While Still We Live, Page 3

  Maria entered with a short announcement. “There’s a man to see the English lady.”

  “A gentleman to see Miss Matthews,” Madame Aleksander said pointedly.

  “He’s a German,” Maria said, equally pointedly.

  For one painful moment all eyes were fixed on Sheila’s astonished face, and then suddenly, everyone had something interesting to say to each other. To Sheila, it was as embarrassing as silence would have been.

  Teresa was already out of her chair. “Mother, I want to see a German.”

  “Stay where you are, Teresa.”

  “But, mother,” Stefan said, his brown eyes urgent, “I’d like to see what kind of car he has. Listen, all the children are looking at it.” Through the open windows, the voices of the children had indeed grown louder. Sheila, as she rose from the table, saw many people outside on the grass. The villagers were beginning to arrive. It must be nearly eight o’clock.

  She excused herself with a slightly bewildered smile, and hurried into the hall. Russell Stevens followed her along with Stefan and Teresa.

  “And don’t be long with your German friend,” he warned her. “We’ve only ten minutes.” He gave her a grin, and went outside with the children.

  Maria was pointing to the music room. “He’s in there,” she said unceremoniously. All her friendliness was gone.

  Sheila pushed aside the white panelled door. The man, who had been sitting uncomfortably on the piano stool, rose and faced her. He was a complete stranger.

  Sheila widened her eyes to see better in the darkening room. The man moved to the window. She followed him there, and they stood looking at each other in the last of the evening light.

  “I think there’s a mistake,” Sheila said in German. “I don’t know you.”

  The man was staring at her curiously: a white-haired, square-faced man with tight lips and clever eyes.

  “No, Miss Matthews,” he said in English, “you don’t know me. My name is Johann Hofmeyer. I have business connections with your uncle, Mr. John Matthews. He had just wired me about you.”

  “Then he sent you here?”

  The man bowed. “He telegraphed yesterday, and gave me your address. I am at your service, Miss Matthews, to take you back to Warsaw. There is a plane to Bucharest which you could catch tonight.”

  Sheila’s confusion left her. She was suddenly on the alert.

  “My uncle doesn’t have a branch of his business in Warsaw,” she said.

  “I am not in your uncle’s business.” There was a suspicion of a smile. “I have my own business. I export the finest Polish table delicacies. Your uncle’s firm is a very good customer. I have been under obligations to him. So, when he telegraphs me in urgent language, then I feel impelled to do as he asks.”

  Sheila relented. “I am afraid I have given you unnecessary trouble. I am very sorry. But I am just on the point of leaving for Warsaw.”

  “And when are you leaving Warsaw?”

  Sheila smiled. This man was quick. “By a train about midnight,” she answered.

  Mr. Hofmeyer produced a bulging pocketbook. He handed her several pieces of paper, neatly clipped together. “Your plane tickets. Give up the idea of a train, Miss Matthews. You are sure you won’t come with me now?”

  Sheila shook her head. “It’s very kind of you, but my friends are waiting for me.”

  “So. Well, at least my journey here wasn’t wasted. I can let your uncle know that you are leaving Warsaw, tonight.”

  Sheila was thinking, why does he keep looking at me like this? She said, “How did you know when I came into this room that I was Sheila Matthews?”

  She couldn’t fathom the man’s half-smile, the suddenly guarded look on his face.

  “Am I really so like my uncle?” she asked gently, and waited tensely for the reply.

  “No. Not really.” Then, as if he had said too much, Mr. Hofmeyer turned towards the door.

  “Mr. Hofmeyer,” Sheila began awkwardly, “thank you for coming here. I should think it must have been a very unpleasant journey for you, at the moment.”

  The man caught her meaning. “I’ve lived in Poland for twenty years. There are a number of Germans here, landowners and business-men. We are accepted as Poles.”

  Sheila looked at the square face, white, heavy-lined. She couldn’t read anything there. If the man worried about his status in Poland at this time, it wasn’t evident. A blank look had spread over his features. His face had become unmemorable, undistinguished.

