Homeland (9 page)

After supper Wladyslaw settled in a corner of the reading room, intending to go over the letter again and redraft some of it, but the card players were raucous that evening, the radio at full
blast, and four comrades from the Italian campaign, embroiled in their nightly argument about the situation in Poland, kept appealing to him for support, information and arbitration, at first
lightly and cajolingly, then with increasing emotion. When he stood up and announced he was retreating to his room, the four debaters stared at him, disconcerted at losing their regular mediator,
and complained that the evening would be spoilt.

The room Wladyslaw shared with two others was a dispiriting place, especially after nightfall, when a feeble overhead bulb cast a mournful grey wash over the metal beds and dark wooden lockers.
There were no reading lamps; reading, like most activities in the convalescent home, was assigned to certain designated areas, and while not actually forbidden in the dormitories was actively
discouraged there. The British had a great love for a certain kind of order, Wladyslaw had noticed. The strict routines, the rigid mealtimes, the mania for queuing, the devotion to early nights
that left large towns deathly quiet after ten o’clock, the closure on Sundays of anything and everything that might offer the slightest chance of entertainment: all were observed with an
obedience that owed less to a love of systems – a vice reserved for the Germans – and more, he sensed, to the demands of equality, a wish to spread the misery of self-denial evenly
across the whole population.

Taking a forbidden candle from his bedside locker, he melted the base and stuck it onto a saucer he’d filched from the dining hall on his arrival over three months ago. As the candle flame
rose and steadied, he unfolded the letter to Helenka and read it right through to the end. What was immediately clear was that his feeble efforts at obfuscation would fool no one. Any censor with
half a brain would object both to the content and the tone. While he might have got away with a few dry facts of family history, his comments were too obvious, too scathing to escape notice. Only
the first and last pages could be judged unobjectionable; the rest would be struck out or held in evidence against him.

Despite this, he decided to post the letter exactly as it was. For one thing, he couldn’t believe that the secret police had the capacity to check every one of the thousands of letters
that must be arriving from Britain daily; there was no reason why his shouldn’t slip through. For another, he was damned if he was going to submit to the bitter medicine of self-censorship
unless absolutely necessary. He would look for another way first, by getting letters smuggled in, or sending them via Soviet-occupied Germany. One way or another, he would not give in without a
fight. There were few enough ways of resisting now that all hope of military and political action was past.

He had written the letter on flimsy copy-paper. Folding it, he ran a fingernail down the folds to make the ten sheets seem less substantial still. Writing the address, he abandoned his ornate
literary script in favour of a dull inconspicuous style, though even this gesture, small as it was, constituted a kind of capitulation, a step on the slippery slope to conformity.

He put his name, rank and post-office box number on the back. No need for subterfuge here: the rank of sergeant was suitably proletarian, and his surname common enough not to be immediately
identified with the ideologically unacceptable professional class.

After some thought, he drew a flower across the edge of the glued envelope flap, like a lover’s seal. Yes: it was a descent into subterfuge. The devil on his shoulder laughed: I’ll
have you yet!

He put the letter on the locker beside his one photograph of the family, taken when Helenka was about to leave for medical school. He tried to imagine how the years of war and occupation might
have changed her, until the throbbing in his leg broke into his thoughts, forcing him to stretch, and, when that failed to do the trick, to pace the room, which, though it did little for the cramp,
did at least give him the impression of beating it down with each stride. It was four steps from one side of the room to the other; he counted them off unthinkingly. The far wall was a thin plywood
partition, subdividing what had once been a larger room. As he approached it for the fourth or fifth time he caught a muffled dirge in monotone interspersed by a dull methodical tapping.

Three soldiers occupied the next room. One was a music scholar from the German borderlands whose loyalties were regarded, probably unfairly, as suspect; the second a wily country lad from the
Carpathians who smiled too much; the third a fellow called Jozef Walczak, who was troubled and emotional and roamed the corridors at night.

Wladyslaw hesitated, reluctant to impose on another’s misery. Yet the tapping had the insistence of a warning.

In little doubt whom he would find, Wladyslaw went and knocked on the door. The dirge stopped. Wladyslaw listened a while longer before putting his head inside. The room was dark, but in the
light from the passage he saw Jozef lying on his bed, curled up with his face to the wall, his forearm bent over his head.

