I washed my body with his mother’s ashes so that I could tell him in the next life that we died together. So that I could make up for the fact that I was not born a Jew. Someday he will know that I loved him that much.
Life goes on. That water does still dare to flow. Sometimes, when I am not on this night train to Kraków, to Lublin, to Warsaw, or to the sea, I walk through the forests of my memory and I see Wolf and I making love against that poplar tree. I hear him breathing his soul into my ear and I remember what it was like to feel so alive. I remember his hands, surprisingly masculine, considering that all of his time was spent with books. I remember how they cupped my breasts, held my body so close to his that we could only become one. Two bodies and one breath heaving into the end of time.
I can walk through those forests and remember what it was like to smell the cold winter air or the spring, to breathe him in. Maybe those trees don’t care who passes by anymore, or who lives or dies, but only that someone is living, that something is alive. Maybe they are real life, and we are just witnesses passing through dust. We make and live chaos, we are their enemy and we are their friend, and we are also that to each other. Sometimes on this train I recall the beauty of that life and I can feel what it was like to love and be loved. I remember what it was to be. Now I am caught between Białystok and Kraków, between life and death. On this train there are no other options but to exist in between.
XV
Mid-morning the train arrives in the eastern region of Podlasie. Leather bag in hand, Wolf disembarks the night train from Rybnik and walks across the platform at the Białystok train station. Wiktor follows him, free of all possessions. Footsteps sound hollow in the large, vacant room, and Wolf focuses his attention on the familiar walls, more decayed than ever, trying to maintain his composure. The men slowly cross the street and board a bus to the town of N.
A small dog with wiry hair, a fresh gash on his back, and big, dark eyes muddied by pale blue cataracts runs up to Wolf, begging to be touched. Wolf looks into the dog’s moist eyes and pets the back of his neck gently. Whenever he dares to stop, the dog nudges him for more.
Even though the day is cool, the atmosphere on the bus is stuffy. Wolf sits near the window, and Wiktor is on the empty seat beside him. The small stray dog follows Wolf and curls himself into a ball at his feet. His eyes seek out the warm solace that lies in the fold of a pant leg, the carefully tied lace of a shoe, the comfort of a master.
Wolf pulls from his pocket three small gray stones, and in the secret hollow of his palm, he calls them by name. Backward, forward, the words still carry the same meaning: mother, father, sister, siostra.
These are the sounds that choke as Wolf thinks quietly to himself. I can live my day, just breathing, just thinking, and then a sound catches in my throat and it becomes impossible not to cry. But he doesn’t cry in public anymore.
Within the hour they arrive in the town of N. Wiktor follows Wolf as he approaches the town bakery. Wolf stands staring. The building that once belonged to his wife, Chaja, and to her father before that, which was given to his mother when they left for America, has now been completely transformed. What was once the Chaim Sara Bakery, and which later became Chaja’s Bread, is now called Mrs. Stania’s Piekarnia. The same pine benches line the walls that were there before. The tall stools with seats covered in fine velvet that was used to upholster Chaja’s family’s home, which was leftover from the living room couch and sewn into cushions by his sister, Leye, still exist in that room. The same glass cases.…
“Okay let’s move on,” he mumbles to the dog, and the dog seems to listen.
On the street passersby take note of the man with dark hair dressed in a black suit made of lightweight summer wool, so much finer than their threadbare clothes. They take note of him, the stranger, who is detectable immediately as an outsider, but who is also as familiar as any other resident of the town.
The face that has come back to haunt them.
Wolf stops walking and sits on the steps of the old town hall in the market square, twirling those three little stones in his left hand. The town church bells ring, striking eleven, God’s hour. Families dressed in their Sunday best walk toward the town church, while others head toward the Orthodox church on the other side of town. They glance over at Wolf as they run. Why is he drawing attention to himself? What does he want from us? Why does he have to remind us when all we want is to forget the past?
