Diary of Captivity

'Pages written in sleepless nights, in the face of death and shame . . .'

EVERYTHING is asleep now. The faint light from a taper standing on my trunk shows five field beds on which the other Sisters are already asleep. Their sleep is calm, much unlike the squeaks and giggles and noisy greetings that welcomed my return today. I alone am awake. Writing one’s diary becomes a sort of vice, and here I am, scribbling as fast as I can, with my book on my knees, after a day’s shaking in a cattle wagon and cart. But if one does not write things down directly, next day everything’s forgotten.

What happened? Well, nothing in particular. I arrived, said ’How do you do,’ was shown the hospital, was given dinner, and went to bed — and that’s all.

But now, as I sit writing here, in the peace and silence of night, with the giant shadows creeping on the walls of this gloomy vaulted chamber (I do not know why the bedroom of hospital Sisters is called ’the chapel’), a crowd of reminiscences, impressions, and plans make my head burst. I must write them down before I go to sleep.

I came to this place through a world all strewn with rubbish, smelling of dirt of the filthy cattle wagon, dark with brutality, gray with misery, gloomy as if overhung by a leaden cloud. I return to my post at the last moment. Our hospital is on the front line. From every side — north from Mohilev and from Minsk, south from Kalinowicze, east from beyond the river Dnieper, and especially west, from the wreckage of the ancient front of the Great War — the boundless sea of howling, cowardly, bloodthirsty mob draws in upon us.

The people in our hospital are the same: the ‘ Head,’ Dr. Mroczek; the ladydoctor, Józka Dowgiallo; Mrs. Henrietta Wolbeck — she is Head Sister, small, bright, smart, and tough as iron, never forgetting, in the most tragic moments, to draw her powder puff over her little nose; Lala Landsberg, a quiet, gentle Lithuanian girl; Ira Krzyzanowska, nicknamed ‘Peo’; Halka Skibniewska, bright tomboy, with bobbed hair and a sunny smile which brightens the darkest hours; and good old Olesia Bialkowska, who used to be housekeeper, a buxom old maid, slightly pretentious, but a good old soul, through and through, curling pins and all. There are other Sisters, twelve in all, but they are new to me.

I think this confounded building has much to do with the gloom which weighs upon us. An old house, belonging lately to some Russians, empty since the beginning of the war, plundered half a year ago; lately whitewashed and disinfected in order to bring in the hospital. A house without tradition and today a whitewashed tomb, without even the insignificant tradition of the last inhabitants. Are we to give it life and warmth?

The old building has countless rooms, halls, glass and open galleries, hiding places, and twisting stairs. The hall and sickrooms are on the ground floor. We live upstairs; there we have the dining room, ‘crocodiles’ room,’ or respectable abode of the elder Sisters, and ‘goats’ room’ or ‘ chapel ‘ in which I am writing, cold as a dog kennel. Besides these, downstairs, are the isolated parts of the hospital: the first ward for the typhus patients, izolatka; the second room for those suspected of typhus, the separatka; and the kitchen.

A dull house, inside and outside. A dead-looking mock-garden and pseudopark. On the other side, the red brick wall of the distillery, three hundred paces away. On the third side, something that used to be a lawn or flower bed; on the fourth, the yard, and a little way off the first houses of the village.

I don’t like to have the village under my nose. I don’t like to have a red brick wall directly before my eyes. I shouldn’t like to have a ploughed field or a road looking as if they would invade the house. The air is sickly with the smell of fresh walls. My heart is heavy. My brother Maurice is somewhere far away in the snow and darkness with his squadron. Where is he now? I feel as if a brutal hand had grasped my heart and squeezed it hard, as the brute of a soldier I saw today did to the squirrel.

Oh, God! Anything but that dismal day, that heavy lump in my heart and that dreadful anxiety!

A nice way to begin duty: I must pull myself together and work — work!

A week later

A week has passed since my arrival. A week, a string of days utterly uneventful, sterilized of interest like our hospital bandages; it unrolls its white ribbon indifferently, endlessly. It covers blood, it is smeared with blood, but it always remains the same — even, endless white ribbon.

Our hospital, ourselves, our life here, are involved in that great thing called ‘Poland’s military action.’ Our Army Corps is already engaged in fighting, which is growing hotter every day, but not on our side. We are on the east side of our Polish Army facing the Bolshevik Headquarters. The Bolsheviks harry us from the side of Osipowicze and Ziobin, and here they are preparing now a final attack, concentrating their forces.

It is a good thing, at least, that there is so much work. I have two sickrooms to attend to, about sixty patients. In the evening I feel so tired sometimes that my head swims, throbs, and seems as if it would burst. Jane and Peo have set up a school for the sanitary soldiers and the children of the farm hands. In the evening, after twelve hours of duty, they still feel energetic enough to stay there till late.

I am much ashamed of myself, but as yet I cannot force myself to help them. Every morning I make a resolution to do so; but in the evening I jump out of the sickly atmosphere of the ward and trudge on through the snow. I never mean it to be more than just a quarter of an hour’s airing, but it ends in a couple of hours’ tramping. Today, for instance, I have just come back from one of these long walks.

By the path trodden in the deep snow, across the fields, I always go in the same direction, to the village cemetery. The farther from the house, the more open becomes the snow-covered world, marked with thorny trees standing out against the wintry sky.

It may be very poetical and easy to dream elegies in a village cemetery, or to dream of heroic crests and plumes amid the thunder of cannon. But it is hard to creep like an ant among sixty sickbeds, reeking of iodine, and know nothing and wait passively when fighting is going on around.

The other Sisters laugh and talk, write letters and teach children. Do they see nothing? Why, our days are numbered. Dr. Mroczek says nothing, but I see he knows. The chief attack of the Bolsheviks will come from Mohilev — that is, on our side. I humble myself in my conscience and try to make an honest reckoning. No, I’m not afraid. It is not that.

