I followed him. The first time had been bad enough. Something had struck. Our block. In that section. But somehow or other. I’d kept myself under control. But now, less so. On the second floor I scream at Swen, “We’re going back!”
He: “No!”
Suddenly a crash. A shell in the wall beside us.
Swen races higher.
I scream: “Let’s go back! Swen! Swen!”
He says nothing.
I scream (the shells are hitting) and already I’m leaving: “I’m going down! Don’t go!”
It didn’t help. The shells were striking the stairs. Ours. I fled. I was a coward. Swen returned after a moment panting and smiling and with new flour.
I was even more impressed since Swen had a bandaged knee; there was something wrong with his knee and (because it was like that from the beginning) he hadn’t joined any of the fighting. Other men, without naming a reason, without explanations, crouched down, practically cowered together behind the barrel, behind the pillars, under the plank beds. And didn’t join.
But there were entire groups who did go. To every summons. To the wounded. To excavations. To the barricades. Relocations. Fortifications. Ditches. Firefighting. Etc.
I have already told of Swen’s suggestions for improvement, which he’d announced at the altar, and how everyone in the shelter smote his breast and repeated, “We swear.” It wasn’t always successful, but there would be breast-beating once more, reconciliations, and requests for forgiveness.
Once, when our entire red shelter was still snoring away and only the thin little candles were sputtering, suddenly on the left side near the wall with the pillars an argument erupted.
“What’s the matter with you, lady, are you nuts?”
Because someone had a child and someone else either took the chamber pot from the child and sprinkled chlorine from it along the passageway between the left side of the shelter and the left wall… or else it was about the chamber pot, but without any chlorine, and the image of someone walking about and sprinkling something just came to me. I think it really was chlorine, and I think it was about the sharp odor… it doesn’t matter.
Or else it was about the barrel. The one not so far from us, near the exit corridor.
“It stinks. What’s that? Change it!”
“Ooh… so what… who gives a damn!”
Finally there came a moment when a decision was made about the barrel. It was already stinking halfway across the shelter.
“Change it.”
“Change it, change it.”
“But how? Who?”
“With a bucket brigade.”
“Yes, yes.”
“A bucket brigade! Please, everyone, line up and we will pass each other the filthy water… one to another… and so on and on…”
Just like the bricks on Chłodna for the barricades.
And it worked. To the bottom. First that old water. Then new. First through the little corridor to the toilets (a stream of people). Then back through the little corridor to the barrel. We passed it along. From person to person. Poured it out. Poured it in. Changed it.
The days didn’t differ from one another so very much. But that one holiday — August 15 (it fell on a Tuesday) — we suddenly decided to observe, to celebrate. Defiantly. From early morning.
That church holiday (now abolished) was at the same time the anniversary of the so-called “miracle at the Vistula.”[12] Which had never taken place. Other than the metaphor, nothing had happened. But in the course of time the metaphor was realized. That was about prewar days. This time people were also waiting for a miracle at the Vistula. Also involving them. On the other bank. And beyond Żerań. If only they’ll come.
“If only they’ll cross the border.”
“If only they’ll come.”
“If only they were here already.”
People listened to the front. Patted the ground. They were advancing. Sometimes they stopped.
Waiting for the Russians was not exactly in line with the policy of the Home Army. Which in its own way was also waiting. And also waiting, as it were, for salvation. So this waiting even with this policy of mutual misunderstanding (still ongoing then) was also a kind of harmony. A human kind.
“The fifteenth day of the uprising,” people said on the morning of August 15.
“The fifteenth day…”
“The fifteenth day.”
It seems to me that I have placed certain facts before that date, the rampaging of hell. But I recall that August 15 was already after many horrors — here — in Starówka. That morning, I don’t remember how it began, obviously it was hot, smoky, something was on fire there, which means there was a lot of smoke and live flames… Well, that early morning, or rather all morning, there were a few hours of rest, peace, festivity after entire cataclysms.
A High Mass was supposed to be celebrated in the great hall with the pillars with the participation of five hundred (I think) partisans who were already quartered with us, and the entire population of blocks A, B, C, and D. Candles and dishes were prepared; from somewhere or other a carpet, I think, perhaps even something else for decoration — what? I don’t remember. I remember that we had begun to assemble. That it was hot, peaceful. That there was a crowd of civilians and a crowd of partisans in their German jumpsuits, pieces of uniforms, with rifles and helmets in their hands, taken from the Hitlerites. That the crowd was really enormous, that the candles were lit, that the priest entered in a green or maybe a white chasuble. And the Mass began.
No one took into consideration the possibility of a commotion, of the disruption of our plans. Nor had anyone shaved for two weeks. The heat intensified, the Mass continued. The people stood there. Peace. On and on. At the end the priest began singing almost at the same time as the partisans and the crowd: “God, Thou who encompassed Poland…”
It was sung to the end. People went their separate ways. Everyone. To their cellars. The troops to their quarters. Or rather to their positions on the ground floor, in the windows, at the exit, at the barricades, and the rest with the civilians to the shelters. And it was then, I think, that the planes flew over. They dived down onto our roofs. And started dropping bomb after bomb. I think we didn’t even keep count then. There were so many of them at one time. All aimed at our block. The people knew that the Germans knew that a large number of partisans were here. But so what? Should they be angry? (Sometimes civilians were angry at the military and vice versa, but not that day.) I don’t know if it was then that someone fired a rifle (sometimes people did that) at the pilots. And hit one. The plane fell. But the bomb also fell on us. On our cellar. Boom. Darkness. Jolt. And — it’s amazing, but we’re standing, thrown together, just as we were before. So not on us? Then there were the tanks. An attack. They pounded us. Then artillery. And — after a couple of hours — in the sunshine and the heat — as soon as Swen and I dragged ourselves out into the courtyard we noticed that there was a hole behind the wall of our shelter and that people were digging out something white. And not just one thing. We all knew that if instead of a house or cellar — there’s a hole (open) and people are digging out something white and something else in white is lying there, then a lot of people have perished. Well, they’d penetrated the cellars. Of our closest neighbors. But we hadn’t caught it.
From that day the ongoing hell of Starówka continued uninterrupted. And, it seems, day and night, also without a break, the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament were burning. All their buildings by turns, those on the escarpment and those above the escarpment.
“The Sisters of the Holy Sacrament are burning,” people now repeated daily from that day on.
Yes, the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament were burning. And rushing about in their veils. White. And slaughtering pigs and cows. Daily. And distributing them to people. And also receiving and caring for people. Larger and larger hordes. Thousands. Those Sisters of the Holy Sacrament who for hundreds of years, since their founding by Marysieńka, had sung behind gratings and taken Communion through gratings, suddenly became activists, social workers, a heroic institution, the support of Nowe Miasto. They provisioned part of the troops, too. The troops distributed some of theirs to civilians. Only, the same error was committed every day in a vicious circle. It was hot. And they didn’t distribute the meat from the pigs and cows that had just been butchered but only those slaughtered yesterday or the day before yesterday. And the ones from yesterday or the day before were already putrid. And when the troops cooked it (because the troops did cook it), in the central shelters, in cauldrons, the stench pervaded the entire cellar. Once we even tried to eat it. But neither Swen nor I could touch it. It stank unbearably. Although we were already very hungry.