“Well, with a photo like this, you are really safe” said Stefan.
Viktor, however, was still grim.
“Not for everybody, ” he objected.
“From whom is she not safe then?”
“From whom? From ours.”
“Why? After all, she works for our cause.”
“Yes, but no one knows it, and if she will show this photo right and left, the news will get around that she is collaborating with the Germans, and that is also dangerous. She must save it for really special occasions.”
Stefan ignored Victor.
“And the one that’s holding you, who is he? And why is he not keeping his paws away from you?”
“That is Walter” Iza answered. “The staff officer, the one I told you about. He is always on the road and it looks like he is a very important figure. It seems in addition that he is terribly in love with me, but I just dance with him when I have to, nothing more than my contract requires.
Walter immediately fell out of the men’s liking.
“Some fat Fritz” said Stefan.
“And the swine blond” added Victor. “Looks like a simpleton.”
“Not fat, just well built” Iza rectified. “And not a swine blond, but a handsome blond man. Not a simpleton either, but a doctor of philosophy. In addition, he plays the violin.”
Every word she spoke stabbed them directly in their hearts until they fell completely silent, ceasing even to talk altogether. Iza noticed it only when they came to Krochmalna, so in atonement, she tenderly kissed first one, then the other, and they agreed on meeting again the following Sunday.
Still, the men returned home in a gloomy mood. So far, they had only been jealous of each other. Now came along this swine blond, who, of all the insanities, played the violin.
“We will have to get rid of him” Victor suggested.
“Most definitely, ” agreed Stefan. “Well, it is good luck for us that he is one of the enemies. We’ll have no pity for him.”
***
Months went by as quickly as weeks in work, conspiracy and trade. Each traded what they could - it became one of the favorite pastimes in Warsaw. The same coat could change four times the hands on Kercelak bazaar, each time at a higher price, before it found a new owner. In conspiracy, however, the task of acquiring weapons was most important. Whoever provided the organization with better armaments gained greater fame among the insurgents. Unfortunately, the first armed actions carried out on the enemy in order to obtain weapons turned out to be a disaster. After military action, the Germans conducted a roundup, followed by public executions and exports to concentration camps.
Sometimes they managed to buy a gun from a German soldier, who alone stole it from someone, and sometimes they managed to disarm a drunken soldier, but such cases were rare.
Once, Victor and Stefan, who just happened to have a bicycle with him, were passing next to the park. They met a German army patrol walking from the opposite direction. Of course, they descended from the sidewalk onto the street. If you didn’t do it at the time, you could collect a fist in the face as a punishment - a warning to say ‘do not forget who's the boss here, you dick’. After that, they passed near a building, on the ground floor of which were located a few shops, and on the corner a wooden public toilet with the door closed by hook. Into this particular toilet entered one of the Krauts. The other two waited outside. One of them began to rummage through his pockets, pulled out an empty cigarette pack and threw it against the wall. Then he called something toward the outhouse and together with his colleague went to the tobacco shop, which was about a dozen feet away. Stefan's eyes went to the toilet door, behind which sat Germany. These doors had the top cut off for better ventilation and on their upper corner you could see hanging belt and a part of the Bergmann’s barrel. Stefan’s blood rushed to his head. "A man can only die once", he thought. He quickly passed his bicycle handlebars to Victor.
“Wait for me on the other side of the park,” he told him hastily. Realizing immediately what was going on, Victor jumped on the saddle and pressed on the pedals with all his strength.
Stefan went to the "backhouse" and quickly looked around. The street was empty. He grabbed the barrel of the machine gun protruding from above the door and with one jerk, pulled the gun out. Then, without thinking, he ran like a rabbit across the street, jumping over the low wall and falling into the park. When he was among the bushes, he looked back. Through the open door of the outhouse, he saw the German yelling something, frantically pulling up his pants. Stefan quickly transferred his documents from his jacket pocket to his pants pocket, wrapped the machine gun in his jacket and ran fast through the park, avoiding the wider alleys, until he was on the opposite side. There, Victor was already waiting with the bicycle. Stefan pushed the package under his arm.
“Get out of here. I no longer have the strength to run, ” he blurted out panting. “Meet you at home.”
Victor pressed on the pedals and vanished in a second. Here on the street was a lot of pedestrians and cyclists, so he mixed in with the crowd in no time. Stefan went to the nearest coffee shop and ordered a cup of coffee, taking his time to rest and regulate his breathing. It was a warm day, so no jacket was needed. After a while, nothing happened. It was clear the soldier did not see which way the robber fled. It had all happened so fast. After an hour of waiting, Stefan ventured back into the street. He circled a bit to calm his nerves before returning to Chmielna street. When he opened the apartment door, the first thing he saw was the barrel of the Bergmann pointed directly to his chest. At first, he was petrified. A moment later, he wanted to break the face of Victor for his silly pranks, but soon his anger disappeared. They both enjoyed their new toy just like kids, petting the black oxidized steel and trying it in front of the mirror.
“With a full magazine” admired Victor. “This is our first.”
