The Unconquerable (18)
By:
October 29, 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!
Sheila lay on one of the narrow beds. Korytowski sat on the hard spindle-legged chair. Stevens paced the room.
“How long will it take the others to leave?” Sheila asked, if only to break the silence and interrupt her own thoughts. This was the second time they had met; this was the second time they hadn’t spoken. Then it had been people, now it was events which had kept them apart. It wasn’t likely that they would ever meet again. But somehow she wished he had spoken.
“Long enough,” Korytowski answered. “They must leave singly or in groups of two or three.”
“Who are the guards at the door?”
“Two of Wisniewski’s men.”
Stevens stopped his pacing. “How long has he been with this outfit?” he asked.
“Who? Wisniewski? Since yesterday. Until then he had thought it possible to break through the German lines. He led two attempts this week. But yesterday he saw that capitulation was inevitable, and so he agreed to Olszak’s original proposal and will fight on this way.”
“Why do you look like that?” Sheila asked Stevens.
“Like what?” he countered with pretended obtuseness.
“So — so contemptuous.”
“All I wanted to know,” the American said, with emphasized patience, “was how long the brave captain has been associating with workmen and business-men and school-teachers and newspapermen. That surprised me, I admit. I thought he only knew beautiful women and handsome horses.”
Sheila was angrier than Korytowski, who repressed a smile. “Really, Steve,” she began indignantly. And then, rather weakly, “He’s Andrew’s friend.”
“Yes. That attraction of opposites, I guess.”
“Not so very much opposites,” Korytowski said mildly. “And he has something in common with you too, Steve. Only, you’ve been educated under different systems, and the result seems different on the surface.” He looked at Stevens’ heavy frown. “It’s strange,” he went on, “I should have thought the violent energy which has characterized Adam Wisniewski’s exceedingly colourful life would have appealed to an American. That is what made America, after all. He is so very much — alive. He’s a good soldier, a magnificent horseman, a fine shot, an excellent hunter. The ladies admire his conversation.” Stevens muttered something under his breath which Korytowski tactfully ignored, although he smiled. He continued, “I must confess that there have been moments in my own orderly existence when I have admired, and even envied, Captain Wisniewski’s ability to enjoy life.”
“He’s a damn’ fascist,” Stevens said. “He’s not on your side, nor on mine. What about that students’ riot two years ago? In the Jewish quarter? Wisniewski was passing with some friends. He didn’t stop them, did he?”
“In all fairness to Wisniewski you should remember he didn’t begin the riot, and he didn’t even join it. He had great contempt for the ‘bourgeois fascists,’ as he called the type of student who began that riot. His contribution to the evening began by snatching a policeman’s helmet. True, he might have tried to stop the riot instead of taking the opportunity for some fun at the expense of the law. I agree with you there. And yet, I don’t suppose either you or I could have stopped that riot or even wanted to act as policemen if we had been having an evening’s celebration such as Wisniewski and his friends had had.”
“What happened to the policeman’s helmet?” Sheila asked.
“It was found floating down the Vistula with four others
which Wisniewski managed to collect before his evening was
over.” Korytowski smiled. “As far as I can remember, they
had paper sails rigged in them.”
The tension slackened, much to Sheila’s relief, but Stevens still didn’t speak.
“I’ve been teaching young men for almost twenty years,” Korytowski continued, “and there is one thing I’ve learned. If a large number of them get together and start looking for what is called ‘fun’ they invariably end in trouble. The sense of power which the mass feeling provides is intoxicating; and, as in the case of that riot, the direction which that power takes depends on the merest chance. One man of ill-will can affect others, and high spirits can be turned into blind violence. To-morrow these young men may be ashamed, but at the moment they are intoxicated, and their individual judgment is lost. Surely you have seen that happen in your own country, too?”
“Of course.” Stevens was too polite. “I don’t believe in pogroms or in the men who don’t stop them — that’s all.”
Korytowski was silent for a long moment. Then he said quietly, “Every country has its minorities, whether they are racial or religious or political. And minorities are always resented, sometimes with cause, sometimes without. The only difference in countries is that some raise the mob emotion against minorities into an official policy and become totalitarian; others seek to educate their citizens against resentment and mob emotion. Their success in that depends on how long a space of peace has been granted to their countries’ natural development.”
Olszak entered briskly. “A short lecture on the dangers of Nazism, I see,” he said, and looked at the cracked ceiling, the boarded window, the plaster and dust on the floor.
