Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series) (11 page)

She tells Janka Tempelhof that she’s going to volunteer for a transport (the trains are moving west, aren’t they, perhaps in the direction of Mauthausen?).

On the platform they both leave the crowd of people waiting and approach Dr Mengele.

Izolda explains that they are nurses. With hospital experience (it’s true: Janka took courses at the Maltese Hospital. Her theoretical knowledge was very good but she was clumsy and ended up working in the office). Could Herr Doktor allow them to join the transport?

‘Herr Doktor’ is handsome, well groomed, carefully shaven and perfectly clean. He looks both women over.

Do you remember… (he thinks for a moment). Naturally you remember how arterial bleeding differs from venous bleeding…

In Polish she would answer without hesitation that arterial blood is oxygenated, consequently it is bright red in colour and spurts from the wound. Venous blood, on the other hand… but she doesn’t know the German words. She says a little incoherently:
Das Blut, im Blut ist Sauerstoff
… Fortunately Janka answers fluently and in complete sentences. Dr Mengele nods his head exactly like Dr Munwes at the hospital on Czysta Street, when he asked Izolda to describe the symptoms of typhus. Like any doctor would, hearing a young nurse give the correct answer, especially a good-looking young nurse, despite a few missing teeth.

How many times does a heart beat per minute?

This question is only meant for her. He sounds easy-going, like a professor who doesn’t want his students to fail their exam.

That depends, she answers.

Oh? On what?

On whether a person is afraid or not. And on how afraid they are.

The examiner bursts into a loud, friendly laugh that shows the gap between his two front teeth. Diastema… she remembers reading about it in her nurses’ course-book. That kind of gap is called a diastema.

The
Aufseherin
standing behind Mengele writes down their numbers. A couple of days later during roll call they are called out and told to report to the next transport.

She has her own bunk, two whole blankets, the roll call lasts half an hour, the soup is free of sand and their guards are not SS but Wehrmacht – men too old for the front and war invalids. In other words, Guben is wonderful.

They work in a factory on the other side of the river. They sit in front of an assembly belt, each prisoner stationed between two German workers. The objects on the belt need something screwed on or soldered, the German workers make sure things are done properly.

But there are three things wrong with the camp in Guben.

The first is the sleepless nights, because of the women screaming for bread. The bread is brought in the evening, the
Stubendienst
is supposed to cut each loaf into five even pieces. The women crowd around, watchful and wary. The knife is dull, the bread is made with sawdust and crumbles easily, the crowd makes sure everything is fair. They weigh each portion (having constructed a scale from two boxes and a piece of string) and loudly count the crumbs. The tension rises and falls. When the knife plunges into the dough the women concentrate in silence and then scream out loud if one portion is smaller than the others. Janka Tempelhof tries to calculate how many calories are in the crumbs and how many are spent in the screaming. She determines that more are lost in the screaming, but no one wants to listen to her.

The second thing wrong is the distance from Mauthausen. The front is getting closer and closer and soon she’ll be cut off from her husband for good.

The third thing wrong is the name Regensberg. She can’t travel across all of Germany and Austria with a Jewish name…

Do you have a plan, Janka Tempelhof interrupts, or are you counting on a twist of fate?

She has a plan. First she’ll return to Cottbus, it isn’t far, just two or three stations away.

She’ll find the nice clerk (who wished her good luck).

She’ll say she was on a transport from the Warsaw Uprising, but didn’t know where they were headed so she broke off.

She’ll apologize for escaping from her assigned labour.

She’ll go back to the canvas mill and figure things out from there.

Look… Janka Tempelhof explains. Here you have your own bunk. You have two blankets and no sand in the soup. Things are good, why go to Cottbus?

So I can be Maria Pawlicka, she explains all over again. For ever. No more Izolda Regensberg.

Janka thinks a moment and says: That’s your daemon again sending you on your way, so you better go. You should listen to what your daemon is telling you.

