‘I scrounged some clothes and army rations for them, and they left in the afternoon, singing at the top of their voices. It went right to my heart. Tomorrow they start on the next stage of their long journey. 750 miles …
‘That’s all, dear. More next week.
‘My love to you, and a special hug for Jenny.
MARK
‘P.S. Frau Schmidt had the cheek to wake me up in the night to tell me some of her silver was missing, and she accused those Polish children. I couldn’t have cared less. They could have walked off with half the house for all I minded. Really, these Germans! They spend five years looting Europe and then come crying to you in the middle of the night because someone’s pinched a jam spoon.
‘We found the missing silver in the letter-box next morning. I bet my bottom dollar it was Jan who pinched it – you never saw such a mischievous face – and Ruth who made him take it back. She’s got as firm a hold over that family as Jan had over the chimp.’
16
Through the Russian Zone
‘TAKE THE POTSDAM road and follow your noses,’ the family were told, and off they went, singing a gay song, with their heads in the air. If they had gone due west towards Belgium, they might have travelled more quickly, for this was the general direction of the traffic. Fewer refugees were moving south, so lifts were scarce and they were on their feet most of the time.
They crossed the Elbe near Rosslau by a bridge that had not been too badly damaged for the Russians to repair. Here they were held up for half a day by a spearhead of the Russian army bound (so rumour had it) for Prague, to drive the Germans out of Czechoslovakia.
Never before had Ruth seen so many soldiers. First came the tanks to clear the way. Next, column after column of marching soldiers, tired and dirty in their ragged uniforms. They came from the Ukraine and the Tartar republics, from the Ural mountains and the Caucasus, from the countries of the Baltic, from Siberia, Mongolia. Over the bridge they poured in their thousands, while everyone else stood by to let them pass.
‘I know that song,’ cried Bronia, as she caught a snatch of a Cossack song from a group of soldiers. ‘Father taught it to us. Do you remember?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ said Ruth. ‘It was the summer we spent by the Dunajec River. We were on a raft, floating downstream between the wooded peaks.’
She sighed, and the tune was lost in another burst of singing. Standing there, they heard many songs, some of them bright and jolly, some of them slow and poignantly sad.
The family squeezed over the bridge behind the last of the marching columns.
They were hardly across when screaming horns announced the arrival of the staff cars, mostly Mercedes and Horchs which had been taken from the Nazis. Next, cars with secretaries; cars with war booty – fur coats, textiles, carpets, looted china; lorries with furniture, radios, refrigerators; food lorries with tons and tons of Russian delicacies – caviare, sturgeon, vodka, Crimean wine; lorries bearing proud posters – WE WELCOME THE LIBERATING ARMY.
More marching columns.
Columns of women and girls in grey-green uniform, with tight blouses and high boots. They had come to do the cooking and washing, to help in the hospitals and look after the sick. Tagged on to them were clusters of small boys picked up from the woods and burnt-out villages. They had come because they were hungry and the Red Army was ready to feed them.
‘The whole world’s gone by today. Surely there can’t be any more people left?’ said Bronia, as the dust began to subside.
But there was still the rearguard to come, and soon the dust was flying again under the wheels of hundreds of small light carts drawn by low Cossack horses.
‘Now for a lift!’ cried Jan, as a grey old man, whip in hand, came rattling by in a cart with a canvas roof. And before Ruth could stop him, he had hauled himself up over the tailboard.
‘We’ll never catch him up – the carts are all full,’ cried Ruth.
But soon an open cart, with nothing in the back but a heap of straw, some fodder, and a leg of smoked pork, picked up the three of them. It was an anxious ride, for the cart was travelling more slowly than Jan’s, and what with the dust and the overtaking and the spreading out into fields on either side of the road, they quickly lost sight of Jan.
Jan was perfectly happy. He had landed on a pile of straw as comfortable as a feather bed, beside a sick soldier and a pen with a squawking goose. And if it was not worth his while to make the acquaintance of the soldier, he thought quite differently about the goose.
