The Upright Heart

by Julia Ain-Krupa

  Anna walks across the town square into St. Mary’s Church, where she lights a candle, kneeling on the cold stones, staring up at the son of God.

  Anna wonders if Jesus was really a man who existed in this world or if he is just a myth, an ideal man. Was what he suffered so different from what many people endured? Anna never was the type to go to church unless her parents forced her to, but now, ever since the war ended, she finds that it brings her some comfort, and comfort is hard to come by. She thinks of all those girls, her classmates from school, of how such a tiny difference in background could shape their whole world.

  She didn’t want to hear it, but he told her. Her kind father’s face has taken a blow since the war, and now his skin looks waxy, as if he were quickly turning to stone.

  “I want you to know, to understand, how lucky we are,” he said, and then he told her what had happened. How her entire class, along with one or two younger students, had been locked in a tool shed behind the school, and then burnt to the ground.

  “How do you know that?” Anna shouted, her face burning with rage, covering her ears in desperation, trying to block out a truth that cannot be ignored. And the ringing was so loud, as if upon hearing her scream the girls could finally scream, too, all at once. The heavens were in her ears, resounding with their call.

  “No!” she cried, and fell to the table, hitting her forehead as she wept.

  “But it is,” her father said, softening, sitting beside her now, stroking her hair. “Everyone else was put in the ghetto, taken to the camps.”

  She had known without really knowing. Something had gone quiet at the start of the war, as if the memory of the girls’ distant laughter were fading away. With that feeling came both terror and inner peace, a calm that was now wiped away by the spoken truth, by reality. Gone was the last bit of peace inside.

  Even though she hadn’t eaten enough soup that day to satiate her hunger, Anna still ran to the toilet and threw up what little was there. Never before was hunger so irrelevant as it was now, seated at her family table.

  IV

  Elżbieta makes a habit of collecting and hiding things. Clothes, books, old newspaper clippings. And what about drying the orange rinds to make a fire? She washes and presses her second-hand goods and locks them up in an old wooden wardrobe.

  “For later,” she tells herself, envisioning just how she will look while dancing in this dress or that shirt. There is nothing more valuable than clothing made of beautiful, fine silk and a ring made of real gold. When the mourning for her father passes (oh, when will it ever pass?), when the family gets back on its feet, when food becomes more easily available, she will be able to dance once more.

  Baby Mateusz sleeps peacefully in his basinet while Waleria grates raw potatoes to make czarne kluski in the kitchen. Food is hard to come by these days, especially in the region of Silesia, and whenever a shipment arrives from the UNRRA, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, everyone runs to the township office to get his or her share. First the food goes to the Russian soldiers and then to everyone else. Elżbieta’s siblings are out in the garden feeding the chickens. She can hear their cheerful shouts as they run from one another, darting between the old apple trees. Elżbieta’s husband is out at school.

  Sitting down in an old rocking chair to mend a pair of her little brother’s socks, Elżbieta hums a tune to herself, an old Christmas carol that recalls the happy memories of her childhood. Maybe they didn’t have much, but life was filled with joy. Their house was a home filled with love. And every summer her cousin Helena would bring Elżbieta to her zameczek—her little castle—in the countryside, where Helena lived with her husband, a Viennese nobleman who had horses and an endless stretch of land. It was here that Elżbieta was provided with painting and music lessons, where she danced and had her first kiss. Here she also became her ladyship, but just for the summer months. Whenever she returned home to Rybnik, her title, and her pleasure, would fade into oblivion.

  Her grandmother, Julia, would yell at her every time she went.

  “Don’t you know?” she would shout, hands on her broad hips, pale blue eyes glimmering in the sun. “That this isn’t real? They will destroy your life if you keep going there, imagining you will be like them. You will never have their life.” This would always devastate Elżbieta, and she would run to bed, tears in her eyes. What does she know? Elżbieta would tell herself. She can’t imagine how important those times are for me.

  Julia was Elżbieta’s paternal grandmother, and Wiktor’s mother. She was a strong woman, even stronger than Wiktor’s wife, Waleria, and she was, as discussed in secret, cyganka (whisper: she was a Gypsy).

  Elżbieta didn’t know. She didn’t know that hiding the truth from yourself can be a dangerous game. She had no idea that concealing the Gypsy truth, the street where she came from, the realities of her daily life, could be harmful to her future. But she couldn’t help but feel that she was the most refined member of her immediate family. If any one of them were to have a charmed destiny, it would be her.

