by Sue Gee
From upstairs, she heard a sudden shout: ‘We’re through!’ The front door was heaved open, feet ran across the room.
Anna turned back to the young man. ‘It’s all right …’ she said again, and he moaned.
‘Come on …’ She put her hands under his armpits and tried to pull him up. He was terribly thin, but tall, perhaps six foot, and as weak as a kitten. ‘Come on … help me … you can do it,’ she panted. He pressed his hand to the floor, and his good foot, and somehow they pushed themselves up and she saw that his left foot was hanging half off, like a rag, and as she stepped towards the beam, supporting him, it touched something on the floor and he screamed. She stood shaking, but still clutching at him. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry … Come on …’ He leaned on her, and she saw a small gap between the fallen beam and the wall; she led him towards it, and very slowly through to the other side.
He was trying desperately to hop, to help her, as they made their way past the bodies to the foot of the stairs, and then, as she struggled to help him on to the first step he gasped and went suddenly limp. ‘Please … please …’ She was sinking under his his weight, turned awkwardly and began frantically to pat at his face, but his eyes were closed. She sank down, half aware of the pounding feet above her, and of more screams as people were lifted. She pressed her fingers to the boy’s thin wrist, and felt, beneath the plaster-covered skin, the faintest throb of his pulse. She would have to carry him.
She stood again, bent down and somehow heaved him on to her shoulders, and right over, like a sack, so that his head and arms hung down. Then she turned, put her foot on the first step, and began, clinging to his arms, to climb. He was so heavy that her shoulder burned, but she made it a couple of steps and stood, swaying petrified they were both going to fall. Then she simply looked at the next step, refusing to look at the one beyond, and climbed on to it, and then to the next, and the next, and the next. Her mind was filled only with steps, and the need to reach them, until, with every muscle trembling, she was at the top, and out of the doorway, lowering him to the floor, standing against the wall and gazing almost without vision at the empty room beyond, and the open door across it to the street.
Sweat was pouring down her. She waited until the trembling in her limbs had stopped, then crossed the hall to the main room. They were gone: no nurse, no helpers, no Jadwiga. Through the street door she could see a knot of people staggering across the street with a mattress, a body sprawled across it. She turned and ran back to the boy, lying in the hall, and bent down, feeling for his pulse once more. It was there, the very thinnest thread. She heaved him up, and moved into the room like a crab, stepping over the fallen beam, skirting the mounds of bricks, reaching the front door at last and swaying down the path between the towering heaps of rubble to the street.
Then Jadwiga was suddenly running towards her, with two men, and they stopped, lifted the long thin body from her shoulders and carried him across the street, where the dust still floated up towards the hot blue sky, to the open door of another house, and safety.
In the morning, Jerzy and Andrzej and the Captain went out into the courtyard, and from behind the cover of sandbags at the wrought-iron gates peered over at the building on the far side of the avenue which was to be their destination. A tunnel had been made from numbers 17 to 22, but that was much further down: here, the only way to cross was above ground, at night. It was perhaps thirty yards they had to cover: the torn-up pavement on this side, with an empty flower trough to crouch behind; then a run across, past the smashed and uprooted tramlines to the central strip of grass and trees, and a last dash to the far pavement, and the gateway. If they made it through there, they were to give the password and ask for the unit commander: he would direct them.
‘And you will make it,’ said the Captain, crouching down again. ‘They’ve lost four men in that unit: they need you. You will take one rifle, and I imagine you will be under orders to act as snipers in turn, from first light tomorrow. Now – back inside, quickly.’
They crossed the courtyard to the side door, and found the main hall crowding with people coming up for air from the cellars where they’d spent the night. There’d been heavy shelling along much of the avenue, and it had been hard to sleep, but the area round their own block had escaped damage. It could surely be only a night or two before it was hit.
Pani Wójcik met them as they entered the door of her apartment. ‘Breakfast is ready, gentlemen.’ They could smell fresh bread, and almost kissed her. ‘And I have a couple of tins of tongue,’ she said, ‘by special delivery.’
