We did a lot of walking, I think. More than I remember. Not that everyone did. Swen walked less. Although he went on walks, too. But Mama, Aunt Uff., Zbyszek didn’t take walks at all. Celinka, after that first day when she went to the district clinic on Miodowa, to that job (indeed!), no longer went out. Anywhere.
Well, thanks to our running about, Swen and I discovered a second route leading uphill. The Nowomiejski route. 23 Rybaki Street (the home of Leonard, the guy who wore eyeglasses and a coat, who had fled his shelter and come to ours because ours was made of poured concrete). From the front. To the outbuilding. Up to the third floor. Across the cobblestone courtyard. To the outbuilding directly opposite. Up to the third floor. There were five floors in all. Well, on the third floor you ran through the hall, as in the Gdańsk Cellar, and then you were on the ground floor on the escarpment. Somewhat like a yard, gardens. Also, hanging gardens (the back of the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament, but something else, too). (Furthermore, the appearance of trees and of constructed or, rather, demolished objects, of things that were covered with dust, had been changed and, moreover, kept on changing.) So — something hanging — because you ran across a bridge — over the ravines of the Nowe Miasto escarpment. And from the bridge to the erstwhile baroque Church of Saint Benon (now functioning once again), which was transformed under the tsars into Bieńkowski’s knife factory. Inside I remember the feeling of a workshop and a church, and that we ran up to the gallery. Or the choir. That church-factory looked worse each time, more and more splintered, the little bricks thinner, drier, because of the dryness, everything in that splintering, burning, and heat was dry. And nothing could be extinguished because they didn’t let that happen, because they were bombing repeatedly, setting fires again, without any aim, over and over. Beyond Benon-Bieńkowski, already from above, from the Rynek of Nowe Miasto, I remember a dry, long, splintered, and always whiter (?) board, groaning underfoot. But finally you ran up to those iron bars, that forged-iron gate which is still in existence today and which closes off that same alley from behind the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament and up to Benon. Down this alley you at last ran out into the Nowe Miasto Rynek itself. At its widest spot. Or, rather, to the right of it. Behind the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament to the branch to Our Lady and Kościelna Street (which again descended downhill on wooden stairs, intersected Rybaki, and continued all the way to Wybrzeże up to the barbed-wire barriers. Up to the tank behind the wall). There one had a view of the entire Rynek. To where it narrows. Into a triangle. A funnel. At Freta and the corner of Koźla.
We did a lot of walking at that time because once, one day, Swen and I went for a walk, purposely I think, to the cathedral. To pay it a visit. Once again. To see it. To touch it. That was a necessity. For us. With that cathedral. I don’t remember anything on the way. There and back. No doubt we ran. Crouching. The Staromiejski route. The hole, the cellar, someone lying down, the wounded: “Oh, Jesus…”
A small balcony. A washtub. That was private. Women. Through the wall. To the Dominicans. I think. A moment: Mostowa — the barricade — someone lying down — shooting — the view — Praga (a different city?). The Gdańsk Cellar. The old walls. Red. The Rynek.
Finally, the entrance to the cathedral.
Afternoon. Heat. Still, it was more peaceful. And a crowd in the center. The rising dust. We walked forward. Toward the chancel. And it wasn’t a crowd of people. But of sculptures, statues, saints, bishops, all gilded, mitered… A crowd… A crush… Chiaroscuro. Heat. But a blurry chiaroscuro. The rest fairly dark. There — in front, all the way in, in a hole (from the door), dust everywhere. We walked over. The chancel had pews in it. On both sides. And an altar, too. And other cathedral furnishings. Armchairs, thrones, gold leaf, cloth covers, accretions. The pews held sculptures, statues — crowded together, face-to-face. But the ones we saw that day were extras as it turned out. And that’s not the half of it. They were gathered near the door, on their pedestals I think, or simply broken off, saved, sheltered here, gathered in a crowd from various places that had already been destroyed. There was the atmosphere of a church fair here. An assembly. Or an election. Judgment, finality. As it turned out. And it happened in an instant, in two or three days.
Newssheets, always at a run. Someone rushes in. Hands one over. Others grab for it. A woman snatches it away. The others move on. Toward the altar. For the candles. Here is Swen. He has it now. In his hands, in the center. He’s already surrounded. They’re hanging on him! A bombshell… Literally. News:
“Today, at — o’clock the cathedral was bombed into smithereens.”
“O o o…”
I remember. That “o” passed through all the stalls, pillars, passages, stairs.
“O o o…”
When it was still standing, although heavily scarred, people said that our side and theirs were fighting there. That barricades were made from the confessionals and from sugar (in sacks).
That’s what happened in the Mint, too. Ours here — theirs over there. Or in the Telephone Exchange later on, in Śródmieście. There, it was in layers. On one floor — ours. On the next floor — theirs. And it was defiant, prolonged. Days. Nights. Weeks. Or, as in the Church of the Holy Cross where the partisans were inside the church proper. The Germans, near the organ. People said that they hurled the organ pipes. Ripped them out. Or that the pipes made the sounds. By themselves, screeching and huffing. Or take the matter of the sewers. It was said that in Żoliborz one could slip into a storm sewer leading to the Vistula. Every so often it surges — and sweeps away the people walking in it. And to get to Mokotów you had to bend low, hunched over. And from Czerniaków you practically had to walk on your knees at times. In addition, they were throwing gas and grenades in there. And there was barbed wire in the manholes. Stopping them up.
These were not myths — but living truths. As at 18 Bracka Street. They attacked. Butchered. Retreated.
Light. Once again. Light and water.
I will be confused about the light and water a few more times. Light and water were available for a very long time. But of course there were disruptions every now and then. Then the carbide lamps would be put to use.
I have already mentioned the latrines that were near the cellar beside the stairs. The entryway cellar. Actually, there was one latrine. A large one. With several toilets that you had to squat over. It is precisely there that I can remember the lightbulbs under the ceiling. Or, rather, that they were still there. And on. And that the doors were gone. Well, at least that fat woman from Towarowa was able to sleep on a toilet-stall door. The stalls for squatting were all missing doors. I remember the hinges. Everywhere. The latrine was always occupied. So one waited one’s turn. And jabbered away. It didn’t matter at all that there were only hinges and no doors. No one paid any attention to anyone else. Nor was anyone embarrassed. There was also no impatience, because who had somewhere to rush off to? We chatted. With the people close by. Who were waiting. Who were pooping. Who were finished. Who still had to. Who were there for the company. Who just happened to be there. Who had to pee. Who had just dropped by.
One time, for example — this I remember — at night under those bulbs I was squatting in my stall without a door and next to me was an elderly lady wearing a white coat. The whole time we chatted with each other in a neighborly way.