Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series) (16 page)

The resort is in a park on a lake, from their windows they can see the mountains – it’s beautiful. They go for walks. They ride in a boat. In the afternoon they sit on the café terrace and play cards – ‘smart rummy’ that her father brought back from Sopot. (He went there several times a year, in the casino he tried out his new system of winning at roulette. The system was never perfected, but he liked rummy and the whole family enjoyed playing.)

They return to Vienna.

Her husband feels ill, the doctor confirms pneumonia.

Her husband is in the hospital. He sleeps a lot. He wakes up and says: Please, go and see Sochaczewski. Tell him where I am, have him come and visit.

Who’s Sochaczewski? she asks.

You don’t know? Huma’s husband.

And who is Huma?

You don’t know that either? Aunt Huma, my mother’s sister!

And where do these Sochaczewskis live?

Good God, where do you think they live? Right nearby, on Pomorska Street.

There isn’t any Pomorska Street here. This is Vienna.

Vienna, her husband repeats, and starts to cry.

Listen, her husband says, clearly put out. You haven’t been living at home lately, can I know why?

Because you didn’t want to be with me.

What kind of nonsense is that? I didn’t want to?

You left a letter… It was on the sewing machine.

I remember something… Are you sure it was to you?
All right, so this is Vienna – her husband refuses to give up – still you could have called Sochaczewski. Like I told you. Just ask if he’s a rabbi yet. And where he is, because we could visit him.

I didn’t know that Sochaczewski wanted to become a rabbi…

You never know anything, her husband says, irritated. It’s his dream to become a rabbi. He spends his whole life with the Torah and dreams that somewhere in the countryside, in a quiet little town…

And I’m supposed to find out where that is. The quiet little town where Sochaczewski is a rabbi, is that what you’re after?

Now you’ve got it – he calms down. Finally. That’s not so hard, is it?

You look so pretty, he says, brightening up at the sight of his younger daughter. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you. Didn’t you bring little Szymuś with you?

Something’s wrong with her eyesight because of macular degeneration. There are two types: wet and dry. Laser treatment is available for the wet type, but she has the dry type. All she can see is the outlines of figures, very blurred, as though in a fog.

Something’s wrong with her lower back and she can’t walk.

Something’s wrong with the cartilage in her knees, it’s probably going.

Her hands start to shake. Her legs and feet shake, too, and so do her toes. Except that each part shakes for a different reason, her feet from Parkinson’s and her toes because of something in her brain. Or from a muscle disease that can’t be treated.

She’s turned the television on, though she doesn’t see the picture. She’s turned on the sound, though she doesn’t know Hebrew. Her Russian caretaker tells her what’s going on. Oh, she says, something happened, people running. Was there a bombing? Yes, there is an ambulance. Look, it’s nearby, right here by our beach…
Gospodi
– my God, they’re showing our restaurant.

Izolda gropes for her walking frame, lifts herself out of the armchair and through the thick, milky fog tries to make out the ruins of the restaurant.

They’re showing a girl, her caretaker reports. A woman is crying, must be the mother. No, not the mother, oh – now it’s the mother…

The telephone rings.
Babcia?
– ‘grandmother’ is one of the few Polish words her granddaughters know.
Ani beseder.

She sighs with relief:
beseder
– ‘fine’ – is one of the few Hebrew words she knows.

Everything OK? her Russian caretaker asks:
Vsyo v poryadke? Vsyo beseder?

Her younger daughter is going to Poland (Sławek B., her great first love, is building a monument and is asking for help).

The monument will be in Łódź, at the train station that used to be called Radegast. That was where the Jews of Łódź boarded the trains bound for Chełmno, Auschwitz and other camps.

Her younger daughter asks her about the Łódź ghetto (you saw it, after all, from the tram).

People wore yellow stars.

I know that, her daughter says.

The streets were deserted… almost empty…

Why? her daughter asks. There were 200,000 people there…

Exactly, she agrees. I thought it was strange too. And the few who were on the streets stood there and looked at me. What am I saying… they were staring at the tram.

Her younger daughter studies the pictures taken by the photographer Henryk Ross. He worked in the Łódź Judenrat and so was allowed to carry a camera and film. Ross buried 3,000 negatives that survived the war. He was a witness at the Eichmann trial. The judge showed him pictures and asked what was on them, and the witness explained. For instance, what is on photograph T/224, which shows children looking for something in the ground. The witness explained that the children were looking for potatoes. Frozen, rotten potatoes were chlorinated and buried by order of the authorities. The children knew this, they dug up the potatoes and ate them. Photograph T/225 shows people who died of hunger. Some died bloated, others emaciated, the witness explained. T/226 shows people waiting to be deported. T/227 the same. T/229 the same. Two or three hundred people standing in line to board the trains. And T/233
shows a family heading to the trains – father, mother and two children. Deportation meant death, the witness added. Deportation where? asked the attorney general. To Chełmno, answered the witness. The prosecutor wanted to know how photograph T/234 was taken. Actually that photo was taken in Radegast Station itself. Some acquaintances who worked there smuggled the witness in and locked him inside a cement warehouse. He stayed there from six in the morning to seven in the evening. He heard the shouts. He saw how they shot the people who didn’t want to board. He saw the train pull away full of people. He saw everything through a small opening in the wall. Through that opening he took photographs T/234 and several others. T/236 shows where the ghetto stopped and the road to Radegast began, and on T/237 you can see people walking down that road. The judge asked the defence attorney Dr Servatius if he had any questions for the witness. Dr Servatius did not. The judge thanked Henryk Ross for his testimony.

