Homeland (21 page)

He came to a narrow sliver of water, blurred with mist, its silken surface speared with rushes and spiky-leaved plants, its banks clustered with dense cabbagy leaves. Along one side, stunted
willow trees bent over the water at odd angles, each crown sprouting a giant star-burst of fine stems, while at his feet a string of bubbles pressed lazily against the tight surface of the water
before breaking softly. Somewhere in the distance a bird called on a single note, and he thought firmly: Happiness is really a matter of putting one’s mind to it. I will be happy here so long
as I choose to be.

He walked along the raised edge of the ditch, across heavy wet grass and hillocks and tumbledown fences. Above his head the haze became suffused with brightness and seemed to drift slowly
upwards. Ahead, watery colours began to form and he saw through the mist a raised road, a bridge, and a figure slowly walking, like in a Dutch painting. As the mist gently dissolved he made out a
long rank of stunted willow trees, and then another, stretching towards an indeterminate horizon. Between them, sudden gates stuck up out of the flatness for no apparent reason, and a hill rose in
a perfect dome, like the cupola of a sunken church. Amid the wash of delicate colours a clump of tall frond-like plants formed a velvety block of olive-green. All was damp and soft. Even the ground
beneath his feet seemed to yield and quiver, as if water lay just beneath the surface of everything.

Making a wide loop, he came to the village of Middlezoy, which he’d been told about but not yet visited. It stood on slightly higher ground, a low-lying island in the midst of a wide
marshy sea. Approaching, he buttoned his uniform properly and ran a hand over his hair, and hoped his unshaven chin was not too obvious.

Stone cottages stood among apple orchards and neat gardens on two diverging streets which snaked over undulating ground. He saw at least one church and one inn, but no obvious centre. He came
across an elderly man, followed by a tight-lipped woman. Both nodded at him when he bade them good morning. Then came a girl with dark hair and flashing eyes who grinned and cast a mischievous
sidelong glance at him as he passed. He looked back at her and heard a stifled laugh. There was a small post office which was also a shop. He tried the door with the idea of buying some tobacco,
but it was closed and he didn’t have his ration book with him.

As he reached the end of the village the sun burnt free of the mist and, on a hill ahead, a tall tree retaining a few ragged leaves flamed suddenly with ochre and amber. It was going to be a
wonderful day. Walking on with a buoyant heart, he passed an orchard where apples had been heaped into large mouldering piles, then a field dotted with tiny upright huts like sentry boxes where
vegetables were growing in narrow strips, then the entrance to Camp A, the first of the three sites which made up the resettlement camp. It stretched across a large orchard only partially cleared
of trees, so that the crouching Nissen huts appeared to be sheltering among a tangle of apple branches. He saw washing hanging on a line and smoke rising from one of the communal blocks and heard a
woman singing, her voice floating high on the golden air. Camp B, his own, was fifty yards beyond Camp A, spread across a verdant meadow ringed by tall poplars. Camp C, which he hadn’t yet
visited, lay out of view over rising ground to the north.

Camp B was not yet finished. The building squad was still putting up standpipes and laying paths and slapping white paint over the ribbed interiors of the Nissen huts, which had been dubbed
‘barrels of laughs’. Only about sixty people had moved in so far. Happily, there were several families among their number and, since his arrival three days before, Wladyslaw had spent
his evenings sitting at a table covered in a clean white cloth, minding his manners and enjoying the enchanting, demanding conversation of women. The families consisted of married couples with
grown-up children or elderly parents. There were no young children anywhere, for all the orphans and women with young children who’d reached Persia had either stayed in the Middle East or
been sent to camps in India and East Africa.

On the previous evening Wladyslaw had found himself next to a fellow called Grobel who had been separated from his family in this way. With a crack in his voice Grobel had read excerpts from a
letter postmarked Masindi, Uganda, describing a life more distant and fantastic than anything he could have imagined in his wildest dreams. Showing Wladyslaw a photograph of suntanned children
squinting under a tropical sun, Grobel had marvelled and wept at how much his sons and daughter had grown. He had no idea when or where he would see them again; no transports were scheduled, nor
yet proposed. He was finding the separation especially hard to bear now that something approaching normal life was finally possible.

