Nocturne Page 4

  Ignoring everything he’d been taught, he pushed the Potez beyond its limits, wheeled around and headed straight for the Messerschmitt. He smiled when he saw it plunging to the ground, trailing black smoke.

  But one week later it was all over. As he travelled towards Lublin with the remains of his squadron, Adam had a hollow feeling in his stomach and the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth. Watching the endless column of refugees who trudged along the road, he couldn’t stop thinking of the crushing defeat and had felt too depressed to make conversation with that chatterbox they’d picked up. He didn’t know what had prompted him to fling himself on top of her during the raid, and he didn’t want to be thanked. If only the Polish planes had matched the pilots. All those aerial combats, all those brave young airmen lost, all for nothing.

  He had told the guy driving the truck to Lublin that he didn’t believe their squadron would regroup there, and as it turned out, he’d been right. There didn’t seem to be anyone in charge, there weren’t any planes, and the lack of organisation maddened him. All around them, artillery battles were raging, bombs were dropping and the airmen had to hang around, waiting for someone to give an order or make a decision. This wasn’t war. This was chaos. So several days later when they got the order to cross the border to Romania and wait there for new fighter planes from Britain and France, his spirits lifted. The bombing raid on the road to Lublin, his rescue of the girl, and the disappointment of being unable to regroup all receded. Soon he’d be in the air again, fighting for Poland.

  But no sooner had his squadron crossed the border, expecting a friendly welcome, than armed guards appeared, grabbed hold of them and took them to filthy barracks inside a compound surrounded by barbed wire. Inside the hut, other Polish airmen were lounging on narrow bunks, smoking, playing cards or staring at the ceiling. Adam looked around, astonished to see colleagues from other Warsaw squadrons.

  ‘Welcome to Romania,’ one of them said. As he ran his hand through his thick hair, he reminded Adam of a Hollywood movie star whose name he couldn’t recall. He tamped out his cigarette on the floor and stretched out his hand. ‘I’m Romek.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Adam asked. ‘Are we supposed to wait in this dump until the planes arrive?’

  Romek laughed mirthlessly and the other occupants of the hut joined in. ‘There aren’t any bloody planes and there won’t be any, either,’ he said. ‘And, in case you’re wondering, this isn’t a holiday camp for displaced Polish airmen. It’s an internment camp.’

  ‘There must be some mistake,’ Adam said. ‘Romania promised to help us; that’s why we’re here …’

  ‘Our Romanian friends have changed their fucking minds. They’ve suddenly realised that alienating the Germans might be risky, so they’ve become neutral. Oh, and they won’t be taking delivery of any Allied planes, either. Instead, they’re going to keep us here to make sure we can’t fight again.’

  Adam sat heavily on the hard bunk, his head in his hands. It couldn’t end like this. A rat scuttled across skeins of dust on the floor and ran under his bunk. He leapt off. ‘Bloody hell!’ he shouted. ‘This place is a stinking cesspit. Are we just going to vegetate here?’

  Romek lit another cigarette and walked over to him, a cautionary finger across his lips. ‘Calm down, pal. Things aren’t as bad as they look,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve been waiting for instructions and we got them today, together with false papers they’ve smuggled in for us. They want us to escape as soon as possible and make our way to Bucharest. From there, our people will get us to France so we can fly again.’

  So there was a plan, after all. They sat up planning their escape in hushed voices long past midnight. According to Romek, who seemed to know everything, the guards at the internment camp were lazy and their surveillance was sloppy. It wouldn’t be difficult to distract or bribe them, cut through the wire and get away.

  When Adam finally fell asleep, he tossed from side to side on his narrow bunk. He dreamed he was crawling under barbed wire, running across fields, and being pursued by French border guards. But when he woke, his head was clear. He wasn’t going to join the others in France. He’d had enough of schemes that came to nothing and he refused to hang around in another foreign country in the hope of being given a plane. He would return to Poland and find some way of fighting the enemy on his home ground.