Only . . . there are no crests and plumes and glory — butchery alone, tons of human flesh. And what will be the end of it? Where is the true way that leads to Poland?

A few days later

There it is. At last something has occurred that has scattered my gloomy mood and I am myself again. The hospital is nearly all evacuated; tomorrow we shall be here no longer. That is, if we do not fall into the enemy’s hands before that time. We are like the last remnants of a crew on board a sinking ship. The boats that we await are the horses which have gone with the hospital and which will come back to fetch us.

But I must begin at the beginning.

Maurice always says that the most difficult thing is to make up your mind to do a thing, and that, once you’ve done that, the rest is easy. I make a resolution and swear to myself on my honor that I will go on writing this diary under all circumstances, however hard they may be. I command no one and have a very small amount of responsibility. But I mean to be such as a member of my family ought to be. Let this witness stand beside me; it will help me not to lose my head. Besides, a diary is like a constant examination of conscience — like the eyes of somebody very dear, standing behind me.

Having been on night duty in the hospital, I had a free morning, and resolved to make the most of it, to get out of Cichinicze into the wide world. Our officer in charge, Mr. Stiller, was going to Rohaczew, twenty miles away. We got into the broad, low, comfortable straw-filled sledge — Peo, Halka Skibniewska, and I.

That ‘wide world’ — great hubbub — the streets crammed with loaded wagons going this way and that. We said goodbye to Mr. Stiller — rendezvous at the confectioner’s at 3 P.M. Then we dived into the crowd.

To the shops to buy some buttons, tapes, elastics, yeast, a lamp glass — it’s shopping all the same.

Suddenly — boom! . . . Boom! — after a minute — again. The street gets white with panic. People run to hide in houses and gates, their teeth chattering. What is it? We ask the soldiers.

‘The Bolsheviks are shelling the station.’

So, there we are!

We walk on through the streets on the excuse of shopping — in fact, so as not to be afraid. Anyway it is a change. Terrible — but . . . never mind. My heart feels lighter directly, as if a hand had lifted off my spirit all the depression and forebodings of former days.

We are at the café an hour too soon. We order cakes. The gunfire goes on, but sounds more distant.

Stiller bursts in; he is pale. Damp clusters of long fair hair slip from under his cap, which he has not taken off.

‘ Sisters, please come directly — everything else afterwards.'

We run out, rush into the sledge. He takes up the reins and tells the driver to whip up the horses. The sledge rolls madly from one side of the street to the other. Before coming to the station, he takes a narrow street to the right. Off we gallop, the last houses of the town are passed. Hop! The sledge jumps up a yard high against a step. We are now in the open, on the main road.

Mr. Stiller gives up the reins to the soldier and turns to us, explaining: ‘We are in retreat. The whole of our first division is gone. That which you saw was the remainder of it. The Bolsheviks will be in Rohaczew in half an hour at most, if they dare enter. Our hospital has been forgotten.’

We were struck dumb by the news — the horses tore on. Hard lumps from under their hoofs were flying in our faces.

As we drove up, Mr. Stiller turned to us again: ‘Remember, Sisters, not a word to anyone. I am going to the Head.’

So we waited in our goats’ room and unpacked our parcels. After a moment Henrietta sent for us. Everybody was assembled in the crocodiles’ room. Dr. Mroczek greeted us gayly.

‘Well, Sisters, to work. Translocation — Mr. Stiller brought us orders. [I know there had been no orders.] By evening we must be here no longer.’

Squeaks, laughter. . . . A translocation is always fun, and everybody wants to get away from this house.

By evening everything was ready. At midnight the last transport had departed. We sent out 240 sick men. Twenty of the worst cases and we Sisters alone remained. Nearly all the orderlies had gone with the hospital.

Dr. Mroczek entered. ‘Well done, little Sisters — and now off to your own bags and away with you; the horses are waiting.’

Joy! . . . ‘Knocik’ squeaks with delight. ‘Swallow’ catches me up and dances round the room. A sledge drive in the moonlight!

‘And if there is room, take these two officers with you. [They were slightly wounded, but did not go with the hospital.] They are very uneasy,’ added Dr. Mroczek, and went out.

If there is room enough . . . And the doctor. The Head Sister said she had to stay, because there were not enough horses. Dr. Psarski said the same, and also Józka Dowgiallo, the chemist Nehrebecki, and the commissariat officer Stiller.

That was impossible. We sent Henrietta to say that we would not go if the others were staying. The doctor was angry, but Dr. Józka Dowgiallo took our part. Dr. Mroczek yielded. ‘Twelve of you womenfolk against me alone — what can I do! ‘ He only sent Dr. Psarski in a sledge towards Rohaczew for news. But the Sisters must pack their trunks and make ready for the journey, he added. So I caught up my trunk and crammed my things into it.

We went to bed. They are asleep and I’m writing. Perhaps it will be the last time I shall write. Well, it does not matter. I am not afraid. My pencil flies over the paper. How I wish I could let that pencil write on and fly into tomorrow. What will happen?

Now I must go to sleep, the first pleasant sleep in this beastly house.

In Captivity

Two days and one night have passed since we were captured by the Bolsheviks, and the second night is approaching. It is my night for duty. We are all crammed together in the izolatka, the patients and four of us Sisters who have remained — Halka, Peo, Olesia, and I. It is the only room without broken windows, and that because it is situated at the back of the house. There is proper accommodation for four people; now it contains twenty-three patients, as well as the four of us. It is stuffy and cold. Every moment I see the face of the guard peeping in through the window.

My hospital apron is red with the blood of the dead whom we buried. I wrap myself up as well as I can and write, till the last moment of my life.

