The Upright Heart

by Julia Ain-Krupa

  Before the war, Łódź was a town of three languages and three cultures. There were Germans, Jews, and Poles. I wonder what it is like now with no Jews and no Germans? No one to be punished or do the punishing? Factories with no owner and no name? Sarah and I sit and imagine together how things might have changed in Łódź with no more Jews observing Shabbat. Together we light candles every Friday at sundown, with no challah, only ourselves. Sometimes we forget all of the words to the prayers and just have to hum the tune, but we know that this is okay. Our parents, wherever they are, would be proud of us. When we sing, at least one of us is bound to be sad and long for the past. Little Sarah used to get so moody that she wouldn’t even join our Shabbat celebrations, but things have changed and now she even asks to light the candles. The rest of us decided to give her the job, because even though we know that she will never grow older, we agree that it is important to give her the chance to feel more grown up. The truth is that none of us knows when Friday has come, nor do we know what will come in the future, but we do our best to count sunrises and sunsets and to keep a schedule. We observe Shabbat as best we can. Every seven days we stop what we are doing, and that is the best we can do.

  In the dream Sarah and I have a wonderful time talking and laughing on the roof. This is not so different from our regular life. She does cartwheels across the still-hot tin as the moon takes center stage before our eyes. We return to our rooms and hang our uniforms side by side, lying down to rest on a row of cots. All these Sarahs with their uniforms hanging above.

  I cannot sleep. I toss and turn and sit up in bed to watch the full moon from my window. I talk to the moon, as I always have, both in real life and in the afterlife. I smile and sense the moon smiling back. It speaks to me without movement or sound, and I hear all that it says. It calls me Rachelka. It speaks to me by name. Birth name, given name, name chosen by my mother, by my father, name called out by my little brother, my real name, Rachelka.

  “Tonight is the night you get set free,” it says to me in that liquid silver whisper that makes no audible sound. Tonight I know nothing about Sarah. I smile and fall briefly into sleep, where I enter a dream within a dream.

  From my bed I sense that someone is at the gate. I rise and go down to greet whoever it is, noticing that I am not even wearing my nightgown. My body is wrapped in a shimmering sheet, a sheet that blows in the wind and feels both rough and cool against my skin as I walk down the cold stone staircase. Stepping out into the schoolyard, I am illuminated by the pale moonlight. I am sheathed in the desert wind and in this moment I feel as if I am the moon, the stars, the desert, the night. I am nature and, for the first time, I am also a woman.

  A man stands at the gate waiting for me. He has blue eyes that twinkle in the light and wavy gray hair. He also has many wrinkles on his face, but he still looks young and handsome. He smiles at me as if he knows about me, why I am here and why I am leaving. He unlocks the gate, just like that, and then he remains at his post, as if his presence will protect me no matter where I go. I step out into the city street and enjoy the movement of the golden sheet as it flaps in the moonlit wind, brushing against my body. After so much time spent inside the school, the city has changed. I can see that many years have passed. There are more cars on the street than ever before, and there are young men with shaved heads standing around a fire wearing sport clothes, drinking from big bottles, laughing, breaking their bottles into the fire and watching with glee as they shatter. There are women laughing and talking, drinking along with them. They wear short skirts and bright blue makeup on their eyes. They look just like the women who used to hang out by the train station at night when I was a child.

  My city has transformed into a lost and forgotten ghost town. I wander the streets looking at the people and the empty houses. Nobody can see me now. The overwhelming grayness has swallowed up many of the once beautiful buildings, and though I feel sorry for what has happened, I cannot say that I feel much regret. In the dream I am one with the night, and nothing can take from me my ecstasy.

  *

  The feather and I are coming closer and closer to each other, and whenever the sun rotates ’round us I wonder if this time will be the last. What life will we be born into next, and how painful will it be to leave this suspended existence? Just how will we know when it is time to say goodbye?

  Part II

  Anna and the Child

  I

  It is easy to swallow the magic pill, for it is small and can be ingested with ease. That’s right, this pill grows on trees. In pools of muddy water covered with dried, forgotten leaves you can also find this pill and you can take it and all things will be healed. In this place you can find it everywhere, and it is available to everyone for free. When you are in trouble, you can remember this. When you are ill or sad you can close your eyes and ask for this pill and then you can find it out in the woods or even where there is no more green to be seen. Even on cobblestone streets, in concrete, it will be there waiting for you. When you take it, you can jump like a grasshopper. You can remember everything that you want to remember and nothing that you want to forget. This pill makes life beautiful and erases all pain.

  Ever since I discovered this pill, I take one every day. I walk through the woods outside of town and I pick one, for they grow wild, like mushrooms. Wild. You may think that if one is good then more than one could be even better, but one is enough to change your world. I am telling you about this because I know what you’re feeling. I can see that you experienced what I experienced, and who knows, some things may be worse. But I can tell you that there is a way out. And it has nothing to do with the Red Cross or Joint Distribution Committee or the church. You can go to Ulica Długa 38 to check the slips of paper, the wall of names, to see if your family has returned, but it won’t help. You won’t find their names anywhere but in the dust. This pill will make you forget your family, and then you will feel no pain.

