The Refuge (10 page)

Because he was a new type of Communist in her experience—witty, cheerful, usually intelligent and gentle, and fond of all the simpler pleasures of existence—she did not find it hard to obey this order, with the help of her appearance and her vigorous youth; but now for the first time she made a tragic mistake, in spite of the years of indoctrination, in spite of her own judgment and reason. Though he was twenty years older than she was, she found herself after a while to have become deeply in love, for the first time in her life.

The Party did not tolerate bourgeois weaknesses such as sincere and unselfish love among its members, wisely perceiving these individualist emotions to be small defects endangering the whole structure of Party action; and her problem now was to keep her feelings secret, from the world and particularly from her lover. For a young woman of sixteen, however hard the schools through which she had passed, this was no easy task, and she failed, somewhere or other, to round off and seal away her deception. Her directors gave no hint that they knew what they knew. Such was not the way of the European Communists, any more than it was the way of their Nazi opposite numbers. One might have thought that it was only by an unfortunate chance that Gestapo agents in Holland became of a sudden fully cognisant of her lover’s secret political connections, but thanks to a last-minute message from one of her former admirers in the Berlin headquarters, Irma was aware that something was about to happen—and aware of it too late. She found his crushed and shapeless body in the gutter at the shadowy street-corner where they were to have met that night. It was evident that the wheels of a heavy car or truck had been run backwards and forwards over it more than once, to make identification difficult. There were no papers in the pockets except an envelope inscribed in a hand she did not know with her own name and the address at which she lived by day. It had obviously been put there after the wheels had done their work.

Within an hour, she was on her way to England, where she lost herself in London for the best part of two years. By now, both the Gestapo and the hunting-dogs of her own former Party, from which by formal notification she had ‘resigned’, were trailing her, for she was potentially dangerous to both sides—what is called ‘hot’. In the end, silent and alone after having for so long been afraid to speak to or make a friend of anyone, she decided to come to Australia, the unknown and remotely isolated continent farthest from the scenes of her youthful joys and griefs and terrors and triumphs, farthest from what seemed at last to have been a life of evil futility in the service of a murderous ideology and a savagely reactionary ideal.

And, now that she was here at last, the very fact of arrival, of the final journeying finally ended, gave her the feeling that the whole world had actually fallen away from beneath her feet, vanishing downwards into timeless space without a shudder or a sound of warning. She found herself facing Baudelaire’s
n
é
ant vaste et noir
, unable to turn away, without any power or impulse to go forward. It was the realization of this that had as it were struck her to the cabin deck where for one of the few times in her life she gave way to unrestrained, unfathomable despair; and thus I had first seen her.

‘You need not worry much about those three men,’ I said. ‘Their identity is known and the police are already here watching them. They will be watched from now on, and perhaps sent out of the country—it will need only one mistake, perhaps not even that. We too have a law to take care of undesirable aliens.’

‘Yes?’ she said, with what seemed an insincere eagerness concealing utter disbelief. ‘Then me—what will they do to me, these police of yours?’

‘You,’ I said, to make her smile again, ‘will be noted as a very desirable alien indeed, and left alone.’ But she did not smile; her eyes did not waver from my face, and so close was their scrutiny that I felt it like a touch on the skin.

‘You are very kind,’ she said at last. ‘You will help me. I must work, I have very little money, no place to go. You are not police. What are you then, please?’

I told her, and when after some explanation she understood that a police roundsman was not a police officer but a newspaper reporter doing special work, she looked relieved but not impressed. Her look seemed to allow that perhaps it was no worse to work for the capitalist Press than for the Communists; for she had by no means rid her mind of the deep imprint of her early teaching.

‘You must go to your consulate,’ I said. ‘If you have Dutch papers they will help you there more than I can.’

I had no intention of entangling myself in any way with an unknown young woman refugee; I had already seen them at work too often to be readily deceived by the superficial charm of foreign lips speaking bad English. I gave her my card, never foreseeing the day and the circumstances in which I would see it again, never expecting to see it again at all. She read the name and address on it, moving her lips slightly as she looked down, and I took the opportunity of studying her averted face for the last time.

