While Still We Live

by Helen Macinnes

  Peter shook his head. “Not drunk,” he said. “Other fellow’s drunk. Not Peter. Not drunk. Just tired.”

  “Then I hope he’s drunker than you are.”

  Peter looked so shamefaced that Sheila wanted to laugh.

  “Then what did you find out about him?” Olszak went on. “Or can’t you tell us?”

  Peter wiped his face with his hand as though to drive away sleep from his eyes. “Nothing. He’s looking for his wife and her kid brother. That’s all.”

  “Didn’t he talk?”

  “Plague on it, didn’t he talk? He talked us all under the table.”

  Olszak continued his questioning. Peter, making an effort, concentrated. And he achieved something. The answers were slow, but conclusive. The man was looking for his wife. Once he had asked about the forest: was there good hunting there? Mostly they had talked about the war, about what the future held for them. Zak had asked him what he was going to do: was he going to fight on? The man—Ryng was his name, yes, that was it, Ryng—had said he was going to find his wife first. After that, he’d know what to do.

  Even Olszak was satisfied. “He didn’t ask about a white dog, did he?”

  Peter looked surprised. “No,” he said very decidedly. “No, No dog.”

  Olszak was pacing the small patch of floor. “Well,” he said at last, to Madame Aleksander, “this man Ryng isn’t interested in either you or the camp. That’s one good thing.” He turned to Sheila. “But I’m afraid I chose an unlucky night for your guide. You will have to wait until tomorrow night before you leave. When Zygmunt takes Madame Aleksander and Stefan back to the forest, then you will go with Peter. He should be fit, by that time.” Olszak gave Peter a bitter look and received an apologetic grin in return.

  “I’ll be all right. Just tired. Sleep,” said Peter. He curled himself comfortably if somewhat precariously onto the bench, pillowing his cheek on his arm.

  “Not in here,” said Olszak, and with unexpected strength he pulled the half-sleeping man towards the door. “Sleep it off in the front room,” he said with a final push on the man’s shoulder which sent him lumbering down the hall. “Fool,” he added.

  “You forget men aren’t trains. They can’t be made to run on time, Michal,” said Madame Aleksander. He didn’t answer. He stood at the door, listening.

  Kati was helping Peter into the front room. And Zygmunt and Ryng were re-entering the house. Olszak waited until the babel of sound in the corridor had ended before he left the door. He was looking at his watch again.

  “This is really most regrettable,” he said. He went over to Sheila unexpectedly. “I would take you to Nowe Miasto myself. But by tomorrow night I have to be near Warsaw. There’s a meeting which I must attend. I simply cannot come with you.”

  “I’ll go with Peter tomorrow. It will be safe enough then. We’ll take care.” Mr. Olszak was watching her, measuring her lifeless face and the quiet voice. She would do as she had said.

  “Good. Remember, after Radom the journey will be pleasanter.”

  “Where do I go from there?” Again that quiet acceptance. He felt angry with himself. His voice was all the colder.

  “To Cracow. Then to Vienna. By train. Your story and papers will reach you at Radom, where you will be hidden until they arrive. In three weeks’ time you should be—” He paused. He took her hand. “You must take care. You have suddenly become twice the responsibility you once were. I will be held doubly answerable for you now.” His eyes were half-laughing, half-serious. For the first time since she had known him, Mr. Olszak seemed completely human.

  Sheila smiled back. I don’t know why I like you at all, she was thinking. I should hate you; and yet I cannot. I don’t know why I should smile for you, except that I know you want me to. She said, “Yes.”

  He kissed her hand, and quickly turned away. “Trust is the most powerful flattery,” he was saying in a low voice to Madame Aleksander. “She weakens my resolution, that girl.”

  “Michal, what have you been doing?” Madame Aleksander challenged him.

  “Playing the thankless role of father,” he answered.

  Together they looked at Sheila. But the girl wasn’t listening to them. She had walked over to the high bed which stood in the corner of the room. She was standing before the little shelf beside it, with its two small candles under the carved figure on its cross. She was watching the hollow cheeks, the deep eyes, with a strangely curious detachment.

