Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series) Page 8

  Nicole firmly believes that the cell doors will burst open and our Soviet brothers will be standing there and say: Comrades, you are free. (Nicole doesn’t know what this will sound like in Russian, so Izolda tells her: Tovarishchi, vy svobodny.)

  The door does open and the guard – the same one who gave her the safety pin and sometimes brings her an extra portion of bread – says to Izolda: Pack your things, you’ll be leaving today. How should I know where?

  She says goodbye to Nicole: Greet your Soviet brothers for me (Bon voyage, queen of hearts, replies Nicole) – and follows the guard.

  The cells in Liesl don’t open on to corridors but are arranged around a kind of hall with a stairwell in the middle. Izolda goes down the stairs to the office, where they return her medallion and her café au lait handbag from Herse’s. It has a comb and a Bakelite compact (she left the silver one with Stefa). She adds her curling paper and the cards she made from the newspaper. She also puts in her false tooth, although that doesn’t make much sense: the Gestapo officer knocked out two more, at the front. She didn’t pick them up, she didn’t have the strength, but she carefully stows the artificial one, even though it’s no longer of use. The guard waits for her to pack her belongings and takes her to the black van.

  Travel

  She’s travelling on board a regular train, third class. There are eight people in her compartment, including Janka Tempelhof. Their bags are stowed on the shelves overhead. It’s a warm September day and the Viennese Jews are dressed lightly. They’ve packed their furs and sweaters in their suitcases, since they might have to stay there a little longer. ‘There’ is the word they use to mean the place where they will live and work. She explains that ‘there’ means a camp, possibly Auschwitz. They don’t know that word and don’t try to repeat it, the Polish name is too difficult. The Viennese Jews ask how she knows it’s a camp and that no one comes back from there. Everybody knows that. In Poland every child knows that. In Poland… the Viennese Jews say with disdain. Maybe no one comes back in Poland, but we’re from Vienna, not Poland, we are going to work.

  Night falls. What are you thinking about? Janka Tempelhof whispers. About my husband, my mother in Warsaw… Izolda had read a brief notice on the third page of the Völkischer Beobachter about an uprising in Warsaw. Can you send packages to Mauthausen during an uprising?

  Both of Janka’s parents died in the ghetto in Łódź. She doesn’t have any friends…

  What do you mean you don’t have any friends? Izolda is surprised.

  They thought I was showing off, because I always know better, Janka confesses. They were wrong, I wasn’t showing off…

  Maybe you really did know better, she consoles Janka. I, for example, knew worse.

  And what of it? Janka whispers. Now we’re both on transport number 47. Together…

  She’s surprised that Janka knows the number of their transport. How do you know that?

  I just do… Janka smiles in the dark. Like I said, I always know better…

  They pass a lit sign: Ostrava. The train slows down. Izolda stops listening to Janka Tempelhof’s confessions and stands up. Will you jump with me? she asks. Janka doesn’t answer. Izolda grabs the canvas sash used to lower the window, climbs on the seat and sticks one leg out of the open window. An older man by the window grabs her other leg. He is surprisingly strong, they scuffle and someone cries out: Don’t be stupid, we’re going to work, you’ll get us all in trouble! Janka just sits there and does nothing. The gendarmes come running down the corridor, she quickly raises the window and returns to her seat. What’s going on? One gendarme examines the compartment. Nothing’s going on, says the Viennese Jew who pulled her from the window. Everyone’s very comfortable.

  It gets light.

  The sun rises.

  The trains slows down again. They read the sign on the station: Dziedzice. She senses that the train is turning on to a branch line.

  Look, she says. Look how bright blue and clean the sky is in Poland.

  A Bucket of Water

  The passengers from the Viennese train assemble in front of a barracks. They are a little uneasy: their suitcases are lying on the ground, in a huge pile. Won’t they be damaged? Or lost? And where do they get them back? Izolda isn’t worried. Her bag is on the pile, but for the moment she doesn’t need the curling papers, the cards or the artificial tooth.

  An SS man gives a signal and two prisoners approach the group, each carrying a dirty striped cap: the passengers are told to toss in their money and jewellery. She tosses in her Mother of God medallion, the gift from Lilusia. Someone asks when to expect a receipt for their valuables. The prisoners don’t say anything. Someone else repeats the question a little louder. The Viennese Jews anxiously study the two prisoners – their silence, their empty, indifferent eyes. Izolda watches them as well. Their eyes aren’t out of their sockets and their shoulder blades haven’t been dislocated. They’re wearing striped suits – but so? What’s so terrible about stripes?

  The SS man orders everyone to undress.

  Then he orders them to approach – one at a time, calmly. He looks each one over and either waves his hand or nods his head. He does this fleetingly, carelessly, as if he didn’t want to. His hand gesture is also careless and sloppy.

  She steps up to the SS man. She has smooth skin and a small red spot next to her breast. The German stops her and stares at the spot – a long time, several seconds – then raises his hand, meaning she should stand to the right. After Izolda comes Janka Tempelhof. She has a very nice figure, not tall, and a kind, calm smile. The SS man sends her to the right as well.