The day before yesterday, in the morning, we woke up with our trunks packed up. Peo and Halka were on duty; Knocik and I went for a walk. We had not gone half a mile when suddenly we heard shots. A band of children came running towards us. A boy explained that at the entrance to Cichinicze a few Polish Uhlans were fighting with some hundred Bolsheviks. One of them had fallen from his horse; the others caught him up on the saddle and fled. The Bolsheviks were coming on.

We returned home as fast as we could. Knocik rushed ahead without waiting for me. Suddenly many shots sounded quite near. I saw that one of our lieutenants, with a few soldiers, started shooting from behind the garden fence. My eyes followed the line of shots.

There, by the road leading from Cichinicze, approached a thick black mass. It stopped. Small points scattered over the fields, like spilled quicksilver. The road from Cichinicze was empty by that time; only from the other side shots came thick and fast, first high up, dzinng, dzinng, then with dry knocking sounds, hitting on the fence as if nuts were cracked. Our soldiers lay down and went on shooting.

I walked towards the house very slowly, just to master myself, because I felt the blood tingling in my veins. When I reached shelter, I tore into the house at full speed.

Upstairs in the dining room, the windows of which face Cichinicze, I found Dr. Mroczek distributing rifles and cartridges to the remaining staff.

Suddenly the lieutenant burst in.

‘I take the command. Sanitaries, follow me! Three of you remain under the doctor’s command! My regiment is not far away. We shall easily hold our position till relief comes!’

They ran out. The doctor and the remaining soldiers took their positions by the windows, and shots began popping. Far out, in the fields, the little black figures jumped up and ran forward. Our men aimed at them, but I did not see any result. The Bolsheviks aimed badly too. It was only after some time that dark holes began to appear in the ceiling and plaster showered upon our heads. They were aiming too high.

I did not feel nervous at all in the beginning, but I knew very well that it would become hotter by and by. So I tried to brace myself up, to be sure not to funk in any case. There was nothing for us to do but to hand cartridges to those who were shooting. I sat down on a case and began to think that, as a matter of fact, there was absolutely no reason why I should be a coward. My father was always brave; so was Maurice; my uncles and my grandfather had been in the Insurrection. Further back, as far as I know of, there had never been a coward in our family. No, I concluded, I should not turn coward.

Meantime, the cannonade diminished, then stopped almost completely. Just a shot every now and then. Dr. Mroczek ordered dinner, because, he said, that business would drag on.

Suddenly, we heard shots coming thick and fast, accompanied by an infernal noise of breaking glass, which poured out of all three double windows.

‘Down on the floor!’ called Dr. Mroczek. I lay down and asked, ‘What is that?’

‘Well, confound them, they are peppering at us with a machine gun from the distillery,’ answered the doctor.

We found out that the pause in the shooting was due to the Bolsheviks’ hoisting up the machine gun to position on the second story of the strongly built distillery, which was about two or three hundred yards distant from our house. Now they could shoot at our men in the garden from above with an advantage. I crawled towards the window and peeped over the sill. From the window of the red unplastered building I saw the black nose of a machine gun puffing nervously at something below, to the left.

The door, banged with boot and gun, flew open suddenly and in burst a soldier, his peasant face heated by the utmost interior fire, a face such as Kossak likes to paint.

‘Cartridges! Our men are shooting their last.’

I filled his pockets with cartridges; Peo seized a water bottle from the table (the glass was gone somewhere) and handed it to him. He drank with great gulps.

We filled our aprons with as many cartridges as we could, and carried them to the garden. Our men were shooting from behind the trees, running constantly from one tree to another. The lieutenant ordered it so that the Bolsheviks might think there were more of them.

We went to and from the house carrying full aprons of cartridges. The machine gun clucked, but there was no time to be afraid. Each time we came from the house we found fewer defenders, more rifles lying on the snow, and footprints stretching out beyond the garden, into the fields.

We brought enough cartridges, so, slipping home for the last time, Peo stopped me in the hall. From the hall there is a door to the laboratory. She opened a cupboard, found what she wanted, gliding with her deft, manicured fingers over familiar jars and bottles, lifted a glass stopper, took out small bottles with a white powder inside.

‘Zosia,’ said Peo, ‘take that — it is strychnine. Keep it on you . . . but only in extreme emergency . . . in extrem-i-ty, remember!’

I hid the bottle in a pocket, under my apron. They say that soldiers are less afraid of bullets when they have gun in hand. Those bottles certainly had a calming effect on us.

Peo snatched up a bottle of ether. We must break it so that they wouldn’t get drunk on it. I grasped another big bottle. We ran out under the machinegun fire, and I poured out the ether. How slowly it goes through that thin neck! After some seconds which seemed an eternity, I smashed the bottle against the steps of the porch. Then we realized that we might just as well have done it indoors, in the laboratory.

Coming back, we seized a big can of alcohol. The clack of a few bullets on the door stopped us; we could not break that metal can. On second thoughts, we poured its contents into the water closet.

As we came back, the entrance door opened and in ran the lieutenant in command of our defense. ‘Where is the Head Doctor?’ he asked, breathing heavily. We ran upstairs together. There we came upon an idyllic scene. The Sisters sat round the table, curled up and looking rather sheepish, while Dr. Mroczek, ladle in hand, served tomato soup into the plates, joking, and saying that, if we must go to the other world, better go with a full stomach than with an empty one. . . . (Oh, God! Poor Doctor Mroczek! He fell today into the grave so clumsily that I had to straighten his neck.)

The lieutenant burst out: ‘It is not a time for making fun. The sanitaries have all fled. Down below only Stiller, Nehrebecki, and my men continue shooting. Is there a horse? I shall skip over to my regiment for help, because I alone know the country round here. It is the last hope.’

