“I won’t go in there. I won’t go in there. Let’s go. Not to the Sisters of the Sacrament. I won’t go into the Sisters of the Sacrament. I won’t go in there.”
We shove him. But he insists.
“I won’t go into the Sisters of the Sacrament. I will not go into the Sisters.”
Suddenly a Sister of the Sacrament is standing in front of us. From below.
“We’re already very crowded, three thousand people under the church.”
She spreads her hands wide; her eyes and head are bowed; she continues, grayly-grayly.
“Really, as many as we could… we accepted.”
She breaks off, confused.
“Maybe, but maybe…” we respond.
“But, as many as we could…”
“But, maybe…” Again we — that is, Aunt, Mother, Zbyszek, I, Celina, Lusia with Mareczek holding her hand (she’d carried him on the escarpment, shielding him), Pani Rymińska. And the woman from Towarowa. That woman. The one with the furrows on her from the door.
“Maybe, maybe anyway…”
“Maybe somehow…”
Except for Swen: “No!” and “No!”
“Not here!”
And he stood off to the side, stamping his feet.
“If you insist… take a look, it’s crowded… the walls are cracked… so many bombs… have already hit… us, the church, you see.”
(Yes, the church of the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament hardly existed above the ground; yes, yes, already by then, and they had nothing left, nothing, nothing, only whatever was under the church, under the trapdoor.)
“All right, please come in — if you can fit — take a look, come in, please,” she invited us to enter through the trapdoor.
What was there?
We were embarrassed. Now we were the others. With bundles of rusks. To go in? Or not?
“No, I won’t go down there, I won’t go in there, no, no.” Swen had made up his mind, he wouldn’t allow it.
Then where to?
“Where now?”
“To Our Lady?”
“Are there people there? It collapsed on top of them, oh, what it looks like!”
It looked horrible, Our Lady. Yes. Yes. I recall everything now. What it was like already then.
“But maybe there are people there?”
“Maybe.”
“Let’s go.”
We walked over to Our Lady. It absolutely terrified us. The church, too. And that dark bell tower. Like those games in the countryside, with cocoa made out of bricks, the rest… actually, Our Lady looked just like that.
“And are people sitting there now?”
There were. Indeed. Under that “cocoa” made of bricks. Someone gave us information. One of us asked a few questions. In any case, people walked in. Came out. Dragged themselves inside. Looked about. Sun. Heat. The front. Ours: bullets, hisses, whistles, shells. No one could fit in anywhere. Here, too, some people were sitting. Perhaps two thousand of them. How should I know?
To the Franciscans? Demolished. People are probably sitting there, too. Two thousand. Three. Under the ruins. We go back. The Sisters of the Holy Sacrament, after all.
Once again we’re standing there. We stare inside. Under the trapdoor. But Swen screams, tugs at us.
“I won’t go in. You go! But I won’t go. I will not go. Not to the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament. I’ll go anywhere. Into the ruins — yes. But to the Sisters of the Sacrament — no. Not to the Sisters of the Sacrament!”
Swen got his way. We walked away. We walked on. Thunder. The front. Shells flying. All the time. Something or other. We squeeze into the neck of the Rynek. That woman probably somewhere around here. The one from the door. With the furrows. She left. Walked away. Separated from us. I don’t know. Because it was all coming apart. The group didn’t stick together. Everything was moving. Disappearing.
Garnizonowy Street? It had had it. The Paulines? The Paulines no longer existed. The cathedral? We already know about that. The Jesuits? Next door. It, too — the same as the cathedral. The Augustinians? On Piwna? They’re finished. The Dominicans. Maybe the Dominicans. We go down Freta. The same. After all, churches are no good. They’re gone, after all.
“Krzywa Latarnia — that’s really where we want to be, or 5 Hipoteczna.”
“Let’s go to 5 Hipoteczna.” That was Lusia.
“Or maybe to the ruins? They say lots of people are squatting in the ruins.”
“Should we?”
“Let’s go to Krzywa Latarnia.”
“Yes, they won’t push us out there.”
“We’ll see. But it’s also ruins.”
“Let’s try the Dominicans.”
“Look, they’re still standing.”
They were. As a church. The monastery — in worse shape.
We enter. Into a veritable safe. Pseudo-Gothic. The portico. To the left on the portico is a row of little stoves. More like a freak show than a kitchen! But there are large kettles on each stove. And they are all steaming. Indeed! In a row. A woman is standing or squatting in front of each one. Disheveled. Under the gray light. And waving a lid. A large one. For a cauldron.
We go inside. Straight ahead. Doors. Downstairs. There are still stairs. The church is below us. Inside the church: echoes, booms. A crowd. We turn. Into the nave. To the left. It’s full. Altars. What a lot of them there are. With gold, silver leaf. Baroque. Dancing figures. Holy troublemakers, mystics. They’re fidgeting, from the altar to the side, upward, across. Under the altar, under each one (why exactly?). On the stairs. Figures. Alive. Half reclining. A homey baroque. Also. They, too, were lying crosswise, sideways, but lower down and dressed in crumpled rags.
We go outside… The barricades. Downhill on our Mostowa. On the left the Gdańsk Cellar is done with. Burned down. On the right the footbridge, a channel across the moat. And the walls. The old ones. Reconstructions. Brick. Thick. And there are people here. Against the walls. Spread out. On the grass. Over the streambed. With no water. It hasn’t flowed for four hundred years. The closer to the footbridge, the more crowded it is. And this is how it was under the open sky? Farther on it was just the same. People were sitting everywhere. Lying everywhere. Those walls. Because they go on, they turn. Parallel with Podwale. And we go on, turn on Podwale. The narrow one. It’s there. Krzywa Latarnia.
“It’s here,” says Mama.
“Here?”
But inside the gate (it was an apartment house) an elderly man was standing, bald, perhaps he had a mustache. That’s right; everyone had beards, mustaches, long hair then.
“My dear people,” he says, “what do you want? You want to come here? There are three thousand people here. You couldn’t fit a pin in… three thousand. They’re suffocating. They’ll suffocate to death. There’s no use talking. You shouldn’t even go inside.”
We shouldn’t even go inside. We didn’t speak. We didn’t stop. We were already walking on.
“Hipoteczna 5, let’s go,” says Lusia, “and maybe…”
“Where? And they’ll let us in?”
“There are six floors there, I have a friend. And if not, then to the ruins…”
“Of course, to the ruins.”
“But where? Which ruins?”
“We’ll find some.”
“Then let’s get going in the direction of Hipoteczna. What if…”
We walk on. From narrow Podwale into broad Podwale. The rear walls of the palaces. People. People. And something roars. Thunders. And the front. And other things, too. Planes. Somewhere already… We have to hurry. We dismissed Długa. It was already a disaster there. Those hospitals. In the cellars. And the burned pilots. Bombed through. Bombed through. Smashed. Everything. And the Dominicans were to experience the same thing a day or two later. Those people. And those saints. Together. Into the cellars. Everything.