Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series) Read online

  The older man understands how terrible it must have been, but: Let me tell you something, lady. This could only happen in Europe. It would be unthinkable in the States. No one would ever go along with it…

  With what? she asks.

  With the trains, the transports… No Jewish community in the States would ever allow it.

  So they would shoot a few people as an example. And then they’d hang the leader of the community on a hook, like this (she gets up and shows the Americans how the leader of the community would hang on a hook) and then they’d ask if he’d rather have more people shot or sent away on the trains… And the ghetto would be… Where do Jews live in New York?

  Listen, lady, says the American whose grandmother emigrated from Grajewo and whose grandfather came from Maków Mazowiecki. I’m trying to tell you: in the States, in New York, no one would agree to any ghetto in the first place.

  Well. Maybe you’re right…

  She falls silent. The sun is rising and she has to make it to Mauthausen.

  The Meeting

  She climbs up a steep mountain path. She looks at the meadows in the valley, the roses in the gardens, the green window shutters, the white church tower and the azure sky.

  Around a curve she sees some men in camp stripes sitting on rocks. They’re smoking cigarettes, turning their faces to the sun. They call out to her: Kim maydele, kim tsu mir…

  What language is that?

  Yiddish?!

  Come, little girl, come to me – Kim tsu mir…

  That loud, in Yiddish?

  She speeds up, hoping they won’t follow her. Hoping that no one heard them. Her face breaks out in a sweat, she feels her heart pounding (‘How many times does a heart beat per minute? That depends on whether a person is afraid or not’). A group of women are heading downhill wearing thick woollen skirts, with embroidered traditional waistcoats. Grüß Gott – they smile at her nicely. Grüß Gott, she responds, recovering her wits. She fixes her blouse, which is wet at the back and under her arms. She smoothes out the white knitted gloves she wore on the train to keep her hands clean. The war is over, she thinks. I’m going to meet my husband. This is the last leg of my journey and it would be silly to lose my mind now.

  The path narrows, dwarf mountain pines appear on the slopes.

  She sees something that looks like a barracks.

  A voice asks her who she’s looking for.

  I’ll take you, says the voice. All she sees is her tennis shoes covered with dust and gravel passing underfoot. She’s sitting on the frame of a bicycle. The bicycle stops at the entrance to the barracks. Inside is a long corridor. She walks down the corridor. Someone turns the handle, the door opens, she stops on the threshold. A blond boy is lying in bed, his face is flushed, probably from a fever. A few men are standing nearby, and sitting at the foot of the bed is her husband. He’s wearing shorts, without a shirt. Resting his suntanned hands on his knees. He glances up… He looks at her. The person who brought her gives a sign, the men leave the room and the sick boy closes the door. Shayek goes to her and embraces her, slowly, very carefully…

  She waits.

  In just a moment she’s going to feel this enormous joy, she imagines. I’m sure I’m going to be very happy.

  She doesn’t feel joy.

  She isn’t happy.

  She doesn’t feel anything, nothing at all.

  It’s because I’m wearing gloves, she thinks.

  She pulls off her gloves behind his back and tosses them to the ground. She strokes him. He’s warm. Is that all? She’s filled with bitterness. It isn’t fair. She’s found her husband and she doesn’t feel any joy whatsoever.

  Shayek untangles her hands.

  I have to go out, he says. Just for a moment, wait here.

  She sits on the bed and waits as she is told.

  At the door he turns around: I’m just going to say you’re here.

  Say to whom?

  To Liesl, says Shayek. I’ll just run down… It won’t take long, wait.

  The men come back inside.

  Do you know where he ran off to? one of them asks.

  Yes. To Liesl.

  And you’re not upset?

  No, why?

  She’s not bad-looking, Liesl, the man says. She’s young. A war widow. She kept your husband fed, cured him of pneumonia.

  That’s very noble. I’m grateful to her… Do you know what they called our prison in Vienna – its nickname, I mean? Liesl.

