The Echo of the Song.

A short story partly based on the life of the Polish poet Theresa Boguslawska (1929-1945).

I wandered through a city that had become hell and met an angel sitting on the rubble writing verse.

‘Of what can you possibly write in such a place?’ I asked.

‘Can you not hear the echo of the song?’

‘All I hear is the symphony from the pit.’

She saw me looking at the ring of fire around us.

‘They mocked our Lord with a crown of thorns,’ she said continuing to write on the tattered pieces of paper carefully balanced upon her knee.

‘We cannot survive this.’

‘After the winter, rivers run, flowers bloom, faith will rebuild. Come with me.’ She took me gently by the hand and lead me to where Christ and his angels now wept. And every place where her feet touched the earth was made beautiful again.

She was ten when the plague first came. On that last day of freedom she joined the crowds lining the streets of Warsaw cheering and waving to our troops, her brother stood next to her whispering the names of the regiments as they passed. Her favourite were the lancers mounted upon their white horses, singing their songs of freedom and home. Even then everyone knew the courage of flesh and blood could never prevail against the iron and steel of the plague, but they went anyway and we loved them all the more for it.

In three weeks we lost the brightest and the best, and what the plague did not claim, was to be found buried at Katyn.

As the plague spread defiling all that was good we became a silent people. A beaten people. In our servitude we bowed our heads and endured the taunts and humiliations of our new masters. And when we fell on our knees before the Almighty we gave thanks it was not us that had been taken that day.

And yet beneath the masks and deceits we created to survive in a world gone mad, there was a part of being that was forever self, a secret self hidden deep within. There dwelt hope and the will to resist. Some knew that place by instinct, others took time to find it, some never did. We hid deep within the fabric of daily life and plotted our acts of revenge. At the time I thought that was how a defeated people fought back and so could not comprehend the Boss’s orders to find and protect the ‘intellectuals.’

I was 18 and already on my third assignment for the Underground when our paths first crossed. The Boss had asked me to carry some documents to one of our cells a few miles outside of Warsaw. I first saw her kneeling down by the side of the road, her head pressed against the side of a tree. At first I thought she was one of the ‘happy people,’ you saw them everywhere back then; unfortunates driven mad by the reality of life under the plague. They retreated into themselves refugees from the horrors of the present seeking sanctuary in the memories of the past. Some pitied them, others crossed themselves and called them ‘mad.’ Perhaps they were, but part of me thinks they were secretly laughing at us, in a world gone mad who is the one that is sane? I, for one, cannot say.

I thought of walking by, but something about the girl made me hesitate. Seeing my indecision she looked at me and smiled, taking this for a sign of encouragement and normality, I asked her what she was doing.

‘I am listening to their song.’

My face must have betrayed me for she started to laugh.

‘Don’t be afraid I won’t hurt you.’

‘I’m not afraid,’ I said sharply.

‘No?’ she teased.

‘No,’ I said firmly.

‘Oh my brave and threadbare knight, all glad in faded blue and grey. What would you have me say?’

I looked at my trousers patched at the knees and turned away to hide the shame of my poverty.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘don’t go.’

I turned back.

‘You said you were listening to something?’

‘Do you hear it?’

I listened, but all I could hear were the sounds of birds and the leaves blowing in the wind.

She seemed disappointed.

‘One day you will hear and understand.’

I next saw her in Warsaw, it was day they took Jacob, he used to be a surgeon, a very successful one in the old days and for those that could not afford his services he helped anyway, for his humanity the plague rewarded him with a yellow star upon the chest.

They came for him and the many others that were with him, lining them up against the nearest brick wall. A crowd was gathered and made to watch. Everyone knew what was going to happen; it was inevitable after the plague had found the bodies of its own. We watched as they stood in line waiting for the end. I am ashamed to say all of us were thankful that it was them and not us standing there, all but one that is.

Suddenly she ran out from the crowd, straight up to Jacob and kissed him upon the cheek. She turned and faced the crowd.

‘He is not of my faith,’ she told them, ‘but I am his sister.’

She stood in front of Jacob and faced the plague.

There was a murmur in the crowd.

The plague was uncertain, it wanted to teach us a lesson, but feared the risk of what might happen.

‘Come on,’ said a voice beside me. It was my contact ‘Maria.’ She nodded towards my angel. ‘We have to get her out of there.’

We walked slowly towards her, very slowly, conscious that the plague was watching our every move, looking for the slightest excuse to act. We each took an arm and gently, but firmly, led her away into the crowd.

‘Stop!’ commanded the plague but it was too slow, we were already running down the street and out of sight. That night we had to move several times before a message reached us directing us to one of our safe houses.

