Читать книгу The Dangerous Places - Louis Golding - Страница 6

Table of Contents

The two young men entered the Post, Feivel holding the girl in his arms, Shmul supporting the woman, her head on his shoulder, his arm round her waist. There were still a couple of oil-lamps in the middle of the cellar, and there were a few candles burning in bottles. Shmul found room for the woman on the edge of a blood-soaked mattress. Feivel walked away a foot or two to find a more salubrious place for the girl.

“Where are you taking her?” cried Elsie. “Leave her!”

“All right, all right!” said Feivel. He put her down beside Elsie. He knew what a state of nerves the wretched woman must be in. Another woman turned sharply round from an arm she was dealing with.

“What’s the matter?” she cried. She was tall, sallow, forbidding.

“Good God!” muttered Shmul. “Frau Cohen-Berger! They’ve brought her over here!” It was clear that he did not like Frau Cohen-Berger. He was gone, suddenly. He was good at that, coming and going suddenly, a talent quite a few Germans had had occasion to deplore.

Frau Cohen-Berger turned to her case again. She got busy fixing up a sling for the arm. Then she moved on to another case which looked like being a long job. Feivel strode up to Frau Cohen-Berger.

“You’re in charge here now?” he asked.

“I am. Who are you? What do you want?” She had no time for civilities.

“I’ve a flask of brandy here, the real stuff.” He uncorked it. She sniffed.

“You’ve no iodine? Well, thank you. It’ll help.”

“I could get some iodine too. Can you do with some German field-dressings?”

She took them from him reverently, as she might once have taken a rare manuscript, or an ivory.

“You’re a good man. We’re out of everything. It’s like baling a sinking ship with a thimble.” She turned round to get on with her work.

“Listen, doctor,” he said. “I want you to help me.”

She turned. Her face was hard and distrustful again.

“Yes?”

“My wife and child ... they’re suffering badly from shock. A bomb buried them. Can you do something for them?” He felt terribly ashamed. He did not like bargaining at a time like this, and he did not like lying at any price.

“I see,” she replied. She had never felt herself Jewish. She did not like Jewish ways. She was German, from one of the good Frankfort families. It was just like an Ostjude, an Eastern Jew, to haggle and barter, as if life and death were a saddle or a roll of cloth. Nothing for nothing. “I’ll do my best,” she said bleakly. “But you realize, of course, we’re all trapped. It’ll be over soon.”

His ears burned. “Thank you,” he said humbly. “You’re a lamed-voonik, a holy one.” The doctor turned from him impatiently, and he came back to Elsie.

“How are you feeling now?” asked Feivel.

Elsie smiled wanly, and looked down at the girl, who was supported against the wall now, with her head on her shoulder. Mila’s eyes were still closed.

“I’ve been trying to get up,” Elsie said. “My legs won’t carry me. I’d like to wash her a little.”

“Mishkosheh,” he said, gesturing with his flat, outspread hands. “Don’t worry, please. The doctor’s coming. I’ll see what I can find.”

There was half a bucket of fairly clean water in the Post for the use of the doctor and her helpers, but it would be wise to fight shy of that. He found a few inches in a battered petrol tin in the passage outside.

“Come,” he said. “I’ve got a cloth too.”

She smiled at him.

“You’ve got other jobs to do. No, I’ll manage.” She took the cloth from him, soaked it in the water, and brought it close to the girl’s face.

“Mila,” she murmured. “Are you awake?” The girl nodded. “Could you open your eyes?” The girl opened her eyes. “I want you to see the face of the man who saved us.”

There was a shadow of a smile on Mila’s lips.

“Thank you, chaver,” her lips went. Then she waited, as if to gather more strength before she spoke again.

“Leshonoh habo beyerushalayim! Next year in Jerusalem!”

“What’s that? What’s that?” asked Elsie. She stared from Mila’s eyes to Feivel’s and back again. It was not German, not Yiddish. It was Hebrew, wasn’t it? She had heard Hebrew prayers down in the cellars. Often she had heard the younger folk converse in Hebrew. But the sound, the tune, perhaps the actual words, went back many years before that... to her girlhood in her father’s kitchen in Doomington, in Oleander Street.

What was the matter with the man? His cheeks were burning. His eyes were all aglow. It seemed to Feivel that in those words, uttered by a girl half dead in a cellar of the Warsaw ghetto, there was something as astonishing as a rose growing out of a dry bone. There was miracle in it, like the burning of the Bush that was not consumed. For the first time he knew with holy certainty that the fighting against stupendous odds, the wounds, and the dying had not been in vain, not even if precisely not one single soul emerged from this gehenna.

“What did she say, man?” insisted Elsie, for the girl’s eyes were closed again.

“Next year in Jerusalem!” breathed Feivel.

“Oh, I see,” Elsie muttered. She said nothing for some moments. Then, a little querulously: “What did I say?” she asked, as if she and Feivel had been arguing and Feivel had insisted that they would stay here in Warsaw, all of them, and all would die here. Jerusalem? The word shook fitfully across the lens of her mind, like the image of a swaying bough beyond a window. Jerusalem? It was a long way off.

“Please,” said Feivel. “Let me wipe her face with the cloth, then I’ll go.”

“Certainly,” said Elsie. She could afford to be generous. There would be a lot more than that to do for Mila. The young man got to it, and swabbed the girl’s face, delicately, carefully, as if it were something that had become inexpressibly precious.

“What’s your name?” asked Elsie. “We’d like to remember it.” He would be dead soon, very likely, but she and Mila would be getting away somewhere, somehow, if they only got some strength into their limbs.

He flashed a smile of extraordinary tenderness at her.

“Feivel Tumin,” he said. He was quite young. The mouth was working, as if he would break into tears any moment. Mila opened her eyes, as if she, too, were anxious to imprint his image on her mind.

“Thank you, comrade,” she said. “It feels better now.”

Feivel rose from his knees and handed the rag over to Elsie. He did not look back.

“Shalom!” he called out to them. “Peace!”

“Shalom!” they said as he disappeared into the passage beyond the cellar.

A moment or two later the doctor was beside them. A bargain was a bargain. She had traded some of the time she could ill afford from the desperate demands of the seriously wounded for a flask of brandy and a handful of field-dressings.

“Your husband’s gone?” she asked.

“He had to go,” replied Elsie. “He’s on patrol.”

A cursory examination indicated that the woman was suffering mainly from shock, hunger, and weakness, like almost everyone else. She turned her attention to the girl, an odd, peaky-faced little creature she seemed, her face old for her body.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Fifteen.”

