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

  She gives up nursing.

  She helps her husband with his textile business. He owns several looms but unfortunately they start having problems with the yarn supply.

  They switch to plastic mats and doilies. The pattern is cut on to a stencil which is covered with material and baked in an oven. The doilies look hand-made and the clients like them, but they start having problems with the polyvinyl chloride supply.

  They switch to gold belts for dresses. Their clients like that even more, but the revenue office puts a duty on gold foil, the problems keep getting worse.

  Travel Document

  They summon her husband to the milicja.

  It’s not about taxes, duties or gold foil. A few yellowed papers are lying on the officer’s desk. The officer slides them towards her husband and gestures politely for him to read.

  One paper is the birth certificate of Mosze Luzer Regensberg. The second is a marriage certificate for Mosze Luzer and Regina Rutenberg. The third is an order for the firm Red and White.

  Shayek touches the cards very carefully, as though he were afraid they might fall apart in his hands, but the officer reassures him: That’s good, pre-war paper, Mr Pawlicki, it’s been through a lot. Well? the officer asks, with a sigh. When are we going back to our real names? Don’t you think it’s about time, Mr Regensberg?

  They go to the passport office. If they list their nationality as ‘Jewish’ they’ll be issued passports within a week.

  They list their nationality as Jewish and are given cards marked ‘Dokument Podróży’. The ‘travel document’ informs in several languages that the bearer is not a Polish citizen: vladelets nastoyashchego dokumenta… le titulaire de ce titre…

  Mrs Krusiewicz has passed away, they say goodbye to one person: Kazimiera Szubert.

  Lilusia sits in her armchair, her twisted hands clutching a walking stick. She scans the travel document with slight disgust. She thinks for a moment… probably about what to give them as a farewell gift.

  The medallion – she asks suddenly. With the Mother of God… Do you still have it?

  I have to confess I don’t.

  You don’t have the medallion? With the Mother of God? She had a tear… Not very large, but it was there – right on her cheek. Do you happen to remember where you lost it?

  I do. I lost it in Auschwitz.

  In Auschwitz… Lilusia repeats. In Auschwitz, I see…

  Don’t cry, she reminds Lilusia. Don’t you know that we mustn’t cry?

  Walls

  They’re back in Vienna.

  Her daughters study at the university, her husband has a shop selling jeans. She helps him out, taking care of the clients. She hands one young man sixteen pairs, he tries each of them on and finally buys the seventeenth. She wishes him a good holiday and wonders if it’s possible to escape from a jeans shop. It is possible, but where to?

  They return home, tired. Without taking off his coat, her husband switches on the record player – a piercing, mournful Jewish song. He drops into the armchair, props his head on his hands and stares at the photographs that hang, enlarged, on every wall. Hela is wearing a pink hat and a summer dress with large pink flowers – the photographer painted the cheerful, pastel colours on to the old picture. Luckily Halina is in black and white, so her overly yellow hair isn’t too conspicuous. Shayek’s father appears in two versions: with and without beard. Tusia is lost in thought, calm as always, her hair combed smooth and parted, with a black velvet bow below her white collar. And her son Szymuś, more serious than his six years. And Zosia, the prettiest of the sisters, whom she never met, the sister who left for Lwów and never got in touch.

  What are you doing sitting there? she asks her husband. Why are you staring at them? When they were alive you always quarrelled.

  That’s not true, he says, I didn’t quarrel with them at all.

  What are you saying? The first time I went to your house you were very put out with Halina.

  I said I was sorry. And – you may not remember – I even praised her soup…

  Because I asked you to. We were sitting at the table and you said: This soup is delicious, did you make it? Halina smiled and said: I’m glad you like it. I whispered to you: Say something nice about the soup.

  There, you see. I made up with all of them and so I’m allowed to be despondent. I want to be despondent, so leave me alone.

  Her younger daughter meets a boy, a Jew from Sweden. She abandons her Polish love, the architecture student Sławek B., and goes on holiday with the Swede. They spend it on a kibbutz and when she comes back she informs her parents that she’s moving to Israel.

  The country is in a state of war, she explains to her daughter.

  It’s my country, her daughter says.

  They’ll draft your husband.

  So? It’s his army and his country.

  He might die! Don’t you understand that they could kill him?

  So they’ll kill him. He’ll die for his country.

  During the war I was the same age you are now, she tells her daughter. And there was no cause more important to me than my husband. The whole world could fall apart as long as he survived, and you?

  And I have more important causes, her daughter says. Causes worth dying for.

  Izolda remembers her conversation with Nicole – about her children not dying, guilty of nothing but… It must have been an evil hour when she said those words, she thinks, terrified.

  The Letter

  First one daughter and then the next move to Israel, leaving them all alone in the Viennese apartment.

  Nothing much changes in their lives.

  She gets up first. She puts coffee in the espresso pot and sets two cups on the table. She wakes her husband. They go to work, sell jeans. They come back. She cooks dinner. Her husband sits in the armchair.

  Why don’t you say anything? she asks.

  He says he doesn’t want to.

  You’re thinking about them again.

  No, he says, I’m thinking about myself.

  And what are you thinking?

  I’m wondering.

  Wondering what?

  He doesn’t answer. But she knows: he’s wondering whether he ought to have survived the war. Why he? Out of his entire family? Why? With what right?

  She knows exactly why he survived: it was because of her. The Americans liberated him, but they weren’t the ones who saved him. Her love, her thoughts, her strength and her prayers kept him alive.