  “Goodbye, Miss Matthews. My regards to your, uncle.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Sheila heard his light firm step cross the parquetry floor in the hall.

  Involuntarily, she stood close to the window. There was a crowd of children in the garden. The American’s tall shoulders were, surrounded by a waist-high sea of sleek heads and bright clothes. He was showing them how the lights of his car switched off and on. Sheila heard the children’s Oh’s and Ah’s of bliss. In the general clamour of thin light voices, Mr. Hofmeyer’s square figure had hurried down the steps of the house. The villagers, who had been staring through the dining-room windows, turned to watch him as he entered his car. As it swung into the road and gathered speed, there was the beginning of a song from the other side of the house. A woman’s voice was chanting a four-lined stanza, a man’s followed it with another verse, and then a slow rhythmic chorus came from the other peasants, and quickened to a crescendo. The villagers were saying goodbye in their own way.

  The door opened, and Madame Aleksander came in. “Sheila, they are leaving.” Her voice, at last, had no disguise.

  Sheila’s throat tightened. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she began. And then as she saw Madame Aleksander’s face, she said quickly with a rush of emotion and much truth, “I have loved being here...all of you...” Madame Aleksander embraced her quickly. There were tears on her cheeks too. Not just for this parting, Sheila knew. They were both weeping for all the partings this night. They were weeping for all the women who were weeping with them.

  Aunt Marta was in the hall, calling them in her firm voice. The others were gathered there too now.

  Madame Aleksander quickly dried her tears, and blew her nose. She went forward to Andrew.

  Sheila, still holding the plane tickets in her hand, took the hat and gloves and coat and handbag and diary which Maria had brought downstairs.

  “Everything else is in the car,” Aunt Marta was saying.

  Stefan said eagerly, “You will send me those airplane magazines you promised?” Sheila gave him a bear’s hug and a nod. So many outstretched hands to take and hold for a brief moment, so many voices, kind, affectionate, well-wishing. Teresa’s small, thin fingers wouldn’t let go.

  Barbara was saying, “Write me at Uncle Edward’s flat. I’ll be in Warsaw, if war comes.”

  Adam Wisniewski stood slightly apart, watching the group round Sheila and Andrew almost grimly. Sheila’s eyes met his. She had a feeling he was going to speak. But Russell Stevens had taken her coat and her hat and her arm, and was leading her determinedly towards the car. “We’ll be late,” he was saying anxiously.

  Sheila settled herself obediently in the car, but she wondered at her sudden annoyance with anyone so helpful as Mr. Stevens. It was all because of this parting, she decided. Partings were unsettling: you lost something, and you were never sure of being able to possess it again. That was it, she told herself firmly. Partings were disturbing.

  She heard Adam Wisniewski’s voice saying, “See you in Berlin, Andrew,” and saw his arm round Andrew’s shoulders. Then there were other voices—Stefan’s, Teresa’s. And Aunt Marta calling practical advice.

  Andrew left his family.

  It was over. At last. They were driving through the gate of poplars. The lighted windows, the moving heads of people crowding around the house, the four white pillars sheltering the group of upraised hands, the children’s shouts, were gone. Above them was a dark sky, and the sudden coolness of
a night breeze.

  3

  WARSAW

  The journey to Warsaw was spasmodic. Every now and again, the car pulled to the side of the wide, flat road, to let the columns of soldiers, with their rifles and blankets slung across their shoulders, go marching past. Long, boat-shaped carts, piled with supplies and equipment, lumbered along on their creaking wheels. The horses didn’t like the noise of the car, and the men walking at their head helped the drivers control them. Twice a detachment of cavalry trotted past. The tilt of the men’s caps reminded Sheila of Adam Wisniewski There were army cars, too, forcing their way westwards past the moving men and rearing horses. Twenty feet away from the main road was a smaller, rougher track. Along this, groups of silent men were walking with the long easy stride of the peasant. They were going east to report for duty. Soon they, too, would be marching westwards like the soldiers they now met. Everywhere was the taste of dust, the smell of gasoline, the whinnying of horses, the jingling of harness, the roar of engines, the grinding of sudden brakes, commands, shouts, oaths, and the steady ominous rhythm of marching boots. How often Sheila had read “Mobilisation is being completed. Troops are moving to the frontiers.” But never had she imagined this labour and sweat, the exhaustion of tempers and bodies, the ear-rending confusion of sounds intensified by the darkness.

