The Unconquerable (11)
By:
September 12, 2014
HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize Helen MacInnes’s 1944 novel The Unconquerable (later reissued as While We Still Live), an espionage adventure that pits an innocent English woman against both Nazis and resistance fighters in occupied Poland. MacInnes, it’s worth noting, was married to a British intelligence agent, which may explain what one hears is the amazing accuracy of her story’s details. Under the editorship of HILOBROW’s Joshua Glenn, the Save the Adventure book club will reissue The Unconquerable as an e-book for the first time ever. Enjoy!
Next day, when the sun was at its warmest, Barbara came for her hour’s visit to the apartment in Frascati Gardens, and Sheila was then allowed to have her clothes. Apart from a treacherous weakness in her legs, so that the first steps made her totter like a baby learning to walk, she managed to pretend she felt very well indeed. When she came into the strange living-room she was telling Barbara cheerfully that all she needed was to move about and make her legs strong again.
“Not too quickly, though,” Barbara admonished in such an unconscious imitation of her mother’s voice that Stevens, trying to shave off a thick growth of beard with half a cupful of cold water, turned to give Sheila a grin.
“What are you two laughing about?” Barbara asked tolerantly, and began transforming Stevens’ bed back into a couch again. Sheila only smiled. She walked determinedly, if slowly, towards the window. It was funny to see how like Madame Aleksander Barbara really was. Sheila wondered what traits she had inherited from her own mother and father. Or didn’t you inherit them if you had never lived with them? Uncle Matthews would tell her, some day, now that she knew enough to be able to question him intelligently. She felt suddenly so happy that she was ashamed. But all the worry and insecurity and pain of the last weeks were well worth while, after all: some day she could question intelligently. If she lived, she added, and looked down on the trees in the street.
“It seems so untouched,” she said in surprise. “The parks are still beautiful.”
“This district is the luckiest, so far,” Stevens said briefly. He thought of the long lines of trenches which she couldn’t see from this window, trenches which yesterday had begun to be filled with dead bodies. The cemeteries could hold no more. He dried his face carefully and turned on the radio.
A man’s strong, encouraging voice filled the room. “The mayor,” Stevens said. “You’d never guess he’s speaking from the ruins of his office, would you? Still works there.” He switched the knob round for a foreign station and found a German one. Always German, he thought angrily; either German or jammed by Germans.
“Oh. not that,” Sheila said, “not so much drama. Don’t they love to threaten? And if they don’t threaten they gloat.”
Stevens silenced her with a hand. He held it there, suspended in the air, his head bent to one side, his eyes narrowing. He turned strangely, unbelievingly, to the two girls who weren’t even bothering to listen. Barbara was telling Sheila that Mr Olszak said it would be perfectly all right if Sheila were to come and help Barbara with the children, once Sheila was strong enough. Suddenly they noticed the American’s face. He was still listening.
“Another ultimatum?” Barbara said scornfully.
Stevens shook his head. He could hardly speak. Their curiosity turned chill.
“The God-damned liars,” he was saying. “It can’t be true.
it isn’t true. The ——!” He seized his jacket as he moved
quickly to the door. “Have to see if I can broadcast to America,” he said. “That was a German report that the Russians entered Eastern Poland yesterday. Can’t be true.”
He was out of the room before either of them could speak.
“They’ve come to help,” Sheila was saying. “Perhaps it’s help.”
They listened to the German announcer’s triumphant voice. Barbara shook her head slowly and sat down on the nearest chair. This news had managed to do what the bombs and shells had failed to accomplish. The first tears since she had said good-bye to Jan Reska were streaming over her cheeks. She just sat there, crying quietly, gazing at the blue sky outside, as if all action and courage had been sapped from her veins.
Sheila stared down at the street. Well, that was another prayer that hadn’t been answered; she had hoped so much, to the point of believing that it would come true, that help would come from the east. Perhaps this new invasion really meant only a defence of Russia before the Germans got too far east. And yet the German announcement was using the tone of victory. Even the element of surprise had made it more victorious. Yesterday no one had known, no one had guessed what had taken place. To-day the Germans were the first to announce it. That doubled the weight of the blow. It made you feel twice as helpless. And helplessness could become hopelessness.
“What will Warsaw do?” she asked dully.
