All through the late afternoon, wounded figures had been continuously going by him, walking aimlessly, stumbling, tottering, lurching, feeling their way, crawling even. For the last half-hour, however, this traffic of pain and despair had eased.
The evening sun was trying to sever the clouds and smoke. It was weak and lifeless.
Leaning now against the wall, Sandingham sensed he was not on his own. He looked around him. No one alive was in sight. The dead youth lay in the road. The dead girl opposite was still there, partially covered by ash that had drifted against her like snow. The little group of dead by the remains of the food shop was unchanged. The dead cat beside the burnt-out car had not moved. Yet he felt he was with someone.
His eyes focused on a section of wall to his right. There was someone there. They were standing in the centre of the street. Their shadow was plainly outlined on the plaster of the wall. Sandingham gazed at it. Yet in the street there was no one.
He stood up hurriedly and ran to the point where the person should be. Still no living person in sight; yet the shadow was still there, imprinted on the wall.
He took two quick strides and his own shadow merged with the other. He was where the person had been, should still be. If that person had had a soul and that soul had had a shadow it would be inhabiting his body now. They would be in him, safe in the deep recesses of his marrow. He heard himself shout – a shriek, his dry throat ripping apart as the sound rose to a whistling falsetto.
He ran, his own shadow flitting over the rubble of the houses and the bodies of the dead; his voice he left behind in the air, hanging there like the shadow that had lost its owner.
He was worn out, totally enervated. All he wanted to do was sleep, lose consciousness forever, just as Mishima had chosen to do.
After leaving the shadow he had fled along a maze of streets and, as darkness fell, found himself on the edge of what appeared to be a public park. There was a mass of people on the ground within it, lying or squatting upon the grass. Their silence shocked him deeply. Some were moaning or wheezing, some keening in undertones of anguish, but no one was speaking.
From a gate pillar there hung a gate. It was still, miraculously, on its hinges. Pointlessly, for the second half of the twin gate had disappeared, he pushed it open and stepped on to a pathway.
As soon as he passed a group of people on the ground, and they noticed that he was unhurt and standing upright, they begged water of him, or help, or comfort. They did not clamour or shout or demand. Nor did they really ask. They merely said it in soft, lover-like voices.
‘. . . .awaremi tamai,’ they pleaded. ‘. . . .awaremi tamai.’
He had no pity left to offer.
An old woman was going from one corpse to another, skilful in her ability to distinguish between the living and the non-living: there was often little apparent difference. From any corpse that wore spectacles she helped herself to them, trying on pair after pair before discarding them. Sandingham followed her movements until she discovered some that suited her vision and disappeared behind a clump of trees.
One man lying beside a split tree trunk captured Sandingham’s attention. He sat cross-legged on the ground, stark-naked like a grotesque holy man. His body was covered with dancing stars. He was muttering something to himself, over and over. Curious, Sandingham went up to him and listened to his liturgy.
‘Tenno heika, banzai, banzai, banzai, banzai.’
The stars around his body were made by the brittle evening light splitting apart in the hundreds of glass splinters that were embedded in his skin.
Towards the centre of the park the people thinned out and the shrubbery that had survived the blast rustled in the hot night breezes. Behind him, the pitiful congregation were illuminated by the dying fires in the city.
The bushes offered Sandingham the shelter and protection he needed to sleep. His eyes were leaden and his brain numbed by all he had seen. He pressed the branches aside and entered the cavern of the undergrowth.
The men were sitting in a row, their legs stretched out before them.
Sandingham eased himself on to the earth, not noticing them. Gradually, he felt their presence. He looked up at them.
They were all alike. Their faces were entirely burned and the frail skin hung from their cheeks and foreheads like the flaking surfaces of the hoods of ripe mushrooms. Their sockets were red voids and the mucus of their melted eyes shone glutinously on the raw, hanging flesh of their faces, like the glass from the tram windows. Their lips were gross, swollen slits surrounded by creamy pus and plasma.