('Oh, she’s fifteen,’ Elsie thought. ‘She’s quite a girl. I thought she wasn’t more than eleven or twelve. Not a mere child. Quite a pal.’)

There was a superficial wound on the flesh of the abdomen, and some abrasions above the ribs. She, too, was weak with shock and privation. She needed stimulants, hot-water bottles, blankets, good food. As well ask for the moon. Anyhow, she could spare them both a little of the brandy. There would be a bowl of watery soup in a minute, and a grey potato each. She went on poking away with her hard fingertips. A thin leather belt fastened round the girl’s waist had some string suspended from it. She pulled on the string and drew up a small wash-leather bag which had been hanging between the thighs. Yes, of course. It was not the first time she had come across a bag like that.

“Precious stones?” she asked Elsie.

Elsie nodded. What else could it be?

“Very well.” She replaced them, and shrugged her shoulders. Doubtless the mother had her load of jewels too. A fat lot of use they’d be to them, if they were as many and as large as the Shah of Persia’s. “We’ll do what we can for you,” the doctor said, “and it’s not much. Anyhow, you can have some clothes. There’s no shortage of those.”

“Thank you,” muttered Elsie. Even the clothes of dead women would be preferable to garments that felt more like gravel than cloth.

Five hours, ten hours passed, and Mila did not awaken. There were moments when a sudden wild fear took possession of the older woman: the girl had stopped breathing, she was dead. But no. The breath still hovered above the lips like the odour above fruit. A trace of colour was coming back into the cheeks.

She herself was sleepy too. She needed desperately the refreshment of an hour or two’s sleep. But she fought hard against it. Anything might happen to Mila while her vigilance was relaxed. She might die, or someone might spirit her away.

But fatigue claimed her. She slept. Then she awoke. She looked round and saw that Mila was still sleeping.

“I must get her out somehow. To-morrow, if possible,” Elsie muttered. “She’s not very strong yet, but time’s getting short. They’re blasting the place to powder. I must get her out.” She looked round as if she expected to see a cavernous opening appear in the sweating walls.

“What did you say?” asked the woman by her side. The doctor had put Elsie with her earlier on, washing and sterilizing bandages, then rolling them ready for use again. The woman had come from Galicia with her husband and two children, in a draft of Jews who had been told, like some millions of others by the time the tally was complete, that they were to go to a labour camp in the East. But something had happened on the way, and she had been separated from the draft. Elsie had heard the story a dozen times, her companion’s mind was like a nipped gramophone record perpetually stuttering over its fracture.

“Did you say something?” the woman asked again, turning her head lethargically. Without waiting for a reply, she returned mechanically to her work. “It was terrible in that truck,” she went on. “We were packed so close, no one could move a finger. Avrom was carrying the baby. In the middle of the night the train stopped and the S.S. came with whips to drive us out.” She looked round as if she expected the S.S. might come into the cellar any moment with their whips. “It was so dark, and people were crying, and over the noise of the soldiers I heard Avrom. ‘Rochel!’ he was calling. ‘Rochel!’ ...”

Elsie no longer listened. The woman’s voice was a thread in a tapestry of noises, the moan of the wounded, the sleepy buzz of conversation which sometimes sharpened into petulance, the clink of utensils, the voices of children crying with pain or hunger.

It was the third day in the cellar, but that was an arbitrary measurement of time. Every hour, every minute, every second was weighted with lethargy, so that while the battle, of which reports came through spasmodically, transpired in time, the atmosphere within thickened from layer to layer in a sort of cotton-wool eternity. Above was a city grown fabulous and remote, with a sky and stars for its roof and a wayward and unpredictable weather of disaster for its climate. In contrast, the cellar had the reassurance of a fixed cosmogony. It was larger and more rambling than the cellar which had housed Post Sixteen. One bay was screened off with hessian and served as an operating theatre, another, containing a large rusted boiler, was occupied by serious casualties, one or two lucky ones on camp-beds, but most lying on palliasses or the flagstones. The walls dripped, the air was fetid, reeking of sweat, dirty dressings, and urine. It was like a railway waiting-room crammed with travellers for whom there were no trains and no destination. They would move no further than they were, some having arrived at a stoical resignation which was the nadir of despair, some bitter or querulous, some filled with the hallucination of glory, their eyes shining with feverish happiness. There were also others who crawled out again to continue the fight with one arm or one leg—in any event, to die fighting. Elsie Silver did not see herself as a Boadicea brandishing a spear. But she felt that even she, the least combatant of females, might well have gone up to the fighting in some sudden fit of wild boredom, hurling a stone, perhaps, as it was not likely any more lethal weapon would be assigned to her.

But she was not alone now. The time had gone when the order of the universe was shaped by the appetite or whim of Elsie Silver. There was Mila to think of. She thought of nothing else from moment to moment under the sweating roof. It was ridiculous to love this small girl so. Why? What claim on her love had she? The questions were as ridiculous as any possible answer. It was all making her head ache. Her eyes were heavy with sleep. The bandages they had given her to unravel slipped from her fingers. She closed her eyes, and was soon sleeping again. Then once more she awoke. She turned at once to Mila. The girl had a bowl of soup beside her to which she was helping herself quite happily. Elsie smiled with pleasure. Mila smiled back. They brought a bowl of soup over to her too. She ate greedily.

“Good, yes?” she asked Mila. Mila nodded. She sighed, and lay back, half-dozing. Then, it may have been ten minutes later, or half an hour later, she felt the touch of a hand on her own. The touch was very light, so as not to awaken her if she slept. She opened her eyes. The girl’s eyes were not far from her own, staring into them curiously.

“Who are you, please?” the girl asked.

“My name is Channah. Are you feeling better now?”

“Channah? Yes, Channah, I am feeling better.”

“Where are you from, Mila?” The girl turned her head away. Elsie reached for her hand and stroked it gently. “Say nothing. Only when you wish to. Rest now, you are very tired.”

The girl turned her head again.

“We were from Ploçk,” she whispered. That was the last she said for half an hour or more. Then at last she spoke again. “She was very beautiful. You are not so beautiful, but you are kind.” She was obviously speaking of her mother, and her mother obviously was dead.

“I want to look after you, because she isn’t here,” breathed Elsie. “Is there—were you with anyone else?”

Mila’s voice in answer was almost inaudible.

“My father ... we heard that a friend from Ploçk was in the Post, a doctor. And we were finding our way. Then he cried out loudly. It was—it was his heart again.... He fell down....”

