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

  She goes back home.

  She learns from her husband that when the widow learnt Izolda was being held at Pawiak she got scared and threw out Shayek’s sister and parents. She ordered them to leave at once, in the middle of the day, when the sun was at its peak. And so his parents found themselves on the street, with their ‘bad’ looks and their poor command of Polish – his parents who didn’t know the city and who had spent the past six months sitting on the floor.

  The day was scorching hot. They must have been blinded by the sun. They looked pale in their heavy dark overcoats – they’d put on their winter clothes before leaving. Like two blind people led by a yellow-haired girl. Shayek’s mother believed Halina looked Aryan enough to save herself if she were on her own, and begged her to go: Leave us, please, just walk away, don’t stay with us – but Halina didn’t want to leave them and the three of them walked on.

  They came to the Church of Our Redeemer.

  They sat down in a pew. They stayed for several hours, hoping to spend the night there, but someone informed the police. An older man went over to them and whispered: They’re waiting for you… outside the church… Shayek’s mother jumped up and dashed on to the street; the policemen chased after her. Halina and her father made it to the courtyard next door.

  They took her to Pawiak, her husband explains. Evidently they’ve already shot her…

  Yes, she says. They’ve already shot her.

  Did you see her? her husband asks.

  Only her back.

  Then she corrects herself: First her face, then her back.

  She hears her calm, even voice. The voice of her husband when he told her about her father. The voice of the tailors in the ghetto. His mother’s gone… That’s too bad… We’re still here.

  Kangur

  Izolda spends a long time at the post office, putting calls in to Krakow for ‘Mr Pawlicki’. When he picks up she asks what’s going on and Mr Pawlicki reports that yesterday there was a wind off the mountains but today the weather is nice. Or that it’s windy today and supposed to be nice tomorrow. This means that everything is in order: her husband met the people in Krakow and escorted them out of the city to meet ‘Kangur’. Kangur will see them to the border, after which some locals will guide them through the Tatras, into Slovakia. The service costs twenty dollars in gold certificates, her husband will receive his share and be able to pay the honest landlady in Śródborów, where Izolda’s mother, Halina and Shayek’s father are all living in a gatehouse.

  She goes to the post office. Places a call to Krakow. She waits an hour, the operator reports that Mr Pawlicki doesn’t answer, would you like to wait? Two hours pass and still no Mr Pawlicki.

  She tries the next day. No Mr Pawlicki.

  On the third day a man she doesn’t recognize answers the phone. Mr Pawlicki has had an accident, very serious.

  She travels to Krakow. The Germans cordoned off the block and took everyone (the man explains), gagged them (she tries to imagine her husband’s mouth gagged, she doesn’t know what that looks like, she’s never seen mouths like that) and bound their feet and legs. The man pays for the tea and whispers: They’re still in prison. She whispers back: I see, says goodbye and goes to the train station.

  King of Hearts

  The train from Krakow arrives at dawn. Izolda runs straight from the station to Lilusia Szubert’s sister Terenia and immediately starts to explain everything: cordon, gag, prison, Kangur… But she doesn’t have to. Terenia reaches for a pack of cards: Shuffle them, she says, and cut them with your right hand, towards yourself. Then she lays out the cards and sees everything: a man with blond hair, in love, in other words the king of hearts. See, he’s already out of the door. Terenia studies the picture cards and suddenly her voice becomes gleeful: your king has a trip ahead of him, what are you worried about?!

  She’s right, too: there he is, second row, first card on the right – the king of hearts. Next to him is the six of hearts, which means a trip. Of course those three spades are a bad sign, Terenia explains, but even that’s not so tragic: you should be getting news any day now.

  She does get news, but it’s from Auschwitz, though at least there’s an address where she can send packages. On the official postcard her husband writes: ‘I’m healthy, send something to eat.’ She sends bread, smoked bacon, onions, one kilogram of sugar and one of lard. That costs 120 zlotys, she’s allowed to send one package per month. Even if I have to die doing it, she tells Lilusia, even if I have to sell myself, I’m going to get that 120 zlotys every month.

