The Upright Heart (7 page)

Cloud cover is drifting into town, and though the sun is still visible on the horizon, a cool breeze stirs the air, lifting dried leaves and shuttling them across empty streets. The sweet damp smell of rain penetrates the air, and Wolf pulls his collar up around his neck to shield his throat from the wind.
If it isn’t really cold, then why do I feel so chilled?
A black crow flies overhead as a shiver runs up the small of Wolf’s back. Wiktor stands behind Wolf, scanning the misty landscape.

They now come to the dim alleyway that leads the group back to number eleven Ulica Nadrzeczna, the location of Wolf’s childhood home. Equidistant from the forest and the market square, this house was the perfect place to grow up, but it was also one of the first homes to be searched for liquidation when the Nazis arrived.

“How lucky we are,” Wolf’s parents told one another from their quiet hovel in the attic apartment provided by Wolf’s friend, Olga. What good fortune they had that Olga was such a kind woman. Jew or no Jew, she knew what was coming before it came and was willing to risk her life for them. Hiding a Jew meant your entire family (and sometimes even your neighbors) could be killed, and yet many Poles did it anyway.

Every afternoon Olga would climb the stairs and bring them bread and cheese, a bottle of boiled water, and sometimes even a jug of cold coffee. She would also carry a bucket of water for them to wash in, and then to use as a toilet. She would then deposit the bucket in the outhouse while her mother was at church. At the start of the war Olga’s father was sent to a camp in Siberia, but because of the family’s prominent standing in the town, Olga and her mother were lucky enough to remain at home. Her mother believed that prayer would keep her husband safe. She would not discover, until six months after the war, that her husband had died in transport on the way to the Soviet Union. Before hard labor and devastation could destroy him, he was taken by dehydration and starvation. “Better to die that way,” she would say as she cried herself to sleep. “My beloved,” she would whisper into her husband’s pillow, “better that you did not have to destroy those beautiful strong hands in the cold harsh winter of that labor camp. It may be better, but I will never be the same.” By the time she received news of her husband’s death, her house was empty and she was alone. The war took from her everything she loved, and she would whisper to the photographs on the wall, the lace trim on
the cuffs of her blouse, the candles lit on the pyre, “See what life stole from me in the night?”

“How lucky we are,” Wolf’s parents would whisper to one another when the silence was booming. Young Leye had begun to experience moments in which she felt that she could not breathe, times when a ringing in her ear would become deafeningly loud, and she would then hold her head beneath the pillow, trying to drown out the sound. The walls and the world were closing in on her. Maybe she knew more than her parents that there really was no chance of escape. Maybe having lived less made her believe less in the world.

“Just think, my little darlings,” her father would say, in his most delicate and caring voice, “just think how lucky we are that we will survive this terrible time. Wait and see, things will be set right in this world.”

Were there smiles that also broke through the clouds and cobwebs of their faces on those dark attic days? Yes, of course there were. There were howls of laughter emitted during the church-going candlelit hours, and there were yelps let loose into the lumpy old down pillow when silence was a necessity and tiny white feathers poked out through invisible holes, getting caught in Leye’s long black hair. Were there tears that formed puddles on the floor? Small pools of water with nowhere to go that you swept into the deep grooves of old planks of cherry wood? Were those tears absorbed by the grains of wood? Were they absorbed and later reborn, coming to life as pale moth’s wings? And how did you feel at the sight of Papa, always strong and wise, the backbone of our life, as he cried just like the rest of us, destroying your image of a solid and perfect world?

“How lucky we are, my darling,” Wolf’s father would say to his wife as he stroked her face and hair. But luck was not on their side. Olga’s family home was just steps away from the market square. Her house could not be overlooked for long.

Yes, they were lucky
, Wolf tells himself, looking up at incoming clouds.
At least they died in each other’s arms
.

Wolf wonders if the only happy time in your life is when you are a child. Your mother holds you in her arms, gives you milk and bread, and bathes you as tenderly as if you were still in her womb. You are no more than caterpillar legs, a sun-kissed heart, and still your hand is always held tight.