(Frankly she doesn’t have any idea what a daemon is, but she’s too embarrassed to ask. She guesses that it’s someone that even Janka Tempelhof doesn’t dare argue with.)

…If they hadn’t taken her for a prostitute, she wouldn’t have stopped in on Mateusz the caretaker,

she wouldn’t have learnt about Mauthausen,

she wouldn’t have travelled to Vienna.

If she hadn’t gone to Vienna, she would have stayed in Warsaw. She would have died in the uprising, in the basement, together with her mother.

If she hadn’t escaped from Guben, they would have sent her on with the other women.

She would have landed at Bergen-Belsen,

in the middle of a typhus epidemic.

She would have died of typhus together with Janka Tempelhof.

Evidently God had decided she was meant to survive the war.

Or not. He had decided that she was meant to die and she opposed His verdict with all her strength. That’s the only reason she survived. And no God can claim credit. It was her doing and hers alone.

She forgoes her daily portion of bread and after five days the
Stubendienst
gives her a whole loaf. She trades the bread for ten marks and a set of dentures. The dentures have a fairly sizeable gold bridge and part of a gold tooth. It seems they belonged to a woman.

The factory is some way off and on cold days the women are allowed to take blankets. They wrap them around their heads and before entering the hall they leave them in the cloakroom.

She walks to the factory. She leaves her blanket. She
takes a German worker’s coat off the hook and carries it to the other side of the cloakroom. She feels a little bad, but she can’t make her escape wrapped up in a blanket from the camp.

They’re done for the day, and go to the cloakroom ahead of the German workers.

She folds up the stolen coat and covers it with her blanket. Then she joins the column of women prisoners leaving the factory.

It’s getting dark and there is fog.

The column crosses the Neisse River and turns to the left, towards the yellow light of the lanterns. Izolda turns to the right… She drops her blanket and quickly passes several streets.

She senses that she’s being followed. She turns around and sees a bicycle and a faint blur of light: the bicyclist is carrying a lantern. The camp guards are equipped with bicycles and lanterns – evidently they’re already looking for her.

She pushes open a gate, hears the crunch of gravel underfoot and crouches against a fence. She is in a garden and looming behind her is what appears to be a single-storey house.

The bicycle comes creaking down the street. It stops at the gate. She hears steps… a man has climbed off, he’s walking down the gravel path. She clings to the fence. The man, barely visible in the darkness, passes her and opens the door. Now she has a clear view of him: he has a rifle slung over his shoulder. He doesn’t go in. He must be listening, waiting for some sound, perhaps the sound of her breathing. She waits as well. She hears her heart
pounding, just like in the ghetto when she was standing next to the door with the padlock. The gendarme probably hears her heart as well. She can’t bear it any longer and tears away from the fence. I’m coming, she says, under her breath. The gendarme is silent. She takes a step in his direction and says louder: Please don’t shoot, I’m coming…

She walks up to the house.

Here I am, she says, to the entrance, but no one answers.

She’s at the doorstep. There isn’t any gendarme. There isn’t anyone at all. That’s strange, she thinks. I’m probably hallucinating. Out of fear? I’m not scared, but I’m having hallucinations. For the first time. Though I’m really not afraid…

She leans against the door. She tears a strip from the coat lining and wraps it around her head like a turban, to cover her black roots. The lining keeps sliding down over her eyes, evidently her hands are shaking. That’s strange, she thinks. I’m not afraid and yet my hands are shaking.

She approaches the station from the back, crossing the rails. A train has stopped on the tracks and she hears banging: a tapper is checking the wheels. She hides behind a wooden goods wagon, and after the tapper passes she climbs on to the raised platform at the back. Inside the wagon is a bench and a small, rectangular window. She stands by the window. The train starts to roll. It passes the tangle of tracks and moves out across the fields, through lashing wind and rain. She stands next to the window and feels a wave of happiness.

She doesn’t know where the train is headed.

She doesn’t have any documents.

She doesn’t have anything but a German worker’s overcoat, a Hungarian Jew’s stockings and a section of Jewish dentures with a gold tooth.

