Nocturne

by Diane Armstrong

  Elzunia muttered as the ribbon was tied on top of her head and hoped she wouldn’t meet anyone she knew.

  As they turned the corner a few blocks further on, all thoughts about her appearance vanished. Several buildings had toppled onto the pavement, leaving jagged towers of masonry pointing at the sky. Bits of doors and windows were strewn over the pavement and a balcony hung precariously from a wall. ‘You, miss, out of the way, quick,’ a man shouted.

  People were wandering around like sleepwalkers, poking among the rubble, shouting the names of loved ones. Some lay on the ground moaning while others bent over them, trying to make them comfortable. One of them, a stout woman with a double chin, was propping a man’s head on her lap and was about to place a glass of water to his lips when Elzunia rushed forward.

  ‘Stop!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t give him anything to eat or drink. He might need surgery.’

  The woman put down the glass. From her narrowed eyes, it was clear that she didn’t take kindly to being corrected by a mere girl.

  ‘Well now,’ she said. ‘Since you know so much, don’t just stand there. Come and help.’

  Elzunia inched forward. Sickened by the blood, she couldn’t remember what she had learnt at first-aid classes. First you had to make sure they were breathing, but what were you supposed to check next: bleeding or broken bones? She wanted to back away but the woman fixed her with an insistent stare.

  Tereska was pulling her arm. ‘Come on, Miss Elzunia,’ she drawled in her slow country accent. ‘This is no place for you. The ambulance will be here soon; they’ll know what to do. We have to hurry and get some bread before they sell out.’

  Elzunia walked on, reproaching Tereska for dragging her away but secretly grateful to have an excuse to leave the frightening scene.

  Back home, she sat on her bed daydreaming. In a scene like the one she had just witnessed, the handsomest boy she’d ever seen was lying injured on the road while bombs were falling all around him. Risking death, she ran over to him and, as she splinted his broken arm and wound a bandage around his head, he gazed at her with admiration and said —

  ‘Elzunia, I want to talk to you!’ Her father’s voice cut through her fantasy. With a sigh, she went into the lounge room.

  ‘It’s too dangerous for you and your mother to stay in Warsaw,’ he said. ‘I want both of you to go to our country house until things settle down. Stefan and I will stay here.’

  No amount of arguing could dissuade him. He was too old to fight but too proud to abandon his city. To him, leaving smacked of cowardice, and he refused to join the exodus. From Stefan’s expression, Elzunia could see that he was thrilled to be asked to stay with his father and have the opportunity of gaining his approval. She longed to stay too but her father was adamant. ‘This is no place for women and children,’ he said. ‘The air raids are getting worse and this morning the bastards even bombed firemen trying to put out the fires.’

  For once, he didn’t apologise for swearing in front of the children.

  That night, Elzunia tossed in her bed, too agitated to sleep. For the first time in her life, the family was about to be split up. She quailed at the prospect of staying with her mother and dreaded what lay ahead, especially as she wouldn’t have her father to protect her. ‘Let it be over quickly,’ she muttered over and over before falling into a dreamless sleep.

  Three

  Everyone was scrambling to get out of Warsaw. That’s how it seemed to Elzunia as their black Skoda inched along a road clogged with cars, bicycles, trucks and horse carts. Petrol fumes, combined with the smell of the leather upholstery, made her breakfast rise up into her throat.

  ‘Mama, I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘Can’t you hold on just a bit longer? If we stop now, we’ll never get back into this traffic. If you could only —’ She didn’t get any further because Elzunia was gagging. ‘Pull over, quick,’ she ordered their chauffeur.

  A moment later, Elzunia was bending over a ditch, holding her stomach and retching while people streamed past like pebbles pushed along by a powerful current. When she straightened up, she saw cars with bedding, boxes, bundles and valises tied onto the roof, stretching as far back as she could see.

  She had never seen so many people all at once. In between the cars, old women with scarves on their heads and men in battered hats and threadbare jackets sat on top of wooden carts pulled by scrawny horses, while their children sat on the edge, their legs swinging over the side as they tried to hold on to the bird cages, baskets and pots and pans heaped beside them.