As if it were yesterday. As if it were yesterday that we were sitting together in this garden beneath the gentle sky. Mother made apple cake and compote, and we sat in the shade of the big cherry blossom tree laughing and talking as if we had all the time in the world. Night would come, and we continued to sit, enjoying each other’s company in the dark
.

The stray dog with dark eyes gives out a small sigh and rustles through a trash can, pulling a pile of vegetable peels across the ground, dragging them along the gnarled roots of the old cherry blossom tree. Wiktor stands beside the rose bush as Wolf reaches to break off a stem, his eyes closed, as if he is remembering the most beautiful and quiet dream. There is a faint whisper, a shout, and then a door swings open. Wiktor turns to look back at the house, and just as the door opens, a stone flies through the air.

There is a thump like a knock on the brain, and then nothing.

Beneath the cherry blossom tree lies a crumpled rose.

There are so many ways to encounter blood. There is the blood that comes from pricking one’s finger with thorns, the blood you tasted when you were a curious child and you wanted to know. You needed to understand intimately the taste of tears, the taste of blood, how people make love, why the clouds look that way, and is God there, and what (on a coldest darkest night, you would ask) happens when we die? Where do we go? Is it just black and then nothing? Nothing? Nothing? How can there be nothing?

What exists in this nothingness? Is it black and is it silent? Do wild flames encircle bodies tortured by impure thoughts? Does
a white light beckon you forward? Are you freed from the earth’s shackles, and like Dante at last encountering his Beatrice, do you rise up and go into the petals of that brilliant white celestial rose? Do you want to go? Do you let go? For Wolf there are no white lights. He is the last spark of light in this lonely place. There is no mirror to reflect his beauty back to him anymore.

Wolf awakens to water rushing onto his face. Rain is pouring down and the ground is wet, mud rising like a tidal wave around him, as if nature were protesting his defeat. Struck by nauseating pain and by an unbearable ringing in his ears, Wolf instinctively touches his face.

There is red and there is shouting.

“You’d better go fast,
żydku
(little Jew), otherwise you’ll join your family in that forest sooner than you think.”

These are words taken from the atmosphere, from the world, from the mind of a man on the run. Wolf stumbles toward the train station, a stream of blood dripping down his face and through his fingers, bag hanging loosely from his shoulder. His limbs feel disjointed, his heart races and his mind screams,
You won’t get me. Never!

The train leaves the station.

Wiktor holds Wolf’s aching head tenderly in his arms.

*

In the dream he comes for me at night. Sarah and I spend the day building a small wooden house for little Sarah’s toys, and we lose track of time as the sun grows huge, settling in the west. The room is aglow. We feel as if we are sitting in the belly of the sun.

Sarah throws back her long, shining black hair, and she stares at me with those slanted blue-gray eyes. “Let’s walk up to the roof,” she says, smiling wickedly, raising her left eyebrow the way she always does whenever she has an idea. I find it impossible
to say no. The day is warm enough to shed our sweaters, and we sit on the hot tin roof overlooking the factories of Łódź. I always enjoyed the rolling hills of the Polish countryside, but this is our landscape now. Sarah can name more than half of the companies and point out what each factory produces and what kind of machinery it uses. Before the war her father owned the biggest factory in town, and she used to spend school holidays helping his secretary to address letters in his office, which is why she had such perfect penmanship at a young age and also how she learned to walk in high heels.

Before the war, Łódź was a town of three languages and three cultures. There were Germans, Jews, and Poles. I wonder what it is like now with no Jews and no Germans? No one to be punished or do the punishing? Factories with no owner and no name? Sarah and I sit and imagine together how things might have changed in Łódź with no more Jews observing Shabbat. Together we light candles every Friday at sundown, with no challah, only ourselves. Sometimes we forget all of the words to the prayers and just have to hum the tune, but we know that this is okay. Our parents, wherever they are, would be proud of us. When we sing, at least one of us is bound to be sad and long for the past. Little Sarah used to get so moody that she wouldn’t even join our Shabbat celebrations, but things have changed and now she even asks to light the candles. The rest of us decided to give her the job, because even though we know that she will never grow older, we agree that it is important to give her the chance to feel more grown up. The truth is that none of us knows when Friday has come, nor do we know what will come in the future, but we do our best to count sunrises and sunsets and to keep a schedule. We observe Shabbat as best we can. Every seven days we stop what we are doing, and that is the best we can do.

