The Upright Heart (21 page)

But sleepiness is not the real problem. From out of nowhere the great bird arrives, black wings like an armed wrecking ball, come to test the boundaries of in-between. It crashes through the front windshield of the bus, sweeping wet shards of glass across the seats. Beyond awake now, the bus driver does what he can to keep a steady hand, but there is nothing to prevent him from moving toward those beautiful, strong, poplar trees. They will crush the bus to pieces. They are eternal, everlasting beings.

Anna feels a slight tug at her side that becomes stronger and stronger. She experiences a pain so deep and alarming that she is
confused as to what is going on. She is awoken by her own muffled scream. A great trembling wing wraps around her. It seems to shield her from the blow. There is a beating heart at her side. There is also her own. One more moment and it will be over, she hears her own voice say, as if she is already separating from her body.
But, oh, the candle
 … she thinks, and then the light of day.

A staircase rapidly forms above the rooftop of the old school as all the stars come together to pave the way for the girls’ ascent. They walk up in single file, respectful of one another, still obedient. They look out at the vision of this new realm in awe. At last they are climbing out of death and into freedom. In the arms of the universe, they enter all time.

Rachelka hangs back on the roof watching them go one by one, for she feels responsible for them all. In the dream she needed a guardian to watch over her, but in truth she is the guardian, protector of all the other girls. She is the last Sarah to go.

Anna’s tears turn to light as she witnesses this image. She begins to float, just a few centimeters off the ground, but it feels like ecstasy. Now Rachelka is helping little Sarah onto the staircase, encouraging her not to be afraid. She is next. She looks into Anna’s eyes.

“Will you come with us?” she asks.

Anna lifts a bit higher.

“Not yet,” Anna says. “I will go another way.” And, with that, she kisses Rachelka and then opens her eyes.

Against pain, it is difficult to keep her eyes open, but somebody yells at her to stay awake, and so Anna does everything she can to obey.
I want to stay. I want to stay
. This is the mantra that keeps her on this plane. There is the strong smell of blood in the
air, so potent that it almost transmits color. There is shouting, there is someone on the ground. They hold her hand. “Squeeze it,” they say, and she does. “Very good, my dear.”

The rain pours heavily now, and every tear that surfaces on Anna’s face is swiftly wiped away, caught up in the current of life. A swooshing sound overhead calls to attention a large black bird that passes over the treetops and soars up, into the sky, through the rain. The bird looks down at her, eyes seen from far away.
I wonder if he is telling me something?
Anna asks herself. And the bird emits a loud, haunting sound.

Here there are no traveling lights, no stars on the ground. The pain is overwhelming, the senses, the sounds.
But I want to stay
, Anna hears her own voice say.
I love the world. I want to begin again
.

There is a way to make love where you inch toward erasing the world, your home, your past. There is a way to feel something like God or heaven in those moments, because nothing on earth could ever be so beautiful.

He has dreamt of this, but it has never happened before. Never has the trembling of emotions traveled all the way through his body, to the very peripheries, and never before could he feel the reverberations inside somebody else’s womb. This is what they call making love. And all he can think about is death. Thoughts come to him swiftly now, as if this pleasure is too much for any single human being to endure.
Will I die now? Will this climax take me into oblivion?
There is no one to ask. Her body has all the answers. He looks into her dark eyes, so filled with emotion as tears drop from the corners of her eyes. She screams with pleasure.

It is like nothing he has ever experienced, the large black bird that emerges from his chest and grows even bigger once outside,
flying like a ghost body through the window and out into the morning light. It stops at a distant tree and turns back to look at him. Their eyes meet. The bird crows loudly and then disappears into the clouds. Now everything will change, and Mateusz will never know just what piece of him was lost as that great bird took flight.

This is the most extraordinary moment of his life. This is the instant where he falls deeply in love, the moment at which they create a child.

When the war had been over for less than a year and Mateusz was newly born, evenings were always peaceful on Ulica Strzelecka. When dinner was over Wiktor and Waleria retired to their room to listen to the radio and have a little drink, as they always did on Sunday nights. Bolesław was humming a tune with his surprisingly operatic baritone while whittling something in the kitchen for the baby. Elżbieta tiptoed into the darkened bedroom just to see the sleeping infant one more time. It was still hard to believe in his presence, that he was there, so pure, so sweet, so beautiful, so alive. She went over to his cradle and couldn’t resist kissing him on the forehead, but she didn’t wake him. He just stirred gently in his crib and smiled.

“Kocham cie,”
she whispered as she stepped away. I love you.

And as she reached the old brass knob on the heavy door, out of the corner of her eye she saw a great dark figure, like a bird, swoop over to the baby and disappear. Her heart sped up for a moment as she leapt over to the crib, worried that her hallucination had been real. Mateusz continued to sleep peacefully. She rubbed her eyes.
I must be tired
, she thought.
It’s just a bit of fear, a bit of dust
, she assured herself, and then left to sit quietly with her parents as the night wore on. It was the spring of 1946, and everything felt so alive. The war was over. A new, happy life had just begun.

My parents, I have seen you. Will you hold me dear? Will you help me to step into the mysteries of life, one hand in the air, the other by your side? What will our language be? Our shared beliefs? You are two sides of the same coin, and in that dissonance there is so much history. What music will we make together? I have seen you and I want to ask you so many things, but already the time has come for me to begin.

This heart is so light that it needs the weight of gravity, of human form, to keep it down, to explore. It is evening, it is morning. We begin this way. Like shards of light sent from the original spark, we spread open the night. Yes, us, we come down into the light. And we hide from our own beauty.

The swelling of the heart is like a call to prayer or a call to mourning. Sometimes the surging waves and the rocking of the boat make Wolf feel as if he is moving toward the end of the world. When overwhelmed by seasickness and sadness he closes his eyes and focuses on the image of Leah, his baby daughter’s face. How he longs to see her again. She has a light within her that is unusually bright. Wolf feels that it is almost as if all of their ancestors have banded together to create the most beautiful life, as if she will live out all the highest destinies they had once imagined as their own. She is the spark.

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