The Adjacent (29 page)

A hectic week followed. I flew across Poland in a variety of
different aircraft, some ancient, some modern, all of them unfamiliar to me. I flew single- and double-engined planes, and for one journey even a Junkers Ju-52 trimotor. I learnt as I flew. Staff meetings and defence strategy conferences were daily events. I frequently carried confidential documents in sealed bags. I have never been so excited in my life! On September 1, the sixth day of my unexpected recruitment into the air force, the Nazis invaded our country, crossing the border in huge numbers at many different points. Although it was mainly a land attack the Luftwaffe was active too, using dive-bombers to attack Warsaw and other major cities, and also attempting, with terrifying success, to put our own air force out of action.

I flew every day, and sometimes at night, frequently seeing German tanks roaming across our countryside and farmland. Sometimes I came under fire from the ground. Once I saw a squad of three Luftwaffe fighters high in the sky to the south of me – that morning I was carrying six army nurses to the town of Bydgoszcz, where the hospital had been damaged by bombing but was still functioning. They were critically short of nurses. To avoid those fighters I dived steeply towards the ground, seeking cover, but the Luftwaffe fliers did not spot me and an hour later I landed the aircraft safely. That afternoon I was back in Warsaw, ferrying a group of senior staff officers for an aerial view of the fighting.

I slept when and where I could, ate whenever I had the chance. The work was exhausting but exhilarating. I felt I was doing something practical to defend my country from invasion, even though every day brought more evidence that we were losing the war. One morning I was given a two-seat RWD-14 Czapla, and instructed to ferry a senior officer from Warsaw to Kielce. During the flight he told me that the German Army was advancing on Kraków from the west. After I had safely delivered him I immediately flew further south to Kraków, heading for the count’s airstrip. From the air there appeared to be no sign of the enemy, but I circled around three times until I was certain it was safe to land.

I taxied the plane to a large copse of trees growing on the side of the field. I parked it there, knowing there was no way of hiding the large and cumbersome aircraft from anyone on the ground, but hoping it would not be spotted from the air.

The car I had used to reach the airstrip was still where I had left it, on the day the major general commissioned me. I started it up without difficulty and drove at breakneck speed into Kraków. As I passed through the outer areas of the city I could see that something
terrible was already going on. Four columns of dark, roiling smoke were rising in the distance, on the western side. I saw several straggling lines of people, heading away in the direction from which I had come. They looked to be in a frightful and pathetic state.

I drove towards the centre of the city – I could see St Florian’s Gate, high and clean against the sky, but there were several fires close to it. The air was full of smoke.

The road that I was driving along towards the Rynek was unexpectedly blocked – a large house had collapsed across the street, and pieces of burning timber were falling from the two buildings that had been on each side of it. I slowed the car, appalled by the sight. I had never before seen such destruction, such evidence of human loss and tragedy: wallpapered rooms were exposed, pieces of furniture hung from the broken floors, flames licked at the huge pile of bricks and other debris into which the building had fallen, beams and rafters rested on the ground at crazy angles, some of them charred and smoking. The remains of children’s toys, clothes, fabrics, hung dankly like dead leaves.

I tried to drive past but the road was impassable for a vehicle. I backed away, parked the car, then continued on foot.

I had still not reached the Rynek when I came across a troop of Polish soldiers attempting to put out a fire that had started inside a shop. I knew the shop: I had visited it many times. I went around the men, keeping my distance, covering my mouth and nose with a part of my sleeve, but then suddenly a familiar voice shouted, ‘Krystyna!’

It was Tomasz, his hair tousled and his face and arms blackened by the smoke. He was in his army uniform, but he had removed his jacket and was working in his shirt sleeves with the other men. Of course I rushed to him and we embraced as if we had not seen each other in years. I could hardly believe my luck in finding him here, so close to the house where we had lived. We had to raise our voices to make ourselves heard, because of the many different noises around us: distant and near-distant explosions, bells ringing, people shouting, the roar of flames and, all too often, the horrible, hollow fracturing noise as yet another of Kraków’s old wooden-framed buildings collapsed when the fires ate away at the interiors. The fires were spreading, apparently unstoppably, all along the street.

