The Silver Sword

by Ian Serraillier

‘He will if I don’t have my sword,’ said Jan. ‘And we’ll never find your father either. He gave me the sword and it’s our guide and lifeline. We can’t do without it.’

  He spoke with such certainty that she almost believed him. It was true that, while they had the sword, fortune had been kind to them. And now Edek was more gravely ill than he had ever been. But all she said was, ‘Go to sleep, Jan. Everything will be all right.’

  Jan did not go to sleep – it was Ruth who slept. There came a time towards dawn when she could not keep her eyes open any longer.

  The fire was cold and the sun peering over the rim of the hills when she woke. Jan and Ludwig had gone. A crumpled blanket and a half-moon of flattened grass showed where they had lain.

  Her first thought was to run after Jan. Then a glance at the two sleepers reminded her that she had other responsibilities more pressing. Gently she touched Edek’s hand. It had hardly any warmth in it. His face was frighteningly pale. Giving way to panic, she leaned over to listen for his breathing. Yes, he was breathing. Thank God for that. But he did not look as if he would be able to get up, let alone walk.

  The road was empty and there was nobody in sight. Her strong faith seemed to desert her and she felt more dreadfully alone than ever. Was it true what Jan had said about the sword?

  With a fierce effort of will she took herself in hand and began to prepare breakfast. There was still food in the knapsack left over from what Mrs Wolff had given her.

  Bronia was the first to wake, and she ate hungrily. She did not seem at all worried to find Jan and Ludwig gone. ‘Jan can look after himself,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘He forgets that we may need him to look after us,’ said Ruth.

  The sun stealing over his drawn face woke Edek. He was too dazed to notice that Jan and Ludwig were missing. Ruth could not persuade him to eat anything.

  ‘What’s wrong with Edek? His eyes are all glassy,’ said Bronia.

  ‘I expect it’s the heat,’ said Ruth, and Bronia was satisfied with the answer. Though it was still early, the sun was already hot. Yet another scorching day was in store for them.

  Ruth had almost to lift Edek to his feet. When she let go of him, he fell over. With Bronia’s help she got him up again, and with their arms round him they staggered along to the roadside. Edek seemed just sensible enough to understand that he was expected to walk, and after a few paces he managed fairly well with just Ruth to steady him. But he looked as if he were sleep-walking and it was only a matter of time before he must collapse.

  ‘Shall we have a ride today?’ said Bronia.

  ‘Of course we shall,’ said Ruth.

  ‘The driver said yesterday that there was no traffic on this road going to Switzerland,’ said Bronia.

  ‘He was wrong,’ said Ruth. ‘Look – there’s something coming now.’

  But it was only a labourer on a bicycle, who hardly gave them a glance as he passed by.

  ‘I should have asked him for help,’ thought Ruth when, after an hour of painful walking, nobody else had appeared.

  Then Edek collapsed. There were beads of sweat on his brow and he kept muttering, ‘I can’t go on. I can’t go on.’ Ruth dragged him into the shade and told Bronia to stay by the roadside and stop the first person that passed.

  A woman in slacks came by, pushing a barrow. She seemed to be looking for firewood. Ruth made her understand that they wanted help, and she shrugged her shoulders and made off. A little later a lorry with a tarpaulin roof stretched over a frame came along. At Bronia’s signal, it braked to a halt. She called to the driver in Polish. He was an American GI. His face lit up when he heard her speak, and to her astonishment he answered her in her own language.

  He stepped down from the lorry, lighting a cigarette as he did so.

  ‘Have you come from Poland too?’ said Bronia, forgetting her errand for the moment.

  ‘Not exactly. My parents were Polish, but I’m from the States myself,’ said the man. ‘We went there before the war. Joe Wolski’s my name – just call me Joe. It’s good to hear a Polish voice again.’ He bent down and took her hands in his. ‘Now, lady. What’s your trouble?’

  25

  Joe Wolski

  THEY SQUASHED INTO the front seat of the truck beside Joe Wolski, and off they rattled on the road to Switzerland.

  ‘You’ll be telling me next that you’ve come all the way from Warsaw,’ said Joe.

