White Eagles

by Elizabeth Wein

  Then the man turned back to her and gently caressed her bare arm.

  An image of Leopold flashed across Kristina’s vision. He was full of outraged fury as he leaped to her defence.

  But there was no Leopold. Kristina was on her own.

  There’s a gun in your tunic pocket.

  Kristina inched sideways, trying to reach her tunic where she’d dropped it on the yellow bedspread. The man put his other hand around her bare waist, trapping her. He bent his face towards hers for a kiss, and without thinking Kristina gave his cheek a resounding slap.

  The man grabbed her wrists in self‑defence, and he was stronger than Kristina. Now, even if he hadn’t meant to frighten her, it was turning into a fight.

  Kristina found herself every bit as frightened as she’d been when the German soldier had trapped her at the end of his rifle. She couldn’t wrench her wrists free of the man’s grip, so she kicked at her attacker’s shins.

  The bolted door rattled.

  “Julian!” Kristina cried out. “The window!”

  The man turned to check the door with a glance, then swung back to Kristina. He winked again and shrugged. He was clearly telling her that the boy wasn’t going to be able to interrupt them.

  But Julian didn’t waste any time. Within thirty seconds, he was climbing in the open window. He hauled his small, thin body up over the window frame like a frantic wildcat, got himself in and sat on the sill, panting. Julian held his father’s pistol in both his chafed hands, pointing it steady at the man’s face.

  “Get out!” Julian yelled.

  The man burst out laughing and took a swipe at Julian, grabbing for the gun.

  Julian sprang from the windowsill to the bed, vaulting over Kristina’s head. She ducked to avoid his legs and backed against the bed. Julian crouched behind Kristina, leaning over her shoulder, still aiming the pistol at the threatening man.

  The man did nothing but stand there shaking his head and smiling, so Julian fired a shot past him. The bullet shattered the china washbasin.

  Julian stood on the bed, brandishing his pistol, and the man backed away. Now his expression was a mixture of fright and anger.

  The man mimed sweeping with a dustpan and brush. Then he unbolted the door and stormed out.

  Julian didn’t put the gun away.

  “I think we’re supposed to clean up the broken china,” he told Kristina. “I guess we’re lucky he hasn’t kicked us out! Are you all right?”

  Kristina rubbed her eyes. “Yes. Fine. Thank you. I’m sorry. Sorry we argued.”

  “It wasn’t anything,” Julian said, embarrassed.

  He was very careful not to look at Kristina in her underwear. He crawled under the bed, quick and catlike, to fetch her blouse.

  *

  When night fell, Kristina bolted the door and shuttered the window. The room was stuffy and smelled of pine; it was like being in a packing crate. Kristina lay head to foot alongside Julian and tossed and turned. She kicked off the suffocating bedspread and threw away the fat pillow. It was impossible to get comfortable, and she didn’t dare to sleep.

  After an hour or so, Julian got out of bed and opened the shutters to let in the cool night air. He climbed up to sit on the windowsill again.

  “I’ll keep a lookout,” Julian told Kristina. “I can sleep in the plane tomorrow.”

  Kristina could see Julian’s silhouette – black against the indigo sky, one knee bent, one hand holding his father’s gun, just in case.

  “You can’t sit there all night!” Kristina objected.

  “Watch me.”

  The shadowy profile of Julian’s young head was alert and tense, his chin raised.

  No one’s going to tangle with that kid, Leopold’s voice said in Kristina’s head. Go to sleep.

  The tiny cabin was cooler now that the window was open again, and the air smelled of sea and pine.

  Kristina slept.

  CHAPTER 20

  The next day, Kristina flew most of the way across northern Italy in one long five‑hour flight. She landed to refuel but wanted to keep going – it was only early afternoon, and she knew that the border with France was only about a hundred kilometres further. She could follow the Mediterranean coast now and didn’t even need a map.

