Holy Week: A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 ||| G o o d F r i d a y a r r i v e d , the ¤fth day of the insurgents’ resistance. Fires burrowed ever more deeply into the heart of the ghetto. Amid the smoke and blaze, ceaseless gun¤re resounded, and the dry rattle of machine-gun and automatic ri¶e ¤re rang out without pause. The Germans also began to hunt down Jews in the city proper. At various times and places individual Jews had managed to escape beyond the walls, and now reinforced German and Ukrainian patrols, joined by detachments of navy-blue police,1 were tracking down escapees on the streets of town. Guardhouses were set up near manhole covers, since that was the most frequent route Jews used to reach freedom. Those caught were executed on the spot. Throughout the day in various parts of Warsaw, short bursts of ri¶e¤re could be heard. The sound would cause panic on the streets, sending pedestrians scurrying into doorways for cover. Every so often a solitary hunched-over man would come running across a suddenly deserted square or street, only to be cut down by a salvo of machine-gun ¤re and fall ¶at on the pavement. Ukrainian policemen in their green uniforms would come riding up on bicycles and ¤nish off any still alive. In a moment, traf¤c on the street would return to normal. Throngs of people crowded in front of the churches on their way to Good Friday services. It was the most beautiful spring day imaginable. Malecki did not go to see Mrs. Piotrowski that morning. Availing himself of the likelihood of her being out at that time of day, he put off the unpleasant conversation until later that afternoon. Instead, he decided to pay a visit to Fela Ptaszycka. Fela lived in a villa belonging to her mother, a despotic old woman entirely under the domination of her own sel¤shness, the widow of a Polish landowner from Ukraine. Malecki recalled from former times, when he had You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. 106 | Jerzy Andrzejewski seen a lot of Fela, that the painter had often complained about her unpleasant living situation. Still, she loved her quarrelsome mother and because of her could never quite make up her mind to move out. The villa stood back from the boulevard along the Vistula, somewhat isolated, separated by an empty lot from a row of other nearby houses. It was surrounded by a small but thickly planted old garden engulfed in burdocks. It was not without some feeling that Malecki pushed the buzzer at the entry, for he had not seen Fela in more than a year. Having known her well from before , he could not accept that everything Irena had said about her would prove to be true. He waited quite some time for someone to answer the door. The sun in full glory ¤lled the high, bright stairwell. One could smell lilacs blooming, and the clean, fresh air was full of the merry twitter of birds. On the other side of the boulevard ¶owed the Vistula, bathed in sunlight as if entirely covered with sparkling, liquid gold. Behind it rose Warsaw with its bluish cloud of fog-shrouded houses and its gleam of slender church towers. Over the city, heavy and immobile, hung a black cloud of smoke from the¤res. A small red kayak ¶oated down the middle of the river. Malecki rang once again, and in another moment he heard steps approaching . When Fela opened the door, it seemed to Malecki that she did not recognize him at ¤rst. “Hello, Fela!” he said, moving into the shadow to hide from the sun. “Don’t you recognize your old friend?” At ¤rst she seemed caught off guard, but then she responded immediately with her plain, boisterous cordiality, as abundant as her massive body. With an energetic, almost masculine movement, she pulled him into the hallway. “So you ¤nally remembered me!” she declared. She still seemed confused, however, and most evidently surprised by his unexpected visit. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked. “No, no, of course not!” she answered hurriedly. “If you can just wait a second, all right?” She looked around the hall for a place to put her guest. “Oh, come on in...