While Still We Live (49 page)

Sheila moved restlessly. She had heard more than she wanted to. This was the just reward for pretending. She was angry with herself, with these curious women, with sable capes. A sable cape was unfair. Any idiot could catch an eye with a sable cape.

“She’s awakening,” Franziska said with sudden interest.

“Now you can find out all about her to your heart’s content,” Marian said with her good-natured laugh. “I’ll get Antoni.” From the doorway, she called “Antoni! Antoni!”

Sheila opened her eyes. Unwillingly. That moment could no longer be postponed. A sad-faced girl was watching her curiously.

“Well!” she said. She turned to Marian at the door. “We were both wrong,” she said. “They’re brown.”

Marian, older, broader, plainer than Franziska, came bustling over to the bed. “Well,” she said in amazement, “so we were. Unusual, aren’t they? She wouldn’t look bad in a sable cape, either.”

“None of us would.”

“You’d be surprised. It takes a good neck and shoulders.”

A small fat man, quite bald and red-faced, entered the hut.

“Well, well,” he began in his best bedside manner, and reached for Sheila’s wrist. He sat down beside her.

“Looks surprised,” he announced. “Didn’t she know she had reached the camp, poor thing?”

Sheila smiled. Somehow, from Marian’s way of saying “Antoni” with such adoration attached to the word, she hadn’t quite expected this middle-aged, ugly little man. Sheila’s smile broadened.

“She’s better,” Antoni said delightedly. “I told you sleep
would do it.” Marian, towering over him, clapped him on the shoulder as if he were entirely responsible. Franziska looked strangely at Sheila, and then slowly, almost unwillingly, smiled too.

“Tell the boy,” Antoni said. “He’s been moping round this door as if she were going to die. Better tell big Jan, too, if you can find him. He was over helping the men at the new huts.”

Franziska obeyed him promptly. The doctor and his wife, watching her running steps, exchanged amused glances.

“What she needs is a husband,” the doctor said cryptically.

“Yes, that would give her plenty to worry about,” Marian added affectionately, her hand still on the little man’s shoulder.

To Sheila, Antoni said, “Your Jan thought he had killed you. He got a lecture and a half for the pace he set. Forgot you were a city girl, the big ox.”

Stefan came first. He didn’t say very much, but he looked so pleased that Sheila could have hugged him. Then Jan came in. He was equally speechless, and more than nervous.

Sheila looked at him solemnly. “Not dead,” she said, “I’m not dead.”

Jan stared and then broke into a shout of laughter. The more he tried to explain the story to the startled doctor and his wife, the less understandable it became. But his laughter was infectious. Even Stefan, with his solemn dark eyes, was half-smiling.

Marian became suddenly business-like. “Well, there’s work to be done. If you men take yourselves back to your jobs, I’ll get her dressed. She’ll sit outside on a bench at the door: some sunshine and a look at the camp would be the best tonic she could have. Antoni, tell Franziska to start changing the
dressings in the men’s hut. I’ll get over to help her as soon as I’ve finished here.”

Marian’s actions were as quick as her words. In little time she had Sheila dressed and seated outside in the sunshine, with an army blanket over her shoulders and a doeskin rug tucked round her knees. Marian had asked so many questions that there had been little pause for any full answers, and between the questions had come such a jumble of friendly advice and information that Sheila’s head whirled. She was glad when the kindly but over energetic woman left her at last, left her to watch the long, low loghouse under the tall thick branches. From this bench she could see only one other hut, quite a large, newly built one. That was where Marian had gone, so the rest of Antoni’s “hospital” must be there.

Except for the distant sound of men’s voices, and occasional laugh, a sudden burst of hammering, the forest seemed deserted. A leaf, its rich colour faded into brown, would be torn from its branch by some unfelt breeze. A patchwork of cold blue, where the leaves had already fallen away from the tree’s black arms, formed the sky. A column of wood pigeons wheeled above, with silver underwings flashing brightly as it twisted and manoeuvred in the sunshine. This was the forest. Its vastness gave strength; its peace gave hope.

* * *

Antoni came out of the hospital hut, lighted a cigarette, and then, with his hands in the pockets of his faded army trousers, strolled over to the watching girl. His good-natured eyes, wrinkled at the corners, looked at her over his spectacles. His nose was so short that the spectacles had slipped almost to its snub tip, and clung there precariously.

“Envying the birds?” he said gently, pushing his spectacles back into place as he sat down beside her.

