Chasing the King of Hearts. Hanna Krall
Her granddaughter, the gallery owner, could come and tell her about contemporary art.
Her other granddaughter, the cultural historian, could tell her about the cultures of the world.
Her third granddaughter will be in the army.
But because Izolda doesn’t know Hebrew she’ll never learn about contemporary art or what will happen to the cultures of the world. Her soldier granddaughter will visit her when she’s on leave. She’ll take off her boots, put down her rifle, sit on the sofa, and fall asleep right away. Izolda will cover up her granddaughter with a plaid blanket and say in Polish: Śpij, dziecko—Sleep, child. And when she awakes, her granddaughter will get dressed up and run to meet a boy, who’s very handsome even though he has a large ring under his lip. Izolda would like to ask if the ring doesn’t get in the way of kissing, but once again she can’t remember the Hebrew word for ring. (The plaid blanket she’ll use to cover her granddaughter will be light and soft but warm, with a colorful pattern, just like another, very different plaid blanket. She’ll try to tell her granddaughter about that blanket, only she won’t be able to. That one felt safe, peaceful, secure, but what kind of safety can there be in the Israeli army?)
She’ll sit down in her armchair.
She’ll start to think. That’s all she can do anymore. And then she’ll remember another stupid mistake. For instance, how could she have put his parents and sisters in with other Jews? The setup was fine, the widow who owned the apartment was an honest woman; the only problem was that her parents had to share it with a young married couple. Both had good papers and decent looks, but the husband was circumcised. Izolda should have found a different flat, with an uncircumcised Jew. Although even an uncircumcised Jew would have been found out (for instance, by running into an acquaintance on the street). She should have avoided places where there were any other Jews at all. Maybe, if she’d asked the policeman from the rickshaw for an apartment without Jews . . . Of course they would have died anyway. (They would have taken shelter in the basement during the Warsaw Uprising and been killed by bombs.) Oh well, she’ll console herself, next time I’ll be smarter. What am I babbling about, she catches herself, what next time?
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 onto 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 mustache, 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 neighbors 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 braid, gray 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 braid, 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