He shouted, ‘Krystyna, it’s not safe for you. The Germans are already entering the city.’

‘If it’s not safe for me it’s not safe for you.’

‘I have to be here. I’m under orders. You must get out immediately.
Do you still have the car?’ I waved back vaguely in the direction of where I had left it. The street now was choked with smoke. ‘Then use it. Warsaw has already fallen to the Germans. They’ll have Kraków before today is out. Do you have enough fuel in the car to get to Tarnów? The Germans have not reached there yet. My parents and some of the servants have already gone to Tarnów.’

‘I want to be with you, Tomasz. Not with them.’

‘I know, I understand. But my father is well known there. You’ll be able to buy petrol in Tarnów. I’ve heard some of the senior officers saying that there is going to be a Polish government in exile in Romania, and there will be transport from Lwów. So you must get to Lwów as quickly as you can.’

‘Not without you,’ I said.

‘I’ll come later. We will be withdrawing soon.’

‘Come now!’ I said loudly, desperately, against the racket of a fire appliance rushing past.

‘You can see I can’t!’ he shouted, indicating his squad of men. ‘I have a duty. But there’s a plan – tonight our brigades are going to regroup and head south. Mine is one of them, so I will meet you in Lwów. Not straight away, but in a few days. Use the people you know in the Air Force.’

‘Tomasz, my love! What is happening here? Have you been to your house?’

‘The house has been abandoned for now. Three of the servants stayed to try to take care of the place, but I told them this morning to flee – the rest have gone to Lublin. Everyone else is in Tarnów. They should be safe there.’

He kept glancing across to the blaze while he spoke, obviously torn between talking to me and carrying out his duty.

There were two more gigantic explosions, somewhere behind us, in the next street, terrifyingly close to where we were standing. Glass in many windows burst out and cascaded down into the street. I was left breathless and frightened by the sheer violence of the explosions.

‘Those bombs landed in Floriańska!’ Tomasz shouted hoarsely – Floriańska was the name of the main street leading from the Gate to the Rynek, where his parents’ house was situated. ‘I’ll have to take the men over there!’

He left me, clambered back over the rubble to the blazing shop and gave hurried orders to the two NCOs working with the troops. Then Tomasz grabbed my hand and we ran through the plumes of swirling smoke, hindered by the piles of rubble on the road, much
of which was still burning. I realized we had reached the Rynek, the market-place in the centre of the Old Town. Miraculously, the beautiful Cloth Hall, the Sukiennice, was not damaged, although thick smoke was surging around it. We hurried past the medieval building, looking for the count’s house. Then we halted.

Tomasz stood beside me, staring forward.

In all the chaos there was a moment of seeming stillness. Across the Rynek, on the far side, three houses were burning out of control. The one in the centre of the three was the count’s house: the glorious townhouse, with its ancient windows, carved gables, timbered walls, built at least three hundred years before, was engulfed. There was something unreal, grotesque about the sight – I looked away, glanced at the sky, so blue and clear beyond the thick coils of smoke rising from all parts of the city. My eyes were streaming with tears, and I could barely breathe.

‘It’s gone,’ Tomasz said.

‘Your home.’ It was all I could manage to say.

‘No!’ He turned towards me and placed both his arms around me, pulling me against his chest. ‘Not my home. The place I lived. The place you lived. Ever since you were there with me I have wanted only one thing and that is to be able to leave that house.’

Part of the roof collapsed down into the flames below, sending up a huge display of sparks and a thick burst of grey smoke.

‘It’s over, Tomasz.’

‘I love my parents but I loathed the life they led.’

‘Their way of life brought us together,’ I said.

‘Yes, of course. They meant well then, but I hated what they said to you.’

‘Are you sure there’s no one trapped inside there?’ I said, watching the flames grow higher. The building next door to it looked as if it too were about to collapse.

‘I searched the place this morning. No one was inside and all the rooms were closed.’ He was already stepping back, away from the blaze. A loud explosion went off in the street beyond the count’s house, making us both turn away instinctively, throwing our hands up to protect our heads, but although we saw pieces of wreckage flying in the air, and a rising ball of fire, the blast somehow did not strike us. ‘It’s the end, Krystyna. That life we had has gone. As soon as this war is over we will be together.’

