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

  The Handbag

  …she hands fifty zlotys to the guard and walks out of the ghetto with an unhurried step.

  She carries a handbag (which her mother bought for her at Herse’s right before graduation) and a small beach bag containing a nightdress, a toothbrush and her favourite yellow beach robe, which can also double for indoor use.

  She knocks, the door opens and standing at the threshold is Captain Szubert’s wife, Kazimiera, their neighbour from the summer house at Józefów, whom everyone calls Lilusia. Lilusia is already dressed. She’s tied her plait up in a bun and is holding a cigarette. She’s neither surprised nor frightened. Come in, she says, and quickly chains the door. And don’t cry, please, we mustn’t cry. ‘We’ she says. To a person who shouts ‘save me’ to a padlock. Who tries to hide in an undersized barrel. The wife of a Polish officer (her husband is a POW in Germany, she has a weapon hidden inside the folding table, and underground newspapers in the sofa bed) and she says ‘We’.

  Izolda stops crying and eats breakfast. She feels increasingly better. Part of a better world – an Aryan world, tasteful and tidy.

  A hairdresser friend treats her hair. First he bleaches out her natural colour with peroxide and then he dyes it ash-blonde. She looks in the mirror, pleased: that’s perfect, not like all those other little Jewish girls with hair as yellow as straw.

  She has nothing in common with the straw colour of those other little Jewish girls. She becomes a blonde, and a tall one at that, because her long, sturdy legs give her height. Satisfied, she returns to Lilusia Szubert.

  Lilusia has company: the caretaker of the building and his son. It’s secret school in the kitchen, today’s subject is Polish history: King Władysław Jagiełło fought, conquered and died… Where did he die? asks Lilusia. Władysław Jagiełło died in Gródek, very good, on the Wereszyca River, tomorrow we’ll look it up on the map, and what happened next? The boy doesn’t know what happened next, so Izolda excuses the interruption, greets the guests and drops her bag on the table, the carefree gesture of a tall blonde. Lilusia breaks off the lesson: Maria, take that handbag off the table, you can’t go tossing your bag around like some Jew girl. Izolda quickly picks up her handbag, excuses herself and laughs out loud with all the others. The guests take their leave, and Lilusia explains that she was being crafty, that her remark was meant to clear any suspicions on the part of the caretaker. Izolda understands Lilusia’s cunning, but then she takes a closer look at the handbag and sets it on the floor. How’s that? Does the bag look Jewish there? She tries the sofa, the stool, the chair. Because if it does, what exactly about the bag is Jewish? The patent leather is thin and soft, the colour of café au lait. The finish is scratched up and is coming off in places, but she can’t spot anything suspicious about the leather itself. How about the handle? Slightly bent, wrapped with braided silk, a little dirty, but it’s probably not about the braid. Or the lining, also silk, which can’t even be seen and which her manicure kit has torn in a couple places. Once again: on the floor, the stool, the chair… Does the bag look Jewish?

  The Voice

  Passes for the ghetto are issued at Krasiński Square, inside the old theatre warehouse (formerly used for storing sets and costumes). She steps up to the German clerk and introduces herself as Maria Pawlicka. She used to keep house for a Jewish family, she left some of her belongings with them and now she needs them back because she doesn’t have a thing. To prove her point she lifts her blouse a bit to show there’s nothing underneath. The German looks up from under his glasses. A civilian, completely grey-headed except for two tufts of red hair sticking out of his ears. Those hairs make her feel a little safer; they remind her of a doctor she once knew who’d moved from Vilna to be with his grandchildren in Józefów. The doctor used to examine her when she was little, whenever she had bronchitis. He never had his stethoscope with him, so he’d hold his ear against her chest and say breathe, breathe, in his funny eastern Polish accent. The red hairs sticking out of his ears tickled so much that her mother had to quiet her down.

  The German with the same colouring as the doctor from Vilna lowers his glasses and writes out, very meticulously: Maria Pawlicka. She takes her pass and crosses into the ghetto (through the theatre warehouse) but right away is stopped by a German gendarme who doesn’t like the look of her permit. He rips it in half and sends her back to the Aryan side. She shows the torn pieces to the clerk. So is that all your piece of paper is worth?

  She’s amazed at her own voice – fast, shrill, all the words in one breath – and is somewhat surprised to recognize the voice of Wandzia, the red-headed daughter of the caretaker at Ogrodowa Street. Izolda had been there once when Wandzia came back from a wedding and immediately wanted something to eat. Didn’t they have any food at the wedding? her mother asked. They did, but they didn’t exactly force it down our throats, the dogs – and then the girl burst into laughter. Izolda would occasionally imitate that laugh and that voice – high, provocative, self-assured. Just right for a tall blonde, she thinks now, with satisfaction, as she places the damaged permit on the German’s desk. Repeating his earlier gesture, the clerk lifts his glasses. Without a word he glues the paper back together and stamps it once again. This time they let her in.

