Читать книгу Holy Week - Jerzy Andrzejewski - Страница 17

Chapter 2

IT WAS A GLOOMY Holy Week for Warsaw. Just the day before Malecki’s encounter with Irena, on Monday the nineteenth of April, some of the Jews still remaining in the ghetto had begun to defend themselves against new German repressions. In the early morning, as SS¹ detachments moved inside the ghetto walls, the first shots rang out on Stawki and Leszno streets. The Germans, who had not expected any resistance, withdrew. The battle had begun.

News of the first collective Jewish resistance in centuries did not immediately get about the city. Various versions circulated around Warsaw. In the first hours it was known only that the Germans intended to liquidate the ghetto once and for all and to kill all the Jews who had survived the previous year’s massacres.

The neighborhoods bordering the walls swarmed with people, for there it was easiest to find out what was happening. One after another, shots rang out from the windows of the apartment houses adjoining the walls. The Germans brought their military police up to the ghetto. Hour after hour, the intensity of the gunfire increased. The defense, at first chaotic and random, quickly assumed the shape of a regular organized resistance. Machine-gun fire rang out in many places, and grenades flew.

Street traffic still functioned normally, and in many places the conflict took place amid a throng of spectators and the rattle of passing streetcars. At the same time, the remaining Jews were being taken away from those neighborhoods where no resistance had been raised. Few realized on that first day that the destruction of the ghetto would be drawn out for many long weeks. But for as many days as the Jews defended themselves, the ghetto would continue to burn. And so it was, amid the springtime atmosphere of Holy Week, in the heart of Warsaw, which four years of terror had been unable to subdue, that the Jewish insurrection got under way, the loneliest and most agonizing of all the struggles undertaken in those times in defense of life and freedom.

Malecki lived on the edge of Bielany, a distant settlement on the northern part of town. It was as he returned home from work on Monday evening that he first encountered the uprising. Just past Krasiński Square, as the streetcar passed along the walls of the ghetto, one could sense an atmosphere of excitement. People pressed up against the windows, but nothing could be seen. Beyond the ghetto ramparts stretched the high gray walls of tenement houses, cut through here and there by narrow windows, like arrow slits. Suddenly on Bonifraterska Street, in front of Saint John the Divine Hospital, the streetcar came to a violent stop. Simultaneously, from somewhere high up, a short, even burst of rifle fire rang out. A machine gun responded from the street.

Panic broke out in the streetcar. People quickly pulled back from the windows. Some squatted on the floor, while others pushed forward toward the exit. In the meantime, shots rained down more and more heavily from the Jewish apartment buildings. A machine gun set up in the middle of the pavement at the intersection of Bonifraterska and Konwiktorska streets answered with a ferocious chatter. Along the narrow stretch of roadway between the streetcar tracks and the walls of the ghetto an ambulance rushed by.

The next day, the streetcar to Żoliborz went only as far as Krasiński Square. Malecki, having completed his work at the firm more quickly than usual, was returning home early in the afternoon. At that moment, streetcar traffic came to a halt, and Miodowa Street was clogged with abandoned cars. Crowds stretched out along the sidewalks.

After a night of gunfire, with the morning came a short interruption in the fighting. Now, however, the pounding began anew, more ferocious than on the previous day. No vehicles were allowed to pass through Krasiński Square, but a restless, noisy, and excited crowd filled the openings of Długa and Nowiniarska streets. As with all major happenings in Warsaw, when observed from the outside it was something of a spectacle. Residents of Warsaw eagerly join a fight and just as eagerly observe one in progress.

A swarm of young boys and coiffed and elegantly dressed girls came running from the streets of the Old Town. The more curious pushed forward into the center of Nowiniarska Street, from which the most extensive view of the ghetto walls could be had. Hardly anyone pitied the Jews. The populace was mainly glad that the despised Germans were now beset by a new worry. In the estimation of the average person on the street, the very fact that fighting was taking place with a handful of solitary Jews made the victorious occupiers look ridiculous.

