雙語·居里夫人的故事 第三章　反叛

Chapter III　Rebels

MANYA at fourteen was not yet as pretty as her sisters. Bronia was quite grown up with long sweeping skirts and her golden hair done up into a bun at the back. She had taken her mother's place and looked after the housekeeping and the lodgers. Hela was sixteen and a beauty, fair and tall and graceful. Joseph was also fair and tall and handsome. He was at the university studying medicine.

The girls would have liked to think of themselves as going to the university also, but in Russian Poland no woman was allowed to go to any university. If they wanted to learn more than they learned at school, they had to get their learning from books for themselves or in another country.

For the moment, Manya was content for herself. She had gone on to the High School and was as happy as a squirrel with all the nuts it needed; but she was worried about Bronia. What would Bronia do without a university? Couldn't she, Manya, invent a scheme to get Bronia to some country where girls could learn what they wanted to know? She made up her mind to work and earn money to keep her elder sister. Well, the high road to earning was to get through school successfully! Manya, that particular morning, would be late for school unless she finished breakfast quickly, cut up the sandwiches for school lunch, saved, yes saved, the meat from Lancet who had interrupted her thoughts by a quick grab at the last of the mutton which was waiting to be cut up for those sandwiches. Lancet was the red setter, the adored of the household. He was very beautiful and did everything he shouldn't. He had golden feathers on ears and tail and feet and should have been a most obedient shooting dog, but he had had no education. Manya, her brother and sisters spoilt him all day, kissed him, even made a lap dog of him. He slept in the chairs, brushed vases down with his tail, ate other people's lunch, upset visitors with his uproarious welcome, took their hats and gloves for them with the politest air—gloves and hats that looked sadly the worse for wear when they were returned to their owners.

At last lunch having been safely wrapped up, her satchel slung on her back and Lancet persuaded to stay at home, Manya ran off to school.

At the blue palace where Count Zamoyski lived, she stopped, hesitated before the great bronze lion guarding one of its old stone courtyards and put her hand on the heavy ring in its mouth to turn it over its nose.

“Don't run away, Manyusia,” called a voice from a window; “Kazia'll be there in a minute.” Manya always picked up Kazia, who was the daughter of the Count's librarian, on her way to school; but if her friend were late, she turned the bronze ring up and went on. Then Kazia could be in no doubt whether she had passed.

“Come to tea this afternoon,” called Kazia's mother; “there'll be your favourite iced chocolate.”

“Of course you're coming to tea,” said Kazla. “Oh! Aren't we late? Come on!”

So the two hurried along the narrow street and through the park, neither of them conscious of the difference everyone else could see in them. Kazia was so well dressed, so obviously the petted daughter of two devoted parents, while Manya was a little left to herself, a little shabby.

It was a long way to school and they had plenty of time for chatter, time too to play certain games. In the wet weather they made a point of trailing their goloshes through the deepest parts of the puddles; in the dry, they played the “green” game.

“Do come to the shops and buy a new exercise book,” said Manya. I have seen some awfully jolly ones with green covers that will…”

But Kazia wasn't caught. At the word green and before Manya could finish her sentence she handed her a piece of green velvet she was keeping ready for the purpose in her pocket. She escaped a forfeit and for the moment nothing more followed. Manya seemed to have given up the game. She began talking about their last history lesson in which the professor had gone out of his way to tell them that Poland was a mere province of Russia and the Polish language a Patois.

“Still he seemed uncomfortable,” she remarked. “Did you see that he dared not look at us and turned quite pale?”

“Yes!” said Kazia; “he was almost green.” And immediately, she saw Manya twiddling a young green chestnut leaf under her nose.

“We've passed the monument!” a cry of horror from Manya. “Oh, well! We've got to go back”; and back they went right to Saxe Square where there was a lofty column supported by four lions. On it was written “To the Poles faithful to their Monarch.” The Czars had erected the monument to those Poles who, traitors to their own country, had died fighting on the side of the oppressor. It had become the duty of all Poles who were faithful to Poland to spit at the monument every time they passed it and Manya and Kazia would not leave that duty undone even if it meant retracing their steps or being late for school.

“Are you coming to watch the dancing tonight?” asked Manya. Naturally Kazia was going. Every week a few families met to dance at the Sklodovskis; but only the girls who were “out” were allowed to dance. Kazia and Manya were obliged to sit still and watch. Nevertheless they were getting hints of how to do it, studying the steps, discussing the movements, learning the tunes; and when the grown-up dancing was over, they practised by themselves.