“Do?” echoed Barbara, still unseeing. And then a fury seized her. “We’ll fight on. We’ll never stop fighting until we have Poland again. Not even if it takes twenty, thirty, forty years. We’ll fight on.” Her voice rose. Her face had paled, her neck flushed red. Her blue eyes were as hard and brilliant as granite caught in sunlight. Sheila switched off the radio and let her talk; it was the best thing for Barbara. Her courage was back all the stronger because of her anger. At last she paused, and the two girls stared at each other. Only the loud ticking of a cheap alarm-clock broke the silence.
“You are so quiet, Sheila,” Barbara said at last. “Don’t you feel anything?”
“Feel?” Sheila walked slowly over to the couch. In the same low voice she clipped out the words, “Damn and blast all politics to hell.”
Barbara was gathering up her coat and basket. “I must go back to the children, to games of let’s pretend, where the bad man gets shot, and the good man lives, and all are happy ever after. I’ll come to see you to-morrow. Take care. You’ll soon be able to come and help with the children.” Her voice was normal, as if she had forgotten the last quarter of an hour. And then she began to laugh, a hysterical, bitter laugh.
“Eugenia,” she explained, “Brother Stanislaw’s wife… You never met her. But you’ve heard Aunt Marta on the subject…. In the first week of the war she was in Warsaw, and then she found enough petrol — that kind of person always does; she approves of rationing except for herself — and she set out for the Aleksander house in Polesie, with her maid and trunks and jewels and best furs…. She hadn’t enough room in the car for little Teresa or Stefan although Stanislaw made her offer to take them with her. She almost embraced Mother in relief when we said we preferred to have the children nearer Warsaw. We heard last week that she had a ‘perfectly frightful’ journey; but she did arrive. In Polesie. And do you know where Polesie is? Right on the Russian frontier. It’s the only funny piece of news in a long time, but I dare say that to no one but you.”
“What about Stanislaw?”
“He’s in Warsaw. He resigned his diplomatic job last week and put on an armlet and took his best hunting-rifle. He’s over in Praga now, stalking Germans in suburban streets.”
“Barbara, have you heard anything about Jan Reska?”
Barbara shook her head for an answer and then walked slowly out of the door. Her footsteps were slow and heavy on the wooden stairs.
Sheila wished desperately that she had left that question unasked. She searched for something to read, but all Stevens’ best books had been burned along with his clothes in the suitcases. She found a battered Polish grammar. As long as she had to sit in here, she might as well learn something. She had a feeling that she was going to need as much Polish as she could master. Besides, a grammar made you concentrate, made you forget other things. Like a good Scot, she began at the beginning and methodically revised the earlier lessons which she had already learned. Now that she was sure of the right pronunciation, the words were easier to memorize than they had seemed in London last spring. She found she could recommend studying a foreign grammar book to anyone who had to sit through air raids.
At six o’clock she was hungry, and picnicked on a strange assortment of food. Mr Olszak had sent bread and butter to-day. Calf’s-foot jelly and a peach came from Madame Aleksander, and the small bowl of milk had been brought by Barbara. Stevens had discovered some soup cubes for her. Uncle Edward had brought a Thermos bottle of soup, a small bottle of red wine, and a bunch of flowers. None of them had forgotten her, however busy and worried they were. And each item of food was now a luxury which not money, but time and trouble had discovered.
As dusk came to the city she didn’t bother either to light the candle or to draw the blackout curtains. She was suddenly as exhausted as if she had worked all day in the fields. She watched the red glow, deepening and widening in the smoke-covered sky — unaware that it was the Royal Castle which to-night was ablaze — until she had gathered enough energy to take herself to bed.
Outside, the eighteenth day of bombing, the tenth day of artillery bombardment, came to its close. People were still toiling in the numerous parks which had once been Warsaw’s pride. They were filling in the trenches which they had dug almost three weeks before, covering the corpses carefully and wearily with the soft, dry earth. The sisters in the burning hospitals pulled the wounded men into the courtyards, sheltered them with their bodies when a German plane swooped low to machine-gun the living mass.
Barbara quieted her children. The night attacks would wake them from uneasy dreams, and they would start remembering their mothers and fathers. Some of them would still think that they were wandering alone in machine-gunned fields.
Stevens had paused for a cigarette, together with the Swede beside whom he worked nowadays. Their work to-night was useless. The precious flour in the largest bakery flared beyond all human effort. Neither man spoke any more as they worked, but they kept together.