The fighting became increasingly fierce. In the heart of Krasiński Square, military policemen and SS guards bustled about in front of the judicial building. No one was allowed onto Bonifraterska Street.

When Malecki found himself at the corner of Miodowa Street, he was passed by an enormous truck loaded with soldiers dressed in full combat gear. Laughter broke out among the crowd, as rifle fire continued without interruption. This was the Jews shooting. The Germans responded with a long volley from their heavy machine guns and automatics.

Malecki had a business matter to take care of in the district bordering the field of battle, so he joined the crowd stretched out along Nowiniarska Street. The first stretch of this narrow street, badly damaged during the war, was separated from the ghetto walls by apartment house blocks standing between Bonifraterska and Nowiniarska streets, which ran parallel to each other. A short distance away, beyond the first cross street—Świętojerska—the buildings came to an end, and the street opened onto a vast, empty, and potholed square that had come into being after the razing of buildings bombed out and burned during the siege of Warsaw.

At the point where Nowiniarska opened upon this square, the crowd thickened, and the sidewalks and roadway became packed with people. Only a few strayed beyond the square. Shots could still be heard from the direction of the Jewish houses. In the intervals when the shooting died down, people broke away from the crowd a few at a time and vanished in haste beneath the walls of the apartment buildings.

Just as Malecki reached a place exposed to fire from the insurgents, the shooting came to a halt, and people, some hurrying home or on errands and others driven by curiosity, pushed forward in a thick wave. The deserted square now seemed even wider. In its center stood two carousels not yet completely assembled, evidently being readied for the upcoming holiday. Under the cover of their wildly colored decorations stood helmeted German soldiers. A number of them were kneeling on the platform with rifles pointed toward the ghetto. The area beneath the ghetto walls was empty. Above them, heavy and silent, rose the high walls of the apartment buildings. With their narrow windows and broken rooflines set against the cloudy sky, they recalled the image of a huge fortress.

Emboldened by the calm, people began to stop and to survey the solitary walls. Suddenly, shots rang out from that direction. Farther along Bonifraterska Street, probably near St. John the Divine Hospital, a deafening explosion could be heard, and many more followed, one after another. The Jews must have been throwing grenades.

People quickly began to take cover in the nearby entryways as shots whistled through the air. One of the running men, a stocky little fellow in a straw hat, gave a shout and fell onto the sidewalk. In the square a machine gun was stuttering. The soldiers at the carousel also were firing. Simultaneously, a series of sharp and very powerful shots rocked the square, and a streak of silvery shells struck one of the highest windows of the defended houses. It was an antitank gun firing in response.

In the ensuing havoc, Malecki found himself far from the closest gate, and he instinctively retreated into the doorway of the first store at hand. The storefront was boarded over, but the recess was deep enough to afford a measure of protection.

The street had nearly emptied. Two broad-shouldered workers were lifting the man lying on the sidewalk. One of them, a younger man, also picked up the straw hat. A soldier standing by the wall urged them to hurry. Then, gesticulating violently, he shouted loudly in the direction of a woman who, alone among the passersby, remained on the street. She stood motionless on the edge of the sidewalk and, as if unaware of the danger to which she was exposing herself, stared straight ahead at the dark walls.

“Don’t stand there, miss!” cried Malecki.

She did not even turn around. It was not until the soldier leaped up, screaming and shoving her away, that she stepped back and cradled her head in her arms in an uncertain gesture of surprise and fear. The soldier, exasperated and angry, pushed her with the butt of his rifle toward the gate. At the same time, he saw Malecki hidden in the recess of the store.

“Weg! Weg!” he screamed at him.

Malecki jumped out and quickly ran after the fleeing woman. Shots now came from all sides. A volley of shells rang out from a small antitank gun in the square. Glass flew tinkling onto the sidewalk. Again the dull explosion of grenades was heard.

The woman and Malecki reached the gate almost simultaneously. It was closed, and before it opened, Malecki finally was able to get a look at his companion, still hunched over and frightened, but whose profile was now turned toward him. The moment he saw her, he gasped in amazement.

