“What are you doing? Those are my deceased daughter’s school notebooks.”
“Yes, but…”
“Excuse me…”
My yes buts were of no help. Since it wasn’t at all obvious why I should be tearing out pages from old notebooks, there was no way to convince her. Even if I were to treat them as souvenirs. I decided to continue ripping them out after Pani R. left. After all, I had to have something to write on. For the road. And for the transport. As soon as she left I went on ripping.
I think we separated for a while after the bags were sewn. Did we go back to Chmielna again? I know that Father and I went to Złota. We had an urge to see Sabina once more, to say goodbye. It was afternoon, overcast, but without rain. The haziness came not so much from above as from below, it was so crowded with people in motion. After all, people were also leaving in that direction — via Zawisza Square. And they were passing each other just the same, returning, discussing. The buildings were black and gray. At the same time. Like the crowd. Torn-off balconies. And suddenly in those balconies — because it’s hard to say on them — there were people. Heads in the windows. It was astonishing that people were looking down into the street. It was a long time since they’d been upstairs. Every so often someone walked by dragging a wounded person on a stretcher. Or a sick man.
Sabina and Czesław were bustling about in their little cellar. Calm. They ate something. Or intended to eat. They had no intention of leaving tomorrow or the day after. The later the better. When it would empty out completely. Why rush? And they left on October 9 or 10. After all, Sabina, Czesław, and Czesław’s sister had apartments on one of the upper floors. So I went upstairs and stood on the slashed balcony. The crowd was passing. Crookedly. Massed together. Avoiding obstacles. To the left. Now to the right. Those in the middle. The street was noisy. A drunken-insane tone was mixed up in all of this. Loud. Nearer and nearer. A speech? Well yes, a speech. I noticed in the crowd — but somewhat above them, because he seemed to be walking but also seemed to be stopping on the mounds — a drunkard. Unless he was a madman. He was haranguing the crowd: “Pee-ople… Where are you going to? Pee-ople! Napoleon has already declared…”
No one listened. The speech was a trifle peculiar.
We went out from Sabina’s place and joined the swarm. To Krucza. While it was still light. To bathe.
This was a major process. Long. By turns. In a basin, in water warmed on all four burners. Everyone bathed. Halina, Zocha, Stacha, I, Stanisław, Jadwiga, Papa.
The Third Day of the Holidays, that seeming metaphor, was drawing near. But only seeming. I sensed it then already. And I wasn’t the only one. The day of capitulation ended. Which in the morning had been the last, the sixty-third day of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
Tanks across Marszałkowska,
Tanks across Nowy Świat…
….
Do you remember the July night…
….
Skip to the left, skip to the right…
….
All Warsaw will shout out hello to us…
….
Arm in arm across Mokotów…
….
To arms, Jesus and Mary, to…
….
Under Thy protection…
….
Fearless you’ll sit astride the fierce lion…
Our heads were spinning.
October 3, Tuesday, we went to Chmielna once more. People were walking around all the time, preparing for the exodus, going out, meeting, bringing back beets and carrots from Mokotów Field. We, too, were really still going in circles. The Bałturkiewiczes, the landlords of the billet on the corner of Zgoda, took us down to their storeroom so we could get sufficient clothing. I don’t know if that’s when I got a coat or even whether I got it from Zocha and Father or from them. I did get winter boots from them. For the exodus. I wasn’t the only one. The whole family rooted around in the cellar. Among the shoes. I was deeply moved by the fact that these people continually were concerned about others. I left the manuscript of one of my plays in the coal bin in this cellar. It was never found. The door to Chmielna was locked with a key. Unnecessarily. The house was burned down by the Germans. Afterward. But who knew that it would become rubble, that some months later only Father and I would be here? That we would come here with a brush and a pot of wet paint and write in large letters:
ZOCHA, HALINA, STACHA
WE ARE AT 37 POZNAŃSKA APT. 5
In boots, coats, with something (ski caps, no doubt, because that’s what was worn then) on our heads, we crossed Krucza for the last time. Crowded. I think Swen dropped in on us once more. Anyway, we did see each other. Settled for a stupid parting. Neither saying goodbye nor not saying goodbye.
At the last moment Father and I took our documents, Halina’s diploma, a camera, and my notes (a play about the uprising, not the same as the one on Zgoda Street), written on Kapitulna Street paper. To bury them. To the cellar, or rather, the shelter at 21 Wilcza. People hadn’t been in the shelters for two days now. We went down. It was black. Empty. We wrapped the camera in rags. The papers — together — into a tin box. We dug a small hole. Covered it over. And tamped it down. After our return in February we dug it up. They were there. Other things, on Miodowa, on Zgoda, which we had covered carefully with bricks, were sodden. Swen also went there, by himself. And none of his things were there, either.
Finally everyone placed a large white cloth sack on his back. Sewn onto straps. And we stepped outside. We. The Wojs., the entire Wi. family. Down Piękna. To Marszałkowska. Here the crowd was already growing denser. And in this crowd we stumbled along to the intersection of Śniadeckich, Koszykowa, and Marszałkowska with the above-mentioned bomb crater in the middle (where people had spent the night). Today it was somewhat easier to enter the stream. (It was a stream.) The Śniadeckich stream. The main stream of the exodus. It seems to me that the weather was not completely sunny. But it was warm. Śniadeckich had walls on both sides, partly burned, somewhat destroyed, partly intact; at any rate, it looked like a street. We walked slowly. Because people were walking crowded together across the whole width of the street. In addition you had to take care not to step into a hole in the roadway or onto stretchers with the wounded. We walked and walked. Although it’s not a long street. At times to the left or to the right, or in front of us, a small space opened up. Then people hurried to catch up. Or turned left. Or right. No one knew why. Something was said. People looked. What’s up ahead. But ahead — only people and more people. A single sound arose from all these people together. One was inside the sound, in its center. And one made sounds oneself. With one’s feet. By talking. The sound came in waves. Every so often a groan, a cry broke to the surface. Sometimes stretchers would pass us. The wave could be felt literally. Also a sense of floating. Which was actually an ebbing away.
The walls of Śniadeckich Street were coming to an end. Any minute now. Any minute. Then the turning off into Polytechnic Square. Here the echoes changed. And one entered a rapid turmoil. Stretcher after stretcher hastily pushed their way out from the crowd. The Germans’ shouts. Ambulances driving up. Automobiles. The loading of the sick and wounded. Green uniforms. Hitlerite. Tattered. A lot of them. Everything against the background of the barricade that cut across the square. A white canvas lay over the barricade. The barricade only went halfway across. Farther down and to the side— automobile traffic. And Germans. Those who were receiving us. As we approached the barricade one of the German officers stared at us attentively, his head raised. He stared at us one by one. One moment at me. He walked up to me. And quickly frisked me from head to toe. And already he was standing off to the side, watching and rushing up to the next people. But not so often. I was surprised then that he picked me out. As a suspicious person. Or rather one with a hidden weapon. After all, the partisans were supposed to be the last to leave. And they were to lay down their arms here. At the barricade. And that’s how it happened. Twenty-two thousand. October 9. Those who were leaving as civilians discarded everything that might smack of a uniform. And no one had any intention of carrying a weapon with him. What for? Now? Obviously, they didn’t trust us. Now I am not surprised that he frisked me. They didn’t trust the young. And I was twenty-two years old then… That I was dragging along with my family, in the crowd, with a sack on my back, didn’t mean a thing… In our own way we must have looked strange then. Civilians. Partisans, too. They weren’t, after all, so very different from each other. All the people who were getting out of Warsaw then resembled each other and were absolutely unlike other people.