  (Don’t tell him that he survived because of you, Lilusia advised her. Don’t ever tell him that…)

  Our daughters wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t survived… Our daughters have your sisters’ faces. Who would have your sisters’ faces if it weren’t for you?

  He doesn’t answer, but she knows anyway: now he’ll think about his sisters.

  She goes to bed. Her husband gets up from the armchair and sits down at the desk.

  Undoubtedly he’s sending one more ad to some paper in Israel or America or the Ukraine: ‘Seeking my sister Zosia Regensberg, nineteen years old, daughter of Regina and Mosze Luzer Regensberg. Last seen in Lwów…’

  Undoubtedly he’ll stop writing… He’ll hesitate… He’ll cross out ‘nineteen’ and start to count… Undoubtedly he’ll be surprised… Sixty? How is that possible?

  She gets up first.

  She goes to the kitchen.

  She reaches for the coffee, the coffee canister is on the shelf, over the sewing machine.

  On top of the machine, just below the label ‘Singer’, is a folded sheet of paper.

  She pours coffee into the espresso pot, places two cups on the table, puts on her glasses and unfolds the paper. It’s a letter to her. Her husband informs her that he’s going away, for ever. ‘I’m leaving and won’t be back. I’ll pay you fifty dollars a week. I’ll also pay the rent and the telephone, on the condition the bills aren’t extravagant. I wish you all the best…’

  A Book

  She likes Israe
l.

  People aren’t shy about giving advice: in the bus they tell her where to get off, in the stop what to buy, at the post office which card to send for New Year and which for Rosh Hashanah. Everyone wants to know where she was during the war and everyone wants to tell her something. In Tel Aviv she asks how to find the bus station and a woman tells her all about herself and then about her husband, who was at the Hotel Polski… She interrupts the woman: It was because of Hotel Polski that I ended up in Pawiak. In Pawiak? the woman cries out. My brother was in Pawiak. They stand on the street and after an hour she asks: So, where is the bus station?

  She listens to strangers’ tales with genuine sympathy: one person hid in a basement, another in a root cellar, an attic, a closet, a haystack. They lived through terrible things, but their experiences weren’t so varied. Unlike hers.

  She grows more and more convinced that her life is a great subject for a book. Or even a film.

  She’s lucky: the Americans are making a film at the Jerusalem airport about a hijacked Israeli plane, starring Elizabeth Taylor.

  She rides out to the airport. They don’t want to let her in. She explains to the officer in charge of security that she has to speak at once to the actress. The officer wants to know what about. About life – a life that will make a great film, Taylor could play the lead. The officer looks at the number on her arm. My father died there… he says. There, you see, she says – and I stepped right up to Dr Mengele.

  The officer discourages her from talking to the movie star and advises her to start with a book instead: You need to find a good writer.

  She works hard, taking care of old people. She is patient. To the professor who fled Germany after Kristallnacht she speaks in a low voice, one syllable at a time (he’s a little deaf and can’t hear long words or high pitches). To the lawyer who spent the war in the Soviet Union she speaks of Poland. How often did they change your bedding? he asks. Where do you mean? You know… in Auschwitz. Not very often, right?

  She takes a holiday once a year, always in the summer. She spends it looking for a good writer. The person shouldn’t be young, should know what war is like, what love is like.

  She starts with a writer in Israel, not young.

  The writer agrees with her, her life would be a great subject for a book, but she has to write it herself. It’s not that hard, he assures her, I’ll give you an example. You’re riding to Vienna with the tobacco. You place your black lacquered suitcase on the shelf, a moment later an SS man enters the compartment – tall and very handsome. He places his yellow pigskin suitcase beside your black one and sits across from you. Maybe he stands next to the window. He smokes a cigarette… He’s clearly waiting for someone… The writer stops. And then what? she asks. How am I supposed to know? the writer answers, impatient. You’re the one who’s supposed to know, not me, as it is I’ve already said a lot. Izolda insists: At least tell me what he has in the yellow suitcase. And who he’s waiting for next to the window… That’s precisely the secret, says the writer. That’s what has to be unravelled, that’s the essence of literature…

  From time to time her husband calls their daughters from Vienna.

  Papa called, her daughter says.

  And?

  Everything’s OK. He feels fine, the jeans are selling well…

  Did he ask about me?

  No.

  Did you say anything about me?

  He didn’t ask.

  The next writer lives in France.

  She tells him about her extraordinary life… The Doctor? he cries out. I know him! He hid me and my wife. And a translator of German poetry. You could forgive him…

  Forgive?! He led me on, cheated me, robbed me of hope. I should forgive him because he saved someone else?

  The Doctor saved me, the writer repeats.

  (He won’t write about Izolda. He’s interested in his own stories, not other people’s.)

  She offers an author in Poland a nice honorarium. The woman writes a book but it does not meet Izolda’s expectations. Not enough feeling. Not enough love, loneliness and tears. Not enough heart. Not enough words. Not enough of everything, simply not enough.*

  Sochaczewski

  Her husband has had a heart attack.

  His coronary disease is getting worse.

  His depression is getting deeper.

  He agrees to spend a holiday together.

  Concentration-camp survivors can receive free treatment at German sanatoriums every two years. A designated doctor examines them and if the illness is the result of Nazi persecution they receive a referral. Not every illness is the result of Nazi persecution, for instance heart disease is not. But depression is. The doctor prescribes a change of environment (that’s worked wonders in similar cases) and they travel to the sanatorium.

  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?

  Beseder

  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?

  The Monument

  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.