  “What is it, Sheila?” Madame Aleksander asked at last. Sheila turned to face her slowly. Then she became alive, as she noticed the room again. Olszak had left.

  “He’s gone?” she said quickly. And no reprieve. No last-minute reprieve. The last faint hope flickered and died.

  “Come here, Sheila.” Madame Aleksander took her hand and led her to the bench. “Now the simplest thing is to begin at the beginning.”

  But Kati had come back to the room. Her round pink face looked as if she were going to cry.

  “Peter’s dead asleep,” she announced vehemently. “And Zygmunt’s getting louder and louder. Everything’s going wrong.”

  “Provided Zygmunt doesn’t talk about the camp...” Sheila began.

  “He’s not doing that. He and Ryng was just telling stories.”

  And Kati is temporarily forgotten, Sheila thought. She said, “Peter passed out very suddenly. Does he always do that?”

  “Usually he’s careful, when he knows there’s a job to do. It must have been that last drink Ryng dared him to take. He said it was dynamite. Peter didn’t believe him.”

  “But it was?” Sheila felt suddenly very wide awake. “Ryng gave him a drink? How? I thought you were serving Ryng drinks.”

  “Ryng had a flask of his own.”

  “Oh.” Sheila exchanged glances with Madame Alexander. “Kati, you’d better get back to that room and watch that flask.”

  Kati looked at them. “Why can’t I have just one quiet evening nowadays, with my sewing?” she asked plaintively. “Just one?” Only Stefan didn’t understand.

  Madame Aleksander watched the closing door. “The Germans have taken our food, but they let us have plenty of cheap drink. They’ve taken away our guns, but they let us carry flasks,” she said bitterly. Then she noticed Stefan’s heavy head and sagging shoulders. From the bed she lifted one of the solid pillows, straightened his body on the hard floor, cushioned his cheek. She pushed back the thick black hair from his brow, and kissed him gently. He was already asleep.

  She rose to her feet, her hands straightening the mended skirt, the darned shawl, smoothing the white softness of her hair. She looked round the strange room.

  “How lucky I am,” Madame Aleksander said. “I still have Stefan and Stanislaw.” She paused before the crucifix. “The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be His Holy name,” she said quietly. She crossed herself slowly.

  She came towards Sheila, tears for the first time in her blue eyes. She clasped the girl suddenly, and Sheila felt all her self-imposed barriers dissolving like the grey-edged ice of a glacier.

  “Now,” said Madame Aleksander, putting aside her own worries and troubles, “we’ll begin at the beginning.”

  34

  THE STRANGER

  Madame Aleksander was asleep. Sheila raised herself slowly, carefully. She lifted Madame Aleksander’s hand gently away from her arm, and slipped her feet over the edge of the high bed. The warmth of the room was stifling her. After the forest, the small room seemed overfurnished, overheated. Its small comforts irritated her. She opened the shutters more widely. Outside, there was silence, the grey shapes of trees, and houses, air which was crisp and cold and clean. She thought of the forest and the men who waited there.

  Her feet began to freeze. She turned back to the bed and searched for her shoes. She watched Madame Aleksander for a moment. The calm, gentle voice still haunted her. “Don’t leave him without seeing him first, Sheila.” Sheila’s mouth was in a tight, unpleasant line as she butt
oned the instep strap of one shoe. “He isn’t a regular soldier any more. His fighting isn’t governed by rules.” Sheila forced the other hard round button through its tight hole. “Michal doesn’t know him as I do. He lived beside us, often with us. I knew him as a child and a boy so I know him better as a man than all the Michals in the world.” Sheila lifted the gun from under the pillow and secured it once more under her blouse. She reached for the shawl lying on the bench. “If he believes Michal is right, he will accept this. If he doesn’t, he will become morose, bitter, sullen. He will take wild chances.” Sheila walked over to the stove. Stefan’s head had slipped off the pillow onto the floor. She eased the boy’s strained neck back onto the pillow, tried to straighten the wrinkled blanket with which his mother had covered him last night when he had fallen asleep on the floor. “Adam’s greatest asset was his directness. He was always honest with himself. He never pretended, never compromised. Michal has been too quick to decide.” The ashes inside the stove’s little door seemed dead, and yet when the fresh wood was added, their heat would kindle flame. She wanted to laugh at her weak symbolism. It was the result of five o’clock in the morning, no sleep, and a gentle voice telling her the things which made her still more unhappy.

