While Still We Live (61 page)

She opened the door of the house carefully, after fumbling for some time to find how its catch worked. The dim light from the front room helped her solve that problem. The quiet village greeted her, as she closed the door equally carefully behind her. She might have one half hour of peace before the smoke from the chimneys thickened, the window shutters were opened, and the people started another day of work and worry. She moved towards the back of the house. It seemed more sheltered. There, in this mixture of garden and field, she could walk and think. The hedge of bushes, now stripped of fruit and leaves, would protect her not only from the early morning wind which froze the dewdrops on the thin brown branches, but from other houses. She wanted no eyes to invade her loneliness.

She halted beside one of the larger trees. Over the inn and its side building, over the rest of the village, over the forest two miles to the south, was nothing but silence. In spite of the dreary light, half night, half dawn, she felt suddenly happy. The forest was still safe. Surely if the Germans had heard that shot, there would have been at least a patrol out by this time. Surely the forest and its secret were safe. Perhaps it was the need for
this reassurance which had brought her out of door. Certainly, she felt calm again.

She pulled the shawl more closely round her shoulders. She was thinking more clearly, now. By the end of ten minutes, she had given herself an answer. Both Mr. Olszak and Madame Aleksander were wrong. One had made the decision for her; the other wanted her to make the decision for Adam Wisniewski. And both were wrong. Adam alone could decide. He knew what he had to do, how best he could do it. The decision was his. And the tragedy was that she would be gone from this village before he knew there was a decision to make. It wasn’t even real tragedy—death would have been that—it was merely frustration. And then she thought, what if Adam knew there was a decision to make, what if he had decided even before Olszak had come to the camp? What if he had been deciding all these last days, while he had watched her and she had avoided him? Then the frustration would be twice as bitter.

A movement from the door of the barn as it opened caught her attention. Weeks of caution make her shrink naturally back against the tree. It was probably the man Ryng, but it was just as well that he shouldn’t see her. The less anyone knew about Jadwiga’s guests, the better. She had drawn too far back against the tree to be able to see the barn doorway clearly: all she had seen for a moment was a man, his head turned away from her as he looked at the silent houses. Perhaps he had decided to leave. Perhaps he was restless as she had been. Those who travelled secretly would always be restless, always worrying about what was happening outside the house that sheltered them. She waited for a minute, and then looked again. The barn door was closed. No one was in sight. She felt a sudden
pity for the lonely figure she had seen. Had he begun to realise his search was hopeless, and yet he didn’t want to admit it?

She shivered, and realised she was chilled. She left the tree and went back quickly to the house. The village would soon be stirring. Perhaps Madame Aleksander had awakened and was anxious.

Quickly she entered the inn and shut the door carefully behind her. She was left in complete darkness. That warned her. Someone had closed the door of the front room and its shaft of weak light into the hall was gone. That, and a sudden feeling of fear, warned her. She drew back against the wall and waited, staring along the blackness of the corridor. The house seemed still asleep. She moved one foot forward cautiously, stretched out a hand to guide her along the wall. She heard a movement, as careful as her own, and she froze. Someone was beside her, touching. A man’s hand blundered along her outstretched arm and then gripped it. For a moment they stood facing each other in the darkness.

“Who is it?” the man asked quietly. “Who is it?” he repeated. It wasn’t Zygmunt or Peter. It was the voice of the man Ryng. Last night, she had thought the voice was familiar. Now she knew that it was. But whose voice, whose voice? She said nothing. The grip on her arm, the hand reaching towards her head warned her. Here was danger, she told herself. Here was danger. He was forcing her towards the door. He was going to open it, he was going to see her clearly. He was trying to feel the shape of her head, of her face. The large hand touched her straining cheek, brushed against her mouth. She bit savagely, heard him curse, wrenched the other arm free as she struck sharply with the heel of her fist against his wrist. She ran along
the corridor. His footsteps hesitated. One of the room doors was thrown open, and Kati was there, half-dressed, her fingers weaving the plait of hair which fell over her shoulder.

“What’s going on here?” she demanded loudly. She looked at the desperation in Sheila’s face, and then stepped into the hall, placing her body between Sheila and Ryng, who still hesitated near the main entrance.

“Came to see if it was time for breakfast,” Ryng said. “Found someone sneaking about. Thought it was a spy.”

