While Still We Live (11 page)

The quiet man sat stiffly in his chair. “Dog’s blood,” he swore, “dog’s blood and dog’s bones.” He didn’t look at the staring-eyed woman, her straight hair stiff in thin pigtails, who clutched round her throat the shabby coat which she had thrown over the shoulders of her nightgown. Together with her husband, she bent over the radio to catch the uneven words. Henryk’s hands trembled. He wiped his mouth and the back of his neck with a rag of a handkerchief. The Pole, still sitting on the chair beside him, cursed the Germans for what they were in a steady, even flow.

Other footsteps were hurrying through the courtyard, now. Olszak looked at the little group in the doorway as he opened the gate.

“You’ve heard?” Henryk called after him. Olszak nodded. His quick footsteps died away on the pavement outside. “That’s another friend of Korytowski’s,” Henryk explained. “He’s an editor of a paper that no one buys. He’s probably rushing to write an editorial that no one wants to read. Say, what are you going to do, yourself?”

The man said dully, “Can’t leave this job until they get another man set.”

Ten minutes later, Henryk’s ’phone rang.

“Someone wants to know if the man waiting in the street outside this building can be brought to the ’phone,” Henryk announced with a grin. “Better not tell them you’ve been warming your back on my chair.”

The man rose and went to the ’phone. He did the listening. Elzbieta had to wait until he returned to the doorway before her curiosity was satisfied.

“Got to go now,” he said.

“What about—?” Henryk motioned with his head in the direction of Korytowski’s flat.

“That’s taken care of. Another man is set across the road, now that the daylight has come.” He stopped at the gate. “I wouldn’t say anything about this,” he advised. “These Germans are wary birds. She’ll fly at the first sign.”

Henryk nodded. “I’ll say nothing. I’m too busy to notice anything.” He pulled out the hosepipe onto the pavement. He called back to his wife. “Get some clothes on. We’ll have breakfast when I’ve finished this job.”

The unobtrusive man had already disappeared round the corner of the street, as Henryk started playing the jet of water round the roots of the chestnut trees.

* * *

Sheila, in her bedroom, heard the cheerful hiss of the water. Someone down there was whistling quietly to himself.

“What has
he
got to whistle about?” she said savagely to her white face in the grey mirror. The mirror only answered her with unhappy eyes and trembling lips.

The weight was pressing on the back of her neck, now. Her hands were hot, her spine was cold. The bed linen was as icy as a midwinter pond. She started to shiver.

ESCAPE

When she awoke, the room was dark and stifling. If this were night again, then she hadn’t much to show for today. She could remember a man, one of those who had met her in the living-room last night, sitting beside her bed. He had taken her temperature, felt her pulse. He had made her swallow some small, square-shaped pills. Uncle Edward had stood watching her silently. The apartment no longer had any voices. She had thought, dismally, everyone had gone home: everyone, except herself. And she had started to shed a sympathetic tear for herself, and then she must have fallen into a sleep so deep that she couldn’t even gauge its length. Later, when the sun filtered through the leaves outside to cast moving shadows on the wall, someone had wrapped her in a blanket and propped her in a chair. It was a woman, she had noticed dimly, a woman with a straight wisp of hair over staring eyes. And the woman had talked, low quick words. Sheila remembered feeling alive
enough only for a brief space to mumble, “
Ja, jawohl
...” in answer to a repeated question. It must have been asked in German, although she hadn’t realised that at the time. She had been too busy watching the shadows on the wall. One had turned into a fox’s face. It chased the other shadows up and across the wall, and then it would suddenly drop back to its original position and the fox’s mask would start its chase all over again. The woman hadn’t believed her even when she pointed out the exact position of the cunning face, had helped her firmly into bed, had covered her with sheets that were all smooth and cool once more.

But now the sun had gone, the shadows and the fox’s mask had gone, the doctor and the woman had gone. Only Uncle Edward was still there, still standing silently watching her from the doorway. He was so quiet that it seemed strange he should have wakened her. Her thoughts were slow like her movements. She wasn’t shivering now. The bed was as hot as an oven. The pillow felt damp when she moved her neck. All air seemed to have gone from the room. There was a jangling in her ears as if she were listening to a distant, violent fire-alarm.