She’s riding a night train through Germany and feels such joy that she starts to cry.

I’m free, she says out loud.

And I’m alive.

And he’s alive.

And I am free.

And everything will be good…

She picks up the coat and wipes her nose on a piece of lining.

She will try (in spite of everything) to tell her story: daemon – escape – goods train – and to explain how happy she was at that moment, and how happiness can suddenly overcome a person in absurd situations.

Her daughter will translate into Hebrew, her granddaughter will nod understandingly: Happiness can surprise you, that’s true… And what happened next?

Next came a train station and the train stopped. A conductor came in, astonished at what he saw.
Was machen Sie hier?
he shouted. She answered very calmly: ‘Nothing really, I’m headed to Cottbus.’ (In dangerous situations, she lectures her granddaughter, it’s always good to… how can I explain it… it’s good to maintain a certain air of superiority.) Cottbus? – the conductor was even more amazed. We’re headed in the opposite
direction! To which she replied, still calmly: Really? In that case I must have got on the wrong train.

Her granddaughter will worry: The conductor could have called the gendarmes or even the SS.

No, he didn’t call anyone. He was a harmless man in late middle age and she always had a way with older men.

Her daughter and granddaughter will smile and for a moment they’ll talk about her good looks. Her daughter will say that she was beautiful, just like Elizabeth Taylor, and her granddaughter will state that she’s still very beautiful, and then what?

She jumped out of the car and changed trains. She made her way to Cottbus. She found the clerk with the notebook and apologized for running away.

(What’s the Hebrew word for war? she asks all of a sudden.
Milchama
. Clerk?
Pakid
. Notebook?
Machberet
… Such bizarre words, how can anyone learn such a language? They’re extraordinary words, her daughter will say. Listen:
machberet
… You think desert and sand and cliffs, and it’s nothing more than a notebook.)

The clerk asked where she was coming from. Izolda told her she’d been on one of the transports out of Warsaw after the uprising. They were headed in this direction but she wasn’t sure where to and feared it might be to a camp, so she broke away…

Her daughter will interrupt, telling her to explain about the Warsaw Uprising. Of course her granddaughter had learnt about it in school, but it’s easy to get all the uprisings mixed up…

Unfortunately, the nice clerk was only in charge of farm workers, but Izolda had been assigned to the canvas
mill and someone else was in charge of the factories. And that person was eating supper.

Why so many details, her daughter will grow impatient. What difference does it make which clerk and what they ate?

It makes all the difference in the world! The nice clerk remembered that my name was Pawlicka, don’t you understand? Maria Pawlicka and not Regensberg! She remembered, but she couldn’t help me, and the person who could help me was eating supper, she’d finished work and had gone home!

What are you arguing about? her granddaughter will ask.

Her daughter will explain the difference between the clerks, and her granddaughter will start to look at her watch.

They sent me to their superior…

Wir beide sollen das Gesetz achten, hab’ ich nicht Recht?
he said. Which means: We both ought to respect the law, isn’t that right? And the law, my dear, stipulates that people who desert their place of work are sent to the penal camp.

In the morning they braid straw (shoe coverings for use on the front).

After that they pump water. The water spills, their toes freeze to the ground because their shoes are full of holes, the iron pump handle burns their hands. I can’t take it
any more, she cries out, and Irma, who is carrying full buckets to the cistern, has the presence of mind to ask her what she plans to do instead. Are you going to run away again? Stop grousing and pump, there’s nothing a person can’t take.

Irma has a degree in forestry. She escaped from a subcamp of Ravensbrück, they captured her as she was washing her legs in a stream. They didn’t let her put on her shoes and brought her barefoot to Schwetig. Every day she wraps her feet in rags and straw.

They sleep on the ground, on straw mattresses. Irma lies next to her and tells stories about trees and how clever they are.

Do you know that maple keys spin in different ways? Half of them spin to the right and half to the left, so that the wind carries the seeds in all directions. (Izolda wants to make Irma feel good and is suitably amazed.)