Spring Will Be Ours (10 page)

Their cousin lived in a large block near Three Crosses Square, and not far from Central Park; from the sitting room window they could see the yellowing trees. At the back, the windows of the kitchen and bedroom overlooked the garden shared by the whole block, planted with shrubs and roses round a small lawn. There was no one out there, and the grass needed cutting. Many of the blinds were drawn: it felt suddenly very quiet, and strange, to be in an empty apartment belonging to people fled to another country. In the main bedroom, clothes spilled from the chest of drawers, and the wardrobe door swung open. There was no food in the kitchen except a bag of dried beans at the bottom of a cupboard. ‘Good,' said Teresa, her voice sounding very loud, ‘we'll have bean soup.' Jerzy pulled a face, and went back to the sitting room; they heard him switch on the wireless and went to listen. Mayor Starzyński was appealing for order in the city: he sounded calm and encouraging, as though no one had anything to fear, as long as they were sensible. Tonight, said the announcer who followed him, the Polish Ambassador in London would be making a broadcast to the whole nation, from the BBC.

Jerzy found a pack of cards in the sideboard, and they spent the rest of the morning playing rummy. Teresa baked potatoes for lunch; as they sat down to eat they heard the scream of low-flying planes and Jerzy rushed to the window.

‘Come away!' Teresa was on her feet.

‘It's all right.' He was craning his neck. ‘They're quite a long way off.'

They went to the window, saw two planes hover briefly like malignant birds and then a sudden fall of black rain and a dreadful roar as buildings beyond the park spewed flames and rooftops into the air.

‘It's like a film,' Jerzy said under his breath, and the planes flew steadily on.

That night they sat huddled round the wireless, listening to the gentle, cultured voice of Count Edward Raczński, speaking from London.

‘Attacked by the enemy,' he said, ‘Poland is heroically resisting the armies of the invader, evoking the admiration and the most profound feelings of sympathy of the whole world … Twenty-five years ago, when the first cadres of the Polish Army marched off into battle, so as to bear witness to the continued existence of the Polish nation amidst the conflagration of the world war, we were fighting for liberty and for our right to an independent existence. Today, each of us feels as strong in a conviction that in this hour of trial we must pass the test of history. The future of the Polish nation is at stake …'

Outside the curtained windows, somewhere in the city, came fierce bursts of anti-aircraft fire, and then an explosion, as another building fell. Anna gripped the arms of her chair. The voice of the Ambassador buzzed with static.

‘The Polish nation will pass this test, which will lead to victory. We have linked our destiny with the destinies of Great Britain and France, bound not only by written alliances and treaties, not only by fundamental interests of security and the defence of our state, but also by common ideals which Europe cannot allow to be trodden on … On land, on sea, and in the air, we march shoulder to shoulder today.'

‘But where
are
they?' said Jerzy impatiently. ‘Where's the RAF? Where are the French?'

‘Sssh!' Teresa was leaning forward, turning up the volume.

‘As the representative of the Polish Republic in London, I affirm that on the part of leading British statesmen I have found during this difficult period the most complete comprehension of Polish interests, and the unchangeable traditional fidelity to the given word … Into the scales of war, Great Britain has now cast all the forces of the empire. She is determined to fight on Poland's side until victory is achieved.'

‘I hope Tata is listening to this,' Anna said. ‘They'll have a wireless, won't they, in his barracks?'

‘I expect they've drafted him into the hospital in Brześć,' said Teresa. ‘He might not have time to listen.'

‘But it's a wonderful speech, isn't it?'

‘Shut up!' said Jerzy. ‘You've just missed something – he's reading a message from Chamberlain.'

‘We in Great Britain are watching with profound admiration the heroic struggle of the Polish forces against the enemy invading their land. Great Britain and France have entered the war with the determination to aid with all their power the resistance of Poland to aggression. They are strengthened by the knowledge that they are fighting for things that are greater than the interests of any one country – for honour, for justice, and for the freedom of the world. Those who have taken up arms in such a cause are assured, whatever sacrifices they may be called upon to make, of victory in the end.'

And then Count Raczyński was wishing them all goodnight, and through the buzzing wireless came the first few tender bars of Chopin's
Polonaise.
Outside the curtained windows, the bombs went on falling.

