Mila 18 - Leon Uris [269]
“Careful, and bring back water.”
Tolek and Wolf once again dislodged the manhole cover and shoved it back into place.
Wolf lowered himself once more and went back to the other sixteen.
“We are three hours from Prosta Street. We can make it by daylight if everyone tries with all they have. Tolek has gone out for water. He will be waiting for us.”
“No! No!” a girl shrieked. “We’ll never make it! No!”
“Keep her quiet,” Wolf barked.
“No!” the girl screamed again. She began drinking the sewage in her thirst madness.
Wolf went back and lit a match and fished for her head and jerked it out of the contaminated bilge. The girl was insane. In a moment the poison hit her stomach and she gave a last two or three writhes of agony and was dead.
Wolf let her loose, and she was washed into the merging waters, spun in a whirlpool, and swept into the larger Kanal.
“Listen, all of you! We’re going to live! I promise you we’ll live! Two more hours and there will be water to drink! Fight! Live!” he pleaded.
They took hands and pressed north into the whirlpools. The rushing water broke their line, and before they could pull it together another Fighter who was moving in a coma was swept under and drowned.
“Together!” rasped Wolf. “Hands together ... push ... push ... we’ll be through this intersection in a minute.”
They pressed north again in foggy oblivion. Each agony-filled step, each one called upon God unknown.
“I’ll live ... I’ll live ... I’ll live ...”
“Survive ... survive ... survive ...”
“God help me live ... live ... live ... live ...”
Chapter Twenty-three
TOLEK ALTERMAN WOVE HIS way through the streets of Warsaw with the skill of an alley cat. Years of moving around in the ghetto, later in rubble and flame and falling walls, made this trek seem like child’s play by comparison.
It was four-thirty in the morning when he stopped before an apartment door on the top floor of Dluga 4. The name read “Alena Borinski.” He knocked sharply. The door opened a crack, stopped by the night latch.
“Who is it?” Gabriela asked cautiously from the other side.
“Don’t scream when you see me. I've been in the sewers.”
Gabriela flung the door open. Tolek tumbled in and looked around desperately for the kitchen. He stumbled to it and turned on the water faucet and let the water spill into his throat and guzzled it like a lunatic. She locked the door behind her and looked at the scene of madness. He emitted animal-like grunts as the water found its way to his caked innards.
A gray stinking creature from another planet, unrecognizable as human, sucking at the faucet. He drank too fast and began vomiting in the sink and drank again, and sharp pains hit his belly. At last he was appeased and he slipped to the floor, weeping hysterically.
Gabriela ran to the phone. “Kamek! Come to my flat as soon as the curfew is over. Bring clothing and any food you have.”
“Have they arrived?”
“Yes.”
Gaby dipped a rag in alcohol and wiped Tolek’s forehead and comforted him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry ...”
“Please tell me about it ... please.”
“Twenty-two or twenty-three of us went into the sewer ... Did you get our signal?”
“Yes, but we couldn’t distinguish it. Good Lord, have you been in the sewer for twenty-four hours?”
“Yes. Maybe sixteen, seventeen left. Few went crazy from thirst ... drank the sewage ... told them not to ... some others drowned.”
“Where are they now?”
“Trying to make Prosta Street. We’ve got to get water to them.”
“There’s nothing we can do for another hour and a half, until it turns light and the curfew is lifted. Kamek will be here by then.”
Gabriela studied the thing before her. “Your voice. Don’t I know you?”
“Tolek.”
“Oh, my poor dear. I didn’t even recognize you.