The Upright Heart (14 page)

There were rumors in the ghetto about what it meant to be taken away, and about where one went from Plac Zgody, which served as Kraków’s Umschlagplatz, never to be seen again. It was November 1942. The truth was becoming apparent, and the atmosphere was tense. Maryna received news that her mother had been taken away in a ghetto raid two weeks before.

The girls had spent the morning raking leaves and scrubbing the stone walkway outside. Fifty meters away some SS guards were joking around and smoking just as they always did, especially when the weather was sunny. In the afternoon, the girls were sent to
clean the marble staircase in Niklas’s building, an unusual chore for this time of day.

“You don’t want us to clean his bedroom?” Maryna asked Pani Grzonka, the head housekeeper.

“Don’t question me,” Pani Grzonka snapped. It was not like her to act this way. They walked to the marble staircase, pails in hand, knowing that something was terribly wrong. Maryna took the second flight of stairs, and Anna started cleaning from the ground floor up.

Never before had Anna felt her own witchery so intensely. Never before had she felt so strong.
I won’t let anything happen to her
, she told herself.
They will have to go through my body to get to her. Nothing can happen. I am a brick wall
. Her back was tense. Her leg muscles tightened. She felt like an animal ready to pounce. Anna looked up at Maryna, one flight of stairs above. Through the worn soles of her oxford shoes, through the short white socks, through the golden calves and the wrinkled seat of her starched uniform, through the tied strings of the white apron with the carefully embroidered lily of the valley, through the imagined white armband with the embroidered blue Jewish star pinned to the inside of her uniform pocket, hidden during the day but dreamt up at night, a steady stream of tears fell down Maryna’s face and onto her dress. Her tears mingled with the soapy water, the salt from her heart forever embedding itself in the grains of the cold, smooth, white stone. Her hands trembled. As if someone had stabbed her back, she fell forward, exhaling deeply as if she wanted to howl, unable to catch her breath.

The front door slammed and Niklas came running up the stairs, his shirtsleeves rolled up at the cuff, his back soaked with sweat. He walked with accelerated determination and swept right past Anna, knocking over her bucket of water, spilling it all the way down into the foyer. Anna could see Maryna’s face from her vantage point, could watch Maryna close her eyes and mouth something to
herself. Through the courtyard window to the right Anna noticed several unfamiliar SS guards walking toward the building. The men stopped to have a smoke and speak with the guards stationed in the courtyard.

Anna was brought back to the staircase by the shout that escaped from Maryna’s mouth as Niklas hissed at her to be quiet and then grabbed her by the arm. She could barely move her legs, and it was almost as if Niklas had lifted her into the air, her feet floating up toward the strange light cast by the blustery clouds pouring through the windows at the top of the stairs. The seat of her uniform was wet with urine.

Anna ran upstairs as fast as she could, nearly falling on the slippery stairs, wet rags still in her hands, as if she could erase the scene from reality. She tried to call out to Niklas, but something about the presence of those guards made her stop. Something within told her to be quiet. By the time she reached Niklas’s room, he had taken Maryna inside and closed the door. Anna dared to turn the handle, but the door was locked, and from inside Niklas grunted at her to wait. She could hear Maryna sobbing endlessly, could hear Niklas whispering to her, but she couldn’t distinguish his words. She wanted so desperately to hear what he was saying that she rested her ear against the door. She was too distracted by Maryna’s cries. Then something very strange happened—Maryna spoke softly, peacefully. And then there was silence.

It seemed to Anna that the quiet was endless. Her heart was beating so fast that time felt both accelerated and slowed down, and there was no way to know just what was happening, how fast or how slow.