‘Hello, my friend.’ Wladyslaw closed the door and turned on the gloomy light.

Jozef made no response.

‘Troubles?’ Wladyslaw went and laid a quick hand on the bony shoulder. ‘I’d be happy to listen if you’d like to talk.’

After a moment, Jozef lifted his head and fastened a fierce eye on Wladyslaw before dropping his head back onto the pillow. But if the identification reassured him, it didn’t encourage him
to speak.

‘Anything particular worrying you? Or . . .’

Another silence, and Wladyslaw said, ‘What about a drop of vodka? I’ve got a bit stashed away, and I’d far rather share it with you than the ungrateful good-for-nothings in my
room. Wait here,’ he added superfluously.

Retrieving the bottle from the back of his locker, he hid it under his shirt until he was safely back in Jozef’s room, when he pulled it out like a conjuror, with a great sweep of the arm,
a gesture unappreciated by Jozef, whose face remained turned to the wall.

‘It’s good stuff,’ Wladyslaw assured him, sitting on the end of the bed. ‘Bartered with Jerzy for a Mickiewicz love poem which I passed off quite shamelessly as my own.
But then Jerzy is so blinded by passion for that nurse of his that it could have been written by a goat for all he cared.’ Wladyslaw took a quick pull from the bottle and smacked his lips.
‘Mmm. A small piece of heaven . . .’

Another pause, then slowly, stiffly, Jozef levered himself into a sitting position and, drawing his knees up to his chin, pushed his knuckles punishingly against his eyes.

Wladyslaw held the bottle out to him. ‘Have as much as you want – feel free,’ he coaxed, eyeing the few fingers of vodka with a touch of anxiety in case Jozef should take him
too literally.

Jozef took a long gulp before swinging his feet slowly to the floor and reaching into his locker for a handkerchief. He blew his nose distractedly, then sat hunched and still, gazing at the
floor. He had lost part of his stomach and intestine to a shrapnel wound at Ancona and was skeletally thin, as though he had only this moment emerged from a labour camp. His cadaverous appearance
was intensified by the cold overhead light, which threw an unhealthy grey tinge over his skin and made a deep hollow of his eye socket.

Beside him on the locker top was a well-travelled family photograph in a bright new frame. Even in his better moments Jozef wasn’t a great talker, and at any mention of home and family
life his silence was positively hostile, but one evening soon after his arrival, still excited by the move to a new place, he’d given Wladyslaw a halting, emotionally charged account of his
story.

He was thirteen at the time of the mass deportations. Lodging near his grammar school some distance from home, he had escaped the main sweep of February 10th which had taken his family and all
their Polish neighbours away to the east. Picked up several weeks later, he had been sent to a quite different camp, and despite numerous appeals to join his family had never seen them again.
He’d later discovered that his father and eldest sister had died in their camp in the Urals, leaving his mother and two – no, Wladyslaw corrected himself,
three
– sisters,
who towards the end of the war had managed to find their way back to Poland.

‘Any news from home?’

Jozef’s mouth contorted, he glared at the floor, whether from disappointment or pain it was hard to tell. Wladyslaw guessed at disappointment and said, ‘Well, there’s bound to
be something soon.’

Jozef shivered with exasperation, as though Wladyslaw’s remarks were pushing him to the very limits of his self-control.

Searching hastily for another less charged topic, Wladyslaw said, ‘I’m hoping to take honest employment, did I tell you?’

Jozef took a slow shuddering breath, his eyes opened a crack to stare sightlessly at the floor.

‘It’s not my dream job, of course,’ Wladyslaw went on lightly. ‘But something to keep the wolf from the door. Tell me, Jozef, what was your ambition? As a kid, I
mean?’

Swinging the bottle up high and fast, Jozef took another swig.

