While Still We Live (27 page)

For one moment his eyes looked directly at the doorway and rested on her. She felt the look rather than saw it. Russell Stevens pulled impatiently at her sleeve. He too was watching Wisniewski.

“Come on,” Stevens said, “we are supposed to be in the next room.” He looked at her in that quick, clever way of his. He stood aside to let her pass into the hall.

Adam Wisniewski had stopped talking, stopped listening. The men beside him saw him take a step towards the door. One of them repeated his question quickly. “You said you would need someone in the villages surrounding your camp to be responsible for guiding your recruits. In each village? Or in a key village, Captain?”

Wisniewski halted. She had gone, and the American was following her.

The men around him were waiting for his reply. He turned his back to the door. “In each village,” he said. “We’ll need help from every village in the district, not just from one or two.” Grimly, he forced his whole attention on the man’s answer. If
there had been no time for personal feelings in the last four weeks, there was even less now.

In the hall, Korytowski waited impatiently for Sheila and Stevens. “This way,” he was saying, “this way,” as he led them to the guest room. Behind them was that low, busy murmur of voices. The two soldiers on guard leaned against the twisted door.

ANNA BRAUN

Sheila sat on one of the narrow beds. Korytowski sat on the hard spindle-legged chair. Stevens paced the room.

“How long will it take the others to leave?” Sheila asked, if only to break the silence and interrupt her own thoughts. This was the second time they had met; this was the second time they hadn’t spoken. Then it had been people, now it was events which had kept them apart. It wasn’t likely that they would ever meet again. But somehow, she wished he had spoken.

“Long enough,” Korytowski answered. “They must leave singly or in groups of two or three.”

“Who are the guards at the door?”

“Two of Wisniewski’s men.”

Stevens stopped his pacing. “How long has he been with this outfit?” he asked.

“Who? Wisniewski? Since yesterday. Until then, he had thought it possible to break through the German lines. He led
two attempts this week. But yesterday he saw that capitulation was inevitable, and so he agreed to Olszak’s original proposal, and will fight on this way.”

“Why do you look like that?” Sheila asked Stevens.

“Like what?” he countered, with pretended obtuseness.

“So—so contemptuous.”

“All I wanted to know,” the American said with emphasised patience, “was how long the brave captain has been associating with workmen and business-men and schoolteachers and newspapermen. That surprised me, I admit. I thought he only knew beautiful women and handsome horses.”

Sheila was angrier than Korytowski, who repressed a smile. “Really, Steve,” she began indignantly. And then, rather weakly, “He’s Andrew’s friend.”

“Yes. That attraction of opposites, I guess.”

“Not so very much opposites,” Korytowski said mildly. “And he has something in common with you too, Steve. Only, you’ve been educated under different systems, and the result seems different on the surface.” He looked at Stevens’ heavy frown. “It’s strange,” he went on, “I should have thought the violent energy which has characterised Adam Wisniewski’s exceedingly colourful life would have appealed to an American. That is what made America, after all. He is so very much—alive. He’s a good soldier, a magnificent horseman, a fine shot, an excellent hunter. The ladies admire his conversation.” Stevens muttered something under his breath which Korytowski tactfully ignored, although he smiled. He continued, “I must confess that there have been moments in my own orderly existence when I have admired, and even envied, Captain Wisniewski’s ability to enjoy life.”

“He’s a damn fascist,” Stevens said. “He’s not on your side, nor on mine. What about that students’ riot two years ago? In the Jewish quarter? Wisniewski was passing with some friends. He didn’t stop them, did he?”

“In all fairness to Wisniewski, you should remember he didn’t begin the riot, and he didn’t even join it. He had great contempt for the ‘bourgeois fascists,’ as he called the type of student who began that riot. His contribution to the evening began by snatching a policeman’s helmet. True, he might have tried to stop the riot instead of taking the opportunity for some fun at the expense of the law. I agree with you there. And yet, I don’t suppose either you or I could have stopped that riot, or even wanted to act as policemen, if we had been having an evening’s celebration such as Wisniewski and his friends had had.”