All afternoon Ruth and Edek kept a look-out for Jan’s cart. As it happened, their vigilance proved unnecessary, for the whole caravan halted at dusk to camp for the night. Fires were kindled, stock replenished from nearby farms, and there was eating and drinking and singing. Jan was quickly found and forgiven.
Next day their ways parted, and the family cut across country in the direction of Bitterfeld and Halle.
Before they left Berlin, the British officer had provided them with ration cards, and with the money he had given them they were able to buy food. For recapturing the chimp Jan had been rewarded with a hundred marks. He entrusted this to Ruth and did not question how she chose to spend it. When at last the money ran out, they were dependent on what they could beg or work for. Work was difficult to find, for the factories were idle and farms had absorbed the first prisoners of war to be released. Some villages refused to admit them, having neither food nor shelter for any more refugees. But for the most part they met with kindness and were not refused food if it could be spared.
Most big towns had their UNRRA food kitchens, and these were always welcome. But best of all were the transit camps. It was the time when camp commandants used to send soldiers round with guns to seize stores. They ransacked warehouses, factories, shops, even garrets and barns, for the peasants had hidden plenty away and the slave workers that swelled the camps often knew the hiding places. One such camp had a Polish section, where a school had been started. Had the family stayed here – and they were pressed to do so – they would have received all the food and schooling and medical attention that they needed. Edek was very tired when they arrived, and Ruth was ready to stay as long as he needed rest. But he recovered after a few days and was eager to be off. Whenever he was tempted to linger, one peep at the silver sword was enough to spur him on again.
All day long the sun smiled down upon them; upon toilers in the fields where the fresh crops were springing; upon towns littered with the debris of war; upon a people numbed by defeat, living from day to day, with no thought for the future; upon women standing in bread queues or wheeling barrows of wood they had collected in the forest for their kitchen fires; upon wounded soldiers sitting on hospital balconies, basking in the sun’s heat. Some of the soldiers waved to the family as they passed by, and the family waved back.
So they came to the edge of the Russian zone.
In the early days of peace there were many places where it was not difficult to slip unobserved from one zone to the next. They crossed the frontier somewhere in the Thuringian forest, without realizing that they had done so, and it was only the unfamiliar uniforms of the soldiers and the strange language of the notices that told them they had now reached the American zone.
17
The Signal
IT WAS THE middle of June. In spite of the long spell of unbroken weather, Edek was no better. At night, as they lay under the bright stars, his cough would keep Ruth awake and she could not throw off her anxiety. Each day his walking became slower and more painful. This was partly because his feet were sore, for his shoes had worn out and the substitute pair he had plaited from reeds had not lasted long. Ruth decided he must rest for a week.
They found a pleasant site in a meadow by a mill-stream. They planned to camp here till she and Jan had earned enough money to buy Edek a new pair of shoes. Ruth took a cleaning job at the local school, while Jan went hay-making. And Edek rested under the trees, with Bronia to look after him. All day he lay in t
he shade, for the sun was scorching hot. At night a chill wind blew; but he was warm, for they had lit a fire for him, and he lay beside it, looking up at the stars that peeped between the willow branches, till he was lulled to sleep by the gentle music of the stream.
So he rested well – and ate well too, for there was no shortage of food. Several times Jan came home from work with a bag full of such food as they had never tasted before – chicken, lobster, salted pork, and luncheon meat. When Ruth asked where it came from, he said, ‘From the farmer. He’s a generous man.’ But her suspicions were not quietened, for it was all in tins and labelled in a strange language.
‘I know he’s stealing it,’ she told Edek. ‘It’s American food, and I think he must get it from the depot. Yet I don’t know – the depot is closely guarded, and I’ve never seen him anywhere near. If he’s thieving, he’ll get caught. The Americans don’t miss much. There’s a hall next to the school, and a military court trying cases all day long.’
