And the latrine? The latrine was more or less to the right of the hole. At the end of the courtyard. It doesn’t really matter which one. Off to the side. Somewhere in a corner. So that because of its narrowness it had room for only a kind of perch. With a hole. For shit. And a path. To reach it. When you sat down on the perch above the hole you had — practically in front of your nose — a shed with something or other inside it. And something above it that rose higher and higher. A side of the annex, probably. Windowless. And behind your back or, rather, behind your a—, was an enormous wall several stories high. Also windowless. Above you there was a tiny strip of sky (narrow and long). Shells would be flying across it. I wanted to say: creatures. But only those. Artificial ones. The live ones were in the cellars. One of the women in our cellar had a dog. What breed? Small and fat. Pan Stanisław said that you could balance a glass of water on that dog (a bitch perhaps?). And he told the woman who owned the dog or bitch, “I’d advise you to watch out for him!” Because apparently, and even for certain, people ate dogs then. And cats.
In the shelter, not this one but the one next door, under number 23 (an immense seven-story building of the old sort, Secession-style, we envied them their Klein vaulting) — well, next door we had a radio station. It was in one of the potato bins. Behind thick boards. But with chinks in them. I say “we had” because we used to rush there. For the radio.
“Beep-beep-beep — beeeep! — BBC…”
Several times a day — news. We would stand in front of those boards. We placed our ears against the chinks. We ran there straight from our place. From our pallets. From our own shelter. Through other shelters. Corridors. Holes. Gaps in the wall. Until we got to somewhere in the depths of those shelters. Under number 23. That is, we were running through cellars. As was done everywhere. Without need of surface paths.
I remember a Sunday morning and Mass during the early, perhaps the very first, days on Wilcza. One of the women loaned her apartment for it. On the ground floor. At right angles with ours. That is, to the left from the gate onto the street. Windows onto the courtyard, naturally. She even prepared a carpet and palms. Perhaps a palm. Just one. And the other, could that have been a dracaena? There was something there. Churchly. Seemingly. After Mass there was confession. Communal. Because there were a lot of people. With the condition — recited aloud — that we’d go to individual confession if we survived all this.
Sunday fell on September 10. That was the second Sunday in Śródmieście and the first one we were aware of on the other side of Aleje. Or rather, which we realized was a Sunday. Later, until the very end, until the middle of October, no one anywhere distinguished the days. Recently, I calculated, because the date is significant, on what day of the week October 1 fell. Recently, which is to say, twenty years later. And to my amazement I discovered for the first time that it was a Sunday.
You remember. August 6 on Chłodna. (“Maybe the Good Lord will change something.”) The consciousness of it being Sunday. August 15—Rybaki — a holiday — the miracle at the Vistula — but they’re not coming. September 3—a Sunday like that day of gun salutes in 1939. On the same confluence of date and day. The sofa. Chmielna. And this fourth one. Well-known. Festive. Now. And that — is all.
In those first days the route along Krucza Street had already descended underground. On Krucza itself between Wspólna and Hoża lay a woman’s bloody shoe (with a piece of foot). From then on people began to be a little more careful. Only one stretch — from our Wilcza to Hoża — became known for its safety. People began to swarm over it. They swarmed between Wilcza and Piękna, too, or, rather, from our corner to the end of Krucza. From the south. Up to the square at the intersection of Piękna, Krucza, and Mokotowska. Across the square, facing the intersection of Krucza, along the whole southern side of Piękna, was a barricade. Long. Solid. Made from sacks and bags filled with something. And from paving stones. But the barricade wasn’t high. You had to run. And crouch down. And watch out for Krucza as you approached the square. Because that’s where the firing from Marszałkowska and Redeemer Square began.
But people ran back and forth. Many of them. A great number. On Krucza and Mokotowska there were many billets. For partisans and for civilians. So both civilians and partisans were running up and down Krucza. And hybrids. Krucza was undoubtedly the main street of southern Śródmieście. Probably because it resembled a street. And had traffic. Despite the various ruins and barricades. And despite the fact that it was only this one stretch. But that was enough. For it to dominate. It suddenly became a substitute Aleje for all of Śródmieście. On Krucza you could take care of many things. On Krucza people met their families, friends. Arrivals from various districts. People who had acquired it as their third or fourth district. In their uprising path. Here you could meet someone you hadn’t seen for ten years. Suddenly. As I did. Also. I encountered Count Franio Z. From school. After so many years. Later, someone else.
On Krucza we met Roman Ż. In Home Army uniform. “Atos.” The fellow who came to Chłodna that time on July 31, when there was that storm and the air raid simultaneously. To say goodbye. To Mama. And me. And who knew Halina. I think he knew Father and Zocha, too. That’s not important. He visited us right away. Once, and then another time. Zocha treated him. To freshly made soup. A whole bowlful. Roman was getting ready to eat. But suddenly a cow: u-u! u-u! u — u! — and plaster showering down from the ceiling. Right into the soup. Roman spooned up whatever could be eaten. He ate the smallest pieces of ceiling. The second time it was the same, I think. With the difference that the stove collapsed, too. Which didn’t bother us. Because we put it back together immediately from scratch. The ceiling was falling every day, it seems. In large chunks of plaster. In strips. Into the soup. And onto our heads. And there was plenty to fall down because although it didn’t look so good from the outside, on the inside it was also a Secession-style building. Or rather, that fifth or sixth Warsaw classicism. Covered with stucco. Rosettes. Garlands. Cornices. To say the least.
A brawl in southern Śródmieście. Our final lifeline. After our renting the place on Wilcza (for nothing, because there was no money in circulation — at that time!). The ground floor. One-two-three. Because after all — there was the shelter. Almost immediately. And after a couple of nights, thinking instead about number 23, next door. Our place had those five stories above it. But it was already somewhat shrunken. Eaten away. In addition, it turned out that it was in fairly poor condition. From the outset it hadn’t looked too sturdy. Or fortresslike. But then the gray plaster started falling off in bits. Whitish-yellow. Dried out. So it crackled. Boards. Laths. And that name I came up with — whitewash: something ceiling-ish. And that turned out to be the trusses. So we left. The entire group. From under number 21 (literally from under, because we moved underground). To look over number 23. Under the guise of moving. The tenants in number 23 knew us. We knew they agreed. And even had they not known us it would have been the same. There was still a little bit of space. So we looked it over. I remember how each of us in turn praised the Klein vaulting and the rest looked it over, patted it. Various people, old ladies. Everyone valued, was knowledgeable about, patted that “Klein.” It seems that Klein, simply a certain Pan Klein, a Jew, a German, had made a good discovery. And just in the nick of time. So that people had managed to build a good many buildings like that in old Śródmieście in the days of Prus and Proust.