In the dream Sarah and I have a wonderful time talking and laughing on the roof. This is not so different from our regular
life. She does cartwheels across the still-hot tin as the moon takes center stage before our eyes. We return to our rooms and hang our uniforms side by side, lying down to rest on a row of cots. All these Sarahs with their uniforms hanging above.

I cannot sleep. I toss and turn and sit up in bed to watch the full moon from my window. I talk to the moon, as I always have, both in real life and in the afterlife. I smile and sense the moon smiling back. It speaks to me without movement or sound, and I hear all that it says. It calls me Rachelka. It speaks to me by name. Birth name, given name, name chosen by my mother, by my father, name called out by my little brother, my real name, Rachelka.

“Tonight is the night you get set free,” it says to me in that liquid silver whisper that makes no audible sound. Tonight I know nothing about Sarah. I smile and fall briefly into sleep, where I enter a dream within a dream.

From my bed I sense that someone is at the gate. I rise and go down to greet whoever it is, noticing that I am not even wearing my nightgown. My body is wrapped in a shimmering sheet, a sheet that blows in the wind and feels both rough and cool against my skin as I walk down the cold stone staircase. Stepping out into the schoolyard, I am illuminated by the pale moonlight. I am sheathed in the desert wind and in this moment I feel as if I am the moon, the stars, the desert, the night. I am nature and, for the first time, I am also a woman.

A man stands at the gate waiting for me. He has blue eyes that twinkle in the light and wavy gray hair. He also has many wrinkles on his face, but he still looks young and handsome. He smiles at me as if he knows about me, why I am here and why I am leaving. He unlocks the gate, just like that, and then he remains at his post, as if his presence will protect me no matter where I go. I step out into the city street and enjoy the movement of the golden sheet as it flaps in the moonlit wind, brushing against my body. After so
much time spent inside the school, the city has changed. I can see that many years have passed. There are more cars on the street than ever before, and there are young men with shaved heads standing around a fire wearing sport clothes, drinking from big bottles, laughing, breaking their bottles into the fire and watching with glee as they shatter. There are women laughing and talking, drinking along with them. They wear short skirts and bright blue makeup on their eyes. They look just like the women who used to hang out by the train station at night when I was a child.

My city has transformed into a lost and forgotten ghost town. I wander the streets looking at the people and the empty houses. Nobody can see me now. The overwhelming grayness has swallowed up many of the once beautiful buildings, and though I feel sorry for what has happened, I cannot say that I feel much regret. In the dream I am one with the night, and nothing can take from me my ecstasy.

*

The feather and I are coming closer and closer to each other, and whenever the sun rotates ’round us I wonder if this time will be the last. What life will we be born into next, and how painful will it be to leave this suspended existence? Just how will we know when it is time to say goodbye?

I
t is easy to swallow the magic pill, for it is small and can be ingested with ease. That’s right, this pill grows on trees. In pools of muddy water covered with dried, forgotten leaves you can also find this pill and you can take it and all things will be healed. In this place you can find it everywhere, and it is available to everyone for free. When you are in trouble, you can remember this. When you are ill or sad you can close your eyes and ask for this pill and then you can find it out in the woods or even where there is no more green to be seen. Even on cobblestone streets, in concrete, it will be there waiting for you. When you take it, you can jump like a grasshopper. You can remember everything that you want to remember and nothing that you want to forget. This pill makes life beautiful and erases all pain.

Ever since I discovered this pill, I take one every day. I walk through the woods outside of town and I pick one, for they grow wild, like mushrooms. Wild. You may think that if one is good then more than one could be even better, but one is enough to change your world. I am telling you about this because I know what you’re feeling. I can see that you experienced what I experienced, and who knows, some things may be worse. But I can tell you that there is a way out. And it has nothing to do with the Red Cross or Joint
Distribution Committee or the church. You can go to Ulica Długa 38 to check the slips of paper, the wall of names, to see if your family has returned, but it won’t help. You won’t find their names anywhere but in the dust. This pill will make you forget your family, and then you will feel no pain.