"I do not have any," said Barbara, and then she pointed to Halinka. "But she had a bay mare once. She even spoke to her."
"My father also had a bay mare, but she never said anything," the corporal chimed up, now with his normal treble.
"We need to search the house, then the garden," Balski said. "And finally we read and sign the protocol."
The search, of course, showed nothing new. There was no sign of Karl in the air, in the water or on the ground.
"He sure cooked us a good surprise," said Jacek. "And he seemed to be so decent, so nice".
"We will notify you as soon as we know something," Balski said before leaving. "He might find himself in the morning, somewhere in the area."
Halinka and I decided to stay overnight with Barbara at her request. The other guests said goodbye and left for the station to catch the last train.
***
We slept long enough, up until nine o’clock at least. Luckily, it was a Sunday.
Still no sign of Karl around.
When, after breakfast, we sat down together over coffee, the doorbell rang.
Lieutenant Balski appeared in the hallway. He accepted Barbara’s invitation to have a cup of coffee and sat down at the table, right on Karl’s chair, with a thoughtful expression.
"So what?" Halinka asked impatiently. "Did you find something?"
The Lieutenant looked grimly at our faces.
"No, we did not find anything," he said finally. "And I am sure that I will never find him. I really have no idea what's going on here."
"Is he dead?" Barbara asked in a strangled voice.
Balski looked at her for a moment longer before he answered:
"We have just received a telex from Munich. This man has been dead for a year now. He was killed in an accident. A large piece of cornice fell on the sidewalk just where he was standing. I already verified all the details so a mistake is impossible. Do you have any of his belongings, anything to prove he was here?"
"No," answered Barbara, her face a little pale. "He arrived without a baggage."
"I propose to close this case," said the Lieutenant. "Let's classify it as a misunderstanding and forget about everything. If it was one of your jokes, congratulations. It was very funny. If not, I still cannot help. As you know, in our forms, there is no box for ‘disappearance’."
After Balski left, we drank another cup of coffee. I no longer had to tell my story out loud. It had already been told.
Back to ToC
The Raft of Medusa
‘The Raft of Medusa’, the famous painting created by Théodore Géricault from 1818-1819, depicted in a thrilling way the horrifying scenes of a shipwreck, a well known tragedy in which the captain abandoned his crew and passengers, leaving them for certain death. This is history - brutal, cruel and true.
But what does it have in common with the post-war memories from the ruins of Warsaw? Or with a romantic acquaintance from the Louvre museum in modern Paris? Who knows? Maybe all these stories, spoken and unspoken, have something in common, indeed, and they are all crossing over at the same point somewhere far beyond the horizon. In eternity, perhaps?
***
Zoliborz lay in ruins. Sulkowski street also lay in ruins. Every other house in the area had either been burned or bombed, the survivors of the Warsaw Uprising returning to their homes after the passage of the war only to find the ruins and ashes. Some houses remained standing, but they were already occupied by others, and the returning owners had to fight the new settlers in order to return to their own homes. Others tried to settle where they could. Often, ruined cellars were used for housing. The families camped in them all, of course without electricity or running water, the courtyards full of rubble used as primitive backhouses. Even the people were not the same as they were before the war. Indifferent to pain and suffering, they fought each other for survival. There was a constant struggle between families for every square meter of housing, for any remaining usable material from the ruins - clothes, furniture, and finally and most importantly, for the piece of bread hastily delivered by authorities to newly opened shops. These were adults, toughened and made cruel by the savagery of war. The polite and gentle were gone. They did not survive the occupation and concentration camps. The children were also different, even crueler. But it was not the cruelty that stemmed from a necessity for survival. Rather, it was born of the worst kind of atrocities sucked out with their mother's milk, blood tainted with the sights of smashed heads of drunken fathers and their neighbours, infused with the stench of moonshine and rotting mash in the cellars. In spite of all that, there was also, of course, carefree fun, fun in the rubble of collapsed buildings, where human waste and unexploded bombs could be seen scattered around. Explosions were heard so often that no one was surprised by them any longer, and the kids sometimes spread mysterious whispers in the evening, about who lost an arm or leg today and on which street. That was the city of Warsaw and its first residents after the war.
