by Sue Gee
The corridor was very quiet; from outside, intermittently, came the sound of shelling, but it was some way away, and she was scarcely aware of hearing it. She just sat there, looking at him, feeling terribly cold.
After a while she heard the door behind her click open, and footsteps, and felt a touch on her shoulder.
‘Pani Anna?’
She turned and saw the Captain, who had received her when the boys brought her to the house, and who looked like Tata. He was looking down at her gravely. ‘If you can come with me now,’ he said, and helped her to her feet and into the main room, where a thin shaft of sunlight, full of specks of plaster dust, pierced the boarded windows, lighting the anxious faces of the boys, and making the room a church.
Then she saw stretched out beneath the sill another body, also blanketed, also with a candle at his feet.
‘Andrzej?’ she asked, and the Captain nodded.
‘We thought – I thought perhaps you would like a little privacy. That is why we put your brother in the corridor, so that you could be alone with him for a few moments. But we shall bury them together.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ Slowly she went to the other side of the room, knelt beside Andrzej, and crossed herself. He, too, looked as though he were simply asleep, his thick fair hair brushed away from his face, his features peaceful as she had never seen them. She thought of the soft, almost imperceptible kiss on the hand he had given her once, leaned over and returned it on his mouth.
Then she got up, and went over to the table, and listened to the Captain as he told her of the arrangements for the funeral, which would be held the next day. A black hole yawned open inside her; she felt as though it had been there always, waiting for her to discover that evil could take everything away.
Early in the morning the Captain told her that the street where the boys were to be buried, in the garden of a block of flats, was heavily under fire. Many people now had to be buried without coffins, even under torn-up paving stones, with only a bottle beside them containing a piece of paper bearing their name, and date and place of death. But somehow two plain cheap coffins had been found, and the bodies of Jerzy and Andrzej lay in them side by side in the main hall of the building, waiting to begin their journey. They were to be carried down into the cellar, and along the narrow, choking passages to the apartment block whose garden had, apparently, become a graveyard.
It was just after eight, the cold stone floor of the hall touched by pale light from the half-open door to the courtyard. Anna shivered. Then she went across to the Captain, who was talking to the civilian commander of the block.
‘Will you wait for just a few minutes?’ she said. ‘I passed a flower shop on the corner of the street when I came – it might be open, now, do you think?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I am sure it won’t be. In any case … it was dangerous enough for you to come at first light.’
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please just let me see – it’s only a few yards, and this street is ours, isn’t it? It’s not like … not like the crossing they made.’ How could he have let them go? When almost the whole of the avenue was held by the Germans – how could he?
She did not voice these thoughts, but she knew he could tell she was thinking them, and he said gently: ‘Go on, then. We will wait.’
She slipped out of the door to the courtyard, and across to a back entrance, the one she had used when she came yesterday with the boys, and this morning, at dawn. She ran down the street to the shop on the corner, and saw at once that it was still locked up and dark. She didn’t care. She went up and began to pound on the door, louder and louder, calling: ‘Please! Please! Open the door!’
From deep inside she heard at last a movement of feet, and voices, and then the bolts on the boarded door were slid back and an old woman said cautiously: ‘What do you want?’
‘Flowers for my brother’s grave,’ said Anna.
The door was opened, and she slipped inside. Like everywhere else, the little shop was filled with shadow. She could smell the spicy scent of carnations, and saw bucketfuls on the floor.
‘Your brother?’ asked the woman.
She nodded. ‘He was killed the night before last, on Jerozolimskie.’ Surely it could not be true. ‘With his friend. We’re burying them both this morning.’
The woman shook her head. She wore a black dress with the sleeves rolled up, and an apron. On the stone floor her slippers sounded softly as she moved over to the buckets and bent down. When she straightened up she was holding two dripping bunches of carnations, one white, one red.
‘Thank you,’ said Anna. ‘I have nothing to give you.’
‘Have them, have them, my poor girl. Who is buying flowers now?’ She saw her out of the shop; Anna blinked in the light, heard the door being bolted behind her, and turned and ran, holding the wet flowers close to her.