“Mila, Mila, you must not speak of it, only when you are strong again.”

“I will be strong soon. I am not strong now.”

“Quiet. You must rest. Put your head on my shoulder again. There, there.” She felt the girl’s fingers tighten round her own.

So Mila had been down here in the labyrinth with her father. And he had had an attack of angina, probably, which had finished him off.

Elsie waited a little time till she felt the grief in the girl’s heart was a little less turbulent. Then she spoke.

“If they were here, would they want you to stay here—for ever?” The girl opened her eyes wide. “Would they?” Elsie insisted gently.

“No, they would not want me to die here. He did not want to die here, nor my mother either. But we shall all die here, of course.”

“No,” said Elsie. Her voice was quite harsh. “I am going to try and get you out. You must help me, Mila. You must be good.”

The girl’s mind tried to get to grips with the thought. It was not necessary to die here. It had not been ordained by God for people to die here. It was being said that it might be possible for people to get out of here ... away from cellars, and people dying, and the smell of blood and bandages.

“I will be good, Channah,” murmured Mila. “I will try and help. How do we get out, Channah?”

How? That was only one question. Whither would they go? To do what? For the time being it was enough to answer the first question. How?

“I want to think now, Mila,” she said. “I want to think what can be done.” She took in hand the grubby bandages in her lap and started to straighten them out and roll them. The woman from Galicia was talking. She had been talking the whole time. It was like water dripping from a bad tap.

How to get out? She was no fool, and she knew that getting out was going to be inconceivably difficult, particularly now, when the ghetto was not merely sealed off but was being systematically pounded into rubble. Well, if they would be killed, they would be killed, but when you survive a direct hit, you feel from then on that bombs and shells may be for other people, but not for you.

She had got in, and somehow she would get out. She had been down here some two weeks, as far as she could make out. During that time she had been pretty prostrate, yet, despite herself, she had heard and seen things; she had learned a great deal. She knew, for instance, that quite a number of young men and women had been steadily coming in and going out for months and months. Some of them had taken children out and carried them off to safety somewhere. But for the most part they had been smuggling in arms and supplies and money, and had then gone out for more. The traffic had not wholly ceased even during these recent days of the culminating onslaught.

But these people were connected with some organization or other, the Jewish Youth Fighters, the Polish or Russian underground movements, and with these the widow of General von Brockenburg had less than no contact. Was there anyone at all to whom she could address herself? Post Sixteen had gone, and with it the few acquaintances she had made in the ghetto. Then an answer suggested itself simply and at once. The answer was her one-time lover, Oskar von Straupitz-Kalmin, whom she had loved to distraction years ago in Berlin, and had chanced to meet again in Warsaw when she had come here to be with her husband during his last hours. It was he who, through the agency of a certain Wolff, a master-baker, had arranged for her disappearance underground in the ghetto. That was to be for a few days only, until the hounds of Himmler had stopped baying for her blood. But the Battle had broken out, and she had stayed down in the labyrinths for longer than that; she had hoped she would die down here.

It was Oskar von Straupitz-Kalmin who had got her down here. It was he who must get her out again, and with her the girl she had rescued under the pulverized pavements. But she realized at once that the job of contacting Oskar, if he still survived, was, in fact, exactly the job of getting out. If he survived, always assuming he still survived, he was beyond the circle of roaring fire that hemmed in the ghetto. He might as well be a thousand miles away as one mile.

Then the secondary figure of the agent, Wolff, superimposed itself upon that of Oskar, Wolff in his ubiquitous bowler hat and greeny-grey suit dusted with flour. Oskar had delegated her to Wolff; Wolff had provided false papers for her; it was to his own house in the ghetto Wolff had brought her, and from that house she had fled raving into the cellars. She had seen Wolff only once again, some five days later. He had called her aside and offered to take her out of the ghetto by a secret route. He thought it only fair he should try to restore to Oskar the woman friend he had confided to his charge. But Elsie had said she did not want to go; she saw no reason why she should not stay on and die there, in the ghetto cellars.

But, anyhow, where was Wolff now? He had seemed a curious sort of fellow, occupied with other more secret jobs than baking bread. He might be dead. He might have left the place by his own secret route. But the chances were that, sooner or later, if he survived, he would find his way to this intact cellar. Then it occurred to her that there was one person, down there, in Post Four, who might conceivably help her, and that was Frau Cohen-Berger, the doctor-in-charge, who (she was certain) played a part in the Battle quite apart from her medical duties. Out of the corner of her eye Elsie noticed the curtains that screened the operating bay drawn apart. The doctor came out kneading her tired hands, and walked towards the far end of the cellar where the cook kept a cauldron of thin soup on the boil. Elsie got up from the heap of thread-bare bandages which she was rolling with the help of the woman from Galicia. The woman was telling her tale again. She went on telling her tale without realizing that Elsie was not beside her.

“Excuse me, doctor,” Elsie started, pulling at her sleeve.

“Yes,” said the doctor abruptly. Her eyes were grey and uncompromising. You might as well appeal to a lump of granite, they seemed to say. Things have gone too far for pity. Everyone must prepare to die with as much dignity as he can muster.

“There’s something I want to ask you,” Elsie began. But the woman stopped her.

“You want to know if there’s any chance of getting out of the ghetto?”

Elsie was conscious of a flare of resentment.

“Why do you say that?” she objected. “As a matter of fact, I was going to suggest....” She tried to think out some technical matter she might bring up. But you could not deceive those level grey eyes.

“Quite right,” Elsie muttered. “I was.”

“Don’t worry,” the doctor said, a shade more kindly. “I’m asked that twenty times a day. Even the toughest ones have their moments. You’re thinking of your daughter, of course.”

“Yes.”

“You must try and face up to it. There isn’t a hope of surviving.” She looked round. She didn’t want to be overheard. It was a simple and obvious statement of fact, but it sounded a little harsh put into plain words. “Think of it from the girl’s point of view. Supposing it wasn’t impossible, and you got her out. You don’t want me to go on, do you?”

“We all know what it’s like out there.”

“At the best you’d just prolong her sufferings. For every Jew who survives, not merely in Warsaw but in Poland, God will have to enact a separate miracle. And there are no miracles.”

“I’m prepared to take a chance,” muttered Elsie.

The doctor turned away.

“I’m sorry. You know how it is. I must see what food’s left. There’s practically nothing coming in.”

“Please,” demanded Elsie. She tugged at her sleeve again. She looked very forbidding.

“What’s happened to Wolff, the master-baker?” Elsie whispered urgently.

