Our cellar “hall” appeared to be the main one for this block even though there were two or three others just like it under block B. After all, the altar was located here. And perhaps it really was the largest? Perhaps. Near the door, that is, near the entrance opening from the stairwell on the right, stood a barrel full of water in case of fire. On August 7 the water was no longer very fresh. Later it produced a stench, quarreling, and the decision to change the water in the barrel by means of a bucket brigade. The door led to the corridors, half cellars, passageways with goats, dogs, stoves over which the women quarreled incessantly and the men were always ready to fight with axes. The second axes in this uprising. From there, stairs led directly from the cement floor to the ground floor upstairs. Immediately to our left were the toilets (the plumbing was still functioning for the time being), everything was in working order, even the lights. Here dusty rays of sunlight shone in from above so that once they had entered early in the morning they shone like that for several hours every day, because the weather was always sunny. Here were the most important comings and goings, meetings, discussions, my sitting on a heap of bricks, and writing.
The cellars began again across the way. A whole new chain of them started over there. Later, this was our famous walking trail. People would go for strolls over there. And it wasn’t the same as on the surface. It was here. After all, these were streets, squares, crowds, life, the making of friendships.
Let us return to the date. Swen had fled here with Celinka the day before I had. At five o’clock on August 1 they’d been outdoors, near Chmielna Street. They had run with their arms raised among the tanks on Nowy Świat, it seems. Celinka had her own room, 1 °Chmielna. And it was there that the living together of many people, entangled, yet separate from one another, commenced. Communal living en masse. But what was there to eat? How long would it last? For a couple of years Swen’s mother, older, experienced, had been hiding rusks in sacks. So Swen brought Celinka over on Sunday. They crept through half of Śródmieście along a circuitous route. Because there was no other way. Somehow or other they got to Złota Street or Pańska, then to Chłodna by way of Waliców, then along Ogrodowa to Solna, Elektoralna, across Bank Square, finally via Długa to Mostowa, in other words, by Staszek’s route from Chłodna to Sienna and mine from Chłodna to Rybaki. The Palace of the Four Winds was already on fire. It was hell in Staszek’s and my neighborhoods. Because of the onslaught from Wola. And they, too, had been struck by the silence on Rybaki Street. So they had run up to the third floor. Empty. But there was the silence, the summer weather, and the Vistula, so Swen, assuming that his mother must be downstairs somewhere, went to look for her and told Celinka that she should just look out the window in the meantime. The window looked out directly across the river to Praga. To the great trees of the zoo. The beach. The railroad bridge, the old one on the left, near the Citadel. To the right — Kierbedź bridge with its latticework. It was a good thing that there wasn’t any firing from Praga then, because Celinka would have been in trouble. When the people in the shelters found out about her, they clutched their heads. So he quickly ran to fetch her.
Swen asked me almost immediately whether I’d heard the latest hit song, “Do you remember the hot July nights…” And I learned right away that the Ads.’ tiny daughter was named Basia. And that they sang to her:
I have a puppet on a string,
He hops to the left, he hops to the right,
And that is the greatest fun…
They sang that song to her over and over again throughout August. And when I remember it I become as sad as can be, from the melody and those words, I don’t know why. (The entire Ad. family, all three of them, survived everything; they are all alive, but I hadn’t encountered them for years until one beautiful June day several years ago Basia came to see me, introduced herself, told me who she is, that my writing poetry interests her, and that it seems I knew her when she was a young child in the shelter, and then it developed into a close friendship until in the end Basia married an Italian Polonist and is living in Florence now even though after we had left and they stayed on there on Rybaki Street her mother, Róża, said to her, “Don’t cry, you won’t live anyway.” They were even driven in front of a tank.) I also learned later that they lined up a crowd of people against the walls of the Citadel and that’s when Pani Róża kicked off her shoes, which were hampering her. Then they transported them away. And she was barefoot all that time.
Well, that day Jadźka and this other woman, Swen and Celinka (I think), and I ran to Mostowa Street. Uphill. Past three or four barricades. Not the kind of barricades that were erected at the beginning, nor even the kind that we put up six days later on Ogrodowa Street; these were made of concrete slabs piled up to a great height, fortified with sand, bristling with metal rods that had been hammered into the earth. They were absolutely impregnable. It was only then that I looked at all of this with disbelief. Because it was here that the uprising began to look as if it came out of a book. The kind about a siege. From the Middle Ages. And about an exotic, sweltering city. Where people start eating the bark from the trees and the soles of their shoes. But here, after all, the danger was practically on top of us. We were encircled. There were assaults, too. And when they happened… but more about that later. Also the sky. And the heat. And the crowds. My head almost began spinning from amazement. I can remember that feeling to this day. Even to the burning in my nose.
So, we ran uphill along Mostowa Street (there was the escarpment and those inclines). To the corner of Freta Street. To the store. Straight ahead. Unbelievable. The store was open. But in a strange sort of way. Almost open (ajar). But they were selling. What? Kasha, I think. Bread? I think we bought those two items. In any case we bought something. For the first and last time. Because I didn’t see any other stores either before or after that.
There was so much congestion on the sidewalks that people were walking in the roadways. They were crowded with refugees from all over Warsaw. Everyone who had fled from Wola was here. Stare Miasto, the Old City, was a famous redoubt. (Already famous.) Impregnable. Barricades. Serpentine streets. Not for tanks. Stare Miasto is strong. Its walls are solid. Thick. And also… Tradition.
Chance meetings. Passing Irena P. with her haversack. She had joined the AK. Teik hurrying into action at the head of a squad, which was walking rapidly single file over the cobblestones of Mostowa near Stara, and either he didn’t notice us or it made no difference to him, so occupied was he and they with what they were headed to. Actually, I don’t know if I met him twice on Mostowa in August or if the first time was on the corner of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets when I was returning home on Saturday from Irena’s. On Rybaki, I think (those two times — with an interval between them). Because otherwise I wouldn’t keep getting those people in single file, his uniformed soldiers, confused with those Boy Scouts in uniform (as I did in my first draft). Then again, if it was two times on Mostowa, then the first time I met him by myself and the second time was when I was running with Swen. Enough of that for now. I have a feeling that Teik’s meeting with Swen came later, so there’ll be more about that later on.
Something else — from that walk, which reminded me for some reason of the mood in 1939 because it was also summertime, something triumphant and disastrous. I’d like to talk about Długa Street. Długa was the most important street in that section of Warsaw. Also the widest. And the most elegant. At that time, at least. Because, according to what I heard then, the most important offices were located there even at the start, including the headquarters of the People’s Army.[6] I have already mentioned that Długa had two roadways between Krasiński Square and Freta. Between these roadways was a series of two or three small plazas. Which lent it chic. Like a boulevard. There were also some plots of grass there. Loudspeakers were blaring on both sides of the street. And there was lots of talking. Flags were hanging in every doorway. Large numbers of people were sitting on the iron balconies. That I remember. And I remember that an elegant automobile with the Polish national flag on it was squeezing its way through the crowds of people.