‘Today, Warsaw defending the honour of Poland has reached the climax of her greatness and glory.' That was Starzyński's last, hoarse wireless message to the city. Warsaw, almost the last place in Poland to surrender, finally did so on the 28 September. They heard it on the wireless, but they did not need to hear. By then, whole streets of the city were ablaze or in ruins. Nowy Świat, one of the most important arteries, was destroyed; every hospital had been bombed; epidemics were raging. There was no gas, no electricity, no mains water for drinking or fire fighting, almost no food. Not a single British plane, nor any kind of military assistance, had been sent; two hundred thousand had died. The government had fled across the Carpathian Mountains in the south-east to Romania. And on the 17th, Russia
^·
had invaded eastern Poland. Holed up in their apartment on Z órawia Street, Teresa and the children heard this on the wireless some days later and were stunned. When the news of the surrender came, and they made their way, famished and apprehensive, to Wiktoria's apartment, she met them in tears.

‘I can't believe it, I can't believe it …' She sat trembling on the edge of a chair in the sitting room, hungry and debilitated, all her assurance gone. ‘To think it is only twenty years since the last war, the last occupation. Twenty years of independence – and now it's all gone again. What will they do to us now, I wonder?'

‘What do you think will happen to Tata?' Anna asked, because she couldn't bear not to.

Wiktoria bit her lip and shook her head, repeating everything like an old woman. ‘I don't know, I don't know. Some of them are coming back, I believe – the Russians can't take every man alive a prisoner, surely?' She blew her nose. ‘You must get back to Praga, all of you, and find out what's happened. If Tomasz does get home, and finds it empty …'

‘Is it true that Hitler's going to hold a victory parade?' Jerzy asked.

‘God knows …' She began to cry again.

Teresa stood up. ‘Well, we shall not be here to see it,' she said. ‘Do you want to come with us, Wiktoria?'

‘How can I?' She gestured weakly at the room. There were whole panes missing from the windows, a film of plaster dust over every piece of furniture. ‘I'm not leaving just so that the Germans can take over my home – anyway, my friends are still here. We'll – we'll manage, I suppose. Go on, go back quickly now.'

‘We'll keep in touch.'

Wiktoria nodded. ‘Yes. Yes. Keep in touch.'

They walked all the way back to Praga through a shell-shocked city, bodies sprawled on the pavements by great mounds of rubble, thousands of makeshift graves in the streets and squares. They passed a large
gimnazium
school where a cavalry unit had been stationed and saw dead horses in the playground, heads askew on glossy necks, tongues lolling, eyes rolled up in terror.

The Kierbedzia Bridge was still thronged with refugees. ‘Why do they keep coming?' Jerzy asked, panting.

‘Perhaps they don't know yet. Perhaps it's worse everywhere else.' Teresa's eyes were searching. ‘Do you think your father –?' Every now and then a knot of uniformed men, dirty and dishevelled, appeared in the crowd, returning home.

‘Do you think he's in Praga?' asked Anna. ‘Do you think he might be?'

‘I shouldn't really think so. Not yet.'

All the way back she thought: make him be there. Make him be there.

When they reached their street they saw that it was covered, like almost everywhere else, in broken glass and rubble. Their house and all those nearby were still standing, and largely untouched, but they looked dead, eyeless and abandoned in a pale afternoon sun.

They got inside, climbed the stairs, and Teresa turned the key of their own door: they stepped into a cold dark hall. ‘Tata?' Anna couldn't help it, even though she didn't really believe there'd be an answer. They walked down the corridor and shivered; the sitting room floor was covered in a silvery mass of splintered glass. In the bathroom, when Teresa turned on the taps, there was a deep shuddering cough in the pipes and a trickle of brown water leaked into the basin, then stopped.

Anna went into the surgery. Books were sprawled open on the floor; a drift of papers, covered in thick dust, spilt out from boxes. Panes here were mostly broken, too; so was the glass in the cabinet of instruments on the wall, and in the picture of Mama on the desk; a few dry leaves from the chestnut tree in the courtyard had blown through the holes in the window. She lifted the black telephone receiver, and heard nothing. So they couldn't even phone Wiktoria now, and Tata wouldn't be able to call them, either. On the blotting pad stood the black box camera they'd taken on holiday. She put down the receiver and picked up the camera, leaving a clean white square in the dust.