The doctor’s lips tightened, as if to keep back some cutting answer. Then she thrust off without a word. Elsie returned to her mattress.

“Well, what happened?” a voice demanded eagerly. It was the woman from Galicia. “Did she let you have something? They say a whole sausage was brought in to-day. Sometimes I’ve begged her on my knees for a crust, but she wouldn’t drop you even a crumb. She’s just as bad as the Germans. Avrom was carrying the baby when we went off. Then, in the middle of the night, the train stopped....”

It was some two hours later that Elsie saw Wolff. He had materialized so suddenly that for an instant she thought he was an hallucination. He was standing with a group by the hessian curtain in front of the operating-couch. His old-fashioned bowler hat was on his head, with such an architectural quality of permanence that it was the bowler hat rather than the flesh-and-blood man that made her realize he was substance, not shadow. The bowler hat had already survived tall churches, spacious warehouses, great blocks of flats. The man himself would probably die, but some day the bowler hat would turn up again, only slightly dinted, in a hollow among the mounded rubble of the Warsaw ghetto, rimmed round with purple willow-weed. The greeny-grey suit had no superficial hoar-frost of flour; the greyness was from the dust of former bakings deeply impregnated into the fabric. In the short while since she had seen him his face had changed a good deal. His plump face was thinner, with a pinched look about the mouth. The clothes hung loosely on his frame. But when he saw who this woman was who strode towards him so urgently he smiled warmly as at an old friend.

“How are you, Fräulein? So you happened to be out of the way. Congratulations.” He hesitated a moment and smiled sadly. “If congratulations are in order.”

“Herr Wolff, I want to speak to you.”

He inclined his head courteously, and gestured with his hand as if the entire cellar was his private office and it was at her service.

“By all means, Fräulein,” he murmured. He walked away with her a few paces, till they were out of earshot. She turned to him abruptly.

“Last time we met you asked me if I wanted to get out of here. I didn’t want to go then, but I do now. I’ve taken charge of that young girl there. She’s Polish, from Ploçk. You see her? She’s alone in the world. I want to know what are the chances of getting her out.”

He looked at her sadly.

“Fräulein, I was asked by your friend to do what I could for you. It’s all different now. I’m afraid....”

“Yes?”

He said nothing. He shook his head.

“There’s no hope?”

“Hope’s just a word, and a word that means nothing any more. You’re asking the impossible. Things are getting more desperate every hour and the only route into the city is reserved for the few supplies we’re still receiving, at immense risk to the people concerned.” He looked at her as if to beg her not to press him further.

“Apart from this route you’ve mentioned—is there absolutely nothing else?”

“Nothing, Fräulein.”

“Are you sure?”

He shifted his glance from her face but did not answer. Suddenly he turned on his heel and was gone. Elsie stood for some moments, dazed and incredulous, as if she had to convince herself that he had not been an apparition after all. Why had he been forced to turn his eyes from her? Was it because he was ashamed he could do nothing for her? Or was he ashamed because he could and would not? Did he feel that he was letting Oskar down, Oskar the one-time Junker aristocrat, who still possessed so preposterous a charm that even a Jew enmeshed in the Warsaw ghetto could not gainsay it?

And what news, if any, had he of Oskar? He might at least have spared time to answer that, however null the rest of his tale was. She shook her head miserably and shuffled back to her place against the wall. It was some half-hour later that, on raising her eyes from the job that had been assigned her, she saw the bowler hat move through the semi-darkness towards the exit from the cellar. She was not certain that it was not a product of her own despondent imagination until she saw the bowler hat enter once more and leave by the opposite exit. This time she was aware of a slight movement in Wolff’s left hand. The hand raised itself from the wrist, the five fingers erect. She understood. Five minutes later she rose and went out after him. She came across him in a recess at the end of the passage.

“Go on if anyone comes,” he whispered. “There’s something I didn’t tell you. There might be a way.”

“You can trust me,” she murmured. He stared at her hard. “I believe I can,” he decided. “Listen. The time’s up. The fact is”—there was an almost imperceptible hesitation—“I’ve been tidying up.” He poked his head out from the recess and looked right and left.

She nodded. She understood. He proposed to make a getaway on his own. Well, who could blame who, for anything?

“If you can make it, it will cost money. I’ve got some zloty for you.”

“That’s all right,” she assured him. “We’ve got one or two pieces of....”

“Yes, of course,” he interrupted her. Then he was silent for some moments. “You know it will be hard enough on your own. Having someone with you makes it ten times more difficult.”

It was as if a lump of ice was pressed up against her heart’s flesh. “She’s the reason I’m trying to go,” she said quietly.

“Very well.” He shrugged his shoulders. “What’s your idea? What do you hope to do?”

“I don’t know. I want to take her away.”

“You don’t talk Polish, do you?” he asked suddenly.

“No. Just the few words I’ve picked up down here.”

He slapped his thigh.

“You can’t get away; not out of the town, I mean. Don’t you see that?”

“I don’t see.”

“I mean, it doesn’t matter what false papers are made out for you, you daren’t move more than a few yards if you don’t talk Polish. Don’t you see?” His voice sounded quite fretful. “You might go on for days, then one day you’re stopped every five yards. Papers are not enough.” Despair began to creep along her veins. Her eyelids twitched. “No.” He shook his head decisively. “We could get you beyond the Wall. You could go to earth somewhere in Warsaw, though it’s much harder for two than for one, as I’ve told you. And that’s all. You’d probably have to separate, and wait in a cellar or a bricked-up room with a concealed door till it’s all over. There are other people around the place doing exactly the same thing.”

“Other people have got away from Warsaw,” she muttered. “We’ll do it.”

“Yes, yes. But they were young and as hard as nails. People who could live in a cowshed for days and days. Or lie under a culvert, chewing grass. And they’d be alone. And they’d talk the language.”

Then an idea tapped like a hammer against her forehead.

“The language? Of course I talk the language.”

“But you just said....” he stammered.

“The Herrensprache, Herr Wolff. I talk the language of the supermen. Listen.” The ideas were flooding through her brain, almost too quickly for her tongue to keep pace with them. “You can arrange to get us out of the ghetto, you say? Well and good. Into some place on the other side of the Wall? Fine. Well, it’s not enough. I’ve got to get away, for reasons of my own, away from Warsaw. It may be all right for some people to stay in here. Not for me; not for us. I shall be a Volksdeutsche. Do you understand? You can get papers for a Volksdeutsche as for anybody else?”

“I suppose so. If they’re false, they’re false.”