Korytowski smiled. Stevens’ frown disappeared. “My fault,” he said, “and now I feel like a heel. I wasn’t attacking Poland, Professor.”
“No?” Korytowski said gently, and Sheila laughed.
“Was I?” Stevens demanded indignantly.
Sheila said, “Just the foreigner’s usual holier-than-thou. I know, Steve, I have had attacks of it myself. I suppose we mostly believe ‘my country, right or wrong,’ whether it’s cooking recipes or social systems we are discussing. What we have been brought up with always seems more sensible than what is different.”
“The foreigner visiting any country is a rarity if he doesn’t criticize and think ‘At home we had… or did…’” Korytowski said.
Stevens watched Olszak’s strange smile. “I got into this through a very simple statement. I said, and I still say, that Adam Wisniewski’s out of place.”
Sheila thought, Perhaps I shouldn’t have defended Adam. Then Steve might have stopped harping on this subject…. But she couldn’t resist saying, partly to find out Olszak’s verdict, “A damned fascist.” Steve looked at her angrily. By her tone and face he saw she didn’t believe him. Wisniewski had watched her a good deal at the meeting, and that last look she had given him hadn’t been particularly short or cold, either. Damn Wisniewski. What was he doing here, anyway?
“All right, then,” Stevens said. “He is a damn’ fascist. I said it before, and I’ll keep on saying it.”
Olszak watched him keenly and then looked at Sheila. “I am going to shock you both,” he said, with mock seriousness. “I never pay much attention to a young man’s politics, as long as he doesn’t specialize in cruelty or violence. He makes, if there is any good in him, at least one major change before he reaches the dangerous age, before his convictions harden. What is more, I am in revolt against the recent fashion of attaching so much weight to political ideology. For the last fifty years we have paid too much attention to political differences, just as we used to pay too much attention to religious differences. Nowadays the word Communist or Fascist rouses the same emotions as Protestant and Catholic once caused. If these religious factions can learn to live together by giving up all persecution and forms of torture it is quite possible that a future world will see many forms of political ideology living and working side by side. We shall have that as soon as politics and politicians become adult. If the Church has found that the Inquisition and St Bartholomew’s Day are not necessary for maintaining its authority politics too can achieve that perspective by giving up concentration camps and murder. If Adam Wisniewski believed that one nation alone should be master of the world, even if he believed that nation should be our own Poland, I would fight him to the death. But his love of Poland only means freedom for the Poles, freedom for every one, to live in their own houses, to till their own fields, to ride over their own roads with no foreigner to interfere or command. He is a nationalist, but not a fascist. For a fascist is one who uses a political ideology to grab more power for his country, his party, and, of course, for himself. He is identified completely with his party, and it in turn is identified with the State. He can tolerate no differences of opinion for that very reason.”
Mr Olszak’s voice had become grimly serious while he talked. As the English girl and the American remained silent he went on, “Adam Wisniewski and I have disagreed in politics in the past. Yet he trusts me in our common fight. I should be a lesser man if I could not trust him. Our differences were merely those of having and not having. In the past he and his friends wanted to keep what they had. I and my friends wanted more than we had. On their side it was fear, on ours it was envy. That is how mean politics can be. But to-day, with German bombs and soldiers to level rich and poor homes, to make us one in suffering, our differences seem petty. Nothing matters now but the freedom we have all lost.”
Neither Stevens nor Sheila spoke yet.
“When a conqueror lives in your cities, destroys, mutilates, kills, you will know then what I mean,” Olszak said, and fell silent too.
Stevens kicked aside a piece of plaster. “I don’t need that experience. I guess you’re right. At least, you always sound as if you were right.”
Olszak smiled, a strangely gentle smile. “With age men lose their hair, their teeth, their eyesight, their strength. Their only compensation is their experience. If they have lived without achieving that, then their lives have been quite useless.” He turned to Sheila. “You understand all that was said at the meeting?”
“Yes. I’ve learned a lot of Polish in the last few weeks. I had to.”
“Good.” To Stevens he said, “You remember the meeting quite clearly?”
“Yes. I won’t forget it.”
“Good. I have a job for you to do. The Germans will round up all foreigners when they arrive. Unless the neutral foreigners have established business here, the Germans will certainly send them out of the country. And they will see that they get safely out of the country. They don’t want any extra witnesses here of their treatment of the Poles. I want a full report of that meeting to reach our friends in the outside world. The only way in which there would be no possibility of the Germans intercepting such a message would be if it travelled out of the country safely locked up in a neutral brain.”