  Once she said softly to the American, “Why don’t they use the trains?”

  “They are using the trains,” he replied.

  And once she said to Andrew, “Surely mobilisation is almost complete now.” It was an effort to cheer him up as much as an expression of her amazement at the numbers of men and the quantities of material which she was now seeing.

  Andrew shook his head sadly. “Not yet,” he answered. And Sheila, who had never pretended to know much about war, but had often agreed with loud demands for action against Nazi Germany, fell miserably silent. There was so much more to war than indignation meetings ever imagined.

  After the darkness of the countryside, Warsaw’s lights seemed gay and confident. Three armed policemen stopped the car for examination on the outskirts of the city. Then, it became a matter of speedy driving through the south-western suburbs, with their broad streets, modern apartment houses, and well-spaced gardens; of skirting the busy centre of the town, with its lighted shops and cafés and tramcars. They reached the River Vistula, and turned north on the new parkway at the enormous Kierbedz Bridge.

  As they neared the Citadel, Andrew leaned forward to give last directions. He was standing on the running-board of the car as it slowed up at the large gateway. A bleak light above the sentry’s head glared down at them. Andrew had only time to jump off, to salute them, to say something which Sheila didn’t even manage to hear, and then he was hurrying past the rigid sentry. For the second time that night, Sheila felt hot tears sting her eyes. The parting had been so quick, so brisk. She hadn’t meant to say goodbye like this. It was callous. She felt she had been totally inadequate. The American must have felt that too. He broke the long silence of their journey, back into the centre of the town again, only as they passed the Church of the Holy Cross and entered the little side street which would bring them to Professor Korytowski’s flat. And then he said, rather gruffly, “What’s that you have been holding in your hand all this time?”

  Sheila looked down at the sheaf of papers. She had forgotten about them. She said, “Plane tickets to Bucharest,” and stuffed them into her coat pocket.

  “I’ll ’phone the airport while you wash your face,” Stevens said bluntly. And then he addressed the windshield, “Although it beats me how a girl can cry so much for a man she doesn’t care two straws about!”

  Sheila didn’t answer that. She had been wondering too. Perhaps it was because she liked Andrew so much that she was sorry he was in love with her. But she couldn’t tell Stevens that. He wouldn’t see the logic, only the vanity, in that. It would have surprised her greatly to know what Mr. Stevens actually had decided: “Well, she’s honest, at least. No false pretences.” He gave her an encouraging smile, which she hadn’t quite expected, as the car halted in Czacki Street.

  The outside of the house hadn’t changed so much since June, when Sheila had first arrived in Warsaw and had spent a week with Barbara here. Except that the windowpanes were all taped, now; and there was a large notice pasted up outside the porter’s house at the gateway; and inside the gateway itself, there were buckets of sand and water. A round-faced, bald-headed porter was sitting under the solitary entrance light at the doorway to his flat. He lifted an eye from his newspaper to identify them. A radio voice was talking earnestly from an open window behind his head. There was a smell of cooking sausage. A woman’s voice called, “Supper, Henryk!” before her head appeared through the window. She looked at the two newcomers curiously.

  Henryk had risen slowly. He limped towards them, and peered cautiously at Sheila and Stevens as if he had bad eyesight.

  “Well, it’s the American gentleman,” he said. “Going to visit the Professor?”

  “Yes.” Russell Stevens didn’t wait for any further questioning. Sheila had turned her head towards the garden round which the block of apartments was built. She had no desire for anyone to see her face, stained with dust and tears, at this moment. The American seemed to understand, for he took her arm, and led her into the garden courtyard. “Inquisitive old buzzard,” he said under his breath.

  “He’s new, isn’t he? There was a younger man here in June,” Sheila said.