“Well, I’ll show them how to be a Volksdeutsche. I’ll make the Germans themselves feel below standard. I’ve had experience, Herr Wolff. Do you understand?”

“I understand.” He understood why Oskar von Straupitz-Kalmin set such store by her. She was certainly a woman of quality.

“Quick. Let’s work out some story, here and now.” She was feverish with inspiration. “I’m volksdeutsche, from some town not far from the German frontier. No. I’m not merely volksdeutsche. I’m deutsche. It was my husband who was volksdeutsche. My husband had a factory, a textile factory. Like my own father, in fact, Herr Wolff, for your private ear. Tell me a small manufacturing town near the frontier, will you? Quick.”

“Bielsko,” said Wolff.

“Very well, Bielsko. My husband had to spend most of his time in Bielsko, where the business was. I loathed the place and the people. I lived most of my life in Germany, even after I got married. In Hamburg, say, or Berlin. That’s the sort of papers they’ll have to make up for me. You get it?”

“Yes, but....”

She would not allow herself to be interrupted. “Then there’s Mila.”

“Yes,” he added grimly. “She’s in Warsaw, after all, not in Bielsko.”

Problems stood up against her no more than a match-stalk in a flooding gutter.

“Mila? She’s my niece, my husband’s niece, that is to say. Her mother and father were killed in Warsaw recently, somewhere in the outskirts. They thought they were fairly safe. The child’s in a bad state. So I’ve come up to Warsaw to take charge of her and give her a holiday somewhere. Have you any idea where? Somewhere up in the mountains.”

“Mountains? The only mountains are south, of course.”

“South? That’s perfect. That’s on the way, isn’t it?”

“On the way where?”

“To Hungary, the Balkans, the sea.”

“The sea,” he repeated. “The sea.” His voice was remote and impersonal as the sea itself. Silence fell between them. The light died slowly out of her eyes. The blood slackened in her pulses.

“My dear Fräulein,” Wolff murmured at length. “You are jumping. Like an antelope.” He sighed and shook his head. “It is a long way to the south. It is a long way even to Warsaw. Now please listen to me for a few moments. I don’t wish to discourage you. What for? You can build up in your own mind whatever story you like, for yourself and the girl. But papers are papers. They are not stories. They are just to show, in case somebody asks for them. If they are satisfied, and they give them back straight away, well and good. If they are not satisfied, and the papers are looked into—it is no good at all. The only thing I can say is they will be the best papers that can be found.”

“Yes, of course.” She felt deflated. She must keep her imagination in hand. She must not jump ... like an antelope.

“The papers may be made specially for you,” Wolff was saying. “Or they may find real papers of two people who are dead. The girl speaks good German, yes?”

“Yes.”

“It is perhaps simpler you should be mother and daughter. We will see.”

“Yes. Mother and daughter,” Elsie whispered. The words were like bubbles in wine.

“It is a strange thing with papers,” he went on. “The only thing is courage. Well, enough of words now.” He came out of the recess where they had been speaking. “I must have some time to work things out. Let me ask once more. You truly want to go?”

She repeated his words. “The only thing is courage. Isn’t that so?”

“Fine. We’ll meet here; five minutes after the young student goes off duty. That’s about three hours after midnight.” The bowler hat rolled on, as if there was no man beneath.

The hours went by. Down there it was always the same, the same dark twilight, mistily punctuated by lamplight and candlelight; the reverberation of gunfire, the coming and going, the muttering and moaning, the sudden sharp spurt of temper. When was daytime? When was night? Somehow the human creature knows, it is one of those things we retain knowledge of almost to the end.

Frau Doktor Cohen-Berger suspended her enormously protracted spell of duty. The young student took over from her. He, too, at length took himself to his palliasse. If there was a dead hour in the Post it was now, with even Death a little more torpid than he had been. It was life obscurely striving to maintain itself till the unseen dawn broke, to receive through the ruin of wall and floor a last little wallet of light and air to carry beyond the threshold.

“It’s three o’clock now,” Elsie told herself. The girl was asleep beside her. She touched her gently on the shoulder. “Mila, come.” It was not easy to wake her. “Mila, come.”

“Yes, yes.” The girl awoke startled.

“We’re going out.” Elsie rose from the mattress. They had each been given a coat, but she thought it better to leave the two coats behind. It would look as if they were slipping out for a moment. Besides, they would certainly have to acquire some fresh clothing when they got beyond the Wall.

Mila rose. She understood. There may already have been a fair amount in her young life of rising and slipping away quietly.

Wolff was waiting for them in the recess, as arranged. “For the present, keep your distance,” he whispered. “Here’s a torch for you. If you’re challenged, say you can’t rest. You’re trying to find your husband.”

“Fine. Go forward. Remember the child’s still weak,” returned Elsie. Then she bent down and whispered into Mila’s ear: “You understand, Mila? We’re now going to try to get out.” Mila pressed her hand. “If it gets too much for you, we’ll rest. See?”

“Yes,” murmured Mila.

They set out. They moved for some time from passage to cellar, from cellar to tunnel. The journey was on several levels, up and down sloping ramps and flights of stone stairs, through trap-doors and lifted gratings. Once or twice, when they had penetrated deep down, and thick blankets of earth and masonry insulated them, they were plunged into a frightening silence. Sometimes the insulating layers were so thin that they could clearly hear the clatter of the Battle. The catacomb world was by no means unoccupied. Men and women with invisible faces overtook them or came towards them on errands, public or private. Once Wolff’s torch picked out two men some distance ahead of them, who suddenly ducked and hid as if they too were engaged in some secret occupation for which they wished no witnesses; perhaps, with no Wolff to aid them, they were searching for the end of the thread which might lead them out of the labyrinth. Their nerve, maybe, had failed; the will to die can snap, no less than the will to live. Or perhaps they had some urgent message to deliver, which they must keep hidden even from their leader. Like rats they scuttled, and were invisible.

Wolff took his time. He was aware that the two females he was conducting were not sturdy farm-girls. He stopped frequently.

“Are you all right? And the girl, too?”

“It’s a bit longer than I thought,” Elsie murmured. “When do we get into the sewers?”

“Oh no. We don’t get into the sewers this way, that’s why it takes longer. There’s only one sewer exit now, and they might be on to it any time. A part of the route has caved in. We’ve got to come above ground; a narrow passage that bears down upon Krochmalna Street. You remember it?”

“No, I’ve not been here long.”