  You’re a sensible woman, the man acknowledges. He looks through the open door. Your husband’s back already… It seems he has a present for you.

  Souvenir

  What about my father? her husband asks.

  He’s gone.

  And Halina?

  She’s gone.

  Your mother?

  I don’t know. I had a dream… I was in a train and my mother was standing on the platform. The steps were too high and she couldn’t get in. I wanted to help her, but then the train started. Mama called out: Just go on, don’t worry about me! – and she pulled a hood over her head. I’d never seen that hood before. The train was going faster and faster, Mama was getting smaller and smaller and next she didn’t have a face. I woke up and told Nicole that I’d just spoken to my mother for the last time.

  Shayek doesn’t ask who Nicole is, so she doesn’t explain.

  They’re sitting in a clearing, on a hill. Down below they can see the barracks and, a little further on, the town.

  She counts all the ones who aren’t there: his father, mother, sisters, nephew, in-laws, her mother, father, friends – Hala and Basia…

  She folds down one finger at a time – first on one hand, then the other. Each palm turns into a fist. She stares at her hands.

  She says: We’re here, you and I are still here. She straightens out the index and middle fingers of her right hand, so that they look like V for victory or rabbit ears in a shadow theatre for children. I had faith that you would survive. I prayed… I was absolutely certain, even though you had those three horrible spades right next to you.

  What three horrible spades? her husband asks.

  Terenia said it meant you had to keep an eye out, because a dangerous person was lying in wait.

  Hartmann! her husband shouts. That had to be him, the meanest kapo in the whole camp. It couldn’t be anybody else.

  Did he get away?

  Are you kidding… That reminds me, I have a present.

  He reaches for a little package tied with an elegant ribbon (from Liesl’s braid, she guesses… or else her box of chocolates). He removes the paper. Inside the box, lying on a silver piece of foil taken from a packet of cigarettes, is a longish, dark object.

  Don’t you recognize it? her husband laughs. Those three spades! The Germans ran away, but the oven was still burning in the crematorium.

  The oven was still burning, her husband repeats a little absent-mindedly.

  Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe we lit it especially for Hartmann. Well? Tell me you appreciate it. This comes from his skull. I managed to save a piece specially for you.

  What about the rest of him? she asks, and wonders if she would be that indifferent if it were the skull of Aufseherin Piontek.

  They took him apart, he says, shrugging his shoulders. Broke him up into presents.

  You don’t like it… Shayek is visibly disappointed. Would you rather have some chocolate? I’ll bring you some.

  He stands up, but then remembers something.

  Listen… he lowers his voice, although there’s no one around. I didn’t tell you the most important thing. They think I’m Polish. I don’t know if you understand…

  I understand.

  Let’s keep it that way, he says. Let’s make sure no one ever finds out about us. Ever. No one. I don’t know if you understand me.

  I understand you very well.

  Shayek climbs a short distance down the slope and looks back. She’s sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her
husband isn’t looking at her face. He’s looking at her legs showing under her skirt and the white triangle of underwear between her thighs.

  What are you doing sitting like that! he shouts. Straighten your legs and sit decently!

  She straightens her legs.

  My legs no longer belong to me, she thinks, surprised. Their rightful owner has returned and he can tell them to do what he wants.

  She carefully adjusts her skirt. She stretches out on the warm moss – with joy and unbounded relief.

  The Return

  They take over the apartment on Operngasse. The SS man’s shoes fit her husband perfectly, they set their own pictures in the frames, she studies the map of Europe to find the way back to Poland.

  She marks out the route, but her husband says: Hold off on that, it’s really nice here in Vienna.