  Chambre séparée

  She eats her midday meals at the Rose – a restaurant dating from before the war, not elegant perhaps, but respectable. The building was hit by a bomb during the invasion, but the ground floor survived, so the owner cleaned up the debris, replaced the windowpanes and invited her old patrons back. And they came – professors from the nearby polytechnic and their wives (who now bake cakes at home to sell at the Kiercelak market), as well as the wives of officers currently prisoners in German camps. New customers appear: black marketeers, money changers, smugglers. The owner asks the waiter (not for the first time) to show the new customers a little more courtesy, the waiter assures her that he will try his best.

  Izolda shows up at the usual time and takes a seat. Roman the waiter brings dumplings with beetroot and asks if he should bring her husband’s meal or are we waiting for him? We’re not waiting, she says, my husband’s in Auschwitz. And you know what? she adds. I have to get him out.

  They give her an extra serving of thick sauce, on the house. Handing Roman her dirty plate, she says: I’ll need money. Do you understand? Lots of money… She gets up and whispers into his thinning grey hair: I can count on your help, can’t I?

  A few days later the waiter points to a closed door next to the bar: There… he’s waiting for you… She hesitates: Roman, she whispers… Roman shrugs his shoulders: What would you like with your dumplings, beetroot or cabbage?

  The room next to the bar looks exactly the way a chambre séparée should at a place like the Rose. Discreet lighting, red-velvet curtains in the window, a bouquet of dried red roses on a small table and a slightly worn sofa. A corpulent man is sitting on the sofa, wearing a tight, unbuttoned vest. He’s spread his legs, so that his stomach spills over his lap. A perfectly nice older gentleman waiting for a woman.

  He asks Izolda to sit down. He moves closer. He lifts her skirt and strokes her thigh. He’s moved by the sight of the run in her stocking and promises new ones, real silk. Do you like me? she asks. If you do, then please, don’t buy me anything. Just give me money. I’ll do whatever you want, but I need lots of money. You see, my husband is in Auschwitz.

  They look at each other. She with her bare thigh and the nice older man with a pinkish, perspiring bald spot. He takes his hand away. Auschwitz, he repeats, in a sad voice… He’s lost all interest in her stockings and thighs. And I’m going to get him out of there, she adds, fixing her skirt. She smiles nicely and leaves the room. As she passes the waiter she shrugs her shoulders: Unfortunately, Roman, that’s not what I meant.

  The Jar

  Her husband had told her to take the unpaved road from the station and cross through the garden plots in the direction of the mountains. She climbs up the road; the garden plots give way to meadows and gloomy, pitiless trees. On the left should be a large solitary house. And there it is, a pretty wooden house with a veranda all around – the kind of house people from the city built so they could spend their summers with lots of children, a resident aunt making jams and jellies, and artistic friends of questionable health. Izolda hopes it will have a large tiled stove so she can get warm.

  The stove is cold. The armchairs are draped with white covers. Evidently Kangur doesn’t have consumptive artist friends. He serves her some strong tea. Among the unwashed shot glasses and the remnants of stale bread scattered on the kitchen table, she notices a photograph propped against a silver sugar bowl. The woman in the picture is w
earing a fur toque with an embroidered veil; she is heavily made up and has bright, audacious eyes. He’s doing this for her, Izolda thinks, she’s the reason Kangur needs the gold dollars. Does she, too, need to get someone out? Izolda studies the woman with envy. Not only does she have eyes like that – she has Kangur.

  She tells him in no uncertain terms that she’s every bit as capable of shepherding people as her husband. And, if she knew the route through the Tatras…

  Unfortunately, Kangur won’t be taking anyone else and won’t be hiring her. He’s sorry about the mishap. He can’t lend her any money (unfortunately). So there’s nothing you can do? she asks. He can give her an address (he jots something on a napkin), but that’s all.

  The address is for an acquaintance – a Hungarian Jew living in Krakow. The man has a young face and old, tired eyes. He won’t lend Izolda any money (unfortunately), but he would be interested in getting his hands on some cyanide. He mentions this very casually, just as she’s leaving. A large jar.

