Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series) (3 page)

She asks a nun about the priest: slender, not young, with a persistent cough.

You must mean Father Franciszek, the nun concludes. Franciszek Pauliński. He’s in the tuberculosis ward on Wolska Street.

She buys a lemon at the Kiercelak market and goes to the hospital.

The priest is dozing.

She looks at him. He’s not going to find any place at all, she thinks sadly. Not for people with ‘good’ looks and not for people with ‘bad’ ones.

It’s you… The priest opens his eyes and peers at her. Will you pray for me?

For you, Father? Me!

You, child. You won’t forget, will you?

She leans over the man’s bed.

I’m not a child of the same God as you, Father. That’s not a God I turn to. And that God doesn’t treat me justly. Or my parents. Or my husband…

She speaks louder and louder, with her new, high-pitched, quarrelsome voice. The nurse tells her to be quiet. By the time she leaves she has calmed down: Father Franciszek asked her to pray for him. If the rector of the Pallottines himself is asking her for such a favour, then it means there’s something on this earth that does depend on her. At least a prayer.

She visits him a few times. She brings him a book from the Szuberts’ library called
The New Temple,
in which some Norwegian suggests that we seek God in nature, that richest of all tomes. The advice sounds good to Izolda. Sitting on the hospital bed, she reads out loud to the priest: about green meadows embroidered with yellow and pink flowers, about the waves of hills, about azure fjords and verdant fields, about migratory birds and the secret resonance of the soul in nature. Unfortunately the priest isn’t concerned with birds or fields or fjords. The priest is dying.

Every day she stands by the manhole; at last Bolek’s people show up. When it gets dark they lift the cover and quickly slip inside. The men have a long rope, which each person wraps around his waist. The run-off comes up to their calves. They stink. They walk doubled over, carrying full sacks. Izolda touches the rope stretching in front of her and peers into the darkness ahead for signs of a lantern. It doesn’t take long. They crawl out on to the street, they’re inside the ghetto. They wait in the ruins, and in the morning the Jews appear – silent, unshaven, dirty. They bring overcoats, sheets, tablecloths, porcelain, silverware. Bolek’s people take onions, garlic, bread and bottles of oil out of their sacks and give them to the Jews. To some they give Polish ID cards. What about a place to stay? asks a man with a beard. Do you have an address for me? At least for a few days… One of Bolek’s workers is surprised: The way you look, are you crazy? – and the Jew nods his head in understanding. When the sacks are empty Bolek’s men refill them with Jewish belongings and hide them in the ruins. Then they start to work tearing down what’s left of the buildings.

Not far from Izolda’s old apartment is a workshop where tailors are sewing German uniforms. She asks about her husband. The tailors saw him on Miła Street, just a few days ago. She asks about her neighbours. Did anyone see the Rygiers? They’re gone… The tailor who knows about the Rygiers doesn’t look up from his sewing machine. Nobody’s here, they went to the trains. Szwarcwald? Father or son? Father. Not here. His wife
took poison and he went to the trains. He managed to give his keys to some acquaintance. Keys to what? The tailors don’t know, maybe to some hidden shelter? Maybe he locked someone inside? Borensztajn? Did you see the Borensztajns? They had a daughter… They had a shelter… The tailors are calm and matter-of-fact. They’re not here, they say. So what if they had a shelter… A really good one? So what of it? Not here, understand? The tailors stay hunched over their machines. Now she understands. The others aren’t there, but the tailors are. Maybe they will stay. Maybe there won’t be any more trains. Maybe, God willing, they’ll stay for ever?

She makes her way to Miła Street, her anxiety growing with every step. She walks faster and faster and finally breaks out into a run. The other pedestrians also start running. Not because they want to see her husband, they just think they have to. She dashes into an entrance, the others follow. She stops and they stop. I’m running to my husband, she explains. They look at her, bewildered, and disperse.

Her husband is so sleepy he’s barely conscious. She strokes his hair, which is no longer golden. Is everybody still here? She wants to make sure. He shakes his head. Your father’s gone. He left… Of his own free will, when they called for specialists.

She begins to understand: her father left the ghetto voluntarily.

I tried to stop him, her husband says, but he said that he’d explain it all to them.

Explain what?

That as a chemist who knew German and a graduate of Heidelberg…

But explain what?

That as a chemist… I begged him, her husband repeats.

(Her father had pretty, brown, wise eyes.)

They took them to Umschlagplatz, her husband says. Apparently the specialists who knew German they were the first to board the train…

(One eye was brown; he had lost the other while searching for a new colour.

A colour that doesn’t exist in the spectrum, at least not yet, a colour with a new wavelength. He explained that the colours of the spectrum differ from one another by their wavelengths, and that the gamut of wavelengths is matched by the colours given off by all living creatures. Her father loved to explain things, adored explaining things. Colours, smiles, roulette… He was on the verge of making a great discovery but an unfortunate explosion ruined everything. So he gave up working on the spectrum and went into business. He started with the tenants who didn’t pay their rent and resolved to have a serious conversation with them. You see, he explained to them, above all else a man has to make sure his children have a roof over their heads, that’s what makes for a true man. You’re absolutely right, Mr Furman, the tenant agreed, but what if a man doesn’t have money for a roof? Then he should borrow it, Father advised. You’re absolutely right, the tenant agreed, could you lend me some money
so my children can have a roof over their heads? Father lent the money, the tenant paid, Father gave him a receipt and Mother suggested that maybe he wasn’t cut out for business after all. So Father went to Sopot. From there he sent funny postcards assuring us that he was developing a new method of winning at roulette.)

Izolda doesn’t hold it against Shayek that he allowed her father to leave.

Nor is she surprised at how calmly he talks about it. Just like the tailors in the shop: he’s gone, too bad, but we’re still here.

