The Portuguese Escape Read Online Free PDF Page B

therefore dignified. But thrown out into the world, which they had given up and forgotten, they felt utterly lost; and again they looked as they felt— lost, and very silly.’
    This time the young man did not laugh. Some strange ring, of a strangely objective compassion, in the young girl’s voice as she pronounced the last four words precluded laughter.
    â€˜Were they always silly? One hears nuns get so,’ he said.
    â€˜But not in the least! Living the life they had vowed themselves to, of prayer and works of charity—or of education, like my nuns—they are perfectly competent; noble, heroic even. But suddenly obliged to take jobs as servants, or as waitresses in factory canteens, which is what most of them did, can you wonder if they were at a loss, and seemed foolish?
Oldish
women, please reflect. No Mass to begin the day, and Holy Communion; no times of meditation before the Blessed Sacrament. Instead, hustle and bustle among pots and pans, or handing plates of food to youngCommunists! This they willingly did for the love of our Lord, who blessed even a cup of cold water given in His name; but how should they be good cooks, or quick waitresses? Of course they seemed silly.’
    As Hetta poured this out—‘She looks like a sybil’—the young man thought to himself. It was all surprisingly reasoned, too; she was no fool, if she did seem a bit ultra-religious.
    â€˜Yes, I get all that,’ he said. ‘Well, go on—where did you go when your convent broke up? You were—let’s see —fifteen then, I suppose?’
    â€˜Nearly sixteen. Mother Scholastica—she was one of the nuns, who taught us Latin—took me with her; she went first to the house of a friend in Pest, as a cook, and I helped her. To strangers we had to pretend that I was her daughter—
imagine
, for a nun!—but I was accustomed to calling her “Ma mère”, so it was not too difficult. Then after a time the deportations began, and the lady we were working for was threatened, so we had to leave.’
    â€˜What deportations? To Russia?’
    â€˜No no—from Pest to the country; the May deportations. All who were not “workers”, in industry or something the Communists thought useful, were sent away, to make room, so they said, for the workers; but really it was just’—she hesitated—‘animus. Should I say spite, or malice, perhaps?’
    â€˜Animus will do,’ Townsend, who had received a classical education, said, smiling a little. ‘Where did these deportees go, in the country?’
    â€˜To peasants’ houses—in a
good
room, if the peasants were friendly, as usually they were; but then often the village Commissars came, and said that they were “enemies of the people”, and must sleep in the barn, on straw. Oh, the wickedness and cruelty! Shall I tell you what I have seen with my own eyes?’
    â€˜Please do,’ Townsend said, unable to repress a secret wish that Perce’s press correspondents could hear what he was hearing.
    â€˜There was an old lady—over seventy—the widow of a former Prime Minister, the Countess X; this is a great name in Hungary, and he had done much for the people,and was beloved. She was sent to the same village where Mother Scholastica and I went, and naturally the peasants treated her like a queen, and gave her the best of whatever they had. But the Commissars came and said she must work for the nation, and since she was far too old to do any real work they took her out into the cornfields, and tied branches to her head and hands, and made her stand there in the burning sun, waving her hands to frighten the birds from the grain—she was to be a bird-scare.’
    â€˜Scare-crow,’ Townsend muttered automatically. ‘Good God! You
saw
that?’
    â€˜Certainly I did. As often as I could, when no one was about, I went and changed places with her, so