As if erupting from the wild beating of her heart, there was a sound that came from within the room of something opening abruptly—a door, perhaps? Then came a scream so brief that it was almost like a sigh, and then a loud thud followed by a chorus of horrible cries and punctuated shouts. The door to the room swung
open and Niklas dragged Anna inside, throwing her down against the open bay window, ordering her to clean. His face was aflame and his eyes were swollen with tears. He flew over to the bathroom sink—the same one that had been the site of his first intimate moments with Maryna—and then he threw up into the sink. He wiped away the sweat and tears with a cloth placed on the basin, and then he told Anna to clean up that too. As he left the room, Anna imagined that she could see something. It was as if Maryna’s white armband with the embroidered Jewish star was crumpled tightly in his hand. As he looked back at her with an expression that said, “clean or die,” he quickly shoved the imaginary keepsake into his top dresser drawer. In a split second, he was out the door.

Anna’s legs shook so violently that she thought they would buckle as she rose to peer out the open window. The sight of Maryna’s body made her want to run to be sick, and yet she couldn’t move. Maryna lay there on the cobblestone walkway, her arms and legs broken, her thick, chestnut hair splayed like wings, like a perfect fan around her head, blood flowing through the long strands of her hair like tiny riverbeds onto the walkway in a steady stream, drowning flowers still vibrant even in autumn.

Anna could see Niklas running out to address the crowd. There were the housekeepers, the SS guards, the yelping dogs, all of them gathered together to witness the body that was taken away from them too soon. She watched as Niklas demonstrated how Maryna fell out the window while cleaning the windows. How he tried to catch her, but it was too late. He pointed up at the window, at Anna looking out; he mimed Maryna’s actions, Anna’s too, shook his head, even laughed. He put on a perfect show. Then Anna watched as the SS men picked up Maryna’s mangled body, threw her like driftwood into the back of their truck, and drove her away.

A pool of Maryna’s blood was left on the pathway even after everyone had walked away. Anna imagined that through her spilled
blood Maryna’s life would somehow continue, seep into the cold stones, feed the ants and the worms and the plants, even the far-reaching trees stretching out toward the Wisła River, and day in, day out, summer, winter, rain or shine, it would move deep into the veins of those cold gray stones, forever changing their lifeless shade to her vibrant, most beautiful, crimson color, to remind the creator that there once was a wonderful being here.

*

There is a moment when falling feels like flying. An infinitesimal fraction of time freezes itself in the atmosphere, and at this moment you are the object of its fixation. So many thoughts flash through your mind in this instant. There are those you love, and you think of them. There is the sound of the world, the shaking, breathing, beating, rushing pulsing that you now realize mirrors the sound of your own life. Your heart is that beat, your blood is that water. And you would never ever be able to know this secret unless it came to you now, at the moment of your death. But you are rising up, and you have never been happier, because you know now that you are a part of this earth and beyond, that you breathe with this world. There are many beings, it is true, but there is also only one.

For two days after Maryna died, Anna’s job was to scrub the cobblestone walkway, erasing any traces of Maryna’s memory.

She couldn’t stand working in the castle anymore. She was so alone and miserable, so sickened by the sight of any of the governor-general’s men, that she would have rather died than remain there for another moment. Anna begged her father to help her find another secretarial job in town. It took him two
months, but he finally found one, and she quit cleaning at Wawel immediately.

She did see Niklas again, but only once. The war had just ended, and the Russians entered Kraków. The atmosphere was jubilant, frantic, free. She was happier than ever because her family had been reunited, and because they were discussing possibilities for the future. She didn’t want to think about the war or about the past.

Walking through Planty on a sunny spring day, one that was a lot like today, she turned to the left to look at some daffodils that were springing up when she saw the sole of a shoe sticking out from behind a bush. She was afraid to look, and still she had no choice but to walk around that bush and see what was behind. There lay what remained of Niklas, facing the sky, his face beaten, a dirty rope tied around his wrists and ankles, his ruddy cheeks drained of all their blood. She wondered what words had been exchanged, what altercation had made somebody want to kill him? Had he wanted to leave this world in the end? Had he shouted insults or begged for mercy?

