While Still We Live

  “Well, someone has got sense,” she said, and looked very pointedly at Sheila. “You and your slices of meat!” she added beneath her breath.

  Tomasz looked round the half-open door. “We are all ready. We are waiting,” he said impatiently.

  Kati said happily, “Tomasz, didn’t you know? Didn’t the Chief—the captain tell you? It’s a wedding.”

  Tomasz said solemnly, “A wedding followed by a funeral is bad, but a funeral followed by a wedding is a good omen. We shall all be the happier of it.”

  “And to hell with the long-nosed German swine,” Kati added emphatically. “This is one thing they don’t take away from us.” She was pulling off her working apron. “I must tell Zygmunt.”

  “The food, woman, the food!” Tomasz called after her.

  “There’s no hurry,” she answered from the other end of the corridor. “They’ve got to go to church first, haven’t they?”

  “You see,” Adam teased, “they won’t let you eat until you’ve been to church with me. Either you marry or you starve, my girl.”

  In the small village square, a sea of quiet friendly faces waited for them. Sheila halted at the inn door for a moment. She looked up at Adam, standing beside her. “This,” she said, “is the loveliest of weddings.”

  Adam’s eyes held hers, as they had done when they had first met. He loves me, she thought, he loves me so very very much. And it almost frightened her that she should have roused so much feeling and emotion in any man. Then he smiled, and she smiled too. She was so happy that she wanted to weep.

  38

  TO THE MOUNTAINS

  Kati had been right: the night wind had brought a threat of rain in its cold touch. Sheila pulled Zofia’s coat more closely round her neck, moved her feet inside their wide shoes to keep them from freezing, hugged her body with her arms. The man, sitting beside her under the bare branches of the small wood, was motionless. He hadn’t spoken since they had reached this place and he had pointed northwards into the darkness, and had said “Nowe Miasto.”

  Sheila strained her eyes. In front of her she could, with some effort, make out the black stretch of slow-moving water. Through the wind’s sad song in the branches overhead came its steady, gentle rhythm. That was the river which flowed east towards the Vistula. Adam had insisted that she should wait for him on its south bank. On the north bank, towards the west, pinpricks of light showed that Nowe Miasto was still awake. Even as she waited, the lights were slowly dying out. Soon the town would be asleep.

  She whispered to the man, “Soon, now.”

  He nodded. She felt he was angry with her because he had to sit and look after her, instead of taking part in the attack.

  Sheila stared once more at the masses of dark shadows, at the patches and the blots of darkness which meant trees and houses and buildings. She was too far away to be able to see anything clearly. She could only guess. She wondered where Adam and his men were. Probably lying like this under some tree, waiting as tensely as she was. She thought of Dittmar’s dead body, now lying in a ditch to the north of the town, with that identification flask in its pocket and its Luger beside it, as if the attacking guerrillas had only had time to shoot but not to search the man who had tried to stop them. And, thinking of the Luger, she said suddenly:—

  “They’ve only got revolvers. They won’t have much chance.”

  The man stirred and put out a hand to quieten her. “We’ve a cache near here. They wouldn’t attack without visiting it first. Don’t worry. They are well-armed.” His bad temper seemed to have been drawn off by worry in her voice. “Don’t worry,” he whispered again. And then, to the silent village, he said softly, “Go out, little lights, go out. We are ready.”

  At last, there remained only two visible lights. The man was sitting erect now, leaning forward, alert. His excitement was obvious. “Time to deal with the sentries,” he was saying. He put out his hand once more and gripped Sheila’s arm. As the first explosion shattered the black curtain of night, his grip tightened. A second, a third explosion, a rattle of quick shots, blinding flashes of light. Men’s cries of warning seemed little things in the violence of sound and jagged flame.

  Sheila and the man had risen to their feet. He was cursing steadily, fluently, in an ecstasy of joy. He stopped for one moment to look down at her. “Well-armed, eh?” he asked, and then, as a large orange column of flame wrapped in thick black smoke rose straight into the sky, he added, “Holy Mother, that’s the railway. Petrol-cars must have been standing on the lines.” He hugged her in his joy. And then the explosions ceased. There was only the wild chatter of machine guns.