“I really don’t think you can be moved,” Uncle Edward said. He walked slowly into the room and switched on the small light beside her bed. “But I think you ought to know, now that you are awake, that we are again under attack.”

“Again?” Sheila swallowed painfully. Even the voice didn’t seem to come from her dry throat. It sounded as if a ventriloquist were using her for a dummy. She raised herself on one elbow, but there was no support in her arm, and she was glad to sink back into the pillow’s furrow.

“Yes. The first came this morning, just after the doctor had
given you some pills and put you to sleep. Then there was a second attack, fairly quickly. I’m beginning to lose count now. The air warden from upstairs has been trying to herd us over to the trenches in the Park, for the recent raids have been coming closer to this district. But I don’t think you should go.”

“And you?”

The blue eyes, tired, worried, suffering, smiled at her. “I helped to dig them during the last two days. I prefer to stay here, myself. Four walls give an illusion of protection.”

An angry, staccato rattle sounded from the courtyard.

“Anti-aircraft,” Korytowski said gently. “It was set up in our garden this morning.”

Sheila nodded. Her hands were clenching the sheets in the same way she used to clench her handkerchief while the dentist’s drill ground out a deeply decayed tooth.

“Just rest and you’ll be all right. Two or three days, and we’ll have this fever beaten. If we could only send you to a hospital, it would be better for you. But the hospital beds are being kept as empty as possible.” He shrugged his shoulders. The kindly face looked so sad that Sheila tried a smile.

The sound of airplane engines seemed closer. Sheila shut her eyes. She couldn’t bear that sound: it was worse than the explosions as the bombs landed. For the bombs had at least finished when they crashed on the ground, but that loud coughing from the sky went on and on, threatening those still alive, promising pain and destruction.

Korytowski sat on the edge of the bed. “Words are extraordinary things,” he was saying. “They persist through the centuries as if they had a real life of their own. Stevens was telling me that the vulgar expression for legs in his country
is—” There was a violent blast the room seemed to rock, glass smashed on the pavement outside. Korytowski looked at the black square of window speculatively. “It really was fortunate that I boarded it up this afternoon. Never did believe in these strips of paper. Well, the vulgar expression is
gams,
I believe.” Another blast tightened Sheila’s body into a rigid stretch of bone and muscle. “Now the extraordinary thing is this: back in the days of Rome, the soldier who didn’t speak proper Latin would insist on a rough slang all of his own. His word for a pretty leg was—” The room moved again, this time more insistently. Sheila’s eardrums were bursting, but her hands couldn’t leave hold of the sheets to shut out the overwhelming sound. Professor Korytowski waited patiently for silence, as if he were facing a crowd of coughing, shuffling students in a classroom. “His word,” he continued when the first short lull occurred, “his word was
gamba
.”

The planes had gone. The anti-aircraft guns had fallen silent in the courtyard. But the ringing in Sheila’s ears was louder. He noticed her tenseness.

“Fire brigade,” he said briefly. He poured a glass of water and held it to her lips. “This bed has got to be changed again. We are soaking the fever out of you, anyway I’ll go and get Henryk’s wife. She said she would look after you until Teresa arrives.”

“Madame Aleksander is coming?”

“She has already left Korytów with Barbara. They decided they ought to be here at the hospitals. Stefan and little Teresa have stayed with Aunt Marta. It will be safer in the country. The Germans will not waste bombs on anything so small as Korytów. Marta ’phoned me after Teresa and Barbara had left;
couldn’t reach me on the ’phone before then.”

“Then only Aunt Marta knows I am still here?”

“So far. And do you know what she said about this chill of yours? ‘Never did wear enough clothes.’”

Sheila wanted to laugh, arid found she couldn’t, somehow.

“I’ll go down to the porter’s lodge. I don’t think there will be another raid for at least an hour.”

“Uncle Edward...”

“Yes, Sheila?” The blue eyes smiled kindly, reassuringly.

There was a slight pause. And then, “Aren’t you afraid?” The question came hesitatingly.

“Yes, I was. Very much so. But I’m getting accustomed to the idea that bombs can drop around me, and as soon as you get accustomed to that, you begin to feel so many other emotions—anger, chiefly—that fear loses some of its importance.”

“Is there much damage?”

“What you’d expect.” The blue eyes had hardened.

“Has London been bombed?”

