While Still We Live Read Free

steps, hot to the touch of her thin shoes, she was thinking how strange it was that one servant should be so arrogant with another. Madame Aleksander ruled the kitchen with a firm hand, but she never reduced Zofia to wailing. Maria could, and frequently did.
    Sheila hesitated on the sandy surface of the drive. Barbara had probably taken the short cut, past the small west wing of the house, past the stables and the duckpond. My friend Wandawas there, sitting under the shade of a willow that wept into the dark water. A yellow kerchief hid her tightly plaited hair, her bare legs were straight and wide apart before her, like a ballet girl on a Degas canvas. One of the geese hissed angrily at the running Sheila. “Boo to you,” she called in English over her shoulder. Wanda looked up from her knitting, and her face crinkled. She didn’t understand, but she laughed, anyway. Sheila gave the child a wave of her hand, as she passed through the line of linden trees and entered the path which edged Kawka’s long, narrow stretch of land. His was the first house in the straight row of rye-thatched cottages which formed the village of Korytów.
    She saw Kawka and his wife and his sister, working half-way up the field. And then, just as she was wondering if her hesitating attempts to speak Polish would be understood by them, or if they wouldn’t object to hearing some German instead, she saw Barbara. And with Barbara was the schoolmaster. They were standing under one of the broad linden trees. They waved, as if they had noticed her indecision. She went forward slowly, thankful that it had been she, and not Aunt Marta, who had found them standing hand-in-hand so openly. But as she saw the numbed, helpless look in their eyes, she knew that the time for discretion was past. Time was too short. They knew it.
    “Jan cannot come,” Barbara replied to Sheila’s message from Madame Aleksander. “He leaves within the hour. The call came this morning. Just a piece of paper handed silently into his house. That was all.”
    Sheila didn’t know what to say. Anything seemed trite. She looked at Reska. He had the strong body, the quiet, large-boned face of a countryman. The sweat still glistened on his throat.His hands and forearms were covered with harvest dust. He had been working with Kawka. He had chosen to help on that piece of land because it lay nearest to the manor house, and he had desperately hoped to see Barbara, or Sheila, or even Teresa, to give them the news of his going.
    His blue eyes were fixed on the horizon, as if he could see the German waves ready to roll over these plains. “I wonder just how many men they really have,” he said softly, almost to himself. “There’s been so much bluster and talk.” Then he smiled as if to cheer the anxious girls, and the hard line of his high cheekbones and strong chin softened.
    “If things were desperate, I’m sure the Polish armies would be fully mobilised and at the frontier now,” Sheila said hopefully.
    “It’s a long frontier.” Reska’s voice was not dejected, only philosophic. “And we have been mustering the troops slowly, almost secretly. We are far from being mobilised. The democracies have asked us to give the Germans no excuse for attack, so we leave ourselves vulnerable in trying to keep the peace. Personally, I think we would have been wiser to have mobilised weeks ago. If the Germans don’t find an excuse, they invent one.”
    Sheila suddenly felt she shouldn’t be here with them. Hurriedly she said, “I’ll go down to Kawka’s house. Father Mazur will understand me if I talk German, won’t he?”
    Barbara nodded.
    To Reska, Sheila spoke the Polish goodbye phrases, which she had been mastering in the last few days. He bowed with unexpected grace, and gave a neat reply which embraced Poland, her allies, his good wishes for her safe journey to London, his hope to see her again in Poland once victory waswon. He raised her hand, and kissed the cuff of her