  They walk along the Danube, visit museums, drop by the offices of the Polish representation. They meet Stefa’s friend, the typist from the Ostbahn, who gave Izolda the patent-leather high heels. Stefa’s already in Australia, her friend knows the address. Izolda receives a letter from Australia, just a few lines: ‘I saw your mother in Warsaw, she wanted to leave, but didn’t have any place to go. She died in a basement in early August, during the first days of the uprising. I don’t know which basement, I wanted to find out, but then they sent us to the transit camp.’ In a PS, Stefa writes that she’s been accepted at the university to study psychology (they decided to count her first year from before the war), and asks if Izolda received the package she sent by registered mail. The package does arrive a few days later with a stamp from the Soviet customs office: provereno – verified. A small box wrapped in heavy grey paper, with a couple of bars of chocolate and Izolda’s compact. The one Shayek gave her at their engagement party. (They were all there: both mothers, both fathers, his sisters with their husbands, little Szymuś… No, Szymuś wasn’t there. He started to whine and Tusia put him to bed early.) The silver compact with the beautiful engraving, the one the Jewish policeman didn’t take at Umschlagplatz. The one the fortune-teller at the Saxon Gardens used to read the first letter of her real name. (It was in the autumn, Izolda was sitting on a bench. A woman she didn’t know approached her and said that for five zlotys she would read her name and her fortune from a mirror. Izolda handed her the compact. The woman wiped off the powder and peered into the mirror for several moments. I don’t know, she said at last, you have a long, difficult name that starts with the letter ‘I’… Back then she hadn’t been Izolda for a long time: she was Marynia. She had her identity card, the park was empty, the woman wasn’t a threat – but nevertheless Izolda jumped up, grabbed the compact and ran off as fast as she could.) The same that she left with Stefa before her last trip to Vienna – with the tobacco, the Count and Janka Tempelhof.

  Let’s go back, she repeats. It’s time to find out…

  Find out what? asks Shayek.

  About Lilusia. About Mrs Krusiewicz. About that basement…

  Her husband agrees, but first he wants to meet up with the boys. He has to talk with them, say goodbye.

  He rides out to Ebensee to see his comrades from the camp who are still there and who don’t know what to do next.

  He comes back with news: Poland is now communist, a plane arrived for the French prisoners at the camp (his friends believe a plane will arrive for them as well, most likely from America, but somehow it never does) and Liesl’s husband came back home, a fairly pleasant man, he was wounded, fortunately not too badly…

  They travel to Poland.

  Her husband insists on living in Łódź. (His father, Mosze Luzer Regensberg, owned a textile mill on Nowomiejska Street called Red and White that manufactured towels and bedding. Of course Shayek is no longer a Regensberg, and no one dares mention Mosze Luzer. Nevertheless, he insists that if they have to go back to Poland, they need to be near the defunct Red and White textile mill.)

  She visits a surgeon who removes the Jewish triangle and the Jewish A from her arm, leaving a tattooed number like the Aryans had, for a prisoner with a record, a number she can show the whole world in the summer when she wears a short-sleeved dress.

  She goes to a photographer and hands him a picture of a Jew with a beard – Mosze Luzer. She asks if the beard might be removed. It will be hard, says the photographer, but I’ll do my best. He creates a negative, retouches the beard and proudly delivers the prints. Prints that show Shayek’s father clean-shaven, the way he was under the windowsill at the honest widow’s. Shayek buys an elegant frame, puts the picture inside and hangs it in a conspicuous place.

  She signs up for nursing school.

  She gives birth to two daughters. She examines them warily. Each has dark features, but not like hers. The first thing she does is tell her husband they look like him. Which means: not like his father, Mosze Luzer, or her mother, Hinda.

  Mrs Krusiewicz is godmother to the elder daughter and Lilusia to the younger. Both celebrate their first communion on the same day, all excited, in beautiful dresses with charming garlands of fresh lilies-of-the-valley. The girls are very devout, never miss a Sunday Mass – the earliest one, at six in the morning – and on fast days they refuse to drink even water. Now and then they ask about their grandparents. Izolda has different variations of Polish death all prepared: partisans, Katyn, underground university, Warsaw Uprising, but the girls don’t pursue matters.