Wolf recognizes Pan Chełmiński, the town cobbler, by the peak of his old green hat. His sons, Jan and Paweł, who were kids when Wolf left home, but who now tower over their short, stocky father, are in tow. Jan and Paweł are twins who were in the same class as Wolf’s little sister, Leye. Before the war, they would all go sledding together in the tiny hills just beyond the forest. Paweł even took Leye out on a date once, but their father never let her go farther than the movies. Paweł smiles at Wolf curiously, for he is surprised to see him. He lifts his hand to wave hello, and Jan knocks it down. The young men enter church behind two old ladies and a young family with several little girls. None of these children with blond braids and starched dresses ever even knew a world before the war, Wolf tells himself. They are blessed in this life, he thinks, standing, the little dog jumping at his feet. They have nothing to remember, nothing to miss. Wolf continues walking. There is no point in dwelling on a golden braid, a green hat, on the memory of what no longer is.
Down the street where boys used to sing in the rain, where Shabbat was spent strolling through town with his father, where he memorized a parsha for his bar mitzvah while walking in the forest until his feet were red with blisters. Down the street where he first saw a beautiful woman naked and dreamt of one day loving someone. Funny enough, it was Olga’s aunt whom he first saw in the nude. She lived in the house beside Olga’s, and would leave the curtains of her bedroom window open so that all the local boys could witness her perfectly naked form as she undressed every evening. She secretly knew that they were watching her, and it would be a lie to say that it did not give her some pleasure knowing that she was the object of their adoration. Her greatest dream was to be loved by everyone and become a great actress in Berlin.
Down the street where he would jump his neighbors’ fence in order to quickly arrive at the back door. On Friday afternoons he would smell his mother’s cooking from a block away, and with his mouth watering uncontrollably he would inevitably run through the neighbor’s garden, taking the fastest route home. Flying with his jacket buttons undone, his kippah sliding from his head, all he wanted was to catch her with flour on her hands, baking challah or stirring soup. He would change his clothes and then the world would come to a halt. The candles would be lit and the songs sung.
Down this street there is nothing anymore. The little stray dog yelps as Wolf comes to a stop before the house that was once his home. Wiktor motions to the dog to be quiet, and, oddly enough, the dog listens.
Leye, Wolf begins, quietly and to himself, if I could reach you now I would tell you this: the house where we once lived isn’t empty anymore. A new family has moved in, and they are breaking bread for Sunday dinner. They are much taller and stronger than we were, but they seem so sad, as if the weight of the world is on their shoulders. They are solemn during their meal, passing dishes back and forth, sharing small talk, mostly about the weather. Remember how you would rise from the table and dance, and sometimes Mama would join you after Birkat Hamazon? Remember the colors of those silly Yiddish songs, and how you would wrap your long black braid like a rope around your head and pretend to be an old man with a beard? Remember the laughter and the jokes? Leyeleh, there is a family sitting down to dinner at our table now, and even though their dishes aren’t ours, and their silverware is their own, I feel goose bumps rising on my back as I see them eating soup with our old silver spoons, see them drinking from Papa’s cup. I cannot see things as they are. I want to look through the window and see you perched there on the arm of Papa’s chair, reading with him, turning
the pages, twirling your curls, adjusting the old lamp with the yellow stained-glass shade so that everything is just right, so that words can be illuminated and come to life.
Wolf places the three smooth gray stones on the windowsill of his old home. The modesty of the stones has nothing to do with their meaning. He stands in the window in plain view, but nobody notices him from inside. He turns away from the image of strangers inhabiting his family home and walks toward the forest outside of town.
XVI
The cathedral where Saint Thérèse of Lisieux would pray as a child was so cavernous that even in summertime she wore a coat to protect herself from the cold. Pigeons dwelling in the rafters would fly overhead while she prayed, and during mass as she knelt before the altar she would listen to the rush of those humble gray wings, yearning for a time when she might be relieved of her painful sensitivity and feel at home in the world. As a child she suffered from nervous tremors and total despair. She felt happy and safe only when at home with her father and her sisters, but one Christmas she felt Christ fill her heart, and her life began anew. She was granted permission to enter the order of the Carmelite nuns at the age of fifteen, where she wrote her autobiographical texts, which would later become l’Histoire d’une me (The Story of a Soul). She once wrote, “The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers, and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word.”
