“A crowd should not be gathering like this,” Piotr muttered to himself, shaking his head. “It’s not safe! What if the Germans fire a shell into the neighborhood? What if a plane goes overhead and sees how many people are on the street?”
“Hey, Pigeon!” Sword called, looking more animated than I’d seen him in weeks as he ran from the headquarters behind me and started off toward the tank. “Come and see?”
I shook my head just as Piotr stepped toward Sword.
“Hey, kid,” he called. “Come here. Go back inside, and get your commander to clear the street.”
“I’m sorry,” Sword shouted above the roar of the crowd, motioning toward his ear. “What did you say?”
Piotr and Sword closed the distance, and as they chatted a few meters away from us, I turned to Mateusz. He looked exhausted, as if Piotr’s sudden exuberance was as tiring for him as combat had been for me. Mateusz was tucked behind a pillar, his back to the stone, his legs crossed at the ankles and angled toward the front door of my barracks.
“What’s gotten into Piotr?” I asked him. “He’s not usually so community-minded.”
“Conscience,” Mateusz said and sighed, tilting his face toward the sky as he exhaled heavily. “He is blaming himself for going off to do a deal when we were supposed to evacuate. I think hearing about the people at Wola and thinking of how vulnerable we all are has driven him slightly mad. He is determined to convince you to come with us—”
I’d seen explosions plenty of times, but this was something altogether different. There came a flash of white light so bright I was rendered momentarily blind, and immediately after, a burst of sound so loud it took my hearing, too. After this came the force of it—a shock wave fierce enough to knock me from my feet and onto the sidewalk.
I didn’t lose consciousness. If only I had. Instead, I was literally shell-shocked—prone on the cobblestone road, unsure if I were dead or alive. Even when my sight returned and my hearing began to fade back in, the street was completely silent, and I thought perhaps I had permanently lost some of my hearing. I scrambled to my knees and turned toward the tank—to find it gone, and the buildings around it, and the children and the revelers and the soldiers. All gone. What was left was a mess so catastrophic and horrifying I couldn’t comprehend the scale of it.
I was drenched in blood and knew it couldn’t all be mine, but some of it had to be, because I was gradually becoming aware of pain in my face. I lifted my hand to my cheek and could feel that it was damaged: from my hairline down to my chin, the right side of my face was grazed or burned or embedded with shrapnel. I had no idea what the actual injury was. All I knew was that it was agonizing.
Hands were on my shoulders. There was a ringing in my ears, and my mind felt foggy, as if I weren’t quite awake. I turned, and there was Mateusz, covered in blood and debris. I scanned him, looking for injuries, but found only a small wound on his neck. His lips were moving, but I couldn’t make out the words.
“Piotr,” I think I said, trying to turn back to where the tank had been.
Mateusz shook my shoulders to regain my attention and mouthed a single word.
Gone.
I turned again toward the tank, and this time I saw Piotr’s body—damaged beyond any possibility of survival, flat on his face on the pavement. But Sword was alive, leaning against a wall. I scrambled to my feet with Mateusz’s help and shuffled toward him, feeling the ground tilt wildly as my ears tried to adjust from the trauma.
Sword was all but hysterical, staring down at his foot, which had been impaled by a sharp chunk of concrete. My hearing was returning by degrees, but I wished I could stop that recovery, because now I could hear desperate cries and the wailing of those searching for their friends and comrades and loved ones.
“Mateusz,” I said, or maybe I shouted. I saw Mateusz’s lips move again, but I couldn’t hear his words. I leaned closer and tried to speak louder. “You need to take my friend to Sara. He needs help.”
Mateusz pointed to my face, then gently touched his forefinger to my chest.
So do you, his lips said. I wanted to stay to help, but my pain felt worse by the second.
“I think I’m going to pass out,” I said.
Mateusz slid one arm around Sword, the other around me, then led us toward the basement hospital down the block.
29
Emilia
Uncle Piotr and Mateusz had been gone for less than an hour when an explosion seemed to rock the entire city. Explosions were common—but not like this. It was so loud I felt the sound in my chest, and the glass in the kitchen window shattered. All the pots fell from the hooks above the stove.
“What was that?” I whispered from the floor of the apartment, where I had thrown myself. Truda was on the floor, too, opposite me, and we stared at each other. I knew that we were both thinking the exact same thing.
Piotr. Mateusz. Roman. Sara.
The city was bizarrely quiet for minutes after the explosion—even the now-familiar sound of gunfire seemed to stop. Curiosity won out over fear, and eventually I crawled to the living room window, but the street below gave nothing away. It was only deserted, our neighbors apparently too scared to go outside.
Twenty minutes later, a frantic thumping sounded at our door.
“I’ll get it,” I said, but Truda shot me a look.
“Sit down,” she said impatiently and made her way over. I followed her anyway.
When she threw the door open there was a child there, a little girl no more than eleven or twelve. She was wearing a red-and-white armband and a tattered and filthy Scouts uniform.
“Mrs. Rabinek,” she panted, leaning against the wall as she caught her breath. Truda nodded slowly. “I have news from the hospital at the church on Długa Street.”
The girl handed Truda a note, drew in one final, deep breath, then ran off down the hallway. It struck me that the couriers for the Gray Ranks were everywhere through the Uprising—always running to the next job, more efficient and discreet than the phone system had been in the years since the occupation began.
“The explosion we heard,” Truda said, leaning against the wall as if her knees were weak, staring down at the folded note in her hand. “I thought it perhaps came from Długa Street.”
“Read it,” I pressed. She continued to stare down at her hands, so I snatched it from her and read the note aloud. Truda, come to the hospital. Bring Elz·bieta. I am fine. Love, Mateusz.
* * *
Truda was not fast, not even at the best of times, and this was not the best of times. I was virtually dragging her by the time we made our way to the convent, and the closer we got, the more disturbing the scenes around us became. People ran to and from the basement—carrying empty stretchers away, carrying bloodied bodies on stretchers as they returned. Men, women and children sat on the road, most weeping, almost all of them splattered if not covered in blood.