“What happened to the policeman’s helmet?” Sheila asked.

“It was found floating down the Vistula with four others which Wisniewski managed to collect before his evening was over.” Korytowski smiled. “As far as I can remember, they had paper sails rigged in them.”

The tension slackened much to Sheila’s relief, but Stevens still didn’t speak.

“I’ve been teaching young men for almost twenty years,” Korytowski continued, “and there is one thing I’ve learned. If a large number of them get together and start looking for what is called ‘fun’ they invariably end in trouble. The sense of power which the mass feeling provides is intoxicating; and, as in the case of that riot, the direction which that power takes depends on the merest chance. One man of ill will can affect others, and high spirits can be turned into blind violence. Tomorrow
these young men may be ashamed, but at the moment they are intoxicated and their individual judgment is lost. Surely you have seen that happen in your own country, too?”

“Of course.” Stevens was too polite. “I don’t believe in pogroms, or in the men who don’t stop them, that’s all.”

Korytowski was silent for a long moment. Then he said quietly, “Every country has its minorities, whether they are racial or religious or political. And minorities are always resented, sometimes with cause, sometimes without. The only difference in countries is that some raise the mob emotion against minorities into an official policy, and become totalitarian; others seek to educate their citizens against resentment and mob emotion. Their success in that depends on how long a space of peace has been granted to their countries’ natural development.”

Olszak entered briskly. “A short lecture on the dangers of Nazism, I see,” be said, and looked at the cracked ceiling, the boarded window, the plaster and dust on the floor.

Korytowski smiled. Stevens’ frown disappeared. “My fault,” he said, “and now I feel like a heel. I wasn’t attacking Poland, Professor.”

“No?” Korytowski said gently, and Sheila laughed.

“Was I?” Stevens demanded indignantly.

Sheila said, “Just the foreigner’s usual holier-than-thou. I know, Steve: I have had attacks of it myself. I suppose we mostly believe ‘my country, right or wrong,’ whether it’s cooking recipes or social systems we are discussing. What we have been brought up with always seems more sensible than what is different.”

“The foreigner visiting any country is a rarity if he doesn’t criticise and think ‘At home, we had...or did...’” Korytowski
said.

Stevens watched Olszak’s strange smile. “I got into this through a very simple statement. I said, and I still say, that Adam Wisniewski’s out of place.”

Sheila thought, perhaps I shouldn’t have defended Adam. Then Steve might have stopped harping on this subject... But she couldn’t resist saying, partly to find out Olszak’s verdict, “A damned fascist.” Steve looked at her angrily. By her tone and face he saw she didn’t believe him. Wisniewski had watched her plenty in the meeting, and that last look she had given him hadn’t been particularly short or cold, either. Damn Wisniewski. What was he doing here anyway?

“All right, then,” Stevens said. “He
is
a damn fascist. I said it before, and I’ll keep on saying it.”

Olszak watched him keenly, and then looked at Sheila. “I am going to shock you both,” he said with mock seriousness. “I never pay much attention to a young man’s politics, as long as he doesn’t specialise in cruelty or violence. He makes, if there is any good in him, at least one major change before he reaches the dangerous age, before his convictions harden. What is more, I am in revolt against the recent fashion of attaching so much weight to political ideology. For the last fifty years, we have paid too much attention to political differences, just as we used to pay too much attention to religious differences. Nowadays the word Communist or Fascist rouses the same emotions as Protestant and Catholic once caused. If these religious factions can learn to live together by giving up all persecution and forms of torture, it is quite possible that a future world will see many forms of political ideology living and working side by side. We will have that as soon as politics and politicians
become adult. If the Church has found that the Inquisition and St. Bartholomew’s Day are not necessary for maintaining its authority, politics too can achieve that perspective by giving up concentration camps and murder. If Adam Wisniewski believed that one nation alone should be master of the world, even if he believed that nation should be our own Poland, I would fight him to the death. But his love of Poland only means freedom for the Poles, freedom for everyone, to live in their own houses, to till their own fields, to ride over their own roads with no foreigner to interfere or command. He is a nationalist, but not a fascist. For a fascist is one who uses a political ideology to grab more power for his country, his Party, and of course for himself. He is identified completely with his Party, and it in turn is identified with the State. He can tolerate no differences of opinion for that very reason.”