‘You can take my Nelly, or Halka’s mare,’ I put in from my corner.

‘Where are they?’

‘I will show you,’ I answered, and ran out with him.

So once again I had to run out of the safe protecting door into the rain of bullets. Every time when I jumped out I felt as if I were leaping into cold water — but after the first moment it was all right, I swam on.

I ran out and the lieutenant followed me. The stables were halfway towards the machine gun. Luckily we found some loaded carts. We crept under their shelter and heard the bullets whip the cloth and clash upon the preserve tins. The Bolsheviks had noticed us. The machine-gun fire chased us and tramped on our heels. Before it caught us, we were in the stables. At the same time the machine gun began hailing bullets upon the wooden wall of the building. White holes appeared. The horses, mad with fear, roared and plunged, tied to their leather straps. Nelly’s nervous wiry body was straining like a bowstring. The lieutenant put on the saddle. I fastened the reins.

I ran to open the stable door; it crashed open, making a square patch of light. Horse and rider leaped out.

‘Good-bye, Sister!’ was all I heard. Mad shooting followed him. Now I began running again from cart to cart and up to the porch. After an unproductive race, the machine gun came back at me while I struggled in vain with the locked front door. Seeing it was no good, I ran round the house and entered by the safe side, the izolatka.

Here I came upon an entirely different world — the everyday hospital life. Half of our patients were unconscious, not knowing anything of what was going on. Peo and Lala had succeeded in calming the others. They went about, talking to the patients, giving medicine. Lala, who had been on night duty, had not left the sickroom and had not eaten anything yet. She went about her duties with absolute calm, but half dazed. I told her to go and rest, but it took ages to persuade the obstinate Lithuanian girl to go. Finally she started making notes for me about the medicines taken by each man, and she dressed me in her apron, not forgetting to button it neatly and to smooth my ruffled white collar.

She had hardly turned to go when suddenly we heard a deafening bang. Somebody must have thrown a hand grenade into our house. The sick jumped out of bed in a panic, which spreads so easily in a defenseless, ignorant crowd. I tried to think of some lie to calm the men, when suddenly we heard a series of explosions.

‘Lala,’ I shouted through the noise of bursting shells, ‘say the Sub tuum prœsidium, for I might get the words mixed up myself.’ Lala knelt before the Madonna’s picture. It was a very large Byzantine picture of Our Lady, with a dark face and a golden robe, very old and in the possession of my family for many centuries past. I had saved it from our house and now it drew the eyes of all our group of sick, helpless men.

I fell on my knees and repeated the prayer after Lala; the sick echoed the words, and the panic ceased. We felt that from that moment our souls were united for better or worse.

I had proposed prayer as a means of calming the patients, but as I knelt down the spirit of prayer overcame me.

I cannot recollect the words, but the thoughts I remember.

‘O God of my fathers, O thou, most holy Virgin, thou hast looked for so many ages on our deadly strifes; before that very, very picture of thine my ancestors have prayed ever since they embraced Christianity. O thou, our Help and Consolation, how many times women and children and old men have turned to thee as their only refuge!’

Outside, the noise and shooting had stopped. Peace reigned inside our sickroom. Suddenly the door opened and the head of Halka Skibniewska appeared. She beckoned to me. I went with her into the passage. Three of our soldiers stood there, with guns still smoking.

‘Zosia, what can we do with them?’ asked Halka with despair in her voice. ‘The Bolsheviks are in the garden. They will be here in a moment. They may possibly let the sick alone, but what about these?’

I looked at ‘these.’ They stood there, motionless, waiting for our decision. They had been shooting to the last moment, and now their faces expressed wild determination. There lies the difference between a Polish and a Russian peasant — the latter shows only passive indifference in tragic moments.

I felt a flow of admiration for those men. It seemed that at that moment there was no one dearer to me. We had to save them.

‘Get into bed!’ I called.

‘There’s no time,’ whispered Halka feverishly.

Quickly I opened the store under the staircase. We ran in with the soldiers and I shut the door.

‘Undress,’ I commanded, pulling at a boot while Halka pulled at a sleeve. When they were in their underclothes we gave them slippers and dressing gowns.

‘Quick, to the sickroom and to bed,’ I ordered.

‘It’s no good,’ said one of them, a gloomy giant. ‘Only trouble in vain for the young ladies.’

‘Please, Sisters,’ said another, ‘there is a peasant from the village who is leading those Bolsheviks and showing them the way. He had a quarrel with Staszewicz here. He was jealous about a girl, and Staszewicz had given him a sound kicking.’

The third, a short, flaxen-haired, redfaced peasant from Masovia, straightened himself to say, ‘That’s right.’

What should we do? They must not he recognized.

‘Halka, shave and bandage.’

I looked round the shed; there, in the corner, I saw large dusty scissors — probably used in former days to shear sheep or to cut wire. With that old rusty instrument I proceeded to cut Staszewicz’s hair in a shameful way, leaving clumps all over his head. Halka found in her apron pocket small manicure scissors, so her work with the two other soldiers went quicker. When hair and moustaches were shaved, we seized bandage, gauze, and iodine. I painted half of Staszewicz’s head with iodine, rubbing it in so hard with cotton wool that the skin became black.

‘And if they ask us what is our sickness?’ asked the poor fellows, who began to regain hope.

‘Make no reply; you have brain fever,’ I answered, heaping a pound of cotton wool on Staszewicz’s head. ‘And you have inflammation of the jaw — and you dysentery.’

Having pronounced this diagnosis, we put them to bed and breathed a sigh of relief.

Now we picked up the guns and uniforms and carried them far away, into the garden, into the shrubbery. Peo walked ahead, erect, indifferent to the whistle of bullets; I tried to do the same.