‘I dreamt of being a film director,’ Wladyslaw said reminiscently into the silence that followed. ‘I used to go to the cinema whenever I had the chance. I’d watch every
film three times over. I’d make reams of notes, diagrams of camera angles. Even rewrite the scripts. My ambition was to put some of the great classics on the screen – the
Trilogy
,
The Teutonic Knights
. . . So you see, I wasn’t short of ambition or confidence. Some might even say I was rather too big for my boots. But one has to have a vision.
One has to have some belief in oneself. And it seems to me that if you don’t grab opportunities as they come along, then some useless fellow with a stunted imagination and limited talent will
get there before you and squander the opportunity. Yes . . . my ambition was to be a director. I was young, of course. But I don’t rule out the possibility even now. Far from it, in fact. I
believe everything is possible.’

Jozef stuttered, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Wladyslaw made a gesture of taking this on the chest, and laughed. ‘Ah, well, you may be right . . . Castles in the air . . . But one must be allowed one’s dreams!’ Removing
the bottle from Jozef’s hand, he took a modest sip, holding the fire in his mouth for a second or two to eke out the pleasure.

‘My dream – was to be – with my family.’ Jozef’s voice came in drawn-out rasps, childishly bitter. ‘That was all – I ever wanted. What a joke. What an
idiotic joke!’

‘But why? You mustn’t rule out the possibility of going home, Jozef. Nothing’s certain yet. Don’t feel you have to rush into a decision. There’s plenty of time
– and don’t let the British try to persuade you otherwise. Listen to your friends.’ Even as he said this, it seemed to Wladyslaw that the loneliness in Jozef was like an open
wound.

‘I was going to work the land,’ Jozef stammered. ‘I was going to – provide for us all. I had it – all planned . . .’

Wladyslaw wondered what land he had in mind. As if in answer to this, Jozef added, ‘I was going to rent a few hectares – keep geese, hens, grow vegetables . . . Sell flowers in the
market. I wouldn’t have – cared how hard it was. I wouldn’t have – minded . . .’

‘Farming is a fine life.’

‘What a joke. What a joke.’

Like a doctor ministering to a patient, Wladyslaw pressed the vodka back into Jozef’s hands and watched solicitously as he took a large gulp.

‘Where are they living, your mother and sisters?’

‘For God’s sake . . .’ Jozef whispered. ‘What does it matter?’

‘Of course it matters. Everything at home matters. To all of us.’

Jozef shook his head impatiently.

‘But I’d really like to know.’

Jozef gave in with a furious sigh. ‘Wroclaw.’

‘And do they have work?’

A shrug which seemed to indicate that they did.

‘Well, it’s not the same as the country, I grant you. But the city has its compensations. More opportunities. More people. Don’t rule it out, Jozef. You might like it more than
you think. You might find that—’

Jozef’s shoulders hunched, his hand jerked upwards, cutting Wladyslaw short. ‘No – you don’t understand. No – they don’t want me. They’ve told me
– they’ve said – there’s no room for me. They don’t want me to come.’

Wladyslaw was momentarily silenced.

‘They’ve – said – I’ll get in the way.’

‘Ah, but they’re just saying that, aren’t they, Jozef? So you won’t feel any obligation on their behalf. So you won’t feel you must go back for their
sake.’

‘No! It couldn’t be clearer,’ Jozef declared harshly. ‘There’s no – misunderstanding. No – my mother couldn’t have been plainer. I’d be in
the way. I’m not wanted. So – that’s fine. I understand! I accept!’

‘They must have very good reasons for telling you such a thing. Perhaps life is particularly hard for them at the moment and they want to spare you the same fate. Perhaps they’re
trying to be kind. One way or the other, I’m sure they’ve got your best interests at heart.’

Jozef gave a rapid shake of his head.

‘Perhaps they’re living very simply,’ Wladyslaw continued gently. ‘Perhaps they’ve only one small room between the four of them, and they worry that there
won’t be any work for you. Perhaps—’

‘No!’

In the pause that followed, Wladyslaw watched as Jozef took a long swig of vodka, then another, before upending the bottle and draining it to the last drop.

Tearing his gaze away from the empty bottle, Wladyslaw said, ‘Listen, Jozef, a mother would never say something like that unless she wanted to spare you hardship . . . disappointment . . .
Unless she believed you had a better chance elsewhere. And she could be right, you know. Why don’t you think about America? Or Canada? Australia? Even England. It isn’t such a bad place
really, once you get used to it.’ Feeling he had ended on a weak note, Wladyslaw added, ‘And the girls are nice and pretty.’