While walking away from Niklas’s dead body, Anna recalled the time she and Maryna had traveled with him to the countryside. The governor-general was out of town. It was the beginning of spring after a long winter. The flowers were budding and there was a newborn smell in the air. The atmosphere carried the headiness of love that everyone feels as winter dissipates. Even when there is war and you are lonely, even when inscribed in the wind is a secret dust that smells strangely sweet, and it is hidden and no one dares to speak of it, nothing can prevent you from wanting to make love when all of life is in bloom.

They were supposed to help Polish servants clean the basement of the governor-general’s mansion half an hour from town. What Niklas really wanted was for Anna to work while he took a few hours alone with Maryna. Anna knew that everything
existed on a precarious line, that the clouds could unfold, the earth swallow them up, her heart cease to beat, and all for what? She understood Maryna and Niklas in their craziness. They made their lives more vivid by making love to each other, so she kept to herself and did her work, just as she was told.

In the middle of the day Anna took her sandwich and went for a walk. She stumbled upon a herd of cows lying beside the road, soaking in the sun. They were spread out along fragrant patches of grass, red tags on their ears, demonstrating that they belonged to someone. Not far from the herd was a tiny group of four baby cows, huddled together. They looked especially cozy, but Anna’s presence disturbed their peace, rousing the runt of the group immediately.

The youngest calf was so small that Anna imagined he could fit twice into the body of one of his brothers. He was a beautiful shade of brown, a color so rich that he seemed to be created not by a mother or a father but by the earth itself. He reminded Anna of Maryna somehow, which made her laugh as he ran around, parading his unique beauty. He came over to her and dropped his head, looking up with his big brown eyes and nuzzling her cheek as she bent down to touch his soft head. If she were a child she would have begged her mother to let her keep him. “Can I take him home, please?” she would have asked. But she wasn’t a child anymore, so she caressed the head of that pure newborn calf and laughed and wept more than she ever could have before.

She continued to walk until she came across a field where a bicycle stood abandoned by a lone tree (she figured the person had gone over the bank on the right and into the stream), and there she found several cows grazing at three of the four corners of a plot of land. The clouds were so vast and majestic on that day, and she couldn’t help but feel that if she could remain in that spot, everything would be possible. If she closed her eyes and inhaled the fresh air, then with just the power of her will she could erase the whole world.

Anna sat beneath the tree and leaned her head against the trunk, her hair latching onto the split bark at the base of the tree, as if it were hanging on to her. She watched clouds pass, felt them move through her, and she nearly fell asleep, so at peace was she on that day. But that kind of peace doesn’t last long. She was surprised to see Niklas and Maryna come back for the bicycle. He was singing a German song and was happy, holding on to her long wet hair like he was Tarzan and her hair, the rope of freedom. She looked happy, too. Her smile was solemn and her eyes downcast, but Anna knew Maryna well enough to understand. Maryna touched her neck and belly with contentment. They were the only three in the world who would ever know the secret to Maryna’s love.

As they walked back, the atmosphere was practically jubilant, and a couple of times Anna had to turn her head just to make sure she was not imagining things. She walked ahead of them, and more than once she heard Maryna squeal with delight. Niklas must have grabbed her breast or pinched her behind. They came back through the clearing where the cows were grazing, and the little brown calf came over to Anna, running along, playing and jumping. Anna didn’t know why, but she could feel Niklas stiffen before it even happened. She heard Maryna gasp as she turned around just in time to watch Niklas grab the baby calf by the neck and drag him back the way they had come.

The calf did not cry out, and none of the herd seemed to notice or care. Maryna’s eyes were filled with horror, and the girls ran after Niklas, Maryna ahead of Anna, breathing so heavily that she could barely run. They reached the banks and heard a painful squeal. Neither of them shouted. Only a tiny breath slipped from Maryna’s lips. What had made them forget their place in this situation? Just moments before they had experienced an equality so real that they had been given the confidence to run for their lives, as if they could do something, prevent something, save someone.

At night I see the stars jumping to form a moving canopy above me.

Where are we going, my little feather?
I wonder, but my feather just goes, no questions asked.

There is a lonesome lullaby that arises in this last passage of night. Sing to me, my little feather exclaims, breathing more softly than ever before.