Walking through the camp in the fresh morning light, Wladyslaw saw Grobel again now. Remembering how their conversation had ended, with vodka and tears, Wladyslaw prepared a smile, only to be
greeted by a wave like a salute and a brisk enquiry as to whether Wladyslaw was intending to come to the residents’ meeting.

‘I didn’t know any meeting was planned.’

‘At ten o’clock in the canteen. No officers or administrators invited.’

‘And the purpose . . .?’

‘Why, to organise our complaints!’

‘Ah.’

‘You don’t agree?’

‘Well . . . if there are valid complaints, then yes – they should be aired.’

‘And by us alone.’

‘If that’s what everyone wants.’

‘Of course it is!’ Grobel brooded for a moment. ‘Valid . . . You think that some of our complaints might
not
be valid then?’

‘I meant rather – that all
reasonable
complaints should be put forward.’

‘But who is to decide what is reasonable? Are you suggesting it’s for others to decide?’

‘Not at all.’

‘That it’s for administrators and officers to decide?’

‘No.’

Grobel eyed Wladyslaw warily. ‘But I think you were. I think perhaps that you side with them quite naturally, that you’re one of them . . .’

‘Hardly.’

‘But you’re a university type.’

‘I don’t see what difference that makes.’

‘It means that you see only one point of view. Your mind is made up.’

‘I very much hope not. In fact – not at all!’

Grobel declared scornfully, ‘They’ll make you an administrator.’

‘Not if I can help it – I hate administration. But isn’t that beside the point? Aren’t we all in this together? Don’t we share the same concerns?’

Grobel glared at him scornfully. ‘Where have you been all this time? Don’t you realise this place is riddled with traitors and collaborators? The administrators are throwing them in
amongst us without a second thought – men who fought with the Germans, men who secretly sided with the Russians. We can’t be expected to live alongside these people. We shouldn’t
be asked to!’

‘Well . . .’

‘You don’t agree?’

‘It’s time to draw a line, surely. People were put under intolerable pressure.’

‘A traitor is always a traitor!’

‘Even when guns are put to the heads of their families?’

‘No excuse.’ With hardly a pause, Grobel added, ‘And it’s not just the Nazi types either – what about the Ukrainians? And the Byelorussians? Pretending to be good
Poles indeed!’

‘But they wouldn’t be here if they weren’t Polish.’

‘Their names . . . their ways . . . How do we know where their hearts really lie? How do we know they weren’t conniving with the Russians all along? No – it’s an outrage!
The administrators sit at their desks, without thought or care. It’s us who have to put up with these characters. It’s a grave insult. After everything we’ve been
through.’

Wladyslaw adopted a tone of quiet reason. ‘Well, if that’s your view, I would certainly agree on the need for a careful assessment of the facts.’

Grobel said dismissively, ‘There speaks a true administrator. Put everything off till another day. Pretend it’s not happening. Oh yes, you’ll make your mark all
right!’

Wladyslaw wasn’t sure if it was the agitation that aggravated his leg, but as he marched back to his quarters he felt the familiar stabbing pains in his calf. He hopped up the steps to the
hut door on a leg and a half and limped through the sitting area to his cubicle. Banging open the door he sat heavily on the bed and gave the muscle a violent kneading. There was always going to be
a Grobel in every camp, of course, a small man with small ideas who tried to inflate his sense of self-importance by stirring up dissent and suspicion. In the
posiolek
there had been a
similarly officious woman who without evidence had accused a family of stealing some food, then gone around boasting about her public-spiritedness; and on the long journey across Uzbekistan a
pompous bigot who, having appointed himself spokesman for their wagon, had demanded that a family of Jews travel in a separate section of the train. On both occasions good sense had prevailed, but
as always at the expense of much unnecessary tension and argument. In the same way Grobel’s ideas would be listened to, discussed and eventually ignored, but not before everyone had been
thoroughly upset.