They followed her into the kitchen, where she spent most of the day, preparing for the unit, on a stove heated by burning wood, whatever food reached them through the tunnel network. Half a sack of flour had been delivered yesterday, and, apparently, tongue. What came through depended entirely on what stores or factories were still in Polish hands, and the supply varied from district to district. The women who carried them often risked their lives as much as those on the front line. Jerzy and Andrzej ate with the others, all grimy and unwashed. Water was rationed now; even though their block so far still had running water, a well was being dug nearby, and there were far too many people here to risk a shortage.
After breakfast, they went to clear their room. The windows had been boarded now with floorboards torn up from under the bookshelves; sunlight came through gaps and chinks, but they had been sleeping here for seven nights, and it smelt stuffy and unpleasant. At night, they used a single candle, set on the table in a saucer belonging to Pani Wójcik. Already, Jerzy felt as if he had been living like this for weeks.
When they had finished shaking and folding their blankets, he and Andrzej made their way out through the main hall again, and up the broad staircase to their observation posts on the second floor, in the apartment where they had first been stationed. They would be relieved at midday, to rest before their sortie at nightfall; now, they crouched behind sandbags at the window, and watched the movement of the German patrols below, and the hulk of a tank far down to the left. From somewhere towards the south of the city came the sound of heavy firing, but when it stopped, and they listened, as usual, for the boom of Soviet artillery in Praga, they still heard nothing.
‘Do you think they’ll come?’ he asked.
Andrzej shrugged. ‘They’ve got to, surely.’ He turned to look at Jerzy. ‘D’you feel all right about tonight?’
His stomach churned when he thought of it, but it was through excitement, elation even, as much as fear. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I want to do it, don’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’ For once, Andrzej didn’t sound like the leader Jerzy had always felt him to be.
‘What’s up?’
Andrzej shrugged again. ‘Just a feeling …’ Then he said abruptly: ‘Did Anna ever say anything to you about … about anything?’
Jerzy laughed. ‘I beg your pardon?’ Then he saw that Andrzej was blushing. ‘Hey … What’s been going on?’
Andrzej gazed at the sandbags. ‘Nothing,’ he mumbled. ‘Just that … just that I really like your sister, that’s all.’
‘Oh.’ He didn’t know what to say. Had Andrzej and Anna … ‘Have you and Anna …?’
‘I kissed her hand, once, that’s all. I never said anything. It was the night you were arrested.’
‘Oh,’ he said again, and thought about the few occasions he had seen Andrzej and Anna together, and how it had never occurred to him that either might be even remotely interested in the other. ‘Well … good.’ He had never had a girlfriend, never even kissed a girl, although he had always thought Anna’s friend Natalia, so dark and thin and clever-looking, might be the kind he’d like to have. Somehow, he’d always thought it was something that would happen at the end of the war, not yet. Perhaps he should have spoken to Natalia months ago; perhaps Andrzej had been an idiot simply to kiss Anna’s hand and not tell her how he felt.
The sound of firing faded. From below, Ryszard on the harmonica could be heard on
ce again, the tune drifting up the stairwell, faltering and then more certain, and he found himself humming, the words inside his head:
A loving heart escaped from a young breast
In pain and confusion,
And flew after the army.
A soldier marching along the road
Took pity on the little heart.
He put it in his knapsack,
And went on his way …
He put his hand on Andrzej’s arm. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’
Andrzej looked up. ‘I know. Thanks.’
At midday, Grzegorz and Ryszard relieved them, and they went downstairs, to wait until darkness fell.
At 3.15 that afternoon, 8 August, unit commanders with radios
picked up another broadcast from Moscow.
‘The People’s Army has staked its young life, its souls and
its hearts, to show the world that it can afford a heroic deed
of such magnitude that other nations can only listen.
