Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series) (12 page)

Do you know why sequoia bark doesn’t burn? That’s how the tree protects itself in case of forest fire (really? that’s amazing).

And do you know why aspen leaves quake? It’s not because they’re afraid…

After pumping water they’re told to form two concentric circles and forced to run. A female guard uses a whip on the women in the smaller circle. For the big circle another guard goads the runners with a dog. The prisoners can choose between the whip and the dog.

After running comes exercise with
Aufseherin
Piontek.
Alles raus!
she shouts, and the women have to run out of the barracks.
Alles rein!
and they have to run back.
Alles raus!
– they run out.
Alles rein!
– they run back.

Piontek loves her work, she doesn’t go home until dark.

At morning roll call they read out over a dozen names, including Maria Pawlicka (Auschwitz, adds the
Aufseherin
) and Irma Jabłońska (Ravensbrück).

Izolda tells Irma what they do at Auschwitz with captured escapees. They hang a plank around their neck saying:
Hurra hurra ich bin wieder da
– Hooray hooray I’m back today. And then they are marched to the gallows.

Irma consoles her: You escaped from Guben, not Auschwitz, but they both know she could easily be eligible for the plank.

Izolda tears the fur collar off her German coat.

She trades it for a pair of shoes.

Very decent leather lace-up shoes – which she gives to Irma Jabłońska.

You see that, don’t you? she asks God. I’m helping her. And in return, you… She hesitates. You do what you think is right.

She says goodbye to Irma.

A gendarme takes her to the train along with a group of prisoners.

The train moves out.

The train stops.

Hours pass, the train doesn’t move.

The train reverses direction.

The train gains speed.

Now there’s no question about it: the train really is heading back, it really is.

Is it possible that God liberated Auschwitz especially for her? In return for the shoes she gave Irma Jabłońska?

That’s impossible. That’s just absurd. But the train was turned back and Auschwitz was free.

The last prisoners are given bread, coarse undergarments and heavy canvas clothing.

Prisoners, guards,
Aufseherinnen
and dogs line up five abreast and march west towards Berlin.

A stream of German refugees moves down the middle of the road, on bicycles or horse carts or else on foot, loaded down with rucksacks, suitcases, bundles, carpets, blankets, bedsheets… No one is guarding them with dogs and no one is shooting at them and no one does them any harm.

Do you know anyone in Berlin? asks a girl marching next to her. I can give you an address, but how about you? You don’t even have a collar on your coat.

But I do have this… Izolda reaches for the dentures with the gold bridge that she’s kept hidden in her underwear. She breaks off the tooth. The girl looks at it, puts it in her pants and whispers: Eichenallee, the last house on the corner. Head towards the Olympic Stadium… Say hello from Edyta Baka. Mention the kayaks at Luttensee…

They sleep in empty stables by the side of the road. Izolda gets up before dawn and listens. Nothing is happening, the dogs are quiet (they’re either asleep or have simply decided there’s no use guarding any more). She goes on to the road and mixes with the stream of refugees.

Izolda gives Edyta’s friend the rest of the gold dental bridge in exchange for a little money, a dress that’s too short but warm, and a ball of string. She ties the string around her waist and thighs and fashions a perfectly serviceable suspender belt. The dress doesn’t cover it completely, but her coat does. The friend’s husband repairs her shoes and now she’s ready for the road.

She goes to the Görlitzer Bahnhof. At the counter they ask for her travel permit, she can obtain one at the National Socialist League of German Women.

She tells the German Women that she’s an ethnic German from Poland, that she was escaping on foot with the refugees, that she lost her bag in an air raid and that her name is Maria Hunkert. The German Women believe her and she’s authorized to buy a ticket all the way to Vienna.

She has to change trains in Dresden: she arrives in the evening, her connection is in the morning. Boys from the Hitler Youth are standing by to assist the refugees, carrying their belongings and helping them on to trucks. One of the boys asks her why she doesn’t have any bags. That’s a long story, she says, and sighs. I understand, whispers the boy from the Hitler Youth. You went through hell, didn’t you, ma’am? – and squeezes her hand in sympathy. Beds for the refugees have been set up in schoolrooms. She is given coffee, bread and a clean towel, and goes to bed. In the morning they issue her sandwiches for the road (‘Food Rations’) and cigarettes (‘Care Rations’). The trucks take everyone to the station, and the serious,
concerned boys from the Hitler Youth escort them to the trains.

