The Silver Sword (10 page)

“With respect, sir, I—”

“Are you satisfied that the prisoner is guilty of the charge you have brought?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then we can leave the matter at that. Have you no further relevant questions to put?”

“No, sir,” barked the lieutenant, banging his papers on the desk. And he sat down.

Captain Greenwood turned to Jan and spoke gently. “Why do you go in for stealing when you can get plenty to eat at the food kitchens?”

“We can’t live otherwise,” said Jan bitterly.

“It has become a habit, a bad habit,” said Captain Greenwood.

“The Nazis stole everything from our country and left us with nothing,” said Jan. “Now it is our turn to steal from them.”

“But this is American food you have been stealing, not Nazi food. It is sent here to feed you and all the other refugees that are flooding the country. If you steal it, you are robbing your own people. Do you think that is right or sensible?”

“I want to feed Ruth and Bronia and Edek,” said Jan fiercely, and the Captain’s unexpected gentleness brought the tears rolling down his cheeks. “Edek is ill, and we are all hungry. I shall always steal if they are hungry.”

“Do they steal?”

“No. They are not as clever as I am. But everybody else does, even the Americans. They take cameras and glasses from the Germans. There’s a hundred cases of wine in your canteen, all stolen. I know where they got it from.”

“Those are not proper observations,” said Captain Greenwood. “It won’t help your case to bandy wild accusations of that sort. If there’s any truth in them, they’ll be brought to my notice and dealt with in the correct way.”

Ruth slipped an arm round Jan’s shoulders and whispered something as he fought to choke back the sobs.

Jan fumbled for an apology. At last he said, “I speak with respect, sir,” a phrase which, coming from his lips, sounded so comic that the Captain could not help smiling.

“When I was your age, Jan, I was brought up on the ten commandments. Maybe they’re out of fashion now. One of them is “Thou shalt not steal” — ever heard of it?”

“It doesn’t work,” said Jan.

“It must be made to work, or everything will go to pieces. Don’t forget that.”

Captain Greenwood shuffled the papers on his desk, summed up briefly, and passed sentence. “Edek Balicki, not guilty, case dismissed. Jan has pleaded guilty. Under the circumstances I shall deal with him as lightly as I can. 200 marks’ fine or seven days.”

There was a brief consultation between Ruth and Jan. Then Ruth spoke. “Jan says he’ll take the detention. We haven’t enough money to pay the fine.”

“We’re saving up to buy a pair of boots for Edek,” put in Bronia.

“Thank you, sir,” said Ruth.

“It isn’t long, Jan, and you’ll be looked after,” said Captain Greenwood. “When you come out, stick to that mother, as she’s old enough not to have forgotten what decent behaviour is.” As an afterthought he added, “Remind her to send me a postcard when you get to Switzerland.”

He cleared the court.

Ruth held Jan’s hand tightly till the guards came for him and led him away. He went without a struggle, not daring to look back at her. When he had gone, she gave one hand to Edek and one to Bronia, and they walked slowly out.

Alone in the courtroom, with a sigh Captain Greenwood turned over his notes of the morning’s cases, ready to draw up the reports for his senior officer. Three cases of theft; two of failure to observe curfew; an old man accused of concealing a storm trooper in his house; and lastly Jan’s case. It troubled him more than all the other cases put together.

As he reflected on the punishment he had given the boy, he realized that for all his noble intentions he had only been scratching on the surface of a problem he could not begin to solve. A week’s detention would not prevent Jan from stealing again. Could Ruth prevent him? She was a remarkable girl and, if anybody could help him, it was she. But after five years of war and twisted living, such cases were too often beyond remedy.

There were queer noises in the barn, louder than the scurrying of rats or the creaking of rusty hinges in the wind.

The farmer flung the door open and shouted, “Come out of there, you young devil! I heard you — can’t you imitate a rat better than that?”

He stood still, accustoming his eyes to the half-darkness of the barn. The sun rose early enough in July, but it was not full daylight yet and all he could see was a vague blur of hay. While he listened, everything was so quiet that he began to wonder if he had been mistaken.

Then the sound of a half-sob, stifled immediately, confirmed his suspicions.

“Come out!” he shouted. “Do I smoke you out like rabbits — or fetch the prong?”

