Chasing the King of Hearts. Hanna Krall
Mother didn’t show either type of smile, only a sad grimace, her mouth turned down at the corners.)
Izolda looks cautiously around. Do the passengers realize that her mother’s sadness and her black dress come from normal times? That the furrows around her mouth aren’t the despair of the ghetto, but simply the bitterness of a wife betrayed? That she’s in mourning because of her son, who did not die of starvation or in the cattle car, but simply of pneumonia? In a word, do the passengers crowded into the third-class compartment realize that her mother’s black dress and sadness are good, non-Jewish sadness and safe, non-Jewish black?
They arrive at the house of Shayek’s two sisters and his little nephew Szymuś. Izolda leaves her mother with them, but that turns out to be a bad idea. The sisters are terrified. A szmalcownik spotted them at the station and blackmailed them out of a ring, and they worry he might have followed them home. I’ll come back for you as soon as I find another place, she promises her mother. The sisters ask Izolda to look after their brother. And our parents, Hela insists. And our brother, and our youngest sister, Halina. And our parents. Why me? she asks herself in the train on the way back. Absentmindedly she adjusts her hair, which is dyed, in contrast to Hela’s, which is real, genuine blond. Why what? asks the conductor. She realizes that she’s been talking out loud. She smiles at the conductor: Why nothing, nothing at all.
Jurek Szwarcwald has a talent for finding decent people. Not only does he know a doctor who operates on Jews (the man lengthened Jurek’s foreskin and shortened Jurek’s wife’s nose right before he was killed in a public execution in the middle of town), but he also manages to meet Bolek. Bolek crosses into the ghetto several times a week. By day completely legally, with a construction firm sent in to tear down buildings destroyed in the fighting. At night illegally, on other business, through the sewer system.
Jurek tells Izolda where to go and how many times to knock. She finds Bolek in a basement carpentry workshop, full of shavings and sawdust, planes, files. A few men are sitting on a stack of boards, thin, wiry, unshaven, with unbuttoned shirts and not exactly sober.
She explains who sent her.
So? asks Bolek.
She explains that her husband is in the ghetto.
So?
So we have to get him out. We can’t use the guard anymore, but my husband could go with you, through the sewers.
With me, love? Bolek gives her a patronizing smile. First someone would have to go and find him, and we can’t leave our site. It’s dangerous inside the ghetto, love. Terrible things happening there. Who’s going to fetch your husband?
I will, she says. I’ll go along and bring him to you.
Bolek stops smiling, stops calling her “love.” He buttons his shirt and gets up off the boards.
You mean you’ll go through the sewers, ma’am?
Where do I meet you? she asks.
She waits by the manhole. The sun goes down, but there’s no sign of Bolek. Sirens signal an air raid. She heads to the nearby garrison chapel. She opens the door and takes a few steps in the dark. A priest is standing in the aisle holding a book. Just saying my prayers . . . He smiles at her. They’re close to the ghetto wall and can hear single shots from the other side. My God, the things going on over there, the priest whispers, and turns his head toward the shooting. My husband is over there, she whispers. The priest places his hand on her shoulder and says: I’ll pray for him, what more can I do? And with his other hand, the one holding the prayer book, he makes a helpless gesture (which reminds her a little of Jurek Gajer before she was marched off to Umschlagplatz: “I can’t do anything to help you, you see for yourself.”). You could give him a baptismal certificate, Father, she suggests. Just one, for a young man. The priest doesn’t reply. And a place to stay? The priest thinks for a moment. Please come back, he says, and breaks out in a violent, hacking cough. Best would be two places, she quickly adds, speaking over the cough, but the priest clears his throat, covers his mouth with a handkerchief, and retreats to the sacristy.
She returns a few days later. She wants to explain to the priest why she asked for two places to stay. One is for people with “bad” looks who can’t show themselves on the street, who speak with a strong Yiddish accent; the other is for people with fairly “good” looks who speak proper Polish. The second one, she plans to explain, wouldn’t be all that risky.
She asks a nun about the priest: slender, not young, with a persistent cough.
You must mean Father Franciszek, the nun concludes. Franciszek Pauliński. He’s in the tuberculosis ward on Wolska Street.
She buys a lemon at the Kiercelak market and goes to the hospital.
The priest is dozing.
She looks at him. He’s not going to find any place at all, she thinks sadly. Not for people with “good” looks and not for people with “bad” ones.
It’s you . . . The priest opens his eyes and peers at her. Will you pray for me?
For you, Father? Me!
You, child. You won’t forget, will you?
She leans over the man’s bed.
I’m not a child of the same God as you, Father. That’s not a God I turn to. And that God doesn’t treat me justly. Or my parents. Or my husband . . .
She speaks louder and louder, with her new, high-pitched, quarrelsome voice. The nurse tells her to be quiet. By the time she leaves she has calmed down: Father Franciszek asked her to pray for him. If the rector of the Pallottines himself is asking her for such a favor, then it means there’s something on this earth that does depend on her. At least a prayer.
She visits him a few times. She brings him a book from the Szuberts’ library called The New Temple, in which some Norwegian suggests that we seek God in nature, that richest of all tomes. The advice sounds good to Izolda. Sitting on the hospital bed, she reads out loud to the priest: about green meadows embroidered with yellow and pink flowers, about the waves of hills, about azure fjords and verdant fields and migratory birds and the secret resonance of the soul in nature. Unfortunately the priest isn’t concerned with birds or fields or fjords. The priest is dying.
Every day she stands by the manhole; at last Bolek’s people show up. When it gets dark they lift the cover and quickly slip inside. The men have a long rope, which gets looped around each person’s waist. The runoff comes up to their calves. They stink. They walk doubled over, carrying full sacks. Izolda touches the rope stretching in front of her and peers into the darkness ahead for signs of a lantern. It doesn’t take long. They crawl out onto the street, they’re inside the ghetto. They wait in the ruins, and in the morning the Jews appear—silent, unshaven, dirty. They bring overcoats, sheets, tablecloths, porcelain, silverware. Bolek’s people take onions, garlic, bread, and bottles of oil out of their sacks and give them to the Jews. To some they give Polish ID cards. What about a place to stay? asks a man with a beard. Do you have an address for me? At least for a few days . . . One of Bolek’s workers is surprised: The way you look, are you crazy?—and the Jew nods his head in understanding. When the sacks are empty Bolek’s men refill them with Jewish belongings and hide them in the ruins. Then they start to work tearing down what’s left of the buildings.
Not far from Izolda’s old apartment is a workshop where tailors are sewing German uniforms. She asks about her husband. The tailors saw him on Miła Street, just a few days ago. She asks about her neighbors. Did anyone see the Rygiers? They’re gone . . . The tailor who knows about the Rygiers doesn’t look up from his sewing machine. Nobody’s here, they went