The Upright Heart (12 page)

There were so many ways to see into a person’s soul. Invisibility was the key to knowing another man’s heart. Here, for the first time in her life (and never, ever to be repeated), Anna learned as best she could how to hide in the shadows. It took effort, but she found ways to achieve it. She pinned back her shiny black hair, slumped her shoulders (a habit that proved difficult to emerge from), wore no makeup, and donned the hausfrau uniform worn by all the other housekeepers. Hers was always at least one size too big.

Some days she worked on the boss’s rooms, shining his shoes and lining up his white shirts so that there was not more than one centimeter’s space left between each hanger. She had heard that Niklas’s quirks were nothing compared to the governor-general’s. He sometimes made his housekeepers rewash his one hundred uniforms in just one day. She also heard that he had a habit of obsessively cleaning his nails. Once he actually whipped his son for bringing a caterpillar into the bedroom. Yes, the governor-general’s wife and children lived in the castle as well. They enjoyed lavish banquets prepared by an Austrian chef who had been imported from Vienna just for them. They spent weekends in a villa outside Kraków, where from the top of a hill they could see the rolling fields of Małopolska running away from them. The children played in forests and in streams. For them, life was beautiful.

Working at Wawel Castle at this time made Anna feel like a cloistered witness to the end of a world. It had ended already, in the destruction of her family home, in the door that had been closed on Łódź, in the train ride with her father from the countryside to Kraków, in the faces of her mother and Wojtuś as the family divided and went their separate ways. It ended in the crease that formed so early between her brows. But here in Wawel Castle, proud heritage sight for the Polish people, where the dragon’s lair still rested beside the Wisła, the old world died. You could walk twenty minutes and see people being cordoned off, you could share a sandwich with Maryna, laugh with her or cry, you could tell her a secret, and tomorrow she could be gone.

Maryna’s real name was Miriam. With her stunning green eyes and electric smile, day-by-day she lived a secret life. She had acquired documents stating that she was a Pole, and she lived with a Catholic family in town. When she changed her name, she learned Catholic prayers and did what she could to erase Jewish life from her memory. But you can’t obliterate who you are. While she scrubbed the marble steps, her mother and sisters moved into the ghetto. On days when Maryna was dismissed early from work, she would visit her family using documents that endorsed her as a Polish nurse in the Apteka, one of the few places of gentile presence in the ghetto. She was able to keep this up until the first deportation, at which point access to the ghetto became more restricted, and the core group of nurses identifiable. But until the gates were closed she smuggled bread, medicine, and news.

There may have been a few other Jewish women cleaning at Wawel Castle, sweeping the walkways or scrubbing the façade. If there were, nobody really knew. Did they have work papers and live in the ghetto? Did they slide off their armbands and move from one world safely into the next? Were they, like Maryna, hiding out in town? Who was this woman? Who was the other? Who knows the truth of everyone’s story? Even in an era of great restriction,
there were always exceptions to every rule. And so many secrets. For always there was a Jew hiding in the light of day.

During this period of time, when she was new to Wawel and Maryna was often by her side, Anna vomited at least once a day. She would just go about her business, working, and then suddenly she would run to the toilet to retch. Luckily this only lasted for a few months and nobody ever knew about it, not even Maryna. Anna would have been ashamed for her to know. Maryna never complained about her circumstances, and the only possible evidence of her suffering came once a month when she experienced terrible period pain. Anna would always know that it was coming, because suddenly Maryna’s face would take on the palest pallor and she would begin dropping things left and right. Once it was so bad that she fainted on the boss’s bedroom floor. Anna dragged Maryna’s body to the bathroom so she could pour cold water onto her face, but Maryna still bled heavily onto her uniform and onto the pale-yellow-carpeted floor. The two risked getting into trouble by spending an extra hour cleaning. Finally Anna tied a white apron backward around Maryna’s uniform.

Their boss, Niklas, was not a good man by anyone’s standards, but he was good at what he did. He once thrashed a dog to death on Wawel Square just for begging him for food. This event interrupted Niklas’s address to a group of young soldiers. He said that the murder was meant to teach them all a lesson in obedience. Anna watched the whole thing from a courtyard window. She could see the excitement in his eyes.

