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

  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?

  Hotel Terminus

  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.

  Justice

  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.

  Armchair. Another Stupid Mistake

  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?

  The Widow

  Her husband’s parents spend all day sitting on the floor; they crawl to the bathroom. The honest widow doesn’t allow them to walk around the apartment, and she’s right: someone in the building opposite could look through the window and see everything. His parents have terrible looks and a terrible accent. They need to be well hidden and the greater the risk, the more you have to pay.

  Her husband starts working for Bolek. He’s no longer Shayek or Wolf, but Władek. During the day he enters the ghetto and loads bricks on to horse carts; at night he goes back through the sewers to pick up the Jewish belongings stashed in the ruins. He sells them to regular customers, uses the proceeds to buy food for the Jews, and gives what’s left to the widow. When the fighting breaks out in the ghetto and he can no longer work day or night, the widow still keeps her lodgers – a magnanimous woman.

  Izolda and her husband look at the flames. At the black smoke rising over the wall. They listen to the shooting, and guess where the shots are coming from, what is burning, where people are trying to escape. (Will they manage to get out or will they die in the flames?) Every now and then someone walking on the pavement or waiting for the tram turns to them and says: ‘Holy Jesus, what a terrible thing,’ or words to that effect, and when that happens they are afraid. Why is the person saying that to them? Dear God, why them? They don’t answer, just he
ad off as fast as they can. They want to keep as far as possible from people who are saddened and sympathetic. But if someone says: ‘Look at those Yids getting fried,’ then they’re calm, because it’s clear no one suspects who they are. When that happens they don’t hurry away, just stand there: Oh well, they’re getting fried all right.

  In the middle of May the uprising dies down. Bolek’s people return to work. It’s high time, the widow is beginning to get impatient.

  The Acquaintance

  Her husband leads the parents of a friend through the sewers out of the ghetto. They can both pass as Poles. The mother is tall and hefty, the father has a moustache, so it’s all right to take them home. (Lilusia found an apartment for Izolda and Shayek on Mariańska Street. The former owners were Jewish and the caretaker Mateusz is kind and trustworthy. The place had been looted, but they repaired the windows, put in a stove and installed a pipe and made themselves at home.)

  Everything would be all right if Shayek’s friend had sensible parents: the apartment is close to the stairwell and the neighbours can hear every sound. Unfortunately they aren’t sensible. They boil water, they bang around lighting the stove and eventually they have to move out.

  Her husband finds them another place and takes them there.

  On the street they see an acquaintance, a Jew from Łódź. The acquaintance sees them as well and gives a friendly smile. The couple smile back and go on.

  They go inside the apartment. An hour later someone knocks at the door. They look through the peephole: it’s the acquaintance from Łódź.

  When they open the door they realize he isn’t alone but with some policemen, who haul everyone down to the station. There they let Shayek go and take the elderly couple to the Kripo.

  The next day her husband wakes up saying that they have to help those people. Her circumcised husband. Whose papers are forged. Whose wife dyes her hair. Whose parents are hiding under a windowsill. Who has sacks of Jewish belongings stashed in the ruins of the ghetto. And he wants to go to the Kripo. She blocks his way and yells: Why are you going? For whom? You’re the one who’s supposed to live, not them. He pushes her off and walks out. But he doesn’t accomplish anything. Lucky the Germans don’t check inside his fly.

  A couple of weeks later a card arrives from the camp, with two words: ‘Save us.’ Shayek’s friend sends a telegram, with six words: ‘Save them, where to send money?’ If they were my parents, Izolda tells her husband, I would get on the train to save them myself, but her husband understands his friend well. She doesn’t want to lose her job housekeeping in a German home. She wants to stay there quietly until the end of the war. Shayek is right. His friend will survive, while her parents, who in their desperation were so bold as to put Shayek’s life in jeopardy, will die in the camp.

  Armchair. A Problem

  She should have told her husband to take them one at a time: first the father, then the wife. Or vice versa: first the wife – surely the acquaintance from Łódź wouldn’t have recognized her. But he would have spotted the husband, since they had done business together. No, Shayek should have taken the husband first. He would have been caught, but the wife would have survived. Of course she would have been caught too, only later… What about the acquaintance from Łódź, did he survive the war? Obviously he was saving himself and those closest to him, every Jewish informer was saving someone. There’s just one problem: at what cost do you save yourself? And who thinks about that problem when you have to save someone?

  A Virgin

  Her husband helps another person he knows to escape through the sewers. The woman spends the night in Bolek’s basement – Izolda is to pick her up early in the morning.

