“Granny! Granny!”
She turns around on her stool, looks with red eyes. Grabs me around the neck, kisses, and bursts out crying.
“How’s your mother, how are you, Lord have mercy, how worried I’ve been about you. How is Kazia?”
I tell her (Kazia’s my mother).
We sat there for a while. Then we went back. I got some soup. Thick. Splendid. Lots of barley. Full. A huge, full bowl. I devoured it.
“Would you like some more?”
“Please.”
I got a second helping. Just the same. What happiness I felt then with those bowls — until I was full. I sat awhile. I had to go back. But just then a nasty fusillade got started against Długa. From that eight-story building on Przejazd.
“How can you go home? How will you get through?”
“Under the barricade.”
It seemed to be getting worse by the minute. I run outside. At the Długa gate, right at the entryway near the barricade — I see that one after the other people get set! bend down, dash across. For a minute I screw up my courage. But I see: a girl courier — she runs — and nothing happens to her so I snap to! duck down, dash across — yes, just like that. And already I am racing along the other side of Długa. Farther, farther. Near the smoldering ruins. Past the Four Winds. At last I pass the curve and the bend. Where you can already see Krasiński Square farther along — on Długa. All the way as far as the Dominicans, too, with the tower and the wardrobe. Gothic. Pseudo. Because that’s how I perceived the annex with the porch (like a wardrobe) at that time. From the front. It no longer exists. There on the left is a narrow street — after that bend in Długa — a little, dead-end alley at the rear of the Krasiński Gardens. It was called Baroque Street. Formally. Before the war. A neighborhood proud of any novelty. But people understood it to be “Barrack Street” (that’s what they said). (I confess that until 1946 I, too, thought it was Barrack Street.)
All of a sudden — bombers. Already they’re hovering over the rooftops, raining down bombs. Now they’re gone. Now they’re back. Farther away. Closer. Now they’re flying into Baroque Street. We are, too. They’re flying blindly. We are, too. We is I. And someone else. Like me. We. Two of us. Here. Only. Neither here nor there. Because now. They’re here! We run. Into some kind of two-story what (?)… empty, it flies, we fly (along?) the downstairs, rooms (?), by way of something (?), halls (?), it’s already changing, howling, clanging, we’re flying, bricks are flying, the bombers are making a mess. The proverbial brick. Just one. But here there are so many: pow! pow! We raise our collars. What kind of stupid instinct?! We jump. Pow! pow! Just not to surrender. To chance. Everything’s important. Because he’s flying in zigzags. In spurts. Between the walls. Ssssh… booom. Falling plaster. Whitewash. Something. From the rain gutters. Wait? No. Just don’t stay still. Sssshh. That hill is flying, we can sit down… We jump for a while and suddenly pow! pow! Nothing. Dodges. Only… As was necessary, in my opinion.
(From Leszno. 1930. Toy blocks. Nanka is peeling potatoes. I’m wondering how a bullet can hit; after all I’d notice it and jump back. Nanka replies that it won’t work. Now something of the sort has worked.)
After the air raid. The other guy goes his way. I go mine. At a run. Długa. The square. Długa. Mostowa. Downhill. The passageway. Below. Rybaki. Cobblestones. Our place. Or rather — oh! he’s here! — Swen, eyes red. He grabs me. Swen’s mother says, “What hasn’t he imagined — all this time — that you’d never return, that something had happened.”
“Eh.” I gesture dismissively.
That’s what I’d wanted. And that’s also how I overlooked it. It wasn’t all that important. Or so it seems. But for me… And for the Radziwiłł Palace. It was. Important. And for that wall. With the garden. Just as it is now. In the first place, because it’s at the rear of the palace (behind the east-west artery, where it descends into the underpass); in the second place, because of its dimensions. Definitely. And such a lawn. And those statues. It’s obvious, of course, that today there is no wall; the whole joke, in fact, is that there is no wall, but instead there are trams on either side and the wall is in the center. Those statues, in particular. There was peace, an interlude. Silence. Roughly speaking, at least. Anyway, right here. And in the meantime Aunt Limpcia was cooking barley soup. In fact, as it turned out later, it was pea soup. Rysiek reminded me after the war (but the steam rose from the window, from below; and it smelled so good — she had something to cook with). Rysiek and I. Went into that garden. It used not to be open. Fine weather, hot. Of course, it was daytime. That sky. Heat — blue. The grass — green. And they. Those statues. Because I remember that they weren’t there after the war; then they were; then they were off their pedestals and just stood there on the grass, stood there, on the grass, in the grass. Then — on pedestals again, it seems, and now? — I’m confused — about how they stand. But how were they standing then? Also. Seemingly on pedestals. No, not really. Without them. All of them? How should I know? Yet dust was rising from something. Something was giving off dust (then). They were shooting. Yes. That’s it. Now I know. At the Bank of Poland. The one on the banknotes. From before the war. Next door. So it had begun. Slyly. Once. Twice. Echo. Ping. A miss. Sometimes it was just the same as that time with the boards. Something toppled too, I think. From among that group of statues. And that’s all.
During the occupation Polish children, Jewish children, old ladies, old men, Gypsies, madmen (so-called) — in general, all kinds of people, singly or in groups, came into our courtyard on Chłodna Street from morning to night and sang. Most often:
On the first day of September
In that famous year
The enemy struck at Poland
From sky so high and clear.
He hammered at our Warsaw
Most viciously of all.
Oh, Warsaw, poor Warsaw,
Bloody city that you are.
Once you were so splendid,
Majestic and so lovely.
Now all that remains of you
Is a heap of rubble.
That is how it seemed after 1939, after that September. When one day — the twenty-third, I think — eighteen thousand shells fell on Warsaw. September 25—well, that was the decisive day — from morning to night, for twelve hours, bombing of all of Warsaw. On the next day it was set ablaze. There were fires. Raging. Shells. But it was already a foregone conclusion. Negotiations. On September 25 people could no longer hold out. On the twenty-seventh those who had survived crawled out from the cellars.
Yes. Afterward. Afterward — the deportations. Pawiak Prison. Not like the camps that first week. It was developing. Then the ghetto began. And that wall on Krasiński Square, on Holy Tuesday — April 20—the second day of the uprising in the ghetto. A German was shooting from the garrison on Miodowa, from a tank, into the ghetto, into Bonifraterska Street. People were dropping over there. From large, blank walls with tiny windows. From the windows, too. And people gathered there — hooligans — and they applauded that German. And after who knows how many hits he took off his helmet, because it was sunny, he was sweating, he was tired out — the hero — in this little crowd of well-wishers — and he wiped away his sweat.
And then — it was that famous, late, beautiful Easter of 1943. The Aryans — we were still called that — in the churches — festive — and over there — that hell — known, but without hope. And without a witness. Yes, there were those who helped. There were well-wishers. Or — the indifferent. But… let’s drop it. Easter Sunday was the climax of the conflagration. In the sky — fire.
That began to make a bit of an impression on people. On some at least. But there was a carnival on Krasiński Square. Carousels. Chair-o-planes. The Germans got it going with great gusto. Well, some members of our little public were whirling around on those swings and wheels — fifty, sixty, a hundred times in a row. In that thick smoke. Blowing in. And blowing in. From Bonifraterska. And from Nowolipki. From Dzielna. Świętojerska. Przejazd. The uprising in the ghetto went on and on. The first swallows. I noticed them in May that year, in that smoke, and I heard their twittering. Around the tenth, I remember. That was already two days after the collective suicide of the Jewish general staff. In a bunker on Miła. The Germans discovered them.