She died of tuberculosis when she was only twenty-four. Her last words were spoken to God, with love.
We have an illustrated book about Saint Thérèse here at the school library, which little Sarah loves best. Sarah usually tires easily, but she can sit for hours staring at the colorful drawings that depict Thérèse’s childhood experiences and how she overcame her fears. She even reads long passages out loud to herself. Once I asked her just what it was about the Catholic saint that captured her attention, especially since she never even saw the inside of a church in her life, but she just looked at me wistfully with those long blue eyes and shrugged her shoulders carelessly.
“Don’t know,” she said, twirling a ringlet of her curly brown hair and staring up at the ceiling the way she does when she doesn’t want to look somebody in the eye. “When I look at her,” she added, “I feel happy.”
“Fair enough,” I told her, and put a red ribbon in her hair.
XVII
On bended knees Elżbieta twirls the delicate ring with a woven lattice pattern and a pale orange stone around the middle finger of her left hand. It doesn’t fit her ring finger now, but someday it will. When she grows older and her fingers swell, the ring will fit her like a glove.
Her mother handed it to her yesterday when they came in from hanging laundry on the balcony. The ring was a gift from Wiktor after the depression, when Waleria had suffered a breakdown and spent several weeks in a sanitarium. The ring was a symbol of new beginnings.
They tried to hum a tune they used to sing before the war, but Elżbieta couldn’t remember the words. It made her happy to see her mother singing, but at the sight of one of Wiktor’s white collared shirts, the song soon came to an end. Waleria sat on the concrete floor of the balcony and cried into the folds of his wet shirt. Where once upon a time she would run into the kitchen and throw her apron on at the first signs of Wiktor’s figure coming around the bend, now there was nowhere to go in anticipation of love. To the baby’s basket, to the smell of his head and neck, and to the soft curl of his fingers and his lips. To the baby for comfort that there was still a future to come.
Elżbieta holds the ring in the late afternoon light and watches how it gleams pale orange. Things, beautiful things especially, are rare nowadays. To have something beautiful is a blessing. That thing, whatever it is, should be cared for with love and appreciation.
Elżbieta pulls from her pocket the faded photograph that she carries of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She has been her patron saint ever since her first communion, and she takes their bond seriously, first by wearing a small pendant with Thérèse’s likeness around her neck, and second, by praying to her every day. She whispers to her sweet little newborn that St. Thérèse will always take care of him. “Shhh,” she says, “Do not worry, little Mateusz. When you are alone and afraid you can always pray to her and she will send down a shower of roses.” She tucks the photo back into her dress pocket and crosses herself. She puts the ring back inside an ornate wooden box that she hides in a drawer beside her favorite sweater. She doesn’t want her sisters to know that their mother gave it to her. She doesn’t want anyone to know that she is the most beloved. It is a secret between her, her mother, and God.
XVIII
Never in his childhood will little Mateusz cast a stone. Not even when he is six and discovers the large pile of worms sewing newly turned earth in his father’s vegetable garden. Not at the head of the dead sparrow that appears in his garden, so still and hidden, with pale yellow wings and a furry brown tendril passing from head to toe. Not when he discovers that bird on a warm, sunny day, when it seems that the whole world is smiling with the coming of spring. He will walk through the garden dancing, pointing out in his mind’s eye each little chamomile flower as it pokes out from the grass, and then stumble across the tiny bird, still perfect, still whole, its beak sticking into the overgrown grass. There is a shudder that passes through his body at the sight of this perfect little creature still so alive in body but devoid of life. How can that be? Its head facing down, as if to teach Mateusz that there is always a price to be paid for new life. Like when Wiktor died around the time of his birth and during the coming of spring. Why, he will ask himself, now and forever after, why does spring always bring death?
Never a stone is thrown. Not even just to see if that little bird can move again.