Over in the Praga sector, once a workers’ suburb across the Vistula river, Stanislaw Aleksander silenced the nagging worry about his wife with the machine-gun to which he had been promoted.
Edward Korytowski and Michal Olszak were busy with the cunningly concealed doorway which they had made between two adjoining cellars. The printing press in one cellar was now completed and hidden by protecting sandbags.
Jan Reska lay in the shelter of an eastern forest beside men who were strangers to him. All his old comrades were lost. This was the fifth company he had fought with, and now it seemed as if they were to be surrounded too. Here under the trees they could rest from the bombers, perhaps think of some way to join the survivors of still another division.
Captain Adam Wisniewski had gathered the remnants of his cavalry platoon from the slaughter fields of the Poznan bulge, had led them silently at nightfall away from the west. The south too was in German hands. Their nearest hope was Warsaw. A knock at the darkened window of an isolated house brought them any food there was, perhaps a moment’s warmth by a stove or in a barn where the exhausted men could rest. And then the alarm of a scout sent the half-sleeping men and the stumbling horses stealing away in the cold darkness once more.
Eugenia, her furs and jewels quite forgotten in her misery, watched the earnest, angry face of the young Commissar as he berated the peasants who had dismantled the Aleksander house, who had dressed in their best clothes to celebrate the day when every man was his own master and need not work. They were as bewildered as Eugenia was unhappy. The big house was not theirs to plunder; it “belonged to the State. Their gay clothes were useless; the State wanted workers soberly dressed, soberly thinking. Her face was a proud mask as she set off on the nightmare journey into an unknown country. Furs and jewels were useless to staunch the blood which oozed through the cracks in her hand-sewn shoes.
In Kawka’s kitchen at Korytów Aunt Marta lay in bed with Teresa and Kawka’s two little girls. The German officers in the Korytowski house grumbled at the lack of linen and silver, at the empty pantry shelves, at the kitchen’s disorder. Aunt Marta smiled grimly to herself and listened to Teresa’s breathing. She would be all right now, although her right hand would never play on a piano again. Stefan lay awake in Kawka’s room. He couldn’t sleep because he had so much thinking to do. What could he do to hurt Them most? He had seen what They had done to the village and to Wanda and Teresa. What could he do to Them?
Andrew Aleksander lay in a cattle-truck, his right leg shattered at the thigh. He listened to the moaning of the wounded men, jammed into this evil-smelling box as the train lumbered slowly into Germany. It was strange how he persisted in living when he wanted to die. He had seen so many men who wanted to live die. If this truck was left unattended in sidings for eight hours, as it had been yesterday, perhaps he would. The body crushed against his twitched in a violent spasm and then lay still. The dead man’s arm was across Andrew’s mouth. He hadn’t the strength left to shake himself free.
Madame Aleksander was attempting to rescue the few scraps of equipment still recognizable from the ruins of the operating-theatre. She worked silently, trying not to think of the flames leaping greedily on the other side of the small courtyard where the western wing of the hospital had been set on fire. For one moment the hot red light disappeared; the crackling and hissing and guns and roaring planes were silent. In the cool darkness the family were round her. Teresa’s nose was crinkled over its freckles as she laughed; Stefan, large-eyed and silent and smiling; Andrew waiting for her to speak, with one eyebrow slightly raised; Stanislaw, serious, worried, bitter, gentle; Barbara, her head thrown back, her eyes seeing some pleasant secret of her own…. The fainting spell could only have lasted a moment, for when the faces had gone with the cool, velvety darkness, the flames had come only a little nearer. Madame Aleksander looked up at the young Sister who had taken three steps to reach her where she had fallen on her knees. The girl moved over the rubble and dust with the grace that her training had made natural for her. Did she ever think of ballet now? Madame Aleksander wondered. But then, there was so little time for thinking these days. So little time for sleep and escape into dreams.
The Sister’s graceful arm helped her to her feet.
“Perhaps we should rest,” she said, looking at Madame Aleksander’s driven face.
“Perhaps.”
They worked on.
RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION: “Radium Age” is HILOBROW’s name for the 1904–33 era, which saw the discovery of radioactivity, the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. This era also saw the publication of genre-shattering writing by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Jack London, Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley, Olaf Stapledon, Karel Čapek, H.P. Lovecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Philip Gordon Wylie, and other pioneers of post-Verne/Wells, pre-Golden Age “science fiction.” More info here.
