Spring Will Be Ours (25 page)

When it was over, Jerzy's unit crept out of the doorway of the apartment block, into the choking, dust-filled air on the avenue, and helped to clear a path through the heaps of fallen masonry.

‘Listen,' the Captain said suddenly in the evening, as they tried to settle on the floor for the night, throats parched, skin thick and itching with dust. ‘Across the river,' he said, frowning. ‘Can you hear anything?'

They listened. Something was missing from the sounds they had quickly grown used to, a background to the sputtering of gunfire, the tearing of falling beams from plaster, groans beneath great heaps of rubble.

From the other side of the Vistula the Soviet artillery no longer thundered. As darkness fell, they strained their ears for it, but only silence came across the water.

Black Friday, 5 August. Daylight raids on Wola sometimes as low as a hundred feet. In some parts of the district the inhabitants were herded street by street into cemeteries, into courtyards, gardens and factory back yards and shot by machine guns. The heaps of corpses were burned, covered by rubble and debris. In headlong flight, the panic-stricken civilians poured out of Wola and into the Old Town, and the next evening General Bór and his staff, under continuous fire in their headquarters, the Kammler Factory, were forced to evacuate, leaving behind vital pieces of damaged signalling equipment, and go to the Old Town too. They moved into a building backing on to Krasiński Square, already named in radio messages to London as a place for airdrops.

So far, the Old Town was untouched by fire or bombing. But fear of the air raids over the city centre had forced people down into the medieval cellars and passageways, and the whole district was now crowded with twice the population of the days before the Uprising. It was difficult to move anywhere: the courtyards and narrow streets were filled with people, looking for somewhere to stay, and where the pavements had been ripped up for barricades a fine sand lay beneath; the streets were ankle-deep in it. Thirty-five people were now crammed into the three-room apartment where Jan Prawicki and his unit were stationed. Already, food supplies were running low.

They had knocked through a hole in the cellar wall, into the cellar of the house adjoining, and another through the far wall into the next house, and so on, until it was possible to move along much of the avenue without ever going to the surface. The tunnels and passages through the overcrowded cellars were narrow and airless, filled with an endless two-way traffic of AK courier girls delivering bulletins and messages, older women carefully carrying baskets of bread, or potatoes, or boxes of tinned food, to the soup kitchens and field hospitals set up behind the front lines.

From the news-sheets delivered daily, Jerzy knew that in many parts of the city life was now being lived almost entirely underground. Apartment block commanders controlled the distribution of food, and supervised the digging of wells, for the Germans had regained control of the water supply, and had cut off most of the mains. It had not rained for a week, not since the second day of fighting.

Every night a few people in his building crept out on to the roof and searched the sky for the lights of approaching planes, bearing not the heavy black crosses of the German bombers but the red, white and blue roundel of the RAF, or the white and red check of the Polish insignia. So far, no lights had been sighted, but no one doubted that they were on their way. The avenue was largely controlled by the Germans now, but Lion had finished off a tank crew this morning: from the empty second floor Grzegorz and Jerzy had hurled half a dozen
filipinki
into the ventilation slits, as the tank passed the broken windows, and the Captain and Andrzej, crouching behind sandbags, had picked off the men as they scrambled out in terror. Jerzy hadn't used a rifle yet. Tomorrow night, he and Andrzej were to cross the avenue, to join a depleted unit on the other side. Now, leaning against the sandbags by the window, he listened to Ryszard playing the mouth organ, stopping and starting over the same old tune, ‘My Heart's in a Knapsack', until he got it right at last, and everyone cheered. He closed his eyes, suddenly very tired, wondering just before he fell asleep if Anna was all right.

A post box had been put up behind their barricade, a plain wooden box with a slot in the top and a lily painted on the side. Twice a day, two young boys appeared to collect the messages inside – you were allowed twenty-five words, clearly written, with nothing about the actual course of the fighting. Neither of the boys looked more than ten or eleven, and Anna assumed they were Scouts. They wore AK armbands, and grinned from beneath enormous caps at the people who went out each day to rebuild and reinforce the barricade.

The phones in their apartment block had stopped working two days ago. Now, the only hope of contacting Wiktoria or Jerzy was through the field post, and she wasn't even certain exactly where Jerzy was. There was no chance that a note to Teresa would get right across the city.

She sat at the living room table with Jadwiga, writing in pencil on two small pieces of paper. Wiktoria, and her address.
All safe so far. Are you all right?
What else was there to say?
Victory!
And just the letter A, to sign it. On Jerzy's note she could only print Kurowski, J., Lion, Jerozolimskie: she did not know what number, but there was just a chance that another Scout would know where Lion unit was, and be able to find him.
Get in touch with me
, she wrote, with her address.
Be careful. A.
Then she folded over both pieces of paper, and looked at Jadwiga. ‘Shall we do it now?'