And when Mateusz will turn eight years old and return home from a weeklong trip to the sea with his grandmother, Waleria, to heal his stomachaches that come every other day or so, he will gather his newfound strength and learn archery. Never a stone has been thrown, but one day he will go out into the forest with his friends from down the road, his little brothers tagging along, the middle brother sitting on the handlebars of his bicycle, and the youngest on his shoulders while he rides. He is so talented with a bow and arrow that he wants to show off to his little brother and his friends his tight white shorts and the long lean muscles on his legs. He chooses a target on an old pine tree, but when Wojtek, his classmate, jumps before the pine, Mateusz misses piercing his face by a fraction of a second. Both boys run home crying, and neither one of them ever picks up a bow and arrow again. In fact, these two boys will cease to be friends. They still run around in the same little pack, but it will be years before they talk or look into each other’s eyes again. Wojtek remains afraid of Mateusz, and Mateusz, when he looks into Wojtek’s eyes, can see only his own vulnerability, and there is nothing so frightening in this world.
XIX
In the forests of Podlasie, spring is the reward for an endless snowfall and for the mud that follows. Wolf walks slowly away from the market square in the southern part of town, passing the old mikveh on Ulica Szkolna. Besides this charred and empty space is blackened ground that was once occupied by the central synagogue. Down the street in the house where the rabbi once lived there is now a storage room for the town. Abandoned chairs and desks and unused doors can be seen through the broken, stained glass windows. Stuffed velvet couches, ornate mirrors, mezuzahs scattered on the floor.
Wolf closes his eyes in order to see what was. He sees the rabbi at the bimah, and his father standing with him, opening the gates to the Torah. He recalls his own bar mitzvah, reciting his parsha, and the excitement of remembering, of being honored, of becoming a man.
Wolf continues to walk toward the forest with Wiktor and the little stray dog in tow. It is Sunday, yes, and the town seems empty as people find themselves hidden at home or in church. Not one store is open, not one public space has movement, none other than the town square where people are sitting outside after
church, or the train station where people come and go.
Leather bag slung over his shoulder, Wolf takes careful footsteps as branches crunch beneath his feet. He makes his way to a desolate graveyard, a large pile of stones in its center.
*
When gravestones crumble they look just like any other ruin. A pile of rock in a desert or a field, a forest hidden from those who wish to forget. It begins with a word. A word marks the beginning, the destruction, that which binds me to you. If you reverse the letters you may find the hero inside. This is the last word. These tombstones are scattered letters, sparks of light, the Torah destroyed, Shekinah’s whisper in the night.
How can you identify which stones belonged to him? And which to her? They are all jumbled together. Some still stand, but they are only half of what once was. They have become a massive pile of rock, a jigsaw puzzle that might never be solved. I know. I have stood at the base of that pile and tried to envision their reconstruction, but I tell you, there is no way. They are the Pyramid of Giza, the pantheon opening up its vast eye to the gods. They are a testament to a people forgotten.
A call to the forgotten ones. Will you hear their sound? Look on them, the fragments of graves, and none of them say your family name. None of them tells the brief story of your mother, Sara Ain, beloved wife of Menachem, mother to Leye and Wolf, 1902–1942. None but you. You tell it. And even though you feel as if you are in the dark, there is a world spinning around you, and all those souls are waiting to hear their name called. Tell it.
*
There are certain words that cannot reach Wolf’s lips without getting caught in a net of despair. Words get locked where they should be expelled. They hover in the air that lingers between breaths, returning to his body where they reside in the chest as woeful and unrelenting pain. There are some words that, once spoken, hit the brain like a signal that brings the truth to mind, words you have to live and go on living. You have to bring new life into this world and not fear for it this destiny. You must tell this life about the beauty and joy of living and try to forget. But in your deepest whisper that flows from your veins down to your child’s, you will say, Inside these immoveable walls there is a story to tell, and you will know it without knowing it, and it will be the secret that is spoken through actions and not words. It will be alive in your genes, and in your life you will speak it silently, but it will show in your movement and in your deepest fears. There are certain words that cannot be sung, even though they are this song. They catch in the throat and return to your heart, from which nothing must escape, and so you breathe slowly, carefully, never to breathe in her love again.
The Upright Heart Page 4