I run. I catch up with her. I ask, “Where…”
I don’t finish. Because she’s looking at me and also into the bucket. I look into the bucket, too. Soup. I don’t know why when I told this to friends after the war, I said that the soup was made from bilberries. Only recently, some twenty years later, have I begun to wonder where those berries could have come from. At the end of August? And at the end of Starówka? There. At that time? And so many of them. So much soup. Yet I can see it and it’s black.
But nothing came of it. I missed it. I ran. I ran up. I ran down to something lower. I turned. Piekarska Street? How should I know? Again, people. Buckets. And nothing. Planes. Bombs. No point in even thinking about shelter. Because where? And when? Already there are loud blasts. Explosions. And the next ones. And again they’re flying over. The diving. Whining. Bombs. The only thing to do was to run even faster. With the buckets. Everyone was running as fast as possible. With buckets. Jugs. But that was no help in this situation. Running without bombs is different from running with bombs. It was a fact that they were bombing something nearby. And a lot. Because there was rising dust. And smoke. Reddish-brown, gray, brick-colored things were moving — those Pompeiis, ashes. And suddenly a burst of news: water was gushing out on Szeroki Dunaj. From a pipe. From a bomb. At that very moment. We clank. We all run. There. Into that dust. Into Wąski Dunaj. Over the mounds. To the corner of Szeroki Dunaj. Everyone came running. And suddenly a miracle — actually visible — water gushing, like a fountain, from a large cracked pipe, pierced through, pushed up out of the ground. Joy. A crush. Collecting. Clanking. And since suddenly there was a lot of water, quick as could be. And everyone takes off. I came running back to Miodowa. Lucky. With living proof of good luck to show. And to drink. Immediately. Mama was delighted. And I was proud. Then night. Noise. Blasts. Rosaries. The moon on Pac Palace. The frieze. We sleep.
In the morning, movement. A raid. The doorway. And then we check why the old aunt is so quiet. But the aunt isn’t alive.
“Well, she’s been dead for some time.”
“When?”
They carried her out. The women, that is. The family. Out to the courtyard. But since the bombing was intense they only set her down quickly, practically threw her down, at the foot of the stairs. Somewhat to the side. So that she lay there. Squatting. Sprawled. All day, all night. And longer. Because there really was no time or way to bury her. Apparently.
I don’t know if it was toward evening of that day or the day before that Celinka, Swen, and I were sitting on the two middle steps when we started discussing whether we would survive.
“You know”—Celinka smiled—“I have a premonition that I’ll survive.”
“I do, too,” said Swen.
Celinka replied, smiling, “Yes, but my friend said the same thing and she died.”
My second foray for water. With searching. This time even more hopeless. Because where? Count on a bomb hitting a pipe a second time? Wandering aimlessly. Searching. And nothing. With that bucket.
“There’s water! 5 Podwale! 5 Podwale!”
“5 Podwale, corner of Kapitulna, a well, wooden, they’ve uncovered it…”
I run. Others do, too. Even better that it’s near us, only via Kapitulna. But I’d run somewhere far away. The nearer I got the more people there were running with buckets and jugs. Even passing us already with full ones.
“Yes. There’s water!”
I run in through the gate of number 5. There it is. A crowd. The clanking. A line. A small courtyard. A well. In the courtyard. Wooden. Green. Moss-covered. Square. Such an old one that no one had known about it. Someone discovered it. Who? There are no people here. The house seems to be standing. Partially. But it’s absolutely unusable. Which means some small part of it is standing. Maybe not even burned out. Just something left after the bombs. That’s right. There were bombs all the time. Because something that probably was an office was serving as a place for the line. Because there was a line. And it kept growing. And there were also bombs. But no one gave up on the water. And so people stood there. Patiently. On the ground floor because it was the ground floor. But as always — not on the top. It was hot. Daytime. Bright. And we stood. For a long time. Because the well was really old. And it was necessary to lower and draw up in turn (with a pole or a rope) bucket after bucket. And that place, it was an office. I inspected. What was left of the furniture. Or rather, a cabinet. Shoved against a wooden harmonium. Which had been pushed out of the way. Full of paper. Blank sheets. For writing. I took a pile for myself. That was sheer luxury. The very fact. And the quality. I remember the watermark. SIMON, and something else, I think. I didn’t have any paper, so I was very happy. And I waited. For my turn. An hour. Two. I think two. In addition to the cabinet there may have been something else. With debris. Nothing else. Ruins, of course, plaster and laths, bricks, openings without door or window. You walked out to the well through such an opening when your turn came. Because it did come, finally. Mine. I lowered the bucket. I drew it up. Someone even helped me. He knew how. And I ran with the water and the paper to my people. To my ruins.
The night was definitely moonlit. With the frieze across from us. And something pounding (a tank, all the time). And the hideous heat. The heat from the fire. We definitely ate one and a half rusks each for the entire day.
Those days on Miodowa Street were spent entirely under bombardment. From morning to night. All that time spent standing in the doorway. With a view of two stories of ruins. There was no vaulting in this place. None. Only the doorway. Actually, I’ve exaggerated about the vaulting. I don’t know if there was a fragment above us. Perhaps there was. But we only counted on the doorframe. About their flying over. The planes, that is, in the dark. I exaggerated about that, too. Precisely on August 31, as we immediately learned, the “Chrobry” Battalion, more than two hundred people, returned from action. To their quarters. To the cellar in the Simons Passage (on Nalewki, near the Krasiński Gardens, called Street of the Ghetto Heroes today). They all collapsed onto their field beds and bunks. That is, they didn’t so much collapse as barely make the motions of pulling back blankets in order to lie down and then, the disaster. Only four or five of them survived. Even though they survived, they had no idea — when, what, how. Just that suddenly there were bombs and firing. I spoke with them, with those who survived — three or four men and one (I think one) woman. In 1946. In September. At that time, from the Saxon Gardens to Żoliborz, Warsaw was a desert. The Saxon Gardens, too. Actually, from Aleje Jerozolimskie to Żoliborz. I was a journalist. I was writing about the exhumations. People testified that here and there, there was this and that. And then there was the question of identification. Lists. Of the identified. Here, too. Only, those few survivors began the exhumation on their own initiative. Several workers did the digging. There was a basin, a large tin basin, for heads, arms, legs. But it wasn’t easy to recognize what was whose. I remember this: “Is this Zdziś’s leg? Or maybe Ryś’s?”
And it was tossed into an empty carbide can.
Don’t be surprised. That was common then. They had a fire going. On the Krasińśki Gardens side. Because the first frosts had set in. But they gave up. Digging farther. Because the Simons Passage was a single tangle, a pile of rubble, and so strong and fused together, with iron rails sticking up. Because the building had been big and strong. So that when it (along with the rest of the ruins) collapsed, it caved in. So much for that. Later they took it apart. That was proper. They dug them out. Buried them. But did they identify them? I don’t know. Well, that’s all.