  “We’ve left,” he was saying now. “That’s the Germans taking their turn now.” He watched the orange pillar of flame, “Such damage, such beautiful damage.” His voice calmed. “Well-planned. That’s the way. First the sentries. Quietly, no fuss. Some dynamite well placed. And then the grenades: well placed too. And then some shooting from scattered places, so that they may think there’s a big attack with a lot of men. And then a quick retreat just as the Huns are getting together. That’s the way, meanwhile: hit hard, then run like blazes.”

  Sheila’s excitement left her more quickly. She suddenly felt cold as ice. She watched the thick heavy curls of smoke, blacker than the black night sky, and wondered: how many killed, how many wounded? Adam?

  The man pulled her down once again into the shelter of the bushes.

  “That’s what we have to watch,” he whispered, and pointed to the river.

  “Where’s the bridge?”

  “Too well-guarded.” The man had guessed her worry, for he added confidently, “He will swim it, all right.”

  Sheila felt suddenly weak. He will swim... She stared at the black cold water of the river. The man must have felt her dismay. “Don’t worry. We are used to this. It’s all in a night’s work. It’s nothing.”

  Nothing? Sheila looked at him angrily.

  “Another five minutes. Give him five minutes,” the man said calmly. His eyes never left the river. Then suddenly he gave the low call of a night bird. Just then a flare lit up the riverbanks and turned the orange flames to green. The man thrust Sheila’s face down and held it pressed to the earth. They didn’t move, but Sheila’s heart had quickened. She had seen Adam, a black shape now as immovable and indistinguishable as they were, as he had thrown himself down beside a patch of bushes. Again the man beside her gave the low birdcall. As the flare’s blue light died down, they heard Adam’s running footsteps. The man’s arm was raised; this time the bird’s whistle was scarcely audible. A second flare ripped into the sky, but the three of them were behind a wall of trees and Adam’s hand was round her shoulders as they lay side by side, face down, on the ground.

  “Neat,” the man said approvingly. “Neat job, sir.”

  Adam’s heavy breathing quietened. He nodded. “If they are sending up flares, they aren’t sure Where we’ve gone,” he said. From across the river came the roar of motors. “Now they think they know,” he added. He listened. “They’ve followed those who went northeast to the Vistula.”

  The flares had ceased. Adam sat up. To the man he said, “Reach the forest by the south. Tell Colonel Sierakowski that three have gone towards the Vistula—Ladislas, Kasimierz, and Edmund—and that two others have gone to the north. They’ll be in camp in a week’s time. Julian is dead. Little Jan is wounded. He’s gone to the Halicz farm. Send two men to pick him up there and get him back to the camp. Tell the captain I am proceeding to the south, as we arranged at our last meeting. I expect to see him there next month. He must ask Warsaw to tell Number Sixteen that the Radom-Nowe-Miasto route is now under suspicion and should be used no longer. Is that clear?”

  The man repeated the message for Sierakowski quickly.

  “Good,” Adam said. “I’ll see you in the spring, Ryszard. In the mountains.”

  Ryszard saluted. “In the spring, rotmistrz,” he said cheerily. And then he was gone, a dark shadow slipping into darke
r shadows. Adam took Sheila’s hand, and together they moved through the wood. Only the distant shouts from the little town, as the Germans fought the flames spreading with the wind, broke the silence of the night. Once the sound of distant shooting halted them. “German bullets only,” he said. And then, “Our men are still safe. If they had been cornered, they would have shot back.”

  As they came out of the wood on its south side, Adam paused once more. “Our men got away,” he said at last. The relief in his voice told Sheila how much he had been worrying. He caught her violently in his arms, held her for a moment against his wet body. He kissed her slowly, and then suddenly let her go.

  “Nearly twenty miles to go before daylight,” he said. “Or is that too much for the first part of our journey?” He took her hand once more.

  “To the mountains?”

  “Yes. I’ll keep you there until Olszak and all his experts have a safe plan arranged for you—papers, clothes, and all that. If Olszak can’t think up a safe enough one to please me, you stay until he does.” His voice was determined.

  They were moving into the open field now.