He jerked back. They heard his movement and whispered through the cracks of their mouths. They hissed like creatures of the underworld. They spoke as insects might.
One of them tried to get up, rocking himself from side to side on his buttocks. Another raised his arms very slowly towards Sandingham. As he did so, Sandingham could hear the tissues in the man’s armpits tearing.
He grunted with fear, with ultimate horror. He wanted to scream but could not.
The dead were coming to life.
He picked up a clod of dried earth and hurled it at the man with the crackling arms. The ball of soil hit him on the chest and disintegrated like a tiny grenade. The earth made a radiant pattern on the man’s flayed skin which darkened as the blood soaked into the dirt, absorbing it into the meat.
Sandingham ran pell-mell through the park, standing on people’s hands, tripping over their prostrate bodies, oblivious of everything. He ran until there was nothing in his life but the next step following the last step and the cartoon strip of all he had witnessed that day flickering in an endless loop through his brain.
He was lying in a ditch. Over his head, thin leaves were shifting in a breeze. A bird was cheeping somewhere, readying itself for dawn. Far off, a dog was howling and barking.
Opening his eyes, he stared upwards at the pattern of the tree against the vaguely lightening sky. Mud was caking on his chest and his left cheek. His right cheek was cushioned by wet clay. As he lifted his left arm to pull himself upright, the dried mud cracked. He shuddered and checked that it was just mud and not his flesh.
He took a deep breath and slapped his hand on the mud to reassure himself. The grimy splash spattered his soiled skin.
‘I’m alive,’ he said to the tufts of grass by his face. ‘Filthy, agreed. But alive. Definitely!’ He raised his eyes. ‘But why? Why on earth me?’
Louis Begley
WARTIME LIES
Wartime Lies (1991) tells the story of an orphaned Jewish boy who, together with his aunt Tania, lives in hiding under assumed Polish identity to escape the Nazi death camps. When they are caught up in the Warsaw uprising, the desperate attempt by the Polish Home Army to liberate the city in the autumn of 1944, they hope that their days in hiding will soon be over.
ONE AFTERNOON, AN AK*10 officer came to speak to the people in the cellar. He said that the AK would have to withdraw at once from the neighbourhood through the sewers; the Germans could be expected within a few hours. We should stay calm and, when the Germans did come, follow their orders promptly and without argument. They would make us leave the building; it was a good idea to gather whatever clothes we needed and have a little suitcase ready. The Germans had Ukrainian guards with them. The Ukrainians were like wild animals. It would be best if young women put shawls over their heads and faces and tried to be inconspicuous. He saluted and wished us all luck. Soon afterwards, a bomb fell on the building next to us; another made a hole in the street. People from the building that had been hit came to our cellar. There was less gunfire, and after a while both the gunfire and the bombs began to seem more distant. It was already dark, and the Germans had not come. Few people slept that night. Families sat together talking. Some people prayed aloud.
Tania told me to lie down on our mattress. She lay down too, put her arms around me and talked to me in a whisper. She said it was lucky that we had not forgotten for a moment we were Catholic Poles and that nobody se
emed to suspect us. Our only hope was to be like all the others. The Germans weren’t going to kill every Pole in Warsaw; there were too many of them, but they would kill every Jew they could catch. We would make ourselves very small and inconspicuous, and we would be very careful not to get separated in the crowd. If something very bad happened and she was taken away, I wasn’t to try to follow: it wouldn’t help her and I might even make things worse for both of us. If possible I should wait for her. Otherwise, I should take the hand of whatever grown-up near me had the nicest face, say I was an orphan, and hope for the best. I shouldn’t say I was a Jew, or let myself be seen undressed if I could avoid it. She had me repeat these instructions and told me to go to sleep.