They were all waiting when she got back, and she saw that Natalia, Jadwiga and Wojtek were there as well. ‘Henryk wanted to come,’ said Jadwiga, ‘but of course as leader he had to stay on guard.’
‘Of course. Thank you all for coming.’
The Captain came over. ‘We are ready to go,’ he said. ‘Will you put the flowers in the coffins for now? I think it might be easier for them to be carried like that.’
‘Oh. Yes. All right.’ She hadn’t thought about how they were to be carried, and handed them to him, watching him carefully lift the coffin lids and slip the bunches inside, red for Jerzy, white for Andrzej. Then he nodded to Wojtek, to Ryszard and Grzegorz, and several other men she did not know, most of whom wore armbands. They lifted the coffins and began to walk slowly through the hall to the cellar entrance, and carry them awkwardly down the steps, bumping and banging. She followed, the girls behind her.
Down in the cellar a path had been cleared between piles of bedding, and ahead she saw the entrance to the tunnel, a small, surely far too small hole blasted into the far wall. She watched the men carry the coffins through, Jerzy first, then Andrzej, saw Wojtek stumble and reach out a hand to the wall to steady himself. The cellar stank of sweat and airlessness, and she thought for a moment she was going to faint, but then Natalia was holding her arm, and pushing her along, and through the hole.
As the column moved slowly along the passage, perhaps five feet across, perhaps less, it felt like less, their feet kicked up dust, and soon they were all coughing and their eyes streamed. Then the passage suddenly became much lower, and there were pipes immediately above them: they had to duck, and move crouching, the coffins banging and banging until the whole tunnel was filled with noise and Anna felt her head begin to throb. Far above, as they moved through another wall, they could hear the sound of gunfire, and the ceiling of the tunnel began to tremble and vibrate. A thin rain of sand and dust abruptly fell, and the whole column stopped. Anna could hear the coffins being carefully lowered to the ground. She no longer thought of Jerzy, or of Andrzej, or the reason they were here. She thought only of the need for air, heard herself gasping and behind her someone retch. The whole tunnel was filled with the sound of people struggling to breathe. Distantly she heard the voice of the Captain: ‘Move on.’ There was the sound of the coffins being lifted once again and the movement of feet. She stumbled forward.
At last, at last, the blessed lovely sight of a chink of light ahead, and they moved along the last few feet of the tunnel and out into a cellar. The coffins were lowered, and they all sank to the floor, drawing great gulps of stale air. At the top of the cellar steps a door was opened, and sunlight met them as they struggled to their feet and carried the coffins, slipping and sliding on their shoulders, up the stairs to the hall. The door to the courtyard stood ajar, and when the men went out, and set the coffins beside a mound of earth, Anna followed, and stood with Natalia and Jadwiga at the doorway, shaking all over, drinking in light and air. A priest stood at the head of the mound of earth: he beckoned to them, and they began to walk towards him.
The garden was tiny, but already six or seven plai
n crosses marked the square of grass. The four walls of the block rose high above them. I’ve been here before, thought Anna suddenly, looking up, and in her mind’s eye saw her face pressed to the window of an empty apartment far above, looking down on to the neat patch of green, bordered with late summer roses. They had been here in the siege. This was Zórawia, where she and Teresa and Jerzy had taken refuge, with the keys from Wiktoria. It was here that Jerzy had watched the black hail of bombs fall on to Warsaw and murmured that it was like a film.
The priest was touching her arm. ‘You have any other family, Pani? Is anyone else able to come this morning?’
She shook her head. She had been too dazed yesterday to go to Wiktoria’s apartment; she would have to try to explain to her later. No, no need to explain: Wiktoria would understand. And Teresa? There was no chance of getting to her now.
The priest looked at the Captain. ‘The other boy … No family?’
‘We sent for his mother and uncle yesterday, but … his apartment block has been badly hit …’
He shook his head. ‘Let us begin, then.’
They stood round the deep pit.