Anna saw it all begin. It started when they were cleaning his sleeping quarters on a summer’s day. The morning had been sunny and beautiful, but now that it was afternoon the sky was overcome with darkness and it began to storm. The head housekeeper came rushing into the room, hair wet and matted, apron undone, and told them to move on quickly. Niklas was on his way, and would
want to enter his room in peace. So the girls, who had never even met him, quickly straightened the bed sheet corners.

They had just shut the massive bay windows (it took two girls to open or close just one) and began drying the floors when the door was thrown open and Niklas came rushing in. He had blood on his right hand and on his rain-soaked white shirt (he never wore a uniform), and he screamed for the girls to get out, while he marched into the bathroom and slammed the door. From their perch at the top of the stairs, they heard curses and the sound of glass breaking. They didn’t know what to do or where to go, so they just sat there attentively. At first they were both trembling, but after a few minutes of silence they began to relax, Anna braiding Maryna’s thick, chestnut hair. Minutes passed before Niklas stormed out of the room and down the stairs past them, marching wildly, his whole body tense and jumping as he walked, frightening the girls so much that Anna dropped the hairpin and watched it fall down the central spiral of the marble stairs. No one could hear that pin drop in the cacophony of sounds. There was the wild thunder barreling down on the city, which almost totally drowned out the sound of Niklas shouting at several SS guards, who were standing outside in the rain.

When Niklas came back upstairs, he was relaxed. He walked slowly up the stairs and even dared to smile, asking the girls if one of them could bring him some fresh soap and a towel. Anna ran to an adjacent building to get the things he requested, discreetly picking the hairpin off the floor as she went. It took her some time to find the kind of soap he liked, one that had no fragrance and was clear and brown, like the simple kind used for washing clothes. It must have been at least five minutes before Anna came back upstairs, because by this point Maryna was no longer sitting there.

The door to Niklas’s room was ajar, but there was no one inside. The air was heavy, but Anna assumed it was a result of the dampness left over from the rain. The door to the bathroom
was also slightly open, and in his dresser mirror Anna could see a reflection of the bathroom mirror. She was surprised by her own quiet response as she watched Maryna sit calmly on the edge of the tub. She did not breathe more quickly as she witnessed Maryna clean the wound on Niklas’s hand and then bandage it with a strip of cloth that she must have ripped off of his shirt. She did not drop her things—the towel and the brown soap, as she watched him bow his head, as if in submission, and lean over to kiss Maryna on the lips. She did not quiver when she saw Maryna smile sweetly, or when Niklas turned to close the door, catching sight of Anna watching. She wondered if Maryna knew that there were tears in his eyes.

*

There is only one way to make pastry dough so that it is light and fluffy enough to bake. First you beat the eggs clockwise and then counterclockwise, and that way the result will be the most delicate and delightful cloud puffs you have ever eaten. This is Bolesław’s role in the household on Saturday evenings, when he and Elżbieta bake a cake. He whips the eggs. He kneads the dough. Sometimes they make
szarlotka
(apple cake), and at other times, a chocolate torte, such as for birthdays or holidays. The rest of the time they make apple cake, or else Elżbieta’s special cookies filled with rose-petal jam, which taste like a piece of heaven.

Elżbieta hums a tune remembered from her piano-playing days. It might be Chopin. On her face is the same secret smile that is always there. It is the smile evident in her eyebrows and in her lips, in the way that her cheeks turn upward, toward rosy thoughts and better days.

There is nothing like the smell of that jam as it fills the kitchen. When the aroma of apples and butter baking together hits the atmosphere there is a slight pause in life, and for a second there is familiarity, a feeling of coming home, a sensation that you were
always there to begin with, no matter what has gone wrong. This smell is so evocative that it will forever recall childhood, family, and memory.