“It isn’t time for breakfast. And that’s my cousin Magda who comes to help clean the bar every morning. What did you do to her?”

“Nothing. She bit my hand.”

“She doesn’t like men, scared of them. You shouldn’t have put a finger on her.” Then Kati called over her shoulder gently. “It’s all right, Magda. Don’t worry. He won’t hurt you.”

Sheila stood quite still. She wished she could turn round and see the man’s face, but she daren’t risk that. Perhaps he might be able to see her more clearly than she thought. So she stood still, and leaned against the wall with her head bowed, and was a terrified Magda. Actually, she wasn’t unterrified.

Kati’s voice was abrupt. “Get back to the barn. I’ll bring you something to eat when it’s ready—what there is of it. Lucky for you that Magda wasn’t a spy.”

To Sheila, she said crossly, “Don’t be a fool, Magda. Men don’t eat you.”

The front door closed behind Ryng’s slow footsteps. Sheila turned to face Kati at last. The girl finished plaiting her hair and said softly, as she coiled the braids round her head, “Hope he believed me.”

Sheila nodded. Her heart was still beating too insistently. There was sweat on her brow.

“Better get back to your room. You are shivering with cold. I’ll come and show you how to feed the fire.” Kati, still in her striped petticoat and white linen chemise with its pink ribbon slotted through the embroidered lace round its wide neckline, took Sheila’s arm and led her towards the end of the corridor.

“Orders are that no stranger is to learn about visitors from the camp. That’s why I had to make up that story. But what did he do to you?”

“Just tried to see who I was.” Sheila shivered. “I hate people pawing me,” she said fiercely.

“What? Everyone?” Kati asked with mock belief.

Sheila smiled, too. “Now I begin to feel I behaved like a fool. I should have answered him when he asked who I was. I should have made up a story like yours. Then there would have been no fuss. And yet somehow I couldn’t answer him. I really was quite dumb with fear. Kati, I’ve met that man... Part of me recognised him in the darkness, but the rest of me isn’t clever enough...”

Kati was looking at her with mild tolerance. Zygmunt had told her about this girl. She was the Chief’s girl. She was leaving him for no reason Zygmunt or Kati could guess. Sometimes that turned a girl’s brain, sometimes that...

“What’s wrong now?” she asked patiently.

“The door of our room. I shut it firmly this morning.”

“Well, it isn’t shut properly now.” It certainly wasn’t. The slight draught from the window had been sufficient to draw the door, improperly closed, a long inch away from its frame. “The old lady has been up looking for you,” Kati suggested, and then watched Sheila closing the door once more, testing the hasp.
She shut it the way she had closed it this morning, cautiously, slowly. The door stayed firm.

“Ryng had looked into his room. He probably looked through every room in this corridor,” Sheila said. She had got rid of that mad fit, Kati thought: her face was cold and hard now.

“They’d have heard him,” Kati said, nodding towards the sleeping Aleksanders.

“They haven’t heard us.”

Kati shrugged her fine shoulders, but before she could answer, Sheila had crossed quickly over to the open window and pushed the shutters closer. Someone was outside, loitering. Ryng, no doubt. Loitering to see the dawn break, perhaps, just as he had loitered round this house looking for the food pantry. He made no pretence of silence now: he must have heard her footsteps. He was walking carelessly, kicking a stone along his path as he went. He was whistling softly to himself. Sheila tried to see out through the shutter’s hinge, but there was nothing to be recognised from that angle. All she could do was listen to the careless kicking at the stone, to the soft whistling as it faded.

The practical Kati was attending to the stove. Madame Aleksander stirred restlessly, and woke. “Thought I heard something,” she said sleepily, and Kati laughed. But Sheila didn’t laugh. If I can just let my mind lie fallow, just for two minutes, just think of nothing, perhaps I’ll remember, she was saying to herself. For there was something to remember. The coarse voice in the hall with its touch of dialect...it held something of a voice she had heard once before.

Kati pointed a poker at Sheila and said to Madame Aleksander, “She thinks something is wrong. She’s been hearing things, too.”

Madame Aleksander had the good sense to keep quiet. She looked at Sheila, and then she sat up in bed. She began to fasten her corsets, button her dress, smooth her hair into its usual neat pattern.

Sheila walked over to the stove. She stood watching the new flames, leaping greedily inside their little cave. The stove door had been left open to increase the draught. She warmed her hands, and looked at the charcoal’s orange glow.