“Irena!”

She looked at him with dark, uncomprehending eyes.

“Irena!” he repeated.

At the same moment, the frightened young doorkeeper opened the gate.

“Faster! Faster!” she urged.

Malecki grabbed Irena by the hand and yanked her inside. The entryway was filled with people, so he pushed his way through the crowd toward the courtyard. Irena allowed herself to be led, obediently and without resistance. He pulled her deeper into the courtyard, where it was empty.

The courtyard was old, dirty, and very run down. In place of what had once been an annex rose an empty plaster-specked wall, a remnant of wartime devastation. In the middle was a tall stack of bricks, alongside which lay a gray patch of poor barren earth, evidently prepared for planting vegetables.

As they came to a stop next to a steep set of stairs leading to the basement, Malecki let go of Irena’s hand and took a closer look at her.

She was still beautiful, but very changed. She had grown thin, and her features had become sharper and more subtle. Her oval eyes had become somehow even larger, but their expression had lost the warm color that had been so characteristic of her. They were now foreign, almost raw. Irena was very well dressed.

She wore a light-blue wool suit brought over from England before the war and a becoming hat, which Malecki did not recognize. Whether because he had not seen her for a long time or whether the changes were real, at first glance she now seemed to Malecki even more Semitic than before.

“It’s you?” she said quickly and without surprise.

Her eyes gave him a careless once-over. She seemed still to be listening to the sounds of gunfire from the street.

Malecki pulled himself together.

“Where did you come from? What are you doing here? You’re in Warsaw?”

“Yes,” she answered matter-of-factly, as if they had parted just a short time ago.

Her voice was the same as before, low and resonant, but perhaps somewhat less vibrant, a bit flat.

“How long have you been here?”

Irena shrugged.

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t even remember exactly. It seems like a very long time.”

“And you didn’t let me know?”

She looked at him more closely and a trifle mockingly.

“What for?”

Malecki lost his composure. This simple question was completely unexpected, so unlike the Irena he had known before. Not knowing what to say, he fell silent. Irena was listening again to the din from the street, and in her strained, somewhat distraught and frightened focus, she seemed to have forgotten about her companion. The silence became prolonged and increasingly uncomfortable and burdensome for Malecki. He felt a clear sense of estrangement from Irena, and in view of the situation in which she now found herself, he very much wanted to erase the distance between them but did not know how.

In the meantime, voices could suddenly be heard in the entryway. Part of the crowd hurriedly began to withdraw into the courtyard. A little boy in torn pants and a ragged shirt flew through the entrance and, knocking against Malecki in his haste, shouted excitedly down into the basement:

“Mama! They’ve set up a gun in our gate! They’re going to shoot from our gate!”

Brushing back a flaxen strand of hair that had fallen across his forehead, he ran back to the gate. A pale and wasted woman leaned out of the basement.

“Rysiek! Rysiek!” she called after the child.

But he was no longer there. Walking heavily, the woman lumbered up the steep and uncomfortable stairs. Suddenly an antitank gun began to fire. A deafening series of booms rattled the walls. From somewhere on an upper story plaster sifted down.

“Oh, Lord!” cried the woman, clutching at her heart.

The gun pounded without interruption. Everything about trembled and quaked, while the shooting from the Jewish side had grown quiet. And in this deafening uproar there mingled the sound of a raspy phonograph from the next courtyard playing some kind of sentimental prewar tango. More and more people withdrew from the gate.

“Oh, Lord!” the woman from the basement repeated wearily. “For what sins must we suffer so?”

Irena, trembling and pale from the strain of the gunfire, roused herself to respond to this complaint.

“Those people over there are suffering more,” she said hostilely.

Her eyes flashed and her mouth was tightly clenched. Malecki had never seen such malice and bitter antagonism in her.

The woman raised her tired, faded eyes to Irena.

“More? And how do you know what I have suffered?”

“Over there people are dying,” Irena cut her off in the same hostile voice.

“Drop it …” Malecki whispered.

