The Upright Heart (19 page)

This bird has seen great works of art painted and performed, has sat on the shoulders of Tolstoy and Tsvetaeva, of Debussy and Górecki, and on the windowsill of Kafka, where laughter and gloom always coexisted. This bird has listened to Mozart conduct his
Marriage of Figaro
at the opera house in Vienna, sat with the young composer while he quietly sang himself into his dying breath. “But who is that soprano?” he asked, a quiet murmur that came too late.

This bird has swooped over the tree where Buddha sat, carried an olive leaf to Christ as he wandered in the desert, laying it down by his side while he slept, eyes like the deepest muddy river, sun sparkling off its shallow surface. This bird has bathed his charcoal-dusted wings in the Nile, traveled the cosmos and beyond with her people in ancient times. He has dipped his longest feather in the dust of a tomb painted with Egyptian history, real, imagined, and forgotten, the tomb that was submerged in water and then projected into the stars. He then gave the feather to Maat, and now Maat weighs it against every heart. What heart is equal to the weight of a feather? You might ask. The right one.

This bird always recognizes the heart that longs to belong. The longing heart yearns for love, and this bird takes special care to watch over it, not because it is any better than the others, and not because the bird can do anything to alter its reality in the physical world, but because these hearts need more reassurance than others in order to feel that they belong. And when they are reassured by the quiet voice within, the one that is signaled from elsewhere, held still by the flapping of this bird’s expansive black wings, then there is a chance for peace. And when this heart is at peace it can really love, and its love helps to heal the world.

Plaster my heart with silver and gold. Make the moon grow so big we can step on a ladder to greet it. These are the kinds of wishes whispered by Elżbieta’s son, Wiktor’s grandchild, little Mateusz, when he was just an altar boy. And when Mateusz was in trouble, he would turn his back on the family and stare at the wall. He could hold this pose with pride for hours until his parents had to beg him to turn around. What had begun as his punishment turned into a game in which he punished them. You could see early on that he knew how to win. What made him dream that he could leave this little town and become someone? As a teenager he stood at the summit of Rybnik, coal smoke burning in the dusk, shouting at the top of his lungs, “I will never leave this town!” But he would, and he would go far.

Days were spent playing soccer and hockey, running in the fields and through the forest where just a few years before Nazis had fought, where you could still find shells and bullets and other treasures left over from the war. Now there was a Gypsy camp in the woods, slightly removed from the riverbank, and Mateusz and his friends would gaze at the caravans from the other side, sneaking behind trees in the night, wondering what it was like to be on the other side. There was always a beautiful woman to watch and dream of as she bathed in the cool clean waters, unraveling her long black hair, which would float along the surface of the water, just like a mermaid’s, as if no other woman had ever existed.

From this point on there would be only one female ideal in Mateusz’s mind, that of a woman with dark and exotic looks. Yes, he would find his way to love Polish beauties with their long blue eyes and blond hair tied into a thick braid to match that of a horse’s mane, but he would always dream of a dark woman until he found himself the right one.

What made Mateusz, a child of this old world, altar boy and rebellious one, shorts appropriately cropped for the times, young muscles strengthening as he grew into a handsome young man—a perfect mix of mother and father, of the dark looks and the gentle eyes—think that he could become an actor and leave this town? Was it that the black bird was watching over him? Burrowing close to his tender heart? Was it hubris? Was it a dream? Nothing that pulled at his heart and made him want to remain in the tender, sad world in which he had spent his entire life thus far could keep him from reaching for some bigger dream. Some unknown particle felt both within and without propelled him forward to Warsaw, into that drama school, text from
The Little Prince
in hand, sweating palms bleeding through the letters, dampening the page. But that didn’t matter now. He knew the words, the right ones. The reading was from a section about a fox and the prince, about how loving someone imprints them forever on your experience of the world. You may know this story. You may have read it, too. And if you haven’t, you must go and read it now.