In a cheap Viennese hotel she trades her cigarettes (‘Care Rations’) for a room for three days, as well as some food coupons. She buys a newspaper. She scans the ads for two notices: a dental technician and employment for a young, energetic woman, to begin immediately.

The restaurant belongs to a Herr Zimmermann (which is made clear by a sign spanning the entire room: ‘Herr Zimmermann reminds his guests that the table settings are his property only’). Izolda sits down at a table. A waiter takes her order: two bowls of soup, two portions of meat, two desserts… The waiter cuts the coupons from her ration card and asks how she would like to be served. Everything at once, she says. Everything? You must be very hungry, he smiles. She ought to smile back but she can’t, since she’s still missing her front teeth. She’s lucky her mouth is shaped the way it is: her lips conceal her upper teeth completely – at least as long as she doesn’t smile.

The waiter comes back and covers the entire table with the dishes she ordered. What about cutlery? she calls out. You forgot the cutlery! I didn’t forget, the waiter says, but you didn’t take off your coat. Please take your coat to the cloakroom, give me your ticket and I’ll bring you some cutlery. Do you realize how many foreigners are running around Vienna these days? Frenchmen,
Italians, Poles, Yugoslavs – and they’re all trying to steal something. But it’s not such a huge concern, is it,
gnädige Frau
? All you have to do is take your coat to the cloakroom.

She can’t take off her coat because then everyone would see her improvised suspender belt.

She can’t eat with her hands, because she would draw attention to herself.

She is on the verge of tears.

A man at the table next to hers stands up. He calls the waiter over and says something. The waiter takes the man’s dirty cutlery and brings it back washed, in a starched white napkin. The man lays the cutlery on the table in front of Izolda, bows and says that there is a very nice café nearby. If she would care to join him for some coffee after her meal…

She tries not to eat ravenously.

She tries to cut with the knife and pick up with the fork.

She tries to remember to hold the knife in her right hand and the fork in her left…

The man takes the cutlery after she’s done and waits for his cloakroom ticket. She gets up and hurries out of Herr Zimmermann’s restaurant. She fishes the piece of newspaper out of her pocket (‘young, energetic, to begin immediately’) and checks the address.

The old lady leans on her walking stick and asks what she can do.

Everything, she says, without hesitation. She can clean, cook, launder and speak French. And what about baking? Do you know how to bake a
Kaisertorte
?

Unfortunately she doesn’t know how to bake a
Kaisertorte
(she doesn’t even know what it looks like). However, she quickly adds, she does know how to bake
Buchteln
– yeast rolls filled with preserves.

The lady is genuinely surprised: a person who doesn’t know how to bake a torte is looking for work in a Viennese household?

Madame
… she turns to the lady and then goes silent, unsure of what she really intends to say.
Madame
… she repeats and hears herself delivering a tirade about the end of the world. The world is falling apart. The world is being bathed in blood and tears (she hopes she said it correctly in German) and meanwhile you,
madame
, cannot be happy unless you have your torte?!

The lady listens very attentively, without interrupting.

Listen, my dear, she says at last, you have a pretty face. And the lecture you’ve just given me is very interesting, but you don’t know how to bake a
Kaisertorte
– and with that she points her black lacquered stick at the door.

At the Employment Office they’re seeking doctors and experienced nurses. She assures them that she’s an experienced nurse (she lost her diploma in all the fighting) and shows the travel permit issued to the ethnic German Maria Hunkert. She’s directed to a military hospital.
She puts on a long blue dress, apron, cape and bonnet. They assign her to the third floor, with eighty wounded men – Wehrmacht and SS.