“Then I am not to stay here?” Stevens’ face was a study in disappointment.
Olszak was pleased. He gripped the American’s shoulder. “You are the only neutral, so far, who is in our organization. This would be a major service which you would render us. Coded messages sent by radio would be too dangerous in this case; that is how important it is. And although the Germans will give you safe-conduct, there will be plenty of danger. You’ll need to use your wits all the time. They’ll have spies well disguised. I’ll give you full instructions later. Meanwhile, don’t forget what you saw and heard to-day.”
“And after that?” Stevens was still disappointed.
“There will be another job for you to do… and then another, and another. We work our good men very hard.”
“And where will I be?”
“Wherever it does the Germans most harm.”
Stevens smiled grimly. “All right,” he said, “that suits me. But what about Sheila? She can’t stay here pretending to be a Pole. She has only got to speak, and the Germans will know at once she is a foreigner.”
“We’ve thought of that.” And we’ve made our plans, the voice implied. Mr Olszak turned to Sheila. “I’ve heard from your uncle. He was not very pleased to hear that you were still in Warsaw. He thinks you are a nuisance to us.”
“What did you reply?” Sheila asked. She wondered why she should feel so upset at the idea that she might have to leave Poland after all. There had been hours in the last few weeks when she had been miserably homesick. Now she knew she still wanted to stay. Madame Aleksander needed her; Madame Aleksander, who once had so many children round her, who now had none.
“I waited to hear your answer before I replied.”
Sheila brushed back the hair from her forehead. There were little beads of perspiration under the curls. “Have I been a nuisance?” she asked.
Olszak shook his head slowly.
“Then I shall stay. Madame Aleksander…”
Olszak and Korytowski exchanged glances. Uncle Edward was smiling happily.
“I’m on the side of her uncle,” Stevens said quietly. “She has already done her job here. She should leave. Or else she’ll spend the rest of the war in a concentration camp — if she’s lucky.” His voice was harsh.
“But, Steve, I’ve lived through the bombardment and siege. The war may last only another year. Once the Siegfried Line is cracked there will be nothing to stop us reaching Berlin.”
Steve tightened his lips. “What you need is a firm hand, my lady,” he said.
Olszak said quietly. “Yes, she already has done more than enough — if that phrase is valid in time of war. But remember — she won’t have the neutral’s prerogative to leave on a train, as you will have. She must go by underground. Until a safe route has been established I do not want to risk sending her. She would be better waiting here. As I said, we have thought of that. We shall give her a name and story that the Germans won’t think of questioning. And she can go on living in your flat, Stevens. Madame Aleksander will join her there. It will all fit into the story we have prepared for the Germans. She will be as safe as anyone can be under the Germans. Safer than many.”
Sheila avoided Steve’s angry eyes. “What’s my new name?” she asked quickly. The meeting had given her hope and courage. It only needed Mr Olszak’s latest suggestion to end completely the sense of frustration and uselessness of the last few days. Perhaps there were other things she could do as well as look after Madame Aleksander. She looked at Olszak and saw he had half guessed her thoughts.
“Perhaps I could be of some use?” she suggested hesitatingly, without waiting for Olszak’s answer.
Mr Olszak only smiled. But she knew him by this time. If he needed her help he would make use of her.
He said, “You’ll find Mr Hofmeyer next door. From now on you are under his advice and orders. He has your papers and life-story all ready. He has enlarged considerably on the name of Anna Braun, which he first found for you in an embarrassing moment with the man Henryk. Stevens was right when he said you couldn’t be disguised as a Polish girl, so we have kept your old story of being a German girl who adopted the identity of Sheila Matthews. If the Germans question you refer them to Mr Hofmeyer, whose secretary you have now become. That and the police records of August the thirty-first will be enough to keep you safe. Now, I shall give Stevens his instructions if you will have a talk with Mr Hofmeyer. I may not see you again for a considerable time. Meanwhile, good luck.”
Sheila smiled whole-heartedly. He would never have taken all this trouble about me if he hadn’t hoped to give me some job to do, she thought happily. She felt as if a very high compliment indeed had been paid her. As she closed the door carefully behind her Olszak was saying. “Now about your Swedish friend… We find nothing against him. I think his best plan would be to…” How miserable, she thought, Mr Olszak would be if there were no plans left to be invented. She was still smiling as she entered the large living-room.
