The man’s ungentle hands gripped her. ‘Put on your outdoor things quickly. We’re leaving at once.’ His voice was low and peremptory. ‘Leaving?’ She stared, saw him as a blacker shadow against the black, her cold lips murmuring: ‘Why?’ ‘Don’t talk. Do as I tell you.’ Obediently she stood up, the draught from the door made her shiver. ‘How am I supposed to find anything in the dark? Can’t we have a light?’ ‘No. Somebody might see.’ He flashed a torch briefly, saw her pick up a comb and start pulling it through her hair, snatched it away from her. ‘Leave that! Get your coat on—hurry!’ The irritable impatience radiating from him made her movements slower, more awkward. Feeling about the dark room, she found her coat but could not find the way into it; she held it the wrong way round. He seized it angrily, turned it, forced her arms through the sleeves. ‘And now come on! Don’t make a sound. Nobody must know we’ve gone.’ ‘Where are we going? Why do we have to go at this time of night?’ She expected no answer, doubted whether she heard correctly when he muttered, ‘It’s the one chance,’ adding something about the approaching ice. He grasped her arm then, pulled her across the landing and on to the stairs. The beam of the torch, intermittently stabbing pitch blackness, showed his looming repressive shadow, which she followed as if sleepwalking through all the ramifications of the huge building, out into the icy snowfilled night.
Although snow was falling heavily, there was none on the black car; it had just been cleared away: yet no one had passed them, nobody was in sight. She shivered as she got in, sat in silence while he quickly inspected the chains. Yellow oblongs stained the pure white in front of the windows. In the air, the snow was transformed into showering gold as it passed the lights. A confused noise from the dining hall, voices, clattering plates, drowned the noise of the car starting up, and impelled her to ask: ‘What about all those people who are expecting you? Aren’t you going to see them?’
Already in a state of irritable nervous tension, he was exasperated by the question, lifted one hand from the wheel in a threatening gesture. ‘I told you not to talk!’ His voice was frightening, his eyes flashed in the dark interior of the car. She moved fast to avoid the blow, but could not get out of reach, crouched down, shielding herself with her raised arm, made no sound when the glancing blow struck her shoulder and crushed her against the door; afterwards huddled there in silence, shrinking away from his silent rage.
Snow-muffled silence outside; silence filling the car. He drove without lights, his eyes like cats’ eyes, able to see through the snowy darkness. A ghost-car, invisible, silent, fled from the ruined town. The ancient snow-covered fortifications fell back and vanished in snow, the broken wall vanished behind. In front loomed the black living wall of the forest, ghostly whiteness fuming along its crest like spray blown back from the crest of a breaking wave. She waited for the black mass to come crashing down on them, but there was no crash, only the silence of snow and forest outside, and in the car, his silence, her apprehension. He never spoke, never looked at her, handled the powerful car recklessly on the rough frozen track, hurling it at speed over all obstacles, as if by the force of his will. The violent lurching of the car threw her about; she was not heavy enough to keep in her seat. Thrown against him, forced to touch his coat, she winced away as though the material burned. He seemed unaware. She felt forgotten, forsaken.
It was incomprehensible to her, this extraordinary flight that went on and on. The forest went on for ever. The silence went on and on. The snow stopped, but the cold went on and even increased, as if some icy exudation from the black trees congealed beneath them. Hour after hour passed before a little reluctant daylight filtered down through the roof of branches, revealing nothing but gloomy masses of firs, dead and living trees tangled together, a dead bird often caught in the branches, as if the tree had caught it deliberately. She shuddered, identifying herself, as a victim, with the dead bird. It was she who had been snared by nets of black branches. Armies of trees surrounded her on all sides, marching to infinity in all directions. Snow flew past the window again, waving white flags. She was the one who long ago had surrendered. She understood nothing of what was happening. The car leapt in the air, she was flung painfully on to her bruised shoulder, tried ineffectually to shield it with the other hand.
