Chasing the King of Hearts. Hanna Krall
men’s shoes—such a trivial purchase.
As she’s buying them, she still thinks she’s in love with Jurek Szwarcwald. Everybody thinks that, especially Jurek’s parents. Jurek isn’t ugly and he isn’t boring. He isn’t poor, either. Izolda is wearing his shoes because a bomb destroyed the house on Ogrodowa Street and now she can’t get into her apartment, let alone her wardrobe.
She stops at her friend Basia Maliniak’s. Just for a moment, to thread the new laces.
A young man is standing by the stove, warming his hands on the tiles. He’s tall and slender, with straight, golden hair. His hands have a golden tinge. When he sits down he spreads his legs and drops his arms—nonchalantly, almost absentmindedly. His hands just hang there, helpless, and even more beautiful. She learns he has two first names, Yeshayahu Wolf, and that Basia calls him Shayek.
She takes her time lacing her shoes. After an hour Shayek says: You have the eyes of a rabbi’s daughter. An hour later he adds: A skeptical rabbi.
Basia sees her to the door and hisses: I could kill you right now.
He drops by a few days later, with bad news about Hala Borensztajn’s brother Adek. (Izolda shared a desk with Hala all through high school.) Adek’s dead. From typhus. She can’t believe it: typhus? People die of scarlet fever or pneumonia but not from typhus. Shayek says: Now they’ll be dying differently, we better get used to that.
They walk over to Hala’s. Adek’s friends have come as well. The apartment is cold. They drink tea. Basia Maliniak is knitting a colorful sweater from unraveled yarn and doesn’t say a word to either of them. The others talk about typhus. Supposedly it comes from lice. Not from people? No, just lice. Hala laughs at her father, who wants to build a shelter and hide from the lice and from the war. His daughter assures him that the war won’t last long, but he’s already stocking up on provisions.
The talk moves to love. Izolda says: You know what? I thought I was in love with Jurek Szwarcwald but I was wrong. Should I tell him or not? After some debate her friends conclude that would be too cruel. Get engaged to someone else, they advise, and Shayek tosses out: I’m available. After he leaves, Basia Maliniak puts down her knitting and says: He meant that—and she’s right.
They take a local train. She opens the window and warm, spring-like air flows inside. The train passes Józefów. She points out the road the old peasant wagon used to take coming from town. You can see how it follows the tracks. Always around this time of year. That’s where it turned behind the trees. You can’t see the houses from the train. The one with the big porch belongs to the Szwarcwalds. The wagon would drive up and the servant girl would unload all the baskets packed with linens, summer clothes, pots, buckets, brushes. Then she’d fetch water from the well and scrub the floors. At the end of summer the same wagon would drive back in from town and the servant girl would load up all the baskets packed with linens, pots, brushes. There used to be a sandy glade in the woods, not far off, with an old oak tree. No, of course you can’t see the tree. It always had so many acorns.
She talks and talks, hoping the words will drown out her fear, as well as her embarrassment and curiosity. They get off at Otwock, the end of the line. A group of older boys scramble out of the next carriage, all very serious and conspiratorial, probably scouts. Their leader issues a few quiet commands—fall in, compasses, northeast—and the column fades into the woods. A freckle-faced boy with a broad smile brings up the rear.
The Zachęta guest house smells of warm pine. Inside the room, Shayek clearly knows what to do with a woman who’s as eager as she is afraid, as curious as she is embarrassed. Later that afternoon they head back, stopping to rest under a tree. She lays her head on his lap. They hear a chorus of voices, not very loud, singing a scouting song: Hur-rah hur-rah, hoo-ray hoo-ray! As long as we can, let’s seize the day!—the boys from the next carriage are also returning to the station. The freckle-faced boy again brings up the rear, but he isn’t singing; maybe he doesn’t have the voice for it. The boy notices them. Hey, he shouts, take a look at this, the Yids are making love. The boy snickers, then turns around and catches up with his colleagues. Izolda keeps her eyes closed and whispers: Your hair is so blond and your skin is so light, but they could tell. He drapes her sweater around her shoulders. She hadn’t realized it had slipped, exposing the armband with the blue star.
They get married. She wears a sky-blue dress tinged with lilac. Her mother bought the fabric a long time ago, thinking she would sew something to wear for her son’s birthday dinner. The color was pervenche—very much in vogue because Wallis Simpson was so fond of it. The duchess had worn periwinkle when she married Edward VIII, or maybe it was to the banquet afterward. In the end Mother didn’t sew anything because her two-year-old son died of pneumonia. She dressed in black and announced she would wear mourning for the rest of her life.
Thanks to Jurek Szwarcwald (he was surprisingly quick to accept her breaking it off and he too got married; his wife, Pola, was a nice, smart woman and by no means unattractive despite a longish nose)—thanks to Jurek, who’s studying medicine, Izolda lands a job in a hospital, looking after the typhus patients. She gives them water with valerian, massages their bedsores, and straightens their pillows. For the first time in her life she sees corpses (which are carried off to the cemetery in wooden handcarts with two large wheels on both sides and four handles for pulling). She has yet to witness someone dying and she very much wants to. She’s not so curious about what visions the dying person might have—light, dark, angel, or God—but wants to know what she might see when someone else’s life comes to an end. A soul? A sign? Because if there is a sign, it ought to be read. She sits beside a young girl, very beautiful despite her illness. She keeps watch all night long, and just as the day breaks she hears a quiet sighing. The sick girl’s chest rises—and doesn’t fall. Izolda leans over the girl, alert and concentrated. She examines the girl’s face—peaceful, serious—but sees no sign of a soul. They load the girl’s body onto the black wooden wagon. Izolda takes off her apron and goes home. She tells her husband what death looks like: no soul, no sign. Then she adds, by way of encouragement: We’re still alive, though. To which her husband says: Even that is less and less certain.
At night she works in private homes. These patients are well-off, they have their own clean sheets, their own doctor, and a genuine funeral. They also have a separate grave. Whoever can’t afford a grave or a funeral is taken out to the street, where the body must be covered with sheets of newspaper. The paper has to be weighed down against the wind with a brick or a stone.
There’s a lot to be learned from these newspaper shrouds.
Who counts as a Jew (anyone with three Jewish grandparents).
Where to wear the armband with the star (on the right sleeve only).
What kind of armbands are to be worn by ragmen and waste collectors (red violet—the green ones used up until now are no longer valid).
What the March ration cards are good for (five hundred grams of sauerkraut and one hundred grams of beetroot), what the April cards are worth (one box of forty-eight matches), and what can be expected in December (one egg with an oval stamp on the shell).
How to make soup out of leftover bread (soak in water, boil, strain, and add saccharin).
What kind of saccharin is kosher for Passover (as decreed by the rabbinate, only in crystal form, dissolved and run through a sieve before the holiday).
Where Dr. Korczak will be telling children stories (the orphanage on Śliska Street).
What kind of