“When do you think I can start for Poland?”
“Perhaps in six months,” she replied soothingly.
He groaned. “I want to go there now.”
“What for?”
“To join the Polish Army.”
She had nursed through the war, and knew that men in his plight were of
no further use in armies. Gently she told him so. He stared
uncomprehensively on an empty world.
“What can I do when I leave here?”
“You must have a long, long rest, and do nothing at all and think of
nothing at all.”
He tried to smile at the nurse’s pleasant face. “You’ve done me a bad
turn in bringing me back to life,” said he.
When they thought him capable of grappling with his personal affairs,
they brought him his bulging pocket-book, and bade him count his money.
He laughed. It was quite safe. He handed back the roll of notes into the
nurse’s keeping. But the other contents of the case he looked at
dismally: the passport, with the foreign visas; the railway tickets; the
letters to Prague and Warsaw. What were the good of them now? He would
never go to Poland. When he got strong, all the fighting would be over.
And when he did get strong, in a few months or a year, he would probably
be lame, with odds and ends of organs gone wrong inside him. He tried to
read the letters; but they were written in Polish—unintelligible now in
spite of his strenuous short study of the language. They bore a
signature which he could not decipher. But it was certainly not
Boronowski. His mind soon tired of the puzzle. What was the good of
keeping the letters? Drearily he tore them in pieces and gave them to
the nurse to dispose of, when she brought him a meal.
Tired with the effort he slept. He awoke to a sense of something final
done, or something important left undone. As his brain cleared, he
realized that subconsciously he had been thinking of his duty to
Boronowski. Of course, he must be informed at once of the reason for his
defection.
And then dismay overwhelmed him. He had no address to Boronowski. The
only channels of communication with him, the Prague and Warsaw letters,
he had destroyed. A happy idea struck him. He toyed with it for what
seemed interminable hours until the nurse came to his bedside. He called
for writing materials, which were smilingly denied him. He was too weak.
But the nurse would write a short letter from dictation. He dictated two
identical letters, one to the Polish Legation, one to the Polish
Consulate, asking for the address of Mr. Paul Boronowski, late of 21
Hillditch Street, St. Pancras. By return of post came polite replies
from Legation and Consulate. Both disclaimed any knowledge of the
identity of Mr. Paul Boronowski. Legation and Consulate were blandly
ignorant of the existence of their confidential agents. Then he
remembered the baffling signature to the two letters. He laughed
somewhat bitterly. His life seemed to be involved in a tangle of false
names.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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