The man drove the car brutally throughout the short day. It seemed to her that she had never known anything but this terrifying drive in the feeble half-light; the silence, the cold, the snow, the arrogant figure beside her. His cold statue’s eyes were the eyes of a Mercury, ice-eyes, mesmeric and menacing. She wished for hatred. It would have been easier. The trees receded a little, a little more sky appeared, bringing the last gleams of the fading light. Suddenly, she was astonished to see two log huts, a gate between, blocking the road. Unless the gate was opened they could not pass. She watched it racing towards them, reinforced with barbed wire and metal. The car burst through with a tremendous shattering smash, a great rending and tearing, a frantic metallic screeching. Broken glass showered her, she ducked instinctively as a long, sharp, pointed sliver sliced the air just over her head, and the car rocked sickeningly on two wheels before turning over. At the last moment then, by some miracle of skill, or strength, or sheer will power, the driver brought it back on to its axis again, and drove on as if nothing had happened.
Shouts exploded behind them. A few shots popped ineffectively and fell short. She glanced back and saw uniforms running; then the small commotion was over, cut off by black trees. The road improved on this side of the frontier, the car travelled faster, more smoothly. She shifted her position, leaning away from the stream of ice- vapour entering through the smashed window, shook bits of broken glass off her lap. There was blood on her wrists, both hands were cut and bleeding; she looked at them in remote surprise.
I raced down stairs and passages. In sight of the main door I hid in the shadows, watched the men guarding it. Sounds of the party, now growing more animated, came from the dining hall, where drinking was evidently in full swing. Someone shouted to the guards out in the cold corridor. The men I was watching put their heads together, then left their post, passed close to me as they went to join the rest. Unnoticed by anyone, I slipped out through the door they were supposed to be guarding.
It was snowing hard. I could barely distinguish the nearest ruins, white stationary shadows beyond the moving fabric of falling white. Snowflakes turned yellow like swarms of bees round the lighted windows. A wide expanse of snow lay in front of me, a hollow marking the place where the warden’s black car had stood. I realized that various white mounds must be other cars, belonging, presumably, to his household, and waded towards them through the deep snow. I tried the door of the first one, found it unlocked. The whole vehicle was buried in snow, which had drifted deep against wheels and windscreen. Snow fell all over me when I opened the door, filled my sleeve as I tried to clean the glass. I thought the starter would never work, but at last the car began to move slowly forward. I revved the engine just enough to keep the tyres gripping, and followed the warden’s hardly visible tracks, which were rapidly being obliterated by fresh snow. Outside the encircling wall they practically vanished. I lost them altogether at the edge of the forest, blindly drove into a tree, scraping off the bark. The car stopped and refused to move. The wheels just spun round, uselessly churning the snow. As I got out, a mass of snow fell on me from the branches above. In two seconds my clothes were caked solid with driving snow. I tore down fir branches, threw them under the wheels, got back into the car and re-started. It was no good; the tyres would not grip, still went on spinning and hissing. I was sliding sideways, I pulled on the brake, jumped straight into a snowdrift, sank up to my armpits. The snow kept collapsing on me as I moved, slipped inside my collar, my shirt, I felt snow in my navel; to struggle out was an exhausting business. After breaking off more branches and piling them under the car without the least effect, I knew I was beaten and would have to give up. Weather conditions were quite impossible. Somehow or other I got the car going, and crawled back to the town. It was the only thing to do in the circumstances.
I started skidding again just as I reached the wall, lost control this time. Suddenly I saw the front wheels crumbling the edge of a deep bomb-crater; one more second, and I would be over; the drop was of many feet. I stood on the foot brake, the car spun right round, executed a complete circle before I jumped out and it nose dived, vanishing under the snow.
I was freezing, very tired, shivering so much I could hardly walk. Luckily my lodging was not far off. I slithered and staggered back there, crouched over the stove just as I was, plastered in frozen snow, my teeth chattering. The shivering was so violent I could not unfasten my coat, only succeeded in dragging it off by slow stages. In the same laborious fashion, by prolonged painful effort, I finally got rid of the rest of my freezing clothes, struggled into a dressing gown. It was then that I saw the cable and ripped open the envelope.
My informant reported the crisis due in the next few days. All air and sea services had ceased operating, but arrangements had been made to pick me up by helicopter in the morning. Still holding the flimsy paper, I crawled into bed, went on shivering under piles of blankets. The warden must have received the news earlier in the day. He had fled to save himself, abandoning his people to their fate. Of course such conduct was highly reprehensible, scandalous: but I did not condemn him. I did not think I would have acted differently in his place. Nothing he could have done would have saved the country. If he had revealed the critical situation a panic would have resulted, the