  In Warsaw she stops in a chemist’s shop that she knows from before the war. She used to pass it whenever she went to Pomianowski’s bakery, and she always took a moment to look at the display window full of mortars and little bottles and colourful soaps.

  The chemist’s smells of eau de toilette. She’s the only customer. She steps up to the counter and says: I’m interested in potassium cyanide. A large jar.

  How soon do you need it? The man at the counter doesn’t seem the least bit surprised.

  Today.

  It’ll be tomorrow.

  How much does it cost?

  Five hundred.

  The next day she wonders who’s going to be waiting for her: the Gestapo or the Polish police.

  The same man is at the counter. He locks the door and hands her a jar wrapped in newspaper. She gives him her mother’s ring as security – gold, with a large, pale-pink pearl – and takes the train back to Krakow.

  How much? asks the Hungarian Jew.

  One thousand.

  He tells her to come back in the afternoon, he obviously wants to check the goods. The cyanide passes the test and in the evening he pays her 1,000 zlotys.

  She doesn’t ask what he needs the poison for. She presumes it’s for other Jews – Polish or Hungarian.

  Waiting

  She’s back in her room at Mrs Krusiewicz’s (she moved from Mariańska Street right after she got out of Pawiak).

  Mrs Krusiewicz works as a seamstress. She is exact, serious and has principles inherited from her mother, who also sewed for a living.

  Izolda has never known a seamstress and sometimes her new landlady’s habits surprise her. For instance, every day at two in the afternoon Mr Krusiewicz closes his shop with religious icons and hangs a sign in the door that says ‘Closed for lunch’ and at two-thirty Mrs Krusiewicz places a soup tureen on the table. Occasionally Mr Krusiewicz is late and the tureen is sitting there, the soup has turned cold, and Mrs Krusiewicz refuses to reheat it because the midday meal is served at two-thirty.

  Izolda finds this strange: she would reheat her husband’s soup no matter what the time. And frankly she isn’t surprised when one day Mr Krusiewicz forgoes both his meal and his marriage with Mrs Krusiewicz and moves out.

  The attic apartment is several flights up. The staircase is dark and gloomy. When Izolda is out, Mrs Krusiewicz leaves a lit candle next to the door. When Izolda comes back she sees the tiny flicker of light and feels safer. At least someone in this world is watching out for her.

  Her husband’s letters come to her old address, so she goes to Mariańska Street and asks Mateusz the caretaker if there’s any word. Bad news, Mrs Pawlicka, he says, something’s wrong, a package came back from Auschwitz.

  Throwing up into a public bin, she thinks: At least I know where to buy the white powder. She wipes her mouth and returns home. She takes the candle from the hall and places it on the table in front of her like a graveside votive. Then she wraps her arms around the package. Mrs Krusiewicz carefully pulls the package out from under her head. The grey paper is full of stamps and crossed-out words in German. Mrs Krusiewicz studies the writing. Neue Adresse abwarten, she reads out loud. Wait for new address… Wait! she cries out. You see? You just have to wait!

  Ice Cream

  Izolda has plenty of free time. She doesn’t send packages. She doesn’t try to get money. She doesn’t buy sugar, onions, bacon or bread. She doesn’t have to get out of bed and get dressed. She doesn’t even have to wake up.

  At times – mostly just before daybreak – she’s convinced that Neue Adresse abwarten is a hoax. They say to wait but there won’t be any new address. He’s dead. Either they’ve killed him or he’s died of hunger, typhus, tuberculosis, exhaustion… She repeats the word ‘dead’, spelling it out: D-e-a-d. Then she adds her husband: M-y-h-u-s-b-a-n-d-i-s-d-e-a-d.

  Mrs Krusiewicz begs her to get out of bed. What for? she asks. Mrs Krusiewicz reminds her that she was supposed to take her husband’s suit to the dry-cleaner’s. What for? she asks. All right, then just go out for a walk. She doesn’t want to upset Mrs Krusiewicz so she goes out for a walk. She passes an ice-cream shop. The doors are open and a young couple are walking out, each holding a flat wafer with ice cream on top. She imagines that they’re she and her husband, walking down the street eating ice cream. But in cones, like her husband preferred.

