And I also found out — something. That Celinka — Swen laughed uncontrollably as he told me this — was still going to work on Miodowa Street every day. To the Health Center. But her Health Center was in Parysów. She went to the local one with a girlfriend whom she’d met here. Swen didn’t go.
“So they were supposed to go there and work in the office every day until today when they got there, there was no more center!” And Swen doubled over with laughter. And so did I. Celinka, too. “They were on duty for a long time!”
During those first days we used to walk to the corner of Mostowa and Stara Streets, or rather, past the corner along Stara itself, to the right of Mostowa, to get free dinners from some nuns. I don’t remember what kind of nuns they were. Stara ran along the embankment from Mostowa Street so that it went high, then low, and became even higher toward Nowe Miasto, right up to the Rynek. These nuns where we took our meals were located across from the rear of the Church of the Dominicans. But the garden of the Dominicans stretched all the way to Rybaki Street. Or, rather, their grounds, intersected by Stara Street and perhaps by those nuns, too, ran down along the escarpment to the very end, at the base of the cliff all the way to Rybaki, and were separated from Rybaki by an ancient, utterly old-fashioned wall, white, with a gate over which was carved (in metal, so it was like a real one) a monstrance, the symbol of Saint Jacek Odrowąż, our Polish holy man of the Middle Ages from Stare Miasto, a Dominican, the patron saint of the Church of the Dominicans, which actually was called Saint Jacek’s. The church at the fork in Długa Street whose bell-tower spire had burned until it shone green. So that wall (white, thick and white!), on the left side of Rybaki as one walked from Mostowa, from the escarpment to Swen’s place, began not so very far past the corner, past the apartment house, at the courtyard, and right afterwards there was that gate with the monstrance in a curve along the sidewalk, only not paved with concrete slabs but with cobblestones, a triangle like the one directly opposite it, the one past the Gunpowder Depot where those children were playing in the grass early in the morning (because there was definitely grass growing there), I even think I remember that beneath the Dominican monstrance a kind of braided grass was growing with leaves on drooping stalks, and chamomile I think, the common variety, low, the kind that likes to grow between cobblestones. The garden, because there was a fruit and vegetable garden to feed the Dominicans and their students and wards (they had several), stretched out in length and breadth and was visible as you walked uphill from down below. And farther on in the direction of Kościelna Street it bordered on the apartment houses on Rybaki and on the gardens of the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament, who also were situated on the escarpment and also provided food. Anyway, a lot more will be said about this. And in more detail. Because this terrain will be very important.
For various reasons. Well, people would stand in line at this convent on Stara Street for the aforementioned gruel. I don’t say “gruel” at all disparagingly because it was a real luxury at that time and a sign of goodwill to serve soup, especially if it was good and thick. People stood with their large pots on the street and along the stairs leading into the red building. The one across from the white Dominicans. The monastery. Massive, baroque, situated high up on the escarpment, practically on its summit. (And everything was white because they loved that color. They also wear white habits, though with black trim, it’s true, and the Polish Dominicans even use a thick red sash as a belt; they have been granted that privilege because the Tatars once slaughtered the Dominicans in Sandomierz, which probably won’t be of any interest to you until you see the display cases in Sandomierz, in the church, with the recently exhumed skulls of those Dominicans, split by Tatar hatchets; a hatchet is even still buried in one skull — after it sank in it couldn’t be pulled out.) The whiteness remains all the more firmly engraved in my memory because of the heat, August, and the smoke, and because sometimes the sky was white from smoke and from the scorching heat, and the Gunpowder Depot was white like that, and the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament were white, that is, their high church, which was also visible from below, with its sky-blue cupola, so that it was also linked with the sky. In addition, there were Pauline Fathers (the Paulines have been in Poland only in the twentieth century). Paulines are dressed entirely in white — although it’s true their church building was here without them because in the nineteenth century the tsar dissolved the Paulines and the Dominicans and the Benonites, who were in Nowe Miasto behind the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament, and he converted their church into Bieńkowski’s knife factory (that is, the tsar approved the change and so it remained until the uprising, about which there’ll be more later because it is also significant in the action). But there were definitely some representatives of those orders. There was a priest from Saint Jacek’s and there were the Pauline Fathers whose church was across from the Dominicans so that it fronted on Nowomiejska where Mostowa empties into it, just as the Dominicans across from them were at the outlet onto Długa Street as I have already explained. But the Pauline Fathers had two towers, baroque, which had not burned but were still intact, and they had a double stairway leading up to the main doors. Against the background of all the goldenness created by the gold leaf stood the Mother of God surrounded by lamps. And all this could be seen from below, from the corner of Mostowa and Rybaki Streets, and the Mother of God stood at the end of a long, long uphill climb, steep, over cobblestones. In connection with this I remind you that Mostowa had an extension leading to the Vistula. Only it was called something else. Boleść? Street. The left side of Boleść, coming from the escarpment, was, above all, the side of the Gunpowder Depot. Boleść Street led all the way to the embankment, just as it does to this day, as it did then and as it had for centuries past, when it had been important, when the bridge — still just a low, pontoon bridge — started not from Bednarska Street but rather from Mostowa itself. Actually, when you walked along it toward Praga, in addition to the trees that were already immense during the uprising (though perhaps in the past they once were small), straight ahead, in addition to those trees, was the center of Praga. With the Ratusz.[9] Ratuszowa Street began at the place where Mostowa would have been had it continued across the Vistula. And the Church of the Mother of God of Loreto. Baroque. The so-called church within a church. Perhaps I am speaking too much about these monuments. But they were important. Because they were perishing with us. We could see Praga. The escarpment and everything I’ve described was above us. And the fact that they were holy places is also not irrelevant. Stare Miasto was the seat of the Armia Ludowa. And also the concentration of our holy places and of the clergy. I am writing about this sympathetically. Because there is much good to be said about the clergy. After all, it began precisely because of those soups. My amazement, I mean. Not only were they not refusing people, they were even urging them. To eat whatever was served. The wait in line was quickly over with. Waiting itself didn’t take long. People weren’t impatient. Just as with everything then. We didn’t grow impatient. After all, we were standing among companions. Family, friends, or new acquaintances. Right away there was conversation. All one’s acquaintances. Friends. It was even pleasant. As I remember it. Except for those planes. We would flee somewhere into the shadows. And then once more move to those steps. Holding our mess kits. I remember having something that clinked and was lightweight. And I think we ate on the spot, right away, on those cobblestones, in the gutter. How long did that last? Not so long, I think. The daily trips. That means those poor nuns just cooked and cooked. What I want to say is that what happened to the institution on Miodowa Street suddenly happened to them, too. Just as it did to everything else. Anyway, sometime around August 13 it was all over with those soups. Standing on Stara Street, with its view, standing on the escarpment, just being outdoors, became impossible. And now I recall that it was while we were going for soup one afternoon, I think, that I saw Teik climbing uphill rapidly, followed by a line of people in battle dress. So it seems as if one time he was connected with the shop. And a second time, with the soup. Chłodna Street was probably an illusion.