  But Julian had his eye on her and hadn’t missed how tired she was. They finished lugging the twenty‑litre fuel cans back and forth from the local garage to the grass verge where the plane was parked. Then Julian pointed and said, “There’s a stable.”

  The stable was a long, low building next to the garage, with an open front and stalls for animals. Two mules stood tied up in one of the stalls, peacefully munching on hay from an iron basket hung on the back wall. A rusty tractor was parked in the stall beside the mules. The other three stalls were empty.

  “There’s some of last night’s bread and cheese left,” Julian said. “And you can have the rest of that winter salami.”

  “Yes. All right,” Kristina said. “We can do another French lesson.” That would be a good way to use an afternoon of rest, she thought.

  Kristina was struggling with the few phrases that Julian had taught her. She’d known the names of some French aircraft, but she didn’t know anything about how to speak the language. The words Julian made her repeat didn’t sound anything like the words she knew.

  “Start with, ‘Hello, my name is Kristina Tomiak. I am a Polish pilot,’” Julian suggested.

  “Hello, my name is Kristina Tomiak. I am a Polish pilot,” Kristina repeated. Her tongue struggled with the strangeness of it. None of it sounded right to her. “Why do you need the little word ‘a’?” she asked. It wasn’t something that was used in Polish.

  “The French use more words than we do,” Julian explained. “You have to follow their rules so you don’t sound stupid. Just learn it! Hello, goodbye, thank you, excuse me, I’m sorry. Thank you and I’m sorry are pretty much the most important things you can learn.”

  “We’ll have to stop being Austrian and Russian when we get to France,” Kristina said.

  “Good,” the boy said fiercely. “I hate being Austrian.”

  *

  You’re in France! Leopold told Kristina joyfully as she soared over the gleaming white beaches of the French Riviera the next morning. What a beautiful day!

  Kristina’s heart ached with loss and love. How proud Leopold would be that she’d made it here. How delighted he would have been to fly over this gorgeous coastline himself.

  She finally forced herself to leave the beaches and fly inland, looking for a place to land.

  And then, ahead of her, Kristina saw the wide green triangle and hangars of a French Air Force base. Neat little fighter planes were lined up at the edge of the airfield.

  Her Polish plane was safe in France. She didn’t need to hide in farmers’ fields and orchard verges any more. She didn’t need to try to pretend she was someone else.

  There were two other planes lining up to land ahead of her. Kristina waited, circling overhead, until they had landed on the airfield and were safely out of her way. Then she too glided down to earth.

  *

  Excited airmen and ground crew came running out to meet Kristina’s RWD‑8. They waved and cheered, recognising the Polish checkerboard flag marking her plane. There was a roar of surprise when Kristina stood up in the cockpit and they realised that she was a young woman, not a man.

  “Hello, my name is Kristina Tomiak,” Kristina said, using the words that Julian had taught her. “I am a Polish pilot.”

  Nobody seemed to understand her attempt to greet them in French, but one of them turned out to speak a little Polish. He came forwards to hug Kristina and kiss her cheeks the moment she’d climbed out of the plane. “Welcome – welcome!”

  Kristina felt as if she’d shrugged off a tremendous weight. It was a miracle that she’d made it here. She was among her own people again, in the company of pilots. Kristina felt as if she’d come home.

  She glanced beh
ind her to look at her passenger.

  Julian hadn’t moved. He was still sitting hunched in the rear cockpit, so low down that all Kristina could see was his dark, windblown hair standing up in tufts on his head.

  “Julian, come down!” Kristina called in Polish. “These are friends.”

  Julian stood up in the cockpit. For once his face wasn’t pale; for some reason he’d blushed very pink. Kristina wondered if he was embarrassed by her terrible French.

  “Come down,” Kristina repeated, and Julian had no choice but to climb out of the plane.

