Mama and Aunt tried some.
“Yes, it’s inedible.”
“I wanted to do it this way for a change. But it didn’t work out.”
Too bad. It’s poured out. We get something else. Maybe coffee with rusks. Food, the liquid sort, we got in jars. Here on Miodowa, at least. I remember. Had we already found them on Rybaki? Or as soon as we got here? Definitely colored. Green. Bronze. And maybe a little warped. From the fire. Little jars.
All this good fortune on Miodowa Street… in the ashes, we waded in ashes here terribly and also they drifted in through the ventilator — as soon as there was an explosion — piles of soot. Well, all this good fortune was immediately spoiled; immediately afterward and over and over again spoiled by bombs.
At the beginning we didn’t move at all. Where could we go? We were in the ruins. A bit of a roof, that’s all. Either they’ll hit us directly or they won’t. If it’s a direct hit, they’ll break through. Then— there’ll be no miracles here. So we sit. They bomb. All around us. Nearer. Farther. The escarpment, Długa, Podwale, Miodowa. We didn’t even interrupt our meals. Here. We learned not to interrupt our eating at all. Unless the bombs were really very close. Then we’d hunch over for a moment. Then the planes would fly away. Mama prayed. She proposed reciting the rosary aloud. We refused. Then Lusia, Swen, and I considered what we could do. Either Mama or Lusia had cards. Was it Lusia who had the idea of playing bridge? The three of us played. With Zbyszek. I think Zbyszek sat in an armchair. Those armchairs were comfortable. Large. And strangely bowed backward. Celina didn’t want to get out of the baby carriage. She lay there dangling her head, arms, legs. And she was content. I remember that the cards were spread out on those boards of ours. And that we didn’t play very much. Because of the planes. The bombing would seem to stop. But not really. They’d fly away. We’d play some more. Again they’d fly over. Bombs. Again watching the ceiling — as for everything. And we play some more.
Then it was necessary to fetch water. For Mama. For cooking. For Aunt. For Pani Rymińska. For washing. For various needs. Water’s there — it has to be fetched. I went back and forth with a pitcher and a bucket to that dark room where the wounded man, his wife, and the waterfall were. It could be collected there in a second. I ran right back to wash. Right away. To wash my shirt. There was no soap. But who even dreamed of soap then? The shirt was black. Celina had an idea. We could wash our clothes. Swen was astounded, for some reason. Because we were washing our clothes. Or perhaps he didn’t react until the evening? Because I think we washed our clothes more than once. After every thick dusting. Or explosion of soot. It dried in ten minutes. Because it was so hot. Such heat. Unbearable. And I think we walked about in various outfits, as was customary during the uprising; I remember that the wife of that wounded man sat in her slip in that dark room beneath the waterfall. Who cared then about a slip? It was immediately decided that we would use the next room, the one beyond the room nearest to us, to poop. Because going out into the courtyard was very risky. Even going out onto the stairs, at least onto the higher steps. Yet we went out to the stairs anyway. Because it was impossible to endure the heat. Of course, there was the water. To wet ourselves. But we needed air, too. When it grew dark we would start sitting around on the stairs. Too low down it was too hot, just like down below. But fragments from the shells would land on the steps more or less halfway up and higher. We took note of that. So we chose the middle steps. Where we could catch a gulp of air but the shrapnel couldn’t reach us.
We went to bed. Lying down to sleep was actually a matter of sitting down — each in his armchair or carriage, or stretching out on a pile of rubble, like Lusia and Mareczek. Or, like Swen and me — in whatever we had on, and we had only one change of clothing — on our boards. In other words, in the same places we’d chosen immediately — everyone at the same time — upon coming here to stay.
The first night I didn’t sleep on the boards next to Swen but on the iron bed with the bare metal netting, just because it was standing there near us and enticed me like a hammock. But because it was impossible to wear a jacket there I had only my one thin shirt right over the iron netting, which formed small squares. I don’t know how many hours later it was or whether it was dawn already or not when I got up and went back to the boards. My whole back was covered with little squares, like a shirt of mail. We also had the idea of removing the netting as a unit and placing it on the boards, on both of them. But no. That was bad, too. What could be better than boards? We stayed on the boards.
The first night as well as the following ones (the whole time on Miodowa, I think) there was moonlight. And smoke. And more smoke. Fires. And more fires. But somehow, from our boards near the window, we could see the upper portion of the Pac Palace gate. The frieze, to be precise. In the moonlight, because it was fine weather although the smoke obscured it somewhat — the niche. Gray-brown — I remind myself. At night it was the color of dumplings left to dry (remember, our mouths were always dry). And that frieze. With figures. A procession. The figures were flat, yet they cast shadows. Anyway. In addition, they were in a semicircle. I would look at it for hours. Intrigued. It seemed to me Swen was less interested. I was somewhat offended by this. Dumplings and more dumplings. Everything then was dry, floury, like the dumplings, ready to crumble. And amidst all this there was the waterfall. That, too! An accident — a miracle — a luxury. The waterfall hummed. Clattered. The water fell somewhat lower down, I don’t remember where any longer. All of Miodowa emitted noises. After all, a river was continually flowing along it. The Pac Palace. Come what may. Pac. From the palace. That one, not the other. Here (that’s how I imagined it) the magistrate’s court convened in the days of Prus.[15]
So, the springs. At night. Dawn. As usual, exceptionally fine weather. Hot. It was hot here, too; in fact, it was like an oven.
“The building burned down five days ago,” said the wife of the man who’d been wounded in the back, the woman in the slip, in the dark room beneath the waterfall. A building takes a long time to cool off. And in summer? What are five days! And how long a fire can be smelled! I knew that from 1939. You could smell those burnt-out shells almost until the uprising. Yes. Because you could smell the ones from the uprising for another five years. Even after eight years they still gave off an odor. Only there were the rains, and the soaking, and so many human feces, dried out, new, all the time, that it’s hard to say what stank. Well, I woke up with squares on my back. The attempt at placing the springs on the boards. And lying down on them. Finally we gave up. The bed remained where it was. With the coat of mail. Empty. Rusty, iron. After all, it had been burned. How had the armchairs survived intact? I don’t know. There was that Christ, too, and some plaster that hadn’t peeled. In the anteroom. But the chairs? Unexplained. I don’t know if it was then or on the third day, but I think it was that second day, only not in the morning because we just lay there, lay there. There were air raids. We each had a little colored jarful of oatmeal or barley soup. Probably the last of the kasha. Or the next to last kasha. So, we lay with those jars under the doorway between our room and the big anteroom with the Christ on the pillar. I think He was on the pillar. Or perhaps past the doorway on the wall. We didn’t all fit into the single doorway. Eight adults. Because the child was held on Lusia’s knees. So some of us probably went near the pillar. It was right there. And it counted just the same. Like the doorway. It was something that might remain standing in the event of a hit and the collapse of some part of the ruins. The doorway and the walls were still perpendicular. For the most part. They might collapse, too. But they had a chance. The pillars, too. Whatever they were. True, they weren’t concrete, as on Rybaki. Even so. Well, we would take the food in those jars to the doorway and since we were hungry, that’s right! Were we ever hungry! — that was a reason. We ate. We looked up. At times soot poured down. On the kasha. The coffee. So we didn’t leave any over. That was the second reason. In the so-called hallway a lot of things were sifting down all the time. From above, from the windows. From the ceilings. From who knows where. Of course we brushed it aside. And ate. What of it? Things used to drift down here, too. But less and less.