  There are different ways to eat ice cream from a cone.

  You can lick around the edges. You can put the whole thing in your mouth. You can bite off tiny pieces, starting at the top. You can go slow or fast, and if you slow down, the ice cream melts and runs down in a sticky streak between your fingers.

  How did her husband eat his ice cream?

  Did he lick around the edges?

  Did he start at the top?

  Slow or fast?

  She doesn’t remember.

  She goes back to the shop and buys one scoop, and tries out different ways. It’s horrible: she can’t remember how her husband ate ice cream!

  She gives up on her walk. She boards a tram – and there’s another couple, sitting right across from her. They don’t look at each other, don’t talk, the man rests his hand on the woman’s lap. The woman adjusts her coat and removes his hand, he puts it back, without looking.

  Izolda feels a strange sensation.

  Not her, but her knee.

  Her knee is yearning for a hand.

  Not Izolda, only her knee. Her knee has become a separate living yearning creature.

  She looks at the man’s hand, but that’s not the hand her knee is after.

  She sighs with relief: she doesn’t remember how he ate his ice cream, but her knee remembers his hand.

  Worse

  She prefers the tram to walking because in the tram she’s less outside, less exposed. The most outside are windows on the ground floor. She can see the people inside – how they’re talking, carrying a glass of tea or watering flowers in a pot. She knows that they, too, have their worries: Lilusia assures her that these days every Polish household has its share of suffering. She believes Lilusia, but she also knows very well that Polish suffering is better, even enviable.

  Her suffering is worse, because she is worse. That’s what the whole world thinks, and the whole world can’t be wrong when it comes to a sense of good and bad, or rather, better and worse.

  She is worse and that’s why she is in disguise. She has a new name and a new hair colour and a new voice and laugh and a new way of carrying her handbag. And she prefers her new self to the real thing. So what does that mean? That her disguised self… that her pretend self is better than her real self.

  A Night

  Your king has a trip ahead… the king of hearts is thinking about you… (Terenia taps on the king and the ace of hearts. There, look: he’s thinking. Of course he’s alive, otherwise he wouldn’t be thinking.) The trip will end well and there’ll be a meeting. A meeting with a sad man. A man with auburn hair. I think I know who it is, Terenia cr
ies out: I read cards for his fiancée. The cards said that someone would be locked up and look, they sent her off to Ravensbrück. Maybe we should pay him a visit? You’re sad, he’s sad…

  They visit the sad man with auburn hair, grey eyes and dark, bushy eyebrows. He serves them cherry liqueur and sausage from Karczew. The man is a lyrical tenor and hums Nadir’s aria from The Pearl Fishers, he even sings in French: Je crois entendre encore – lala-lala-lala – sa voix tendre et sonore (at ‘his voice, tender and sonorous’ Izolda starts to cry). He tells them about studying with Didur. Adam Didur, you’ve heard of him, haven’t you?

  Terenia takes her leave and the sad host moves a little closer.

  He likes her hair.

  (That’s not my real hair, mine is darker.)

  He likes her name.

  (That’s not my real name…)

  Is there anything real about you? he asks.

  Waiting. That’s the most real thing about me.

  The sad man assures her that he knows all about waiting, too, and puts his arm around her.

  That’s not the neck his arm is yearning for, she thinks, and he’ll realize that in a moment.

  She’s not wrong: the sad man removes his hand. He sighs. He whispers soothingly to cheer her up: You’ll get a new address, you’ll send him a package… What will you send?

  Izolda lets herself daydream: Onions, garlic, smoked bacon, maybe sugar…

  Bacon? the man brightens up. Where do you buy that?

  At the Kiercelak market, behind where they sell white bread, in a booth with a little awning.

  I wonder if my wife would eat smoked bacon, thinks the tenor, she was always so picky.

  Then buy the raw bacon. It’s just as nutritious, and cheaper.

  He strokes her hand… My neighbour waited and waited, and look, yesterday she got a message. Smuggled out of the camp at Skarżysko-Kamienna.