  *

  Kristina and Julian were given their evening meal in the officers’ mess hall at the airbase. There was more food than either of them had seen in a month, and wine too. Julian sat pale faced and silent, picking at his dinner. He let the Polish‑speaking French pilot do the translating for Kristina. Julian seemed to have shrunk – among all these uniformed men he looked even smaller, a weedy and unimportant little boy. He sat politely at Kristina’s side, every inch the headmaster’s son. Julian was clearly experienced at sitting through adult dinner conversation without misbehaving.

  Kristina noticed that the muttered words of thanks or refusal that Julian gave in French were not the same responses he’d taught her to say. But she didn’t have a chance to ask him about it while they were eating.

  Afterwards, they were given a bare but comfortable guest room in the airbase headquarters with neatly made twin beds. Julian had to stay there by himself while Kristina was invited for cigarettes and cognac with the lieutenant‑colonel, who was the commander of the base.

  “You understand a little English?” the Polish‑speaking French pilot asked Kristina as he lit a cigarette for her. She’d discovered his name was Antoine. “If so, you may not need me to translate the French for you. The commander speaks English.”

  “English? No, not at all,” Kristina said. “Why …?”

  “But you spoke English at the table,” Antoine said. “And you introduced yourself in English when you arrived. You said, ‘Hello – I am a Polish pilot.’”

  “That was English?”

  It took Kristina a moment to understand.

  Then she realised: England had always been Julian’s goal. Every single thing he’d done since Kristina had met him had been calculated to get him to England. And like Julian, now Kristina was able to say hello and goodbye and thank you and I’m sorry, to ask for food and simple directions, and to tell people who she was in English.

  Julian hadn’t taught her a single word of French.

  He’d coached her to speak in English.

  CHAPTER 21

  A surge of betrayal and anger slammed into Kristina at what Julian had done, filling her whole body. She dropped her cigarette and sat bent over with her elbows on her knees. Her forehead rested on her clenched fists, her eyes squeezed shut against outraged tears.

  The sneaky, selfish little brat had taught her English.

  At last Kristina raised her head and straightened her back, burning with embarrassment. She couldn’t let these French Air Force officers know how stupid she’d been – how easily she’d let this sly kid fool her.

  “Sorry, I’m exhausted,” Kristina said as Antoine picked up her cigarette and gave it back.

  The commander spoke, and Antoine translated his words. “We’re the ones who should apologise. You’ve earned a good night’s sleep. We can talk again in the morning, but I wanted to get a few things settled now to put your mind at rest for tonight.”

  Kristina nodded to show she’d understood, and the commander continued to speak.

  “I’ve made a few telephone calls. We’re expecting a Polish flight group to be created at Tours. We can transfer you there, and you can work in communications for the French Air Force until the other Polish pilots arrive. I’ve had our lads in the workshop give your plane a comprehensive service – you can fly to Tours yourself.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Kristina burst out, remembering what Julian had taught her, and then realised that she must be speaking English.

  Kristina blushed, and the anger she felt towards Julian for tricking her surged through her again. It drowned out any relief and gratitude she felt. “I mean …” Kristina turned to Antoine and asked, “How do you say ‘thank you’ in French?”

  “Merci. Merci beaucoup.”

  “Merci beaucoup,” Kristina repeated.

  The commander smiled.

  “I’ve made arrangements for the boy as well,” he went on to tell her, again with Antoine translating for him. “There’s an orphanage run by nuns not far from Montpellier, and the Sister in charge is Polish. It would be nice for Julian to have someone near who speaks a familiar language. He can stay there as long as necessary and he’ll be well fed and given a good education—”

  “Oh, but Julian has family in England!” Kristina couldn’t help interrupting.

  “I’m sure the Sisters will want to get in touch with his family,” the commander assured her. “But the cross‑Channel ferries have all been cancelled since the declaration of war, so he won’t be able to go to England any time soon.”

  Kristina tried to imagine the determined, furious Julian Srebro settling down to the tight rule of a Roman Catholic orphanage. Another thought came to her.

  “But he’s Jewish,” Kristina said.

  Antoine put this to the commander, and they both laughed.

