22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [10]
Jostling past a group of girls, peasants in shawls and country headscarves, he felt a hand brushing his pocket and he dodged sideways, falling into step with some soldiers, hoping that the hawkers and pickpockets would leave him alone if they saw he was going to fight for his country.
‘Bloody chaos, isn’t it?’ said a voice next to him.
‘Terrible!’ Janusz yelled back, glad to find somebody to talk to. He looked for the man, to find the eyes that belonged to the voice. ‘Are you …’
But the soldier had already gone and he was talking to the back of someone’s hat.
He arrived at the station and fought his way inside, clutching his mobilization card to his chest. For weeks, radio broadcasts had urged all available men to go to their nearest railway station, where they could sign up as soldiers ready to defend Poland. For weeks, Janusz’s heart had leapt and drilled against his ribs, waking him in the night with its rhythms. And there was no doubting that the war was going to happen. Here he was, standing in the middle of pandemonium – the station much worse than the crowded streets – his legs trembling while his heart still walloped his ribs in fury as if trying to beat the nerves out of him.
He looked up the stairs he had just descended, the thin section of the sky still visible above them. It would be impossible to fight his way past the crowds, back up to the station entrance and the over-baked day. He had to go on. He took one last look at the sky and then carried on forwards, into the crush of people.
Trains were crowded with families trying to leave Warsaw, and whole carriages were being taken over by soldiers. Pulled back and forth, fighting for room to stand, Janusz knocked into crying children, but there was no time to stop and help them. Everywhere he looked he saw bewildered infants, and it occurred to him that if anything were to happen to him, if he were to die during the war, these lost children would be his last view of Warsaw. They were surely who he was going to be fighting for, all the sons and daughters of Poland.
A harassed-looking soldier told him to hurry up and board a train.
‘Which one?’ asked Janusz.
The man waved his arm in the direction of a platform. ‘Timetable route number 401. Warsaw to Lwow. You get off at Przemysl, 491 kilometres down the line. They need men to work on the town defences there. Now get out of my sight.’
By late afternoon Janusz’s hat had vanished, his wallet containing his identity card and a few zlotys had been pickpocketed, he had been given a uniform and a kit bag and he had boarded a diesel train heading south-east.
In carriages up and down the train, soldiers were singing and sharing jokes, but Janusz stayed silent. He prayed Silvana and Aurek would be safe. He’d said goodbye casually, as if he were just going out to buy a newspaper. He’d told himself it was braver to leave like that. He’d met up with his father a few days before and that had been the old man’s advice.
‘Don’t dwell too long on saying your goodbyes. Women always cry and make a fuss. Make it quick. Goodbyes are best kept short. Be strong and you’ll make a fine soldier.’ His father had looked down then, his hand hovering over Janusz’s shoulder. ‘Just make sure you come back in one piece.’
Now Janusz regretted the way he had left. In truth, it hadn’t been bravery that had made him turn his back so quickly on his wife and child. It had been the hot tears that had pushed at his eyes as he’d brushed Silvana’s cheek with a kiss. His father had been wrong. She’d been the brave one, standing there dry-eyed, holding their son tightly in her arms.
In the train’s corridor, Janusz leaned against the door, rocking back and forth with the motion of the tracks, watching the landscape change from tall houses and industrial buildings into flat fields and dark belts of woodland interspersed