The first thing Wolf did, after praying, was to go to sleep. I lay my body down on top of his, as I would have done as his lover, as I have always wanted to do. I still remember that unbearable need to merge my body with his. People say that love is joyful. Why? I remember when we made love, I wanted only to cry. The joy of feeling an extension of his life inside of me was too much, because no matter what we did, he could never be close enough. Ecstasy lies right on the border of loss. I could not bear to love him, and yet I had no choice.

The boat rocks us back and forth as we cross the ocean. Sometimes the movement is gentle, like lying in a hammock or
being cradled in your mother’s arms, but at other times it is wildly violent, and Wolf lies sick in bed, moaning as he vomits out whatever food he has managed to get down.

We boarded in Hamburg.

I wonder how many lost souls have left Europe for other shores? I suspect that most of them stayed behind. When we first came aboard the boat, I felt so unsure. Where was I to fit in this tiny room with only a bed and a place for the little dog to sleep?

We are traveling to America now. I wander the deck at night and listen to people. Most of them have never been there before. A new life begins for us all. We look out at the uncertain world. I understand these travelers well. Our old world is lost in the mist. Wolf keeps mostly to himself. He sits in his room and reads a lot. Sometimes he stares out the small circular window in his room and watches the sea pass by. He loves to snuggle and pet the dog, whose old stomach seems to be stronger than the rest.

This city was destroyed during the war, but slowly things have been built up again. Some places have been renovated to look as if they were never even gone. There is a second coming, a revitalization of life, never to replicate what it once was, but now the city can be something else. When thirty years have passed, this city will become a monument to the socialist system. There are wide boulevards. There are statues bound together with pride in tribute to the worker, and there are also monuments to the past. Here uprisings challenged a reign of terror and despair. Ghetto Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, walls crumbling down, a cacophony of screams at dawn but nobody hears your sound above his own, basements filled with mothers and children weeping in anticipation of an uncertain end. That was Warsaw then.

Now thirty years have passed and everything has changed. Before World War II people called Warsaw the Paris of Eastern Europe. It is now Paris without the glamour, Paris without the fine cuisine, the outdoor cafés, the Arc de Triomphe, and the city lights.

It is here that Mateusz comes to study theater, and his world begins to open.

There is magic to standing in a black box with everything on the outside submerged in darkness, bright lights shining down on an imaginary world. You are the center of that world. Your breath reverberates throughout the darkness and people are watching and waiting to return your breath with a wave of intensity so honed that it might feel like love. There is an unexplainable transmission of energy in this dark house where every story is possible. Fake tears and blood are never really fake. Didn’t you know? If you do this, if you give yourself over to the magic, then you can feel your body expanding to incorporate everyone, and you can experience the most wonderful sensation of oneness and you will feel that the whole world is in love with you, and you will shine like the brightest sun. There is a practice to living so many lives, but is there also a price? How does the individual survive when it spends so much time stepping into other souls? Who’s to know? Maybe the answer comes later. Right now, under those hot lights, with the hushed silence of an audience at your feet, the consequences are nothing but an irrelevant dream. And the universe is rotating, and you want to bask in its glory, and you are calling out to the cosmos from the earth, and now, for just this moment in time, you are at home in this one room, and it feels like you are the central point of everything.

The wings of a bird are not so different from the wings of an angel. And what about the wings of the mind? Remember you,
the child? You also had wings. You lay beneath the clouds and projected yourself into their midst.

Freed from his obligations toward Wolf, toward Anna, toward the people of this world, Wiktor recognizes that the time has come for him to move on. But how does one go to the next level? Does it involve ascending or descending? Perhaps simply moving to the side? Leaving behind this world is something new, something he has never done before. He walks for hours toward the outskirts of Kraków, where there is a big stone quarry with pale blue waters the color of the brightest sky or the clearest mind. He walks down the rocky steps and looks up at the pink dawn. The water reflects this blush of life. And the mirrored beauty causes a surge of emotion in his heart that he has not felt since he died.

