The gaunt man muttering to himself as he strode along the streets of London, revisiting an internal scenario invisible to others, aroused sympathetic glances from passersby. They took him for one of the unfortunate souls unhinged by the Blitz, who bolted for the shelters jabbering that Hitler was coming whenever they heard the wail of a siren or saw planes darkening the sky.
There were so many ways that war could reshape the landscape of your mind, Adam Czartoryski thought as he rushed on, looking neither right nor left. As a student in London many years ago, he had delighted in its regal buildings and imposing monuments, but now they were merely a blur against the scenes inside his restless mind. He walked along the Thames Embankment, enveloped by the chilly mist that rose from the river, which he considered the dullest waterway in Europe. He was already on the other side of Westminster Bridge before he’d even realised he’d crossed it.
‘Cor, you want to watch where you’re goin’, guv,’ the cockney hawker shouted, as Adam walked into his barrow and sent potatoes and carrots tumbling to the ground.
Ever since he’d read in The Express the previous morning that an uprising had broken out in the Warsaw Ghetto, he’d been consumed by visions of carnage and destruction, of doomed fighters crushed by tanks and blood streaming down the streets that had haunted him since his visit six months earlier.
He thought about the feisty girl with the elfin face who had guided him around the Ghetto. He wondered whether she was fighting with the insurgents. They didn’t have a hope. They were inexperienced street fighters, armed only with defiance and homemade weapons, against tanks, artillery, and an army determined to wipe them off the face of the earth. And yet they’d found the strength to confront the Nazis.
They’ve shown us the way, he mused. For years we’ve talked about honour and resistance, but they’ve actually done it. His thoughts returned to Elzunia. Their paths had crossed twice and each time one of them had saved the other’s life. He didn’t believe in fate — that was a simple person’s way of interpreting life with the benefit of hindsight. But he couldn’t find any rational explanation for these coincidences.
There was something appealing about the girl, and, at a different time and in a different world, he would have liked to spend time with her and show her that there was more to life than violence and persecution. He saw himself as her mentor, teaching her about the ways of the world, escorting her to balls and theatres, and watching her blossom into a woman.
As he turned the corner, the Gothic towers and spires of the Houses of Parliament came into view and his fury was rekindled. Ensconced in this bastion of democracy, English politicians planned their strategy and issued their orders, impervious to the suffering of the country that had been their first and staunchest ally. As an idealistic young diplomat, he’d had visions of making the world a better place, but the cynicism of realpolitik made him want to vomit.
It was a cheerless April morning, and he hunched his shoulders against the rain and turned up his collar against the penetrating chill. The weather had been like this ever since he’d arrived four months before, and its greyness reflected his state of mind as he knocked on one office door after another, repeating the same story to people who tried to conceal their incredulity behind a screen of politeness.
Of the members of the Polish government-in-exile he had already briefed about the situation in Poland, he’d been most impressed by the Commander-in-Chief, Wladyslaw Sikorski, whose vision for Europe included the formation of a United Nations organisation to thwart and counterbalance the ambitions of power-hungry dictators. When the time was right, he told Adam, the Home Army would rise up against the invaders and liberate Poland. Adam left his office hoping that one day this statesman would become the head of a democratic Poland.
After meeting the Polish representatives, Adam started doing the rounds of English ministers, secretaries and undersecretaries, whose doors, like their ears, were reluctant to open to him. He was consumed by his mission to convey the situation in Poland, and in particular to give them an eyewitness account of the Warsaw Ghetto so that they’d realise they had to act fast to save the remaining Jews. They were unfailingly courteous and attentive but the almost imperceptible change of light in their eyes signalled disbelief, and the way they averted their gaze while making avowals of support indicated that his mission had little chance of succeeding.
From his student days, he knew that for the English there was a clear distinction between making a diplomatic request and being persistent. By raising his voice and insisting that it was inhumane for the British to stand by and watch while millions of civilians were being butchered in an Allied country, he feared he’d overstepped that line.
He was mulling over the insuperable national differences in communication as he headed to Whitehall for his next appointment. The light was fading and although it was only mid-afternoon it already seemed like evening. It began to drizzle and soon he was coated with a layer of chilly dampness. Inside the draughty building, Adam shivered as he waited to be ushered into the office of a minister who had finally found the time to grant him an interview.
