The Devil's Harmony, page 22
By contrast, Yan played the much-loved folk songs of the country. ‘Plynie Wisla’ – ‘The River Flows’ and ‘Hej Sokoły’ – ‘Hey Falcon’, which had been sung by soldiers for decades.
Anatol was delighted; he said singing had always been a strong part of Polish life, and some of the old ballads had accompanied the most dramatic moments of the country’s history.
When one night Yan played ‘Nie Daj Sie’ – ‘Don’t Give Up/Don’t Let Go’, the women in the restaurant sobbed openly, and Anatol climbed on to a table, and delivered a speech saying they would not give up and they would never let go, they would resist the sweeping evil of the Nazis while there was breath in their bodies. He drank two more glasses of wine, mopped his eyes unashamedly, and repeated the sentiment, while one of the helpers went to look out of the door to make sure no one was outside, because you could not trust the Nazis not to come marching down the street and carry you off for sedition or incitement when all you were doing was singing.
But often, walking back to his rooms, Yan felt as if the world had become distorted – as if it had been dislodged from its axis. Or was it more as if the Earth’s rotation had altered and its people had not altered their pace to match it? Once, he tried to explain these feelings to Bruno, but Bruno said he did not give a tinker’s toss if the world was off its axis or slowing down or racing ahead, or whether it was performing somersaults across the universe. Whatever it was doing, it wasn’t likely to make any difference. Better to concentrate on not sinking into the Slough of Despond and not letting the Nazis crush them once and for all.
‘You don’t seem to fall into the Slough of Despond very often,’ remarked Yan.
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Bruno, suddenly serious. ‘I have a dark side. But then who doesn’t?’
It was early evening, and shadows were spreading thickly across the ground, turned to a mosaic of crimson and gold by the sinking sun, so that it was like walking across one of the Persian carpets out of the old legends.
‘It’s a beautiful city,’ said Yan, in sudden anger. ‘And it’s our city. Yet here we are tiptoeing through the streets, constantly looking over our shoulder. There’s a line of poetry from somewhere – I don’t know the author’s name, and I’m not sure if I ever did, but I think it was an English poet. One of the eighteenth-century Romantics. Something about a man tiptoeing down a lonesome road in fear and dread … “And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread … ” That’s us, my friend.’
‘Well personally, maestro, I’m inclined to think we’re more like characters in one of those French farces,’ said Bruno. ‘Trying not to be caught in the wrong bedroom. Not that I’d necessarily object to that, because at least you’d have the promise of a lively night ahead of you.’
But he frowned, and Yan felt, as he sometimes did, Bruno’s mood change. I have a dark side, Bruno had said. What might that dark side hold? After a moment, Bruno said, ‘All we can do in these times is trust to God’s mercy – or the devil’s, if the Prince of Darkness is likely to be more kindly disposed to us – that the Nazis don’t find out what’s happening in quiet corners of Warsaw.’ They looked at one another. ‘We both know what I mean, don’t we?’ he said.
‘Oh, yes. And don’t you think that those things – those quiet activities, are gaining strength?’ said Yan. ‘You can almost feel it happening. Like a storm that gathers strength as it gets closer.’
‘A storm,’ said Bruno. And then, very softly, ‘Or a Tempest.’
He did not say any more, but he did not need to. Yan knew that Bruno was referring to the embryo organization first conceived in southeastern Poland, started by the Polish Home Army, and intended to culminate in an uprising in Central Poland that would drive out the Nazis.
The Resistance movement that had been given the name of Burza. Tempest.
It had been Anatol, and – rather astonishingly – the thin dark woman, Irina, from Tanwen’s old lodging house, who drew Yan and Bruno into the Tempest movement.
Irina was often in Anatol’s restaurant, and somehow – Yan was not sure how – she had got into the way of coming to sit for a while with himself and Bruno – also Alicja on the nights she was there.