  I first discovered it when I was transported to a camp near Kraków. I was with my father, but then we were separated, and an old man took me under his wing and told me about the pill that would help me to survive. He was right. I made it here because of this pill I will show you now, the one that will help change your life.

  II

  His hand is small and delicate, like that of a young pianist, or of one who has not yet withstood the test of time. The nails on his fingers are jagged and deep grooves of dirt form beneath them. His face is constructed of wide smooth planes, and just like a baby’s, his skin shows no indication of worry, no scars to suggest the things he has seen. His eyes are a glassy blue, long in the way many of his countrymen’s eyes are long. They recall the Mongol. They are a reminder that racial purity does not exist. Not even in Poland.

  The boys emerge from a small cluster of trees that cast shade across an old brick wall stretching from one block to the next. Staggered but together, they make their way back into the street. The older boy, the leader of the two, walks in front of the little one, who is no more than seven years old but who has the look of a wrinkled old man who has seen enough and wants to close his eyes to the world. The leader is adolescent but small, his oversize shirt, stolen off a corpse one year ago, rolled up at the sleeves. Here is Ulica Szewska, one of many passageways leading to the market square. Streets stretch out from the center of Kraków like the many arms of Ganesh reaching past the obstacles of the world. If only they could. Leaving the market square they pass the cool shade of Planty, a ring of green surrounding the city center. In winter, Planty is a wonderland in miniature—branches bending down to cover pedestrians from the snow, though the walkway is covered with ice and it is inevitable that someone will fall. Ah, but in summertime the very same place is imbued with the sweet smell of lilac, and people walk slowly. They sit and talk, enjoy an ice cream cone. Grown men in their short-sleeve shirts with starched collars sit and lick to their heart’s content. Suddenly everyone becomes a child. Here the boys make their way slowly, oversize shoes toiling against
the uneven cobblestones.

  Anna is heading toward Planty while they are walking in the direction of the market square. Maybe today they can find a little work, or else some food to eat behind one of the few still-operating cafés.

  When you want to walk like a lady you arch your back, extend your buttocks, relax your face. When you do it well, nobody notices the pain with which you step or the black seam drawn up the backside of your leg. She is focused on the pain in her feet, the rumbling in her stomach, but it is the feeling of fear that causes her to lift her gaze and notice the boys, as if fear is a forward-cast shadow preceding the one whom it is devouring, alerting the public to its presence. The first boy is no more than eleven or twelve years old. He passes by, eyes holding her gaze long enough to make her recognize his suffering. She feels his hunger, and it makes her shudder someplace deep within. She looks away quickly. As if he could take something away from her with his despair. It seems as if all human experience has passed through him, and now there is nothing left in this world that could make him cry.

  III

  She walks past the shops selling last year’s wares: an old pair of shoes, a sack of sugar, a toy German Shepherd that winds up and barks. It sounds like an electric siren. Everyone is struggling now to make ends meet. Everyone is trying to make do. Anna cannot help but mull over how much everything has changed.

  When the Russians first arrived, we fed them our last morsels of bread, our sausage, our stored potatoes and beans. Whatever we had became theirs. The Germans had received news of the Soviet Army’s approach before their arrival in January of ’45, so the majority of Nazi soldiers had left Kraków for the west by that time. A few Nazis remained. The Soviet army did take prisoners of war, especially those who had been Gestapo or SS, and there were some executions, in a nearby village, but it was almost impossible to see a Nazi’s body on the streets of our town. It did happen sometimes, though. There was an occasional fight with a soldier, a traitor, or a collaborator. There was an explosion caused by some Nazi soldiers that took place on a bridge away from the Wisła River. The possessions of those dead soldiers became fair game. There were boots, watches, shirts to be taken. People needed clothes. Here was a portrait of humanity that would not be easy to forget. Not only war can instill fear in a person’s heart. Life is better without war, yes, but I cannot help but wonder what is yet to come.

  Anna stops her internal rant to admire a small ornate opal pin in a shop window. The pin is a simple gold line dotted with tiny opals that form the points on a delicate star. Anna would like to own something like this. She imagines herself wearing a new dress made of fuchsia silk, imagines walking into a dance, being admired by the handsomest man in the room. The store owner, a woman of about seventy, sits at a table in the back. Barely visible through the foggy pane of the storefront window, she leans against her left hand, staring into space, smoking a long brown cigarette with her right hand. Every thirty seconds her pursed lips take a puff. Like so many other people around, she looks sad, gray. This is the life that has descended upon their world. They are all lucky to be alive, yes, but what price does living through the war make you pay? Anna takes another painful step, and with that twinge returns the ramblings of her mind.

  Before the war, life was one big party. My family lived in Łódź, had a big, beautiful house with paintings on the wall and a maid in the kitchen. We didn’t know that our house would be robbed or that we would be threatened. We were still enjoying our summer vacation in a small country village when my father returned to Łódź to gather some papers, only to find that Germans had broken into our home, stolen all our belongings, and even burned much of our house to the ground. We never went back.