  Weary and dejected after weeks of wandering from place to place and sleeping in barns and stables along the way, to avoid being captured by the Germans, Adam got back to Warsaw. But the city he knew had been buried beneath a pile of rubble. It now belonged to helmeted soldiers in grey-green uniforms, and officers with death’s-head insignia on their peaked caps who strolled around the streets with the self-satisfied expressions of those who dispense death with impunity. As the tram swung across what remained of the city, he noticed that on some walls residents had scrawled ‘Poland lives on!’ but, from what he could see, the graffiti said more about the defiance of the writer than about reality.

  On the corner of Marszalkowska Street and Aleje Jerozolimskie, a group of people had gathered around a pile of flowers heaped on the pavement. Some held lighted candles while others knelt in silent prayer.

  ‘We keep vigil here every day from dawn till curfew,’ the elderly woman beside him murmured as she wiped her eyes. ‘They shot thirty people on this spot last week. Someone in that restaurant over there fired at a German soldier, so they rounded up everyone inside, stood them against that building and shot them. You can still see their blood on the wall.’

  As the tram rattled towards the Old Town, he stared at the burnt-out ruins and piles of broken masonry. To think it had only taken three weeks for so much of the capital to be demolished. When he saw what was left of the old market square, he tightened his grip on the back of the seat until his hands cramped up. Those ancient buildings whose baroque façades had depicted scenes of eighteenth-century life had become tragic heaps of rubble.

  Gone were the lively pavement cafés, the artists with their easels, and the horse-drawn doroszki that used to clatter over the cobblestones of the alleyways beneath the city’s medieval walls.

  Gone was the Royal Castle with the gilded apartments that had left him awestruck as a boy. Gone was the ornate opera house where Milicja Korjus’s thrilling voice had made him forget to breathe. Gone, too, were his favourite haunts, like the Hungarian nightclub where he’d invited Elena that disastrous night at the Europejski Hotel, and the Polonia Restaurant whose dim lights and romantic music had always put his girlfriends in the mood for making love. He had left a city that bustled with life and returned to find a violated corpse. He slumped in his seat, feeling helpless and ashamed because he’d failed to defend his city.

  The people in the streets moved with an air of wary alertness, as though ready to flatten themselves against a doorway or to dart into an alleyway at a moment’s notice. Food queues stretched for blocks and exhausted people shifted from foot to foot, terrified that by the time their turn came the bread would have sold out. A crowd had gathered around a kiosk where Germans were dispensing soup to demonstrate their beneficence. Adam bristled. How could people accept soup from their oppressors? It was a wonder it didn’t choke them.

  His fellow passengers spoke in hushed tones, looking around from time to time, as if to check that no one was listening, even though the Germans rode in compartments designated exclusively for them. As the tram squealed to a halt, he heard a shout from across the road. Two SS men had grabbed hold of an old man with a white beard, struck him across the face so hard that he staggered backwards, and proceeded to kick him with boots buffed to a high polish. One of them took his pistol from his holster and a shot rang out in the golden light of that autumn afternoon.

  Adam felt the blood drain from his face. All conversation on the tram ceased. After a pause, his neighbour commented, ‘At least they’ll get rid of the Jews for us.’

  ‘And then they’ll get rid of us,’ Adam retorted.

  ‘I nev
er believed we’d have to capitulate,’ a man across the aisle was saying to his neighbour. ‘I don’t know what happened to our army. And, as for our air force …’

  Adam clenched his fists. Didn’t these people understand anything? He thought of his colleagues and all the sorties they’d flown back to back while they were reeling with exhaustion after not having slept for thirty-six hours. He wanted to tell his fellow passenger about all the Messerschmitts and Junkers they’d knocked out of the sky so that they couldn’t drop their obscene bombs on people like him who didn’t care about the pilots’ lives that had been lost and the sacrifices that had been made.

  He could feel the heat coming out of his eyes and longed to grab this ignoramus by the scruff of his neck and not let go until he’d told him what had happened and why it had happened, but he was too angry and too confused, and knew he wouldn’t make any sense. The whole thing didn’t make sense, anyway.