The rain had stopped and the light slanting through the window high on the wall cast a gleam on Sir Ewart Lynn’s silver hair. As he motioned for Adam to sit on a straight-backed wooden chair facing him, Sir Ewart continued to suck on a pipe that had discoloured the edge of his neatly clipped moustache. Looking at the impeccably tailored suit with a waistcoat and a tie as understated as his Cambridge manner, Adam thought that he epitomised the stereotypical image of the English gentleman.
‘Mr Czartoryski, we understand and sympathise with your passionate concern for your gallant and oppressed country.’
Sir Ewart’s manner was urbane and his eyes brimmed with disarming candour, but, from his inflection and his frequent need to adjust his tie, Adam could tell that Sir Ewart didn’t regard being passionate as an admirable quality.
There was a deferential knock on the door and a little man bustling with self-importance entered and murmured something. Sir Ewart replaced his pipe in the marble ashtray, pushed back his chair and excused himself.
Adam tapped his shoe on the parquet floor. This was turning out to be another frustrating day. He had just come from an unsatisfactory meeting with Szmuel Zygielbojm, whose manner he had found extremely irritating. A Polish Jew who had escaped from Warsaw, he now represented the Bund political party in the Polish government-in-exile. While Adam described what he’d seen in the Ghetto, Zygielbojm had become so agitated that he paced up and down like a tiger in a circus cage. At one stage, he even spoke of killing himself as a gesture of protest to awaken the conscience of the world to the carnage taking place in the Warsaw Ghetto. He sounded so melodramatic that Adam couldn’t wait to get away.
Back in his office, Sir Ewart apologised for keeping Adam waiting and reached for his pipe again. ‘We hold our staunch ally Poland in the highest esteem, and it distresses us to see her suffer but unfortunately our resources are stretched to the limit,’ he said in a pained voice. ‘We must put all our efforts into defeating Germany. The Red Army in Stalingrad has shown us the way. We must defeat Rommel in North Africa, and then turn our attention to Europe. Only when we have defeated Hitler will Poland and the rest of Europe be free from tyranny.’
Pausing, he tapped his pipe and, as he struck a match, his patrician face glowed in the flame. He sucked on the pipe thoughtfully, filling the office with the aromatic smell. Leaning forward, he said in a confidential voice, ‘You’re a pilot, are you not, Mr Czartoryski? Many of your countrymen are flying with the RAF, you know, and the gallant chaps are making an invaluable contribution to our war effort. We are immensely grateful to them and, after the Battle of Britain, we owe them a debt we can never repay.’
Adam left Sir Ewart’s office with a hollow feeling in his stomach, like a starving man who asked for coins but was fobbed off with advice on budgeting. Chilled and dejected, with a roaring headache, he walked past the liveried doorman of The Connaught Hotel, slid into a leather banquette and ordered tea, which arrived in an ornate silver pot along with a jug of milk that he pushed away. As he sipped the black tea, he reflected on Sir Ewart’s parting words. When he had returned to Poland after the disaster in Slovakia almost two years before, convinced that his work in the Underground was over, he had considered the possibility of going to England and joining the RAF like thousands of Polish flyers, some of whom flew in the Polish Kosciuszko squadron with their own emblem painted on the fuselage. He was fed up with the cynicism of politics and the chicanery of politicians. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. Slapping a few shillings down on the table, he walked out of the restaurant with a lighter step.
The paper boy on the corner was shouting, ‘Paper, paper, read all about it, Rommel’s getting his just deserts in the desert!’ A sudden gust of wind almost blew Adam’s hat off and sent sheets of newspaper flying along the street. One page fluttered around and came to rest against his shoe and, as he bent down to remove it, a headline caught his eye. Szmuel Zygielbojm had committed suicide.
Adam picked up the paper. Zygielbojm had left a suicide note in which he explained that the only honourable thing to do in an uncaring world was to kill himself, to draw attention to the genocide taking place in the Warsaw Ghetto.
The hollow pit in Adam’s stomach deepened. So Zygielbojm hadn’t been melodramatic at all. He had taken this shocking action because he believed that he had to take a stand. Zygielbojm had sacrificed his life in the hope of awakening the conscience of the world. Adam gave a mirthless laugh. He had died trying to shame those who felt no shame.
Adam let the paper drop and walked on, his long stride swallowing the stately curve of Regent Street. He had dismissed Zygielbojm and his anguish as theatrical posturing. A man who, as it now turned out, was far more noble and highly principled than himself. He kept walking, oblivious of everything but the failure of his mission.