Chasing the King of Hearts. Hanna Krall
the Jewish police he apologized to the victim and promised to change for the better).
Where to mend clothes (nowhere but the Keller workshop, because they hire pedantic old spinsters).
Where to arrange for a hearse (nowhere but Eternity, the company that invented the bicycle-cart hearse—very practical, it can carry up to four coffins at once!).
The source of Jewish optimism (it comes from being created in God’s image—the fount of all goodness and the source of all being, without beginning).
No one in her family has died yet. Her father traded half an apartment building for a whole calf’s hide. Her mother trades pieces of the hide for onions and bread.
She needs to borrow a little money. She goes to Hala Borensztajn (the one she sat next to all through high school). Fifty? What do you need fifty zlotys for? Hala’s father is surprised. Izolda explains that it’s for the German guard: he looks the other way and I walk out of the ghetto. That costs fifty whole zlotys. You want to leave? Hala is astounded. With your hair? Hala herself is blond and has a snub nose, but she has no intention of leaving their shelter before the war is over. She shows off the tap with water, the bags of grain, and the stock of medicine. Izolda agrees, the shelter is fantastic, so, now will you lend me the money? Mr. Borensztajn hands her ten zlotys and she promises to return them when the war is over. She borrows forty from Halinka Rygier’s father (Halinka sat right behind Hala in school) and then hurries to her husband.
Her husband works in a factory set up in the attic of a multistory apartment building. She hears the rumble of trucks as she climbs the stairs. At the top of the stairs a man is putting a padlock on the door to the workshop. His hand is shaking and he has trouble fitting the key into the lock. Where’s Shayek? she asks the man. In there—he points at the door (the hand he uses to point is also shaking) and then runs downstairs. Shayek, she whispers to the lock, I can’t get in. The motors get louder and louder. Shayek! She tries to break the padlock, punches it with all her strength. Shayek, I can’t just stand here! In the courtyard someone shouts, “Jews come out!” and she hears the stamping of feet. She knows what’s coming next: they’ll search the apartments, floor by floor. They’re going to find me, she explains to the lock. They’re going to find me and take me to Umschlagplatz. She hears a child crying, then several shots and a quavering voice she doesn’t recognize: Save me! Shayek, save me! When she hears “Shayek” she realizes that the voice is her own. That’s me crying out, I just got a little scared, but now I’m calm, I can’t stay here because they’ll shoot me, I can’t stay here, they’ll shoot me on the spot, he’ll open the door and then what, he’ll see me shot dead, I can’t . . . She says all that out loud as she runs down the stairs. In front of the building Jewish policemen and SS men are lining everyone up in a column. One of the policemen is Jurek Gajer, who recently married Basia Maliniak. He notices Izolda and lifts his hands to say: I can’t do anything to help you, you see for yourself, and places her in the column. They march off down the empty streets and through a wideopen wooden gate. They pass the hospital and stop at the collection point. She thinks: This is Umschlagplatz and this is where I am. The cattle wagons will come for us . . . My God, they’ll come to take us away—and how will he manage without me?
The film is playing in slow motion and the sound has been turned down—that’s why everyone is moving more slowly and speaking more quietly. Or not speaking at all, they’re just sitting on their bags and rocking back and forth, back and forth. Or they’re whispering to themselves, very possibly praying. They’ve calmed down, stopped bustling about—there’s no more running away. They wait. They don’t have the strength for anything else.
She is unable to wait. (By now the roundup must be over, the man has unlocked the door, and the workers have come out of the factory. Are you Shayek? the man asks. Your wife was here . . . Shayek runs down onto the street, Iza, he calls out, Izolda, and Jurek Gajer repeats: Izolda’s gone, she went to Umschlagplatz . . . Stop shouting, listen to me, Izolda isn’t here.)
Izolda looks around. There’s a barrel next to the wall. She can tell at a glance that it’s too small, but she tries to climb inside anyway. The barrel flips over and so does she. The hospital is locked, but even so she stands near the entrance and waits there for hours. A doctor from the typhus ward looks out of the window and sees her. That’s our nurse, he tells the policeman. They let her in, she lies down on an empty bed. Surely they won’t take the sick people, she thinks, but someone enters the room and announces that they’re taking all the patients. She gets up and mops the floor, thinking they won’t take away the orderlies, but someone enters the room . . . She puts on a white apron, they won’t take the nurses . . . A Jewish policeman lines up all the workers and holds out his cap. People toss in rings, necklaces, watches . . . Izolda takes out the silver compact Shayek had given her as an engagement present. She opens it, wipes the powder off the mirror, checks herself, and tosses it into the cap. The policeman picks up the compact and returns it without a word, he’s not interested in silver. They’re allowed to leave the hospital. Umschlagplatz is now empty. A few people are scurrying through the streets. The wind picks up newspapers, bangs on abandoned pots, slams open windows. A horse whinnies somewhere close by. Lying on the pavement is an overturned bowl, white pockmarked with black where the enamel chipped off—a bowl someone had wanted to take along but it was too unwieldy for the journey.
Izolda tells her parents she isn’t spending another day in the ghetto. That’s right, you’re absolutely right, her father agrees, making a slight gesture with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. She knows that gesture, that’s how her father underscores his pronouncements. You’re not going to your death like some docile little lamb, he states in a solemn voice, raising his right hand once again. She’s not thinking about how she will go to her death. She isn’t going to her death. She’s thinking about her father’s reflexive gesture, how it originates in the left hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for speech and the movements of the right limbs. She learned about reflexes at nursing school, but can people on the Aryan side distinguish between the workings of the left hemisphere and Jewish gesticulation? It’s good you’re getting out of here, he assures her, and hugs her tightly, so that his hands are behind her back. And because his hands are behind her back, she doesn’t have to wonder what people might think who don’t know about the workings of cerebral hemispheres.
Early the next morning her husband accompanies her to the guard post.
She takes out the money she borrowed from Mr. Rygier and Mr. Borensztajn, hands fifty zlotys over to the guard, and walks out of the ghetto with a calm, unhurried step.
At some point—about a quarter of a century after the war—she will begin to imagine her old age.
She will sit in her armchair (lemon, olive, and almond trees will be growing outside her window).
She will reach for a book, one of many that she promised herself she would read someday.
She will watch a film, one of many that . . .
She’ll put on a record . . .
She will go for a long walk up Mount Carmel. Perhaps she’ll head down to the beach, take off her slippers, feel the moist sand under her feet, warmer than the sand in Sopot, but a little coarser . . .
In the evening one of her granddaughters will stop by and talk about work. About school. About her boyfriend. I thought I was in love with him, she’ll confess to her grandmother in secret, but I was wrong.
Izolda will try to tell her granddaughter an extraordinary story from half a century earlier (what else?) and her granddaughter will sit at her knees and listen eagerly. Finally she’ll shut her eyes and whisper: And that was that. Just like in the American film Rose Marie from before