  Two groups form, right and left. The groups keep growing, the one on the left more quickly than the one on the right. The old man who pulled her from the window approaches the SS man, bashfully covering his underbelly. He looks shorter and thinner than he did wearing clothes, his shoulder is crooked and juts out to the left. The Viennese woman next to Izolda asks if she thinks the older people will get easier work, because her father was sent to the left. Izolda reassures her: I’m sure they will, you shouldn’t be worried. The woman’s father knows several languages, maybe they’ll assign him to an office… the woman consoles herself. I’m sure of it, Izolda says to encourage her. My father also knew a lot of languages, she adds, imagining her father standing naked, defenceless and embarrassed among the specialists that knew German.

  A man from the group on the left takes a few steps towards the SS man, smiles politely and says: Sir, we are thirsty, could we please ask for some water?

  The SS man smiles back. The gentleman is thirsty, he says to the prisoners who collected the jewellery. They took it away and have now returned wearing their caps. Bring the gentleman a little water… The prisoners leave again and return with a bucket full of water. They place it on the ground. The polite Viennese Jew looks for a cup. You’ll have to drink from the bucket, the SS man says, and signals to the prisoners. They grab the man under the arm, bend his neck and shove his head into the water. The man squirms for air, kicking and pushing with his legs… Eventually he calms down. His body sags. The prisoners let go, step back and stand off to the side. The man’s body slides to the ground. Is anyone else thirsty? asks the SS man.

  A Number

  They give her clothing: a rough cretonne dress with a flower print, a black sweater, a number – preceded by the letter A and tattooed on her forearm – and a place to sleep. The barracks have three rows of bunks, with three levels to a row. Izolda’s place is on the top. The bunk could fit four women lying on their back. But it has to accommodate nine, so in the evening they all lie on their left side, facing the wall. Their knees are bent and their bottoms press against the stomachs of the women behind them, while someone else’s buttocks press against their own. During the night they shift positions, all at once, on to their right side.

  After two days Izolda and Janka discover that they were given the wrong numbers. The inmate functionary in charge of the tattooing etches a horizontal
line through the old numbers and gives them new ones, this time with a small triangle. You’re lucky, the woman tells them. That triangle is Jewish all right, but those numbers mean you came here with a record.

  They have a record because they were in prison.

  They’re lucky because people with a prison record aren’t subject to the selection.

  There had been a mistake when they arrived. Transports were coming in from the Łódź ghetto and in the confusion their group was treated like the Jews from Łódź. The selection was illegal. Unlike what happened to the other Jews. Those Jews were in a normal transport, they didn’t have prison records, and their selection was in order.

  For some time she’s been staring at the sweater worn by one of the inmates working in the office. The sweater is knitted from colourful bits of yarn. Izolda moves closer. She can see a few knots and a dark-pink lining sticking out from the bottom and at the sleeves. It’s the same sweater her friend Basia Gajer, née Maliniak, wore when she left for Honduras.

  They go back to their barracks. On the way she tells Janka about Basia, Honduras and the sweater. Could it be a sign? she wonders.

  That’s very possible, says Janka, but who knows what it means.

  It was at Basia’s where I met my husband. I went in for a minute just to thread my shoelaces and he was standing by the stove warming his hands on the tiles. Like this… and then he let them drop, they looked so helpless somehow…

  Your friend Basia is telling you something, Janka Tempelhof states. Maybe you’ll survive Auschwitz?

  The Deal

  It’s still dark and they’re standing in front of the barracks. The Stubendienst and the Aufseherin take the roll call and report to the SS men. The numbers don’t match up, they keep counting and counting, the roll call drags on for hours.

  During roll call the sky has two colours – deep grey on the darker side and a reddish violet on the lighter side. Clouds pass under the light, filling themselves with gold and violet, and float down towards the earth. She’d never seen the sun rise more beautifully than it did at Auschwitz.

  She stands next to two women from Silesia. The older one reminds her of her mother, especially her eyes, her mouth and her cheeks.

  She makes a deal with God. I will help this woman, she says, and in exchange you will help my mother… Agreed?

  She shields the woman from the wind. Other prisoners vie for the place in the middle, where it’s warmer – Izolda immediately stands on the outside, to shelter the woman who looks like her mother.

  The woman smiles in gratitude, folds her hands and whispers something.

  Izolda leans in towards the woman…

  Please don’t disturb me at the moment, the woman says, I’m praying.

  The woman is also talking with God. Do you see? I’m helping her. Don’t forget: We have a deal.

  Presents

  They send their shoes and clothing to be disinfected. The lice are killed, but not the nits, and new lice emerge after a few days. As a result of the disinfection she loses her only photo of her husband. She was carrying it in her shoe and didn’t manage to save it in time. The picture showed a young man on skis wearing a Norwegian sweater, with ski poles in both hands and a snowy mountain slope in the distance.

  They’ve been placed in quarantine. They aren’t sent to work: after roll call they sit on their bunks.

  In the afternoon they’re given soup made from swede or potato peelings. She prefers swede since it doesn’t have sand. In the evening they receive half a boiled potato and some bread. They eat the potato and save the bread for breakfast; the morning hunger is harder to bear. They sleep on their bread so no one steals it during the night.