  And here she was, just a few years later. Who could have imagined that the war would come? Who could have foreseen that the life they had known would take such a turn and that so many dreams would be smothered in the cold, dark earth? That her beloved papa, dear sweet Wiktor, would meet a tragic end?

  Elżbieta was only sixteen when the war began. One year into the war she was able to find work at a well-respected flower shop in town, and it was there that she spent her days counting the roses and the lily of the valley whenever May would come. Even though there was a war, spring still came, and with it arrived the most beautiful delicate blossoms of violets and tender white lily of the valley that would shake and tremble in the wind. Elżbieta would bind them into miniature bouquets, creating small bunches of flowers wrapped in leaves. They were still affordable to some.

  She had finished school at the age of fourteen, and was studying to become a piano teacher until the war began. This was a job that she could imagine herself doing. This way she could always be clean, her auburn hair rolled back, just so, framing the curve of her ear, the cuff of her blouse undone, and then she would always be surrounded by music.…

  Roses are red, white, pink, and yellow. Roses are glorious gifts of nature, starting small, narrow, and then expanding and opening to inform the whole world of their extraordinary beauty. They offer you solace in difficult times. They serve as a reminder that life can improve, that there is always sun lurking somewhere beyond the clouds.

  Elżbieta’s grandfather, Albert, was known for growing prize roses. At the age of five he traveled alone on the train for days to meet his mother and her new husband in Bavaria with nothing but a suitcase, a teddy bear, and a small placard hanging from his neck that read “Albert Kajzerek, Rybnik, Poland.” Through his experiences in Munich with a nobleman stepfather, he learned about gardening and acquired many other hobbies. He was given opportunities to experience things that he never would have dreamt of had he stayed at home. He could build furniture, make shoes, and grow prize roses with ease.

  Albert would grow up to be a rather small man in size, a big man in stature. His family liked to tease him with the nickname “little emperor.” He worked in a factory that produced enamelware, weighing ore on weekdays. On Sundays he would dress in a three-piece suit and gold watch, and, awaking at six, he would go to church and then walk twenty kilometers to meet with a master gardener on a nearby estate. For hours on end these two men would sit on apple crates in the tool shed or on a bench under the shade of an old oak tree, drinking homemade wine from a large jug corked with newspaper, discussing the best way to till the soil, to keep plant-eating snails at bay, to cultivate the perfect, most fragrant roses.

  Albert and his wife, Maria, had a garden so clean that you could eat from the soil. These were Waleria’s parents, Elżbieta’s grandparents on her mother’s side. They lived down on the west end of Ulica Strzelecka, where they had a field, a vegetable patc
h, pear trees, even a small bridge over a pond beneath which floated pink water lilies. On this tiny plot of land everything was beautiful and serene, even the last wisps of wheat floating off the fields in the late day sun, taking comfort in the final waves of the August heat.

  Maria kept a small drove of cows, and they produced milk so pure that it became popular among Rybnik’s Jews. Maria gave her Jewish customers open accounts, and she used these accounts to trade with her customers for beautiful fabrics. As a result, she was always well-dressed, even in difficult times.

  During the war, the roses in the flower shop brought back familiar memories of Elżbieta’s grandparents’ garden, which was still vibrant, though much diminished in those difficult times. The roses’ fragrant beauty was Elżbieta’s link to St. Thérèse—to prayer and to unbridled hope. Like a beautiful melody that came from the heart, the roses were a reminder of family life and of peace, of the love and cultivated beauty that surrounded her. The sweet smell of roses was a promise that life was not over. Happiness would come around again one day soon.

  Spending her days amid that heady aroma was a pleasure for Elżbieta, except when an SS officer would come into the shop to buy flowers for a lover or for his wife.

  One afternoon, while Elżbieta was working alone, a tall, handsome officer with closely cropped blond hair and a pronounced jaw bound in to buy two-dozen roses for his Polish mistress. Elżbieta took pleasure in arranging his bouquet, though something made her nervous about the man. He stood there, back toward her, hands clasped behind him, eyeing the street, breathing heavily. She supposed that with a body that tall and that strong one would need to breathe heavily to survive. She watched him flick a piece of lint from the zigzagged double “s” embroidered in his collar. Elżbieta noticed her own hands trembling as she tied the pale violet ribbon into a perfect bow.

  “Done,” she said, meekly, calculating the cost of the bouquet.