‘The flowers,’ Anna said suddenly. ‘The flowers! They must be taken out.’
‘Of course.’ The Captain and the boys lifted the coffin lids once more, carefully took out the two bunches, and passed them to her.
‘Help me,’ Anna said to Jadwiga, standing next to her, and she and Natalia quickly began to separate and mix the flowers so that there was one bunch for each, of white and red. They laid them on the ground, and then the coffins were slowly lowered on ropes the priest had brought with him, into the grave, Andrzej first, then Jerzy, and he said: ‘Let us pray.’ They bowed their heads.
‘Our Father, which art in heaven,’ the priest said slowly, ‘have mercy on us. Oh, Lord, have mercy on our sons fighting for Poland, and on our brothers dying from bombs and shrapnel. Oh Lord, who has given the smallest bird its nest, and the peace of the sky above its head, save our homes from being destroyed, and our walls from crumbling. Turn thine anger away from us, as we have already suffered so much. We beg thee, oh Lord, to deliver a speedy end to the war, and grant a free and independent Poland.’
There was a long pause. Then he raised his head, opened his eyes, and gestured to Anna.
She bent down, picked up a handful of earth and threw it on to the coffins; it scattered over the lids. Then the boys took the two spades that had been left there, and began to dig at the mound, shovelling the earth back until the pit was filled. They pressed it down, picked up the few pieces of turf which remained, and pressed them down, too, and then Anna set the flowers at the top of the grave, and the priest took two small white crosses from his pocket and dug them into the ground.
Anna stood with the others, looking at the flowers and the crosses, smelling the earth, unable still to believe that Jerzy and Andrzej lay beneath it, and then Natalia was tugging gently at her arm, and she had to turn and leave them.
On 7 August the district of Wola fell entirely into the hands of the Germans. They began then to blast a path across the city, breaking through Polish positions on the way, storming across streets, burning houses, rolling tanks over gardens, over the Monument to the Unknown Soldier, through parks. All along the route, buildings on either side were burned out, and they took up their positions.
The Old Town, housing the headquarters of General Bór and the AK Command, was now quite cut off, the broad avenue of Krakow-skie Przedmieście, which linked it to the city centre, covered by German machine guns, and controlled by twenty tanks. They were cut off, too, in the north: the open fields leading to the suburb of·Zoliborz were covered by German artillery, machine guns, two armoured trains. Now, the only way to send messages to·Zoliborz, or the Kampinos Forest beyond, where a few air drops were being made, would be through the sewers. Pre-war municipal maps of the network were examined; sewage workers summoned to headquarters; manholes were opened up and guarded.
Air raids came every forty-five minutes, then every half hour; more and more people crammed into the cellars. New heavy guns and mortars were installed around the city each day; the exhausted German units who had fled across the bridges from the advancing Russians in the weeks before the Uprising were now being sent back, re-armed. There was a new terror; the ‘moo-cow’: two mine-throwers joined together, the first sending a hail of phosphorous bombs which set fire to entire blocks of houses, the second blasting whole storeys away. When the low, dreadful mooing sounded, there were perhaps a few seconds before the explosion came. Many of them huddled in the cellars were buried alive. All through the day and night fires raged.
Among the civilians, utterly defenceless, panic was growing, but few people were talking of surrender. Each district, and in places each small group of streets held by the Poles, had its own news-sheet or bulletin delivered from heavy shoulder bags by the Scouts, or the AK courier girls – weekly, twice weekly, some even daily. Anna began to help distribute Walka, Fight, whose banner was the Polish eagle perched on a sword; in the Old Town copies of Warszawianka disappeared within moments of the couriers’arrival. None of the scores of publications was more than four pages, typed and mimeographed; they were crammed with messages, local details, sometimes house by house, of the fighting, the casualties; they had sketches and cartoons: the Polish eagle rising like a phoenix from the flames of burning buildings; Hitler grimacing in the stocks; Red Cross nurses tending wounded soldiers.