  “The commander says, all God’s children are lambs in the eye of the Lord,” Antoine told Kristina.

  *

  Julian was still awake when Kristina got back to their room. He was sitting perched in the open window, just as he’d done in the tourist cabin in Italy, when he’d stayed awake all night long to guard Kristina while she slept.

  “What did they say?” Julian asked.

  “That I was speaking English, not French,” Kristina answered coldly.

  She sat down on her bed and looked at him. After a long moment of silence, Julian said in a small voice, “Sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” Kristina exclaimed. “You made a fool of me! You’ve been laughing behind my back the whole way across Europe!”

  “No, I haven’t!” Julian protested. “Laughing at you – are you crazy? I’m so in awe of you it makes me ashamed of myself! I wish I could be like you. I wish I was so clever that I could fly a plane and find my way over mountains when it all looks the same. I wish I could land in fields without panicking and fly through storms without being sick! And I’m scared of you sometimes too. I’m scared of you getting angry and I’m scared of you getting tired. But I never, never would make fun of you.”

  Julian took a deep breath. After a moment, he added, “But it doesn’t really make any difference, does it? You’ll learn French now. It was because I’m scared of you that I didn’t tell you it was English. I wanted you to learn it so you could take me to England, but I didn’t think you’d let me teach you if you knew.”

  “What a crazy, childish plan!” Kristina exclaimed. “You’re just a selfish little boy.”

  Julian looked up at her. “I guess I am,” he admitted. His eyes were full of tears.

  And of course that was what he was. Kristina had more or less forgotten how young Julian was. Eleven years old, a sheltered schoolboy, whose parents were murdered just last week.

  Kristina had to tell Julian the other thing she’d learned that evening.

  “I’m going to join a Polish Air Force group at Tours. You’ll have to stay here for a bit, and they’ve found a place for you in a …” Kristina struggled for a better word than orphanage. “A children’s home. Here in Montpellier. They’ll help you get in touch with your family.”

  “I could get in touch with them myself,” Julian said, leaping at the idea. “Perhaps the commander could let me use his telephone. You could ask him for me. I can take the train to Paris and then to London – there’s another train that they put on a boat across the English Channel.”

  “I don’t think you can travel on your father’s pa
ssport without your father being with you,” Kristina said. “And anyway, there isn’t any boat. The ferries have all been cancelled.”

  She heard Julian give a small sigh of defeat and disappointment.

  “You’ll be safe here,” Kristina said. “You can go to school. They’ll feed you and give you new clothes. Probably get you special cream to take care of your eczema. It’ll be better than a refugee camp, where you’d have no idea what will happen next.”

  Julian nodded. Then he climbed down from the windowsill and crawled into the other bed across from Kristina’s. He turned his back on her under the covers.

  “I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” Julian said steadily. “Before they take me away.”

  Kristina thought he was probably crying, but he hid it so well she couldn’t be sure.

  CHAPTER 22

  Kristina lay awake in her comfortable, clean bed, unable to sleep.

  Julian had sworn he’d never meant to make fun of her, and she believed him.

  But in Kristina’s imagination, Leopold was laughing his head off.

  Best prank ever! Leopold cried joyfully. Oh, come along, Kristina, surely you see the funny side – and now you speak a bit of English too! It might be useful! Didn’t you even suspect? You must have suspected. You knew it didn’t sound right.

  And then Leopold’s voice said in a calmer tone, Don’t you feel sorry for the little guy, though? After tomorrow you’ll have the Polish Air Force, but Julian will be completely on his own.

  Very softly, Leopold added, Do you really believe the French nuns will be able to contact his family in England? The Polish Air Force will be all right without you for a while. The kid won’t.

  “Julian?” Kristina said aloud.

  He didn’t answer.

  She got up and stood by his bed, touching the lump where his shoulder was in the dark. Julian was breathing steadily and didn’t stir or start. Kristina knew he was asleep, not sulking.