  The woman has a ‘good’ look: thick plait, grey eyes, fair skin and a small nose sprinkled with freckles. They head home. At the first corner they run into a policeman. He looks the women over, grabs the girl by the plait and pulls her into an entrance. The girl pushes him away, the policeman jostles her against the wall and unbuttons her blouse. Mister, Izolda says in her non-Jewish voice, who do you think you are? Why don’t you go out and catch some Jews and leave decent people alone! So? – the policeman turns away from the woman’s bust – You want me to go to the workshop in the basement? The sewer guides are still there, Bolek, her husband… Shut your mouth, he barks at the girl, but she has no intention of doing so. On the contrary, she starts wailing louder and louder: Let me go, I’m still a virgin… The situation is getting unpleasant. People are going to work, they might hear, might get curious… Because who shouts ‘I’m a virgin’ at dawn? And who can a policeman shove around inside an entrance like that and get away with it? They could be in for a lot of trouble. Fortunately the policeman is put off by the fact that the girl is a virgin. So he turns to Izolda, and she already knows what to do. She doesn’t wail and doesn’t struggle. The acquaintance looks discreetly away. The policeman buttons his pants and the two women go home.

  The Sweater

  Basia and Jurek Gajer are leaving Poland.

  The Germans announce that any Jews who are citizens of other countries will be allowed to leave and people buy foreign passports on the black market. Basia and Jurek purchase ones from Honduras and report to the Hotel Polski on Długa Street.

  Izolda wants to say goodbye to Basia.

  Because it was at her place that she saw a blond man with helpless hands.

  Because it was in her apartment that he said: You look like a rabbi’s daughter. To which she said: My father is a chemist who’s searching for a colour that isn’t in the rainbow. That’s almost the same thing, he said, smiling, and that’s how love began.

  Izolda wants to catch up before they leave and stays the night with the Gajers. They talk about Honduras, about how they’ll have to learn Spanish. That Spanish isn’t all that hard. That Basia’s colourful sweater will come in handy on the journey. (Basia explains the stitch – which loop goes where – and shows how she tied off all the bits of wool on the inside and covered the knots with a dark pink lining.)

  The Germans surround the Hotel Polski at five in the morning. They send everyone to Pawiak prison and separate the Jews from the Poles. Izolda shows her identity card made out to Maria Pawlicka and stays with the Poles who came to say goodbye. Basia and Jurek show their Honduran passports and stay with the Jews. The Germans take the Jews away, the Poles stay in prison. She spends two months in Pawiak.

  The Prayer

  There are cells on both sides of the corridor. One is for Jewish women. Every day, on her way to the toilet, Izolda steals a glance at them through the spyhole. One morning she notices her husband’s mother. She’s sitting sideways, resting her chin on her withered, wrinkled hand. That evening she’s facing the door, as though she were looking straight at her daughter-in-law.

  Izolda shrinks back in a panic.

  She returns to her cell.

  She asks a new arrival who else the Germans had arrested the day before.

  Several people.

  Was there a tall young man with straight blond hair?

  Yes, there was a man with blond hair.

  And how about a dark-haired man with a beard… No, what am I saying, without a beard, quite a bit older…

  Yes, there was a man with dark hair.

  And a girl? With bleached yellow hair?

  No, no girl.

  It’s all clear: they caught her husband and his parents, but his sister managed to escape. Izolda struggles not to shout: Listen, everyone, they took my husband! I don’t have anyone to live for! But what sense would that make, the women in the cell can’t help her, the guards even took away their hairpins. She looks at the others with envy. They wound up here at Pawiak for an important cause, for some act of patriotism. They taught children Polish history or carried secret messages or printed underground leaflets… Is it her fault that her only cause is her husband?

  For exercise the women are let out into the prison yard.

  They totter about, one behind the other, under the ey
e of the female guard. After a moment five figures appear on the steps – the women from the Jewish cell. Izolda knows – everyone knows – that the Jewish cell is headed into the ruins of the ghetto. Where they will be shot.

  Izolda sees her husband’s mother.

  The Polish women walk four abreast and turn to the left just as the Jewish women pass by, so the two groups are facing each other.

  She is frightened.

  His mother will recognize her.

  His mother will give her away with a look, a gesture… Will she smile? Will she say something?

  Izolda starts to pray. The way she always does, to the Mother of God on Lilusia’s medallion. May she not look in my direction… Let her walk past me… She breaks out in a sweat, she’s wet with fear, she tries speeding up her pace and slowing down… The Jewish cell keeps moving across the yard, her own mother-in-law is walking to her death and Izolda is asking the Mother of God to make her step more quickly.

  The Jewish women march out of the yard.

  The Polish women walk in a circle, in silence, one behind the other.

  Shots ring out.

  She counts to five.

  She thinks: Now it’s my husband’s turn, now Shayek

  will be taken out and shot.

  The women return to their cell.

  The next day someone hands her a smuggled message, from her husband.

  The Germans had hauled in a different tall young man with blond hair.

  Scorching Hot

  The Germans free the women detained at the Hotel Polski.