There was time for thinking — the emotional sort. No, don’t think. No matter what.
“Oy,” I thought, “they stayed back there on Miodowa, and those little crosses…”
Again we moved up a bit. Along the wall. It was becoming more and more dangerous.
“Ohhh,” I thought, “over there are Halina, Father, Zocha. In Śródmieście.”
Śródmieście! I had arranged to meet Halina at seven. On August 1. I would be there September 1. Also at seven. Since it was afternoon, I figured I would be there in two hours. And what about Mama? Where is my mother? Is she alive? I still have the keys. How did she get back to the apartment before they drove her out? How is Nanka? Sabina? Aunt Józia? Stefa?
Again a little way along the wall. Shells were landing. And those fires. Along the other side of Długa. Here. A fresh one. On Garnizonowa, too, I think. 13 or 15 Długa. Live flame. And yet the sun is shining here. Through the smoke. And flames. It’s stinging. Everything.
“And I,” I thought, more or less in these words, “who read with Mama long ago, long ago in peacetime about that ‘Yon Valyon,’ as people pronounced it, by Victor Hugo, who walked through the sewers of Paris with a wounded man on his back — now I, any minute now, in three minutes or so will enter the sewers of Warsaw with a wounded man on my back.[17] Who could have imagined it?”
But Śródmieście. So far away. Today perhaps it’s hard to understand. Nowy Świat — Krasiński Square. Both are in Śródmieście. They’re not so far apart. But they were terribly distant. No nearer, I tell you, than, for me, after the war, from Warsaw to Paris. In general, the two places weren’t thought of as being in any way connected.
It was five in the afternoon when we broke away from the corner of the wall on Długa and the wall on Krasiński Square and immediately started crawling. Faster and faster. Because the shells were falling mercilessly. On us. On the entrance. The Miodowa barricade was fine. But the barricade across Krasiński Square, from Bonifraterska, was low — no higher than our waists. Made of gray paper sacks filled with something or other. Cement, most likely. And that barricade was important. Our defense. We were crawling beneath it. I was dragging the wounded man along the ground. With all my strength. Quickly. Quickly.
Across from the fire, from flames that were several stories high, in the sunshine, was the manhole. Someone was half squatting, half standing over the manhole. One or two people. And directing the traffic. Without pity he tore the bundles and knapsacks from people’s backs and flung them aside onto a heap; they were piling up. Everything moved like lightning here. The shells were striking noticeably at the manhole itself. From two sides. The fire was raging. And engulfing things. We crawled along. Using all the strength we had. In front of us, behind us, too, was an unbroken line. The manhole wasn’t big. The cover was thrown to one side. No one explained to anyone else what to do or how. Everyone learned as much as he could see in a second as the people ahead descended. I flung my wounded man over my back. No. He was handed to me somehow, I think. No. I don’t remember. With him, perhaps. Into that opening. The last view. The church on Garnizonowa. Burning. Smoke. Sun. Shells. And metal rungs. One foot. The other foot. Lower all the time. It was deep. It wasn’t hard at all. Some number of those rungs. It widened out at the bottom. Like a bell. And we were entirely underground. Burbling. We set off at once. To the right. We’d already rolled up our trousers on Długa. We waded into something. Water halfway up our calves. We began to walk. In that water. so-called. Step after step: squish… squish… squish…
The first thing that startled me was the calm. The quiet. A burbling sound. Those steps. A light. A candle could be seen far ahead of us. Our nurse was also carrying a candle. So, calm. After that hell. Relief. Extraordinary relief. The wounded man didn’t weigh me down at all. He was resting a bit from the effort. He was passive. Joy, almost. After that hell above. The bombs, the shells… far away. All that could be heard was: u-uu — uuu — uu — uu — u—drawn out, horribly drawn out, hollow — uu — uuu — that’s the shells and the bombs; completely distant, indifferent — and the echo carried, carried.
I think we turned into Miodowa immediately. Because a whisper. From one person to another:
“We’re walking under Miodowa.”
“We’re walking under Miodowa.”
“We’re walking under Miodowa.”
And the whisper, too, could be heard in echoes, drawn out, as in a seashell. No. As in a well. That’s not quite right, either. Because it wasn’t just a bottomless well in cross-section. But something without beginning or end. And incalculable. Because it was branching. After all, there were as many sewers as there were streets. Another city. A third Warsaw, counting from the top. The first was the one right on the surface. The city of passages through courtyards and vestibules. The second was the city of shelters. With a system of connections. Underground. And beneath that underground Warsaw was this underground one. With traffic. Rules. Signs. At each fork, over the entrance into the sewer proper, or the Stare Miasto— Śródmieście pedestrian artery, was an arrow and the inscription “HERE” in chalk on the bricks.
What do sewers look like? Different in different places. Always shored up with bricks in their entirety. And they always have rounded ceilings and rounded floors. Or, rather, oval. In general, they appear to be cross-sections or, rather, to be seen in perspective, because their cross-section can be seen into infinity. Oval-shaped. More or less oval. I say more or less because right under Miodowa the sewer was large and had benches (concrete, I think) on both sides. We walked behind a candle. The nurse. And ahead of us someone else was also carrying a candle. And someone even farther ahead, I think. So things could be seen. Obviously, not clearly. The walls shimmered. That perspective. The procession also without beginning or end shimmered. Flickered. In a slippery way. Because here everything was slippery. We had rolled up our trouser legs. To our knees. But we were wearing shoes. The water was always halfway up our calves. I don’t remember if it stank. Or steamed. I don’t even know what was in it. Probably various things. It seems we passed two corpses. Exactly twice, I think, something got tangled under my feet. But generally one didn’t feel anything but slosh… slosh… and relief. That we’re going to Śródmieście. It must have been an absolute hell in Stare Miasto if our eyes and noses were so deadened.
Not long ago someone asked me where the sewage was coming from then. Why was it still flowing?
I don’t know.
Those concrete benches may have been for the workers to have something to walk on. After all, normally the sewage flows higher and more rapidly.
No one thought about that then. Benches are benches. Suddenly I noticed a discarded knapsack on the benches. Then, farther on, a jar of lard. Then again a knapsack. Or a blanket. I remind you — or myself, anyway — that I was carrying the wounded man. It was wide and high under Miodowa. So I was carrying him normally. We walked on and on under Miodowa. And it was shimmering. From those candles. And the people. And the thundering: u — uu — uuu…
Well, anyway I was exhausted by carrying him.
“Zbyszek,” I turned only my head because we were walking, “could you take him now?”
“Fine.”
Swen slowed down. Zbyszek passed him. He came up to me. And took him. I was free. I felt comfortable. As I rarely had.
I don’t remember if this was first:
“Attention! Put out your lights, an open manhole.”
“Attention! We’re slowing down, we’re passing under an open manhole.”