‘The provocateur wireless station Dawn, at the service of
the Home Army, pretends that it is the Home Army which
has risen to action, and that it is fighting for the freedom of
Warsaw and Poland, and that at this moment all operations
by the Soviet Army outside Warsaw have ceased – that from
the time they started, the Soviet artillery, formerly so closely audible, has become silent.
‘Do not believe it, citizens of Warsaw! Do not heed it, heroes! Hundreds of thousands of your friends, the Soviet troops, and with them one hundred and twenty thousand of General Berling’s army, are fighting at the gates of Warsaw, and your liberation is only a matter of days away. General Sosnowski and General Bór, the provocateurs, are merely evoking derisive laughter by their pretence that the freedom of Warsaw is being bought with the blood of the Home Army!’
‘Ready?’ asked the Captain, and they nodded. ‘Good.’ They had made a small gap between the two piles of sandbags at the courtyard gates, just wide enough to squeeze through, and tossed a ten-złoty piece to see who should go first. ‘Orzeł czy reszka – eagle or tails?’ asked the Captain. Andrzej had chosen the eagle, and on the back of the Captain’s hand the eagle came up. Beyond the sandbags the avenue stretched, suddenly far wider than thirty yards. ‘You’d better go, then.’ He stretched out his hand to each of them. ‘Goodbye, men. We’ll meet, first thing tomorrow.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Goodbye, sir.’
Andrzej squeezed through the gap, and Jerzy waited a moment, then followed. Andrzej moved slowly, crouched on all fours; he did the same. It was very quiet, past eleven, and the only light came from the summer stars: the sky was cloudless still. Far down to the left, when he dared to raise his head, he saw the great dark shape of the tank they had watched that morning, the cannon raised. As far as they knew, there was nothing else covering this section. He had a scratching tickle at the back of his throat, and swallowed hard, longing to cough. Andrzej was moving faster now, springing up to break into a run; then he was upright, and running like the wind towards the trees. Jerzy stood up, too, ready to run after him, then heard the sudden, out-of-nowhere burst of machine-gun fire, and dropped to the ground, flat on the pavement.
Silence. He raised his head, could see nothing but the pitted surface of the avenue. Where was Andrzej? Very slowly he pulled himself up to a crouching position once more, his blood pounding in his head, and saw him, sprawled on the ground just before the trees. Without even thinking, he ran to him, calling ‘Andrzej! Andrzej!’, bent down and began to drag him back towards the sandbags, and then the sound of the machine gun came bursting out again, and there wasn’t even time to think: not yet!
‘Are you coming to the mass?’ asked Natalia.
‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘What time does it start?’
‘At ten, I think, but we’d better go soon, it’s bound to be very full.’
They were still on the floor in their blankets, but Natalia had got up and fetched glasses of tea from the kitchen – ‘Because you’re a heroine, now,’ she said.
Anna laughed. ‘Don’t be silly.’ But she let Natalia go – she was too stiff to move. She had expected to dream of the endless flight of cellar steps, the crippling weight on her shoulder, but as far as she could remember had dreamt nothing at all. She gingerly pressed the cut on her hand, which throbbed.
‘Do you think there’ll be a field post today?’ she asked, watching the sun stream in between the shutters.
‘I imagine so. Have you still not heard from Jerzy?’
‘No – I sent a note yesterday, but I don’t even know if it’ll get to him.’ She stretched. ‘I expect he’s all right – anyone who can escape from Pawiak must have a charmed life, don’t you think?’
‘Most certainly. Anyway, it’s been quiet on Jerozolimskie for a couple of nights now. He might even come to the mass.’ Natalia pushed off her blanket. ‘I think Jadwiga’s still in the bathroom – I’m going to dig her out.’