  As he got off the tram and walked towards his parents’ house, he braced himself against his father’s derision of the air force. He couldn’t blame his father for gloating: the cavalry he’d maligned had put up a valiant fight against the deadliest tanks and artillery the world had ever seen.

  He pressed the bell, and waited for an effusive welcome from his mother. But, when she opened the door, there was something remote, almost frozen, in her expression. She led him into the lounge room without a word and twisted a handkerchief around her fingers before bursting into loud sobs. ‘Thank God you’re all right!’ Her trembling fingers stroked his hand. ‘The Blessed Virgin has answered my prayers. Every day I prayed that you’d come back safe.’ Tears splashed down her thin cheeks and the corner of her mouth twitched.

  He held her away from him and looked into her face. Her cheeks were furrowed and her lips, which had been pressed together after a lifetime of keeping her feelings inside, had become a thin line.

  He looked around. Everything in the apartment was as he remembered. The heavy Gdansk sideboard, the crocheted doilies on the table, the Persian rugs on the polished floor, and his father’s large armchair by the window.

  ‘Where is Father?’ he asked

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  ‘Is he ill?’

  She pulled at the cross around her neck, and fiddled with the handkerchief again.

  ‘What happened?’

  She swallowed and wiped her eyes. ‘He joined the army.’

  He stared at her. ‘At his age? But that’s insane.’

  Her answer came in gulps. ‘He said he wasn’t going to wait around until the Gestapo came for him. Poland needs me and, as long as I have a drop of blood left in my body, I’ll defend my country. That’s what he said. You know your father. You can’t argue with him.’ She blinked to push back the tears. ‘I know he was sent east, but I haven’t heard a word from him, and, now that the Russians have occupied Poland east of the Bug River, it’s impossible to find out what’s going on.’

  ‘What company was he with? Where were they fighting?’

  She wrung her hands. ‘I can’t find out anything. I’ve heard rumours that the Russians took our soldiers prisoner but everyone says something different. I just don’t know what to do.’

  She placed the kettle on the tiled stove and brought two glasses in silver holders to the table. ‘There’s no sugar in the shops but I’ve still got a bit of that raspberry jam you like.’

  Adam waved the jam away. ‘There must be some way of finding out where he is.’

  Her hands shook as she poured black tea into the glasses. ‘You say that because you don’t know them. My neighbour has a cousin in Lwów and she says the Bolsheviks arrest people and send them to Siberia for the slightest thing. They don’t answer to anyone.’ She looked at him anxiously. ‘Anyway, what are you going to do now?’

  Adam shrugged. He was too depressed to gather his thoughts.

  That night, in his old room, he paced up and down. He’d been consumed by the prospect of coming back to Poland but, now that he was here, he felt like an insect that had flown into the web of a waiting spider.

  Five

  Many of the city’s parks had become graveyards, but roses as vivid as tropical sunsets still bloomed in one secluded corner of the Saski Gardens, and pale green buds were appearing on the chestnut trees. Sitting on his usual bench in the park, Adam shivered. April had brought the usual sudden downpours but none of the warmth that should herald the beginning of spring. He took out his packet of Klubs and, as he lit up, he wondered idly whether the blood of those buried in the park had nourished these rose bushes.

  Apart from a harassed young mother wheeling a baby carriage, and a stooped old woman with a string bag, the park was empty. You didn’t venture outside these days unless it was necessary, but it was four months since he had returned to Warsaw and he needed to get away from his mother’s misery.

  As he did each day, he unrolled the Nowy Kurier Warszawski and skimmed its contents. Ever since the Nazis had banned Polish newspapers and arrested their publishers and editors, the only paper sold openly was this German-sponsored rag, which spread rumours, lies and misinformation. Today’s issue, marked April 1940, announced that publishing and selling the work of Polish authors and playing the music of Chopin were all strictly forbidden. Adam gave a sardonic laugh under his breath. So novels and nocturnes were now considered subversive. The paper also reported Hitler’s threat that his next conquest would be Britain. From what Adam remembered of the English from his postgraduate student days, he knew that the more they were pushed, the more they’d dig their heels in, but anything was possible in a world where Poland had been carved up between Germany and the Soviet Union like a Christmas goose and had virtually ceased to exist, and where German boots were stomping across Europe.