The threats were ineffective, so he went off to fetch the prong. Soon the hay was flying. And something else came flying too — an over-ripe turnip which, beautifully aimed, struck the farmer full in the nape of the neck. He swore.

An anxious voice piped up, “We give in — please put that horrible thing away before it goes right through Bronia.” And the farmer turned round, his prong poised in mid-air, to find himself face to face with a tall thin girl, her clothes and hair bristling with bits of hay. “We only spent the night here. We haven’t done any harm.”

When she realized that he had not properly understood, Ruth called Edek.

The hay at the farmer’s feet parted, and Edek’s spluttering face appeared. He had held his breath all too long and made a dive for the open air, clinging to the handle of the barn door while he coughed the chaff out of his lungs.

“Hey, that’s me you’re stepping on!” shrilled Bronia, as she emerged from under the farmer’s left foot. And when she saw the murderous prong, she flew to Ruth and hid behind her.

“Edek, tell him we only spent the night here and we haven’t done any harm,” said Ruth, with one arm round Bronia.

Edek translated.

“No harm!” exclaimed the farmer, removing a splodgy mess from inside his shirt collar. “I suppose you call this a birthday present. One — two — three of you. Is that the lot, or have we another batch lurking somewhere?”

The reply was another wet turnip. It landed on exactly the same spot as before. The last member of the family, who was certainly no diplomat, had launched his second missile. Now he came sliding down from the top of the hay, for no other reason than that he had run out of ammunition.

Bronia giggled, Edek grinned, but Ruth was angry.

“When will you grow up, you silly little boy!” she said, seizing him by the shoulders and shaking him like a puppy. “You spoil everything for us. I wish we’d left you in Warsaw.”

Jan, who had as usual acted from the highest of motives, began to protest. “Don’t go for me, Ruth. I haven’t stolen anything. The larder window was open all night, and I could have taken anything I wanted, but I didn’t — you know I didn’t!”

“Go on your knees and apologize,” said Ruth.

He didn’t go on his knees, but he did mutter that he was sorry. And the farmer, who had by now removed most of the traces of bomb damage from his neck and was almost ready to see the funny side of the situation, was gracious enough to take the apology in good part.

“Now, Mr. Interpreter,” said the farmer to Edek, “perhaps you’ll be good enough to explain your presence here.”

Briefly Edek told him who they were, where they had come from, where they were going to, and why they had not (as they usually did) asked permission last night to sleep in the barn. They had arrived after dark and had not liked to disturb the household. “We’ll willingly pay for our night’s lodgings with a day’s work,” he finished.

“Of course,” said the farmer. “And if I’m not satisfied with you, I’ll hand you over to the Burgomaster.”

“What’s a burgomaster?” said Bronia, when Edek had interpreted (and from now on, he had to explain everything, for the farmer knew little Polish).

“A burgomaster, my dear, is a nasty bogey-man who plagues everybody beyond endurance. He’d be particularly interested in you. You’re Poles, aren’t you? Well, there’s an order gone out from the Military Government that all Poles in the area are to be rounded up and sent back to Poland. It’s the Burgomaster’s job to see that the order is obeyed.”

“We’ve just come from Poland. We’re not going back again,” said Ruth.

“We’re going to Switzerland to find our father and mother,” said Bronia.

“Nothing on earth would send me back to Poland,” said Edek.

“Nor me,” said Jan.

“That’s what you think. But if the Military Government decide you must go back, back you go, my lad. And neither rotten turnips nor anything else will save you,” said the farmer. “Now come along and have a bite of breakfast.”

There were window-boxes on the sills of the farmhouse, gay with flowers. On the scrubbed table in the kitchen a breakfast of coffee and rolls for two had been laid.

“Emma!” called the farmer. “Four visitors for breakfast — four tattered bundles of mischief from Poland. Ruth, Edek, Jan and Bronia. They’ve walked all the way specially to meet us. This is Frau Wolff, my wife. She speaks Polish. Learnt it from two Poles who worked here during the war.”

A plump and comfortable-looking lady shook hands with each of them in turn and, welcoming them to the table, went to fetch more breakfast. From now on, what with her knowledge of Polish and Edek’s of German, the conversation ran quite smoothly.

“What’s that mess on your collar, Kurt?” she asked, when she came back.

“A present from Poland,” said the farmer, winking at Jan, and when Edek translated, they all laughed so much that they nearly spilt the coffee.

