It seems it was that day that I got up from the boards for a moment to fetch something, because after all, when we weren’t standing in the doorway we were lying down, and I ran out into the yard. Maybe it was to get cups. Into the neighboring stairwell. In the same corner, but next to the stairs. Also a burnt-out cellar. And I found them immediately.
Swen’s mother said, “Mirek, you’ll manage to find something, somehow. And I could use some dishes. Coffee cups. Because we don’t have enough jars. There’ll surely be something there.”
And there was. They were right there. Just as I entered. I looked around. Warped. Scorched. But you could see they were porcelain. Flowered. From a set. With saucers. I was happy. I dug them out. Brought them over. Swen’s mother was happy, too.
“Oh, how nice, I’ll serve in them.”
Perhaps it was precisely then that they showed me: “Look, shrapnel, still warm! It fell in…”
“Now?”
“Yes, right onto your place, where your back was, just after you walked outside.”
“You had just gotten up and walked outside and wham! right through the window. You were lucky.”
I was. Because nothing else fell in. Not a piece. I looked that one over. It was warm. A fat chunk. It was iron.
And perhaps it was on that second day that Lusia, Swen, and I organized a literary contest. We had the idea and then immediately:
“We’ll do it?”
“Sure.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“But on what?”
“The theme?”
“Well, that…”
“Good. That.”
“We’ll write…”
“For how long?”
“Two hours.”
“Good.”
“Attention,” said Swen, as soon as we had pencils and paper in hand, “we’re beginning.”
The contest was interrupted. Several times. We ran to the doorway. Then we read aloud. Taking turns. I don’t remember anything. I remember only Lusia’s sheet of paper, long, from a legal pad, what a page! And her sloping, tiny pencil writing. And that hers was the shortest.
The ventilator used to come open. Soot drifted in. Once it covered Zbyszek. So we were always laundering shirts. And we were always wetting ourselves to try and cool off. A common rosary. Evening. Maybe it was a bit cooler. Not in the slightest! It was summer. In Warsaw. And in that cellar. So out onto the stairs. We found the ideal step. The center one. We sat there most of the time. Celina, Swen, and I. On one step. I remember that once we sat on two. So perhaps two of them were ideal?
At night, a breath of air. The moon. Shrapnel. “Wardrobes.” Exactly. Bomb-hurling wardrobes. The frieze was fine but there was really only as much peace then as there was during the day. Except that there weren’t any planes. And no one thought to stir from his place in response to those nocturnal weapons. We lay there. Listened. Watched. Something drifted down. Farther off there was smoke, smoke and the moon in a semicircle on the frieze. Tanks drove up from Krakowskie Przedmieście. They would stop near us, somewhere near Kapitulna, near the barricade, no doubt. And fire. And fire. Deliberately. Hollowly. Drily.
Thunk!
And after each thunk! something would sift down. Sometimes we counted. Out loud. Once, half asleep, we counted up to 123. And that time my stomach ached from the explosions and the dust.
We got up. Sun. Heat. It was like an oven in here. The building wouldn’t cool down for anything. Perhaps it had cooled off one or two degrees? But what difference did it make if it was 107 or 105? And it was that high, for sure. The only breezes were from the bombs, the mortars, shells, grenades, and tanks. And these had the negative aspect that they always made something fall down. Something small, powdery, but with a kind of ash-step or, so to speak, an ash-shudder. Or the cornices would break off, the moldings, brackets, walls, low walls, bricks, brick facings, plaster, pieces of beams; they pushed around the piles of rubble, the ones above us, the ones near the front and by the gate. It seemed to us that something was always being fired from the tanks and the mine throwers (those “wardrobes”), hurtling in either from the gate or from the building’s front. That front was shrinking all the time, its columns, openwork, pendants. The “wardrobe” with its one-two-three gouged everything, gouged and hurled. It wasn’t called a mine thrower for no reason. At the beginning we were afraid of the flamethrowers. That they could reach us. Through the holes, the open grillwork. The same with the tank. That it could hit us. With one of its volleys. Or set us on fire. The same with the grenades. But after two days we got used to them, knew that they wouldn’t penetrate to us. If only the tank crew wouldn’t storm us. If only they wouldn’t suddenly hold their guns on us. Scream at us. Order us to come out. And at the same time fire at us. And then drive us in front of them as a shield. Everything at once would have been just too much. But the planes. It was impossible to get used to the planes. The cellar no longer amused us as a novelty, as ruins. Perhaps it might have amused us. But it didn’t. Every fifteen to twenty minutes, continuously, they flew over. Dropped their bombs. Flew past again. Dropped their bombs again. Every twenty minutes, ten minutes of standing in the doorway. That’s right. Half and half. I don’t remember what was happening with the front then. I remember this. The doorway. Swen’s mother leaning her head against the edge of the wall, under the oil painting of Christ. They fired blindly. They didn’t care what they hit, as long as they destroyed everything. So the same ruins were hit for the third time, the fourth time. The ruins were disappearing, like the remains of these latticework shields.
We would get up early, but not to eat, because I think that by then we had already begun to eat only once a day. Toward evening Swen’s mother prepared coffee from what remained of the kasha. For everyone. She gave everyone a cup. Without sugar, of course. How long had we been without sugar? From the very beginning, I think. And three rusks each. Thin ones — bent, broken slices of dried black bread. Later we had only two each. That was the most solemn moment. And either before or after it we recited the rosary. The day was long. Although apparently people say that at the end of August the days get shorter, that’s nonsense. So much sun. Heat. And those bombs. And standing in the doorway. Counting.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve… well… a dud… oh.”
And immediately:
“One, two, three, four, five…” Boom, uproar, something is collapsing! Us? No…
And again:
“One, two, three, four, five, six…”
I was still reading from Titchener. Those thirty-six or thirty-eight pages. From Freta Street. Did I write anything? Perhaps I was still working away at my huge poem. I remember telling Swen the second or third day on Miodowa, in a relatively quiet moment, that I would like to read it to him.
“Good. You know what, let’s go to the third room to take a dump and you’ll read it to me.”
“But, you know…” I wavered.
“What’s the matter?”
“No, not while we’re shitting.”