Fifteen minutes later they were hurrying down the stairs and outside, Henryk and Wojtek beside them. It was a perfect morning, the sun not yet too hot, and the trees on the corner rustling. Anna looked down towards the far end of the street, at the ugly torn-off front of the building which had housed the field hospital, and wondered if the boy had survived the night. She would go after the mass to find out. The pavements were filling with people wearing the AK armband, all moving towards a house near the barricade, where a mass was to be held in the courtyard; as they moved inside, and more and more joined them, filling all sides round the makeshift altar in the centre, it felt, still, quite extraordinary to know that they were in an area held by Poles, that despite the shelling yesterday the street was Polish once more, not occupied, not German.
The courtyard was filled with excited voices. Anna kept turning and looking for Jerzy or Wiktoria; after all, there were people here who had come from streets away. She caught a glimpse of the young pregnant girl she had seen on the first day of the Uprising, very pale, arm in arm with an older woman, and she waved, but the girl didn’t see her. There was a movement at the gateway and the crowd parted to let through the priest, who wore a white and red armband on the sleeve of his black gown. He moved behind the altar table, where a figure of the Virgin stood next to a vase of roses, and raised his arms.
‘My dear friends …’ It was not usual for a priest to open a mass like this, but there had been no mass like it since before the war. ‘Thank you all for coming. It is a miracle to have so many of us here, on a piece of land which we have at last reclaimed for Poland. Let us pray.’
Anna looked down at the cobbles, at the many, many feet in patched shoes or sandals, and closed her eyes. The priest’s voice rose above the rustling and shifting in the crowd, and the mass began.
It was an abbreviated service, for no one wanted to linger out of doors. Afterwards, he raised his arms ‘Let us join in singing: “Oh God, in your power and glory”.’
Anna found herself holding Natalia’s hand on one side, Wojtek’s on the other, as they all began to sing:
‘Oh, God, in your power and glory
For centuries you have watched over Poland.
Before your altar we beg you:
Bless our free homeland!’
The voices rose to a triumphant shout, and fell silent. Anna felt tears pouring down her face, turned and saw that Natalia and Wojtek, and most of the others around her, were crying, too. Never until now had she really felt herself to be in love with Poland, in the way that Tata and Wiktoria had always seemed to be. Now, after five years of fear, and secrecy, after losing Tata, losing any real belief in a future, she felt as those around her must be feeling – liberation, exultation, hope. She was in her own home again. Around her the voices rose in the national anthem:
‘Poland is not yet lost
As long as we are alive …’
The last time she had used those words
was at Christmas, 1939: she had whispered them with Wiktoria, Teresa and Jerzy in a freezing church, wondering miserably where her father was. Now, in the crowded, sunlit courtyard, she wiped her eyes and searched again for Jerzy’s thin dark face, but could not find it. This afternoon she would go and look for him, no matter how dangerous it was.
The service was over. People began to file out of the gateway, pausing to shake the priest’s hand, or talk to him. He was a burly, middle-aged man; as she got closer she could see deep smudges of purple-black under his eyes, and his skin had the thickened look of extreme fatigue, but he was also, clearly, as moved and excited as anyone else, talking rapidly, gesturing. Anna felt too shy to speak to him, but she saw Wojtek go up and shake his hand. ‘Thank you Father.’ Then they were all outside, and began to walk with the tide of people back towards their building.
Two figures were standing at the gateway; arm in arm with Jadwiga, Anna only half-registered their presence, two young men with armbands who were obviously waiting for someone, and who looked very grave. As they drew closer, she thought almost idly that they might be waiting for one of her unit, and then perhaps that they were waiting for her. Then she saw one of them step forward, and heard him ask uncertainly: ‘Is Anna Kurowska here?’
He was lying in the corridor of the apartment, stretched out on a folded blanket, another one over him, turned back at his chest. They had folded his hands and closed his eyes; someone had washed his face and brushed his dark straight hair. A candle in a saucer burned at his feet. He was a statue, a painting, a romantic image of death.
He was her brother.
Anna knelt down beside him, and heard the others move softly into the main room and close the door. She stretched out a hand, touched his, and found them quite stiff and cold. She put her fingers to his lips, with a touch as light as a brushstroke, then leant across and kissed him.
‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘Please come back.’