  Their life is safe and peaceful, disrupted only by her husband. He comes home from work and says: I saw a woman who looked like Halina. She even had Halina’s hair – yellowish blonde, but not ugly. I followed her off the tram. I stared at her a while and then said: Excuse me, I thought maybe my sister… You know – maybe she’s alive but doesn’t know that we are?

  They visit the apartment on Pomorska Street where his family lived before the war. They find the name REGENSBERG on an old list of tenants by the entrance. (I told you… her husband whispers.) They climb the first flight of stairs. The door is open, the apartment is being used as a clinic. Patients are waiting in the front hall, name tags of doctors are fixed to the dining-room and bedroom doors, his father’s office is now the reception. Is Mrs Regensberg here? her husband asks. Is she a nurse or a doctor? asks the receptionist. She’s my sister, her husband says. We… I’m so sorry to bother you.

  He comes back from work… He saw his father again, and with his beard, too. He followed him…

  Why should that person be alive, and with his black, Jewish beard, while my father isn’t? My father could be here… And my mother could be…

  If what? She sets down her coffee cup and looks at her husband.

  If they had stayed at the widow’s.

  She threw them out! On a scorching-hot day, when the sun was at its peak!

  Because you were at Pawiak. The woman became scared, that’s not so hard to understand. How did you end up at Pawiak anyway?

  I went to say goodbye to Basia Gajer, she explains for the umpteenth time.

  Exactly, says her husband. Did you really have to do that?

  Do you seriously think – she raises her voice – that your parents died because of me?

  Keep it down, her husband whispers. The building isn’t very soundproof – God forbid the neighbours might overhear what they’re talking about.

  Józefów

  Jurek Szwarcwald drops in. He’s wearing an officer’s uniform and is happy and proud because he won election to the Sejm as a representative from Pomerania. He’d been in charge of a propaganda brigade, agitating and writing political plays. The heroes were all peasants, workers and soldiers, while the villains were landowners and members of the reactionary underground. The plays were performed in army theatres, with 100 per cent attendance. His work was appreciated: the minister himself awarded him the Order of Polonia Restituta.

  Jurek Szwarcwald is there on business: he is selling his properties. As an honest communist he doesn’t want to be the owner of four summer houses in Józefów.

  (Summer in Józef�
�w…

  waking up in the dark, when the shutters are still closed…

  sunlight peeking through the little hearts carved in the shutters…

  walks in the sandy glades…

  the oak tree in the glade, so big and spreading, with cracked bark and so many acorns… It’s at least a hundred years old, said Fräulein Maria, but what’s that for an oak tree…

  Fräulein Maria Hunkert, Jurek Szwarcwald’s governess… after her own child died she became a wet nurse to little Jurek…

  acorn soldiers, acorn beads…

  evenings on the veranda… the kerosene lantern made of white majolica painted with colourful flowers and the slender, tall glass… the bright circle of light in the middle of the table…)

  Her husband would like to tell Jurek what he thinks of communism.

  She cuts him off, she doesn’t want to make their guest feel bad. Thanks to Jurek she found work in the typhus ward and thanks to him she met Bolek. If it weren’t for the typhus ward they wouldn’t have rescued her from Umschlagplatz. And if it weren’t for Bolek…

  A man comes who’s interested in buying the patch of forest and the summer houses. He notes that there aren’t many trees and that the houses are small, wooden, without running water.

  Jurek agrees with him completely and signs a piece of paper.

  The new owner of the summer houses and the woods hands Jurek the money and leaves.

  So, now we’ve taken care of Józefów, says Jurek Szwarcwald.

  Work

  She works as a dispatcher in an emergency-services centre. On a few occasions she refuses to send an ambulance to a party secretary. She very patiently explains that ambulances cannot be dispatched in cases that aren’t life-threatening, but they fire her anyway.