Mr Hofmeyer was reading peacefully at the desk. The candle stub gave a deep yellow light which rounded out the lines on his face, softened its furrows. He removed his hornrimmed glasses, stuffed them into the breast pocket of his neat, dark suit, and came to meet her with his quick, light step. She seemed to be standing again in the music-room at Korytów, listening to these footsteps in the hall. In the dining-room the Aleksanders and their friends sat round a table rich with food and wine and silver. It was little Teresa’s first grown-up party. The children outside had played round the American’s car. The gaily dressed women from the village had brought their songs and laughter and friendly curiosity to the windows of the big house. The evening sky was slate blue. There was the lingering warmth of a summer’s day to carry the sweetness of flowers and trees into the softly lighted rooms.
It couldn’t be only a month ago. It couldn’t, Sheila thought, as she took Hofmeyer’s outstretched hand. It wasn’t possible so much could have happened in one month. But the boarded window, the dust gritting under her heels, the torn plaster, the guttering candle were there to prove that the nightmare was a reality. There was no awakening, no escape from this drama.
Mr Hofmeyer was speaking in English. Sheila knew by this time that it wasn’t a foreign language to him: his hesitancy was due to the fact that for so many years he had used English so little. To serve his country this man had been willing to renounce it. Living with foreigners, Hofmeyer had become one of them. Even the square-shaped head with its bristling white hair, or the way he bowed with his heels together and made a little speech of welcome was now quite un-English. She wondered if he were ever really happy, or was his happiness a sense of having accomplished a difficult task well?
“I am under your orders, Herr Hofmeyer,” she said, and sat on the nearest chair.
“Yes, Fräulein Braun.” He smiled as if to himself, and turned back to the papers he had been reading at the desk. “Here are the necessary documents. First of all, birth certificate. That gave us the greatest difficulty of all your papers: it had to be a blend of fact and fiction. We had to find a real man called Braun who lived in Munich and was killed in the last war. We found one called Ludwig Braun.” Mr Hofmeyer repeated the name slowly as if to emphasize it in her memory. He was to do that with all the names and dates he mentioned, quietly, insistently. Sheila found herself repeating the name to herself quite naturally.
Mr Hofmeyer’s clear voice went on, “Ludwig Braun had a wife Frieda, who married a year after his death and went to live in Cologne. She died two years ago. The Brauns did not have any children, so I have given you a birth certificate showing you were born six months after their marriage. Its date is the fifteenth of May, 1916. For good middle-class reasons your birth was kept secret from Frieda Braun’s ultra-respectable family. She boarded you out temporarily with a retired governess. Before Frau Braun had found courage to reveal your existence to her family, her husband had been killed, and she herself was thinking of a second marriage. Naturally she had less courage then to own you. But Frau Braun found, even after she was successfully married for a second time, that confession grows more difficult with postponement. So when Frau Braun, now Frau Mühlmann, went to live in Cologne, you were still living with the governess. She was a Miss Thelma Leigh who had retired in the city where she had spent thirty years and had become a naturalized German. That is actual fact, by the way. She is a friend of mine and now lives in Switzerland. She already has received instructions about the little girl whom she looked after in Munich. Her address there was Theresien-strasse 25. You lived very quietly with her until you were sixteen. Like many governesses, Miss Leigh was a snob and wouldn’t let you mix with the children of the neighbourhood or let you have school friends. You grew up almost unknown in Munich. Miss Leigh was your constant companion. That was your simple life until you were sixteen, and you followed her through museums and art galleries obediently.”
Mr Hofmeyer brought a small red book across to her. “Baedeker. He has a fine chapter on Munich. I understand that is the city you know best in Germany?”
Sheila nodded. She knew it well.
“Good. Then all you have to do is to refresh your memory. Don’t be worried about that part of the story. Any girl who has been away from her native town for almost ten years is not photographically clear about its details. All you need to do is to memorize the streets round your old home and the chief shopping-centres. Remember what you can of the English Park and the old Pinakothek Museum.”
Sheila nodded again.