Sitting at the locker which served as his desk, Wladyslaw folded and addressed the letter to Helenka, using the same unschooled handwriting as before and the same flower motif over the seal. He
then tidied up. It didn’t take long. The cubicle, separated from its neighbours by partitions, was barely large enough to contain the locker, an iron bed, a metal chair, and what the English
absurdly called a ‘commode’ – which, since it concealed a chamber pot that no full-blooded male would be seen dead carrying across a mixed camp in broad daylight to the latrines,
was widely scorned and universally derided. When it rained hard, the corrugated-iron roof gave off a deafening clatter like the rattle of small-arms fire, and the insides of the barrel streamed
with condensation. The floor was bare concrete and cold underfoot, and the hut’s two small stoves looked inadequate for a harsh winter. The thick glass windows at either end of the
tunnel-like hut consigned the cubicle to perpetual dusk during the day, and the unshaded lights glanced down over the partitions to create shafts of glare and pockets of deep shadow in the evening.
Yet for all its faults, this space was his own, the first he had had in six years. If he was destined to spend the winter here, he could do worse.

He went to the toilet block to wash and shave, and then to the canteen for breakfast. The place was crowded, the conversation at a roar. He found a seat next to a group of boisterous young
people. A lively corporal was telling tall stories to the only unmarried girls in the camp, two pretty creatures of twenty or so. Inevitably, given the fierce competition, the girls were spoken
for, but since the corporal had an Italian bride in Bologna and the photographs to prove it, no one, least of all the corporal himself, was taking the flirtation too seriously.

The conversation was fast, the laughter uproarious. Soon Wladyslaw was laughing with them, though a little self-consciously. It was a long time since he had been in the company of well-mannered
girls. In Italy most of the good girls had been kept firmly under lock and key, while in England he only ever seemed to meet the loud, cheeky, abrasive factory girls who frequented the pubs. He had
forgotten the exquisite tension one felt in the company of pretty women, the urge to vie for their attention, the swell of pride one felt at an appreciative glance. He had forgotten, too, the
loneliness that was the other side of longing, the ache for a love of one’s own.

An hour later, on his way back from posting his letter, Wladyslaw was approached by the upright figure of Major Rafalski, one of the camp administrators.

‘It’s Malinowski, isn’t it? How are you settling in? Accommodation all right?’

‘Fine, thank you, sir.’

‘You were transferred to us from the north, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Not happy there?’

‘It wasn’t that. I asked to return to this area because of the chance of work.’

‘Ah. You’ve had an offer, have you?’

‘I believe so.’

‘What kind of thing?’

‘Farm work.’

The major raised an eyebrow and regarded Wladyslaw thoughtfully. ‘Listen . . .’ he said. ‘Do you have a moment for a chat?’

The major’s office was in the concrete administration block. It contained a table, four chairs and a telephone. Papers were stacked neatly on the floor and a large map of Britain hung on
the wall.

The major gestured Wladyslaw to a chair and offered him a cigarette. He himself did not take one, but sat upright in his seat, touching his fingertips together in a precise arch. Rafalski was a
cavalryman, tall and austere, with highly polished boots and a crested signet ring. He was probably in his late twenties, though his stern face and serious manner made him seem older.

‘You joined the army in the Soviet Union?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘You never thought of a commission?’

‘No. I was perfectly happy as a regular soldier.’

‘But you’re an educated man?’

The nature and purpose of education was one of Wladyslaw’s favourite hobbyhorses. He liked nothing better than to argue against the trend towards a narrow intensive curriculum in favour of
an eclectic, intuitive, meandering path of one’s own choosing; though a lively discussion and a worthy opponent could sometimes persuade him to the other point of view for a split second or
two. Now, out of old habit, he replied, ‘That’s an arguable proposition.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m not sure how much real education you get from a formal education.’

The major stared at him uncomprehendingly, and Wladyslaw withdrew the comment with a quick gesture.

‘I completed a year at Lublin University before the war, if that’s what you mean.’

‘And your subject?’

‘Literature.’

‘Really?’ Rafalski murmured appreciatively. Then, on a note of polite conjecture: ‘Not many books to be found on a farm, I wouldn’t have thought. Nor time to read
them.’