“It's a shame that it was captured in the crapper, and not on the battlefield” Stefan whined a little, but it detracted nothing from the value of the captured weapon.
***
Stefan poured the next glass.
It was already night. Even so, they had plenty of time before the morning.
“Another big night,” said Victor. “As then, before the surrender.”
“We never surrendered” objected Stefan. “We never laid down our weapons.”
“Yeah, and now, we will not give up. Do you remember the first barricade? We worked to build it all night.”
“That one I’ll never forget. Even Iza worked hard with us. The hardest part was setting up the trolley car across the street. The rest was a trifle - the curbs, the bricks, and the furniture. People threw what they could from the windows. Everyone wanted to have his or her personal participation, something own in the first barricade. It was after all a symbol.”
“Do you remember the first tank? It was something. It drove for about 200 meters from the barricades, stopped, turned its tower, as if wondering what to do next, then fired a cannon. It was a bang, remember? I thought I lost my ears. But it hurt us only a little. The barricade was solid.”
“The trolley got damaged a lot” Stefan reminded.
“The trolley yes, but it went later for scrap anyway.”
“And do you remember how the tank scurried away when the bottles of gasoline flew out of the windows? Like a crawfish, it ran away with those Krauts hidden inside it, and those behind it also flew away.”
“Not all of them. Some stayed on the pavement, and from one of them we got our second Bergmann.”
“Not all attacks ended so well. Always, one of ours got killed. Well, the new guys came. Everyone wanted to wear a white-red strap on his shoulder and the metal eagle on his cap.”
“Those we had not enough of.”
“But we had plenty of German helmets. With red-white stripes painted on them, those were like our Polish helmets.”
“We still have a helmet like that in the basement.”
“Do you think
it might be useful tomorrow?”
“Good idea. The helmet is impressive, after all.”
“Do you remember the first one who died?”
"I cannot remember him well. He was somewhat gray, expressionless. I still don’t remember his name. He fell on the first barricade, near the trolley, just the other day.”
“After that, there was fucking shooting everyday you could not walk normally even if you wanted to. People instinctively bent in the middle. After some time, they got used to it, so much so that even in their apartments, they were walking that way.”
“Yes, I remember that and on and on, guys were falling one after the other. Not a day went by that someone did not die. And remember how Iza dished out orders? Such a reliable courier, you could say, that even while dancing between bullets, she had never been even scratched.”
They fell silent at the memory, then had to drink again. Through the open window, the moon looked in, pale, cruel and merciless, throwing its glow on the faces of the last tenants of that house, sentenced to death. There were no curtains in the windows. What for? There were no neighbors across the street - all the other houses had already been demolished. The nearest neighbor visible from the windows was the steel roof of the Central Station, with the lit makeshift lamps of its construction site.
“It's because of them” Victor nodded at the newly constructed building. “Our house could have been good for another few years.”
“Listen to you talking. The new train station is needed. And we? For scraps we are good, that’s it. After all, who needs two old dotards like us? Well, I still admittedly do quite well, but you? You do not even collect your pension, so it’s like you don’t exist at all.”
“No pension, so I cost this country nothing. And you, you cost so much and yet do nothing. So who is more needed?”
“All right, let it be. There's no need to argue. Tomorrow morning, the electricity will be cut off. It will already be the last step.”
“And do you remember how we got buried during the bombing on Sliska street? I thought that was already the end of us. Then, I really got scared.”
“I was scared all the time. It was just during the fights that I was not because there was no time to think. Other than that, during the whole damn uprising, I was peeing in my pants with fear.”
For the first time in his life, Stefan had confessed what had been troubling him for so many years.
“Why didn’t you say so before?” Victor asked.
“Because it was nothing to brag about.”
“I was also frightened” confessed Victor. “But now, I 'm not afraid. I just feel nothing, completely nothing.”
“Sure” Stefan gave him a look of irony. “Now you have no reason to be afraid. And you know what? Now, I am also not afraid. Of anyone or anything. They can pee in my pocket. I will ignore them thoroughly.”
“Well, another one?” Viktor lifted his empty glass.
“Sure. Why not?” Stefan poured another round.
“How did we come out of the cave after the bombing again?” asked Stefan.
“What? Do you not remember? Iza found us. She knew all the passageways forged between the basements of the buildings. It was really great liaison work. She found us and the guys dug us up.”
“Well, yes, and then we buried them. One after the other. In each yard around were the graves of insurgents and civilians.”
Silence fell again. These were not easy memories.
***
October 03, 1944. On that day, in the morning, the surrender was announced. The Warsaw Uprising fell. The couriers had notified all still existing brigades that they had to lay down their weapons and surrender. All except one. Courier Iza did not appear, failing for the first time. Victor and Stefan rushed to Krochmalna, heavily disturbed. They looked around on the streets as anxious residents of the capital were preparing to leave their city. The signed terms of surrender guaranteed them and the insurgents safety and immunity after the deposit of arms. They were supposed to be treated as prisoners of war. Germany of course, did not keep these conditions and began to immediately send truckloads of people to the concentration camps.
