“Keep calm, Gabriela. You and I are the only two who are aware of it and who are left in a position to help. The Jewish Fighters’ leaders all know your address. Certainly they will attempt to contact you. The best thing you can do is go home and wait.”
The cuckoo chirped the hour. “Ah, time for the news.”
Kamek flicked on the radio and closed his eyes to concentrate on the true meanings, for the real news was between the lines and filled with cryptic clues. The war since Stalingrad continued to go badly for the Germans, and their double talk could not fully cover it. There was not a single mention of the ghetto action. This also was a good indication, for they were quick to brag of victories. He flicked off the radio.
Gabriela was already on her feet, walking toward the door.
“Keep calm,” he said once more.
The light filtering through the manholes was turning dimmer and dimmer. Wolf watched it fade. Soon it would be night again. He slipped off the ledge and inched along where the nineteen survivors lay entwined like a net full of freshly caught fish. During the day they had passed out and awakened, slept in snatches and gained back an ounce of strength from what they lost during the terrible crawling of the night before.
Wolf satisfied himself that all of them could be marched again. The instant darkness fell he alerted them to stand by. Soon the movement overhead thinned to silence and then, a break. Ack-ack guns in the distance popped at another Russian air raid. This would keep the Germans busy in the streets.
“Let’s go,” he said.
The water ran chest-high. Wolf first, Tolek second, Chris third, they pushed against the current, moving southward in a direction which they knew was leading them away from the ghetto. Some of the shorter girls had to go up on tiptoes to keep the sewage out of their mouths and noses.
Hand in hand, they inched down the Kanal, hoping desperately to find another arterial. Wolf counted steps.
In three hours, he estimated, they had moved two and a half blocks. Someone was always slipping or collapsing or breaking silence.
And then the luxurious sound of loud rushing water farther down the line met his ears. It meant another large Kanal! This sound spurred the half-dead line of marchers to another effort. The two sewer lines merged in swirls and whirlpools battering together.
Wolf halted the line. From his memory of the maps, he tried to remember where two such intersections merged at such an angle. There was no place like it in the ghetto. A Kanal the size of the one before him must be near the Jerusalem Boulevard area. If so, they were entirely beyond both the big and little ghettos. Wolf decided to gamble with his flashlight. It was soaked and unworkable. Chris had dry matches in a pipe pouch.
A single match sent a dullish yellow glow on the moist bricks. It also revealed the shocking condition of his people. Wolf knew the race for life had to be speeded, more gambles taken. He lit a second match and sloshed nearer the intersection. A third match found him what he was looking for, an iron ladder leading to the street.
“Hold the line still,” Wolf told Tolek and Chris. I’m going up to find out where we are.”
“Wolf ... don’t ...” Rachael cried.
“It will be all right. There’s an air raid going on up there.”
He climbed the ladder and shoved hard to wiggle the manhole cover loose. It gave after a fifth renewal of effort. He held it open just enough to look out to the streets. Good luck! Pitch-black in a blackout! Streets deserted!
“Help me lift this manhole cover.”
Chris, Tolek, and Wolf hung on the narrow ladder and grunted together and dislodged it. Wolf darted for the cover of a building, worked toward the corner, and sprinted back, replacing the lid. He huddled with Tolek. Chris was too occupied holding Ana and Rachael erect. Rachael fainted again. Ana had been in a bad way for hours.
“We are directly under the intersection of Twarda and Zelazna.”
“That means we are just two and a half blocks from Prosta Street.” Would someone from the People’s Guard be waiting for them there? Both agreed that it was a small chance. It was twenty-four hours since they had sent the signal and entered the sewer. Moreover, in daylight this present intersection would be too crowded. Wolf decided to try a push for the quieter Prosta Street and at the same time send Tolek to Gabriela’s flat.
“Careful, and bring back water.”
Tolek and Wolf once again dislodged the manhole cover and shoved it back into place.
Wolf lowered himself once more and went back to the other sixteen.
“We are three hours from Prosta Street. We can make it by daylight if everyone tries with all they have. Tolek has gone out for water. He will be waiting for us.”
“No! No!” a girl shrieked. “We’ll never make it! No!”
“Keep her quiet,” Wolf barked.
“No!” the girl screamed again. She began drinking the sewage in her thirst madness.
Wolf went back and lit a match and fished for her head and jerked it out of the contaminated bilge. The girl was insane. In a moment the poison hit her stomach and she gave a last two or three writhes of agony and was dead.
Wolf let her loose, and she was washed into the merging waters, spun in a whirlpool, and swept into the larger Kanal.
“Listen, all of you! We’re going to live! I promise you we’ll live! Two more hours and there will be water to drink! Fight! Live!” he pleaded.
They took hands and pressed north into the whirlpools. The rushing water broke their line, and before they could pull it together another Fighter who was moving in a coma was swept under and drowned.
“Together!” rasped Wolf. “Hands together ... push ... push ... we’ll be through this intersection in a minute.”
They pressed north again in foggy oblivion. Each agony-filled step, each one called upon God unknown.
“I’ll live ... I’ll live ... I’ll live ...”
“Survive ... survive ... survive ...”
“God help me live ... live ... live ... live ...”
Chapter Twenty-three
TOLEK ALTERMAN WOVE HIS way through the streets of Warsaw with the skill of an alley cat. Years of moving around in the ghetto, later in rubble and flame and falling walls, made this trek seem like child’s play by comparison.
It was four-thirty in the morning when he stopped before an apartment door on the top floor of Dluga 4. The name read “Alena Borinski.” He knocked sharply. The door opened a crack, stopped by the night latch.
“Who is it?” Gabriela asked cautiously from the other side.
“Don’t scream when you see me. I've been in the sewers.”
Gabriela flung the door open. Tolek tumbled in and looked around desperately for the kitchen. He stumbled to it and turned on the water faucet and let the water spill into his throat and guzzled it like a lunatic. She locked the door behind her and looked at the scene of madness. He emitted animal-like grunts as the water found its way to his caked innards.
A gray stinking creature from another planet, unrecognizable as human, sucking at the faucet. He drank too fast and began vomiting in the sink and drank again, and sharp pains hit his belly. At last he was appeased and he slipped to the floor, weeping hysterically.
Gabriela ran to the phone. “Kamek! Come to my flat as soon as the curfew is over. Bring clothing and any food you have.”
“Have they arrived?”
“Yes.”
Gaby dipped a rag in alcohol and wiped Tolek’s forehead and comforted him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry ...”
“Please tell me about it ... please.”
“Twenty-two or twenty-three of us went into the sewer ... Did you get our signal?”
“Yes, but we couldn’t distinguish it. Good Lord, have you been in the sewer for twenty-four hours?”