“Anna Braun left Munich when she was sixteen. That was in 1932, the year before the Nazis came to power. Miss Leigh wanted her to finish her education abroad, to learn languages, so that some day, when Miss Leigh was dead, Anna Braun could earn money in a ladylike manner. By this time your mother had stopped paying the small allowance to Miss Leigh, and the governess had informally adopted you. So Miss Leigh arranged for you to go to England, where she had been born and still had some relatives. You travelled third class and spent a quiet year with a dull English family. Their name was Carson, and they stayed just outside London. You can pick any district you know. You were teaching their daughter Margaret to speak German in exchange for room and board. At the end of that year, when you were about to return to Munich, Miss Leigh had lost her last savings in the depression; she had to become a governess once again with a family in Switzerland this time. You were offered a temporary position, well paid, as a governess in a London household. Your employer was a Mrs Bowman of Eaton Square. As things grew more difficult in Europe you thought you must stay in a secure position. Mrs Bowman helped you to become a foreign correspondent in a business firm which exported to Germany. For the sake of being able to continue your position in this business firm and for the sake of future promotion you wanted to become a naturalized British subject. Your mother’s selfishness had given you no pleasure in the name Braun, so you even chose an English name — Sheila Matthews. Your security was assured. You were highly thought of in your firm, whose name was Mathieson, Walters, and Crieff.”
Hofmeyer ignored Sheila’s upraised eyebrows. He pointed to a thin dark-blue book and some papers on the desk, “There are the citizenship documents, the legal papers for your change of name and your subsequent passport. They are excellent copies. You need have no fear about any suspicion rising from them.”
Hofmeyer didn’t wait for any questions. He went on, “You had, of course, been little interested in politics during all this period. You were much too intent on trying to fight for yourself in a world where you had neither influence nor money nor a recognized name. Then the A.O. — the Auslands-Organisation — approached you. As the A.O. has some ten million Germans through the world organized in all grades of treachery towards their adopted countries, you are perfectly safe in maintaining that you agreed eventually to help your Fatherland. I can testify to that. For when you were visiting Miss Leigh in Switzerland, later in 1938, I was in Switzerland too. I met you, and through my connexions with the A.O. working in Poland I decided the form of your service in that organization. You returned to London, and we corresponded. You sent me several pieces of requested information which verified my opinion of your ability. Then in the winter of 1938–9 you met Andrew Aleksander and had many enjoyable evenings together. You wrote me that he wanted you to visit his family. He thought you were English, of course, on account of your name, of your business connexions in an old established British firm, and of your accent. Thanks to Miss Leigh’s early teaching you had an excellent English voice. This summer, when I was searching for a reliable secretary to replace Margareta Koch, I decided that you must be brought to Warsaw. I ordered you to resurrect the Aleksander invitation, and you arrived here welcomed as an English girl. Everything went according to plan, except that a careless member of our A.O. here betrayed me and drove me into hiding. You were arrested, released pending further investigation, rearrested along with Elzbieta — that is, Lisa Koehler — and escaped during an air raid. Since then you have been waiting until I can open my business house here again, and then you will begin working with me. And that is the story of Anna Braun who became Sheila Matthews.”
There was a pause.
“Now, let’s begin at the beginning,” Hofmeyer said with a smile.
Sheila felt herself grow tense as she strained to repeat the names and dates which she had tried to memorize. She was too anxious; she made a mistake, fumbled, halted, and bit her lip in annoyance at her own stupidity.
“Easy, now,” Hofmeyer said. He prompted her carefully, insisting that she should repeat the names after him, spelling them out slowly.
“Again,” the quiet voice said, when she had finished her account.
Again she told him. This time the names were becoming familiar, the dates and events seemed more plausible.
“Good,” he said, and her confidence increased.
“If you could give me a piece of paper and a pencil I could write down the German names. I’d remember them much better then.”
Hofmeyer raised one of his eyebrows, but he followed her suggestion, watching the look of concentration on her face as she wrote. The resemblance was so strong, he thought. Charles Matthews was dead, and yet he still lived, still shared in life through this girl.
“There!” she said, and watched him anxiously as he examined the sheet of paper.
“Good,” he said once more. And then, as if to keep her from being too confident, he added, “There are two n’s in Mühlmann.” He held the piece of paper to the candle’s flame. “Well, that’s about everything, Miss Matthews.”
“But what work shall I do?” Sheila asked quickly. “I mean, the Germans will expect me to do more than typing to justify all the trouble you took to get me into Warsaw.”
“I have already informed the proper authorities that you are invaluable to them for counter-espionage, which is my own field. Yon are to maintain the name and character and friendships of Sheila Matthews by German permission. They believe that you will be able to give them necessary information from time to time because of the trust which your Polish friends have put in you.”
