While Still We Live (5 page)

Professor Korytowski abandoned his labours, and introduced the strange man, who had risen to his feet and was watching Sheila keenly. His name was Michal Olszak.

“We’ve been talking of the old days, which is one of the few escapes left us from the present,” Korytowski said. “Now do sit down, and we’ll wait until Mr. Stevens finishes verifying the airplane time.”

Sheila sat quietly, and tried to listen to a conversation which
had now switched, for her benefit, to the most recent news. But she was wondering if Mr. Olszak had seen as much danger as Edward Korytowski had in the “old days.” That phrase meant the Polish fight for freedom during the last war; and then the continued fight for Polish boundaries after 1919, when the rest of the world relaxed into peace and forgot Poland; and then the establishing of a liberal regime. Edward Korytowski had been in the short-lived government. He had “retired” with Paderewski and Sikorski and the other liberals. In his disappointment, he had given up politics completely. Well, if Professor Korytowski said they were talking about the old days, then he and Mr. Olszak had indeed been talking about them. So much, Sheila thought, for the strange feeling she had had, as she entered the room, that they had been talking about her. What she needed, she told herself wryly, was not two months, but two years, submerging her personality into a family like the Aleksanders. Then she’d be less of an egotist, and happier altogether.

Her thoughts and Uncle Edward’s slow voice were interrupted by the American. He was still worried, but he was also excited. He began pacing the room, his hands plunged deeply into the pockets of his light-coloured tweed jacket.

“I ’phoned the office twice,” he was saying quickly. “First time, no dice. Second time, after I made calls to the airport and station, they told me a blackout is rumoured. Some of the districts in the city are already dimming out. They want me to get to the broadcasting station at once, just in case. As for the plane to Bucharest, all civilian reservations are cancelled for the next twelve hours. Then I tried the station. Trains are needed for the army. Those for civilians are few and far between. I reached
Bill Robertson, who had been covering the station, trying to get a news story that way. Bill says it’s hopeless. Stations jam-packed.” He looked at Sheila and shrugged his shoulders. “So what?” he said.

Sheila’s dismay left her, perhaps because she felt he expected her to be dismayed. “You’d better go to the broadcasting station,” she said in a voice that was calmer than her thoughts. “I’ll go to the station and wait. That’s all that can be done, anyway.”

“I’ll go with Miss Matthews,” Professor Korytowski said. “And if there isn’t a train available. Miss Matthews can have Barbara’s room until there is one. I think that would be better than a hotel in this emergency.” He looked towards Sheila for her acceptance. She gave him a thankful smile. That was one worry gone, anyway. A few days in a hotel, and there would be little money left to get her to Britain.

Russell Stevens still stood undecided. He was obviously relieved at the quickness of their decisions, but he seemed reluctant to accept them. He looked at her for a moment. He knew determination when he saw it.

“Hurry,” Sheila said. “You’ve wasted enough time on me already. And thank you very much for having wasted it.” There was a smile in the business-like grey eyes as he gripped her hand in his. And then his even, sure footsteps were running down the stone stairs.

“Suitcases,” Sheila called after him from the landing. “No time. Leave them with Uncle Edward.” She saw Russell Stevens’ upturned face, saw a wave from his hand that he understood and agreed, and then he had disappeared into the courtyard. Professor Korytowski smiled as he struggled into a thin coat, which never seemed to get properly onto his large, stooping shoulders.

“I have a nice niece, I hear,” he said as Sheila came back into the room.

Sheila smiled, too. The “Uncle Edward” had slipped out so easily, so unconsciously. “I’m sorry—” she began.

“Not at all, I like it. And I’ll see that your luggage is forwarded to you later. Now, I suppose we ought to leave, too. Are you sure you really want to go to the station, after Stevens’ information?”

“Frankly, I don’t want to go. But I’ve promised everyone I would leave Warsaw tonight. So I suppose, I have to try at least. Just to satisfy my conscience.” She fumbled in her pocket, wondering if she should explain about Mr. Hofmeyer and the plane tickets. But Mr. Olszak turned the volume control on the wireless set, and said in his crisp voice, “Total blackout in fifteen minutes. That’s the latest announcement.”

He looked at Sheila, gathering up her handbag and gloves. “Perhaps you shouldn’t go,” he said. “Not tonight.”

