While Still We Live Read Online Free PDF Page A

were gathered there too now.
    Madame Aleksander quickly dried her tears, and blew her nose. She went forward to Andrew.
    Sheila, still holding the plane tickets in her hand, took the hat and gloves and coat and handbag and diary which Maria had brought downstairs.
    “Everything else is in the car,” Aunt Marta was saying.
    Stefan said eagerly, “You will send me those airplane magazines you promised?” Sheila gave him a bear’s hug and a nod. So many outstretched hands to take and hold for a brief moment, so many voices, kind, affectionate, well-wishing. Teresa’s small, thin fingers wouldn’t let go.
    Barbara was saying, “Write me at Uncle Edward’s flat. I’ll be in Warsaw, if war comes.”
    Adam Wisniewski stood slightly apart, watching the group round Sheila and Andrew almost grimly. Sheila’s eyes met his. She had a feeling he was going to speak. But Russell Stevens had taken her coat and her hat and her arm, and was leading her determinedly towards the car. “We’ll be late,” he was saying anxiously.
    Sheila settled herself obediently in the car, but she wondered at her sudden annoyance with anyone so helpful as Mr.Stevens. It was all because of this parting, she decided. Partings were unsettling: you lost something, and you were never sure of being able to possess it again. That was it, she told herself firmly. Partings were disturbing.
    She heard Adam Wisniewski’s voice saying, “See you in Berlin, Andrew,” and saw his arm round Andrew’s shoulders. Then there were other voices—Stefan’s, Teresa’s. And Aunt Marta calling practical advice.
    Andrew left his family.
    It was over. At last. They were driving through the gate of poplars. The lighted windows, the moving heads of people crowding around the house, the four white pillars sheltering the group of upraised hands, the children’s shouts, were gone. Above them was a dark sky, and the sudden coolness of a night breeze.

3
    WARSAW
    The journey to Warsaw was spasmodic. Every now and again, the car pulled to the side of the wide, flat road, to let the columns of soldiers, with their rifles and blankets slung across their shoulders, go marching past. Long, boat-shaped carts, piled with supplies and equipment, lumbered along on their creaking wheels. The horses didn’t like the noise of the car, and the men walking at their head helped the drivers control them. Twice a detachment of cavalry trotted past. The tilt of the men’s caps reminded Sheila of Adam Wisniewski There were army cars, too, forcing their way westwards past the moving men and rearing horses. Twenty feet away from the main road was a smaller, rougher track. Along this, groups of silent men were walking with the long easy stride of the peasant. They were going east to report for duty. Soon they, too, would be marching westwards like the soldiers they now met. Everywhere was the taste of dust, the smell of gasoline,the whinnying of horses, the jingling of harness, the roar of engines, the grinding of sudden brakes, commands, shouts, oaths, and the steady ominous rhythm of marching boots. How often Sheila had read “Mobilisation is being completed. Troops are moving to the frontiers.” But never had she imagined this labour and sweat, the exhaustion of tempers and bodies, the ear-rending confusion of sounds intensified by the darkness.
    Once she said softly to the American, “Why don’t they use the trains?”
    “They are using the trains,” he replied.
    And once she said to Andrew, “Surely mobilisation is almost complete now.” It was an effort to cheer him up as much as an expression of her amazement at the numbers of men and the quantities of material which she was now seeing.
    Andrew shook his head sadly. “Not yet,” he answered. And Sheila, who had never pretended to know much about war, but had often agreed with loud demands for action against Nazi Germany, fell miserably silent. There was so much more to war than indignation meetings ever imagined.
    After the