But Irena, unable to control herself, turned on him viciously.

“Why should I? People are dying over there, hundreds of people, and you, over here, are letting them die like dogs … worse than dogs.”

She raised her voice and became much more agitated. Malecki grabbed for her hand and pulled her aside toward the entry to one of the stairwells.

“Get hold of yourself! You’re looking for trouble. Think about what you’re doing—people are already beginning to stare at us.”

As a matter of fact, several people who had drawn back from the gates were peering curiously in their direction. Irena looked around. Perceiving their glances, she immediately calmed down and fell silent.

“My papers are in order,” she whispered timidly.

She anxiously looked Malecki in the eyes.

It made him uncomfortable, as never before in his entire acquaintance with Irena. He was terribly embarrassed and humiliated by her situation and by his own helplessness and privileged position.

“What are you talking about?” he blurted out somewhat artificially. “No one is going to look at your papers now. The worst thing is that there’s no way of knowing when we can get out of here. Where are you living?”

“Nowhere.”

Malecki shuddered.

“What do you mean nowhere?”

“Just as I say.”

“But you said you’ve been in Warsaw for a while.”

“For a while, but what of it? I can’t go back to where I was living. But no matter,” she said disdainfully, “it’s not important.”

“How is it not important? Listen, what about your father?”

She looked at him briefly.

“He’s dead.”

“So it’s true?” he whispered. “There were rumors to that effect …”

“It’s true.”

He was silent for a while. Finally, forcing himself, he asked:

“And your mother?”

“She’s dead too.”

It was the answer he had expected, but as soon as he heard it, he felt its full weight upon him.

“That’s terrible!” was all he managed to say.

And he immediately felt how meaningless his words were. But Irena, standing with her head bowed and tracing invisible patterns in the broken asphalt with the end of her brown parasol, did not convey the impression that she was expecting anything else from him. Her suffering had become so deeply embedded that she expected from others neither compassion nor warmth.

Malecki looked distractedly at the movements of Irena’s parasol. More keenly than usual he felt the same onrush of emotion that inevitably took root of its own accord whenever he contemplated the increasingly frequent tragedies of the Jews. These feelings were different from those that arose within him for the suffering of his own compatriots and of the people of other nations. They were dark, complex, and deeply disturbing. At the moments of their greatest intensity, they became entangled in an especially painful and humiliating awareness of a hazy and indistinct sense of responsibility for the vastness of the atrocities and crimes to which the Jewish people had been subjected now for many years, while the rest of the world silently acquiesced. That awareness, stronger than any intellectual reasoning, was probably the worst experience he had taken from all his wartime encounters. There were times, as at the end of the previous summer, when the Germans had first begun the mass slaughter of the Jews and when for days and nights on end the Warsaw Ghetto had resounded with the sounds of shooting, that his feelings of complicity became exceptionally strongly aroused. He bore them then like a wound in which there seemed to fester all the evil of the world. He realized, however, that there was within him more unease and terror than actual love toward these defenseless people, who now found themselves cornered on all sides, the only people in the world whom fate had uprooted from a demeaned, but still existing, human brotherhood.

The present encounter with Irena only heightened Malecki’s confusion, which had been growing within him since the previous evening. He had felt very depressed then because, as a typical man of education, he was the kind of person who finds it easy enough to relate the sufferings and cruelties of all mankind to his own pangs of conscience.

In the meantime, the antitank gun fell silent. From the phonograph in the neighboring courtyard now rose the ringing voice of a male tenor. Round and resonant words of Italian floated loudly and clearly about the walls of the ghetto. Machine guns rattled from the middle of the square. The people who had retreated to the courtyard now returned to the gate. The same small boy, whose mother had called him Rysiek, burst from the entryway and ran up to the woman, still standing by the stairs to the basement.

“Mama! The Germans are blowing up the Jews’ houses! Oh, look what huge holes they’ve already made!” he said, holding his hands wide apart.

“Go home, Rysiek!” the woman whispered.

He shook his unruly, dirty-blond hair.

“I’ll be right back.”