My parents bought the remains of a bombed-out villa on Sulkowski street and began to rebuild it. With the energy and enthusiasm of my father, the house was soon suitable for residence, although it was not finished until quite a long time later. Building materials were not bought in stores. Those did not exist. Instead, they used the bricks from demolished houses collected from the streets, purified from old mortar and plaster. Those were used for reconstruction. The city was recreating itself like a tremendous monster, regenerating limbs by devouring the old ones, those that were no longer fit to be used.
The boys had fun, of course, mainly playing a pretend war, often using real guns found somewhere in the ruins. The bravest took on the dare to disarm unexploded bombs while the young ones pretended to be on the hunt. In the ruins of the houses were many feral cats and chasing one of them among the rubble in an attempt to break his neck with a piece of brick was real fun. Cats are extremely vital creatures. Sometimes, we had to execute many accurate throws just to make them stop screaming and throw their bodies around like a man possessed by some evil spirit.
When the girls found a dead cat, they held a funeral for him. To start, they beat in an iron, rusted, heating boiler lying behind our house with a piece of metal rod. This gave a very dignified, deep sound similar to the sound of the church bell.
Then, they wrapped the cat, or rather, what was left of it, in a piece of cloth and carried it together somewhere, where they previously dug a small hole in the ground.
“How did she die?” One of them would always ask the same question.
“Cancer” another answered, stating the grim secret.
New was this disease, until recently unknown. It must have been really terrible as even the adults spoke its name in a whisper. Tuberculosis was common knowledge then. Hundreds of people were dying of it. But cancer? This was different. No one knew exactly what it was and no one dared ask because the word alone created widespread fear and respect.
This was Sulkowski street after the war. Very few people were interested in who General Sulkowski was. Perhaps he was one of the Russian troops, some wondered as many streets got new names of communist heroes, but again, no one inquired. Everyone had more important things on their minds.
The kids there had yet another attraction. On our street lived a redhead girl. Nobody knew her name. We just called her Redhead. If she played with us on the street, we could get used to her presence. She melted into our crowd easily. But she was too polite and calm and she was not allowed to leave the house. That's what set her apart. Whenever she showed up in the window of her room on the first floor of one of the untouched houses on our street, the passing children stopped on the ruined sidewalk and cried together "Redhead, Redhead!!!" until she fled in tears into the apartment. There were unwritten, strict rules governing the children's world. The most important was this: You have to do what the other kids do, especially the older and stronger ones. If someone broke this rule, he or she became exposed to the ridicule and contempt of others. It was unbearab
le. In extreme cases, the ridicule was followed by complete isolation, but being treated as a "leper" was the worst of all.
***
When the debris was cleaned up from the streets and the first garbage truck began to ride around, it was a real event for the boys. These were large trucks in silver-gray color, the back of each open and with a narrow platform from which the garbage man managed his professional duties. For us, this platform was a real magnet.
We ran after the garbage truck from one dumpster to another and when the garbage man went into his seat next to the driver after throwing the garbage with his shovel, the older guys jumped on the platform to get a free ride to the next dumpster. At the beginning, the driver and his helper would stop to chase us away, but later, they gave up. They must have become accustomed to us.
Once, I also dared to ride on the back of the garbage truck. I jumped onto the platform and looked with pride at the buildings moving backward. After a few meters, my colleagues jumped back on the street. I did not know how to do it and the truck suddenly picked up speed. It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened: we had jumped on the platform at the last dump and now, the garbage truck was driving straight to the main dump, somewhere outside the city. I stood on the platform paralyzed with fear, the figures of my colleagues becoming smaller and smaller until they were simply dots in the distance.
“Jump!” I heard their cries.