READ GORGEOUS PAPERBACKS: HiLoBooks has reissued the following 10 obscure but amazing Radium Age science fiction novels in beautiful print editions: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague, Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”), Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt, H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook, Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, J.D. Beresford’s Goslings, E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man, Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage, and Muriel Jaeger’s The Man with Six Senses. For more information, visit the HiLoBooks homepage.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”) | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt | H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook | Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins | William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land | J.D. Beresford’s Goslings | E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man | Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage | Muriel Jaeger’s The Man With Six Senses | Jack London’s “The Red One” | Philip Francis Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D. | Homer Eon Flint’s The Devolutionist | W.E.B. DuBois’s “The Comet” | Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Moon Men | Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland | Sax Rohmer’s “The Zayat Kiss” | Eimar O’Duffy’s King Goshawk and the Birds | Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Lost Prince | Morley Roberts’s The Fugitives | Helen MacInnes’s The Unconquerable | Geoffrey Household’s Watcher in the Shadows | William Haggard’s The High Wire | Hammond Innes’s Air Bridge | James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen | John Buchan’s “No Man’s Land” | John Russell’s “The Fourth Man” | E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” | John Buchan’s Huntingtower | Arthur Conan Doyle’s When the World Screamed | Victor Bridges’ A Rogue By Compulsion | Jack London’s The Iron Heel | H. De Vere Stacpoole’s The Man Who Lost Himself | P.G. Wodehouse’s Leave It to Psmith | Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” | Houdini and Lovecraft’s “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” | Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Sussex Vampire.”
ORIGINAL FICTION: HILOBROW has serialized three novels: James Parker’s The Ballad of Cocky The Fox (“a proof-of-concept that serialization can work on the Internet” — The Atlantic); Karinne Keithley Syers’s Linda Linda Linda (which includes original music); and Robert Waldron’s roman à clef The School on the Fens. We also publish original stories and comics. These include: Matthew Battles’s stories “Gita Nova“, “Makes the Man,” “Imago,” “Camera Lucida,” “A Simple Message”, “Children of the Volcano”, “The Gnomon”, “Billable Memories”, “For Provisional Description of Superficial Features”, “The Dogs in the Trees”, “The Sovereignties of Invention”, and “Survivor: The Island of Dr. Moreau”; several of these later appeared in the collection The Sovereignties of Invention | Peggy Nelson’s “Mood Indigo“, “Top Kill Fail“, and “Mercerism” | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Flourish Klink’s Star Trek fanfic “Conference Comms” | Charlie Mitchell’s “A Fantasy Land” | Charlie Mitchell’s “Sentinels” | Joshua Glenn’s “The Lawless One”, and the mashup story “Zarathustra vs. Swamp Thing” | Adam McGovern and Paolo Leandri’s Idoru Jones comics | John Holbo’s “Sugarplum Squeampunk” | “Another Corporate Death” (1) and “Another Corporate Death” (2) by Mike Fleisch | Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer and Frank Fiorentino’s graphic novel “The Song of Otto” (excerpt) | John Holbo’s graphic novel On Beyond Zarathustra (excerpt) | “Manoj” and “Josh” by Vijay Balakrishnan | “Verge” by Chris Rossi, and his audio novel Low Priority Hero | EPIC WINS: THE ILIAD (1.408-415) by Flourish Klink | EPIC WINS: THE KALEVALA (3.1-278) by James Parker | EPIC WINS: THE ARGONAUTICA (2.815-834) by Joshua Glenn | EPIC WINS: THE MYTH OF THE ELK by Matthew Battles | TROUBLED SUPERHUMAN CONTEST: Charles Pappas, “The Law” | CATASTROPHE CONTEST: Timothy Raymond, “Hem and the Flood” | TELEPATHY CONTEST: Rachel Ellis Adams, “Fatima, Can You Hear Me?” | OIL SPILL CONTEST: A.E. Smith, “Sound Thinking | LITTLE NEMO CAPTION CONTEST: Joe Lyons, “Necronomicon” | SPOOKY-KOOKY CONTEST: Tucker Cummings, “Well Marbled” | INVENT-A-HERO CONTEST: TG Gibbon, “The Firefly” | FANFICTION CONTEST: Lyette Mercier’s “Sex and the Single Superhero”