A formation of German aircraft appeared overhead, high and silhouetted black against the afternoon sky. They were Junkers Ju-87
Stukas, the Nazis’ dreaded dive-bombers. They appeared to be circling. Their engines throbbed above the sounds of the inferno in the town. One by one the aircraft turned away from the formation, went into a steep dive and flew at a horrible speed directly towards the ground. There were sirens on each aircraft, set to howl – an unspeakable wailing noise which added an element of deliberate and sadistic terrorizing. The dive-bombers were aiming themselves at the buildings by the river, half a kilometre away from where we were standing. No one on the ground was firing back at them. The lovely old city was at their mercy, and they had none of that.

Tomasz seized my wrist and we began running, retracing our steps. Broken glass and shattered masonry was all around. Within a minute we reached the place where the shop had been, but in the short time we were away the building had been almost completely destroyed. The squad of soldiers had disappeared.

Tomasz looked alarmed.

‘I have to find them,’ he said.

‘They could be anywhere,’ I said, because I had a sudden irrational urge to make him flee with me.

‘No – we have orders. This street, and the one beyond.’

‘Come with me, Tomasz. This is hell.’

‘I can’t abandon my men!’

‘Yes, you can. The Polish cause is lost. There’s nothing to fight for any more. The Nazis will move in and round up everyone who has been in the army.’

‘We fight to the end.’

Another explosion, somewhere at the far side of the Rynek, made Tomasz take me in his arms and we kissed deeply for the first time since we had met that day. For a few seconds, in that closed world of love, it felt bizarrely as if life was about to revert to normal. Everything receded. But moments later we heard again the sound of German aero engines. Another flight of dive-bombers appeared above us, now only intermittently visible through the thickening columns of smoke. They were already circling, preparing another deadly attack.

‘Quickly, Krystyna!’ Tomasz shouted, thrusting me away from him. ‘Go now!’

‘What about you?’

‘We’ll meet in Lwów. Just get there as soon as you can!’

So we parted. My last glimpse of Tomasz was as he ran in search of his troop, keeping his head down, along the ruined street,
zigzagging around the heaps of wreckage. The howling of the dive-bombers was closer now so I ran too, away from the Old Town and towards where I had left the car. Rubble from a building collapse had crashed over the engine compartment, and the front windshield was cracked, but otherwise it seemed to be more or less undamaged. I pushed away what rubble I could with my hands. The engine started at the first attempt. I had to drive forward through a mess of broken glass. I ignored it, swung the steering wheel around then accelerated away. A heavy door frame had been blown into the street, and I did not notice it until too late. The car shook violently as I drove across it. A horrible scraping noise sounded from beneath the car, then stopped. The car lurched on. There was an explosion somewhere close, but I could not see where it was – almost immediately a Stuka passed directly above my car, low and close, at the bottom of its dive as it levelled out and climbed away. It passed so near me that I could see, as in a still photograph, the metal rack where the bomb had been carried, the black of the tyres in their streamlined covers, the mottled green camouflage and a glimpse of the swastika on the fin as the plane turned sharply and banked low across the town. It headed towards the west.

I leaned away from my steering wheel to stare at the aircraft, not watching where I was driving. It was suddenly no longer an enemy aircraft, but just an aircraft. The fascination I always felt for planes gripped me. I wondered what it was like to fly a Stuka, how it might feel to peel away from a formation, aim down at some target on the ground, dive headlong at full speed, the siren screaming, the aircraft shaking with the stress of the dive –

The car had started to veer. It banged and swerved as it collided with the paving stones at the side of the road. I wrenched the steering wheel, straightening the car. I drove with no direction in mind, only to escape the worst of the bombing. The steering was heavy and sluggish and the ride of the car was unstable – I assumed at least one of the tyres had been punctured. I checked the fuel gauge: only a few litres remained. I had no idea how far it was to Tarnów, nor even if the roads were safe to drive on.