  ‘So we have,’ said Bronia.

  ‘Gee, that’s some way,’ said Joe. ‘I guess the city’s changed since I was there before the war. I was only six when Ma and Pa took me to the States to settle. I like it a lot over there now, and I can’t say I’m sorry we made the move. How’s the kid doing?’

  The ‘kid’, Edek, was sitting by the door where the fresh air from the open window had already revived him.

  ‘Would he like a cigarette?’ said Joe.

  Edek shook his head.

  ‘What about you, lady?’

  Ruth refused as well, and she watched Joe take both hands off the steering wheel to light a cigarette for himself – and suddenly jab in an elbow to correct a swerve. After her almost sleepless night, she was too tired to do anything but lie back with her head against the top of the seat. In spite of their good luck in securing a lift, she could not shake off her anxiety for Edek.

  The country-side swept by – trees and hills and villages – and after a while Ruth roused herself from her sadness and asked Joe where he was taking them.

  ‘You leave that to me, lady,’ he said. ‘You’ve plenty on your mind and you’ve told me where you want to go.’

  ‘But we hardly know who you are – or what you’re doing.’

  ‘I’m the Occupation,’ he said. ‘The army taught me French so I could go to Paris – then posted me to Germany because I can’t speak German. I’m here to fire folks with the spirit of occupation, to tell them they’ve all grown up the wrong way. But what’s the use? They’re so sick and tired they just stare at you. It’s not often you get a chance to help someone … Gee, that was a close shave!’

  Joe had been trying to light another cigarette – and the lorry had swerved across the road, skidded and nearly knocked down a tree. He righted her just in time, blew the tree a kiss, and drove on.

  ‘What was that noise?’ said Bronia. ‘I thought I heard a yelp. You haven’t run over—’

  ‘No, no,’ said Joe. ‘Just the tyres complaining, I expect. You get used to it. Now talking about growing up wrong, that tree’s a case in point. Only a muttonhead would have let it grow there.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s well off the road. Be sensible and let me hold the wheel while you light up.’

  After a while Bronia asked, ‘What’s in the back of the truck, Joe?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ said Joe.

  ‘Could I sit in the back?’ said Bronia.

  ‘You wouldn’t like it,’ said Joe. ‘There’s a couple of bears and a hyena in there.’

  ‘Jan would love that,’ said Bronia.

  ‘Who’s Jan? Is he your boy friend?’ said Joe.

  Bronia giggled and told him he was a friend who had run away.

  ‘Oh,’ said Joe, and a suspicion of a smile stole across his face. ‘Why did he run away?’

  Bronia told him all about it, and when she had finished Joe said, ‘I once knew a kid who ran away like Jan. I had gone to sleep in the back of my truck – alone, mark you – and when I woke in the morning, there he was, stretched out beside me. Must have climbed in over the tailboard during the night. I shook him awake and asked what the heck he was doing. Said he was going north, and if I was going that way would I take him to – I forget the name of the village. Some place north of the Danube. Now I was going north as it happened, but when I heard his business I changed my mind. I told him he ought to have known better than to desert his folks. He kicked and stormed at me as if he was crazy and called me all the names that aren’t in the dictionary. Know what to do with a fellow like th
at? You truss him up and leave him to cool off in the back of the truck till he knows better. And that’s just what I did.’

  There was a question already on Bronia’s lips, when she heard a bark from behind her.

  ‘That must be the hyena,’ said Joe. ‘Like to take a look?’

  He stopped the truck by the side of the road, and Ruth and Bronia followed him out and round the back. He hoisted them up into the hyena’s cage. There on the floor in front of a pile of crates was Ludwig, barking and wagging his tail, and Jan beside him, with a handkerchief over his mouth and his wrists and ankles bound.

  Joe undid his bonds and said with a broad grin, ‘How are you feeling, kid?’

  Jan’s answer was to kick out at Joe and spit at him like a catherine wheel, while the elderly and good-natured Ludwig crouched in a corner growling, but not quite knowing what to make of it all.

  ‘It was true what I told you about a couple of bears and a hyena,’ said Joe. ‘Here they are, all rolled into one.