We were awake when they arrived late the next morning. It was the same bellowing as for Jews in T., the same pounding of rifle butts on the gate and then on the cellar door and the apartment doors and people trying to hurry and stumbling on the stairs. A Wehrmacht officer and a couple of German soldiers stood on the sidewalk in a little group apart while the work was done by Ukrainians: they rushed around, pushing and hitting people as they came out into the street. Some of them had whips and some had dogs. A woman just ahead of us did not move fast enough to satisfy a Ukrainian. He hit her with his whip. Her husband pushed his way in front of her. Two Ukrainians beat him. Many people from other buildings were already assembled in a column, four abreast, ready to march. A Ukrainian called for silence and asked that all the women in our group immediately give up their jewellery. He pointed to a bucket. Then he told us to pass by it one by one. When our turn came, Tania took off her bracelet and ring and threw them in. He asked to see her hands and waved us ahead. I looked at Tania. She had put a kerchief over her head and tied it under her chin; her face was smeared black with coal dust; she was walking bent over like an old woman. When we reached the column she said she wanted to be in the middle of a row; I could be on the outside. The column seemed ready to march when another squabble erupted: a woman had not thrown anything into the bucket; the Ukrainian in charge of it grabbed her hand, saw a ring, beat her on the face and with an easy, fluid gesture, just like a butcher, cut off her finger. He held it up for all to see. There was a ring on it. The finger and ring both went into the bucket.
The march began. Tania had manœvred us both into the middle of the row, with a man on either side. We no longer saw familiar faces. People from our building had drifted away; much rearranging had to be done before the German officer gave the order for departure. The column went down Krakowskie Przedmieście, turned right on Aleje Jerożolimskie, but it was difficult to recognize in the smouldering ruins the street we had tried to memorize. Tania said she thought they were taking us to the Central Station. We were a sea of marchers. Tania and I had no possessions; our hands were free. I was walking with a light and bouncy step. Was it fear or the strange parade we were a part of after the weeks spent in cellars? Around us, people were staggering under huge valises; some were transporting a piece of furniture or a rug. Many had children in their arms. Directly in front of us was a man with a large grey-and-red parrot in a cage; every few minutes the bird screamed. The man had the cage door open, and he would put his hand in to quiet the bird.
As in T., when I watched the final departure of the ghetto Jews, but on a vaster scale suited to the breadth of the avenues we were walking on and the enormous length of the column, the crowd was contained on both sides by Ukrainians, SS and Wehrmacht. Many of the Germans were officers. The Ukrainians and their dogs walked with us, while the Germans, immobile on the ruined sidewalks, were like green-and-black statues. From time to time, a Ukrainian would plunge into the column and beat a marcher who was not keeping up with the others or had stopped to shift his load. They beat marchers whose children were crying; we were to make no noise. And they dragged out of the column women who had attracted their attention. They beat them, beat men who tried to shield them, and then led the women to the side, beyond the line held by the Germans. They possessed them singly, in groups, on the ground, leaning them against broken walls of houses. Some women were made to kneel, soldiers holding them from the back by the hair, their gaping mouths entered by penis after penis. Women they had used were pushed back into the column, reeling and weeping, to resume the march. Others were led toward the rubble and bayoneted or shot.
Occasionally, the column halted. Tania and I remained standing; people foolish enough to sit down on a suitcase or a parcel were beaten to the ground and then kicked and shoved till they were properly upright again. During these stops, the selection of women for Ukrainians was most active. Just ahead of us stood a tall and strikingly beautiful young woman with a baby in her arms. I had noticed both her beauty and her elegance; she wore a beige tweed suit with a dark zigzag pattern that reminded me of Tania’s old suits. A Ukrainian grabbed her by the arm and was pulling her out of the column. At first she followed without protest, but then she broke away from him and ran toward a German officer standing some two metres away. I had also noticed this officer before. He had a distinguished, placid face and a very fresh uniform. The boots hugging his calves were polished to a high shine that seemed impossible to maintain in this street covered with chalky dust and debris. His arms were crossed on his chest. Could the young woman also have been dazzled by the boots? When she reached the officer, she threw herself on her knees at his feet, held the baby up with one arm, and with the other encircled these superb black tubes. A cloud of annoyance mixed with disdain moved across the officer’s face. He gestured for the Ukrainians to stand back; a silence fell as he decided on the correct course of action. What followed the moment of reflection was precise and swift. The officer grasped the child, freed his boots from the young woman’s embrace and kicked her hard in the chest. With a step or two he reached an open manhole. There was no lack of these, because the A.K. had used the sewers as routes of attack and escape. He held up the child, looked at it very seriously, and dropped it into the sewer. The Ukrainians took away the mother. In a short while, the column moved forward.