At the time of her death she had a matured beauty proper to her twenty-eight years, which was in fact part of her power of complete repose; and it cannot be denied that such reposefulness can cast over the observer a spell stronger than that of any other womanly characteristic, mental or physical. Already, at eighteen, this ability to become quite still was evident, but the mobility of youth had not yet softened in her face, and its changes were abrupt, not subtle as they later came to be, when knowledge and experience had ripened into a deep wisdom which in any other woman would have been disconcerting, since it had about it more of intellect than of instinct.

Evidently the Nazi investigators did not discover that one of her Kovno grandmothers had been Jewish; but there is no doubt that from that old woman, whom to her knowledge she never saw, she inherited a certain skin-pigmentation which gave her whole body, and particularly the exposed surfaces of hands, throat and face, a colour of creamy ivory most pleasing to see in its subtle contrast with the opaque blue of her eyes and the high line of her wide cheekbones. Apart from this, no trace of Jewish ancestry could be discerned (if even this were indeed Jewish, not Slav)—none of the exaggerated elaboration of line you see in women of that race. Beneath the delicate glowing skin the fine bone-structure was strong and Slavic in its width of jaw and brow, and the faint upward slant of her eyebrows and the outer corners of her eyes gave her an expression at once wistful and mischievous. This was emphasized by her mouth, which suggested in its width and controlled fullness much generosity of heart and hand and a pleasant temper, and in the upward line of the corners an optimistic humour at present modified by her attitude of despondent self-absorption. The heavy house coat and the pyjamas of apple-green linen, creased from sleep, concealed the rest of her, except the fact that she was full-bosomed, and that her back was beautifully straight, like her shoulders. I recalled my recent foolish impulse to take her face between my hands and kiss her mouth; and as I looked at her now I could understand it well enough even while I deprecated it, ashamed of myself. It was an impulse every man who had ever been near her, within the strong and reassuring aura of her intense personal being, must have felt as I had. Not all of them resisted it, I know; for long afterwards she told me she had for years thought of men in terms of hands and mouths to be evaded, and had bathed whenever possible because of a feeling of continual uncleanness. Too many people, she said, touched her.

She looked up at last, after a longer time than it could have taken to read the few words on the oblong of pasteboard which she was now holding out to me diffidently.

‘No,’ I said, ‘you keep that. Then if things get too bad for you, you will know where to find me. You understand that?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I understand. If things get too bad.’

‘But they will not,’ I said. ‘We are in full recovery in this country, after the depression. There is work for all. You will be all right.’

‘Oh—I will be all right. But there will be war,’ she said gently, as though speaking to a child. ‘It is certain. He is not ready this year, not yet. It will be next year.’

Again she nodded her head in that weighty and ancient manner that went so oddly with her youth.

‘That is why,’ she went on to say, ‘those three men come here. They know. They hope to make trouble. We do not know what Moscow will do. We think there will be a—a treaty, yes?—between Stalin and him, sometime. We feel it must be so. Then he will not be afraid of war. Because of Russia, he is still afraid. Of England, no. Of France—ah no! But of Russia, yes . . . But war, it is certain. Inevitable. I have seen it. I tell you.’

Then with another swift change of mood she turned up her face to shake back the smooth dark page-boy hair, looking suddenly gay and mischievous.

‘You know what I think?’ she said. ‘I think that these Nazis have—shall we say?—ripened too quick. You have a proverb, I think it is about money. It says, “Easy come, easy go.” It is true of so many things, you see. That is what I think—it is true of the Nazis. They come quick, they go quick. It must be so. They have no history. People without a history, they always want war—to shed the blood, to make the sacrifice, to become blood-brothers with their own national past. They have no political past, so they make one. Do you agree? It is what I think.’

‘How old are you, Miss Maarten?’

‘I am eighteen years one month. You think that too young? My friend—no! I have lived.’

She looked at me consideringly while neither of us spoke. I had thought her two or three years older, and while I watched her grave eyes regarding me with unselfconscious thoughtfulness above the high cheekbones I felt again the uneasy sensation of pity I had felt earlier, before that remark about Europe on the eve of crucifixion. At length she broke the brief silence.