  Ruth begged Jan to stop kicking, but he took no notice.

  ‘Does this make you feel better?’ said Joe, and he threw him a slab of chocolate.

  Jan threw it back again.

  ‘Nothing for it but to tie up the parcel again,’ said Joe, and, as Jan would not listen to Ruth’s reasoning, he had to carry out the threat. He managed with some difficulty to tie him to the tailboard in such a way that he could not throw himself out, but left his ankles unbound and his mouth free.

  And off they went. The lorry made quite a lot of noise on the bumpy road, but not half as much as Jan made. In this manner they journeyed the sixty odd miles to Lake Constance, right to the gate of the Red Cross camp where Joe had planned to take them. It was a collection of tents and Nissen huts between Überlingen and Meersburg, within a stone’s throw of the lake. The hills round about were thickly wooded, and trees crowded the shore. Through a gap in the trees, across the water could be seen the green hills of Switzerland and behind them, in a haze of sunshine, the majestic Alps.

  Ruth gasped. The mountains were more beautiful than anything she had ever imagined. They looked so near that she could almost lean over and touch them.

  The motion of the truck had rocked Edek to sleep, and he only stirred when Ruth and Bronia shouted and clapped for joy.

  ‘Please can you let Jan out?’ said Ruth. ‘He’ll feel quite different if you show him the mountains of Switzerland.’

  Joe untied him. Jan was quiet and sober, for he had kicked and shouted till he had no more kick or shout in him. He accepted some chocolate, and when Joe put an arm round his shoulders and pointed to the mountains they had come so far to see he burst into tears.

  26

  News at Last

  JOE DID NOT find it easy to persuade the camp to take in the family. It was not at the moment overcrowded – in fact, a whole party of refugees had recently been sent back to their countries – but it was in a muddle. The decision to make this corner of south Germany part of the French zone had only been taken in the middle of June. Now it was August, and the Americans were beginning to hand over to the French. The muddle helped Joe to get his way. It also helped Ruth to get hers. The camp doctor wanted to separate the family, with Edek in the Nissen hut which served for a hospital, and the rest in E block at the other end of the camp. Ruth refused to leave him. Finally she was allowed one of the tents outside the hospital block within call of Edek’s bed, and here under canvas the three of them made their home.

  There was one matter in which the camp superintendent refused to budge. He could not allow the family to cross over to Switzerland. The Swiss authorities could take no more refugees unless there were relatives in the country willing to be responsible for them. Besides this, they needed some definite proof of identity before any arrangements could be started upon.

  Ruth thought that the sword might help to prove who they were, and she wrote at once to the farmer for this. As for relatives in Switzerland, she did not even know if her father had ever arrived there. Nor could she remember her grandparents’ address in Basel. She had no idea if they were still alive.

  She was feeling sad and disheartened when she said goodbye to Joe. They had come so far, and now that their goal was within sight it seemed harder than ever to reach. She thanked him from the bottom of her heart for all his kindness.

  ‘Don’t call me kind,’ said Joe. ‘Everywhere’s a mess, wherever you look. I want to help clean it up. I want to show folks that you can’t see all of life from a hole in a blitzed cellar. There’s more to it than ruins and rubble. Sometimes things work out right, and sometimes they don’t.’ As he shook Ruth’s hand, he added, ‘This time they’re going to work out right.’

  One by one the hot stifling days dragged by. There was thunder in the air, but the black clouds held back their rain. They seemed to be saving it up for some grand and terrible occasion. Had it not been for Edek, who was too ill to be out of bed for more than a few hours each day, the others would have borrowed a small boat and risked the crossing. But Edek’s illness kept them back, that and the hope that the its (International Tracing Service) would soon answer the superintendent’s letter. He had lost no time in sending them all the information that Ruth had given him. His inquiries in Basel for the grandparents had yielded no result. What was more surprising was that Ruth received no reply from Herr Wolff about the sword.