Months later, she took the film to a Polish photographer to be developed, and she and Jerzy sat in their father's empty surgery and stared at the prints. From under the silver birch trees he smiled at them in black and white. There were pictures of Anna and Jerzy in the boat, in swimsuits, laughing and fooling about in the water. It seemed to her then absurd that they could not have known – had she thought, once, that she was dreaming her own life? The whole of her past, of Tata's and Jerzy's past, looked now like a distant dream, as insubstantial as light and air, a family drifting downriver like Alice in Wonderland, innocent, uncaring; something that might or might not have happened a very long time ago, before the terror began, and everything changed for ever.

Inhabitants of the General Government!
Victorious German arms have, once and for all, put an end to the Polish State. Behind you lies an episode in history which you should forget forthwith; it belongs to the past and will never return.

Inhabitants of the General Government!

The Führer has decided to form a General Government as part of the territory of the Polish State, and to place me at its head. The General Government can become the refuge of the Polish people if they will submit loyally and completely to the orders of the German authorities and accomplish the task set them in the German war effort. Every attempt to oppose the New German order will be ruthlessly suppressed.

Hans Frank, Governor General
Kraków, 12 October 1939

Hans Frank was Hitler's lawyer. A large, fleshy man, in the years before 1939 he had visited Poland on a number of occasions, well dressed, smiling. Now, appointed by Hitler as Governor General, he was installed in Krakow, in Wawel Castle, ancient palace of Polish kings. The swastika fluttered above the city; from here, Frank ruled the ‘General Government', a large central and southern area of the country. On the west, it was bordered by Polish territory seized into the German Reich. On the east, along the river Bug, it was bordered by Polish territory seized by the Soviet Union. Under the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, secretly signed by Ribbentrop and Molotov in August, Poland was held in pincers.

Kraków, beautiful university city, was now the capital; Warsaw had been stripped of her historic, heroic role, and there, on 26 October, Dr Ludwig Fischer, lean and grey-haired, became District Governor.

Soon, the walls of the city were plastered with notices and proclamations, in German and Polish. When the decree announcing the ‘refuge'of the General Government went up, so did a poster showing a Polish soldier in rags, bent over a wounded comrade. His bloody fist was raised against a background of the ruins of Warsaw beneath a lurid sky. A picture of Neville Chamberlain hung there, and the caption read: ENGLAND, THIS IS YOUR WORK! Anna saw a copy of the poster, pasted up in the main shopping street in Praga, and felt sick. She thought of the sunny afternoon in Wiktoria's apartment, hiding in the bathroom and listening to the grown-ups talking about how if there was a war the British and French would come and save them. She remembered listening to the wireless with Jerzy and Teresa, to Count Raczyński reading the stirring message from Chamberlain, his assurances of victory. She didn't know what to think about the poster – she knew it was called propaganda, and that she should ignore it, but nonetheless it confused and frightened her.

In October, the first snow began to fall. A few days later, frost gripped the city, and the temperature plunged into an abyss of cold. Figures in black picked their way slowly through the streets, past snow-covered mounds of rubble from the siege. Peasants from beyond the suburbs drove through with their carts piled up and turned to stare at the German patrols on every street. Coal vanished, reappearing on the black market at terrifying prices. It was strictly forbidden to venture into the forests outside the city and forage for wood, but people went, or stayed in bed all day to keep warm, boarding up the holes in the windows with cardboard. The mains water was still cut off: almost all the pipes had been destroyed during the bombing, and long, shivering queues formed at the frozen pumps in streets and courtyards. Some electricity was restored, but there were frequent power cuts. On milder days, people walked to the farms beyond the suburbs – Teresa and the children went to the fields in Bródno – and searched the hard ground for potatoes, turnips and cabbages. Most of the farmhouses were empty, the farmers captured by the advancing German troops, their wives and children fled. Machinery stood unoiled and neglected, the animals had gone. There was little to be found in the way of food, but occasionally people stumbled on rusting guns and rifles, hastily buried by Polish Army units before they were taken prisoner. Even in Central Park, weapons had been buried. Few people dared to dig them up and take them home, but the places where they lay were carefully noted.