Kati was worried about the continued silence. “What’s wrong, anyway?” she said. “He was a man searching for food. What’s wrong about that?”

“A man searching for something,” Sheila said slowly.

“Aye. For his wife and her young brother, Zygmunt got bored to sleep with his story, last night!”

Sheila bit her lip. “Zygmunt. Get Zygmunt. And Peter,” she said suddenly.

“Zygmunt? He’s still asleep. When he’s asleep, he stays asleep.”

“Get him, Kati.”

The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Well, don’t blame me for his language,” she said.

Madame Aleksander was wakening Stefan gently. “Please, Stefan. We may have to leave.” Her eyes watched Sheila’s face anxiously.

There were other signs of life in the house, now. A woman’s voice, strong and confident, was giving orders. That would be Jadwiga—Kati’s mother. Doors opened noisily. Shutters creaked. There was a sound of dishes, of a stiff broom sweeping a hard floor. Peter and the man Zak stumbled out of the front room, and Jadwiga’s voice followed them. Sheila heard the hiss
of water, as the two men wakened their heavy heads under the cold stream from the pump. The hiss of water...water hissing against a hot dusty pavement. A man whistling softly... whistling the same little tune she had heard that morning...

What has he to be happy about?

“God...” Sheila said. “Oh, God.”

“What is it, Sheila?” Madame Aleksander came over quickly. Kati and Zygmunt, with wild hair and his half-opened shirt wet with water, stood at the door.

“Kati,” Sheila said very quietly. “Ryng is not a Pole. He is a German. His real name is Dittmar.”

Her denunciation ended in anti-climax. They all stared at her unbelievingly. Zygmunt’s face was still half drugged by sleep.

“What’s that?” he said slowly.

“He’s a spy. I first met him as Henryk, a Polish concierge at Professor Korytowski’s flat. When war came, he changed to an official in the German
Auslands-Organisation,
working closely with the Gestapo. He arrested and questioned you after my disappearance, Madame Aleksander.”

Everyone turned to the older woman. She shook her head nervously, blankly.

“The name means nothing... I didn’t catch any of their names when they questioned me. They were just...faces.”

Sheila said, “A tail man of about forty, powerful shoulders, round white face, small grey eyes, straight mouth with thin lips, short nose, long upper lips, short bristling fair hair growing over a once-shaved head?”

Madame Aleksander looked amazed. “Yes, there was one with very short hair, almost a shaven head. And grey eyes, small and hard...”

Kati was staring too. “That’s Ryng, all right. You’ve got him pat.”

Stefan suddenly broke his attentive silence. “That was the man who was at Zorawno, yesterday morning, when I went there to warn its Jadwiga about the shot.”

Kati looked at Zygmunt in alarm. “It’s the camp, Zygmunt. That’s what he’s after.”

Stefan said, “Mother, perhaps he followed you after all. Perhaps that dog...”

“No,” Sheila said, “he came for none of those things, but he may have found out about them. Zygmunt, did he describe his wife to you? How she might be travelling?”

Zygmunt was very much awake now. His face still looked tired, but his eyes were alert. “She was a blonde, quite young, with pretty fair hair to her shoulders. She had delicate hands but the left one had been scarred by a pot of boiling soup. The brother was young, just a kid. They were travelling south, trying to hide from patrols. There was an older man with them at one time. A big fellow. Ryng seemed jealous about that man. Didn’t know whether he was the reason his wife had disappeared, or whether it was the Germans. I felt kind of sorry for him: he was sort of worried.”

Sheila looked at her left hand, and so did Stefan.

“You and Jan and me,” he tried to say. Sheila nodded.

“Devil take his pock-marked soul! Bloody fool that I’ve been,” Zygmunt said.

“You were out on a raid when we arrived in camp, Zygmunt. You didn’t know that Jan and Stefan and I arrived together, or that my hair was longer, then. But at least we know that Dittmar came here looking for me. Not for the camp. But he traced us
to this district and then we vanished into thin air. Now, he has seen Madame Aleksander here, knows she evaded the men who followed her from Warsaw, knows she must have friends here to help her. Yesterday he heard a shot from the forest although the villagers had told him the forest was a dead place with all its paths blocked by undergrowth. When he adds up all these things the answer will be that refugees are hidden in the forest.”