“Of course not. Our boys overlook the passage from one side, the Germans from the other.” He stopped and looked at the girl. “We’re liable to be fired on from both sides if they see anything moving. But it’s dark. It ought to be all right, if we take it carefully. Can the child make it?”

“I’m not a child,” asserted Mila quite vigorously. “I’m fifteen.” Her whole being was freshening up in the excitement of the adventure. “I’ll make it, if you will.”

“We know we’re not embarking on a school picnic,” said Elsie severely. Wolff grimaced and moved on. The way led, as before, across cellars, through trap-doors, up ladders; then suddenly, as they emerged from a coal-chute, air struck clean in their nostrils.

“Wait,” whispered Wolff. He stuck his head out cautiously, looked upward, and left and right. “It’s all right. Move slowly. Don’t make a sound.” There was a sudden pop-pop of mortar-fire. “That’s all right,” he assured them. “It’s not for us. Are you all right, both of you?”

“Yes, yes,” cried Mila.

“Of course we’re all right,” said Elsie, with less enthusiasm but with dignity. They thrust out on all fours.

At my time of life, thought Elsie. But of course it isn’t really happening.

Suddenly the whole sky lit up as if a furnace door were swung open, then shut again.

“Down!” said Wolff.

They threw themselves down and lay flat as lizards. Wolff removed his bowler hat and set it down before him, as if it were a fourth member of the party.

“There, on the right! Do you see it?” he whispered. “The Wall! We’re not far now!” The ghetto Wall swung, squat and dark, just above eye-level beyond a canyon sliced from the street buildings by a bomb. He spoke of it as if it were any wall that might shut off any recreation park. It had become a casual object in the landscape of his movements.

The Wall, thought Elsie. Yes, the Wall. Higher than mountains. Higher than the mountains where the Tibetan monasteries are. Not too high for Elsie with her blood up, she told herself with the ghost of a smile.

“Now!” ordered Wolff.

They scuttled forward again, crouched immobile once or twice again. At last they reached a hole in the left-hand wall hemmed round by a close of rubble. It must have been the egress from a sewer once, for the way was down an iron ladder encrusted with hard filth. A connecting passage led straight into a large cellar.

“We’ll stop here,” said Wolff. “It’s fairly dry in this corner.” He shone his torch to show them where he meant. “I want you to sit down. There are a few things I must say to you. It’s fairly safe here. Nobody from the ghetto is likely to stumble upon us, and the Germans still don’t know about this way out,” He shone his torch on his watch. “We’ve made good time,” he stated. “I’ve started things moving since we spoke earlier on. In half an hour or so Sem will be here. He’s all right. He’s a Pole, from Warsaw. But he’s all right. He’ll take you to Marta, the old woman, and get your papers for you. Understand?”

She understood. She had not had any training in conspiracy, but she learned fast. If Wolff was a person of some importance in this obscure clandestine world, there must be a buffer between himself and the next contact to which they might be assigned.

“I’ll be leaving you after I’ve had a few words with Sem. After that it will be up to you. Had this happened when I first suggested it, I could have handed you over to your friend. Now....” he shrugged his shoulders. “It’s different now.”

“Will you tell me,” she asked him. “Is he alive or dead?” Even as she spoke she knew what the answer was, and she knew that the answer caused no pang in her heart.

“I don’t know,” Wolff said shortly. For him, too, it was not a subject to dawdle over. “I’m not asking who you are. I’ve never asked anyone, of course, and no one told me.” He turned to the girl. “And you, Mila. Have you understood all we’ve said?”

“Everything, thank you.”

He held up his torch to her face, so that he could scrutinize it more carefully than he had been able to till now.

“An expert would know you’re both Jewish,” he observed. “With the girl he need not be an expert.”

Elsie reached her arm round Mila’s shoulders, and pressed her close.

“You are not right, I think.”

“If it’s better for Channah to go alone,” said Mila, “let her go alone.”

“Please,” exclaimed Elsie urgently. “You’re upsetting the child! Let the matter be.”

“When setting out on an adventure like this we must face all the facts. Listen!” he cried suddenly. “That’s Sem! He’s coming! Quiet!” Elsie and Mila turned their heads sharply and heard the sound of stealthy feet approaching. Then a voice came, tense and low.

“Sem!” the voice announced.

“Lob!” returned Wolff. Doubtless Wolff had almost as many names as there were people he had dealings with. “It’s me! They’re both here!” He was speaking Polish. “Come through!”

A young man came through from the passage beyond the cellar. With one hand Wolff flashed the torch on him. In the other hand he held a pistol with which he covered him. It was Sem right enough. He replaced the pistol where it belonged.

“I will explain to him,” Wolff announced. “His German is not good, but you’ll be able to understand each other. And you’ll be able to help out, won’t you, Mila?”

“I think so.”

Herr Wolff and Sem talked for some minutes. Then the older man handed over a bundle of zloty. There was a movement from Elsie.

“Please, no!” Wolff insisted. “Whatever you have you will need. You have a long way to go. Well, I’ll be leaving you now. So, junges Mädchen”—he turned to Mila—“good luck to you!” Mila made the ghost of a curtsy in the darkness. She was a well-bred child.

“Thank you very much,” said Mila, a trifle primly.

“As for you, Fräulein—it seems fitting, doesn’t it? I brought you in here. I take you out again.” He paused a moment and shone his torch up against the clammy ceiling. “We’re in Warsaw now,” he said, “at Panska. The Wall was above our heads just back there.”

Elsie reached impulsively for his hands. “No,” he said. “Don’t thank me yet. You never know. They may have got wise to the old woman. Besides——” he hesitated.

“Yes?”

“You’ve not got very far, have you?” He answered the question himself. “Further than a great many others, anyway. In any case, it’s not me you’ve got to thank,” he added gravely. “You must thank your friend. It may be he won’t be in a position to do you any more kindnesses. Good-bye, Fräulein.” They shook hands. “I’ve still got one or two things to clear up. And you, Mila. Good-bye to you both. You’ll see them through, Sem. Good luck.” He took off his bowler hat, replaced it, and moved towards the ghetto again, the whistling bombs, the hurtling shells.

“Come,” requested Sem. “This way.”

They followed. There was a descending ramp, another steel ladder, another passage, another cellar.

“We’re almost there,” said Sem. He pushed aside a clutter of old boxes, buckets, baskets, draining-boards. A tunnel gaped beyond. They entered and crawled along for some ten or twelve yards till they reached another clutter of boxes and baskets, also duly pushed aside. “We’re there,” Sem announced. They entered a small blind cellar, quite dark except for a faint hint of light low down in the wall ahead. He moved some boxes out of the jumble in the corners. “Please to sit,” he said, then took up a length of rusted metal piping that lay against the wall. He lifted it and banged hard against the ceiling, twice, three times. Then he waited for some time, and banged again, twice, three times. Then, at last, after an equal interval, the response came twice, three times.