  Before the war, I was a girl of fourteen. We lived in a big comfortable home, my mother, father, Wojtuś, and I. Wojtuś is six years younger than me. Mama had him just when she thought that she couldn’t have babies anymore. There he appeared, and so we all loved him the most, like he was our little doll. Wojtuś even looked like a doll, so pretty and delicate with his little blond curls and big blue eyes. Where I was a moody troublemaker, he was polite and kind. I remember once a beggar came to our house, and Wojtuś stopped the game he was playing in order to open the gate for the beggar, even helping him to pick the finest apples off the tree. Someone else’s father would have given his child a scolding for what he did, but our father just laughed and picked Wojtuś up in the air, swinging him around with joy.

  Not understanding the fuss he had caused, Wojtuś began to cry, tears spouting from his sweet innocent eyes.

  “That’s okay, dear Wojtuś,” my father said, laughing, “We can have one less apple pie this year.”

  Every day my mother gave me a warm, buttered roll wrapped in foil for school, and every day as I reached the corner of our street I would throw the roll into the trash, smiling with the secret joy of knowing that I didn’t have to eat it and that nobody would ever know what I had done. During the war, every day that I was hungry I thought about that buttered roll. Even now my mouth waters. If I knew then what I know now, things could have been different.

  My hair has always been this stormy shade of black and blue, and my eyes have always been this dark. I was born blond just like the rest of my family, but I became ill when I was only four and had all of my hair shaved off. I didn’t cry or blink an eye. I remember it like it was yesterday—I simply observed myself with grave consideration, watching my golden locks as they dropped slowly to the ground. With my solemn face and dark eyes, I resembled one of the old portraits hanging on the wall in the town library. My smile was so infrequent and surprising that when it did happen, everyone stopped to look. Even dinner got cold.

  “Do it in circles,” I demanded of my mother the time she shaved my head. She stood behind the old stuffed chair, razor in hand. I remember sitting before her, wrapped in a white cotton sheet, staring at my reflection in her ornate vanity mirror, tiny brown shoulders exposed, posture alert. “I want it to come back black and blue.” Somehow my wish came true, and it was then that I imagined I might be a witch.

  By the time I was five, I was well and had beautiful thick, dark curly hair.

  Somehow everyone picked up on my strange capacity for sorcery, and everyone would tease me and call me a witch.

  “That’s right,” I would joke, “I am a witch and you had better watch out, or else I will cast a spell on you.” I could sense that even though everyone was friendly with me, they were also always a little bit afraid. I took pleasure in frightening my teachers, spouting nonsensical words, imitating black magic invocations. My teachers and my friends enjoyed these games, however slightly unnerving they might have been.

  Of course since the war came, my abilities seem farther and farther away. Now I find myself thinking only of things: shoes, blouses, skirts, hats, coats, bras and panties, potatoes and bread. I never imagined that my life could become so mundane. But I remember when I was still a child and we had so much fun. I was the teacher’s pet. I was their mistress of the occult, their Catholic girl, their dark horse in a sea of once and forever night.

  My best friend, Rachelka, was also an unusual girl. She wore her long black curly hair in plaits that wrapped around her head like a rope on the dock of the black sea. Those ropes were like coiled snakes waiting to be provoked, unraveled, and drawn out into the murky waters of an unconquered world. She was like Rapunzel’s dark sister, only she did not let down her golden hair, but rather collected her black silky locks and kept them to herself, creating the look of a child in an old woman’s body, just waiting to be set free.

  Rachelka was known by all our teachers as the special one in the group. She passed all of her lessons without effort, sang like an angel, and was a gifted painter. Everyone knew that one day soon she would become a great artist. Rachelka knew this about herself as well. She believed in her own bright future the way most young girls know for certain that they will become brides, mothers, have a house all their own. Their sheer confidence even allows the
m to imagine how many children they will have, and whether those kids will be boys or girls.

  All of the students in the Mikolajskiej School for Girls were Jewish except for myself and three other girls. Why did our parents send us to a mostly Jewish school? Who knows? Maybe because it was the best school around. Things were not so separate then. Just because most of the students were Jewish doesn’t mean that there was much of a difference between us. We all wore the same pleated gray skirt and starched white shirt. We studied the same maps, had our first periods, attended class trips, ate the same foods. Rachelka was the neighbor of Małgosia, whose father was in business with Malwina’s uncle. Their mothers shopped at the same grocer, but not at the same butcher. Most girls went to temple, a few of us went to church. Our differences were small and almost unnoticeable.

  The teachers at our school were mostly Catholic, though it was common knowledge that the beautiful and graceful young history teacher, Pani Tarkowska, came from a poor Jewish family in a nearby town. She wore long skirts and silk blouses in bright, friendly colors, but she could not hide her youth or her beauty. She was set to marry one of the most successful young merchants in Łódź—the son of a banker and a self-made businessman. Her eyes were bright with possibility.