We began to treat it — because we felt it — as the only reality. That was. Is. And will be. People joked:
“Well? And when winter comes?”
“Indeed. And Christmas?”
“So? We’ll be sitting here then, too…”
“Perhaps there’ll be Christmas trees… from somewhere.”
Problems of cold were foreign to us. Distant. That year. Particularly.
For water, we went to Chopin Street. First of all, probably. During the period of the Soviet nighttime air raids. Past the barricade. Because of those gray sacks. And bending down. They were gray at night, too. A straight-ahead stretch. Then a sharp left. It was safest at night.
Then to Wilcza. I don’t know if we went to the house just past the corner of Mokotowska, on the right side, right away. Because once we walked on Krucza and Wilcza. Then again on Mokotowska. In any case, somewhere around there. I remember many trips — in daylight. But there were trips in the evening, too. And at dusk. Because we learned the passwords. And the responses (the response was more important). And sometimes it worked. Lots of people went with us. And lots passed us by. Civilians. And partisans. And those who were half and half. With buckets and without. The evenings were warm. I remember dry earth under my feet. And sand. Near the barricades. Antitank trenches. Near holes. Ruins. And those silhouettes in the darkness. Hurrying.
I remember Wilcza Street once in the daytime. On that stretch between Krucza and Mokotowska. The sun was out. Large buildings. Tall barricades. The smell of paving stones. From the barricades. Narrow passageways. One of the partisans on duty. And, as usual, a crowd. It remained in my memory because at first I was amazed. That there were people there. Walking around. Even the remains of streets. Buildings. It was still summer. A blue sky. A peaceful hour. So, those appearances. And this truth. Sad. I suddenly felt such sorrow. Because it could have been normal. I don’t know if I thought about all of Warsaw. Probably not. It was enough that on this stretch. Of Wilcza. Something was standing. Still. Something was alive. It was warm. So, just to begin living normally on this stretch.
Another time Halina and I were out walking. With Zocha or Father. Toward Wilcza. Already near the address that afterwards we came to know much better. It was late afternoon, almost evening. After the heat of the day. It was dry. Dusty. You could feel the soot in your teeth. Jagged fragments, earth, obstacles underfoot. It was right after a bombing. Right there. From a distance you could already note the absence of the four- or five-story apartment house at the corner. No. Not from afar. It was as we were going back. But somehow we already knew it. Because we were walking on Wilcza. And the corner of Wilcza and Mokotowska was bombed. Completely shattered. Precisely — shattered. Drily. Crackingly. Into boards, laths, walls, bricks. The rest, badly scarred, stood there, hung there. The apartment house was pouring out into the streets. Onto both of them. Into the intersection. And falling apart. Sifting down. Because there were pieces of it and pieces of it. But the farther away you walked, the less there was. Of whatever. Now a board, now bricks. And everything dry!
On our way back, since we were carrying water, we picked up several boards for fuel. Everyone was doing it. Why not? It was the same in Stare Miasto. Throughout the whole uprising. Everywhere. Because it was something to burn. We didn’t have any idea if people had been killed. We didn’t see any bundles. Sheets. At that time — as it happens — there must already have been a great number of graves. In the squares, the grassy areas. After the potatoes were dug out. In the courtyards. And the sidewalks. In our shelters on Wilcza, not far from the radio station, a certain old lady died a so-called natural death. And a funeral was held. In the courtyard.
The mother of Janek Markiewicz’s mother also died then of natural causes. In the same district, only a bit farther south. On Mokotowska. Or Służewska. I remember that the two of them had to look for boards for a coffin. They ran around. Janek and his mother told me about it. Until they found some. They nailed together a coffin. They buried her at the edge of Mokotów Field. On Polna Street. Later it was hard to find. People had already been brought there for the exhumation. They asked, “Where should we dig?”
Then Janek’s mother knelt down in the mud, because it was muddy, and placed her ear against the ground. And she seemed to hear her mother’s voice. From underground. With her burring “rh”: “Don’t worrhy, daughterh, I won’t cause you any trhouble…”
As for Markiewicz’s mother, it wasn’t enough that she had stood with her husband, Lech Byliński (the publicist), against a wall on Bagatela in a column with other people. They heard behind them round after round of gunfire. And they could smell smoke, burning. At one moment something strangely melted fell at their feet.
“What’s that?” said Lech.
“Don’t move,” she said.
(A piece of a corpse.)
So it wasn’t enough that Lech was taken to the Gestapo on Szucha Street. That probably he was shot there on August 4. After all this the Germans placed Janek’s mother and other women on a tank and moved with them down Aleje Ujazdowskie to Three Crosses Square. They used them as a living shield for their attack. Janek’s mother sat on the tank. And thought, “All right, but what’s it going to be?”
They were getting nearer and nearer.
“Another moment… all right, but what’s it going to be?”
Then they turned into Mokotowska. The partisans did not shoot. But finally they started shooting. The people dashed to the gates. They didn’t want to open the gates. In the end they unlocked a few of them. And so it wasn’t known who was killed, who wasn’t.
It was here, I think, that Janek’s mother first saw him. And they stayed together until the end. He was quite young then. Still hardly the age of a Boy Scout.
Let’s get back to water. To those outings. Afterward it was mainly the two of us, Halina and I, who went. We learned the passwords. We carried buckets. Mostly at dusk. And we were off. With the crowds. To Wilcza. Or a bit farther. Where — I’ll describe it right away. I know that on Wilcza, beyond Mokotowska, you turned left into a gate. But was there a second gate somewhere around here? Because inside one gate (the second, I think) you sat in a nighttime line. A long line. Buckets were placed upside down. People sat on them. And chatted. Two hours. Three. It didn’t matter. Anyway, we treated it as an excursion with discussions and other pleasures. No impatience. The line moved a bit? The buckets creaked? We did the same. Ours. We pulled them along. And again, plop onto their bottoms and chatting.
Once Halina said we’ll go a little farther. She may even have said that we should go past Aleje Ujazdowskie. It was already good and dark. So there we were. Walking through the courtyards. One. Two. I look out. Where’s Ujazdowskie? We’re in a not particularly large courtyard. With low walls or something. Black walls.
“This is Aleje,” says Halina.
“What do you mean? This?” I ask.
“Well yes.”
“You mean it’s not a courtyard?”
“It’s Aleje Ujazdowskie.”
“How can that be?” We look more closely.
“Yes. Aleje Ujazdowskie.”
Close inspection was of no use. Those were definitely barricades. Those low walls. The space was enclosed. But was it pitiful! Those black walls were the façades of buildings. Other main streets looked just the same. Marszałkowska, too. We went on. To the other side of Ujazdowskie. Past Ujazdowskie — I don’t know — were we there just that once. That time. But the shock, realizing what it was, will remain with me till the end of my life. To have mistaken Aleje Ujazdowskie for a lousy rear courtyard!
Our stove kept on collapsing. And also the building 21 on Wilcza. And Pani Trafna’s little house. And the low walls. And the courtyard with the grenades. There was a time when I think we didn’t cook on the ground floor. We stayed in the shelter. Then, I think, the food situation was already becoming serious. For everyone. By that time we were down to the last sugar cubes. Once, when Zocha went out of the cellar, I got hold of her bottles. And tipped one into my throat. It was sweet, like juice. Sweet. But suddenly a shock! Something (unusual!) different. Revolting! I swallowed. Because there was nothing else I could do. And I began to think what it could be.