  Some pushed overloaded barrows, stopping frequently to wipe their sweating brows with the back of their hands; others carried their belongings in rucksacks on their backs or changed suitcases from one blistered hand to the other as they shuffled along the endless road. Mothers shifted fretting babies from one hip to another while crying toddlers pulled at their skirts as they dragged their tired little feet in the dust.

  Occasionally a woman had held up a child and pleaded with Lusia and Elzunia’s chauffeur, Pan Maciej, to let them ride for a while but Lusia had given him strict instructions not to stop for anyone. ‘You don’t know what kind of people they are. Once they get in, there’ll be no getting rid of them. Besides, we’re squashed as it is.’ Elzunia had argued that someone could sit beside their chauffeur but her mother was adamant.

  While Elzunia was wiping her face, Lusia moved into the shade of a tall poplar, undid a couple of the tiny covered buttons on her cream silk blouse and fanned herself with a bough she pulled off the tree. Although it was mid-September, the sultry weather showed no signs of making way for autumn. In the distance, peasant women in kerchiefs and big aprons were bending over corn stalks that glistened in the sun. It was the kind of idyllic rural scene that city artists loved to paint but none of the travellers on this road were interested in their surroundings. Their minds were focused on the journey’s end and where they would sleep that night.

  ‘Come on, Elzunia, we have to get going,’ her mother said, glancing at her watch for the hundredth time, as if afraid of missing an urgent appointment.

  Elzunia climbed back into the Skoda but the road was so jammed with traffic that no one would let them in, and, when the chauffeur pressed the horn, he only succeeded in enraging the refugees.

  ‘Look at them. Just because they’ve got a car, they think everyone has to make way for them,’ shouted a woman pushing a wheelbarrow. Sweat ran down her face and the tendons on her neck stood out. ‘You wait; everything’s going to change from now on. Your lot won’t be so high and mighty any more!’

  Lusia sighed. She couldn’t come to terms with the chaos or with the ineptitude and dishonesty of their leaders who had misled them about everything. Only a few days before, everyone had been jubilant because Churchill had announced that England was now at war with Germany. Crowds had rushed to the British Embassy, whistling, blaring car horns and tossing flowers to the English ambassador who came out on to the balcony waving to the crowd like a Roman emperor after a victorious campaign. But, apart from issuing declarations, Britain and France had done nothing to help. And the night before leaving Warsaw, Lusia had heard the shocking news on London radio that the head of the Polish army, Marshal Smigly-Rydz, had left the capital, along with the entire government of Poland. She still shook with anger at the fact that their leaders had deserted them — left them to face their invaders alone.

  Now, surveying this endless throng of refugees, she saw it as purposeless and panic-stricken as a swarm of bees after the death of its queen, and cursed the cowardly marshal and the ministers.

  A group of young soldiers, some of whom looked no older than Stefan, trudged past, heads down. Their boots were covered in dust and their shirts hung out of their stained trousers. Some hobbled along, leaning on their companions; others had slings around their arms and blood-stained bandages around their heads. The able-bodied ones walked with the slow, dragging gait of the defeated, their heads full of images they would never des
cribe. No wonder they were dejected, Lusia thought. Losing a battle so fast was demoralising enough without being deserted by your commander.

  When a big Humber halted to let them into the traffic, their car shuddered and stalled. Cursing under his breath, Pan Maciej turned the key in the ignition again but the engine was dead.

  He got out and raised the bonnet and poked about while Lusia drummed her fingers on the leather seat. For this to happen now, of all days. She leaned out the window. ‘Is this going to take long?’

  ‘Prosze pani, I don’t know how long it will take. It might take a minute or it might take an hour. That’s if I can fix it at all.’

  She groaned. ‘We should have taken the train.’

  ‘Madame, the Germans have bombed the railway lines.’ He spoke slowly with exaggerated patience, as if speaking to a dim-witted child. ‘The trains are held up for most of the day while they repair the lines, and, when they finally get going, they’re jammed with soldiers. Thousands of civilians are stranded on the railway stations. I’ve even heard of people being trampled and falling under the trains in their rush to get on.’