Looking up from her bowl of baking powder and sugar, Elżbieta glances over at Bolesław, who is sitting on a stool, hunched over a bowl of eggs, eyes cast downward, intent upon completing his task to perfection. He feels her looking, so he looks up at her and smiles, a break of sunlight that doesn’t come to his face often, but when it does, it is always a miracle. Uncharacteristically, he grabs Elżbieta and pulls her onto his lap. The flour from her hands get all over his face and shirt, and together they laugh. They laugh and laugh, and, for this moment in time, everything is as it should be.

Better not to remember the war, now that it is over
, Anna reminds herself, walking down Ulica Sławkowska on her way to buy groceries. The old market has little to offer now, but there are things one can get, like potatoes and carrots, things that can help keep a person alive. Out of the corner of her eye she sees that same haunting little boy again, the one who was wandering the streets with another child just days ago. He is standing in Planty, carrying a little dog in his arms. This dog has all of the fat that the young boy lacks. He is old and scruffy, and his eyes look filmed over, as if they are almost blind. The little boy holds the dog close to his face, inhaling his fur, as if he will never let him go. A bearded man in a dark brown suit sitting on a nearby bench turns around to say something to the boy, and as if in response, the boy puts down the dog and the dog runs back to the man. The boy stands there, frozen, and the man says something to him again. The boy comes over to sit next to him.

Carrying a bag with a few necessities, Anna sees the boy again on her way home. This time she stops to really look. The hollows of his cheeks are just as sunken as they were before, and his hair is
even wilder than it was. Eyes closed, he listens intently to the man. The man looks like a foreigner. He has a small bandage on the right side of his forehead. Occasionally he pauses to touch the plaster and shut his eyes. In these moments the boy looks away.

She decides to walk through Planty so that she can really observe them. She hears the man speaking to the boy in Yiddish. She cannot help but worry about him, at least a little. Maybe it isn’t necessary anymore, but it is still an automatic response to want to tell them to hide who they really are. An elderly lady with a German Shepherd comes along, and the little dog gets excited and begins to jump up and down and bark. The little boy goes after him. The man on the bench holds his head as if in pain, probably in reaction to the sound. The little dog lifts his leg and begins to urinate on the large dog. Something more marvelous than the leg of lamb Anna has just purchased on the black market is the sight of this seemingly starving boy opening his mouth and howling with laughter. He laughs so hard that he has to lean over and press a hand to his belly. The old lady curses at the boy in disgust and tries to pull her dog away, but the German Shepherd just bends down to lick the little dog’s urine. She shudders with horror, and the boy is rendered so hysterical that he is now rolling around on the ground, the last traces of winter’s mud and dried leaves sticking to his back, spring’s newborn hyacinths crushed beneath him. He tries to catch his breath now.

“Come back over here!” the man from the bench shouts, now in Polish, holding onto his head.

The beautiful, midday sun moves to a location central enough to sparkle as a reflection in the small pool behind them. The light diverts Anna’s attention, and as she turns to look back at the scuffle she notices a lean figure in the distance, standing behind an old tree. His nose is thin and his eyes twinkle with the look of a small mole that has rediscovered his burrow. His white shirtsleeves are rolled up at the cuff and his hands are shoved into his pockets. Observing
the odd couple, he smiles at the scene. He turns toward Anna and she looks back at him, but something about her attention makes the light fade from his face. He walks slowly to another tree, looking back at her every so often, and then away. It is as if he is being caught doing something wrong. What is it? She wants to understand. There is no way to know, as he quickly retreats behind a birch tree, branches twisted, like a mother’s arms reaching for the sun.

There is a piece of music that runs through my heart whenever I need escape from the world. My piano teacher used to play it softly, and I would strain to listen to it from the cold hallway as I waited for my music lesson to begin. I could see that my teacher had been crying. She would carefully fold the sheet music and tuck it away beneath our lesson, putting a crease along the “t” in the composer’s name, Satie.

The remains of my life are like this piece of music that mirrors all the last bittersweet traces in the world. They are: an image of Wolf, a lonely ghost-train ride. Only this melody knows how to make the pain of loss beautiful again.
Close my eyes and make me once more
, I ask. I ask again. I ask, and there is no answer.
Make me alive and whole so that he may come to me and our bodies can unite one more time. There is no love in the realm of ghosts
.