Hardly had we returned when suddenly we heard a wild roar in the courtyard. A black crowd covered the lawn. I could distinguish the faces of those nearest, distorted with fury. We heard no words, only a thunder-like yell of the mob, gathered into one roar. The faces of our patients seemed petrified, only the hands — thin, parchment-like hands — pressed round the handles of the stretchers. These hands lived and strained and spoke of a terrible anxiety.

After a moment we shook off our inertia and said to each other, ‘We must know what is happening to the others.’ Peo and Halka stayed while I went to get news.

On the way I came upon the keeper of the stores and Nehrebecki, the chemist, cutting off their N.C.O. shoulder straps.

I began to understand the yell of the crowd: ‘Co-o-ome o-o-out!’

From the courtyard, through the bolted door, a horrible voice was crying, ‘Co-ome o-out, all of you! Officers first — those who don’t come will be shot all the same!’

By the narrow staircase leading from the first floor a sad troop of men and women descended, reluctantly, with bowed heads. First went Dr. Mroczek, pale but calm — he was speaking to those behind. I saw him put some sort of white powder into his mouth as he unbolted the door. Behind him Henrietta, then Lala with a glazed look in her eyes, fixed before her. Behind her those two officers, then Stiller and Lesiewski, carrying his little daughter in his arms. His wife was trying to hold him back by the shoulders, speaking in a breathless, hoarse whisper: —

‘Stachu, don’t go there — Stachu, don’t go there, don’t go there!’

She evidently did not understand her own words, repeating them mechanically in horrible anguish.

Last came the Sisters in a compact group. Knocik, Stasia and Ela, sobbing aloud, and Dr. Józka Dowgiallo, with her hands in her jacket pockets and her head proudly thrown back.

I caught her by the sleeve as she passed me. ‘Mrs. Józka, where are you all going?’

‘Why, don’t you hear they are telling us to come out? We cannot continue the defense. The Head wants to explain to them that this is a hospital, and that they should leave us in peace. Well, come along, we must not exasperate them.’

Suddenly her eyes fell on my apron and cap.

‘On duty, Zosia? Good, then, go back to your patients.’

A Bolshevik burst in through the open door, brandishing the butt end of his gun. I sprang back, slamming the door, and returned to the ward.

Here I found Peo and Halka struggling with poor Olesia, who, screaming like a peacock, tried alternately to stuff herself under a bed and to leap out of the window into the garden.

At last we succeeded in calming her, and she fell exhausted into an armchair.

Comparative silence reigned in the sickroom again, a silence broken now and again by shots. Who can be shooting now and why? They probably want to frighten us out of the house. They shan’t. After a moment we heard a banging at our door, and hoarse yells: ‘Co-ome o-out! Those who don’t obey will be killed all the same!’

But they fell back before we decided what to answer.

A short calm — then angry shouting of Russian voices. Then for one moment we caught the calm voice of Dr. Mroczek, but it died in the hubbub.

Suddenly a horrible scream from Henrietta. Then a shot. Then a dozen more shots. Then silence — the sickroom was frozen in deadly anguish.

We sprang to the door and wanted to run to where some awful tragedy was going on. But in that moment from all corners of the sickroom voices rose in supplication: ‘Sisters, don’t leave us.’ One of the soldiers we had just put to bed jumped out and lay down on the threshold to bar the passage.

‘Kill us first, Sisters.’

‘Kill us, Sisters,’ groaned the ward. One man, unconscious with typhoid fever, rolled his head on the pillow, fixing us with his burning, senseless eyes. Parched lips opened, but no words were uttered; only those eyes spoke.

‘Oo-ooh!’ a groan escaped his throat, a moaning call for help.

There is something strangely pathetic in the helplessness of so many grown men. A boy of sixteen, a voluntary soldier, — a great favorite of all the hospital, who had passed the typhus crisis and was getting better, — drew out his thin hand from under the blanket and caught at my apron. I looked at that bloodless boyish hand, which reminded me of the orphanage children catching hold of ‘their young lady,’ asking for sweets.

‘All right, all right,’ we told the sick. ‘We will remain with you, of course we will. We only wanted to know something — perhaps to help someone. There is something bad going on there. And no harm will be done to you here, you know.’

We sat down on the edges of the stretchers, trying to calm the more restless.

Sick men are like children; they are calmed easily. A few minutes afterwards silence again reigned in the hospital, silence broken now and then by the sniffings of Olesia, who, sitting in a corner, was blowing her nose loudly.

A terrible uncertainty beset us. We could neither go out nor speak to each other. The eyes of all our patients, heavy with anguish, were fixed on us. Only with our eyes could we communicate to each other the unmistakable knowledge. ‘But who — all of them. . . . Why did Henrietta scream like that?’

Suddenly we heard a simultaneous banging at all the windows — again that same intolerable yell: —

‘Co-ome o-o-out!’

Behind the door a voice began to speak Russian. (What hoarse voices those men have!)

‘Ey, you there — why have you not come out yet? We thought we had finished with you all and here there are some more of you. Simeon, climb in through the window and drive them all out of there!’

Our windows, though on the ground floor, were pretty high.

‘Climb in yourself, if you want to risk your head,’ grumbled Simeon.

‘We must speak to them,’ said Peo.

So we went all three to the window, which we opened. At the sight of us the crowd began to yell louder. Two Red soldiers were standing on a bench, making faces and obscene gestures at us. I gripped my bottle of strychnine firmer in my hand, and noticed that Peo did the same. Halka leaned out and tried to make herself heard.

‘Listen to us, you fellows,’ she began in Russian. ‘It is understood that we are your prisoners, but you must understand that we cannot leave this room because of the sick men lying here. Of course you will do them no harm. We have no weapons; you can come in and see for yourselves.