  She walked to the door. The restlessness which hadn’t let her sleep, which had made it impossible to lie on that bed, now urged her on. Behind her, the still figures didn’t move. She stepped quickly into the corridor, closed the door carefully so that the latch slipping into position would not awaken them. In the long hall’s darkness, she felt her way with her hands pressed against the rough wall. There was heavy snoring from one of the closed doors which she passed. The smell of sour cabbage seemed stronger. Still the haunting voice said sadly, “Sheila, you were too honest to please me by marrying Andrew. You were too honest to go away with Steve on false pretence. Keep that honesty. It’s the only thing that matters. Don’t do what you think is noble or clever. Do what you know is right.” In the front room, the half-opened door showed Peter and another man asleep over the large wooden table. The light was too dim—the shutter had been opened, but the sun had not yet risen—to let her see the other man clearly. Perhaps it was the man Ryng. No, he was going to sleep in the barn. It was probably the villager Zak, who had never got home to his own bed after last night’s celebrations. It didn’t matter, anyway. Everyone was asleep.

  She opened the door of the house carefully, after fumbling for some time to find how its catch worked. The dim light from the front room helped her solve that problem. The quiet village greeted her, as she closed the door equally carefully behind her. She might have one half hour of peace before the smoke from the chimneys thickened, the window shutters were opened, and the people started another day of work and worry. She moved towards the back of the house. It seemed more sheltered. There, in this mixture of garden and field, she could walk and think. The hedge of bushes, now stripped of fruit and leaves, would protect her not only from the early morning wind which froze the dewdrops on the thin brown branches, but from other houses. She wanted no eyes to invade her loneliness.

  She halted beside one of the larger trees. Over the inn and its side building, over the rest of the village, over the forest two miles to the south, was nothing but silence. In spite of the dreary light, half night, half dawn, she felt suddenly happy. The forest was still safe. Surely if the Germans had heard that shot, there would have been at least a patrol out by this time. Surely the forest and its secret were safe. Perhaps it was the need for this reassurance which had brought her out of door. Certainly, she felt calm again.

  She pulled the shawl more closely round her shoulders. She was thinking more clearly, now. By the end of ten minutes, she had given herself an answer. Both Mr. Olszak and Madame Aleksander were wrong. One had made the decision for her; the other wanted her to make the decision for Adam Wisniewski. And both were wrong. Adam alone could decide. He knew what he had to do, how best he could do it. The decision was his. And the tragedy was that she would be gone from this village before he knew there was a decision to make. It wasn’t even real tragedy—death would have been that—it was merely frustration. And then she thought, what if Adam knew there was a decision to make, what if he had decided even before Olszak had come to the camp? What if he had been deciding all these last days, while he had watched her and she had avoided him? Then the frustration would be twice as bitter.

  A movement from the door of the barn as it opened caught her attention. Weeks of caution make her shrink naturally back against the tree. It was probably the man Ryng, but it was just as well that he shouldn’t see her. The less anyone knew about Jadwiga’s guests, the better. She had drawn too far back against the tree to be able to see the barn doorway clearly: all she had seen for a moment was a man, his head turned away from her as he looked at the silent houses. Perhaps he had decided to leave. Perhaps he was restless as she had been. Those who travelled secretly would always be restless, always worrying about what was happening outside the house that sheltered them. She waited for a minute, and then looked again. The barn door was closed. No one was in sight. She felt a sudden pity for the lonely figure she had seen. Had he begun to realise his search was hopeless, and yet he didn’t want to admit it?