As they walked towards Krochmalna, they saw the residents of surrounding houses leaving their dwellings laden with bundles of their most needed things. Their faces were gray, resigned, but at the same time, one could see they felt some relief. This was the end. The end of the shootings, the bombings, the end of sleepless nights in caves, never knowing when the next bomb would fall or where - on their house or someplace else.
Nobody knew what was going to happen next, what hell awaited them now, but at least, some of their troubles had come to an end and it just gave them relief. Maybe finally, the next night would be peaceful. Maybe they would eventually get some quiet sleep?
Finally, they came to Krochmalna. The house in which Iza lived was untouched by bombs. The walls showed indeed a lot of bullet holes, as in all the surviving homes, but some windows still had glass panes remaining.
They entered the stairwell and then they heard a gunshot. Immediately, both of them knew it came from her apartment. They rushed up the stairs to the third floor. The door was locked. They did not have a weapon. It had been announced earlier that those who were detained and found with weapons were to be shot on the spot, so they preferred not to risk it. But at this time, that was not important. Only she was important. They broke down the door and rushed into the apartment.
Iza was lying on the bed, her dress torn. In her right hand, she still clutched the little pearl handle of her Walther pistol, and in her heart was stuck a German officer’s bayonet. She had bragged about that gun even before the uprising. Big Walter had given it to her as a gift for her personal defense and strictly ordered her never to go out to the street with it.
Big Walter himself was now leaning against the wall, his face contorted in pain. From between the fingers of both hands, which pressed the wound in his abdomen, oozing blood trickled out. One glance at him explained the entire situation.
Shortly after the surrender of the insurrection, big Walter came to stand up for what he believed was his own. As a conqueror, in his opinion, legally, he had a right to it. Iza gave him a ball from her small Walther gun and he drove the dagger through her heart. Stefan and Viktor were late for a few moments only. Without thinking, they grabbed big Walter by the shoulders and seated him on one of the chairs. He did not resist, but started to scream something in German when they attached him to the chair then gagged him thoroughly.
Then, they had to take care of Iza. They pulled the bayonet out of her, which Victor wiped on the pants of the German who watched all the circumstances unfold with terrified eyes.
They grabbed both ends of the covers on which she lay and carried her into the yard. There, next to existing graves of other insurgents, another one appeared. To those, who asked questions, they answered briefly - stray bullet - and no one was surprised. That was nothing unusual. Afterwards, they returned to the apartment in tears. It was the first time they both cried since the beginning of the war.
Without thinking or speaking to each other, they knew what would happen next.
“We do the museum stuff” Stefan muttered.
Victor nodded. The prisoner was untied from the chair, his hands tied instead to the hooks that the previous tenant of the lodging screwed into the upper part of the doorframe in the door between the kitchen and main room. Those, probably initially placed to suspend a swing for the children, were now handy for any other purpose. One leg of Walter they tied to the door hinge. To fix the other, they had to hammer two nails on the doorframe. They used whatever they could to tie him up. In the closet they found various belts. Stockings proved particularly useful for their purpose. Big Walter still did not understand, did not even try to break away from his bonds. He only mumbled something through the gag, but they did not pay any attention. Stefan knew that in the cupboard under the sink was a drawer with tools. He pulled out a pair of pliers and handed
it to Victor. As for himself, he grabbed a sharp kitchen knife and with a few cuts freed Walter of his German army uniform.
“I told you, he is fat, ” he said.
Then he began to incise on the white skin of Walter the vertical stripes, from the top to bottom, as it was depicted in the museum painting. Victor came up with tongs, and only now big Walter realized what was cooking. His eyes bulged out of his head with terror and he began to shake and squirm like a mad animal from all sides, so they had to tie him even more tightly. Already at the stripping off the first piece of skin, he looked like that poor wretch in the museum. After the second, he had probably had enough, because he fainted. But they also had enough. Victor picked up the little Walther and blurted out a bullet straight between his eyes.
Then he went to the bathroom and Stefan heard him throwing out, his body caught up in spasms.
When he came back, he was white as a sheet.
“We have to get out of here, ” said Stefan. “Krauts can be heard on the street.”
“We won't bury him?”
“Too much risk. If they get us, they’ll do with us what we had started to do to him, but they will see it through to the end. That is for sure.”
He turned out to be right. As they descended, they saw Germans already at a neighboring building. They were releasing long streams of burning kerosene from their flamethrowers straight into the windows of the building. The previous houses were already burning. A small group of residents who had not yet left the city gathered on the street, watching the spectacle with desperate faces.
Stefan and Victor went back to Chmielna street.
The mood was grave. They lost, in one person, a friend and lover. The punishment of Walter did not bring them any relief. On the contrary, their consciences weighed heavily like boulders plunged deep into their hearts once and for all, heavy and huge, impossible to remove. They avoided the Germans, their patrols sweeping the emptying city as they looted houses, getting whatever they could and setting what was left on fire from flamethrowers whose fiery tails reached up to the second floor of the buildings.