‘Oh, don’t be afraid — we don’t know how to shoot,’ she added after a moment, with a somewhat humorous disdain which she could not restrain.

As a matter of fact, the ‘heroes’ looked as if they were in no hurry to answer our invitation, fearing a trap of some kind. They did not enter the house, although the door was broken out. They only repeated obstinately and stupidly:

‘Co-ome out, we tell you! If not, we will set the house on fire.’

A young lad stepped out, an anæmic type of army clerk, dressed in leather jacket and armed with every existing weapon, from sword and knife to revolver and hand grenades hanging from his belt. He shouted: ‘What’s the use of hobnobbing with those cursed blood-drinkers! Don’t you know how to shoot! And who killed our sailor who lies there on the road! That’s what you deserve!’

He pulled out a hand grenade and hurled it at us.

We sprang aside. The hand grenade, well-aimed, fell on the floor, at the other end of the room, between the unconscious typhus patient and the young volunteer boy.

We knew that hand grenades do not explode on falling, but only a few moments after the safety stop has been pulled out by the thrower. Our eyes were turned spellbound to the small object, lying on the border of two lives. The typhus patient was perfectly unconscious, but the boy jumped up on the bed and, wrapped in his blanket, stood pressing himself against the wall in an agony of fear. We felt our knees bend. What the others were doing I do not know; I only saw that black point between the two stretchers.

Luckily the hand grenade did not explode. We sat frightened, not knowing what to do, afraid to go up to the window, where guns and grenades threatened us. . . .

But what was that new word which the mob began to shout? It was no longer ‘Come out!’

Halka suddenly grew pale. ‘They want to burn us,’ she gasped.

It was true. ‘Fire! Burn them!’ the crowd was roaring.

In a sudden determination, Halka approached the window. One step, like a leap into eternity — and she stood out, in her white hospital apron, framed by the window casement. The first clouds of smoke rose in gusts from below, screening her now and then from the eyes of the crowd.

‘Listen to me, put the fire out!’ called Halka. ‘We will all come out — only help us to carry out the patients!’

A mocking, lazy laugh was the only answer. Men are always grateful when somebody gives them occasion to laugh. Amid the jeerings and mockings, unexpectedly, without any reason whatever, the atmosphere became less hostile.

‘Leave them alone and let them go to the deuce. Let them be roasted, if they like. Hurry up, don’t you see the house is burning?’

Hearing that, Peo and I leaned out of the window to see what was going on.

‘And if you won’t come out we can go in and we can roast you,’ sympathetically remarked a thin, consumptive-looking man with a goatee, throwing an armful of damp straw under our window.

‘A little sauce won’t hurt,’ called out a beardless Bolshevik, with the nice rosy face of a boy of eighteen. So speaking, he poured on the straw a canful of paraffin, stolen from our supplies, amid general approval.

Thick black suffocating smoke entered the room. We closed the window and ran to save the patients. Luckily our separatka had no beds, only litters.

But the work proved to be beyond our strength. We stuck in the corridor with our first patient, a tall, strong man, sick with brain fever. Impossible; we had twenty-three patients. And besides, what use would it be to carry them out into the keen frost?

We carried the litter in again. Deathlike silence fell on our ward. I saw some of the conscious men’s lips move silently, as if in prayer.

Peo buried her face in her hands, praying probably also. Behind the damp windows puffs of brown smoke rose into the air. It was a bright day, with the sun streaming in through the windows; but the smoke had become so thick that it obscured the light at times.

After a moment, light shone again in the ward.

Halka and I wrote sitting on an empty litter awaiting death.

How long we sat there I do not know. Each of us was probably examining her conscience and bidding her people farewell. I think it must have lasted a long time; for when I roused myself and went up to the window I saw that the crowd had dispersed, the straw and paraffin which had been laid at the four corners of the house had gone out, and only some of the beams smoked. Opening the window, I leaned out and saw a number of people crossing the courtyard bending over something, which was lying on the ground. The same thing happened in many places and on the road as well. In the farmyard a crowd surrounded the hospital wagons, which were loaded with food and clothes, stealing what they could lay their hands on. I shut the window. Halka and Peo lifted up their heads.

‘Well, Zosia, how is it?’

‘Better than we could expect, it seems to me. The fire has gone out. But do you hear . . . ‘

In the rooms above us we heard distinctly the tramping of many feet and a hubbub of voices.

Peo rose and took my hand.

‘Come, Zosia, we will go upstairs, and perhaps we may learn what has happened to the other Sisters. Halka and Olesia will remain with the patients.’

So we went upstairs together. The staircase was all muddy and dripping with melted snow, carried on the boots of the band.

In the dining room a crowd of Bolsheviks were sitting round the table. With wild laughter and yelling they were snatching food out of full plates. All the spoons and knives and forks had been thrown on the floor. One Bolshevik had seized the soup tureen and tilted it, drinking greedily, indifferent to the streams of soup which were pouring behind his collar and down his clothes. Several others standing behind were shaking him and demanding to have their turn.

The beautiful large white azalea standing in the middle of the room, covered with snow-white flowers, was dripping with tomato sauce.

Disgusted with the sight, we drew back unnoticed and went towards our goats’ room. There, besides the Bolsheviks, a whole crowd of peasants — men, women, and children — were plundering. All our boxes had been emptied, the leather ones cut open with knives, the wooden ones broken with the butt ends of guns, and our belongings thrown out on the floor. Women with horrible animal faces were ferreting and looking into all the corners of the room, pulling, tearing, and cramming away their spoils. Some of them were weeping and pitying us all the time. One especially, a big strong woman, was crying heartily, sniffing loudly. She kissed our hands, groaning ‘ Oh, poor dear! ‘ every now and then, greedily cramming each time some new object into her large apron, which was already bulging and full.

