Nocturne

by Diane Armstrong

  A small crowd had gathered near the Royal Castle. It had become an empty shell, gutted and robbed of its treasures, but in front of it stood Warsaw’s landmark, the Sigismund Column. This marble monument, which had been erected three hundred years before to commemorate the king who had moved Poland’s capital from Kraków to Warsaw, now soared above the devastation around it, a symbol of hope for the city. In the centre of the crowd lay a dead horse that was still twitching while people crowding around it were feverishly hacking off chunks of flesh with knives, hatchets or axes — whatever they could lay their hands on. They were pushing and jostling and abusing each other in their frenzy to obtain a larger part of the animal, now a bloodied mess. The thought of tasting meat again made Elzunia salivate but the gleam of bloodlust in their eyes repelled her and the thick smell of blood made her gag. It was better to keep eating barley soup than be reduced to such primitive behaviour.

  As she walked, she heard solemn voices chanting Latin prayers. Walking slowly along the street, a straggling group carried a medieval wooden cross. At their head came a white-haired priest, his cassock raising clouds of dust as it swished along the ground. He paused for a moment to mop his perspiring face and then spoke in a voice palpitating with spiritual revelation.

  ‘It’s a miracle, that’s what it is,’ he said. ‘It’s a sign. My church caught fire and everything went up in flames, but this crucifix was untouched.’

  She gazed after them curiously as they walked on, still chanting, bearing the crucifix like a coffin. It looked like a funeral procession on its way to bury Christ.

  Ever since the Uprising had begun three weeks before, she’d noticed an upsurge in religious feeling. In courtyards, cellars and hospital wards, crowds knelt to pray while priests performed Mass as solemnly as though they were inside cathedrals. Tragedies that she expected would have shaken their faith seemed instead to have strengthened it. Perhaps faith was all they had left, Elzunia mused. Or, like Granny, they believed that prayers were now more important than ever. She sighed, wondering what had become of dear old Granny, alone on the other side of the city. Her mind went back to the morning when they had parted. Granny had cried when she had told her that she was going to join the Uprising, and made the sign of the cross over her head and blessed her, wiping her eyes on her apron.

  Now that raging fires and intense fighting had cut communications between the Old Town and the city centre, Warsaw had become a number of isolated districts, and the only safe way of crossing from one to another was through the sewers. One of the fighters in her ward had told her that the wireless operator in his unit had to radio London in order to get through to Zoliborz, which was only three kilometres away.

  As she ducked into an underground passage that connected the cellars of several buildings, Elzunia noticed that people had scrawled the names of the streets above ground to guide those below. Although it was safer to use the network of cellars to get around the Old Town these days, Elzunia had mixed feelings about doing so. When the occupants of the overcrowded stuffy cellars saw her armband, they often launched into streams of invective and abuse. Her heart ached as she looked at the swollen bellies of the hungry children and the gaunt grey faces of their parents. Most people huddled in the cellars to avoid the bombs and incendiary rockets that usually hit the upper storeys of buildings and within seconds reduced them to rubble. After each strike, Elzunia dreaded seeing the charred little bodies of children being brought into the hospital, and was happy for them when they died quickly.

  ‘Could you give me some of that water to wash the children’s clothes?’ a young woman whispered, eyeing Elzunia’s bucket. Two dull-eyed children clung to her skirt as she spoke. On the verge of tears, the woman pointed at the dirt that coated everything in the cellar. ‘I’m going insane living in this filth. It’s even worse than the hunger.’ But although Elzunia wished she could help her, she couldn’t part with even a drop of the precious water that was needed for the patients and for sterilising the medical instruments.

  She came to a deserted building. Several days earlier, a bomb had ripped through the roof and destroyed the upper storeys before becoming lodged on the floor of the first storey without exploding. The floors and ceilings of the upper apartments had been torn down and the staircases hung suspended in the air.

  Tormented by the hunger that gnawed at her most of the time, Elzunia wondered if anyone had left food in those apartments, and her mouth watered as she imagined the delicacies that might be stored in their cupboards and pantries. She could already taste the velvety sweetness of cheesecake and the smoky flavour of sausage. Even a slice of stale bread would satisfy her hunger.

