In the evening, Heńka and Jadźka were in our cellar, not in our corner but in theirs (they had found a corner for themselves)— bunks against a wall near a pillar in another nave… Jadźka, on her bunk, told Swen’s and my fortunes from cards. She even divined some significant details. About life. Mine I don’t remember, but for Swen: very, very characteristic coincidences of the figures on the cards, and that she blurted it out to him without thinking, finally risking the vividness of the news about him (from the cards).
What else? Prayer. I’m sure Swen had begun to lead the prayers by then. No. Not yet. That’s right. It was still a woman. One. Swen two or three days later. He’d refused. He read the newssheets out loud (I pass directly to that because it was an equivalent liturgy); he would stand right in the center of everything, in the main aisle of the main nave, since we’ve already blundered into such a comparison, and rightly so since there were three naves. He always stood near the right side of the aisle, close to the entrance, near a bunk and, I think, a pillar, but perhaps I’m adding that detail from my imagination. Two women would take two candles from the altar to illuminate the latest news. Not necessarily once a day. Just as with prayer. In the morning and the evening, too. At least. So the women would take the candles from the altar. And light them. They would draw close to Swen as if for the recitation of the Gospels and stand on either side of him. Deaconesses. I was the subdeacon or sacristan. The rest of our family sat close by on a bunk. Swen stood at the center of our circle and of the larger circle of the pressing crowd the first of whom would be sitting or squatting and the more distant ones standing as he read. But they always listened intently. To what was reported. Because it was important. And how! Everyone grew quiet then. Right from the start. Yes, it was truly very pious. The reading, that is. There were several newssheets or placards of assorted sizes published by various editorial committees — either by the Home Army[7] or the People’s Army or the Civil Defense. The reading would be accompanied by mass scowling, complaints, wringing of hands, or outbursts of joy.
Let’s move on. For a certain number of days I’ll be getting things confused. Until August 15. Except that on the twelfth — I’ve recalled what took place then — something happened. And something else on the thirteenth. Something notorious, at that. Until then. Here’s what I’ve recalled: a tram driver and his girl on the bunk across the way, practically beside the barrel. Somehow they were also near the door, the unfinished door to the stairwell, but also somehow near the pillar, although a moment ago it seemed to me they were near the wall. In any case, they were close to us, within earshot. They had a carbide lamp. And they were using it. But I can remember many such lamps in the darkness. The concrete darkness. Or the darkness behind the pillar. Or perhaps it’s because they changed places later. Although also close by. Or that everything was in darkness. That’s it, I’m sure. They said they were a couple. Not married. He was large-boned. In a navy-blue tram driver’s uniform. She… For some reason I remember her mostly from above — her disheveled hair, bushy, tangled. Against the background of the carbide lamp. That hair. She, too, was large-boned. She wore a suit of sorts or, rather, a jacket. A gray check or a salt-and-pepper pattern. They were relatively young, fairly good-looking and pleasant, and through all this they were in love. We got to know them. Or rather it happened like this: on one side, the one near the altar, we became friendly with the Ads., and on the other side, the side with the barrel and the exit, with the tram-driver couple.
I’m going back for a while to August 7, to that first day in Stare Miasto. What else did I learn? Right at the beginning? In general, that swimming across the Vistula would be… Well, I didn’t ask about it right away because I was embarrassed. I sensed immediately that it wasn’t right to inquire about it right off. After a while I screwed up my courage and asked, in a half whisper at that; Swen shrugged his shoulders and burst out laughing. “Whaat?… Go take a look… The embankment is covered with barbed wire, the tanks are out, and at night the searchlights keep raking the Vistula and the shores.”
Naturally that convinced me immediately, since I’d really been convinced from the very first moment we entered that terrain and that shelter. Jadźka and Heńka also heard him. And gave up just as I did. Anyway, they were blind instincts. First you wanted to go here. Then there. In Wola there was the dread of mass shootings and burnings. So a person wanted to escape from that hell by some miracle. But here something else popped into one’s head from the start. A new mood. All over again. And I know, just as surely as I know myself and every average Varsovian, that I would have wanted to return immediately from that miraculous salvation outside of Warsaw to this hell. After all, in 1939 my parents and I had fled as far away as Zdołbunów, so that I wasn’t even in Warsaw after September 5, and throughout September I was disconsolate at not being here. And when people told me what had happened, and wrung their hands, and mentioned September 23, 24, 25, I wanted to know about those days in particular. Throughout the entire occupation I regretted that I hadn’t been there on September 25 during the famous bombardment from eight in the morning until eight at night.[8] When Nanka, Sabina, and Michał were on Ogrodowa Street at the corner of Wronia in Olek’s ground-floor apartment. (Olek — the brother of Zosia Romanowska, the woman who with Olek’s wife left for Grochów on September 8, to her sister and brother-in-law’s in Kawcza, and all four of them perished instantly because their lock snapped shut, they were searching for their keys, the planes flew over, and they’d already raced down to the cellar, and only their daughter Hania survived who was living in Zosia’s place, and it was our Stefa who took on the identity of Zosia Romanowska, so that the dead had even saved us then.) Well, according to what Sabina told us, Nanka stayed there, not moving an inch the entire time, huddled over and clutching at her liver. So now I had what I’d wanted. Yet I wanted to flee. But had I fled, I repeat, I would have regretted not having experienced what I was about to experience. That’s why I feel so sorry for those who died in the bombardment. The thrill of the experience passed them by. Such an adventure and all for nothing. That one might not survive — that’s another question entirely. But let’s not bother with such deliberations for now. Anyway, there will be more and more of them. Not because I suddenly have a craving for them. But because in that life they were the very stuff of life. Imagining what might take place or what would definitely take place a moment later accounted for at least half of one’s thoughts. The rest were devoted to taking care of various immediate needs— food, shelter, clothing. It was summertime and hot, so there wasn’t any particular difficulty with the latter, because one could get along with nothing, just a fairly threadbare suit with clumps of dirt on the pants legs, and shoes with holes in them — in other words, we worried about the immediate needs of bare subsistence, what touched our skins, and finally, about that threat from the Vistula and, even worse, from the sky. Memories have pushed back the rest. It is difficult to say “memories” in the strict sense of the word. Because there are memories from the day before yesterday. And memories from an hour ago. Memories from Wola and others fresh from Mostowa Street. Everything was rehashed. Over and over. Along with possibilities, with what might have been. Against the background of what was happening. Obviously there must have been a break for talking, too. And a rather long one at that. Especially since talk was focused precisely on those themes. By and large.