  “The younger chap is now in the navy. Henryk came last month. Usually, I don’t mind him. But I guess my nerves need a good stiff drink tonight.”

  “Do you come here often, then?” They were following the paved path round the edge of the garden to the doorway in the courtyard which led to Professor Korytowski’s staircase.

  “Once a week. About. There’s always a good party on Sunday nights. Just men, and a lot of talking.”

  The night in the city seemed warm. It hadn’t the edge of the air at Korytów. But inside this courtyard, there was the sweet perfume of flowers and leaves, strangely remote from the busy streets only a hundred yards away. Sheila stepped carefully round another pail of sand at the foot of the staircase. There was still another one on the landing outside Professor Korytowski’s door.

  As they waited for the door to be opened, Sheila said, “You know, I have rather a strange feeling...” She ignored Stevens’ grin. “I should either have gone home two weeks ago—”

  “You’re dead right, there.”

  “—or,” Sheila finished, “I shouldn’t go at all. Not just now, anyway.”

  “Just when, then?”

  Sheila was thinking, what is it that he finds so funny about me? She said, “Oh, after some weeks, once the war has settled down. After all, people stayed in Paris during the last war, and did what they could to help.”

  Russell Stevens looked at her in alarm. “You are leaving, tonight!” he said determinedly. “Personally, I don’t care whether you go or stay. You are old enough to take care of yourself. But Andrew Aleksander happens to be a friend of mine, and he has asked me to see you leave. So leave you do. Even if it kills me, or what is more important, even if it loses me my job.” He glanced at his watch, and pressed the doorbell once more.

  “You have work to do?” That might explain Mr. Stevens’ impatience.

  “A mere detail of broadcasting at one o’clock in the morning.” The voice was acid, and justifiably so. Sheila felt more of a nuisance than ever. She gave Professor Korytowski a very subdued greeting. The look of worry and strain on his face didn’t ease her conscience.

  * * *

  The apartment had three rooms and a very small kitchen. There was the living-room in which Uncle Edward ate and worked and received his students, there was his small bedroom, and there was the slightly larger one which Barbara used during the University term. Before Barbara, Andrew had occupied it, and before Andrew, Stanislaw. For Uncle Edward, foreseeing the needs of numerous relatives w
hom he intended to set firmly into the professions, had provided the extra bedroom as a necessary economy for the family purse. Aunt Marta alone opposed him. “Someone has got to look after the land,” she had said in protest to a family of professional men; and she had registered stony disbelief when her brother replied, “By the time the children are all grown up, the State will look after that.” A more effective silencing was the way in which he transferred the Korytowski house and lands to his two widowed sisters, so that they were freed of dependence on him. For himself, he had his work. The little money which he earned was sufficient for his ideas of how a man should live. Barbara had once said, “Uncle Edward thinks that a good review of one of his articles in a University publication is more important than a bank account.” Now Sheila, standing in the bare “guest room,” with its two couches, simple furniture (she smiled as she noticed that the most important article was a bookcase, filled with an excellent choice in novels and poetry), remembered the pride in Barbara’s voice. It was easy to understand Barbara and Jan Reska when you remembered that.

  Sheila searched for the jug of water standing in its basin under the table. Its coldness, splashed vigorously over her face, made her feel, as well as look, better. Outside, in the narrow hall, the American was phoning. From the living-room came the sound of men’s voices. She hurriedly combed the wind tangles out of her hair. (“I’m afraid we don’t have much time left, Miss Matthews,” Professor Korytowski had said, which was his polite paraphrase for “Hurry up. You’re late.”) She paused in the middle of combing her hair at the memory of Uncle Edward’s way of pronouncing “Matthews.” He pronounced it like every foreigner, stumbling over the impossible combination of th, and giving it more of the French sound of “Mathieu.” Only Mr. Stevens had said it the exactly correct way. Only Mr. Stevens—and Mr. Johann Hofmeyer. Perhaps he had lived for years in England or America. Why worry about a detail like that anyway? There was more to think about at the moment.