The Polish Officer

answering machine gun, tracer rounds in the darkness like sparks blown across the sky.

Sometimes the snow fell in squalls; swirling, windblown. Then it cleared, the clouds rolling east, the frozen river shimmering in the moonlight. De Milja drove with both hands gripping the wheel, coaxing the truck along the ice, riding the snow that gave them traction. Shura pointed out a small road that led up a hill from the river; perhaps an abandoned ferry crossing. De Milja stopped the truck and climbed the hill. He found a well-used dirt road and an ancient milestone that pointed the way to Biala.

It took a long time to get the truck off the river. De Milja and Shura knelt by the tires and studied the surface like engineers, finally building a track of branches to the edge of the shore. It worked. Engine whining, wheels spinning, the truck lurched, swayed sideways, then climbed.

Once on the upper road, de Milja let the engine idle while he got his breath back. “Where are we?” Shura asked.

“Not far from Biala. A few hours, if nothing goes wrong.” He eased the clutch into first gear, moved off slowly on the rutted road.

Midnight passed, then 1:00 a.m. They drove through snow-covered forest, boughs heavy and white bent almost to the ground. Shura fell into an exhausted sleep, then woke suddenly as they bounced over a rock. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to abandon you.”

“I’m all right,” de Milja said.

“I should have helped to keep you awake. I can sing something, if you like.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I can discuss—oh, well certainly music. Chopin. Or Rachmaninoff.”

The engine steamed as the truck climbed a long hill. At the crest, de Milja braked gently to a stop. They were on a wooded height above Biala. Directly below, a poor neighborhood at the edge of town. Crooked one-story houses, crooked dirt streets, white with frost. Wisps of wood smoke hung above the chimneys in the still air. De Milja drove the truck to the side of the road and turned off the ignition. “Now we wait for dawn, for the end of the curfew. Then we can go into the open-air market with the produce trucks from the countryside. Once we get there we can make contact with the local ZWZ unit—our luck, it’s a good one. Very good. They’ll move us the rest of the way, into Warsaw. In a freight train, maybe. Or hidden in a vegetable wagon.”

They sat and stared out the window. It seemed very quiet with the engine off.

“Perhaps it would be best if I stayed here,” Shura said.

“You know somebody here?”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t last long.”

“No, probably not. But at least . . .”

“You’d have it over with?” De Milja shook his head angrily. “No, no. That isn’t right. We’ll hide you,” he said. “Not in the ghetto— somewhere in Warsaw, one of the working-class neighborhoods. With friends of ours. It won’t be easy, but if you’re able to stay in the apartment, if you avoid people, in other words if you can live in hiding, you’ll survive. You’ll need some luck, but you’ll see the end of the war.”

“And you?”

“Me?” De Milja shrugged. “I have to keep fighting,” he said. “The Germans, the Russians. Perhaps both. Perhaps for years and years. But I might live through it, you never know. Somebody always seems to survive, no matter what happens. Perhaps it will be me.”

He was silent for a time, staring at the sleeping town. “There was a moment, about a year ago. Someone I knew in Paris, ‘Let’s just go to Switzerland,’ she said. I could have, maybe I should have, but I didn’t. I missed my chance, but I don’t really know why. I had a friend, a Russian, he had theories about these things—a world of bad people and good people, a war that never seems to end, you have to take sides. I don’t know, maybe that’s the way it is.”

He paused, then smiled to himself. “Honestly, Shura, right now I will be happy when the sun comes up. The marketplace will be full of people—there’ll be a fire in a barrel, a way to get a hot cup of coffee. It’s possible!” he laughed.

“Hot coffee,” Shura said.

“And some bread. Why not?”

They sat close together in the truck, trying to stay warm. He held her tightly, she pressed against his side. In time the darkness faded and the first sunlight hit the rooftops, a flock of pigeons flew up in the air, a dog barked, another answered.

A Reader’s Guide

The Research of Alan Furst’s Novels

Alan Furst describes the area of his interest as “near history.” His novels are set between 1933—the date of Adolf Hitler’s ascent, with the first Stalinist purges in Moscow coming a year later—to 1945, which saw the end of the war in Europe. The history of this period is well documented. Furst uses books by journalists of the time, personal memoirs—some privately published—autobiographies (many of the prominent individuals of the period wrote them), war and political histories, and characteristic novels written during those years.

“But,” he says, “there is a lot more”—for example, period newsreels, magazines, and newspapers, as well as films and music, especially swing and jazz. “I buy old books,” Furst says, “and old maps, and I once bought, while living in Paris, the photo archive of a French stock house that served the newspapers of Paris during the Occupation, all the prints marked as cleared by the German censorship.” In addition, Furst uses intelligence histories of the time, many of them by British writers.

Alan Furst has lived for long periods in Paris and in the south of France. “In Europe,” he says, “the past is still available. I remember a blue neon sign, in the eleventh arrondissement in Paris, that had possibly been there since the 1930s.” He recalls that on the French holiday le jour des morts (All Saints’ Day, November 1) it is customary for Parisians to go to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. “Before the collapse of Polish communism, the Polish emigres used to gather at the tomb of

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Maria Walewska. They would burn rows of votive candles and play Chopin on a portable stereo. It was always raining on that day, and a dozen or so Poles would stand there, under black umbrellas, with the music playing, as a kind of silent protest against the communist regime. The spirit of this action was history alive—as though the entire past of that country, conquered again and again, was being brought back to life.”

The heroes of Alan Furst’s novels include a Bulgarian defector from the Soviet intelligence service, a foreign correspondent for Pravda, a Polish cartographer who works for the army general staff, a French producer of gangster films, and a Hungarian emigre who works with a diplomat at the Hungarian legation in Paris. “These are characters in novels,” Furst says, “but people like them existed; people like them were courageous people with ordinary lives and, when the moment came, they acted with bravery and determination. I simply make it possible for them to tell their stories.”

Questions for Discussion

It has been said that many of the heroes of World War II were ordinary men and women who responded to extraordinary times. Is this true of Captain de Milja? Do you think he would still be a remarkable person in peacetime? What about the young boy on the train to Pilava?

At the beginning of The Polish Officer, Captain de Milja is described as “a soldier” who “knew he didn’t have long to live.” At the very end of the book, he says he “might live through [the war], you never know.” Discuss this change in his outlook. Does his opinion of his chances of survival affect his actions?

From the outbreak of fighting until Germany’s surrender, Poland fought an all-out war against the German invasion. Warsaw and many other Polish cities were destroyed, and Poland lost eighteen percent of its population between 1939 and 1945—more than any other country in World War II. By contrast, France lost a much smaller percentage of its population and Paris was left nearly intact after the German occupation. What does this say about