“It was a clean shirt this morning,” she complained.

“Then I shall ask Jan to wash it for me, just to show my appreciation.”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” said Ruth.

“No doubt, Jan would have thought of it himself, only I beat him to it,” said the farmer, winking at Ruth.

“Jan has plenty of ideas, but not that sort,” said Ruth.

“Eat all you can,” said Frau Wolff, depositing a plate of rolls on the table. “There’s plenty more when you’ve finished this lot.”

Bronia’s eyes were wide with astonishment. Never had she seen so much food.

“This is a farm, you know,” Frau Wolff explained. “There is no shortage.”

The family were content.

“You have made us so welcome,” said Ruth, “I feel somehow as if you’d been expecting us.”

“Oh, you get to expect anything in these parts,” said the farmer, between gulps of coffee. “The woods are full of refugees like yourselves, you know. You’re not by any means the first lot I’ve found in the barn. Last winter I found a whole family in the cowshed, curled round a cow to keep warm. Told me they’d walked all the way from the Ukraine. Didn’t believe a word of it, of course. If you ask me, they’d just footed it from the next village — a stunt to get a free meal. I made ‘em work for it, though. We’ve had dozens and dozens of refugees working here at one time or another. Got rid of them all now, thank the lord. Now the Military Government send us nothing but German prisoners of war, and they’re worse. The Government want to turn us into an agricultural country. Holy onions, did you ever hear such nonsense! As if you could ever teach a mechanic how to milk a cow! He’d try it with a spanner if you didn’t tell him how.”

The farmer rambled on like this for some time, munching great mouthfuls of bread between whiles and washing it down with cascades of coffee. Edek was the only one who bothered to listen, and when at last the farmer came to a full stop he said, “I worked on a German farm during the war. But I hated every moment. The people weren’t decent like you.”

The farmer appeared to take this harmless observation as an insult.

“You think I’m decent, do you? Just wait till I’ve wrung a day’s work out of you — you’ll think very differently then. We’ll start right now, soon as you’ve done eating.”

“Let them rest today, Kurt,” said his wife. “They’re all of them worn out.”

The farmer thumped the table with his fist. “I don’t believe in treating people soft,” he said. “Treat ‘em rough and they respect you. Give ‘em the milk of kindness, and it’ll turn sour. No, they’ll start right now. Ruth and Jan shall come with me to the hayfield, and there’ll be no lunch for them if they slack off. Bronia can feed the hens, and Edek—”

“Edek shall stay in the kitchen to help me,” said his wife. “He looks as if a breeze would snuff him out. He shall stay and peel the potatoes for me — that is, if he’d care to.” And the look she gave her husband made it quite clear that she intended to have her own way in this matter.

“Jan, you rascal, don’t imagine I’ll let you forget my shirt,” said the farmer, thumping the table so fiercely that all the crockery jumped.

And, as far as Jan was concerned, the farmer had his way.

Kurt Wolff’s farm was high up in the Bavarian hills, not very far from the Czechoslovakian border. The hills were thickly wooded right to the top, and between them the River Falken came racing and twisting down on its way to join the Danube. A road passed through the field at the foot of the farm — northwards towards Berlin, southwards to the plains beyond the Danube. A few miles downstream was the village of Boding, where each day the Burgomaster received his unwelcome orders from the American troops stationed there. He was a tall, thin man in late middle age, a scientist and Social Democrat, who had lived in retirement from the rise of the Nazis in 1933 till the Americans fished him out some months back. He was shrewd and conscientious in rather a stupid way, but the anti-fraternization laws had soured him. He thought that Germans who were willing to co-operate with the Americans should be treated as friends, not as enemies. As go-between for his own people and the occupying power, he was answerable to both and invariably received more kicks than praise.

In the eyes of the family he was the devil himself. His present instructions were to round up all Polish and Ukrainian refugees in the area and dispatch them home in the American lorries provided. Most of them (and there were a considerable number lurking in the hills and villages) were only too glad to be going home, but there were some who, like the family, had their reasons for not returning. It was up to them to keep clear of him, for orders were orders and must not be disobeyed. So the farmer had offered to keep the family with him till the scare was over. They were only too pleased to accept, for they had quickly found out that, however much thunder there might be in his words, there was little in his heart. And his wife cared for them as if they were her own family.