‘You must call me Irma,’ she said decidedly. ‘Maartens—that is just a name. When the gentleman in Holland was—when he died, I changed my name to his. He was so kind to me, it was—you know—a memorial.’

She looked steadily at me again in silence. Then, quite unexpectedly she stepped forward and took my hand in her two hands, cool and surprisingly strong within their softness. I felt my card being bent across the back of my knuckles.

‘You are very like him,’ she said, ‘but not so old. It is very funny. When you came here, I was almost for one moment frightened. He was always what he called saving me from myself.’

She laughed, for the first time; a half-hysterical laugh with tears beneath its amusement. At the same moment I was aware of steps and shrill voices far away along the corridor, approaching. I withdrew my hand from between hers. Her laughter ceased abruptly, and she sighed, quick and short with a sort of impatient resignation; but the look of mischief haunted her eyes.

‘You must be my friend,’ she said in almost a whisper. ‘My first Australian. You agree?’

‘I do,’ I said, not quite sure where we were now in that fantastic conversation between strangers. ‘I do agree.’

‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘Now it is a treaty. Now . . .’

With unexpected swiftness, as the loud voices and the steps drew nearer, bringing with them something of the excitement that seethed through the whole ship and affected both, she raised herself on her toes, took my head between her hands, and kissed me full and lightly on the lips; and was standing away from me, smiling. For a moment I thought I must have imagined the whole thing, which could have taken no more than a couple of seconds; but no—my own lips and her faint smile assured me it had indeed happened. I was so taken aback, in such a confusion of mind whether to be annoyed or glad, that I had nothing to say. It was she who spoke, hurriedly now.

‘A treaty. That was what you wished to do before, I know, to kiss me. I could feel that. And you did not even try. You are a funny man.’

‘Goodbye,’ I said, and went away in haste, to avoid the people coming noisily along the stuffy and dimly-lighted corridor and put myself beyond the reach of that strange young woman’s gentle mockery; and the last impression I had of her was of her voice, calling out quite loudly from the littered interior of the cabin, ‘Do not forget—a treaty. We are friends.’

I’m damned if we are, I thought, going up on deck in considerable confusion of mind, not knowing, of course, that I should ever see her again.

We had passed under the bridge. The sun was once more behind clouds, the whole world was grey, and the cold wind in my face restored me to my normal senses quickly enough. My interview with the youthful refugee below decks soon began to seem like a fanciful and unlikely dream, impossible to perceive whole in retrospect and so impossible to forget.

The voice of the purser beside me made me think of more immediate matters.

‘There’s one of your victims, Mr. Fitzherbert. That chap in the fancy ankle-length black coat there by himself on the rail. That is your German baron—or so he says.’

I thanked him, and went towards the stranger, sorting out a series of questions in my mind as I approached.

In the last months of that terrifying year, the European fugitives came in greater numbers, and more hurriedly; and the ugly panic of August flowered and seeded freely in September, and, with the coming of the hot and avid summer months, died and seemed to have vanished. But the seed lay waiting in our hearts and minds—seeds of a blank and mindless fear for most, who had seen from a great distance the first purposeful parade and triumph of the new German military and air strength unmatched, it was plain, in the world or history; the Colossus shadow fell across southern Europe, the Middle East, the Indian Ocean and beyond, across this greatest and youngest of the continents, to which the refugees were coming like locusts, swift, shy and ravenous.

For some, however, there was a thrill of excitement in the brief threat and eventual postponement of war. To these groups, the profit-makers and the armed forces in particular, the withdrawal of the threat at Munich that September, the apparent shelving-away of a promise that armed force would be used in the end, was not so much a shame upon British integrity and a bloodless defeat of the Imperial arms as a sort of personal betrayal. One man, a clothing manufacturer whom I had long known as a man of intelligence and peace, asked me to luncheon with him expressly, one would have thought, to show me the account-books of his father’s firm (of which he was now managing director) for the years between nineteen-fifteen and nineteen-twenty. On those figures, which even I could see were enormous, the whole present wealth and solidarity of his company were based, he explained. The business done then had enabled the firm to survive even the depression years, to gather strength up to this very day, this moment, when another war would have made him a millionaire.