“Why?”
“Just because; you go and when you come back we’ll go behind the pillar and I’ll read it to you.”
“Fine.”
And I read it to him behind the pillar.
In the meantime there was trouble with water. An unpleasant half surprise. Miodowa was flowing, flowing, roaring; the moon was shining. But the sun was shining, too. And those pipes that had been hit were clearly emptying out. The roaring stopped. There was still something flowing. But by the third day the waterfall in the dark room was no longer thundering. At first it still fell in a trickle. Then just barely. Then whatever was left. Just drips. We had to stand there patiently with a bucket. In order to have a supply for the next day at least. Laundering was over. No more luxury. After three days or two and a half we were already without water.
I took the bucket. I ran out into the courtyard. It was cluttered even more than before with various things. The first time I scooped up some water nearby, in our courtyard I think. But that was also the last time. To get water there. In our whole area, in fact.
By then, people were already coming to join us. People. Living there already. That Tuesday. They came over. They came downstairs. Just as we had. They walked in. They stayed.
“May we?”
“Of course.”
A whole family. Large. I don’t remember from where. An old aunt was with them. She groaned. And immediately lay down on the iron bed. On the springs. And didn’t move any more. She spoke through her nose. Indistinctly. She was always complaining. That her whole throat was burned from the fire. In fact, she was scorched. Those women, several of them, healthy, bovine women, affirmed it, knew about it, had witnessed it. And yet they shushed her. And repeated, “She’s exaggerating.”
Then, when she was groaning during the night, they said to her, “You’re exaggerating, Aunt.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
There were other people there, too. In the corners near the walls. Because they came over. They also said, “She’s exaggerating.”
“She’s exaggerating.”
They also came into that first anteroom. And the hall behind ours. The women from that family, since we were sitting in our part and eating only once a day already, would go and cook in the anteroom where Christ was. They had a stove there. Once they walked past carrying some fat dumplings. Freshly steamed. White. Flour dumplings. A heaping bowlful. Fragrant. Sheep dumplings, as I used to say when I was a boy. They walked past us behind the pillars, carrying the dumplings. To their nest. I don’t remember anymore where it was exactly. In the corner near the courtyard. Not so much in the corner as near the wall. They were the third group here. After the woman in the slip with the wounded man in that dark room which was now as dry as tinder. And after us. After all, I’ve said that the shelters weren’t anyone’s private property. Underground Warsaw was communal.
Swen recalls this: “Do you remember how that woman carried those dumplings… fffull…?”
Perhaps the woman would have given us dumplings. If we’d asked. But it never entered our heads. And it wouldn’t have helped the situation. There were still two rusks for each of us with a drink of coffee from the charred porcelain. And what of it that the women yelled at their aunt? The others did, too. After all, they didn’t really yell so very much. Although from Wednesday through Thursday was quite long enough. And in chorus. Loud enough. Until she stopped groaning. I have to admit that. The wounded man on Miodowa, the one with the mustache, it was his own fault, also was left alone. In terror for oneself, out of fear of sticking one’s head out.
What about the news? The newssheets? I think they still reached us somehow. They were gotten hold of. One knew things. That the so-called general situation was worsening. I was about to say that it couldn’t get any worse in Starówka. But that’s not true. The worsening really had no end. It always turned out that things could be worse. And even worse.
We were awaiting the demolition of the bridges. We were astonished that the bridges were still standing. Red Florian was standing in Praga. With its towers. And the Orthodox church, too. With its sky-blue cupola. Like fair weather. We were waiting for one more symbolic, evil, preordained piece of news. For the end of the Sigismund Vasa statue on its column. It was still standing. It remained standing for a long time. Until we learned through the newssheets that they had demolished it.
Our kings were not protecting us. Nor were we protecting our kings. Nor what had come after them. Everything. Everything.
O, my Piwna Street! Of the Augustinians. Of Vespers. Psalms. And the Seven Plagues. I once went to Vespers at the Augustinians. There was a crowd. They were burning incense. There were palms. People were singing. Vespers. Those Jewish matters in a Gothic church, in the twentieth century. And when they got to
Thou art a priest forever
After the order of Melchizedek…
I was very moved. In those words I could hear, I remembered, my first Vespers. That is why I am writing about this. Because it is all intermeshed. Everything. My neighborhood, too. Leszno, Chłodna. And Muranów. Because the majority of my churches were there. Then the Jews. And Karpiński. And that woman near the pillars.
In the courts of the Lord’s house, in the midst of thee, o Jerusalem.
Praise ye the Lord.
Then there was also something about “within thy palaces.”
Jerusalem in Stare Miasto or Muranów. Then in the ghetto.
There was yet another Psalm:
Except the Lord build the house, they labor
in vain that build it;
Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman
waketh but in vain.
And further along… I remember only this:
(something) not be ashamed
But they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
Only then did I understand that this refers to a defensive gate, like the one on Podwale or in that classic Roman drama by Shakespeare. People are forced out there. People shove other people through such a gate. At that time I thought — on Nowolipki, on Leszno and Piwna Streets, in the crowd, beneath the palms, that it was a gate like the one at 99 Leszno or 37 Poznańska, a gate like so many others. A front gate. An entrance. With a sign: “Peddlers, singers, musicians, and beggars prohibited.” With niches on the sides and iron Saint Nicholases. Usually iron. Grillwork and flowers. And farther on, in the center, in front of the entrance to the first courtyard welclass="underline" an oil painting of a sphinx on water lilies, above the stairwell. Or tiles. With garlands. Festoons.
Well, Our Lady on Piwna Street. Who would have thought at that time when I was listening so intently to those vestibules, those gates — build and keep watch, praise be the house of the Lord — that now, running out with a bucket in search of water on Podwale, I would see that “Zion,” the second one, turned to rubble, gray, red, “Our house, the house of the Lord”—the second one after Muranów, after the elders who shall judge the people, that I would see those Augustinians. Their backs. From Podwale. Demolished. No more Seven Plagues. Palms. Crowds. That singing about Jewish matters. From Melchizedek. Who (I learned this later) appeared, no one knows from where, and — the first to do so — performed a bloodless sacrifice. And immediately departed.
It was sunset. Heat without letup. And bricks, piles of ruins, gray, ashen, stone upon stone. With fires, rubble, the clanking of the bucket, mine, empty, and of other buckets that passed by. I associate this with sunset. Climbing up Podwale. On the other side. Higher and higher. To mounds of something or other. Nothing specific. It seemed to be Rycerska Street. You could recognize it because it was crooked. Because it was a red path, at third-floor level, made of shattered bricks. Or rather, buildings. So many had piled up already. So I’m running along Rycerska. Buckets clanking. Empty. No water anywhere. Only people searching. No one found any. Suddenly, I look: several hundred twisting meters ahead, beyond the rise, the red rise, a woman is running, carrying something, in a bucket, a pitcher. I run. I chase her. I look: she’s carrying something. Because it’s not clanking. And she’s slightly bent over to one side.