It was late in the afternoon when we reached the great square adjoining the Central Station. The space was divided into two unequal parts. The much larger one was where we and, we supposed, the rest of the remaining population of Warsaw were now gathered. People were lying down, with their heads in the laps of companions; others were sitting on their possessions or crouching on the ground. Alleys kept free for access, like lines of a crossword puzzle, traversed the multitude. On the perimeter Ukrainian guards paced back and forth. The smaller part of the square had become a military encampment, crowded with trucks and armoured cars.
Tania and I sat down on the ground, leaning against each other, back to back. Our neighbours, who had been there since the day before, said there was no food and no water to drink except what one could get from people who had a canteen or something to eat in their bundles. Apparently, there was no lack of such clever people among us. We also learned that in the morning and during the previous day parts of the square had been emptied; whole sections had been taken to the station. New arrivals like ourselves had taken their place. The night had been worse than the march and the waiting: the Ukrainians and the Germans were drunk. They roamed through the access alleys, chose women to take to the encampment. There had been screams, probably they tortured as well as raped. Tania asked if anyone knew where the trains would take us. Opinions were divided. Some thought it was just a short ride to some forests where we would be machine-gunned; others talked of concentration camps or work in factories in Germany. Tania also asked about latrines. It turned out there were several points that served that purpose. They were easy to find: one followed the smell. That was, Tania decided, where we would now have to go; we should not wait until the night.
We picked our way among the crowd; there was a long line to use the place. Tania said that after we finished she would somehow buy food and water; we had to keep up our strength. She would do it without me, it would be easier, but first we would choose a place that
I would keep for us in one of these clusters. She wanted to find one without crying children or wailing sick: they attracted misfortune. And she wanted us to be in the middle of the group. People trying to be on the outside, to get more air and to be able to get around, were wrong. She didn’t care about fresh air; she wanted to live through the night. We did as she said. In a little while she returned. She whispered that she had bread and chocolate. We had not eaten chocolate since the beginning of the uprising. She also had a bottle of water. She had traded her earrings for them; earrings, she informed me, had never been more useful; she had been right to hide them. Best of all, from her point of view, she had also been able to acquire a small mirror, a comb, a lipstick and a blanket. The blanket was for the night, the rest was for the morning. Tania didn’t let the food be seen until our neighbours began to eat. She thought it was difficult, and in some degree dangerous, for a woman and a small boy to eat in a hungry crowd without sharing. Then she divided the bread into evening and morning portions. She allowed us each one gulp of water. The rest, and especially the chocolate, were also for the morning. We wrapped ourselves in the blanket and lay down. It was getting dark; all around us people were clinging to one another for warmth and comfort. Tania told me she was afraid of this night, but we had to make ourselves sleep; if we were exhausted we would make mistakes. For instance, she said, that young woman with a child made a terrible mistake when she knelt down before the officer. She should have stood as straight as she could, looked him in the eye, and demanded that he make the Ukrainians behave like disciplined soldiers. Germans, said Tania, cannot bear the feeling of pity; they prefer pain. If you ask for pity, you get the devil that is inside them, worse than the Ukrainians.
The day finally departed. I fell into a dead sleep. Shouts and curses awoke me. Beams of electric torches criss-crossed the night. Just as we had been warned, Ukrainians and Germans were hunting for women. Tania said, Quick, cover me with the blanket and lie on top of me; pretend I am a bundle. Around us, soldiers were wading among the sleepers, looking them over, rejecting some, hauling away others. Then they were gone.
War Stories Page 26