“I’ll have to try, I’m afraid.”

Mr. Olszak remained staring at the girl. “The resemblance is really very strong, in every way,” he said incredulously in Polish. Sheila looked puzzled. She didn’t quite understand. Perhaps she had misunderstood. She was tired, and Mr. Olszak spoke so quickly. Perhaps she had misunderstood.

Certainly, Mr. Olszak was thinking of something else now. “I’ll wait for the others,” he said to Uncle Edward. “We’ll begin without you, if necessary.” He picked up a newspaper.

“If you are expecting—” Sheila began in alarm.

“Hush, child. You worry too much. Either there will be a possible train, or there won’t be one. We needn’t wait long at the station. I’ll be back in time to see my guests.”

Mr. Olszak had come over to the door, with the newspaper still in his hand, to say goodbye. “I hope we may meet again, some day, when all this trouble is over.” He looked as if he were expressing an impossible wish. “There is much we could talk about. Goodbye, and a safe journey.”

Under the row of chestnut trees in the quiet little street, Sheila was still wondering about Mr. Olszak. Uncle Edward seemed to think that something Olszak had said had depressed her.

“Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly. “This trouble may not last so long as Michal thinks. He is always rather too realistic, too gloomy. That’s why his newspaper sells so badly. He
will
write editorials which are both true and unpleasant. He says there are two kinds of journalist. One becomes rich and powerful, and cynical of the poor. Another remains poor, and cynical of the rich and powerful.”

“I think I would like to meet Mr. Olszak again, some day,” said Sheila.

“He was a great friend of your—” Uncle Edward halted abruptly. He was suddenly business-like. “There’s a taxi,” he said. He waved vehemently. They were standing outside the Church of the Holy Cross. Around them, on Main Street, there were tramcars and lighted restaurants and numerous cafés crowded with earnestly talking people. It seemed as if every open window concealed a wireless set turned fully on. In June, Sheila remembered, there had been music and laughter and smiling faces on the street. Now, the lights were darkening. People were leaving the cafés. People were walking urgently.

* * *

The taxi-driver justified Professor Korytowski’s extravagance. The cab reached Central Station as the last lights vanished, like
the flames of candles briefly snuffed out. Uncle Edward looked up and down the darkened street as they stood accustoming their eyes to the night. “I do believe,” he said as he stared at the buildings in their new austerity, “I do believe a blackout is an improvement.” And Sheila found herself almost smiling.

Inside the large, modern station, the ghastly light from infrequent, blue-painted lamps was certainly no improvement. Masses of people stood patiently in crowded groups. Children had fallen asleep on benches against the walls; their exhausted bodies drooped pathetically. Professor Korytowski steered Sheila through the crowd of stolid faces. They were going home, these people. They belonged to the villages, and in this moment of crisis they wanted to return there, these older men and women and children. A war was threatened; the villages would have to be defended. Even years of city life had not eradicated that simple belief.

“The foreigners will be over there,” Uncle Edward said, indicating the section where express trains usually left for abroad. He mixed force with polite phrases to ease a way through the crowds.

Sheila heard them before she saw them, sitting on piles of luggage or elbowing each other round the notice boards. Worry hadn’t improved their tempers; their smart clothes were as jaded as their nerves.

Voices of many nations were outshouting each other.

“Ridiculous... I’m going back to the hotel.” It was an English voice, too.

“And start this all over again, tomorrow?”

“Ridiculous...a few extra trains and we would all get away.”

“You’re darned right it’s ridiculous,” a third voice said. An
American voice. “How do they expect to win a war if they don’t have organisation?”

Sheila looked at them savagely, all the more savagely became Uncle Edward was pretending not to have heard them. How did they expect a war to be won if soldiers had to walk to the frontier so that a batch of foreigners wouldn’t have to wait for a free train? A Frenchman argued bitterly with an Italian. A Rumanian family quarrelled loudly among themselves. A woman, who evidently believed in travelling with her jewellery, complained and complained. She had lost a hatbox. A fat, dark-haired, sallow-faced man was buttonholing every station employee he could see. It never seemed to dawn on him that these hurrying, harassed men had each his own job to do. “I’m a neutral,” the fat man kept saying. “I’ve a neutral’s rights. The Embassy told me there would be a train, tonight. Where’s that train?” The only silent people, it seemed, were three young American chorus girls with immaculate hair and elaborate shoes, and a tight-lipped Englishwoman whose dull clothes spelled governess. These four had drawn together. They stood beside a worried Cook’s Tour agent, and listened, with amusement and disapproval respectively, to the unanswerable questions which bombarded the unfortunate man.