Jadwiga nodded, folding over the note to her mother. ‘Yes. Come on.'

They went out of the apartment and ran down the stairs to the ground floor. From the open cellar door they could hear the families below moving about, coughing, clattering pots and pans. It had been a quiet night; the children might be allowed to come up, soon, and play in the hall.

Outside, it was already very hot, sun on the balconies and barricades; they stood at the entrance looking down the deserted street. ‘I think it's all right,' said Jadwiga, and they ran out, slid their notes into the post box and ran back again. The very moment they reached their entrance, they heard a deafening explosion, and clung to each other.

There was the sickening sound of tearing masonry, a building crumbling, then silence. Anna raised her head from Jadwiga's shoulder, and they stared at each other. From the place of the explosion came the noise of bricks falling to the ground from a great height, then more, in ones and twos, sounding almost gentle, and then they heard the screams, and muffled shouts, and they turned and ran out into the street, towards them.

Clouds of dust floated through the air, obscuring the sun, and they coughed and choked, and realized they couldn't move at all until it had begun to settle. They stood pressed against a wall, hands over their mouths, eyes closed again, and listened to the screams and cries for help. When the dust began at last to sink on to the pavement they went out again, and saw doors and gateways opening all along the street, and people hurrying out and down towards a house with a great gaping hole in the front, right down the middle, blasting open the second and third floors and blocking the entrance with a towering heap of rubble.

‘You know what that is, don't you?' said Jadwiga, panting.

‘The field hospital.'

‘Yes.'

They reached the house and stood with a crowd of others, staring at whole apartments exposed above, pieces of beds and tables and sofas hurled like doll's house furniture across the rooms. Then a Red Cross nurse appeared at the ground-floor window to the left of a blocked doorway, her face and hair grey with dust and shock, and called out: ‘Hurry!'

From behind the crowd men were pushing through with shovels and pickaxes, shouting to everyone to get out of the way, and they began to tear down the rubble, and clear a path through to the door. Anna and Jadwiga ran towards the window, where daggers of broken glass were sticking all round the frame. Peering through, as the nurse moved back a little, Anna could see nothing but pale shapes in darkness, figures on the floor so thick with plaster dust that they looked like pieces of sculpture. Then something stirred, moaning, and she said to the nurse: ‘What do you want us to do?'

‘Just help us to move them. I think we can go across the street.'

‘We can't get anyone out through here, surely,' said Jadwiga, and the nurse shook her head.

‘No, no, but if you can climb through you can help me a little, until they clear the door. We've lost two of our staff …' She spoke with such control that Anna wondered if she really knew what she was saying. Then she saw her hands, clenching and unclenching as if in spasm. ‘We're coming,' she said, and began to tug at the larger pieces of glass. At once, although she was trying to be careful, blood began to pour down her palm, and she looked at it distantly, feeling nothing.

‘Idiot,' said Jadwiga, and bent to tear a strip off the bottom of her dress. ‘Tie this round – no, I'll do it.' She quickly tied a knot round Anna's thumb, and said, ‘Let's just smash it in.' She picked up a brick, and began to tap all round the frame; the glass fell into the room, and then she pulled herself up on to the sill and said to Anna, ‘Come on. Do you need a hand?'

Anna shook her head, scrambled up, and dropped down after her into the room. On the far side, a huge beam had fallen, and from beneath it she could see two or three twisted bodies protrude on split-open mattresses. Beyond was the doorway to the hall, and beyond that the heavy oak door to the cellar, hanging half off its hinges, with a heap of bricks and plaster before it. Groans came up the stairway.

‘If one of you can go down …' said the nurse. ‘I must have someone to help me here.'

From outside the front door the pickaxes sounded louder and closer, and they could hear bricks being hurled aside.

‘I'll go,' said Anna, and ran across the room. She began to tear the rubble away from the top of the cellar steps. ‘We're coming!' she yelled to the doorway, and scrabbled like a rabbit until she could make her way past the hanging door to the top of the steps and look down.

It was quite dark. Very slowly, she crept down, feeling the wall until she could see a thin strip of light coming through a ventilation slit near the top of a far wall, and made out several figures on the floor. Here, too, a beam had fallen: it lay across the middle, and above it a hole yawned between lath and plaster.

‘It's all right,' she said unsteadily to the figures. ‘We're going to get you out.' How many were there? Who had been groaning? Who was alive? Something was moving on the other side of the beam. She stepped over it awkwardly, and found a young man half-propped up against the wall. Even in this light she could see that his face was completely colourless.

‘My … leg …' He could barely speak.

She bent down, ran her hands over his legs, saw his left foot twisted inwards as if on a pivot. He must somehow have dragged himself out from under the beam: the edge of a half brick was just supporting it a few inches above the floor.

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.