Alicja thought Irina might be one of Anatol’s casual waitresses – there were several who came and went – but Bruno said it was more than that.
‘I think she’s here to pick scraps of useful gossip,’ he said.
‘You mean she’s a Nazi spy?’ This did not sound as far-fetched or dramatic as once it would have done.
‘I think we ought to keep the possibility in mind. She’s an odd, secretive woman.’
‘Of course she is secretive,’ said Anatol, when this was put to him. ‘She had a sister who was married to a Jewish man – a respectable, hard-working bookseller. A very nice family. But the Nazis burned his shop and took his entire family to one of the camps.’ A plump shrug. ‘I do not know which one, and I don’t think Irina knows. But for that reason alone she would never work for the Germans. Against them – oh, yes, she would definitely work against them.’ He glanced to where Irina was sitting. ‘You may be approached by her,’ he said, very softly, under cover of the piano that was being played in a corner by one of the customers.
‘To help in her – um – work?’
‘Yes.’
Anatol was right. The approach came two nights later.
‘Radio transmissions,’ she said, seated at the table with Yan and Bruno, her thin face intent, her dark eyes glowing, but her expression as bland as if she were discussing with them which dish to choose from the menu.
‘Radio?’
‘It could be a way of sending messages without being seen or heard. And I believe, Bruno, that you have knowledge of such things.’
‘A very little,’ said Bruno.
‘But enough. The equipment can be got, but there’s the question of where it can be set up.’
Anatol, who was hovering with a wine flagon, sat down. ‘If I could set it up here, I would do it,’ he said. ‘I would throw my entire restaurant open for such a purpose, but it is quite small, and the oppressors can walk in and out at their will.’
‘A warehouse or offices would be best,’ said Irina. ‘There are plenty of empty buildings. But it must be somewhere that wouldn’t be noticed very much. A place where we could come and go without comment.’
Yan and Bruno looked at one another, and Yan knew the same thought was in their minds. But Bruno did not speak, and at last, Yan said slowly, ‘There might be somewhere.’
TWENTY-TWO
Warsaw, early 1940s
‘I never found the old staircase,’ said Anatol, as they went cautiously inside the Chopin Library much later that same night, and crossed the big empty hall towards the kitchen area. ‘There was never time to search for it. But my father talked of it.’
They found oil lamps in a storeroom, and went down the steps to the kitchens by the flickering light of them. Their footsteps echoed in the emptiness, and it felt strange to know that overhead were the high-ceilinged, ornate rooms where once silken-clad ladies and gentlemen had gathered; where royalty of all races and creeds had come to hear music played by the finest musicians of the day. Were you ever here? said Yan in his mind to his Romanov girl. Might you and your sisters have been brought here as children – as a treat, for a special event, or simply to attend a concert? But he had no idea if that doomed family had ever travelled to Poland, let alone to Warsaw. Pointless speculation. Concentrate on trying to find this boarded-up stair.
But as Anatol cautiously investigated an old larder, Yan felt his mind loop back over the years to that other larder with its stone slab that could be pulled away to open up another ice room. The stone that could not be moved from within … Don’t think about it, said his mind, angrily. Think instead about what’s happening now, and that this might be something that will help the Resistance movement. Tempest. Burza.
‘It can only be somewhere in here, that boarded-up stair,’ said Anatol, as he and Bruno tapped on walls and sections of planks.
Bruno said, ‘I think there’s something here – listen.’ He rapped on a section of timber a second time.
It gave a dull echo, and Yan said, ‘A hollow space behind?’
‘Let’s find out.’ Bruno was already plundering the drawers for suitable implements. ‘Hammer and chisel,’ he said. ‘Anatol, why did you have a hammer and chisel in these kitchens?’
‘There were sometimes small jobs to be done – maintenance – shelves to be fixed …’
But Bruno was already hammering against the wood, and sliding the blade of the chisel between the planks when they loosened.