  Salivating, she placed the bucket against a wall, covered it with a plank of wood, and climbed over the pile of broken bricks blocking the entrance. Clinging to a fragment of the staircase, she hauled herself up to the small wooden platform that was all that remained of the first-floor landing. She stopped to catch her breath and regain her balance when she heard a noise and looked around. Perhaps she’d imagined it. But a moment later, she heard it again. Tip-toeing in the direction of the sound, she inched across a plank of wood and peered behind a door that hung open.

  Lying entwined on a rug on the floor, surrounded by fallen paintings, broken china and shattered chairs, were a man and a woman. Her skirt was rucked up around her waist, her legs were wide apart, and she was moaning and gasping, but whether it was with pain or pleasure, Elzunia couldn’t tell. Lying on top of her, the man was making rough rasping sounds and violent movements as though pushing a plough through unyielding soil. Her mouth dropped open. So that’s how they did it. Her breath came faster and she felt something warm and moist between her thighs.

  Suddenly aware of the intruder, the couple separated and sprang up, red-faced, and hurriedly adjusted their ruffled clothing.

  ‘Jesus Maria!’ the girl exclaimed, pulling down her skirt while her boyfriend rolled away and hitched up his trousers. ‘What are you staring at? Go on, beat it!’

  Flustered and confused, Elzunia backed out, retraced her steps, grabbed her bucket and walked back to the hospital.

  Unsettled for the rest of the day, she couldn’t get that scene out of her mind. It looked disgusting but, although she was ashamed to admit it to herself, it excited her. She wondered how it felt and whether it hurt, and wished there was someone she could ask. Now that Janka was gone, there was no one she could discuss these things with.

  ‘You’ve looked preoccupied all afternoon,’ Dr Zawadzki said after they’d sunk into their chairs at the end of the day. ‘Anyone would think there was a war on.’

  She was irritated. ‘How come you’re always so cheerful, Dr Zawadzki?’

  ‘We can’t control the wind but we can adjust our sails,’ he said. ‘I can’t do anything about the war, so I concentrate on what I can do. And I’ve never found that being depressed improves the situation or my mood.’

  He glanced at her and added, ‘But if you don’t start calling me Andrzej, I will get upset.’

  She hesitated for a moment, wondering whether the question she was about to ask was impertinent. ‘Why do you insist on being called by your first name?’

  He smiled. ‘That bothers you, doesn’t it?’

  She struggled to explain her disapproval. ‘It’s just not done. It’s like not having enough respect for yourself. It’s bringing you down to the level of ordinary people.’

  He burst out laughing. ‘But I am an ordinary person. I can’t claim any credit for being born with a retentive memory and parents who supported me while I studied. Having a degree in a profession I chose doesn’t make me any better than a nurse or a street cleaner. And if the respect I get is on account of my title, then it’s not worth having.’

  She stared at him, trying to absorb his ideas.

  ‘I can see you find this strange,’ he said. ‘But isn’t this part of what our struggle is about? We want to be independent but we also want to establish a more democratic Poland, where every
one will be represented and all people will be treated equally.’

  She looked at him in dismay. ‘Are you a communist?’

  He shook his head. ‘I hate categories that put people into boxes. Most of the problems of the world are created by people who add “ism” to their beliefs. Look at Catholicism. They’d have us believe that we should give up everything we enjoy — our desires, our passions and our pleasures — so we can go to heaven. They want us to be dead while we’re alive, so we can be alive after we’re dead! I’d rather live now and take my chances later. But if you must give me a label, you can call me a humanist.’

  What an unusual man he was, she thought, with his tram-driver’s cap, devil-may-care manner and strange ideas. Although she didn’t agree with everything he’d said, the idea of a real democracy where everyone was accepted and regarded as equal appealed to her. It sounded like the Utopia she’d once read about in the classics at school. Perhaps if enough people believed in it, and wanted it to happen, it could come true.