Professor Korytowski had managed to attract the attention of the Cook’s Tour man. In Polish, he asked quickly if there was to be a train, if they should wait?

The man, his thin face thinner under the wide scoop of his official cap, nodded. “There is to be a train, specially provided.” His tone said, “But why, in God’s name, for such people?”

“Thank you. We shall wait, then,” Professor Korytowski replied.

Someone said behind them, “A Pole! Imagine that! When they should be staying at home to fight!”

Sheila turned to face the elbowing woman who carried a dog under her arm.

“Don’t worry. Your dog can have my place on the train,” she said clearly, and walked away. Professor Korytowski managed to reach her as she struggled free from the last of the crowd.

“But there is a train, Sheila. Any minute perhaps.”

Sheila, still telling herself what she could have said to the woman, still thinking of bitter, stinging phrases now that it was too late, looked up in silence at Professor Korytowski.

“With
these
objects?” she asked at last. The scorn in her voice, the vehemence in her eyes left Professor Korytowski no reply. He looked worriedly towards the notice board, but Sheila was already walking out of the station.

THE OLD SQUARE

Sheila twisted once more on the narrow bed. Outside, she heard the cool sound of water as the porter hosed the pavement. It must be nearly morning, she thought. The sound of voices from the living-room still came mumbling through the hall, like the intermittent stirring in a hive of bees.
Can’t sleep
,
can’t sleep,
ticked the clock on the bookcase.
Can’t sleep, can’t sleep,
hissed the water against the house wall.

“Can’t sleep. How can I? How can anyone?” Sheila said bitterly to the ceiling. “If,” she told herself, “you hadn’t been so very high and mighty at the station last night, if you hadn’t had so much pride that you didn’t want to be seen even dead with that crowd of hysterics, you’d now be on a train. And soon you would be arriving in a country where it would be safe enough for your fellow-travellers to regain their good humour and elegant charm. As Mr. Stevens would say, ‘So what?’ All right, so what?” But the fact remained that today and tomorrow
and tomorrow she would also refuse to get on a train. Well, call it pride; but she wasn’t going to start scrambling to leave Warsaw. Not after the kind of scene she had witnessed at the station last night. The only trouble was money. She had stayed so much longer than she expected that she hadn’t much left. She would have to write to Uncle Matthews in London, explaining her point of view: a nice, long chatty letter to keep him from worrying. He would send her some money through the Embassy.

She listened to the hoof beats of many horses being driven through the empty streets. Now and again, there was the dull rumble of tanks and heavy trucks. At other times, there was the creaking and groaning of farm carts bringing in supplies of food. Sheila listened, and dread and fear and pity and excitement kept her staring at the ceiling. She wondered how many millions were lying awake with these same emotions, millions who had the added sorrow of parting from those they loved. (She was indeed one of the lucky ones, as Mr. Stevens had said: she hadn’t a husband or a sweetheart or a son or a brother to worry over, like all those other women.) It seemed unfair of life, somehow, that other millions could sleep in peace, and need only worry about nothing more than breakfast when they awoke.

Having decided that she belonged to those who worried and stayed awake, Sheila fell deeply asleep.

When she awoke, it was early afternoon. The apartment was silent. Dressing didn’t take long when the choosing of clothes was eliminated. She was filled with sudden energy. First, the suitcases; clothes. Second, the Embassy, and a wire, with a letter to follow to Uncle Matthews: money. Third, a talk with Uncle Edward: something to do, to help while she stayed in Warsaw.
How long would she be here? Looking at that question in the practical light of day and not in the emotional atmosphere of a blackout, she smiled ruefully. Uncle Matthews would have a lot to say, and Professor Korytowski, although he had been too polite last night to argue when she was so tired and unhappy, might very well find a piece of gentle advice to give her when she was rested. But they would find she was in earnest. The only thing that worried her now was that she might not be considered useful, or worse still, that she would be a positive worry and nuisance to them all.