  She hands the document to her mother and they both walk out of the ghetto. Her mother by way of the guard post, Izolda through the theatre warehouse. The old clerk doesn’t stop her, he knows her papers are in order.

  The Sisters

  They take the train. Izolda’s hair is stylishly rolled up at the back. Her mother is dressed in black and is her usual sad silent self. (Her silence is the good kind, from the old days when – mostly over dessert – she would prop her head on her hands and listen to her husband’s tirades on politics or life or love or smiles, especially female smiles – his favourite subject. That and roulette, which he played in Sopot. How the wheel spins and how women smile. The smiles come in two types: consenting and encouraging. And when I see a consenting smile it’s impossible for me to back away – he boasted to his wife and daughter and to the young governess. Mother didn’t show either type of smile, only a sad grimace, her mouth turned down at the corners.)

  Izolda looks cautiously around. Do the passengers realize that her mother’s sadness and her black dress come from normal times? That the furrows around her mouth aren’t the despair of the ghetto, but simply the bitterness of a wife betrayed? That she’s in mourning because of her son, who did not die of starvation or in the cattle wagon, but simply of pneumonia? In a word, do the passengers crowded into the third-class compartment realize that her mother’s black dress and sadness are good, non-Jewish sadness and safe, non-Jewish black?

  They arrive at the house of Shayek’s two sisters and his little nephew Szymuś. Izolda leaves her mother with them, but that turns out to be a bad idea. The sisters are terrified. A szmalcownik spotted them at the station and blackmailed them out of a ring, and they worry he might have followed them home. I’ll come back for you as soon as I find another place, she promises her mother. The sisters ask Izolda to look after their brother. And our parents, Hela insists. And our brother, and our youngest sister, Halina. And our parents. Why me? she asks herself in the train on the way back. Absent-mindedly she adjusts her hair, which is dyed, in contrast to Hela’s, which is real, genuine blonde. Why what? asks the conductor. She realizes that she’s been talking out loud. She smiles at the conductor: Why nothing, nothing at all.

  Bolek

  Jurek Szwarcwald has a talent for finding decent people. Not only does he know a doctor who operates on Jews (the man lengthened Jurek’s foreskin and shortened Jurek’s wife’s nose right before he was killed in a public execution in the middle of town), but he also manages to meet Bolek. Bolek crosses into the ghetto several times a week. By day completely legally, with a construction firm sent in to tear down buildings destroyed in the fighting. At night illegally, on other business, through the sewer system.

  Jurek tells Izolda where to
go and how many times to knock. She finds Bolek in a basement carpentry workshop, full of shavings and sawdust, planes, files. A few men are sitting on a stack of boards, thin, wiry, unshaven, with unbuttoned shirts and not exactly sober. She explains who sent her.

  So? asks Bolek.

  She explains that her husband is in the ghetto.

  So?

  So we have to get him out. We can’t use the guard any more, but my husband could go with you, through the sewers.

  With me, love? Bolek gives her a patronizing smile. First someone would have to go and find him, and we can’t leave our site. It’s dangerous inside the ghetto, love. Terrible things happening there. Who’s going to fetch your husband?

  I will, she says. I’ll go along and bring him to you.

  Bolek stops smiling, stops calling her ‘love’. He buttons his shirt and gets up off the boards.

  You mean you’ll go through the sewers, ma’am?

  Where do I meet you? she asks.

  A Request

  She waits by the manhole. The sun goes down, but there’s no sign of Bolek. Sirens signal an air raid. She heads to the nearby garrison chapel. She opens the door and takes a few steps in the dark. A priest is standing in the aisle holding a book. Just saying my prayers… He smiles at her. They’re close to the ghetto wall and can hear single shots from the other side. My God, the things going on over there, the priest whispers, and turns his head towards the shooting. My husband is over there, she whispers. The priest places his hand on her shoulder and says: I’ll pray for him, what more can I do? And with his other hand, the one holding the prayer book, he makes a helpless gesture (which reminds her a little of Jurek Gajer before she was marched off to Umschlagplatz: ‘I can’t do anything to help you, you see for yourself.’). You could give him a baptismal certificate, Father, she suggests. Just one, for a young man. The priest doesn’t reply. And a place to stay? The priest thinks for a moment. Please come back, he says, and breaks out in a violent, hacking cough. Best would be two places, she quickly adds, speaking over the cough, but the priest clears his throat, covers his mouth with a handkerchief and retreats to the sacristy.

  She returns a few days later. She wants to explain to the priest why she asked for two places to stay. One is for people with ‘bad’ looks who can’t show themselves on the street, who speak with a strong Yiddish accent; the other is for people with fairly ‘good’ looks who speak proper Polish. The second one, she plans to explain, wouldn’t be all that risky.

  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.

  Tailors

  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?

  Father

  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 di
scovery 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.)