The Silver Sword (16 page)

The war produced countless tragic stories, few of which ended as happily as that of the Balicki family. Yet it would be wrong to pretend that life for the Balickis was at once serene and free of trouble. They had been parted too long and suffered too much. It took time to grow used to a life which was so different from anything they had known before.

On the whole Bronia was the quickest to settle. She had been only four when her mother had been taken away. Too young to remember happier days, she had quickly accepted Ruth as her new mother. And through the terrible hardships of the war Ruth had looked after her with wonderful devotion. Restored now to her parents, she grew up as a happy and gifted child. Her talent for drawing matured. At first she could draw only the scenes of war and escape which she had lived through. Her pictures were full of soldiers, ruined buildings, open railway trucks, and queues outside the soup kitchens. Gradually her subjects changed. Soon they began to reflect her new and far more secure life among the mountains of Switzerland.

Edek was not so fortunate. Many of the children admitted to the village showed signs of tuberculosis. But hardship and lack of good food had made Edek much more delicate than most. He had to be sent away to a sanatorium, and for the first month or two the doctors despaired of his life. But the will to live was strong in him and he grew better. After eighteen months he returned to his family. Another six months of open-air life in the mountains made him fit enough to go to Zürich and study engineering. He had always wanted to be an engineer.

And what of Jan, that charming bundle of good intentions and atrocious deeds? His complete record, so far as it was known, was sent to the I.t.s., but nothing came of it and his parents were never traced. So he became a Balicki. During the war his mind had suffered more than his body, and minds usually take longer to heal. He did not take easily to a secure and peaceful life. He was excitable and could not concentrate on one thing for long. He liked to play at firing squads and torture, at crossing the frontier secretly and at smuggling. He was always fighting. Though he had all the food and clothes he needed, he was the biggest thief in the village. He broke into the other houses and raided the larders — it was usually the German house, for he still hated Germans and could not forgive them for what they had done to Poland. Margrit Balicki treated him as lovingly as she did her own children, but he was often rude to her. Ruth was the only person who could manage him, and he remained as devoted to her as ever. She knew that the way to his heart was through animals. She persuaded her father to let him keep rabbits and goats. She took him to neighbouring farms, and soon the farmers found that he could do anything with a sick animal. If a cow was ill or a horse lame, they found it would get better more quickly if they sent for Jan instead of for the vet. And of course it cost them much less.

So in time even Jan grew up, and his bad ways began to drop from him. There were no more raids on larders, and the German children no longer got a shower of rotten apples at their heads whenever they passed the Polish house.

Lastly, Ruth. She had all the time been so brave, wise and unselfish that you might have expected her to present no problem at all. But she had grown up too quickly and shouldered responsibilities far beyond her years. As she wanted to be a teacher, her father lost no time in arranging for her to go away to a university to be trained. She refused to go. Her parents and her new home meant so much to her that she could not bring herself to leave them. She behaved like a young child, clinging to her mother and following her about everywhere. It seemed as if she were trying to recover the lost years of her childhood.

But this phase did not last long. Little by little the magic of her new surroundings worked its spell upon her. In 1947 she went to Zürich University to study for a degree. Four years later, as a qualified teacher, she married a young Frenchman who had come to work in the children’s village. When a second French house was built, she and her husband were made the house-parents. The last time I heard of her she had sixteen French orphans under her care, as well as two small girls of her own. As far as I know she is there still, bringing them up in the spirit of the children’s village, giving them all the trust and affection that young people need.

And over the way, at the Polish house, in a velvet-lined drawer of her jewel box, Margrit Balicki keeps her proudest possession — the silver sword.