  “What will Olszak say?” Sheila murmured.

  “I’ve more to say about you than he has,” was Adam’s quiet answer.

  * * *

  The night became a number of hours, each with its accomplished miles. There was speed and tension and care, but none of the agony of her night journeys with Jan and Stefan. Adam didn’t force the pace, and yet they appeared to cover more ground. He insisted on a ten-minute rest every hour, and whenever her pace lagged, his arm would be there to help her. Even that contact with him seemed to give her strength. Before dawn, they had reached the end of the first stage of their journey. A quiet-faced peasant woman welcomed them into her small quiet house.

  The second night, they covered thirty miles. This time they were given shelter in a country house, whose owner had been a friend of Adam’s father. Now, his wife dead, his sons killed, he lived alone in the almost empty rooms of his looted home.

  When they set off on the third night’s journey, which was through wide stretches of forest land and uninhabited country, they were given two horses. “Poor specimens, I’m afraid, compared with what you used to ride, Adam,” their host had said, “but it was all I could hide from the damned Germans. These crocks will at least take you a little more quickly than your feet. Leave them at the monastery. They will be brought back here to lend to other travellers.” He had watched them leave, half proudly, half sadly. Sheila felt that the deepest regret of this old man, who lived with perpetual reminders of regret and sorrow, was that he was too old, too ill to be of any use, except as the host of those who travelled secretly. The horses carried them a long distance that night. The flat plains had given way to rich forests and rolling grassland. They travelled far enough away from even the smallest road, so that they were unseen and unheard. Dawn brought them to the monastery. The white-robed priests gave them shelter in the small guesthouse outside the grounds.

  The fourth night they travelled through a country of foothills, each with its small castle or little church on its crest. It was now much colder. The ground was hard with frost. The rain was turning to grains of snow. At dawn, they thawed out in a forester’s warm hut. When they left, they had food with them, and the forester’s wife had given Sheila a fur cap and long boots.

  The fifth night took them to the mountains. At first, the mountains were simply steeper hills, tree-covered, snow-sprinkled. And then the hills heightened, sharpened. The peaks became ice-covered crags, the pine forests climbed only half-way up the steep sides. Adam led her along the finger-like valleys, deep and narrow; along the paths beside the shallow icy streams that clattered down to meet them. Snow was underfoot now, yet either the mountains or the pine forests sheltered them, for Sheila felt warmer than she had felt on the open plains.

  They rested for only an hour on the fifth day. Looking at the dark grey sky above them, Adam shook his head. “We are nearly there,” he said. And then, anxiously, “Sheila, can you keep on walking? We can trust this place even in daylight. There’s nothing to be afraid of here.” He looked up at the sky once more.

  “Except the snow?” Sheila suggested.

  He nodded. “There’s going to be a heavy fall soon. We must keep moving until it comes. Once it starts, we will have to wait until the storm is over. And it might last a week.” Sheila looked at the black rocks showing through the snow on the mountainside. The pine trees, green no longer, seemed black too. There wasn’t a house in sight. She shivered, and said, “You lead, Adam. That makes it easier for me.”

  Their pace had slowed, perhaps because of the snow on the ground which made each step an effort of sinking and lifting wherever the flakes had drifted, perhaps because Adam watched Sheila’s progress as anxiously as he watched the sky.

  “Adam, you don’t have to stop for so many rests,” she said once. “I’m all right.”

  He kissed her and then straightened the fur cap on her head, again.

  “What a bad mountain-climber you’d make, darling,” he answered, his smile broadening as he watched her indignation, and then her answering amusement.

  “Frozen?” he asked.

  “Not as long as we keep moving.” She pulled Zofia’s coat tighter round her neck. She kept doing that nowadays, it seemed.

  “I’ll get you a fur jacket,” Adam said.

  She laughed at that. “The Germans seem miles and miles away, somehow,” she said.

  “Five miles, to be exact. Just over that wall of mountains on your right,” he answered. “Over there is the railway from Cracow to Zakopane. They’ve taken over Zakopane completely. It’s their mountain resort, where tired army officers and Gestapo experts take their little blondes for ten days’ leave.”

  Sheila stared blankly. “And our village?”