Turning on his heels, he ran back to the entryway.

“Maybe now we can go back out on the street.” Malecki said, and left Irena to see what was happening at the gate.

He saw an artillery piece standing in front of the building and several German soldiers around it. The machine gun rattled constantly from the middle of the square. The gate was half open. A small group of people was negotiating with a tall, broad-shouldered soldier to allow them to exit. The soldier at first did not want to let them out, but at last he stepped aside and waved them past. Instantly several dozen people darted toward the exit.

Malecki swiftly returned to Irena.

“Listen, we can leave, but quickly, because they’ll probably start up again soon.”

Looking at Irena, he fell silent. She was pale and her face had changed. She leaned on one hand against the wall of the building.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, frightened. “Do you feel sick?”

“No,” she protested.

But she grew even paler. Malecki looked around and quickly approached the woman from the basement.

“May I ask you for some water? This woman is feeling faint.”

The woman looked at Irena and hesitated for a moment. Finally she nodded her head.

“Follow me.”

Malecki descended after her and stopped at the door. The odor of poverty struck him immediately. In the basement was a kitchen nook, low-ceilinged, darkened with soot, and saturated with dampness. There was hardly any furniture. On a wooden bed next to the wall lay an old and emaciated man, covered with the remnants of a once-red quilt. Nearer the entrance, a dark young man sat on a stool, peeling potatoes. The work went amazingly quickly. With machinelike speed his pocketknife flashed, and with measured motions he deftly tossed the peeled potatoes into a basin of water on the floor. The young man was leaning downward into the shadows; his face could not be made out.

The woman drew some water from a bucket and handed a mug to Malecki. He thanked her and quickly returned upstairs to Irena.

“Have some of this,” he said, offering her the water.

At first she did not want to take it, but finally she allowed herself to be persuaded. After a couple of swallows she pushed the mug aside.

“I can’t,” she whispered with revulsion.

She was slowly regaining her composure, but she still trembled slightly and kept leaning against the wall.

“How do you feel?”

She nodded, feeling better. At that moment the woman emerged from the basement.

“Maybe the lady would like to sit down?” she called. “Let her come downstairs.”

Malecki looked inquiringly at Irena. To his surprise, she agreed, and he led her down the stairs. The woman wiped off a wooden stool with a rag.

“Please have a seat,” she told Irena and placed the stool nearer the door.

Malecki stood beside her. The antitank guns began to sound again. The man lying next to the wall began to moan, but the woman paid him no attention. She stood before the kitchen, thin and frail, with her arms hanging down, clearly tired beyond endurance. Although she wore a miserable threadbare dress, she looked well-enough groomed. Her hair, already graying, was smoothly combed, revealing the sallow skin of her temples, transparent as vellum. She must have been no more than forty years old, although she looked much older.

Malecki glanced toward the bed.

“Is that your husband? Is he sick?”

“He’s sick,” she replied. “But he’s not my husband. He’s my husband’s father.”

“And your husband?”

“He was killed in September.”²

Irena only now looked about the room. The woman immediately noticed her glance.

“The Germans threw us out of Poznań province,” she explained. “We had a little house in Mogilno. My husband was a gardener there.”

She fell silent and looked about the place herself.

“And now—it’s all gone!”

Malecki, who had been watching the young man peel potatoes for some time, could no longer restrain himself and exclaimed:

“You’re really good at that!”

The youth started, broke off his work, and raised his head. His face, which once must have been gentle and not bad-looking, now was swollen, and the livid, brick-colored spots on his cheeks gave the impression of a mask. His hair was cropped close to the skin, his eyelids deeply red, and his eyes dead, motionless, and without luster. His glassy stare, so little resembling anything human, had a crushing effect on Malecki. He was relieved when the boy, without responding, again bent over and, taking another potato from the small basket, began to peel it skillfully with his red and slightly swollen hands.

No one spoke. The man moaning next to the wall attempted to pull his hands out from under the scraps of quilt. The tenor on the phonograph in the courtyard began singing a new aria. From far away, the short reports of single shots rent the air.