‘Carefully,’ said Anatol. ‘For if this is what we’re looking for, we’ll have to replace those boards when we come and go.’
Between them they worked free a large oblong of timber, roughly six feet high and eight feet wide. As it came away, a breath of cold, sour air gusted out.
Bruno reached for one of the oil lamps and thrust it inside.
And there it was. A wide staircase, partly stone, partly timber, but the timbers rotting and sagging. Thick cobwebs like veils hung down from the vaulted roof above, and strange cold echoes drifted across the dimness. But unquestionably, this was the ancient, famous stairway, up which sumptuous banquets had once been carried for glittering and often royal audiences.
‘Wall sconces,’ said Anatol softly, pointing to the walls. ‘They were for the best wax candles – for light so that the musicians could play the Iced Polonaise all the way up here and through the rooms to the Ivory Salon.’
‘Do we investigate?’ said Yan, peering at the stair rather doubtfully.
‘Maestro, you astonish me,’ said Bruno. ‘Of course we investigate. This is romance and history at its best. Also,’ he said, on a more practical note, ‘it could be a place we can use as a secret headquarters for the radio transmissions.’
‘You should not get carried away yet, Mr Sicora,’ said Anatol. ‘First we have to see what is down there. Also, we must be careful not to fall through the rotting parts of the steps.’
Descending the old stairway was a strange experience. The echoes whispered all round them, and it was necessary to constantly push aside the thick cobwebs. Several times Anatol tried to burn them out of the way with the oil lamp, but the air was so damp that the oil flare was struggling to remain alight at all.
‘And it’s so bloody cold,’ said Bruno, turning up his coat collar, and shivering so that the glow of the lamp he carried shivered with him on the walls. ‘I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to get warm again after this. I’m cold right through to my bones.’
For Yan, the old nightmare was still trying to break into the present, and when Bruno said this about it being cold, he thought it must be how those two had felt as they died – his beloved Katya, and the girl who had been with her. Bone-cold, so that you would never believe there could be warmth anywhere in the world ever again. And there had not been, not for those two.
The stairs finally opened out on to a large area, which had the same stone floor as the scullery overhead. There were deep shelves, waist-high, along one wall.
‘The original sculleries,’ said Anatol, pointing to an ancient sink and the remains of what looked like a massive iron range.
‘We could bring chairs down here,’ said Bruno, shining the lamp around. ‘And if we really can get a radio transmitter, it could go on one of those stone shelves.’
‘Wouldn’t the roof block out the signal? And all the rooms overhead?’
‘I don’t know. Yes, they might. We’d only find out by trying. But even so, as a … a centre for information, it would work,’ said Bruno. ‘We could post lookouts in the square or even in the main hall upstairs, and have a warning system in place.’
Yan said, ‘And even if the Nazis came into the building, I don’t believe it would occur to them that there might be this place down here. We’d replace those sections of wall planks every time.’
‘I think you’re right. Well?’ said Bruno, looking at them, a light of excitement glowing in his eyes. ‘What about it? Are we going to try?’
And this time the images that were crowding Yan’s mind were quite different. They superimposed themselves over those older, disturbing images, and they were pictures of himself and Bruno – perhaps Anatol and Irina too, and maybe even Alicja – working stealthily in this place. Sending out secret messages. Coded radio signals for the Resistance if it could be managed, but in any case somehow spreading information that might help their fight and that might add to the growing momentum of the organization. And doing it all under the very noses of the oppressors. It was impossible not to be fired by the audacity and the dangerous glamour of the idea, and by the eventual aim it might achieve. It was also impossible not to be fearfully aware of the certain outcome if they were caught.
He said, ‘Yes. Oh, yes, we’re going to try this.’
It was Bruno who came up with the idea of using the opening notes of Sibelius’s incidental music for Shakespeare’s The Tempest over the transmitter.
