Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series) (4 page)

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 head 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 eye 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.

The Germans free the women detained at the Hotel Polski.

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.

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.