Driven by fear, I did something that was the biggest mistake I could have made. I jumped off the platform with my back facing the direction of the ride.
Just like that, the world spun and disappeared, leaving nothing but darkness. I wasn’t even sure if the darkness existed or if I was only imagining it. I had no idea how much time had passed - An eternity? A second? - Until I felt someone touching my hand. Redhead stood bending over me, her blue eyes staring intently into mine. “Do not die,” she told me, her words somewhere between an order and a plea. “It is not the time yet.”
“I am not planning to” I answered indignantly. “I was born not a long time ago.”
“That's good,” she said. “My name is Magda. I will need you one day.”
And she disappeared. I saw myself lying on my back on the sidewalk surrounded by a group of several people, some of whom I recognized as my playmates and one young soldier with his girlfriend. “He's dead,” said the soldier indifferently to the girl. And they left holding each other’s hand.
I saw it all as if from above, but the view did not last long. After a while, my vision blurred. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, I saw the sky above me, and the hard pavement was under my back.
I rose heavily from the sidewalk, all my bones aching.
“Well, you smashed your head on the road,” said Mundek. “Next time, you should jump in the same direction in which the truck is moving.”
“And there, on the side, there was a chain” added a second boy. “You could have held on to it.”
I was not willing to go home and explain why I was covered in bruises. Moreover, the guys went right to the Wilson Place to shoot the carbide and I could not pass up such an opportunity. My head was still foggy and it stayed that way until the evening, but it was not the end of my experience for the day.
During the shooting, sometimes "misfires" occurred and of course, that day, it just so happened that I was the unlucky victim.
The art of shooting carbide revolves around the fact that the tin can has a piece of carbide inside and we pour a little water over it. The carbide begins to emit a flammable gas, probably hydrogen. It is then we quickly close the tin cover, and on the bottom, where previously, we pierced a small hole, we put the lighted match. Usually, this is followed by a loud, deafening explosion and the cover of the can ends up flying a good few meters ahead.
Usually. Sometimes, though, the can explodes in your hands, injuring your fingers with the sharp edges. Totally unsuitable for this kind of fun were the American cans of powdered milk from UNRA. These were made of cardboard and though covered with a thin aluminum coat from the inside they looked like a sheet of metal, they shattered at the first shot without making too much noise. When the carbide was already weathered, or too little water was added, the amount of gas produced was not enough to cause an explosion. Then red tail of fire gushed from the opening in the bottom of the can. We just called it a "dud". Of course it happened to me. I returned home with a burnt hand, head in a daze and tattered clothes. None of that was unusual.
What was unusual was that as I passed by the house where Redhead lived, I looked up and saw her sitting on the windowsill. When she saw me, she waved her hand before disappearing from my sight.
***
The day was great. Pasquale and I sat just on top of the roof, we had recently mended, the panorama of the roofs of Paris stretched out before us. The view was really fabulous, like sitting on a raft in the middle of an undulating sea, which shimmered in the sun, its living waves reflecting the sun’s rays. Warm air blew constantly; lifting up from the streets below the smell of baked bread and cheap wine as it usually did during the lunchtime.
A big book of poems could be written just on the subject of the roofs of Paris. The mere sight of it was enough to make someone fall in love. The typical, traditional roofs were generally steep, covered with dark slate, which glistened in the sun as the surface of the water, while in other places, the graphite was concealed under the shade of the clouds, giving the impression of infinite depth in a variety of shades and hues.
Among this ocean, the islands could be seen stretching towards the sky. Of course, there was the Eiffel Tower, the white silhouette of the Sacre Coeur Basilique, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the golden dome of the Invalides Palace glittering in the sun. There were others as well, which, even after spending a month in the city, I still did not know yet.