The Bolsheviks, armed with guns, lifted up now and then with the tines of their bayonets some new part of our apparel, crying out, ’Who wants that?' And, according to what the object proved to be, either a dozen hands were stretched out for it (shoes and overcoats were most in demand) or else it was thrown out of the window amid laughter and jokes. In that way our prayer books flew out, our fine stockings and other dainty articles, because the women took only the stronger linen, several pairs of our slippers, our needlework, and — oh, horror! — Olesia’s false hair, which she must have forgotten to put on in the general confusion.

Nobody took any notice of us. I squeezed through the crowd with difficulty towards my bed, thinking that I might rescue some of my things. To my great surprise I noticed that one of my trunks had not been opened. It had been pushed under the bed and had escaped notice. Kneeling beside it, I took out some of the things which I cared for most, leaving the rest. This diary I took out, the leather-covered book with my favorite poems, the prayer book which I had got on the day of my First Communion, and the stirrups which I had brought for Maurice but had not had the opportunity to give him.

Before going down, I stopped to look round and see where Peo was. I saw her, loaded with a heap of clothes and making her way towards the door, energetically pushing aside those who would not let her pass.

How strange that crowd was! It not only tolerated but seemed to approve of our taking a share in the spoil. It robbed calmly and shamelessly, in the sight of the owners. You could not call those people bandits — just jackals.

We got out into the corridor at last, and from there to the sickroom. Here only Peo proudly exhibited her spoils. Darling Peo! — unselfish as usual. Of her own things she had hardly taken anything, but each of us found something of ours: Halka her cloak, Olesia her uniform and boots, I my leather jacket and sweater. We found some linen and underclothes and several keepsakes of absent Sisters — such as Hanka Trzcinska’s miniature portrait of her mother.

Halka, encouraged by our example, also decided to go to carry off some more things.

We enjoyed it immensely, and were much amused. For really, was it not funny to steal your own belongings? Only Olesia would not see the joke and declared she would not move, begging us not to leave her alone.

Peo remained to keep her company, while Halka and I went up to our goats’ room; here, among the robbing women, we saw our maid Fruzia, who had already filled her apron with our things. Halka ran up to her. ‘What a good thing you are here! Please help us bring down some things.’

Fruzia looked askance at Halka, then gazed round fearfully and, shrugging her shoulders, answered in Russian: ‘What do you want with me? I don’t know you ‘ — and quickly mixed in the crowd.

We carried down some more things, but could not forget Fruzia.

On our return to the ward, we noticed a white board hanging outside our door. Upon the board was written in Russian this inscription: —

COMPARTMENT FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASES TYPHUS — SMALLPOX — DYSENTERY

Peo explained that she had put up that board during our absence, to keep out the Bolsheviks, and it worked splendidly. Whenever an undesirable guest approached the door and read the inscription, he flew away like anything.

But we were still in ignorance about what had happened to the rest of our Sisters. We were especially uneasy about Lala. Oh, why did she not stay with us!

We held a council and decided that we must find out what had happened to them and to the others. Peo and Olesia remained with the patients, and Halka and I went in quest of information. We met a lot of men at every step, but they either would not or could not tell us anything. Besides, seeing our white aprons, they tried to keep as far from us as they could. Some of them were even afraid to speak to us: ‘You come from the infectious hospital. Keep away, Sisters, keep away, farther back!’

Thinking we might learn something in the farm or in the village, we went out.

It was late in the afternoon. The hour had come when, over the bright winter day, ashes seemed to scatter. Everything was becoming gray and cold. The crows were settling for their night’s rest with a low rustling of wings and shifting to make themselves more comfortable on the stiff branches of the trees.

There, high above us, light still lingered, but below dusk was falling. In that twilight we distinguished a patch on the snow. We approached. A man was lying face downwards, half naked and his feet bare. We leaned over him. On his cropped hair there was a stain, as if from a blow, and a little blood. ‘Perhaps he is still alive,’ we thought. ‘Perhaps it is one of ours.’ We touched him with our hands. A hard cold hostility met my lingers. I started up.

‘Halka, it is a corpse!’

An icy fear seized me. I should have liked to run away. But something held my feet.

Halka spoke in her melodious penetrating voice: ‘Zosia, calm yourself. Darling, be sensible; we cannot do anything for this poor fellow, but we must see who he is.’

A sickly feeling came over me. I struggled hard against it. Halka was trying to turn the man’s face upwards. With an utmost effort I seized him by the shoulders. We turned him slowly on his back.

The open eyes of our Head Doctor stared at us — from the trampled snow at our feet.

We stood helplessly beside the corpse, looking out into the strangely empty world. Suddenly I caught Halka by the arm. A few steps farther another body was lying . . . a third. I looked round wildly behind me . . . a fourth . . . a fifth, just visible in the dark which throws a veil over everything that is farther off.

‘How many corpses are here?’ I asked in a hoarse voice that sounded strange to me — and then a horror came over me, because it seemed to me that somebody else had spoken. I began to tremble all over.

Halka soothed me and stroked my face.

‘Perhaps they are not all dead.’

At this thought all fear departed. Hand in hand we ran up to every corpse in turn. Trembling with emotion and anguish, we turned over the bodies. I was no longer afraid — no, only in a great hurry. We listened to their hearts

— in vain, all in vain.

Some of them we did not even try to listen to — they lay, a horrible mass, in a pool of blood — covered with snow.

Mr. Stiller lay near Dr. Mroczek. His face was frozen in a contortion of anger, his teeth showing, his fists clenched. Who knows — perhaps he had thrown himself in the critical moment to the Head’s rescue.

Nowakowski, poor fellow, had a broad, deep wound on his neck. Cutting off his officer’s shoulder straps did not help him. Near by were the two wounded officers — our patients.