“But when I don’t report to the Germans, when I don’t give them information, won’t they guess something is wrong then?”
“I shall credit you with some information, Fräulein Braun. We have to throw a sop every now and again, you know, to justify the money the Germans pay us. Now, here are your papers. Your birth certificate, your naturalization papers, your deed of name, your passport with its visit to Switzerland, correctly dated, and your identification card in the Ausland-Organisation. Keep these safe.”
He watched her open her handbag and transfer her powder-box, cigarette-case and comb into her pocket to make room for the papers.
“You may as well give me your real passport,” he said. “It has too many summer holidays stamped on its pages which would not at all agree with our story.”
Sheila removed the thin dark-blue book and held it in her hand thoughtfully. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I don’t like giving it up. Silly, isn’t it?”
“I assure you it must be destroyed.”
His quiet voice prompted her. She placed it in his outstretched hand.
“Now, Fräulein Braun, tell me the story of your life.”
Sheila looked startled, but Mr Hofmeyer was waiting. She began, “Born in Munich, May 1916. Fifteenth May 1916. Parents Ludwig and Frieda Braun, later Mühlmann of Cologne…” When she ended he nodded sympathetically.
“The only slips were with the English names, strangely enough. Repeat it all once more.”
This time he said, “Good. Don’t worry about how you spent your London years. Now that the war is on the Germans don’t have the same facilities for inquiries there. But they have no doubt checked on Miss Leigh in Switzerland. However, I have sent her full explanations. Even photographs which she can produce of Anna aged two, Anna aged six, and Anna aged twelve. Miss Leigh’s brown hair is almost white now, by the way. And she stoops slightly when she walks. That’s how you saw her last, in 1938. And you need not worry either about the house where you were brought up. We placed it especially in a row of houses which has since been torn down to make way for Party offices and barracks.”
Sheila’s eyes widened. She had better stop being surprised. She had better concentrate. There were questions she wanted to ask, questions which even now were slipping away from her just because she wanted to ask them so much.
“What if I am questioned?”
“Both the Gestapo and the A.O. have their lists of secret German agents. They will not question you. If you get into any difficulty with the military all you do is to show them that A.O. card and refer them to me. You may never have to face questions on the story I have just given you. But to keep it alive in your memory I suggest that you send yourself to sleep each night by repeating your life story to yourself.”
“I shall end by believing I was born in Munich.”
“Good.” Hofmeyer smiled encouragingly. “Frankly, I don’t expect you to meet any complications. You are responsible only to me. You are a secretary on my staff. You were chosen for your assured loyalty to Germany and your special qualifications. But actually you will do no spying. I shall give you only routine work to do. You see, I intend to keep you alive. Your uncle would never forgive me if I didn’t.”
Sheila’s sense of elation faded. “You mean… ?” she began incredulously.
“I mean that you will leave Poland safely when the time is suitable.”
She flushed with annoyance. “Mr Olszak didn’t lead me to expect this.”
“Mr Olszak doesn’t know your uncle personally.”
“But he knew my father.”
Hofmeyer came over to her and took her hands in his. Sheila, looking at the kindly face with its worried eyes, felt her emotions smooth out. “So did I,” Mr Hofmeyer said.
There was a pause. “You wish I had left Warsaw before the war began,” Sheila said, with a very small smile.
“Well, I can imagine other things I might have been doing in the last week instead of worrying about Anna Braun.”
Sheila looked down at the guide-book which lay on her lap. She slipped it into the remaining free pocket of her coat as she rose to her feet.
Mr Hofmeyer said, “Read your Baedeker, remember your catechism, and if you can find a typewriter practise typing. You are supposed to be a secretary, you know.”
Sheila smiled wryly. “Ja, Herr Hofmeyer,” she said.
He was looking at her almost sadly. It is so easy to disappoint the young, he was thinking; they expect so much. He followed her with his light step to the doorway into the hall. “One last order,” he said. “Positively no bright ideas, positively no heroic gestures.”
Sheila tried to smile. But that was the unkindest cut of all.
In the guest-room there were only Professor Korytowski and Stevens. Olszak had gone, and Sheila felt cheated of a last court of appeal. And yet, on second thoughts, perhaps it was just as well that she had been cheated. Hofmeyer was her chief now, and there was nothing else to do but accept his plan of strict non-intervention and say nothing. Mr Hofmeyer was the serious professional, and he wasn’t going to trust any amateur performance. And that was that.