Mr. Olszak’s voice had become grimly serious while he talked. As the Britisher and American remained silent, he went on, “Adam Wisniewski and I have disagreed in politics in the past. Yet he trusts me in our common fight. I would be a lesser man if I could not trust him. Our differences were merely ones of having and not having. In the past, he and his friends wanted to keep what they had. I and my friends wanted more than we had. On their side it was fear, on ours it was envy. That is how mean politics can be. But today, with German bombs and soldiers to level rich and poor homes, to make us one in suffering, our differences seem petty. Nothing matters now but the freedom we have all lost.”

Neither Stevens nor Sheila spoke yet.

“When a conqueror lives in your cities, destroys, mutilates, kills, you will know then what I mean,” Olszak said and fell
silent too.

Stevens kicked aside a piece of plaster. “I don’t need that experience. I guess you’re right. At least, you always sound as if you were right.”

Olszak smiled, a strangely gentle smile. “With age men lose their hair, their teeth, their eyesight, their strength. Their only compensation is their experience. If they have lived without achieving that then their lives have been quite useless.” He turned to Sheila. “You understood all that was said at the meeting?”

“Yes. I’ve learned a lot of Polish in the last few weeks. I had to.”

“Good.” To Stevens he said, “You remember the meeting quite clearly?”

“Yes. I won’t forget it.”

“Good. I have a job for you to do. The Germans will round up all foreigners when they arrive. Unless the neutral foreigners have established business here, the Germans will certainly send them out of the country. And they will see that they get safely but of the country. They don’t want any extra witnesses here of their treatment of the Poles. I want a full report of that meeting to reach our friends in the outside world. The only way in which there would be no possibility of the Germans intercepting such a message would be if it travelled out of the country safely locked up in a neutral brain.”

“Then I am not to stay here?” Stevens’ face was a study in disappointment.

Olszak was pleased. He gripped the American’s shoulder. “You are the only neutral, so far, who is in our organisation. This would be a major service which you would render us.
Coded messages sent by radio would be too dangerous in this case: that is how important it is. And although the German will give you safe-conduct, there will be plenty of danger. You’ll need to use your wits all the time. They’ll have spies well disguised. I’ll give you full instructions later. Meanwhile, don’t forget what you saw and heard today.”

“And after that?” Stevens was still disappointed.

“There will be another job for you to do...and then, another, and another. We work our good men very hard.”

“And where will I be?”

“Wherever it does the Germans most harm.”

Stevens smiled grimly. “All right,” he said, “that suits me. But what about Sheila? She can’t stay here pretending to be a Pole. She has only got to speak and the Germans will know at once she is a foreigner.”

“We’ve thought of that.” And we’ve made our plans, the voice implied. Mr. Olszak turned to Sheila. “I’ve heard from your uncle. He was not very pleased to hear that you were still in Warsaw. He thinks you are a nuisance to us.”

“What did you reply?” Sheila asked. She wondered why she should feel so upset at the idea that she might have to leave Poland after all. There had been hours in the last few weeks when she had been miserably homesick. Now she knew she still wanted to stay. Madame Aleksander needed her: Madame Aleksander who once had so many children round her, who now had none.

“I waited to hear your answer before I replied.”

Sheila brushed back the hair from her forehead. There were little beads of perspiration under the curls. “Have I been a nuisance?” she asked.

Olszak shook his head slowly.

“Then I shall stay. Madame Aleksander...”

Olszak and Korytowski exchanged glances. Uncle Edward was smiling happily.

“I’m on the side of her uncle,” Stevens said quickly. “She has already done her job here. She should leave. Or else, she’ll spend the rest of the war in a concentration camp—if she’s lucky.” His voice was harsh.

“But Steve, I’ve lived through the bombardment and siege. The war may last only another year. Once the Siegfried Line is cracked there will be nothing to stop us reaching Berlin.”