  “Quite near Zakopane. Sometimes there’s safety in the lion’s den.”

  At the end of the afternoon, the narrow valley broadened and they saw the village: red roofs on blue-painted houses scattered over the white snow.

  Wisniewski was smiling now. The worry had gone from his face. “Our house is higher up the mountain. It stands above the village,” he said. “We’ll cut up through this pine forest. Just half an hour more. All right, Sheila?”

  She nodded, and he kissed her. “It’s extraordinary—” he said, shaking his head.

  “What’s extraordinary?”

  He looked at her with a smile in his eyes. “Later,” he said. “We’ll talk later, Pani Wisniewska.”

  They climbed slowly through the pine wood. She needed his arm now. He felt her weight sag, and slowed his step still more. She didn’t even notice it. At the edge of the fir trees, Adam halted. There was nothing but silence, and the gathering darkness. In a clearing was a loghouse. A long slope of mountain shoulder was the background. There was smoke from its chimney, a thin column pointing like a grey finger from the wide red roof to the greyer sky. A small candle burned on a table at the window. Adam smiled, and gave a long, low whistle. They waited. The candle moved—as if someone had lifted it and put it back.

  In the summer, Sheila was thinking, the meadow around the house would be green. There would be little yellow and red and blue flowers, white butterflies, birds, and the dark sweet smell of pine trees. There would be a high blue sky, pierced by the jagged mountains gleaming white in the sunshine. There would be red and purple petunias in the carved window-boxes, the sound of a woodman’s axe in the forest, the clear voices of children bringing home the cows from pasture in the evening. The bells round the cows’ necks would strike their slow note at each slow step. In the summer... Well, that wasn’t for her to see.

  She tried to smile. “We managed it,” she said.

  In the valley below, she could see the steady pillars of smoke from the village chimneys. The houses themselves were hidden in the downward curve of pine woods. Beyond the valley was the range of mountains which divided the village from Zakopane.
And the Germans. She gazed at the mountains and said once more, as if to them this time: “We managed it.” She smiled happily. “I managed the journey better than the one with Jan, didn’t I? It was longer, and yet I’m not so tired, Adam.” She stumbled as she spoke. “Or am I, and I just don’t notice it?” Adam’s arm tightened around her waist. He lifted her across the stretch of snow-covered grass towards the house.

  The door opened as they reached it. An old woman, her black knitted shawl drawn tightly by one hand across her throat, against the cold air, waited for them.

  “You’re late,” she said to Adam in her faded voice. “I was beginning to worry.” She gave him her hand, and he bent and kissed it.

  Closing the door behind them, she looked at Sheila. If Adam takes his arm away, Sheila thought, I’m going to fall down... how warm the room is...how safe and warm and safe...

  “My wife,” Adam was saying. “Sheila, this is Pani Olszak.”

  Sheila’s tired eyes opened. “Michal Olszak’s mother,” she heard Adam say softly to her. He led her to a low chair by the open fire. Pulling off her long boots, he began rubbing her feet and legs.

  “Soup,” Madame Olszak said. “That’s what she needs. Hot soup. And a footbath. If your feet are warm, you’re all warm. Veronika! Where’s that girl? Veronika!”

  Veronika came hurrying out of the kitchen, white-haired, plainfaced. She was a good twelve inches taller than her mistress; as broad-shouldered as a man. She wiped her large hands on her apron and a real welcome came into her expressionless eyes as she saw Adam.

  “My nephew, Adam Gunter, and his wife have come to see me,” Madame Olszak was saying. “From Cracow. They are tired and hungry. Give them some soup, Veronika, and bring that washbasin and some hot water in here. Yes, in front of the fire. The bedroom’s too cold to bathe in. Don’t you see how frozen she is? Make them comfortable. They came all this way to see me because they heard I was ill. Imagine that, Veronika! We must take good care of them.”

  Veronika smiled at Adam, and nodded. “All the way from Cracow! Imagine that!” she echoed in her harsh voice. As she turned to look deliberately at Sheila, the welcoming smile gave way to a frank stare. Then, as if suddenly remembering all the things to be done, she whisked round and disappeared into the kitchen.