As soon as Elzunia heard the drone of aeroplanes high above the city, she rushed to the window and started counting.
‘Look at them all!’ she shouted and ran for her father’s field-glasses. Before she had time to use them, Stefan had grabbed them from her hand.
‘It must be the air force on an anti-aircraft training exercise,’ he said.
‘Gosia’s cousin reckons our pilots are the best in the world,’ Elzunia said. ‘He says they’ll knock the Germans out of the sky in no time.’
‘I’d like to know how they’re going to do that with their antiquated planes,’ Stefan scoffed. ‘They don’t even have a retractable undercarriage. Junkers are the best planes ever built.’
Elzunia pulled a face. She didn’t know what a retractable undercarriage was and she certainly wasn’t going to ask. Stefan was an insufferable know-all. Just because he was four years older and understood mechanical things, he always made her feel ignorant.
‘You don’t know everything,’ she said.
Her mother gave her a sharp glance. ‘Don’t be rude to your brother,’ she said.
Elzunia glared. It wasn’t fair. Their mother always made excuses for Stefan. She always sided with him — never with her.
‘Well, I know more than a snotty thirteen-year-old who goes around with a toy Red Cross box and thinks war’s a game,’ he sneered.
Elzunia turned to her mother. ‘How come he’s allowed to be nasty to me?’ she complained, but Lusia didn’t seem to hear.
With an irritated gesture, their father put down his newspaper. ‘Leave your sister alone, and stop the quibbling,’ he snapped at Stefan. ‘You should have more sense at a time like this. It’s about time you pulled yourself together and acted your age.’
Stefan turned back to the window, red-faced at the rebuke, while Elzunia shot him a triumphant look. At least her father stood up for her.
Stefan peered through the field-glasses. ‘They don’t look like ours,’ he said slowly.
A moment later a shrieking sound turned Elzunia’s skin to gooseflesh. An explosion followed that sounded as though a thousand cannons had gone off at once.
‘Quick, Elzunia, get your mask and run!’ her father shouted, and they all rushed down the stairs three at a time, hardly taking a breath. A nearby nightclub was the closest shelter and they reached it just before the next bomb hit. Crouching in the basement, Elzunia clamped her hands over her ears and shook each time she heard the explosions. Every bone in her body vibrated with the shaking of the cellar walls. Did this mean they were being attacked? How long would the bombing last? All around her, the adults discussed the situation, their faces tense. Some of the women were white-faced and their eyes were full of fear, while others murmured prayers. The men said that Hitler must have finally carried out his threat to invade Poland, but the Polish army and air force would soon repel them and show them what Poles were made of. With each explosion, Elzunia’s breathing became so rapid that she felt dizzy. So was this how war began? What if their building was hit? What would happen to all their things? Where would they go? Would they be buried under the rubble?
A fine heroine you are, she told herself. She had broken out in a cold sweat and her moist hands could hardly hold her first-aid box. She prayed she wouldn’t need to use it.
Her father put his arm around her trembling shoulders. ‘It’ll be over soon, Dzidzia,’ he said.
Her brother leaned forward. ‘Is poor little Dzidzia scared?’
She turned away from his mocking glance. If only the bombing would stop.
As soon as they emerged from the shelter, she knew the world had changed. It wasn’t just the fire engines racing through the streets, the pall of dust that dulled the brightness of the September sunshine, or the sparks from all the fires that rose into the sky. It was the smell. At first she thought it was the smell of smoke and burning buildings but it was more pervasive, more frightening. It was the smell of fear.
Over the next few days, Elzunia’s hair rose on her arms each time the sirens shrilled to warn them of imminent bombardment. ‘Why hasn’t our air force shot down those Stukas?’ she kept asking.
Every morning they huddled around their large wireless to hear the latest news, pressing their faces against its walnut case to ensure they didn’t miss a single word. The air alerts were interspersed with mysterious announcements that made no sense at all but made Elzunia feel uneasy with their stuttering urgency. Attention attention, arriving arriving between eight and twelve. Her father explained that these messages were in code for the army. But what if the soldiers weren’t listening and missed them?
Three long days had passed since the Germans had attacked, but if this was war, it wasn’t what she had expected. She had envisaged gallant warriors performing heroic rescues and fighting courageous battles. She had not anticipated huddling in dark shelters, teeth chattering, as they waited for the next bomb to fall.
It was all so confusing. From her history lessons, she knew that battles were either lost or won, but right now no one seemed to know what was happening. Someone said that the Polish Air Force had repelled the Luftwaffe, the army had taken over Gdansk, the English and French had attacked Berlin and General Bortnowski was on his way to save Warsaw. When she heard that, she jumped up and cheered, but then someone else said the exact opposite and painted such a bleak picture of what was happening that her stomach folded in on itself and she picked the skin around her thumbnail. She didn’t know what to believe and the worst thing was that her parents didn’t either. And all the time the air alerts kept coming, buildings kept falling and fire kept raining down from the heavens until the sky glowed scarlet, and she closed her eyes, pressed her hands together and whispered urgent prayers to the Blessed Virgin to protect them and their house.