A few steps farther, we found a body which we could not recognize at first. It was that of a very young man, with dark thick hair, his eyes closed, his face sweet and serene, almost smiling. He seemed to us to be only asleep, because we could not find at first sight the wound which had caused his death.

‘Nehrebecki!’ exclaimed Halka suddenly. ‘ He always wore his wedding ring on his second finger. They have been trying to take it off. Look at the skin torn off!’

Nehrebecki! How strangely death changes people! It ennobles their faces or makes them animal-like. Nehrebecki had fought to the last moment. Halka had seen him shoot in the garden when all the others had thrown down their guns. Gun in hand, he had come to this place, to fight. The gun lay beside him, and his stiffened fingers were on it. That face, which looked as if a beautiful serene light shone through it, we could not recognize for that of our chemist Nehrebecki.

Beside the dead bodies little groups of village children were bustling round, pulling off what they could, poking with sticks, and throwing snow and frozen mud at the faces, amid laughter. Little gray animals, melting noiselessly into the gray darkness at our approach.

One thing became clear — we could not leave the bodies of our dead a prey to those children and perhaps to beasts. So we returned home to fetch litters, and, calling Peo away, left Olesia with the patients and then once more departed.

We met several Bolsheviks loafing about and asked them to help us, but a curse was all that we could get from them.

It was with a great effort that I began the office of gravedigger. I knelt in the snow beside the first corpse, unable to decide to put my hands under it. Again Halka’s and Peo’s example spurred me on. We put Dr. Mroczek and Stiller on the stretchers. Halka remained with Stiller and the other dead, while Peo and I carried Dr. Mroczek.

Oh dear, what a weight it was, to carry thus a human body over snowdrifts! Our hands and arms seemed to come out of their sockets, and every so often we stuck and were forced to put down the litters on the snow. Our feet staggered, our legs bent, as if they were made of dough. We sank in the snow and rose. We had only one desire and one sinking fear at heart, not to let the corpse fall out.

Things went better afterwards. One of us, always changing, remained on guard; the others dragged the body — one could hardly say they carried it. But our nervous effort doubled our strength, and the last round went easier and much quicker.

Ten of those bodies we carried in this fashion, although some lay farther away than the others and the last was far out, on the main road leading to the village, about half a mile away from the house. We set the ten stretchers under our windows, so as to be able to look out, and, if necessary, defend the bodies. It had become completely dark. My nerves gave way, for, after having brought the last man, my hands suddenly felt limp and I slipped fainting beside the litter on the snow. Its fresh cold touch brought consciousness back and I rose to my feet before Peo ran up to help me.

Oh, for a rest! In a moment we should have it, if only Halka would bring the sheets to cover the dead.

Suddenly a small figure wrapped in a large shawl slipped out of the darkness. A childish hand pulled at my apron and a child’s voice whispered, ‘Sister.’ I recognized one of the Swallow’s pupils, who told us in a broken voice that beyond the garden, near the smithy, a Polish soldier was lying, that the Bolsheviks broke his head in the morning, and that he lived and screamed for a long time. The little girl was afraid, so she hid in a potato dump and came out to tell the Sisters only when it was dark.

There was nothing to do. Halka, who is the weakest of us, remained, while Peo and I took a litter and went with the little girl. The sight was more terrible than all. The others were shot; this man had been murdered with a piece of iron. His head was battered beyond recognition and brains were coming out of the skull. The trampled snow denoted that there had been many assailants, and that the athletic man had fought long and desperately.

The girl shrieked and fled on seeing the bloody mess, and we were left alone with him, in the field.

How we dragged the body to the house I do not know. As through a mist, I remember that when we had crawled up to the house I was kneeling beside the stretcher, unable to let go of the handles. I could not unbend my fingers and knelt waiting for Peo to help me.

Meanwhile the Bolsheviks had put sentinels in front of our door and would not let us in. The frost was very keen and we were only in our hospital aprons.

Oh, never mind! We sat down on the steps of the porch, ready for anything. At last one of the commanders, on a round, gave orders that we should be let in.

In our ward the air was stifling. People were crammed like herrings in a barrel. Halka and Olesia were lying on the floor with only their arms under their heads. They made room for us.

Every now and then one of us would get up to give medicine or make a camphor injection or perform some other hospital duty.

I tried to go to sleep, but the faces of the eleven dead stood up before my shut eyes. I must have been a little feverish, for after a moment I ceased to distinguish where I was, and the difference between dream and reality. After a horrible nightmare, I woke up and looked round. Where was I? And why did my feet ache so? Why, of course, they always do after a ball. It seemed to me I was in Slepianka, where I have been dancing a lot, and was dancing still. It was a whirl of light and music and people. Stas R. was showing some funny step which he had learned in Paris. Mr. Z. invites me to dance with him. I cannot, I’m dancing with that tall Uhlan with a pince-nez. ‘You see, I can’t possibly, Mr. Z.!’

‘Mr. Z., Mr. Z.!’ I called. Everything disappeared. I lifted my head and saw Peo sleeping. Oh, it is the goats’ room. ‘But why are you dressed, Peo darling? Are you on duty?’ I ran up to the window.

There was a full moon. In its light I saw a row of bodies and dead faces. Unclosed eyes with frozen pupils were gazing at me. I awoke.

But when I regained my place and stretched myself on the floor, the phantoms returned. After a fearful nightmare, I caught Halka by the arm.

’Oh, Halka darling, do you know that I can’t laugh? It is horrible, but I feel that I shall never be able to laugh, not even smile. Halka — do you also feel like that?’

Halka put a cold hand on my forehead, then got up and came back to me after a moment with a glass of something she gave me to drink. It was dawn before I could go to sleep.

(To be concluded)