She sat on the bed. Korytowski sat on the hard, spindle-legged chair. Stevens paced the room. An hour ago she had sat here like this and watched the other two as they waited for Olszak. Then she had been confidently Sheila Matthews; now she was this strange Anna Braun, so strange and yet somehow so incredibly real. The blend of fact and fiction had been convincingly measured. Mr Hofmeyer had taken an actual couple, who had been childless. He had given them a daughter and reasons for her life with Miss Leigh. Miss Leigh had been an actual person, too, and she was a friend of Hofmeyer’s obviously willing to back the Anna Braun legend. Miss Leigh was probably in Mr Hofmeyer’s own line of ‘business.’ And all the rest had been invented, except, of course, the firm of Matheson, Walters, and Crieff. No doubt, by this time, Uncle Matthews had been informed of Anna Braun and had given instructions to his firm that any innocent questions from strangers about a Sheila Matthews, a foreign correspondent, would be satisfactorily answered. She smiled suddenly, partly in admiration of Mr Hofmeyer’s powers of invention, partly because she now felt confident. It was a pleasant feeling for a change.
“But what are you going to do?” Stevens was asking Korytowski.
“I’ll stay here. Why shouldn’t I? I have no fine paintings or objets d’art to attract German collectors. Even my books wouldn’t be of any value to their libraries, and they wouldn’t find my manuscript interesting. It is quite unpolitical. Besides, my students know they can find me here, and some of them may need my help. Those I know well I can direct to Jan Reska.”
“Reska? Here in Warsaw?” Sheila asked in surprise.
“In hospital. He escaped from the Russians and came back through the German lines to Warsaw. He is in charge of Department Number Thirty-two, by the way. I recommended him; I know his worth. He will be able to leave the hospital to-morrow.”
“I suppose he made his way back to Warsaw because he thought Barbara would be here,” Sheila said slowly. “Does he know? About Barbara?”
“Yes.”
“Does Madame Aleksander know?”
“Yes.”
There was silence. Stevens stopped his nervous pacing.
“How is she?” Sheila asked at last.
“She is still working at the hospital, but she will be leaving in a day or two. She’s — well, I think it would be a very good thing if Sheila would look after her for some time. She needs some one like you, Sheila; some one who is young enough to make Teresa think she is needed. She always gathers strength if she thinks some one needs her.” Korytowski smiled half sadly. “I offered her a room here, but as soon as she heard that you were living alone at Stevens’ flat with a pack of men she was horrified. She accepted Olszak’s idea that she should go there, as soon as she heard that.”
“I was very thankful to be allowed to stay there,” Sheila said. “Steve and his friends took good care of me. Didn’t you tell Madame Aleksander that?”
“I tried to,” Korytowski said, so ruefully that both Sheila and Stevens wanted to smile.
“It is so like her ” Sheila said, “to have time to worry about me, when she herself has suffered so many blows.”
“And they are heavier than we thought,” said Korytowski with deceptive quietness. Suddenly his hand went over the scar on his brow and tightened on it as if the agony of his soul required his body to suffer, too. “Korytów was in German hands when Wisniewski and his men passed near there in their effort to get to Warsaw. The house was standing. But a scout found that German officers were quartered there, that there had been some trouble in the village. We don’t know where Marta or the children are. Wisniewski’s own house had been burnt to the ground as well as the village houses. His father had defended the village together with the peasants. They were all executed as snipers. There was nothing left except some half-crazy women and children searching in the blackened ruins. And yesterday” — he paused, speaking with increasing difficulty — “yesterday we learned that Andrew is missing. One of the men in his battalion met Teresa in the hospital. He said that Andrew had fallen, wounded; he said that the German tanks had advanced over the wounded men lying before them, but that Andrew probably escaped death because he had rolled into a ditch. After that he didn’t see Andrew any more, but the Germans had captured that district, and those who were wounded and had escaped the tank treads must be prisoners.”
“Andrew!” Sheila said “Andrew too.”
Stevens smashed his fist at a piece of bulging plaster on the wall. His face was rigid.
Sheila rose and went over to Professor Korytowski. “I’ll look after Madame Aleksander,” she said with difficulty, and gave him her hand. His blue eyes looked up at her with real affection. She turned away swiftly and hurried out of the room. She heard Stevens’ feet running to catch up with her.
They joined the city’s silence, and made the slow, heartbreaking journey back to Frascati Gardens.
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”