  She thought of the doctor’s quiet authority and self-control, his good-natured humour, the confidence he gave the patients to whom he was so dedicated, and she felt mortified about what she’d said about respect.

  That evening, in the cellar she shared with nurses and runners, she spotted Pola, the girl she had seen with her lover in the abandoned building.

  ‘Sorry I told you off up there,’ Pola said. ‘It’s just that you gave me such a fright, appearing out of nowhere like that.’

  She saw Elzunia’s expression and shrugged. ‘That’s just how it is nowadays. I can see you’re shocked, but everyone’s doing it. What am I saving it for? I might be dead tomorrow.’

  Despite her exhaustion, Elzunia couldn’t sleep. All around her, the girls were giggling and confiding secrets, probably about their sexual adventures. Even the sixteen-year-old who had recently joined the AK as a runner shared confidences with them, but Elzunia, who was almost nineteen, was unable to take any part in these whispered conversations. Although she felt excluded and immature, she was shocked that, like Pola, these girls had dropped their moral standards without a qualm. But Elzunia knew that there was one man she longed to make love with and that was the AK courier — Eagle. With him it wouldn’t seem immoral. But what if she never saw him again? What if she died without ever doing it?

  Forty-Six

  Elzunia counted out the six grinding roars that sounded like the agonised bellowing of a cow in labour, and waited for the explosion to find out whether she was alive or dead. As soon as she heard the deafening booms that followed, she breathed out. Of all the weapons that the Germans had unleashed on them, the mortars they called ‘cows’ terrified her most, with their long flames like the burning tongues of prehistoric monsters.

  What with the roar of the ‘cows’ that turned buildings into infernos and people into charred statues, the stuttering of artillery and the hail of machine-gun fire, it seemed to Elzunia that she was living out a nightmare from which there was no awakening.

  At the same time, remote-controlled Goliath tanks crashed into houses, armoured trains spewed shells so huge that they sliced through buildings like drills, and Stukas peppered them with bombs. Fires often raged unchecked because of the shortage of water, but over twenty thousand fighters sent to defend the Old Town still hung on. They fought street by street, corner by corner, and building by building, armed with pistols, rifles, hand grenades, insufficient explosives and ammunition, and a grim determination not to surrender the ancient heart of the capital. For the third time since the war began, Warsaw was fighting for its life.

  ‘I don’t know why we haven’t gone crazy in here,’ Elzunia said, looking helplessly at the endless line of insurgents and civilians who hoped to be admitted to the hospital, even though they knew there was nowhere to put them all and no medicines with which to treat them.

  ‘Because we’re far stronger than we realise,’ Dr Zawadzki replied. ‘And we’re too busy to think about ourselves.’

  He was telling his small patient to keep watching out for the fairy that lived behind the door while he extracted splinters of glass from her face. As Elzunia handed him the tweezers and disinfectant, she listened to his stories about hobgoblins and princesses that distracted his young patient from the pain. His audience included the first-aid workers and other staff who hovered around to hear his tales.

  ‘Got any of your spitting soup left?’ he asked Elzunia as the orderlies brought in the next patient.

  She couldn’t help smiling at his description. Every morning she made a big pot of soup from barley that hadn’t been husked, so that as they ate they had to keep spitting out the chaff. To her dismay, even the barley ration had recently been reduced.

  With the ever-increasing number of patients, there wasn’t enough soup to go round, but no one was keen to volunteer to go to the warehouse, which could only be reached by a route above ground that was right in the firing line.

  ‘I had a funny dream last night,’ she said as she covered a patient with a sheet, exposing only the ripped abdomen through which his slippery intestines were showing. ‘I dreamed that I’d made a big vat of barley soup, and, when I went to ladle it out, it turned into a huge sausage.’

  Dr Zawadzki chuckled. ‘It could be a sign of meat deprivation. Of course, Freud would have interpreted it differently.’

  She blushed. Next time she’d keep her dreams to herself.