Izolda’s younger daughter travels to Poland. Together with Sławek B. they look at the wooden station building, the tracks, which are also genuine (trains are using them to this day) and a genuine goods wagon. Sławek B. wants to erect oversized
matzevas
with the names of the camps and a tall, broken column, which in Jewish symbolism stands for a life cut short. On the column will be the Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill. Between the station and the Fifth Commandment he proposes a tunnel showing what the Jews left behind. Glasses, apartment keys, pictures and names, tens of thousands of names. Izolda’s daughter buys a notebook, in case she has to take
notes. Sławek’s wife, Marysia, picks them up from the train station when they return from Łódź. The table is set for dinner, their son is slicing tomatoes for the salad. Marysia sits down to talk with Izolda’s daughter. Her son calls her into the kitchen to make a dressing for the salad. She keeps running back and forth between kitchen and table. While in the kitchen she tries some food – maybe the dressing or the meat – to check if it’s ready. She swallows too quickly and chokes. The ambulance arrives. The doctors try to revive her. Marysia dies.

If it weren’t for the tobacco and Vienna (this thought will haunt her more and more persistently), she would have died in the basement together with her mother.

If she hadn’t escaped from Guben, she would have died of typhus together with Janka Tempelhof.

If her younger daughter hadn’t gone to Poland…

If there hadn’t been dinner…

If Marysia hadn’t checked…

If the monument hadn’t been…

If the Łódź ghetto hadn’t been…

Izolda’s younger daughter writes the names of the Sochaczewski family in her notebook. It was a large family and inside the tunnel they appear on several different lists. Mayer and Pesa, their daughters Tola and Golda and their grandson Itzek, only a few months old, went to Chełmno. They were followed by Ryvka with her brother Moszek, her sister Ruchla and two twin daughters, Chana and Luba. And Dawid also went with his three grandchildren, Rochna, Chaya and Dawid.

Izolda’s younger daughter doesn’t know and will never find out if one of those men was Aunt Huma’s husband. And if he was a rabbi. And if he managed to settle in a nice, quiet little town.

For her birthday Izolda’s daughters prepare an enormous banquet. Everyone is there – the daughters, granddaughters, son-in-law – only the soldier-granddaughter is missing. They didn’t grant her leave and now she’s guarding some border post. She lets Palestinians into Israel. Every Palestinian assures the granddaughter that
he’s going to work, and she has to guess which one will work and which will blow himself up along with a bus, a market or a restaurant.

Izolda would like to give her granddaughter some advice, not about Palestinians, but in general. She’d also like to advise her granddaughter’s colleague, a student assigned to guard the checkpoint with a metal detector. That’s the most dangerous work in all Israel, because in case of an attack the guard at the checkpoint is the first to die. Izolda would like to give lots of good advice to everyone at the table – on how to survive. And it would be hard to find a better expert at that. No doubt about it: she is an outstanding specialist at surviving.

She sits in the place of honour.

Everyone is very warm to her, except she doesn’t see them and she doesn’t understand what they’re saying because they’re speaking Hebrew. Now and then they realize this and switch to English. She should be able to answer, after all she studied for three whole months. You don’t have to speak it perfectly, her grandson encourages her.

On the contrary, she is able to speak perfectly:
High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince…

Oscar Wilde, she adds with pride. I had a wonderful English teacher (she says these words in English), but after three months…

She doesn’t know how to say ‘hanged himself’ – they didn’t cover this topic in their lessons. Maybe it’s better, after all Mrs Szwarcwald’s lodger isn’t the best subject for a birthday party. Or Mrs Szwarcwald for that matter. (Poison – how do you say that? She can’t remember that either.)

What happened after three months? the grandson asks.

Nothing, the teacher gave up teaching.

That’s too bad, says the grandson.

And so – advice. The outstanding specialist at surviving wishes to give her family some valuable pointers. All have been verified on the basis of her rich personal experience.

For instance:

dye your hair,

change your voice,

have a calm, self-assured way of looking,

don’t place your bag in a Jewish manner, or wring rags like a Jew, or say Hail Mary like a Jew,

make a deal with God,

make sure you stick exactly to your end of the bargain,

listen to the voice of your daemon,

and…

What are you laughing at,
babcia
? her grandson asks.

Once again they’re talking in Hebrew. Evidently about Sławek B. and whether her younger daughter should move to Poland. Sławek has asked her to, but she doesn’t want to leave her children. Incidentally Izolda’s daughter has four daughters of her own – strikingly similar to those other four.

In her thoughts and in Polish Izolda starts adding and subtracting.

Two thousand and five minus nineteen hundred and forty-two… add thirty-one… makes for how much? Ninety-four? Holy Mother of God, Hela would be that old? So Tusia would be ninety-two… And Szymuś, imagine that, a seventy-year-old Szymuś!

*