They were eagerly discussing the joys of coming out as they walked under the school archway into the courtyard. Girls from every direction were trooping into the great bare, three-storied building; there were laughter and chatter and gaiety and many greetings. But one girl was hurrying in alone as if she wished to escape notice. As the two caught her up, they saw that her eyes were swollen and red and her clothes were untidy as if she had scrambled into them anyhow.

“What's the matter with Kunicka?” they asked one another and one of them slipped an arm round the girl.

“What's the matter, Kunicka?”

Kunicka could scarcely answer, her pale face was drawn with pain. “It's my brother,” she stammered. “He's been caught in a plot… For three days we hadn't had any news of him…They're... they're going to hang him at dawn to-morrow.”

The words seemed to have no meaning. The two drew Kunicka out of the crowd; bending over her, they tried to understand, tried to comfort her. But there was no comfort for someone whose brother was going to be hanged to-morrow! Manya and Kazia knew the young, gay brother. He was their friend. He had done nothing wrong. How could he be going to die?

“Make haste, children! Enough talking!” It was the hated voice of the German superintendent, Miss Mayer, and the three were obliged to bury their grief and go into school.

It was no longer the private school to which Manya had gone as a little girl, but the government High School, run by the Russian government. In it, everything except the pupils were Russian. The Polish children were obliged to attend it, because only by so doing could they get a certificate of any sort which would enable them to get work. They attended, but they were rebels and freer to express their opinions than their elders. Manya and Kazia took delight in inventing witticisms against their Russian professors, their German master and especially against Miss Mayer who detested Manya only a little less than Manya detested her.

Little and dark Miss Mayer used to go about in soft slippers not to be heard and the better to spy on the girls.

“It's no more use speaking to that Sklodovska girl,” she said, “than throwing green peas at a wall!”

“Look at your ridiculous, frizzy, disorderly head, Marya Sklodovska! How often have you been told to confine your curls? Come here and let me brush them down and make you look like a decent school girl.” “Like a German Gretchen!” thought Manya, but she said nothing. So with the brush that brushed everybody's hair, she set on Manya's head with good hard blows. But however hard she brushed, the curls were rebels still—those light, capricious, exquisite curls that framed Manya's round, rebellious face.

“I won't have you look at me like that!” Miss Mayer would shout. “You have no right to look down on me!”

“I can't help it,” said Manya truthfully, for she was a head taller than Miss Mayer. No doubt she was glad that words sometimes have two meanings.

But the girls liked some of their teachers, for some were Polish. In some of the Russians also, to their dumb surprise, they found Polish sympathies. They began to understand that even in Russia there were rebels. One Russian master had gone so far as to give as a prize a book of revolutionary poems. That silent act became the talk of the school and the pupils watched him with wondering, admiring eyes. Poles could live with Russians. Oh, yes! Were not the pupils in that city school Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews? And were they not all happy together? In school they found no difference in the races. Outside school each nation kept apart, for all feared spies.

In spite of everything Manya loved her school; a little shamefacedly she confessed it. “Do you know, Kazia,” she wrote one holiday, “I like the school. Are you going to laugh at me? I like it. I even like it very much. I am not longing for it. No! But I am not sad at the thought of term and two years more of it is no horrible thought.”

But on that particular day, when Miss Mayer called the girls in from the courtyard, Manya had no thought for school. In the sunny morning, she had been dreaming of music and dance and jesting. Suddenly the world had changed. While the dim words of unheard lessons floated around her ears, she could see nothing but the young eager boy whom she knew… and a cold, pictured dawn with a gallows.

There was no thought of dancing at the Sklodovskis that night. Manya, Bronia and Hela, Kazia and Ula, her sister, all went to sit up the night through with Kunicka, keeping watch in the long night, thinking of the boy who had to die. That keeping watch is a Catholic custom, it is just staying awake to think. The six children sat with Kunicka. We who are happier cannot imagine what they thought or felt. It is so different when someone we love dies naturally, even children understand that; but this other—to sit and wait while the minutes pass and the hour of man's exceeding cruelty comes nearer to stain the dawn with wrong—that was horror indeed. They must have watched in silence, for there was nothing to say, nothing to do, only plenty to think, rebel thoughts for the hearts of six young rebels. From time to time, they did what they could for Kunicka, their own hearts breaking with sympathy. They tried to get her to drink something warm; gently they put their arms around her or tried to dry her tears. Then suddenly they realised that the new light was no longer candlelight. There was a red line in the sky. The red dawn had come. The six buried their terrified faces in their hands and threw themselves on their knees to pray for the young rebel who was dead.