In the days that followed every hope was crushed. It turned out that General Bortnowski’s army had been cut to pieces and the Germans with their panzer tanks had cut across Poland like scythes mowing down fields of wheat. They were rushing towards the capital. Hardly anyone could believe the news that the Polish army had been decimated and everyone was asking, ‘How could this happen to our army? Where’s the cavalry? When will our allies come to our aid? Why hasn’t our air force protected us from German dive bombers?’ To Elzunia, these questions were more unsettling than the rumours because no one had any answers.
She was still trembling after another air raid when her mother placed her finger against her lips. ‘Ssh. Szpilman’s playing Chopin,’ she said. In between the air alerts, coded messages and news bulletins, Warsaw Radio broadcast the city’s popular pianist playing the Military Polonaise.
Elzunia glanced at her mother. Lusia’s eyes were closed and an ecstatic expression smoothed out the anxious lines on her face. The stirring notes rekindled a fierce patriotism. There was still hope in a world where such music existed. It reminded them who they were, and reaffirmed their pride in their nation and boosted their spirits. But Elzunia didn’t feel comforted. This time in Chopin’s rousing music, she could hear the tread of soldiers’ boots and the rumble of approaching tanks.
The polonaise ended, and the notes were still lingering in the air when a fanfare introduced an important announcement. They blanched when they heard Colonel Umiastowski announcing that German panzers were racing towards Warsaw. He ordered men of military age to leave the city to avoid being captured, and eventually to regroup.
Panic gripped Elzunia’s chest as she heard her parents discussing the situation.
‘We’ve all been misled,’ her father said bitterly. ‘Our military and political leaders have miscalculated the disparity of weapons between us and the Germans. Or else they deliberately deceived us. And now they’re telling the men to abandon the capital.’
Elzunia’s hands shook at the thought of being separated from her father. She looked at him anxiously. Thank God he was too old to be mobilised.
‘Miss Elzunia, are you ready?’ Their maid, Tereska, was standing in the doorway holding a string bag. Tereska could barely read and write but she was very shrewd. ‘Put this ribbon around your hair,’ she said while Elzunia protested that she wasn’t going out looking like a child. ‘Go on,’ Tereska cajoled. ‘The younger you look, the better chance we’ll have of getting food.’
Elzunia muttered as the ribbon was tied on top of her head and hoped she wouldn’t meet anyone she knew.
As they turned the corner a few blocks further on, all thoughts about her appearance vanished. Several buildings had toppled onto the pavement, leaving jagged towers of masonry pointing at the sky. Bits of doors and windows were strewn over the pavement and a balcony hung precariously from a wall. ‘You, miss, out of the way, quick,’ a man shouted.
People were wandering around like sleepwalkers, poking among the rubble, shouting the names of loved ones. Some lay on the ground moaning while others bent over them, trying to make them comfortable. One of them, a stout woman with a double chin, was propping a man’s head on her lap and was about to place a glass of water to his lips when Elzunia rushed forward.
‘Stop!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t give him anything to eat or drink. He might need surgery.’
The woman put down the glass. From her narrowed eyes, it was clear that she didn’t take kindly to being corrected by a mere girl.
‘Well now,’ she said. ‘Since you know so much, don’t just stand there. Come and help.’
Elzunia inched forward. Sickened by the blood, she couldn’t remember what she had learnt at first-aid classes. First you had to make sure they were breathing, but what were you supposed to check next: bleeding or broken bones? She wanted to back away but the woman fixed her with an insistent stare.
Tereska was pulling her arm. ‘Come on, Miss Elzunia,’ she drawled in her slow country accent. ‘This is no place for you. The ambulance will be here soon; they’ll know what to do. We have to hurry and get some bread before they sell out.’
Elzunia walked on, reproaching Tereska for dragging her away but secretly grateful to have an excuse to leave the frightening scene.
Back home, she sat on her bed daydreaming. In a scene like the one she had just witnessed, the handsomest boy she’d ever seen was lying injured on the road while bombs were falling all around him. Risking death, she ran over to him and, as she splinted his broken arm and wound a bandage around his head, he gazed at her with admiration and said —
‘Elzunia, I want to talk to you!’ Her father’s voice cut through her fantasy. With a sigh, she went into the lounge room.
‘It’s too dangerous for you and your mother to stay in Warsaw,’ he said. ‘I want both of you to go to our country house until things settle down. Stefan and I will stay here.’
No amount of arguing could dissuade him. He was too old to fight but too proud to abandon his city. To him, leaving smacked of cowardice, and he refused to join the exodus. From Stefan’s expression, Elzunia could see that he was thrilled to be asked to stay with his father and have the opportunity of gaining his approval. She longed to stay too but her father was adamant. ‘This is no place for women and children,’ he said. ‘The air raids are getting worse and this morning the bastards even bombed firemen trying to put out the fires.’
For once, he didn’t apologise for swearing in front of the children.
That night, Elzunia tossed in her bed, too agitated to sleep. For the first time in her life, the family was about to be split up. She quailed at the prospect of staying with her mother and dreaded what lay ahead, especially as she wouldn’t have her father to protect her. ‘Let it be over quickly,’ she muttered over and over before falling into a dreamless sleep.