At that, the woman spoke up.

“That’s my oldest son, just returned from Auschwitz.”³

No one said anything in reply. The woman looked at her son with a tired gaze, while he continued indifferently, as if no one had said anything about him.

“He was there for two years. They caught him on the street.”

Abruptly she began bustling about the kitchen, shifting around dented pots and saucepans. There was no fire burning in the stove, and the cold was even more penetrating in the basement than outside. The sun certainly never shone here.

Malecki glanced at Irena. She had completely returned to normal, although she was a bit paler than usual. She sat rigid and attentive, unnaturally straight, her dark eyes examining the woman attentively but with an evident lack of goodwill. The woman, for her part, finally stopped rearranging things, turned, and went up to her son.

“Enough peeling, Kaziczek,” she said gently. “That’ll do for today.”

At that moment the shrill, hoarse shout of one of the soldiers rang out from in front of the gate. The young man started, moved away from the window, and instinctively shrank into himself. For a moment, his red eyes passed across Malecki and Irena with an apprehensive squint. Only when he saw his mother did he calm down somewhat. He continued standing alone, lurking in the corner and gazing uncertainly at the strangers in the room.

“Let’s go!” Malecki leaned over to Irena. She stood up with some effort and thanked the woman, indifferently and with a trace of contempt, for her hospitality.

This cut Malecki to the quick.

“Irena!” he said, his voice rising with reproach, “How can you speak to these unfortunate people in that tone of voice?”

She glanced at him with the same derisive coldness as at the beginning of their encounter.

“So you don’t like my tone of voice?”

“No.”

The hardness in his own voice did not disconcert her at all.

“Too bad. That’s the tone I seem to have.”

“But Irena!”

“What are you so surprised at?” she asked, cutting him off irritatedly. “That woman is not the unhappiest person in the world. She doesn’t have to die from the fear that at any moment they can shoot her sons just because they are who they are. She at least has them, you understand? She can go on living. And us?”

“Us?” He didn’t understand at first.

“Us Jews!” she answered.

At that moment, the sound of a machine gun sounded very close to them. The cannon continued firing from the far gate.

“You didn’t used to say ‘us,’” Malecki said at last, speaking softly.

“No, I didn’t, but I have been taught. By all of you.”

“By us?”

“By you, Poles, Germans …”

“So you’re lumping us together?”

“You’re all Aryans!”

“Irena!”

“You taught me that. I only recently came to understand that everyone in the world has always hated us and still does.”

“You’re exaggerating!” he murmured.

“Not at all! And even if they don’t hate us, at best they barely tolerate us. Don’t tell me we have friends, because it just seems that way. In reality no one likes us. Even when you help us, it’s different than when you help other people …”

“Different?”

“You have to force yourself to assume a posture of generosity and sympathy, of whatever is good, humane, and just. Oh, I assure you that if I could hate Jews as much as you do, then I wouldn’t say ‘us’ and ‘you.’ But I can’t feel like that and so I must be one of them, a Jew! For who else am I supposed to be, tell me that?”

“Yourself,” he replied, but without much conviction.

She said nothing at first. She bowed her head and stood that way for a long time, again tracing invisible signs on the ground with her parasol. Suddenly she lifted her beautiful, eastern eyes toward Malecki and said in the soft tone that formerly had so often sounded in her voice:

“I am myself. But Miss Lilien from Smug no longer exists. I was told to forget about her, so I did.”

A commotion arose at the gate. People were slipping out, taking advantage of the latest break in the shooting.

“Let’s go,” Malecki said.

The German sentry at the gate urged those exiting to hurry. In a moment Malecki and Irena found themselves on the street.

Irena did not know this part of town, so she stopped, disoriented. Malecki pulled her after him in the direction of Franciszkańska Street. A few passersby were stealing this way along the rows of tenements. Shots still could be heard, sparse and far off. An open army car slowly made its way down the center of the roadway. From its running board a young officer issued orders in a loud voice to the soldiers grouped around the carousel.