  Elzunia had listened in sullen silence to the conversation. She felt aggrieved that while she had been retching by the roadside, her mother had shown no sympathy for her at all. Now, as she contemplated the image of people being squashed beneath trains, she quivered on the edge of another bout of nausea.

  ‘Mother, it’s no use going on about it,’ she said. ‘Stop nagging Pan Maciej, so he can fix the engine.’

  Lusia fluttered her hand in a helpless gesture. She thought of Edward and Stefan sitting comfortably back at home in their apartment, drinking tea while she was stuck on this highway going nowhere. It had been a mistake to listen to Edward and leave Warsaw.

  Pan Maciej was tapping on her window, wiping his blackened fingers with a cloth. ‘I can’t get the engine started. We need an automobile mechanic.’

  ‘So what’s supposed to happen now?’ Lusia demanded. ‘Where are we to find a mechanic? And how do we get out of here?’

  She was still railing at him when a covered truck drew level with them. The driver, a cheerful fellow with a snub nose and pink cheeks, leaned out. He looked as though he’d just walked off the farm except for the air-force cap perched at a jaunty angle on his head. As his eyes fell on Lusia’s delicate face and desperate expression, he pulled up and turned to his companion.

  ‘We can give them a lift to the next town, can’t we?’

  But the other airman was staring moodily out of the window and merely shrugged.

  Lusia glanced at the khaki tarpaulin that covered the truck and an expression of distaste flitted across her face. But before she could refuse, Elzunia said, ‘Thank goodness you came along or we’d be here all day.’

  When the driver untied the thick rope that secured the canvas cover, they saw that the back of the truck was filled with airmen. After they’d hoisted Lusia and the chauffeur onto the truck, the driver said to Elzunia, ‘You’re so tiny, you can sit up front with me.’

  As he turned the key in the ignition, he said, ‘That was bad luck your car breaking down back there.’

  ‘But it was good luck coming across you.’ Elzunia smiled.

  ‘An optimist, eh? That’s what I like!’

  As they crept along the highway leading south, Elzunia and the driver chatted while his companion stared gloomily out of the window, not saying a word. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that under his air-force cap, his angular face was pitted. There was something interesting about his melancholy air and the bitter curve of his mouth but, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t engage him in conversation.

  ‘We’re on our way to Lublin to regroup, so we can go on fighting from there,’ the driver was saying.

  ‘Don’t tell me you believe that?’ As the other man said this, his heavy-lidded eyes rested on Elzunia.

  The driver turned to her. ‘Don’t let him upset you. Ever since our defeat, he’s been in this grouchy mood and he can’t snap out of it.’

  As the truck lurched to a stop once more, Elzunia looked around. In a wayside shrine, Christ hung on the cross. Blood poured from his wounds and a garland of cornflowers and daisies rested on his head. To their right, past a clump of spindly sunflowers, two girls with kerchiefs on their braided hair were walking through the field, laughing. Occasionally they straightened up and shielded their eyes against the sun as flocks of black jays flew overhead.

  Elzunia was about to say that these country girls didn’t even seem to realise that their country was at war when suddenly they heard a whistling, shrieking sound far above.

  ‘Bloody Stukas with their Jericho trumpets,’ the driver cursed. ‘Probably heading for Warsaw.’

  The other guy gritted his teeth until the hinge of his jaw jumped under the skin. The Stukas were coming closer now, and the shrill sound puckered the skin on the back of Elzunia’s neck. They weren’t flying past, they were diving, darting, swooping low over the highway, so close that she could see a pilot’s face clearly in his brown leather helmet. From his expression, he might have been on his way to a party.

  Firm hands grabbed her by the waist and, before she had time to protest, the taciturn airman had pulled her off the truck and thrown her, like a sack of potatoes, into a ditch. She wanted to shout at him but her face was in the dirt and all the breath had been squeezed from her lungs as he flung himself on top of her.

