The Upright Heart (20 page)

It is no longer possible for Anna to stay in Kraków and do nothing. She will return to Łódź, put a candle on those grounds. It is a small gesture, but it could help somehow. As if those girls
are listening.
Most people wait for All Saints’ Day, but I will go now
, Anna decides as she rises from her bed and changes from her old nightgown into her only dress. She puts on her stockings and combs her hair. She walks to the mirror to pin back her hair, noticing the gray strands that multiply weekly along her temples. Age comes with experience much more than it does with time. She puts on her shoes and coat and takes all of her savings from a drawer beneath the old mirror. The money is enough to travel there, but she doesn’t know if it is enough to get back home. She leaves a note for her parents and walks out the door.

There is a grin that spreads across the bird’s beak as longing surfaces like a wave cascading out from Mateusz’s Hamlet and into the theater. This is his final scene. He is lying on the stage floor, dying the first of one thousand public deaths. It is a small price to pay for receiving all the love in the world.

These are words that are understood even across the language barrier. She stands in the crowd feeling so much like a stranger, sensing the way that people look at her, for she is so obviously unlike everyone around, and yet somehow these people welcome her, because she is different, because she has come so far.

Why did she have to come? Why did she pack her bags, leave her things, everything, just to travel from New York to Poland and see for herself? She felt an emptiness created by the absence of stories, by the ones her parents did not tell. She lived with the isolation created by her mother’s hysterics, her father hiding out alone in his library with his cigars, his books, his prayers, and his regrets. He never said anything to her, but she knew. Her mother was not his true love. Even though it was forever hidden, there was evidence of his story in his every action, his every word.

Her parents had left their whole world behind just so they could have a better life, but they did not have the chance to think about how this change, this deep sense of sadness and loss, would influence their children’s future. Or maybe they only foresaw positive experiences, opportunity, happy times. How would their children learn to feel their roots when those connections had been so brutally severed?

With a small blue glass memorial candle in hand, Anna boards the bus to Łódź. At first she feels nervous and shaky, eyes darting around, scanning her fellow passengers, as if there is someone to look for, somebody to tell, but within an hour the lull of the passing landscape calms her down. She wraps her light brown woolen coat around her neck, for even though it is spring, there is a strong chill in the air. The first promises of a colorful dawn give way to a gray, rainy day.

Her fellow travelers are joined together in this gloomy light. She watches them with interest. Beside her is an empty seat. Across the aisle sits a young mother with her daughter. The woman has long dark eyes and smooth alabaster skin, and she and her child eat sandwiches wrapped in a striped kitchen towel stuffed inside a simple cotton bag. At the front of the bus are two young priests, and at the back are three workers, all drunk, all sleeping. They are like a row of angry ducks leaning against the glass windowpane. Their snoring is intermittent, punctuated by moments of reprieve. The bus is otherwise empty, bumping along the road that leads Anna back home.

The Polish countryside passes with its little houses, its smoking chimneys, always burning, even now, in spring. Old ladies with patterned scarves on their heads, their faces so wrinkled you could read history in those lines, carry pails of fresh milk along the side of the road. Where are they going? They walk this way every day.

The world is bleak and heartbreaking, but it is also beautiful.

Anna closes her eyes and imagines what it will be like to step off the bus and set foot in Łódź once again. Her heart expands. Will there be anyone from the past to remember her face? Is there anything left standing inside the gates of the old school? Or is it just ashes? Just dust?
No matter, I will light my candle
. Anna’s eyelids grow heavy, succumbing to sleep. She can already see herself turning the corner, just like she did for so many years. She approaches the imposing wrought iron gates, the old school building looming overhead. Inside the girls are waiting, their starched uniform dresses pressed, their shiny hair clean, their smiles radiant. Anna will open her hand and show them what she has been given. The gates will open. Something will begin.

You would never imagine this place as a stage set for a performance at dawn, but here it is, the gate outside Birkenau. Before you extends a great expanse of green and rows of empty bunkers. You ask yourself, why did you come?