Sheila stopped watching the flashing wings. “No. Admiring. Not envying. They have hawks to prey om them, too.” She hesitated. “Actually, I was thinking about airplanes.”

“Haven’t you left them behind you?” The kind eyes were studying her face.

“Difficult... Don’t they ever fly over here?”

“Yes. But the thickness of these trees keeps us safe. Even in winter, their branches will camouflage us, and there are plenty of evergreens scattered about. You notice, we haven’t tried to make any clearing. We’ve dispersed the huts over nine or ten square miles. The Lodge, as you see, is the centre of the camp. The men come there for orders, or for an evening in its warmth. For we are very careful about fires. Smoke in daytime would give us away, or any glow at night. Yet, we must have heat. So we light a fire in the Lodge when darkness comes, and we’ve built a canopy over the chimney so that no red glow of sparks can be seen from the sky. We kill the fire before dawn, so that there’s no smoke left to give us away. Then we take the hot ashes and—do you see that kind of mound over there by the Lodge?—well, we spread the ashes there, in a kind of hole in the ground, with earth over the top. It bakes things for us slowly. The main cooking is done either over the Lodge fire, or at three covered kitchen fires. All at night, of course. We have had to change our mealtimes to suit the fires, but at least we do have one hot meal a day. It looks as if we’ll have to build more kitchen fires, if our numbers keep increasing as they do.”

“How many are there in the forest?”

“Well over three hundred, now. At the end of a year, we’ll be
counting in thousands.”

“But there won’t be room.”

“There’s room in other forests. There’s room in the mountains.”

“It all seems so quiet, as if no one really lived here at all.”

“We keep apart. We take turns working and relaxing. Even at the Lodge in the evenings, there’s never more than fifty together at once. We share and share alike. Some look after the food, some look after the patrolling, some build and help with the improvements. There’s always some raiding party out. The men take their turns. It’s all a matter of planning and organisation.”

“Food. Where does it come from?”

Antoni laughed and smacked his knee. “You ask us that in this forest? Four hundred square miles or more, with everything from hare and rabbit to boar and deer? The peasants in the villages around do what they can to help us, too. There’s a lot of smuggling going on in these parts, nowadays. And then, now and again we lift something we especially need from a Nazi’s larder. We don’t starve. We eat carefully, but we don’t starve.”

“But if you hunt in this forest, surely the shots may be heard?”

“Not if we do our hunting in the central part of the forest. We’ve marked out a boundary line a certain distance from the camp. Beyond that, no more hunting.”

“What if the Germans come hunting?”

Antoni shook his head. “There’s a woman for you—always thinking of trouble.”

Sheila smiled at the wrinkled brow which meant the invisible eyebrows were raised in mock disgust.

Then seriously he added, “You don’t miss a trick, do you? It
was a good point you made. But when the Germans take time off for some ordinary hunting, and not just the mere hunting of human beings, then they are going to spend their shooting holidays in the forests where the game is known to be so plentiful that they’ll bag big results. There has been a rumour for many years among the peasants—and we keep it alive, you may be sure—that this forest is poor in big game. Years ago it was too much hunted over, and it never was restocked. There’s a forest to the east of us with bigger and richer game. Marshal Goering won’t waste time here if he has better tracts of forest to explore. As for a less ambitious hunter...well, if any of them comes here, we’ll lie quiet that day and let him shoot around the forest’s edge to his heart’s content. Our patrols will follow him and his friends, and they’ll probably have some ripe criticism to make on the German’s way of hunting when next they spend an evening at the Lodge. I hear the Germans are pretty busy right now emptying our libraries and hospitals and factories of their equipment. What would they want with a forest where there wasn’t even a decent hunting lodge to spend a night in? No, the danger would only come when they formed a suspicion that this forest isn’t so desolate as it seems.”

He looked at Sheila laughingly. “You don’t believe me?” The spectacles were slipping again.

“And if they formed a suspicion?”

“We shall have our warning. We have our patrols round the forest night and day. And we’ve good leaders. They’ve their plans made. Yes, even the optimistic Pole has his plans against a possible attack!” He watched her face with amusement. “Remember, no motorised division can surprise a large forest. The Germans will have to use men and not their machines for
that. And we will have time to retreat.”