‘Short and recognizable and appropriate,’ he had said. ‘Whichever of us is here can play the notes each time – we can keep one of the violins down there for that. And whoever’s listening will pick up and know it’s a signal that a message or some information is imminent.’
‘Whoever’s listening might include the Nazis one night,’ Yan said.
‘Yes, but we’ll have to risk that.’
Others joined their small group – all vouched for by Anatol and often by Irina. Alicja was among them, prophesying sadly that the Chopin Library’s days were probably numbered. ‘It will end in being one of Warsaw’s most tragic losses, you’ll all see.’
‘Oh, the old place has weathered worse,’ said Bruno, cheerfully.
‘I shall ensure its memory lives on, though,’ said Alicja, ignoring this. ‘I shall compose a symphonic poem, telling its story, and my pen will be dipped in tears and the notes written with my heart’s blood. People who hear it will be moved to tears.’
‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ said Bruno, with unmistakable sarcasm. But afterwards, he said to Yan that Alicja might be impossibly gloomy, but she was very committed to what they were doing. ‘And she’s entirely trustworthy.’
‘I know.’
With them was a man who, when the world was normal, had owned a small printing business. He suggested creating what would appear to be advertisements for concerts, but which could contain hidden messages.
‘But the Nazis will know we can’t stage concerts any longer,’ objected Yan.
‘Yes, but if they found them, we’d say they were ones ordered ages ago,’ said the printer. ‘Old advertisements or programme covers for concerts you had in your schedule. I’ll even print a fake schedule, for heaven’s sake!’ he said.
‘That’s quite a good idea about fake programme covers,’ said Bruno. ‘We could use them to keep our people informed – and to tell them about our meetings. In a strange way it might be safer than word of mouth, because you never know who might be listening in.’
‘It’s a pity we aren’t strong enough yet for anything other than meetings,’ said Irina, who was present. ‘But we will be.’ Her eyes glowed and she suddenly looked unexpectedly attractive. ‘Before too long we might be able to get hold of arms and supplies – break into the German munition stores. We need to counter the threat from the Soviets, and when the Polish Home Army gathers its strength—’
‘We’ll start with the meetings,’ said Yan, before Irina could become too carried away. ‘I like the idea of the fake advertisements. We could incorporate symbols to let people know where meetings are to be held. A different one for each venue. A heart when we’re meeting in that abandoned warehouse near Holy Cross Church in the Krakowskie Przedmieście.’
‘Where Chopin’s heart is supposed to be sealed inside a pillar,’ nodded the printer.
‘And when there’s a meeting here in the Library, we’ll make it an open book,’ said Bruno, eagerly.
‘And,’ said Yan, ‘on the nights we use Anatol’s cellar we’ll have a small sketch of Father Gregory’s firebird piano. It’ll look like part of a poster for a concert, but it’s very distinctive, that piano, and if we draw it clearly enough, people who know will recognize it.’
Anatol said, ‘Father Gregory would have liked to think of himself as playing a part in this.’
Tanwen had to constantly remind herself that there was nothing to feel ashamed of in having left Warsaw. Irina had said it was the only thing to be done – Tanwen must go while it was still possible to leave, and the baby could be left with her.
The baby. Born in painful, struggling secrecy in the bedroom at the top of Irina’s house, with only Irina to help her. The months leading up to that night had been unutterably tedious. Irina had books, but there were only so many books you could read, and sewing and knitting were boring in the extreme. Tanwen had her violin, but there was not much satisfaction in playing when you did not have an admiring audience.
Once or twice she even made a few half-hearted attempts at housework. Cleaning and polishing were, of course, the ultimate in tedium, but Tanwen had been brought up in a house where such things were important, and Irina’s own rooms were shockingly untidy, with old papers strewn around and spilling out of half-open drawers. Sorting everything out would at least give her something to do.
But Irina would not hear of it. She had better things to think about than filing letters and receipts and seed catalogues, she said, closing a drawer with an angry forbidding snap. So Tanwen did not bother.