There were posters, too: In Fighting the Fire, You are Defending Warsaw. A skull beneath a German helmet – A German for Every Bullet! Christ with a lantern, watching over a Red Cross nurse and a wounded AK fighter.
From the headquarters of the AK, the Information Bulletin which had been secretly printed and distributed each week of the occupation continued to appear, every day when it was possible; it listed the casualties, the wounded, the gains and losses made on the front line, reported the news from the rest of Europe as it was picked up on the broadcasts from the BBC, from Dawn, the station of the Government in Exile.
Warsaw had its own military radio station now, Lightning, broadcasting from a battered transmitter in the AK headquarters: on 15 August they received acknowledgement at last that they could be heard in London.
Over and over again, as arms and ammunition began to be exhausted, and some unit commanders estimated they had enough for only a few days more, radio signals were sent appealing for supplies to be sent from London, from the bases in Italy, or from the Soviet airfields no more than fifty miles away, to be dropped over the city.
From behind the heap of sandbags piled at the end of the narrow passageway, Jan peered out at the tank, motionless at the far end of the street. It had arrived ten minutes ago, blocking the exit; now it rested, a monster waiting for its prey. Should he go back now, and report its arrival, or wait until he had been relieved?
It was late afternoon, and he had been stationed here since two, after a long and mostly sleepless night in the cellars, listening to the pounding of shells on nearby buildings. Across the street the houses were windowless and black with smoke, the sun indifferently shining on their scars. He closed his eyes for a moment and allowed himself to drift into a blurry haze of thirst and fatigue. He thought of fruit, of running water, saw himself climbing a long ladder up a rustling tree filled with oranges, peeling them, one after another, sucking the juice, licking it off his fingers. His mother was standing below him on the grass, calling up to him: ‘Jan! Jan!’ His head slumped on to the sandbags.
‘Jan!’ He was being shaken, and he jerked himself awake in terror. What had he done? Who had been killed?
Paweł was beside him, grinning, his face filthy, his eyes alight. ‘They’re coming tonight – there’s been a signal!’
‘What?’ Jan rubbed his face. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain – Wroński’s just told me – he had a message half an hour ago. The BBC played some tune at the end of Polish Hour, it means they’re on their way. I knew t
hey’d come, I knew it.’
He felt energy flood into him again. ‘What time? What do we do?’
‘We don’t know what time yet, just – after nightfall. Anyway, Wroński wants us all on standby to be ready to collect containers – we’ve got to get to them before the Krauts if they fall near their lines. You’re relieved now, we can all have a break in the canteen. Come on!’
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Jan. ‘Just have a look out there.’ Paweł peered over the sandbags. ‘Christ. Why didn’t you come and report it?’
‘I didn’t want to leave my post. You think it’s all right for us both to go now? Shouldn’t one of us stay and keep watch?’
‘I’ll stay, you’ve done your stint anyway. Go and report it. See you tonight.’
‘See you tonight.’
They stood on the rooftop and waited. It was just before midnight, and the sky blue-black and filled with smoke, the outline of streets and avenues all over Warsaw marked by burning houses. At nine, a moo-cow raid had hit a street several blocks away, and from up here they could clearly see how the upper storeys had been ripped open, the timber beams and window frames eaten away by the flames. Down on the street there would be teams of civilian fire fighters, frantically passing buckets, drawing from the well on the block with an ancient hose, but what chance had they? After almost two weeks without rain, the medieval houses, with their wooden frames, were like brushwood.
Jan stood next to Paweł and looked from the burning buildings to the smoky sky, turned to check if he could see a gleam on the water of the Vistula, and found that he could not: it was just too far away. Were the Soviet guns firing tonight? Did they know the drop was coming? He could hear nothing.
Around them on the rooftop were half a dozen men, and on many of the nearby houses he could see the dark figures of more, ready to catch whatever fell, moving quietly, looking up again and again, checking each possible direction from which the planes might come. This morning, Lieutenant Wroński had announced that they were down to their last two rounds of ammunition. If a container did not fall into their unit’s hands tonight, what the hell were they supposed to do?