  The soup is brought in wooden barrels with handles through which a wooden pole is inserted. The two functionaries who bring the soup call the barrels faski. They pour the soup into the bowls, take the faski out and set them next to the barracks wall. In the afternoon there is another short roll call. The women dash out and fall on the barrels, chasing away the swarms of enormous, sluggish horseflies and scraping the rest of the soup off the bottom with their bare hands. They spend nearly twenty minutes between the barracks. During this time Izolda looks for women from the uprising in Warsaw and asks about Pańska Street. Pańska doesn’t exist, says a woman from the uprising. What about number 6 Mariańska Street? Mariańska isn’t there either, don’t you realize that Warsaw doesn’t exist any more? She’s frightened at the idea that Warsaw might not be there. Because then maybe Lilusia isn’t there, or Terenia, or Mrs Krusiewicz. So who will send packages to Mauthausen?

  Sonia Landau runs up – she works in an office and is allowed to move about the camp. She brings presents: a small onion, a towel and warm stockings. Used, but good quality, she says proudly, from the Hungarian Jews. Izolda asks her about the Hungarian Jews, because they aren’t in quarantine. Sonia points at the smokestack by the crematorium and says: That’s where they are now.

  In the evening Izolda puts on the stockings and folds the towel under her head. It must have been packed between clothes inside a suitcase. This Hungarian Jew had some nice perfume, she thinks as she falls asleep.

  During the night she gives the onion to the Stubendienst and is allowed to go to the toilet. As she crouches over the bucket next to the wall of the barracks, she smells an odour of burnt goose feathers. A thick, dark-brown column of smoke is rising from the crematorium and is quickly swallowed by the sky.

  Talent

  A package arrives for the woman who looks like Izolda’s mother. Delighted, she sits on the top bunk across from Izolda, takes the parcel out of the box, removes the paper, looks at it tenderly and puts it back. She raises her head and signals for Izolda to join her. Izolda hurries over and stands on the middle bunk, so that her face is level with the package and the other woman’s hands. She wants to give me something, Izolda thinks gratefully – maybe a clove of garlic or even a heel of bread…

  The woman takes out a white silk slip. She brushes it off, smoothes it out and says: It’s nice, isn’t it? This can be traded for food. Take care of it, would you, Izolda. Sorry for the trouble but you’re more talented at that sort of thing than we are.

  Izolda is still standing on the bunk. Still smiling… The woman’s friend looks at her uneasily: Is something wrong, Izolda?

  She trades the slip for a single, fairly large unpeeled potato and continues to protect the woman from the wind. Thanks to her talents, she’s made a deal with God and has to fulfil her side of the bargain.

  Standing at roll call, she promises herself that she’ll never have any more Jewish talents or Jewish anything. Assuming, of course, that she survives the war. And her husband won’t either. Or their children. And their children will not die guiltless of everything but the faith of their fathers…

  The woman who looks like her mother leans over and says: Are you saying something, Izolda?

  She shakes her head: Please don’t disturb me at the moment, I’m praying.

  The Exam

  The Germans are moving the prisoners from Auschwitz. No one knows where to: some say deep inside the Reich and others say to be gunned down. Nurses are sent with every transport, so maybe it’s not to be gunned down. Dr Mengele is standing on the platform, looking over the people being shipped away. Some consider this a bad sign, others think the opposite.

  She tells Janka Tempelhof that she’s going to volunteer for a transport (the trains are moving west, aren’t they, perhaps in the direction of Mauthausen?).

  On the platform they both leave the crowd of people waiting and approach Dr Mengele.

  Izolda explains that they are nurses. With hospital experience (it’s true: Janka took courses at the Maltese Hospital. Her theoretical knowledge was very good but she was clumsy and ended up working in the office). Could Herr Doktor allow them to join the transport?

  ‘Herr Doktor’ is handsome, well groomed, carefully shaven and perfectly clean. He looks both women over.

  Do you remember…
(he thinks for a moment). Naturally you remember how arterial bleeding differs from venous bleeding…

  In Polish she would answer without hesitation that arterial blood is oxygenated, consequently it is bright red in colour and spurts from the wound. Venous blood, on the other hand… but she doesn’t know the German words. She says a little incoherently: Das Blut, im Blut ist Sauerstoff… Fortunately Janka answers fluently and in complete sentences. Dr Mengele nods his head exactly like Dr Munwes at the hospital on Czysta Street, when he asked Izolda to describe the symptoms of typhus. Like any doctor would, hearing a young nurse give the correct answer, especially a good-looking young nurse, despite a few missing teeth.

  How many times does a heart beat per minute?

  This question is only meant for her. He sounds easy-going, like a professor who doesn’t want his students to fail their exam.

  That depends, she answers.

  Oh? On what?

  On whether a person is afraid or not. And on how afraid they are.

  The examiner bursts into a loud, friendly laugh that shows the gap between his two front teeth. Diastema… she remembers reading about it in her nurses’ course-book. That kind of gap is called a diastema.

  The Aufseherin standing behind Mengele writes down their numbers. A couple of days later during roll call they are called out and told to report to the next transport.