“Good,” Sem said. “She’s in. Not to hurry. We wait till she thinks it’s all right.”

Twenty, thirty minutes passed. Then they heard the sound of someone descending into the adjoining cellar-room. Feet flapped across the floor. Then some heavy piece of furniture was shoved aside. Chinks of light appeared round a trap-door on ground level.

“The Arc de Triomphe,” murmured Elsie.

“Hopingly, not the Brandenburger Tor,” Sem brought out.

“Or maybe David’s Gate in Jerusalem,” Mila piped up with startling shrillness.

Oh dear, oh dear, Elsie said to herself. A grown-up young woman, with clear ideas about things.

The trap-door was lifted out of a groove. A dim grey light drizzled through, a dim sour smell.

“All right,” a woman’s voice complained. “Don’t hang about all day.” She spoke Polish. A grizzled old head appeared. Wisps of grey hair hung from it like the tatters of a floor-cloth. “What have you got there?”

“A woman and a girl,” Sem replied. He crawled through, to receive them.

“Now you, little one,” said Elsie.

Then suddenly the girl threw both arms round her, and hugged her as if she would never let her go. The frail body was trembling convulsively.

“Mila, Mila, what is it?”

She seemed to have relapsed into the condition of numb terror which had possessed her during the first night and day after the rescue.

“I don’t want to come! I don’t want to come!” she sobbed.

“All right, sweet one, all right.” Elsie patted her head. “It will be all right soon. I, too, am very tired. It has not been an easy journey.”

The girl’s frightened, Elsie realized, terrified out of her wits, here on the threshold of the huge, hostile, outside world. She has memories of German soldiers beating people with their rifle-butts and kicking them with big nailed boots. There in the ghetto it was wretched, but it had become familiar. People starved, people were killed, but they died among friends: and they had pride in what they were despite their sufferings. It was her father’s graveyard, but the child had for a time heard the word Jew uttered with pride and dignity. In the world beyond it was an obscenity and a death-word.

“Aren’t they coming?” scolded the old woman. “Do they think I’ve got nothing else to do?” She poked her head through again. “If you want to go back, you’re welcome to!”

“Mila,” whispered Elsie. “Listen, Mila, please. You said your folk would like you to try and get away. Well? Wouldn’t they, Mila? Wouldn’t they?”

Mila lifted her head. “I’m sorry, Channah. I’ll be good.” She got down on her knees and went through. Elsie followed.

They found themselves in a cellar-room just below pavement level. Daylight filtered through a narrow length of thick panes brown with dirt. There was enough light to see that the place was used for washing, obviously on a professional scale. It was evident that when Marta was engaged in her more public calling, a clothes-horse and mangle were drawn against the trap-door that led into the underground ghetto world.

“How much?” she was asking Sem. “I can’t risk my skin for nothing. If they catch me....” She made a gesture as of a knife being drawn across her throat. Elsie understood hardly one word she said, but got the meaning.

“You know very well, you old crow,” said Sem. He was quite small, with a curious shock of hair starting upright from his skull, like a cock’s comb. He might be a mechanic or a truck-driver.

“If you haven’t got enough,” Elsie murmured fearfully, “we could help out.”

“It’s good she not know you have something more,” advised Sem. “Perhaps she find it difficult resisting temptation. Not look frightened, now. If she do any bad thing, she know—bang!” He placed his forefinger at his head to show the sort of thing that would happen to her. “Is a fixed price,” he continued, chiding the old woman comically with his forefinger. “But she feel she is a good woman for business if we have an argument.” He took the wad of money from his breast-pocket and peeled off the due amount. The old woman stuck forth a skinny claw with a cry of pleasure, then went off to count up the notes on the flap of the mangle, like a dog going off to crack a bone at his leisure. “Please to listen, Fräulein,” Sem continued. “Soon I go. I get papers like Lob say, for you and girl. He also say you not want to stay in Warsaw.”

“No, no. We must get away.”

“But where? Is Germans everywhere. Town is more safe than country.”

“We want to go to a port somewhere, the sea.”

He looked doubtful. “You mean Gdynia? Dantzig?”

“We are going on a ship to Palestine!” Mila broke in urgently.

Sem looked at her compassionately, but said nothing. It was clear he thought Palestine as inaccessible as the moon.

“Whatever happens, we won’t stay in Warsaw,” insisted Elsie. “We’ll go south. We’ll be on our way. What’s the next big town south?”

“Cracow.”

“I was in Cracow,” said Mila, “a few times, before ... before those people came.”

“You see,” said Elsie, as if that established some point or other. “So let it be Cracow.”

“Let it be Cracow,” Sem repeated. “You can hide in Cracow, like you hide in Warsaw. Then, maybe, something will happen.” It was clear that he did not think it in the least likely that anything propitious would happen. “But wherever you are and you are out in street, you must hold head like this.” He lifted his head to show the demeanour they must adopt. “If not”—he shrugged his shoulders—“is nothing no good.”

“We will do our best,” she told him, smiling. But her heart was knocking as she remembered it knocking in the rarefied air on the high top of a Bavarian mountain. “Won’t we, Mila?” The girl nodded looking from one to the other.

“I come back in five days, six days,” said Sem. “Till then you must be here, not move anywhere.” He looked round. It was not an endearing place, but it was less distressing in most ways than the place they had just come from. “The old woman will bring you lady clothing, für Dame, and for girl, also.” He turned to the old woman, who had some time ago finished counting the money and found a place for it under her skirts. “I go. No monkey-business now. If anything goes wrong, the Big One will have you cut up into little pieces. Understand?”

“That’s all right,” she grinned. She patted the place under the skirts where the money was. So long as it was made worth her while, nothing would go wrong.

“Good-bye, Fräulein,” said Sem, “and you, young one. I come back when all is ready.” He inclined his head towards each in turn, then stooped to lift up a bundle under the wooden stairway. It was a bag of plumber’s tools. Presumably he was a plumber who had come to attend to the taps or something. He climbed into the upper room. They heard his feet over their heads. A door slammed.

“Hi you!” the old woman exclaimed, turning to her guests. “Jew-women! Push that back along here, will you?” She indicated the heavy mangle.

“She wants us to push this machine back,” translated Mila. She went over to it.