When Mateusz climbs down from his place suspended above the crowd, he is still floating. It is not unusual for a performer to remain in the spotlight for long after the audience has gone. He carries the spotlight with him.

When Mateusz steps out into the night to light a cigarette, he sees that the audience has gathered. They are drinking, singing, building a bonfire. It is a strange sight, this merry crowd sitting at the edge of Birkenau, but this is the Polish landscape. Every space has a story to tell.

A tall figure walks toward him through the grass. It moves slowly, long white skirt gleaming in the night. Mateusz takes a drag from his cigarette and walks past the group to greet the figure. The light rain has lifted, and the fog is rolling in. His exhalation creates a
stream of heat in the cool night air. Mesmerized as he nears the edge of darkness, he sees the woman from the audience, the one whom he imagined to be a mirage. He wishes to meet her, but as he gets closer he realizes that she is crying, her broad bony shoulders heaving uncontrollably as she looks out at the void, at the empty buildings so lonely and still in the quiet night. Mateusz stands there helplessly for several minutes, clearing from his throat a sudden unknown fear. He moves to face her. She is like no one he has ever seen. She is the most beautiful woman in the world, his wildest dream.

Different sounds converge, trying to emerge from his body, but he can only stumble. Finally he points to himself and says, “Mateusz,” a murmur emitted from someone who has little practice making conversation. His introduction makes the woman smile. “Leah,” she replies, and puts out her hand. In silence they walk back to the group, Leah looking out at the landscape, Mateusz watching her every move. He wants to ask her questions, find out if she can hear the haunting cry of this night, but he has no language with which to speak.

The trip to eastern Poland is long, six hours to be exact. Though it is summer now, the weather has taken a turn for the worse, and a cold rain is beating down the road. The car Mateusz is driving was borrowed from a friend, and it lurches forward every so often, for he is new to shifting gears. He is new to driving as well, but he doesn’t let on. Leah leans back against the stiff leather headrest of the tiny, canary yellow Fiat Maluch, her wild black hair spilling up toward the roof of the car. She watches the passing landscape, a constant rain of teardrops sliding down the window at her side. Yes, now she feels it. There is a great sadness bubbling up inside.
Who have I never met?
Leah wonders.
Who died? How many people did my
parents mourn for? I can only look and wonder. I can never ask. I can never know. It would break their hearts to talk
.

Steam lifts from Mateusz’s chest as he parks the car outside the town of N. He follows Leah as she walks up a faded path into the woods. It isn’t far to walk before the first headstone, a matzevah, appears. This one is upright, like an obelisk, warning against intruders. And now the discovery begins. The dimensions of the old cemetery are not so big, but there are enough scattered gravestones left to inform passersby that Jews once lived here. Some matzevot are still standing but extremely faded. Others are practically buried beneath the earth, moss growing over their rough surfaces. Hebrew letters meet nature and dirt. Who wants to preserve this memory? Nothing can escape the weathering of time.

When she does finally discover her ancestor’s grave, she is relieved to see that it has not been toppled, that it is still standing. Mateusz hangs back as Leah sits on a pile of wet leaves on the ground beside it. He can think only of how her long white skirt will be ruined, but he says nothing. Leah covers her face for a few minutes and murmurs something, though it is impossible for him to hear. When she rises and walks back to join him, she has an expression of strange bewilderment on her face and a different look in her eyes, almost as if she is accusing him of something. As they walk slowly back to the road, she stays off to the side. When they reach the car, Mateusz gets inside, but she remains standing, her back turned toward him, staring out at the open green field across the way. She climbs inside. Mateusz begins to drive. Leah opens her door and vomits outside of the moving car. Mateusz pulls over, offers her a handkerchief and some water, wishing to hold her in his arms. They drive through the woods for an hour in silence, the bumpy road knocking them about. She wonders if they will ever get out. At this moment the only thing Leah can think of is her bones.

When at last they emerge on the other side of the forest, they register at a small hotel near town.