“But oh I will miss this world,” Wiktor says aloud, to no one in particular, arms cast straight up into the air, chest heaving, weeping like he didn’t know he could.

For a moment it seems as if he will be sucked into the earth. There is no freedom in hanging on to the familiar. A flock of birds flies overhead. Everything changes once again.

Now it is time for Wiktor to be set free, his old clothes disintegrating with each passing moment, just as the sky brightens incrementally. He steps into the waters, tenuously at first, but there is no shallow bank on which he can lean, so he must submerge himself completely. How is it to swim when you are no longer alive? There is nothing so beautiful. You can breathe water just as you once could the air. Everything is available to you as it never was before. You may witness a realm of microscopic creatures, for every molecule of water and life is moving together and there is no separation from one element to the next. I breathe, you breathe, as if there is someone to talk to.

Now Wiktor swims to the rough surface at the bottom of the quarry where there is a circular hole just big enough to fit his body. He swims down into the opening, which appears to be a secondary
reflection of that ecstatic pink sky. As he moves through, a cold wind blows past his face, sweeping something away. He arrives in the garden of his childhood home, where there is an apple orchard and chickens run wild. There is that old smell of dawn coming over the fields and a sense of longing so strong that he must run, just as he always did, across the fields, away from home. Running wild, arms outstretched, hands brushing the tall prickling grass until breathlessness forces him to succumb. This is an image of his world, formed in childhood. This is the fullness of being alive. This time of his life has come to him once again. Was this feeling the cause of that strange, sad pain?
I can live it again, now, and everything is okay
. He hears his mother’s voice calling his name, and when he turns his head to reply, the familiar world falls away.

You could call this darkness, only that everything is filled with light. The new world appears like the night, for there is a thick terrain of stars that is spread out in a twisted expanse before him. This is the whirling double helix of life, and also something beyond. This has no name. In the arms of the universe, there is nothing to see or hear, nothing to know. Gravity is a memory. I wouldn’t dwell on it for long. The afterlife is weightlessness. One, two, three, go. Count your way to forgetting. Who are you now? You are the body that created the shadow. You are the sound that created the world. You shiver with the joy of being home again.

Anna cannot go back to sleep as night changes hands with the dawn. First a line appears across the horizon like a pale purple finger reaching out to provoke the light. Periwinkle blue is met by a variation on pink so vibrant that it is always remarkable to see again. Pale crooked fingers spread further and brighten until the sky is all aglow and pink and purple, as if nature were blushing at her own
ability. And when the atmosphere is cast in this particular shade of purple-pink, the light also tints the rooftops and the waters with its unbelievable expression of love. It is enough to make you forget the pain of yesterday and want to begin again.

The pink sky is aglow above the rooftops of Kraków and the looming church tower nearby. Even with everything that has happened in this city in recent years, it still looks storybook perfect at any hour. In the fog, in the snow, in the delicate smoke-laden wind of winter’s reprieve, Kraków is always magical. Anna listens to the ticking of the old silver wind-up clock beside her bed. On a little cot across the room, her brother, Wojtuś, sleeps so peacefully, as if nothing bad could ever happen to him. Even now. Anna feels her soul wrestling with everything. Stars in my hand, what does that mean? She looks down at her empty palm and a sudden association comes to mind: the pattern on the ceiling of the old school library, tiny white orbs of light cast against a blue background. The mural was painted at the end of the nineteenth century. The girls used to love to play games of hide and seek in the library and to read together, sometimes adventure stories, other times romantic histories about knights or princesses. Aside from the schoolyard and the roof of the school building, which was always off limits but still used for games, the library was their favorite place for escape. And then there was a leak in the roof, and a mother crow made a nest for her babies hidden in the soft beams of wood. Eventually the ceiling had to be replastered, the walls painted over, and the family of birds relocated. Now the orbs of light were gone, and there was only a gray wall to look up to. But the magic of the past was never forgotten. The next autumn the Nazi invasion began, and Anna and her family left town. And soon after the school was burnt to the ground with the girls inside.