She washes, massages, changes bedpans, uncovers the wounds before the doctor makes his rounds and bandages them up afterwards. The wounds fill with pus, the bandages stick, she moistens them with hydrogen peroxide and removes them with great patience and care, one millimetre at a time. The doctor watches her work. I see you haven’t grown indifferent, he says. You know why that is? Because you haven’t seen death. She doesn’t contradict him, doesn’t look up from her bandages.

(The doctor is old, he spent both wars in military hospitals, but she feels more mature. Perhaps because she has seen different types of death. The death he knows is fast, from the front lines. In the ghetto and in Auschwitz it was a slow expiring. It’s dying, not death, that makes you mature, she thinks as she changes a bandage.)

One of her charges is eighteen years old and has an infected stomach wound. In his fever he calls out ‘Mama!’

Another has red hair and freckles, and watery, lashless eyes. His leg has been cut off above his knee and his wound won’t heal. He never moans, but he occasionally faints when she changes his bandage.

The oldest is forty years old. He has an amputated hand and burnt-out eyes. He used to be a stage designer and talks about a production he never managed to finish.

Everything was supposed to be grey and black, he says – everything except for her, and she was going to be in yellow and red ochre.

Who is she? asks Izolda.

Joanna… Do you see her? Do you see? In yellow and red ochre. And gold.

She places a gauze wick on his eyes and lifts his amputated arm. Under his armpit, level with his heart, is a tattoo showing his blood type. The distinctive, dark-blue letters are the same size as her number from Auschwitz.

You’re looking at me, the SS man surmises. And what do you see?

She studies his emaciated face and the eyeballs without pupils. Where exactly do yellow and red ochre fall in the spectrum?

Every morning the enemy planes cross into Austrian airspace. She quickly moves the wounded on to stretchers, helps out the orderlies, and everyone clambers down into the shelter. ‘
Licht, Luft und Sonne
…’ – the designer shouts out the German propaganda slogan. Light, air and sunshine! Sunshine, air and light! Air and light! Air and light! Air… In the afternoon the radio calls off the alarm and they return to the third floor. It’s nothing, she calms the patients down, in just a minute you’ll be able to relax.

The Red Army enters Vienna.

The hospital puts out white flags and Red Cross signs. The nurses and doctors stand to attention inside their rooms, their aprons spotless white.

The Russians burst in, rifles at the ready.
Kto SS
? Who is SS? they ask the doctor.

The doctor says nothing.

They go to her.
SS
?

She, too, says nothing.

The soldier points the rifle barrel in her direction:
A teper, sestra?
– And now, nurse?
Uzhe znayesh
– Now do you know? She unbuttons her cuff and rolls up her sleeve. She shows them the number and says: Auschwitz. I’m Polish.
Uzhe znayesh?

They call an officer.

She stands there with her rolled-up sleeve. Auschwitz… Oświęcim… Polish…

All the more so, says the officer. Are you saying they didn’t kill any of yours?

They killed everyone.
Vsekh ubili.

So get even… The officer claps her on the shoulder. Now you can take revenge.
Nu? Kotory SS?
– Well? Which one is SS?

But I don’t know. I know who doesn’t have eyes and who doesn’t have legs. But who is SS, I don’t know –
ya ne znayu.

The soldiers withdraw.

The designer covers his face with a towel and cries out loud. The doctor leans over her number:
Schwester Maria, mein Gott
…

She lets down her sleeve. Takes off her bonnet. Walks down three flights of stairs, one step at a time, holding on to the rail. She feels that all her energy has escaped.

She thinks: What will happen now? I have to go. I have to make it to Mauthausen but I don’t have the strength.

She leans against the hospital wall.

The war is over, she thinks. And I am alive.

The war is finished. So why aren’t I the least bit happy?

Nu chto, sestra?
– What’s the matter, nurse?

She opens her eyes. The officer who told her to get even is standing next to her. You thought we wouldn’t find them. But we found them, don’t you worry.

And the one without eyes?

Every single one. Feeling sorry?

Not sorry, she shakes her head, just tired. How am I going to get to Mauthausen if I don’t have any strength?

Take a bicycle, the officer suggests. You want a bike? Wait, I’ll find one for you.