“No. Nor Paris. Not yet. We are fighting alone so far.”

Sheila closed her eyes.

“Don’t worry,” the quiet voice was saying. “We’ll hold on here until our allies can reach us. All you’ve to worry about is recovering as quickly as possible. I’ll tell the porter’s wife to come up here, now. When she has left and you are back in bed, I’ll give you some medicine.” He nodded towards a bottle standing on the table beside the bed.

The door closed.

Sheila stared at it, miserably. It was one of those moments in life when everything seems wrong.

* * *

The door opened again, cautiously this time. The pale-faced, pale-eyed porter’s wife came into the room.

“It’s only me—Elzbieta,” she said. “I’ve brought you some herb tea. Sip it, while I straighten this bed.”

She wrapped Sheila methodically into the blanket, and propped her once more on the chair. Sheila began sipping the tea. It was weak and bitter: it smelled of a wooden chest with scented clothes, long undisturbed. Sheila collected her thoughts in German. A lot of Poles knew German, used it with foreigners if Polish failed. Yet Sheila felt she should be surprised at this woman. At the moment, she was incapable of feeling anything except worry. Over the edge of the wide cup, she watched the woman methodically change the bed linen. She was dressed in an old skirt, a shapeless knitted jumper. Yet there was a neatness, a clean-scrubbed look to her in spite of the old clothes. Her straight hair was tightly pinned into a plaited coil at the nape of her neck. Only one short strand of hair was out of place, and she would blow at it out of the corner of her mouth as it fell over her eye. Then, quick-temperedly, she’d tuck it back into place, scarcely pausing in her work. Sheila took some time to notice that the woman was watching her as much as she was watching the woman. “You’re slow in the uptake, today,” she told herself, and at that very moment realised why she should have felt surprised at the woman’s German. It was good German, accurate and hard, with the clear enunciation of Berlin.

On an impulse, Sheila said to the waiting woman, “Are you German?” Her voice was a ludicrous whisper: the effort of sitting up in this chair must have been more of a drain on her strength than she had imagined.

Elzbieta looked at her with a strange smile. “Oh no!” she whispered back. “Are you?”

“No.”

Elzbieta laughed suddenly. She spoke in a normal voice again. “There’s no one here. You can speak as loud as you want. Old Korytowski’s down gaping at the bomb-holes.”

Sheila tried to focus her mind sharply. The callous impertinence in the woman’s voice had warned her.

“You work for Hofmeyer, direct?” the woman asked suddenly.

“Hofmeyer?” Sheila felt her mind dulling again. She was too tired to cope with all this, she thought in desperation.

“You don’t know anyone called Hofmeyer?” The voice was sarcastic.

Sheila shook her tired head.

“Come off it,” the woman said almost savagely. “Stop wasting time.” She went over to the dressing table, opened Sheila’s handbag, pulled out the airplane tickets and Hofmeyer’s leaflet. Sheila, who had imagined that Olszak had destroyed that sheet of paper, could only stare at the fact that it was still in her bag. And there was a reason behind that fact. So much she could guess, even at the moment, when her head felt it had fallen off her neck and was rolling around on the floor.

The woman said bitterly, “I found that this morning. Fine credit you are to us! Letting them dope you until you can’t even see what’s happening to your own handbag. Heinrich got in touch with Hofmeyer about you this morning, after the policeman left us.”

Heinrich. Not Henryk. Heinrich. And Johann Hofmeyer playing a double, yet single-purposed game. Hofmeyer, neither
German nor Pole, living in Warsaw for twenty years as a German-Pole. Hofmeyer taking orders from Uncle Matthews, working now with Olszak, accepted by the Heinrichs. Surely that must be it. Surely Hofmeyer was in German pay in name only, for his own purposes. Surely—Policeman... What was that about a policeman?

“Policeman?”

“Political police. Watching you. A fine mess you’ve made of it. What did you spill at headquarters, yesterday?”

“Nothing.”

“Hofmeyer will be pleased for that small mercy. If it’s true. Wish he could see you now, so doped that when the police pick you up again they’ll get everything out of you.”

“Where is he?”

“Hofmeyer? Safe. And still in touch with us. He said you would hear from him.” The woman smoothed the top counterpane with quick decisive strokes of her hand. “What’s your idea in staying here, anyway?”