“Don’t you dare touch it, Mila!” commanded Elsie. “Come on, you!” She turned to the old woman. “Come on! Give me a hand!” She had, after all, been the wife of a great soldier. The woman chewed her own lips as if they were some sort of sticky toffee. Then she shrugged her shoulders, and came up to the machine. Between them the two women got it back where it belonged.

“Now something to eat and drink,” Elsie commanded, gesturing with her fingers at her mouth. The girl looked from one woman to the other with bright eyes.

“Shall I tell her what?” she asked.

“She understands!” said Elsie.

She understood right enough. Mumbling and bumbling away, she was already flopping in her loose slippers up the wooden stairway.

“Oh, my God!” Elsie cried suddenly, and clutched her heart.

“What’s the matter, Channah? What’s the matter?” Terror had jumped into Mila’s eyes.

“Nothing, nothing at all!” said Elsie quietly. “I’m sorry I frightened you. Nothing’s wrong here.” She tapped at her heart. It was better to reassure the girl on that score straight away.

“What was it then?”

“Oh, I was just thinking.”

Channah did not wish to say any more. Mila turned to see if there was anything she could do to make the place a bit more comfortable. Elsie stood a moment or two thinking. Her thoughts were that she had been till a few moments ago, a dim denizen of the Warsaw ghetto, Channah who had been doomed to die, if not from the bomb that had nearly dispatched her, then from one of the twenty deaths that lie waiting for a rat in a closed cellar.

And now, a few moments later, she was not merely Channah, she was already something a little more. Already she had jolted the teeth of this Polish harpy. Already she had shown that Elsie Silver was not dead yet, not wholly dead.

But her heart had turned over not because she was merely excited, she was frightened too. God knows what a devastatingly weak hand she had! Had she already overplayed it at the very outset of a game which would need not only infinite resource but infinite self-control? What was to prevent old Marta walking straight out and coming straight back with a Gestapo patrol? Well, what? You could go on turning the thing round and round in your head till the question creaked inside your skull, like one of those wooden rattles that demented enthusiasts nourish at football games.

“See we have something hot!” Elsie suddenly called up the staircase. “Tell her, Mila, what I said!” ordered Elsie imperiously.

“See we have something hot!” translated Mila.

“Yes, pani, soon! At once!” wheezed the old woman.

Elsie smiled. It didn’t matter how weak the cards were. You must bluff your way through the card-game that was to be played from now on, on a table-top that might cover lands and seas, or might be no bigger than this same rickety table in this same small room.

There was a tap in the cellar, and a bucket to carry water over to the copper. There were some thin gritty fragments of washing-soap around. They washed and dried themselves on somebody else’s towels. They even had the end of a comb between them. They washed and combed their hair, and felt better. Soon the old woman was down with two chunks of bread and a basin of some dark hot liquid which was probably soup, though it may have been an ersatz coffee. She kept her distance from Elsie, and the wrinkled mouth remained pursed in a frozen ‘O’, as if she felt that her client had some tie-up with a devil; for though the woman was a Jewess, she talked and held herself as if she were a Christian, a German for that matter. The small one seemed to have claws too.

“You can sleep if you want to, after you eat,” declared Marta. “I don’t suppose I’ll have much time for washing. If anybody knocks, don’t worry. It may be somebody with a basket of clothes, though usually I pick up the stuff myself. Anyhow, don’t open the door, whoever it is. Stay down here.”

Mila translated. They thanked her. She went off upstairs again. They ate; then they lay down. They had soft things under them and over them, and something to raise their heads.

“If we can sleep, Mila, well and good,” murmured Elsie. “If not, we must just lie down and let time go by. Are you sleepy, Mila?”

The girl was silent for some moments. Then: “Please, Channah, will you tell me?” she whispered.

“Yes, Mila?”

“Where do you come from, Channah?”

She had known, of course, that questions must come. She knew that with this child there must be no duplicity; Mila must sooner or later know the exact truth, though she would be shocked by it, as any Jew, anywhere in the world, must be shocked by it.

“I want you to know everything, Mila,” she said.

“You were not born in Germany, were you? You aren’t like the other Jews from Germany.”

“I was born in England, Mila, but I am not English now. I am German, I married a famous German, and you will have to know his name.”

“But you’re Jewish, Channah?”

“I am Jewish. But I have been a bad Jew. I forgot everything. I could have done something, perhaps a good deal. But I did nothing. Only once, there was an old Jew from England, and he came to Germany, and I helped him to get away again. That was all I did. I have been bad.”

“You did not do anything to help them—the Germans, I mean? You didn’t help them in their wickedness? No, you did not, Channah. I am sure you did not.”

“No, I did nothing to help them.”

“But you helped us, Channah, down in the cellars of the ghetto. I saw with my own eyes.”

“It is a strange story, Mila. I think you’re tired now, and you ought to sleep. I’ll tell you the whole story, Mila, whenever you ask me. Go to sleep now, Mila.”

“Good night, Channah.”

“Good night, Mila.”

But they did not sleep. Soon the girl spoke again.

“Channah!”

“Yes, Mila?”

“Do you think it will be possible?”

“To get away, Mila? I don’t know. It will be good to try. You are young yet.”

“You are not old, Channah.”

“We shall have to be clever. We shall have to bluff our way.” She paused. “We won’t shuffle along, Mila, as if apologizing for something. We must walk with our heads in the air, like that young Pole said.”

“Yes, Channah. It isn’t we that should feel ashamed. It’s them.” Again there was a brief silence; then once more Mila was speaking. “Where will we try to get to, Channah?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere. You should try to sleep, Mila. To a port somewhere, to the quayside. We will get on to a ship.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know, Mila. I don’t know. It depends on where the ship goes to.”

“But surely you’d like to go to Eretz Israel? Where else can a Jew go to?”

“Why not, if the ship went there?”

“But if the ship did not go there, one would have to take another ship.”

“Yes, Mila. You’re shivering. Come closer. Are you warmer now?”

“Why would you not like to go to Eretz Israel?”

“I’m getting sleepy, Mila. We will talk again. Some day, perhaps, on a ship, with the sky sharp and blue overhead, and a white road of water behind us.”

“Yes, yes, Channah,” the girl said drowsily. “And there will be seagulls. I have never seen seagulls.”

“And porpoises,” whispered Elsie. “Good night, little one. It is morning, but we will say good night.”

They were very tired and were asleep soon. The German barrage had a fresh lease of life within a half-hour. The house shook over their heads like a rickety truck on a rough road, but it did not awaken them.