  The ITS occupied a huge barracks, one used by Nazi storm troopers, at Arolsen in the American zone. In those early days of so-called ‘peace’, the Child Search branch had hardly got going and was able to deal with inquiries quite quickly. But the index of missing children was growing all the time, as each day brought more and more inquiries. ‘Is my child dead? … Our home was bombed while I was serving in Africa and I believe my younger daughter survived, but I have failed to trace her … My two sons were taken from me in Auschwitz in 1942 and adopted by a German family in Nuremberg. Can you, etc. etc …’ Inquiries like these arrived by every post.

  One day late in the month the superintendent called Ruth to his office. Was it good news or bad? His face was as grave as usual and betrayed nothing.

  He spoke slowly. ‘That sword you told me about, Ruth. Would you describe it to me, please?’

  She did so in great detail, even mentioning a tiny piece on the hilt which was slightly bent. As she described it and launched once again into the story of its adventures, a smile spread over his face.

  ‘Ruth, you’re the luckiest girl in Europe,’ he said, and he unrolled a small brown paper parcel on his desk. Out of it tumbled two crumpled letters – and the sword. One letter was from Herr Wolff and the other from her father. Both were addressed not to her but to the headquarters of the its. Herr Wolff’s letter contained as much of the story of the family as he had managed to piece together, as well as details of their plans for getting to Switzerland. He had found the sword the very day they left, and had sent it off at once to the its with the letter. Ruth’s letter to him, written from the camp, had evidently gone astray, for she had no reply to it till weeks later. The other letter, from her father, Joseph Balicki, bore a January date. In it he described the children and their circumstances up to the time when he had last seen them. He also referred to his escape from Zakyna, his unsuccessful attempt to find his family, the meeting with Jan and how he had given him the sword, and his long journey to Switzerland. And now the miracle had worked.

  Ruth was so overcome that all she could do was bury her face in her hands. She hardly heard what the superintendent was saying.

  ‘I received this information two days ago, but I didn’t want to tell you till I had checked it all. You see, your father’s letter is months old and I had to get in touch with him. He’s living in Appenzell, just the other side of the lake. Here’s his reply to me.’

  He handed Ruth a telegram, but she was still too dazed to take in all that he had said, and he had to repeat most of it again. Brushing away her tears, she read the message: ‘Will collect children on 23rd
at Meersburg by the afternoon boat. All arrangements about permits in hand this end. Please wire answer. Will ring Ruth tonight, if possible.’

  ‘I wish all our cases could end as happily as yours,’ said the superintendent.

  But Ruth was already out of the room and running to her family to tell them the great tidings.

  Five minutes later the Red Cross nurse on duty in E block heard a fearful row. Rushing into the last Nissen hut, she found three children and an elderly dog dancing up and down on Edek’s bed. When she protested, they threw all his pillows at her. So she fetched a broom and chased the three of them down to the lake. Then she returned, angry and out of breath, to pick up the pillows and see if the patient had died of shock. But the patient had sneaked out of bed and, by a roundabout way, joined the others on the shore. For him the news was more of a tonic than all the medicine and all the rest and care in the world.

  Is that the end of the story?

  The family, as they laughed and danced for joy on the shore, thought it was. They did not know that what was in some ways their most dangerous ordeal still lay ahead.

  27

  The Storm

  IT WAS THE morning of the 23rd. Joseph Balicki had tried to speak to Ruth on the phone, as he had promised, but the line had been so bad that she did not recognize his voice and could hardly hear a word. He seemed to be trying to tell her something of importance, but after several unsuccessful attempts the line went dead, and that was the end of that. What was it he was trying to tell her? How she longed to see him again!

  The Swiss boat that was to take them over the water was not due for some hours yet. But the family were too impatient to wait. They were down by the lakeside, eager to catch a glimpse of her when she steamed past the distant Swiss shore. They looked very stiff in their best clothes. Edek was wearing one of Rudolf Wolff’s suits, and Ruth a summer dress of his mother’s. Jan was wearing a blue shirt and Bronia a cotton dress too small for her – both had been given to them in camp. Their faces, bronzed by the sun and dirtied by weeks of dusty wandering, were unusually clean. They had made valiant efforts to untangle hair that hardly knew what brushes and combs were for. Jan’s hair had been so knotted that he found a comb useless and had to resort to a pair of scissors instead.