Chasing the King of Hearts. Hanna Krall
He managed to give his keys to some acquaintance. Keys to what? The tailors don’t know, maybe to some hidden shelter? Maybe he locked someone inside? Borensztajn? Did you see the Borensztajns? They had a daughter . . . They had a shelter . . . The tailors are calm and matter-of-fact. They’re not here, they say. So what if they had a shelter . . . A really good one? So what of it? Not here, understand? The tailors stay hunched over their machines. Now she understands. The others aren’t there, but the tailors are. Maybe they will stay. Maybe there won’t be any more trains. Maybe, God willing, they’ll stay forever?
She makes her way to Miła Street, her anxiety growing with every step. She walks faster and faster and finally breaks out into a run. The other pedestrians also start running. Not because they want to see her husband, they just think they have to. She dashes into an entrance, the others follow. She stops and they stop. I’m running to my husband, she explains. They look at her, bewildered, and disperse.
Her husband is so sleepy he’s barely conscious. She strokes his hair, which is no longer golden. Is everybody still here? She wants to make sure. He shakes his head. Your father’s gone. He left . . . of his own free will, when they called for specialists.
She begins to understand: her father left the ghetto voluntarily.
I tried to stop him, her husband says, but he said that he’d explain it all to them.
Explain what?
That as a chemist who knew German and a graduate of Heidelberg . . .
But explain what?
That as a chemist . . . I begged him, her husband repeats.
(Her father had pretty, brown, wise eyes.)
They took them to Umschlagplatz, her husband says. Apparently the specialists who knew German were the first to board the train . . .
(One eye was brown; he had lost the other while searching for a new color.
A color that doesn’t exist in the spectrum, at least not yet, a color with a new wavelength. He explained that the colors of the spectrum differ from one another by their wavelengths, and that the gamut of wavelengths is matched by the colors given off by all living creatures. Her father loved to explain things, adored explaining things. Colors, smiles, roulette . . . He was on the verge of making a great discovery but an unfortunate explosion ruined everything. So he gave up working on the spectrum and went into business. He started with the tenants who didn’t pay their rent and resolved to have a serious conversation with them. You see, he explained to them, above all else a man has to make sure his children have a roof over their heads, that’s what makes for a true man. You’re absolutely right, Mr. Furman, the tenant agreed, but what if a man doesn’t have money for a roof? Then he should borrow it, Father advised. You’re absolutely right, the tenant agreed, could you lend me some money so my children can have a roof over their heads? Father lent the money, the tenant paid, Father gave him a receipt, and Mother suggested that maybe he wasn’t cut out for business after all. So Father went to Sopot. From there he sent funny postcards assuring us that he was developing a new method of winning at roulette.)
Izolda doesn’t hold it against Shayek that he allowed her father to leave.
Nor is she surprised at how calmly he talks about it. Just like the tailors in the shop: he’s gone, too bad, but we’re still here.
In the evening they meet up with Bolek.
Before climbing down into the sewer she kneels on a pile of bricks. Ask her . . . she whispers to her husband. Ask who what? Get on your knees and pray . . . She reaches for the Mother of God medallion that Lilusia Szubert gave her (She’ll look after you, she said, as she draped the chain around Izolda’s neck). Pray that nothing bad happens to us . . . She would like to add: Today and until the end of the war—but she reconsiders, they shouldn’t ask for too much. Help us, she says out loud. Please be kind and help us. You won’t forget?
Things aren’t bad: she rents a room in Wesola, a town on the outskirts of Warsaw, and fetches her mother. She becomes friends with her neighbor, who has a handicapped child. Mother and daughter spend the day riding the local trains. The daughter sings and the mother collects handouts in a canvas sack. The little girl has a long, thin neck; she leans her small head to the side and sings Brahms’s Lullaby with Polish words: Jutro znów, jak Bóg da, wstaniesz wesół i zdrów . . . Her voice is high-pitched, perfectly clear, with a nice vibrato.
Izolda returns to the ghetto for some bedding and carries the bundle back out via the theater warehouse. Then she takes a rickshaw to the train station.
A policeman standing at the corner of Świętokrzyska Street and Nowy Świat eyes her closely. He waves the rickshaw to the curb, climbs in, and says something to the driver . . . They turn onto Chmielna Street and stop at the Hotel Terminus. The policeman orders her inside. He takes a key at the reception. Inside the room he looks at her shrewdly and smiles: So what do we have here but a little Jew girl, am I right? Take off your clothes.
She takes off her clothes.
The policeman unbuckles his belt with the holster, takes off his uniform, and shoves her to the bed. His breathing is hoarse, loud, long, he smells of cigarettes and sweat. She thinks: Will he demand money? Take me to the station? Ask for my address? The policeman stops moving. She thinks: Will he follow me to Wesoła? Will he find my mother? The policeman gets up and dresses. He stands in front of the mirror and combs his mustache and hair. Put your clothes on, he says. Now go outside and get back in your rickshaw. You see how lucky you are, running into a decent person . . . He salutes and heads back toward Nowy Świat. The rickshaw driver asks: To the station?
Her neighbor is on the train, with her daughter. The girl is singing, Jutro znów, jak Bóg da . . . Izolda tosses five whole zlotys into the canvas sack—she’s happy he didn’t demand money, didn’t take her to the station, didn’t ask . . .
She starts to regret that she didn’t ask him for anything. At least for a place to stay. Since you are such a decent person, couldn’t you find me a safe address . . . Or even two. One for the people who can’t show themselves on the street and the other . . . As she washes herself and changes her underwear, she regrets letting such a great opportunity slip by: she ran into a decent person and didn’t ask for a thing.
Shayek leaves to fetch his sisters but comes back without them. They committed suicide, after poisoning little Szymuś. Shayek tried to find out where they were buried, but the man who dug their grave is no longer alive either.
It was Hela, she tells her husband. It had to be Hela. She managed to get her hands on some cyanide. She probably said . . . What would you say in that situation? Let’s not . . . Or: This doesn’t make sense anymore . . . Maybe you don’t say anything, just reach for the white powder . . . And Szymuś, Tusia’s six-year-old son? Which one of them said: Be a good boy and swallow it all?
She was so pretty, that Hela. So blond . . . and yet she didn’t want to save herself. And meanwhile she, Izolda, with dyed hair and eyes a policeman can spot while she’s riding in a rickshaw, she’s supposed to save everybody. Is that fair? she asks her husband. Tell me, where’s the justice in that? But her husband asks her not to say anything against his sisters.
Armchair. Another Stupid Mistake
Her plans for old age turn out to be unrealistic.
She won’t read books because she’ll lose her eyesight. She won’t listen to records