or German.”

  “Oh... Well, we all understand German. Would you speak in the language?” But it was more of a command than a question.

  Sheila began eagerly. “Am I supposed to be this Margareta Koch?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “By the way you looked at me when you said her name.”

  The men exchanged quick glances. “And do you deny that you are Margareta Koch?”

  “Of course. I am Sheila Matthews.”

  The man behind the desk smiled. Sheila began to feel that this wasn’t going to be as easy as she had thought.

  “An Englishwoman?”

  “Born in England. My father was Scots.”

  The man with the fountain pen began writing. The man with the moustache smiled again. “Just answer these questions, please. Your name is Sheila Matthews? Spell it.”