He pushed his spectacles back into their rightful position with a broad forefinger. “Just wait until you’ve rested here for a week or two. Just wait until you see the men and the Chief. I know how you feel. I came here the same way, not quite believing. Guerrilla army? A storybook adventure...something out of the Middle Ages...fantastic. Perhaps we are all these things; but we are also the only army left to a conquered country. Some of us at any rate will be here to help those who start pushing the Hun back where he belongs. Then we won’t be just a storybook chapter; we’ll be in the history books as well.” He touched her arm gently. “We all came here with our courage shaken, our pride badly wounded, our hopes quite gone. All we had left was cold rage. But now we have something more; we have learned to believe in ourselves again. We expect danger, we live with death; but we’ve got our courage and we have action. Plenty of it. Look to the faces of the newcomers when they first arrive. You’ll be filled with pity. Look at these same faces just a few days later. Then you’ll see what I mean.”

“I’ve already seen. Jan. Even Stefan.”

“The boy was in a bad way. He will take some time to mend. Jan told me about it.”

“About Korytów?”

“You know about it?”

“No. And yet I must. I tried to get there in time. I failed.”

“You don’t want to know about it.”

“I must. I have to meet Madame Aleksander. I can meet her better if I know. Jan wouldn’t tell me. Stefan—I am afraid to talk to him about it; can’t... You are a stranger. You can tell me better than anyone. If you know, then tell me.”

“I know only the outline. But it is enough. It’s a common enough story in the last six weeks, yet it is one which you always seem to be hearing for the first time. That’s the kind of cold, unbelievable shock it gives you.” The kind, simple face was worried. He jabbed at the unruly spectacles crossly. Her request worried him. He looked miserably towards the hospital as if wishing Marian would appear and help him out of this.

Sheila’s voice was tense. “If you don’t tell me, I shall never know. And I shall go on worrying about it and thinking about it. The name of Korytów is haunting me. I feel as if someone had told me that a friend had died, and then refused to tell me what illness had killed him. That’s how I feel. I am not being sordid. It is just that Korytów was the one place in Poland which I knew as if it were my own village. Don’t give me details. But just tell me: are Stefan’s sister and aunt dead?”

“They were taken away with the others.” Antoni watched her face. Suddenly he was the doctor, again. “I think you are right in wanting to know, or else you will always torture yourself about it. If you know the worst, then you know. It’s healthier that way. Now what did you learn about Korytów’s end?”

“Only that Jan and another man went to warn the village. Only that Jan and five other men and Stefan came back. That’s all I know.”

The early sunset now bathed the forest in its rich rays. The evergreens seemed darker. The breeze had gone. There was a strange hush through the trees, as if they waited breathlessly for night.

Antoni cleared his throat and stared at the copper beech opposite them. Its leaves were like molten metal.

“Jan and his friends came to Korytów in the late evening. Jan went to warn the people at the big house. His friend went to the village: his girl lived there. There was absolute peace in the village. There had been no Germans since the officers billeted in the manor house had gone, taking the soldiers with them. The Germans had requisitioned most of the food supplies. In fact, there was so little left that the people of the village thought the Germans wouldn’t bother about them again. So both Jan and his friend had some difficulty in persuading the people that there might be some danger intended for them. They didn’t get very excited about it. They had heard too many false rumours from refugees, they hadn’t anything left for the Germans to plunder. They didn’t believe the story very much that Korytów had been giving trouble and was to be punished. For one thing, all their weapons had been taken from them. And they knew that the Germans knew that.

“Well, at last, some families did move into the woods. They lay there all night, and watched the peaceful village. Rain came on, and a cold wind. By dawn the Germans hadn’t come. By dawn, those who had listened to Jan and his friend thought they were alarmists. They found reasons for wandering back to the village where those who had refused to leave had spent a pleasant comfortable night in their warm beds. The day passed, and still there was no sign of any approaching Germans. In the woods beside the village there were only left Jan and his friend and five men who wanted to join Captain Reymont’s band, and Stefan. Stefan wanted to fight, too, and he had been so insistent that his aunt finally agreed he should go back to Reymont’s camp with Jan. I think she knew that if he stayed in the village he would do something desperate and get them all into trouble.
Stefan’s aunt promised she would set out for Warsaw with the little girl as soon as the child was well enough to travel, for she had been wounded at the time of the fighting round Korytów and her hand wasn’t healing properly. From what Jan told me I think the whole arm had become infected.” Antoni passed a hand wearily over his brow. “So many of our doctors have been killed or imprisoned,” he said heavily. “So many wounds have gone unattended.” He stared at the copper beech, each leaf outlined in gold.