As if an alarm clock goes off inside, Leah awakes just before dawn. Mateusz is still sitting in the same armchair where he sat the night before, as if waiting for this moment. Leah rises from the bed, naked, her pert breasts erect in the cold morning air, her long limbs graceful as she saunters to the window. She opens the curtains to reveal a view of the woods, tender with possibility in the early morning light. Everything is new. Life is predawn. She leans her back and buttocks against the window and stretches open her arms toward Mateusz. He runs. Right there, against the window, a crow screeching in the woods just beyond, these two foreigners, born on opposite sides of the same culture, making love into the early morning light.

There is a melody played in that subtle twinkle of stars in the vast summer night. Anna moves between worlds as her eyelids become heavy and she dozes on the bus. Here the gray, rainy day, drunken men snoring at the back of the bus, the sweet child resting in her mother’s arms, and rain drifting along the windowpane, like tears of nostalgia flying out of the past. With eyes closed she reaches the inside world, the one filled with night. The moon is full in the dream world. The school gates open: Anna walks inside. Rachelka descends the old crumbling staircase, running. Her hair is long and gray and wild, but she still wears her old school uniform. She extends her hand toward Anna and speaks with the same, childlike voice.

“
Kochana
(dear) Anna, we have been waiting for you all this time.”

“I know,” Anna replies. “I tried to come, but it took me so long.” She hugs Rachelka and looks up to see all of their old classmates standing along the stairs, watching them.

“I have a candle for you,” Anna says, handing the blue glass memorial candle to Rachelka. The glass is frosted from the heat of her hands.

Rachelka smiles. “To remember us by?” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small matchbox. “We can light it.”

Rachelka lights the candle and places it on the ground.

Tears begin to pour down Anna’s cheeks. She falls to the ground at Rachelka’s feet. “Yes! Yes! To remember you by! I am sorry! I am so sorry!” She cries into the dark and luminous night, her tears falling deep into the grooves of the stone walkway. A strong wind picks up all of the dust in the old abandoned schoolyard.

One by one, all the stars begin to fall to the ground. There is a rain of light as the girls emerge from the building and spill out into the courtyard. In silence, they band together as stars cascade above their heads.

Anna ceases to cry. She stands there, mystified.

“Come on, let’s run,” Rachelka says, taking Anna by the hand.

And up they go. Those stairs that they have known for all of their lives now become a road to freedom. Forty-one Sarahs on their way home.

This bird has a map of the whole world engraved in its memory. It knows the best way to travel from South America to North, to reach the Holy Land, to travel from Kraków to Białystok. It knows all there is to know, as if it has lived everywhere and always, and through all time, which in fact it has. This bird saw the beginning. Watched clouds as they separated into dust, lands unhinge, and water as it collected into vessels built into the land. This bird was transformed from airborne white-feathered being to shadowed creature as it saw the commotion of separation, like two lovers saying goodbye, as light lifted from darkness, and sky from earth. Now there is a world. Now there is longing. Now there is a wound. Now there is intimacy experienced by the earth only through the
extended rays of light, through the feet that wander, the animals that run, the grass that grows and heaves on the side of this mountain like a great wild bear breathing secretly with the rhythms of life that circle all around. This bird heard the first sounds emitted in the dark, the touch that brought stars down from the heavens, the one that brought man into a woman’s arms. Then the bitter fruit.

The bus is traveling fast now, along a narrow road that connects one highway to the next. They call it a shortcut. There is a row of poplar trees on either side of the road, and they look so strong in that delicate wash of rain, as if no act of nature could wipe them away. Anna wants to stay awake, to view the passing countryside, to contemplate her past, her future, to remember the way to Łódź, but she is so tired that her head keeps dropping and she nods off to sleep.

She is in full slumber now, standing with the girls on the rooftop of her old school, stars everywhere around them, on their bodies and in their hair. She is so far removed from the reality of this journey by bus that she has no way to know that the driver, too, is succumbing to the sleepy mood of the day, his eyelids so heavy, his head caught every few minutes on its way down to his chest. He finds this extreme sleepiness alarming, and therefore accelerates his speed and opens the window, hoping that the fresh air and the swift movement will keep him awake.