Word soon spread of what happened, the plague confounded by the defiance of a small insignificant Polish girl, unbelievable. Was it my imagination or did everyone seem to walk a little taller afterwards.

From that day on she was assigned to my unit. ‘So you can keep an eye on me,’ she said. We denied it, but everyone knew it was true. I remember every spare moment she would be scribbling something down on any spare pieces of paper she could lay her hands on. At first she refused to show us what she was writing but Maria worked on her, slowly chipping away at her shyness and embarrassment. One night we were huddled together shivering in a damp cellar hiding from the plague. We had been on the run for days and the strain and fear were now beginning to show. To pass the time Maria asked her to read us something she had been writing. To my surprise she agreed. I was expecting some childish nonsense, but as she began to read her verses in that quiet, clear voice of hers, something strange seemed to happen. When I was at school I heard the story of how a French girl had revived a nation against an invader. To my strictly rational and scientific mind such a thing was clearly absurd, I had laughed out loud saying that it was nothing more than the invention of a skilled propagandist. But huddled together in that cellar listening to her words I began to believe of impossible things. I began to believe we could be free again.

It was then I began to understand the Boss’s order. An act of defiance no matter how heroic or noble the sacrifice is meaningless if the people do not understand the idea of freedom. The spirit of a defeated people survives not in vengeance but in the words and pictures of its writers and artists. An image painted on a wall or a few scraps of poetry passed from hand-to-hand in the street can be more devastating to an enemy than any act of violence.

Often she would amuse herself by sitting on the steps of the buildings opposite the plague and calmly write her poetry in its presence. At first the plague was suspicious and demanded to see her verses, but she flattered and entertained it with tales of pastoral scenes and it soon decided that she was harmless. But what it didn’t realise was that buried deep within such a lyric landscape were details of troop numbers, insignia, directions of movement. Soon news of her exploits reached the Boss and he paid us a visit. He laughed at her exploits and cried at her words. And at the end of the evening he stood up and kissed her gently upon the cheek. He told me afterwards:

‘If ever I doubt why we do this I will remember this night and know the reason why.’

It was inevitable they would come for her. By those that know she was warned and told to run.

‘I cannot be silent,’ she told them, ‘of those who are gone, I must sing their song.’

They came for her early the following morning and locked her in the darkest and deepest of their places. From the pitiful few that ever saw the light of day again we learned something of the conditions, the cold and the damp, the maggots in the bread, the screaming in the night and the dreadful knowledge that when it stopped a life of a friend was no more.

Day after day she survived, gone but not forgotten. Voices were raised, questions asked. They pleaded for mercy for one so young. To the plague she was an embarrassment regarding her as a mere child led astray and so tried to entice her to its side. Like Christ alone in the wilderness who can guess of the fears and temptations?

Then one day the miracle of the resurrection. From the dark and into the light she stepped. If it thought it had crushed her spirit it was wrong. Her first words to us were;

‘What do you ask of me?’

Throughout the early part of 1944 we confounded and perplexed the plague. We struck where it was weakest and then disappeared into mist and marsh. Soon there was nowhere it felt safe. Then we heard the sound of guns in the east and thought they had come to set us free, how little we knew. In ignorance Warsaw sacrificed itself to the music of Chopin. All I remember is the screaming from the skies and the howling of a wind unlike any that I have ever known. A most unnatural thing. We feared its coming, for where it passed, death soon followed. Night and day, through the entire month of August, the plague mocked us smashing our beloved city street by street.

Some prayed amongst the ashes, others lost hope, most just fought and died. The plague said God had abandoned us. But it lied. I know that while she lived one of heaven's most precious jewels walked amongst us.

She was fifteen when the Almighty called her back to him. I called to pay my respects; she was lying there covered by a sheet of perfect white, her face pale and serene, untouched by the plague. To deaden my grief I walked for hours afterwards in the ruins of Warsaw. Then I heard the sound of someone singing. At first I thought it was some trick of my imagination and tried to dismiss it, but the voice was becoming louder. I stopped and listened. Suddenly there appeared to be strange shapes all around me, figures of people, men, women and children, the souls of the fallen, all watching me.

Then I saw her.

She was singing.

Then another began to sing, then another and another. Soon there were ten thousand voices all singing in divine harmony.

At last I understood.

I am old now and wander a land now free. Do the young know or care of all that went before? There is no reason why they should. There is little to remember her, a small footnote in some obscure academic journal, or if you can find it a dog-eared copy of her poems buried deep within the bowels of some second-hand bookshop. But I have not forgotten her.

All our lives have times of sorrow and darkness, but when I am my lowest, believing that even God has abandoned me, I always remember that I once met an angel in the ruins who took me by the hand and led me to a better place.