  Adam didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there brooding when an elderly man, with a little hunting hat perched at an angle on his unruly white hair, came hobbling along the path, muttering to himself like an absent-minded professor. There was something familiar about the man but Adam couldn’t place him. For the briefest moment, as he walked past, the man gave him a sideways glance. It could have been significant or totally meaningless; you couldn’t trust anyone these days. Every day people were dragged to Szuch Avenue, and, after the Gestapo had finished its interrogation, not even their mothers could recognise them.

  That night, as usual, Adam couldn’t sleep. The floorboards in the adjoining room creaked and he heard the clicking of rosary beads and his mother’s low murmuring voice. He marvelled that she didn’t run out of prayers for divine intervention. Suddenly he sat up. Of course! The old man in the park was Pawel’s father, Dr Wieniawski. He and Pawel had been sparring partners at the university fencing club and he had stayed at their place in Zoliborz. Over coffee and the delicious cheesecakes and walnut tortes that Pawel’s mother baked for them, they’d spent hours discussing philosophy and politics. How extraordinary that he hadn’t recognised him straightaway. The turmoil of the past few months had affected him so profoundly that events before the war seemed to have taken place in another lifetime.

  Puffing thoughtfully on his pipe, Dr Wieniawski had always listened to his ideas and hadn’t made him feel stupid, as his own father did. After all these years, he could still hear the quietly authoritative voice saying, ‘We must go on believing that everything is possible,’ whenever Adam argued that Poland’s conservative ruling class would never surrender its power to make the government more democratic. Strange how some phrases stuck in your mind.

  Next morning, Adam hurried to the same spot in the Saski Gardens but Dr Wieniawski didn’t appear. When he called the Zoliborz number listed in the telephone directory, there was no response. A few days later, when he’d almost given up hope, the white-haired doctor came hobbling along the path, a briefcase under his arm and his hat askew, as though he’d rammed it on his head while running for the bus.

  ‘Dr Wieniawski, I’m so glad to see you,’ Adam began. ‘Ever since I returned to W
arsaw —’

  Ignoring his greeting, the old doctor tapped the ground with his cane, drawing Adam’s attention to a half-smoked cigarette in front of his right foot. ‘All you young people are the same; you think that just because there’s a war on you can make a mess everywhere.’ He poked Adam’s arm with the walking stick. ‘Pick that up, young man, and don’t litter the park in future!’

  Startled, Adam bent down to pick up the cigarette and Dr Wieniawski whispered, ‘Come at four,’ and hobbled away. The cigarette butt on the ground was a clumsily hand-rolled brand made with cheap tobacco and there was some writing on the tissue paper. It was an address. Dr Wieniawski no longer lived in a mansion but in a damaged apartment block in the riverside suburb of Powisle where every morning the mist rose from the river and swathed the damaged buildings of the surrounding streets. The façade was crumbling and pocked with bullet holes and the bell swung from the end of a rickety doorpost.

  Inside the small room on the fourth floor, a pink geranium wilted in a little pot on the window sill. In this part of town, the Vistula flowed sluggishly, and in the intense light of the late-afternoon sun it glinted like a wide band of steel.

  ‘As you can see, I’m living like a bachelor here,’ Dr Wieniawski said. ‘My dear wife passed away before the war and Pawel …’ His voice faltered and he bowed his head. When he looked up again, his eyes were blazing. ‘The bastards shot him three months ago. So now I have nothing to lose.’

  Adam was shocked and started to offer his condolences but Dr Wieniawski rose and left the table so hurriedly that his chair scraped the floor. While he bustled about making tea, Adam sensed that something was being left unsaid but stifled his curiosity, not wanting to appear insensitive. As he looked around at the chipped tiled stove, rough pine table and the sofa against the wall, which probably opened up into a bed, a hundred questions crowded into his head.