  She was still struggling to push him off when she heard the explosion. The ground trembled violently and for the next few moments her head was spinning. She could hear nothing at all. As soon as she felt his weight lift off, she tried to scramble to her feet but her legs buckled and she sank to the ground. Far away, someone was screaming. Around her, everything was ominously silent. Two horse carts lay on their sides, their contents spilled across the highway and there were bodies on the road. There was a deep crater in front of the truck. Then she heard a woman screaming, and in the background the murmur of prayers. ‘Holy Mary, full of grace …’ A horse whinnied and a woman yelled, ‘May they roast in hell for eternity, the filthy murderers!’

  Elzunia looked over and saw a patch of scarlet on the cornfield. There was no trace of the two girls but one brown boot lay on the ground. She looked again at the red stains and froze. That grinning Stuka pilot must have fired at those girls as if they were targets in a shooting gallery.

  She clasped her arms tightly around her body. Her mind was blank and the sound of the explosion still reverberated in her ears.

  ‘Thank God you’re not hurt.’ Her mother was kneeling beside her and her voice was breaking with emotion. Dead leaves and clumps of soil clung to Lusia’s silk stockings and her coiled hair had come loose. ‘You were in the front and, when they started firing … thank God you had the sense to jump into the ditch.’

  In a hoarse whisper Elzunia said, ‘It was that airman.’

  She remembered his strong arms lifting her out of the cabin, and the pressure of his lean, hard body lying over hers. She sprang up. ‘I have to find him.’ She looked around, hoping to spot him in the crowd but her mother swayed and tottered backwards. Elzunia caught her in time and sat beside her on the ground, her arm around her mother’s trembling shoulders.

  ‘Warsaw can’t be worse than this,’ Lusia said. ‘We’re going back.’

  Four

  As the truck inched its way towards Lublin, even the garrulous driver fell silent and Adam noticed that his face was white and his hands were trembling. He, too, was shaken after the air raid that had left so many dead and wounded on the teeming highway, and, grateful for his companion’s silence, he tried to comprehend the swiftness of the catastrophe that had befallen Poland in the first week of the war.

  When the order to take to the skies had finally been given, he had felt a sense of relief. The incident at the Europejski Hotel and the argument with his father had left him feeling flat. In the last days of August, when the air force was put on alert and the pla
nes were sent to a secret airfield outside Warsaw, he had paced up and down, impatient to fight the Germans and prove himself in aerial combat. He couldn’t wait to see his father’s face when it was over and he could tell him that the air force had destroyed the Luftwaffe.

  While the airmen had waited, they’d speculated about the relative strength of Polish and German air power.

  ‘We’re better pilots but they’ve got more bombers and fighters than we have horse carts,’ his friend Stasiek had said. ‘And, let’s face it, our planes can’t match their Junkers and Messerschmitts. It’ll be like putting snails in a race against cheetahs.’

  ‘It’s training, skill and stamina that count,’ Adam had argued. ‘That’s why we’ll beat them.’

  As soon as their squadron had received the order, they’d hurled themselves against the enemy planes that blackened the sky over Warsaw, but the German bombers and fighters just kept coming, wave after wave, like swarms of locusts. No matter how fiercely they fought, how many sorties they flew, or how many enemy planes they shot down, within one week the Germans had control of Polish skies, and Warsaw lay defenceless beneath them.

  Adam was flying in formation beside Stasiek during one of the sorties over Warsaw when he spotted the Junker above them. He cursed his Potez P-11 for not being able to fly high enough to reach it. Just then a Messerschmitt swooped down and riddled Stasiek’s plane with bullets. He must have hit the petrol tank because a moment later the cockpit burst into flames. Adam watched, gripping the column with white knuckles until he saw that Stasiek had managed to bail out and a few moments later his parachute opened up like a mushroom floating in space. Thank God. In a few moments he’d touch the ground. Then he heard the staccato of machine-gun fire and Stasiek crumpled and plummeted to earth like a stone. Adam’s mouth was dry and his hands shook so much he needed all his strength to control the plane. ‘The bastard,’ he kept repeating. ‘The fucking Nazi bastard.’