In the evening they meet up with Bolek.

Before climbing down into the sewer she kneels on a pile of bricks. Ask her… she whispers to her husband. Ask who what? Get on your knees and pray… She reaches for the Mother of God medallion that Lilusia Szubert gave her (She’ll look after you, she said, as she draped the chain around Izolda’s neck). Pray that nothing bad happens to us… She would like to add: Today and until the end of the war – but she reconsiders, they shouldn’t ask for too much. Help us, she says out loud. Please be kind and help us. You won’t forget?

Things aren’t bad: she rents a room in Wesoła, a town on the outskirts of Warsaw, and fetches her mother. She becomes friends with her neighbour, who has a handicapped child. Mother and daughter spend the day riding the local trains. The daughter sings and the
mother collects handouts in a canvas sack. The little girl has a long, thin neck; she leans her small head to the side and sings Brahms’s Lullaby with Polish words:
Jutro znów, jak Bóg da, wstaniesz wesół i zdrów
… Her voice is high-pitched, perfectly clear, with a nice vibrato.

Izolda returns to the ghetto for some bedding and carries the bundle back out via the theatre warehouse. Then she takes a rickshaw to the train station.

A policeman standing at the corner of Świętokrzyska Street and Nowy Świat eyes her closely. He waves the rickshaw to the kerb, climbs in and says something to the driver… They turn on to Chmielna Street and stop at the Hotel Terminus. The policeman orders her inside. He takes a key at the reception. Inside the room he looks at her shrewdly and smiles: So what do we have here but a little Jew girl, am I right? Take off your clothes.

She takes off her clothes.

The policeman unbuckles his belt with the holster, takes off his uniform and shoves her to the bed. His breathing is hoarse, loud, long, he smells of cigarettes and sweat. She thinks: Will he demand money? Take me to the station? Ask for my address? The policeman stops moving. She thinks: Will he follow me to Wesoła? Will he find my mother? The policeman gets up and dresses. He stands in front of the mirror and combs his moustache and hair. Put your clothes on, he says. Now go outside and get back in your rickshaw. You see how lucky you are, running into a decent person… He salutes and heads back towards Nowy Świat. The rickshaw driver asks: To the station?

Her neighbour is on the train, with her daughter. The girl is singing
Jutro znów, jak Bóg da
… Izolda tosses five whole zlotys into the canvas sack – she’s happy he didn’t demand money, didn’t take her to the station, didn’t ask…

She starts to regret that she didn’t ask him for anything. At least for a place to stay. Since you are such a decent person, couldn’t you find me a safe address… Or even two. One for the people who can’t show themselves on the street and the other… As she washes herself and changes her underwear, she regrets letting such a great opportunity slip by: she ran into a decent person and didn’t ask for a thing.

Shayek leaves to fetch his sisters but comes back without them. They committed suicide, after poisoning little Szymuś. Shayek tried to find out where they were buried, but the man who dug their grave is no longer alive either.

It was Hela, she tells her husband. It had to be Hela. She managed to get her hands on some cyanide. She probably said… What would you say in that situation? Let’s not… Or: This doesn’t make sense any more… Maybe you don’t say anything, just reach for the white powder… And Szymuś, Tusia’s six-year-old son? Which one of them said: Be a good boy and swallow it all?

She was so pretty, that Hela. So blonde… and yet she didn’t want to save herself. And meanwhile she, Izolda, with dyed hair and eyes a policeman can spot while she’s riding in a rickshaw, she’s supposed to save everybody.

Is that fair? she asks her husband. Tell me, where’s the justice in that? But her husband asks her not to say anything against his sisters.

Her plans for old age turn out to be unrealistic.

She won’t read books because she’ll lose her eyesight. She won’t listen to records because she’ll be hard of hearing. She won’t go on walks because her lower vertebrae will pinch her lumbar nerves…

Her granddaughter, the gallery owner, could come and tell her about contemporary art.

Her other granddaughter, the cultural historian, could tell her about the cultures of the world.

Her third granddaughter will be in the army.

But because Izolda doesn’t know Hebrew she’ll never learn about contemporary art or what will happen to the cultures of the world. Her soldier-granddaughter will visit her when she’s on leave. She’ll take off her boots, put down her rifle, sit on the sofa and fall asleep right away. Izolda will cover up her granddaughter with a plaid blanket and say in Polish:
Śpij, dziecko
– Sleep, child. And when she awakes, her granddaughter will get dressed up and run to meet a boy, who’s very handsome even though he has a large ring under his lip. Izolda would like to ask if the ring doesn’t get in the way of kissing, but once again she can’t remember the Hebrew word for ring. (The plaid blanket she’ll use to cover her granddaughter will be light and soft but warm, with a colourful pattern, just like another, very different plaid blanket. She’ll try to tell her granddaughter about that blanket, only she won’t be able to. That one felt safe, peaceful, secure, but what kind of safety can there be in the Israeli army?)

She’ll sit down in her armchair.

She’ll start to think. That’s all she can do any more. And then she’ll remember another stupid mistake. For instance, how could she have put his parents and sisters in with other Jews? The set-up was fine, the widow who owned the apartment was an honest woman; the only problem was that her parents had to share it with a young married couple. Both had good papers and decent looks, but the husband was circumcised. Izolda
should have found a different flat, with an uncircumcised Jew. Although even an uncircumcised Jew would have been found out (for instance, by running into an acquaintance on the street). She should have avoided places where there were any other Jews at all. Maybe, if she’d asked the policeman from the rickshaw for an apartment without Jews… Of course they would have died anyway. (They would have taken shelter in the basement during the Warsaw Uprising and been killed by bombs.) Oh well, she’ll console herself, next time I’ll be smarter. What am I babbling about, she catches herself, what next time?