  But right now she didn’t have time to think about soup, sausage or dreams because it was time to select the most urgent cases for him to see. This responsibility always weighed her down. What if she made a mistake and someone died while waiting to be seen? As she walked briskly among the stretchers, trying to comfort and reassure the patients without becoming involved in discussions, she noticed a young man whose head was bowed as he pressed one hand against his shoulder. She walked towards him and stopped, hardly able to believe her eyes.

  ‘Stefan!’ she cried and flung her arms around him. ‘Oh thank God! Thank God you survived.’

  He was squeezing her hand as he cleared his throat and tried to speak. ‘Lucky they brought me here,’ he said finally.

  The stain under Stefan’s arm was spreading and he bit his lip. ‘It’s my shoulder. I’ve been shot,’ he said.

  As she motioned for the first-aid boys to bring him in to see Dr Zawadzki, she noticed that he was thinner and taller than she remembered. More manly. His bored, spoilt expression had been replaced by a steadier, more focused gaze.

  He winced as Dr Zawadzki examined his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll have to remove the bullet,’ the doctor said. ‘Unfortunately we don’t have any anaesthetic. All I can give you is a swig of moonshine.’

  ‘Make it a big swig,’ Stefan said through white lips.

  Elzunia was leaning over her brother when he came to. ‘You fainted while Dr Zawadzki was getting the bullet out,’ she said. ‘Probably just as well.’

  His face was contorted with pain. As she handed him a glass of water, he whispered, ‘Mother. Where is she?’

  When she told him how she had found their mother in the ruined bunker, a strange, harsh sound, more like a cough than a sob, tore from his throat. They sat in silence for a long time.

  ‘What about Father? Have you heard anything?’

  She pulled a face. ‘He’s all right,’ she said brusquely, ‘but it’s a very long story.’ She sat down beside her brother. ‘First I want to hear all about you. How did you manage to get out of the Ghetto?’

  ‘After two weeks, I joined a group of fighters. We didn’t have any Molotov cocktails or grenades, so we used to ambush Germans or Ukrainians and take their uniforms and weapons. In the end, our bunker got hit. It was a miracle I got out alive. By then, most of the Ghetto was on fire and there was only one way out.’ Stefan winced as he described his journey through the sewers.

  After wandering about town, avoiding the round-ups and hiding from the Germans, he’d found work on an allotment on the outskirts of
the city. Determined to fight the Germans, he’d joined the insurgents, and, when the Uprising broke out, his unit was sent to the Old Town. They’d been fighting hand-to-hand battles in the streets when he was shot.

  ‘Our ammunition’s running so low now that we can’t fire on the Germans until we’re up close so we don’t waste any bullets,’ he told Elzunia. ‘I’ll tell you how bad things are. Our major had a revolver of one calibre but ammunition for another. He had to run around begging for someone to give him the right ammunition. I don’t know what the bloody Russians are up to on the other side of the river, but if they don’t come and help us soon, and if the Allies don’t drop us some more weapons, I don’t know how long we can go on defending the Old Town.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Talk about history repeating itself!’

  His eyes darted around the ward. ‘Gittel. Where’s Gittel?’

  ‘I can’t find her. I’ve looked, I’ve asked people, but no one knows anything.’ The desperation made Elzunia’s voice rise. ‘I don’t know what’s become of her.’

  He shook his head and said, ‘Poor little kid.’

  She saw the tears in his eyes and was surprised. He had never shown any interest in Gittel before. They sat for a while without speaking, and from his expression she sensed he wanted to get something off his chest.

  ‘I wish I’d never joined the Jewish police,’ he said. ‘I got conned by German lies. They said that joining up would protect us and our families, but I didn’t protect you and Mama, and, in the end, the Germans deported most of the Jewish policemen like everyone else.’

  He tried to sit up but fell back against the lumpy pillow donated by one of the tenants of the apartment building. ‘I never thought it would turn out like that, or that I’d end up doing what I did. Somehow one thing led to another …’ He trailed off, looking at her as though expecting absolution. ‘I made the wrong choice, that’s all.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And you chose the right side, you brat. You always do.’