‘He brought nothing back yesterday, or the day before,’ said Edek. ‘Perhaps the source has dried up.’
‘He says the farmer has promised him more tomorrow,’ said Ruth.
Edek was determined to clear up the mystery. Without saying a word to Ruth, the next afternoon he went alone to the farm where Jan worked and hid behind a hedge. He saw Jan leave the hay-making before the day’s work was over. Instead of returning to camp, he hurried off in the opposite direction, straight through the town.
Edek followed him to a level-crossing outside the town. Suddenly a ragged youth sprang out of a bush by the roadside and beckoned to Jan. The meeting seemed to have been arranged, for Jan showed no surprise and slipped down from the road to join the youth.
Edek crept as close as he could without making his presence known and waited. He waited so long that he began to wonder if they had given him the slip.
Then suddenly Jan broke out of the cover and ran half-doubled up along one side of the railway line in the direction of the signal ramp. The youth had disappeared.
Edek climbed into a tree which gave a good view of the line. From here he saw Jan swarm up the side of the signal ramp – it extended right across the track – and lie down flat and motionless on top, above the line. What was he up to now? As far as Edek knew, train-wrecking was not one of Jan’s pastimes, for in spite of his twisted sense of values he was not deliberately destructive.
‘I must go and find out,’ thought Edek. And, jumping down from the tree, he walked along beside the track till he came to the foot of the ramp.
‘What’s the game, Jan?’ he called.
Jan was startled, for he was still lying flat and hardly visible and had not noticed him. He swore at Edek and told him to go away.
With a clank and rattle of loose metal that took them both by surprise, the signal on the ‘up’ line changed to green.
‘Go away, you fool, go away!’ Jan screamed at him. And, flinging himself at the signal, he began to tug at it.
Edek was really agitated now, for he could hear the distant rumble of an approaching train. He shouted to Jan to come down, but the boy was working furiously with a spanner and what looked like a pair of wire-cutters and paid no heed.
The noise of the train grew louder. Puffs of dirty smoke rose above the trees.
With the thought of some dreadful accident impending, Edek sprang up the side of the ramp and started to climb.
It was not an exercise for which he was well fitted. He had already spent most of his small reserves of strength, and his muscles were too flabby to give him much grip. The ramp, too, had been badly damaged and hastily and inexpertly repaired. An iron stanchion broke away under his foot. Gasping and coughing, with a great effort he hung on with his hands – and somehow hauled himself up.
When his head appeared over the top, he saw that the signal had changed to red. Jan was slithering backwards like an eel in a frantic hurry. His feet scraped past Edek’s face, nearly knocking him off. As he passed him, his eyes were blazing, his face purple with fury. But because of the din of the train Edek could not hear what he said.
With no thought in his head but to prevent an accident, Edek groped his way along the top of the ramp. As the train – it was a goods train – approached, laboriously chugging, with an endless winding line of trucks, he tottered upright and waved. He need not have done so, for the signal was at red where Jan had put it and the engine had already started to jam the brakes on.
With a great clanking from truck to truck as the bumpers collided, the train screeched to a standstill. A hiss of steam. A long shrill whistling. A dark cloud and a great swallowing of filthy smoke.
When he had finished coughing and wiped the smoke from his eyes he caught sight of someone shouting at him from below. It was not Jan – he had vanished. An American military policeman was pointing a revolver at him.
18
Captain Greenwood
CAPTAIN GREENWOOD OF the American Army of Occupation, aged forty-two, and already grey at the temples, was a lawyer in his home town. His experience fitted him well for his present role of trying petty cases. He went to great trouble to be just. This was seldom easy, as nothing was straightforward in this foreign country, and the need for using interpreters made the hearing of evidence a slow business.