So far I had not reached the top of the Eiffel Tower and it turned out later that up to the end of my stay in Paris, I would not get higher than the first floor where the elevator delivered tourists for free. Then again, I’d met a lot of people born in Paris who had never visited the top of the Eiffel Tower. I found myself there only after seventeen years, when I came as a tourist with my wife, my camera and a tourist guide under my arm, hoping to get to know my old Paris. By then, my small little hotel nicknamed the "American Hotel" was no longer there, as well as also the majority of my old friends, but the Eiffel Tower was still standing in the same place where it used to, still creating the same emotions of admiration and resentment like: What is this pile of useless scrap metal doing in the heart of one of the most beautiful cities of the world?
Marc Chagall supposedly frequented the restaurant housed in the tower, saying that he liked to eat there because it was the only place in Paris where he could not see the Eiffel Tower. He placed, however, the image of tower in the mural covering the ceiling of the dome of the Paris Opera. Love and hate at the same time? This was probably the attitude of most Parisians towards this structure. Now, it has already merged with the landscape of the city that it has become absolutely indispensable.
Pasquale was eating something with enthusiasm from his canteen. My lunch was, like always, the same: half of a crispy baguette, one litre of milk and two bananas. It had been like that every day for over half a year. Only that and nothing more, nothing less. I was almost always hungry, but in great physical shape. I could thoroughly enjoy the sight of all the firm muscles of my stomach.
Pasquale was an Italian, but had lived in Paris for many years. Large and loud, he had the appearance of a bully. He had the attitude, too. Few could stand working with him. Apparently, he tried to throw my predecessor once off the roof because he talked back to him. As for me, I did not care what he had to say because I did not damn understand him, and I think he liked me for that and I liked him too. Whenever he looked for me, he would walk around the building and scream ‘Kurwa Macio’! They were the only Polish words he knew and he probably thought that was my name. After eating lunch, we descended
from the roof down to the nearest cafe on the corner, where we had a small cup of black espresso coffee while standing at the counter, sometimes with a small glass of senorita rum or Calvados.
The company where I worked (of course in black) dealt with the renovation of apartments or entire buildings. The owner usually added one floor up if it was still possible. In many buildings of the Parisian streets, one could easily distinguish recently added floors, sometimes one, sometimes two of them. They differed in style from the lower floors, simpler, lighter and cheaper than the original levels. Pasquale and I, we were in charge of dismantling the old roofs and after a team of masons added the next floor, we built a new roof atop, usually lighter and of course cheaper. The original roofs were covered with stone slates generally, sometimes with zinc tin. We made the new roofs, mostly with galvanized steel sheets, hardy to work with and not so long lived as zinc, but much cheaper.
After work, I would return to my American Hotel to change and relax a little. This was, of course, the cheapest hotel I could find in the area, but I really wanted to live there. The hotel was located at Rue Brea, next to the intersection of the boulevards Montparnasse and Raspail. From a tiny balcony of my garret on the seventh floor, I could lean over a little and see the statue of Balzac made by Rodin on the little square at the intersection and a piece of the terrace of the famous cafe La Rotonde, where Impressionists once gathered. Who knew? Maybe Modigliani himself lived once in my room? Maybe he was even poorer than me? I was working as a roofer’s helper. He painted his blind portraits, which no one wanted to buy in his lifetime. We both came to Paris to paint, after all. We both were young and full of enthusiasm. There was only one thing that made us different: he painted and I did not. After a day of work on the site, I came home and was able only to fall down on my battered couch, which had probably already seen enough in its long life, and I slept like a log for an hour or two. After waking up, I went down seven floors using the stairs since there was no elevator there to buy a baguette from the corner bakery and from the next, small store, a can of meat or black olives and a bottle of cheap wine, Prefontaine, such that only clochards and I drank. Then, I climbed back up to my seventh floor. The stairs up to the fifth floor were covered with old, red carpet. All the rooms on the sixth floor were equipped with the toilets. On my floor, there was no red carpet and there was just one, shared toilet in the hallway with just enough space for one to stand over a hole in the floor. For me it was enough and it was good. Oh, how wonderful life was in this city, especially in the evenings. How could I close myself up within the four walls of my attic and paint while outside, the dusk brought all of Paris to life?