  She shivered, and realised she was chilled. She left the tree and went back quickly to the house. The village would soon be stirring. Perhaps Madame Aleksander had awakened and was anxious.

  Quickly she entered the inn and shut the door carefully behind her. She was left in complete darkness. That warned her. Someone had closed the door of the front room and its shaft of weak light into the hall was gone. That, and a sudden feeling of fear, warned her. She drew back against the wall and waited, staring along the blackness of the corridor. The house seemed still asleep. She moved one foot forward cautiously, stretched out a hand to guide her along the wall. She heard a movement, as careful as her own, and she froze. Someone was beside her, touching. A man’s hand blundered along her outstretched arm and then gripped it. For a moment they stood facing each other in the darkness.

  “Who is it?” the man asked quietly. “Who is it?” he repeated. It wasn’t Zygmunt or Peter. It was the voice of the man Ryng. Last night, she had thought the voice was familiar. Now she knew that it was. But whose voice, whose voice? She said nothing. The grip on her arm, the hand reaching towards her head warned her. Here was danger, she told herself. Here was danger. He was forcing her towards the door. He was going to open it, he was going to see her clearly. He was trying to feel the shape of her head, of her face. The large hand touched her straining cheek, brushed against her mouth. She bit savagely, heard him curse, wrenched the other arm free as she struck sharply with the heel of her fist against his wrist. She ran along the corridor. His footsteps hesitated. One of the room doors was thrown open, and Kati was there, half-dressed, her fingers weaving the plait of hair which fell over her shoulder.

  “What’s going on here?” she demanded loudly. She looked at the desperation in Sheila’s face, and then stepped into the hall, placing her body between Sheila and Ryng, who still hesitated near the main entrance.

  “Came to see if it was time for breakfast,” Ryng said. “Found someone sneaking about. Thought it was a spy.”

  “It isn’t time for breakfast. And that’s my cousin Magda who comes to help clean the bar every morning. What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing. She bit my hand.”

  “She doesn’t like men, scared of them. You shouldn’t have put a finger on her.” Then Kati called over her shoulder gently. “It’s all right, Magda. Don’t worry. He won’t hurt you.”

  Sheila stood quite still. She wished she could turn round and see the man’s face, but she daren’t risk that. Perhaps he might be able to see her more clearly than she thought. So she stood still, and leaned against the wall with her head bowed, and was a terrified Magda. Actually, she wasn’t unterrified.

  Kati’s voice was abrupt. “Get back to the barn. I’ll bring you something to eat wh
en it’s ready—what there is of it. Lucky for you that Magda wasn’t a spy.”

  To Sheila, she said crossly, “Don’t be a fool, Magda. Men don’t eat you.”

  The front door closed behind Ryng’s slow footsteps. Sheila turned to face Kati at last. The girl finished plaiting her hair and said softly, as she coiled the braids round her head, “Hope he believed me.”

  Sheila nodded. Her heart was still beating too insistently. There was sweat on her brow.

  “Better get back to your room. You are shivering with cold. I’ll come and show you how to feed the fire.” Kati, still in her striped petticoat and white linen chemise with its pink ribbon slotted through the embroidered lace round its wide neckline, took Sheila’s arm and led her towards the end of the corridor.

  “Orders are that no stranger is to learn about visitors from the camp. That’s why I had to make up that story. But what did he do to you?”

  “Just tried to see who I was.” Sheila shivered. “I hate people pawing me,” she said fiercely.

  “What? Everyone?” Kati asked with mock belief.

  Sheila smiled, too. “Now I begin to feel I behaved like a fool. I should have answered him when he asked who I was. I should have made up a story like yours. Then there would have been no fuss. And yet somehow I couldn’t answer him. I really was quite dumb with fear. Kati, I’ve met that man... Part of me recognised him in the darkness, but the rest of me isn’t clever enough...”

  Kati was looking at her with mild tolerance. Zygmunt had told her about this girl. She was the Chief’s girl. She was leaving him for no reason Zygmunt or Kati could guess. Sometimes that turned a girl’s brain, sometimes that...