The boy before him was a strange case – Edek Balicki, sixteen, a Pole, of no address, caught interfering with train signals. The prosecutor, Lieutenant James, claimed that he was one of a gang of train robbers and had been seen halting a train. The boy admitted having halted the train, but denied the rest of the charge. As nobody else had been caught and the suspected attempt to rob the train had been abandoned, the whole case could not be proved. The attempt to connect him with a previous train robbery had broken down for lack of evidence. Pressed to give some reason for his action, Edek replied that it was a prank.
Captain Greenwood was puzzled. The boy was obviously ill and did not look the sort to delight in pranks of that nature. Moreover, his refusal to have anyone to defend him did not make matters any easier.
There was a sudden stir at the back of the court, and a corporal came forward with a message for the judge. After a few moments of whispered conversation Captain Greenwood said, ‘Sure – if they can help us. Show them in.’
Ruth, Jan, and Bronia were shown in and made to stand beside Edek. Bronia was holding Ruth’s hand and grinning happily. Jan was biting his lip. His eyes were defiant.
‘There’s been a mistake and I’ve come to explain,’ said Ruth in Polish. ‘This is Jan. It’s all his fault. I want to speak for him.’
The interpreter translated.
‘Who is the other child?’ said Captain Greenwood.
‘My sister Bronia,’ said Ruth. ‘She has nothing to do with this, but I had to bring her along as I’ve nowhere to leave her. We’re on our way to Switzerland and are camping by the mill-stream.’
‘I see. What’s the boy’s full name?’ said Captain Greenwood.
‘Only Jan – that’s the only name of his we know,’ said Ruth.
‘Jan, have you any parents?’ said Captain Greenwood.
‘The grey cat and Jimpy, but they’re dead, and Ruth’s my mother now,’ said Jan, sullenly.
Captain Greenwood could make nothing of this.
Ruth did her best to explain a situation she did not fully understand herself.
‘We take it then that you have no parents, but that this young lady, Ruth Balicki, aged eighteen, sister of Edek Balicki, is your guardian,’ said Captain Greenwood. ‘You claim that Edek Balicki is wrongly accused. Lieutenant James here will read the charge and it will be translated for you. Listen carefully, Jan, and then answer our questions.’
The charge of halting the train and attempted robbery were read and the prisoner was asked, ‘Guilty or not guilty?’
Jan’s answer was to make a bolt for the door, where two guards seized him and brought him back, kicking and biting.
The judge spoke severely, but without effec
t. He turned to Ruth. ‘Have you any control over the boy?’
‘He’s scared of soldiers,’ said Ruth. ‘If you’d kindly send those guards outside, sir, I think he’d behave himself.’
Captain Greenwood gasped. This was not a request that he had met with before. But one glance at the struggle in front of him convinced him that extraordinary measures were justifiable. He told the guards to release the prisoner and wait outside the door. Jan collapsed on the floor, panting and angry, his eyes flashing.
Captain Greenwood waited for him to calm down, then asked him to stand up. To his surprise the boy obeyed.
‘We are here to know the truth,’ he said, abandoning all formality. ‘Now, Jan, will you tell us in your own words what happened?’
Jan looked round the court suspiciously. Except for the lieutenant and the judge, there were no soldiers there – only the interpreter (a civilian), Edek, Bronia, and Ruth. This gave him some of the confidence he needed. He looked at Ruth.
She smiled at him – but if her smile was an encouragement to him to speak out, her words were a warning.
‘Jan, no hanky-panky,’ she said. ‘If you try that, you know what you’ll get.’
Jan tried to see what she was holding behind her back, but he had to guess. With lowered eyes he addressed the judge. ‘It’s not Edek’s fault. I changed the signal and he came to stop me. I ran away and he was caught. He needn’t have been caught, but he’s very stupid for a boy of his age. He makes a mess of everything.’
‘What made you want to stop the train?’ said Captain Greenwood.
‘The food trucks.’
‘You were going to raid them yourself?’
‘No.’
‘You were one of a gang?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was Edek Balicki a member?’
The Silver Sword Page 7