  The officer turned around and handed her the money for the flowers, and as she gave him his change, he slapped her right hand down onto the counter, and held it there tight, looking into her eyes. She tried to squirm away, but he was too strong, and besides, she was mesmerized by his stare.

  “Don’t you use soap?” he asked, face still, emotionless. “You’d better wash your eyes.” And then he let go her hand, and left the store as loudly as he had come in.

  As the door shut behind the officer, Elżbieta turned to look in the mirror at the back of the store. She looked just like any other Silesian woman, light hair, clear skin, pronounced nose, narrow lips. She was the prettiest of her sisters, but she did have eyes as black as a void.

  That night Elżbieta had nightmares that she was in the forest at night and a black vulture was trying to scratch her eyes out. For weeks she would tremble like a frightened dog.

  “Please don’t go. Don’t leave me alone,” she would say to Pani Malik, her young boss, whose husband was off at war. “Don’t be silly, my dear, you will be fine,” Mrs. Malik would reply, stepping out of the store.

  Little did Elżbieta know that it was Malik who was having the secret affair with the same SS officer who had threatened her just weeks earlier.

  That year, Elżbieta would lose all of her teeth, one by one. The doctor said she was lacking in calcium, but it was the fear that stole away her youth.

  V

  If I could sell this pill on the black market I would, but I know that people have a difficult time seeing the possibilities in small items. They lack imagination, or at least that is what my father used to say. He sold watches, restored old clocks until they shined like new. He knew what was valuable and what wasn’t, but he was always disappointed when other people couldn’t see things the way he saw them. Whenever I see something old and beautiful and hidden, I think of him.

  If I could sell this pill on the black market I would, but since I can’t, I sell stockings, sugar, and sometimes perfume. Whatever I can get my hands on. Everything is in demand. Cigarettes are the easiest item to deal with, but there are so many other people doing the same business as me that I am always looking for new items to sell.

  Once, sometime last autumn, a lady, a really nice lady, all dressed up with golden paint in her hair and a fur stole around her shoulders, came up to me in the street. I was standing near the Rynek by a small street, Ulica Św. Marka. I was looking through a garbage can because I hadn’t eaten for two days and was starting to get very miserable. I knew that some nuns lived close to that corner, and once or twice I found a carefully placed sandwich in that can, as if it were there just for me, as if the pill were working its magic all over the place.

  This lady saw me, I think, rustling through the can. I have to tell you that she was beautiful, the most elegant lady I had ever seen, and when she began talking to me, I felt so scared I wanted to run. I can’t say I was ashamed. Two or three years ago I might have been embarrassed to be caught in such a situation, or at least I still imagined I could be, but since the war ended, things have been different. But still, this lady made me feel nervous, like I was going to get into trouble or something. Her voice was soft but stern. She told me not to run away.

  “I will take you to obiad (lunch),” she said, and then announced, “Follow me.”

  I was so hungry I walked two steps behind her to hide the sounds of my hunger pangs the whole way. We passed through the market square and went downstairs into one of two restaurants in the center of town. There was a big room with painted windows that looked out onto the street and sent rainbows inside, just like they do in church. People think that light is God.

  We sat at a big table with linen tablecloths, cloth napkins, and real silverware. I thought hard about taking a few knives and forks, shoving them in my pocket: that would have earned me some real money—the kind of money that could buy me a coat and some new shoes, even more dinners like this—but if I stole here, now, then I really wouldn’t be worth the life that I was spared, so I thought better of it, even held my hands down under my legs beneath the table when I had to.

  For five years all I had eaten was bread, potatoes, carrots and whatever apples I could find. Once I had naleśniki. But on this unbelievable day I ate two kinds of pierogi, young potatoes, green beans, veal cutlet, and for dessert, wild strawberries the size of ladybugs, mixed with fresh cream. I swayed to the exhilarating sensation of tasty food—something I had nearly given up on. As the light poured in from the window in beams of blue, red, and yellow, I swooned. The lady told me that she was from Warsaw. She was an actress, which made sense, because she was so beautiful. She looked like an angel. When my stomach was filled, for a moment I thought that I saw stars in her eyes. “Could it be?” I asked myself. The magic? The pill? As if heaven itself had come down to earth to sit at my table, to surround my little world.

  I could tell that the waiters weren’t too happy about having me there, but I tried not to care. I wasn’t too clean that day either. I hadn’t had a haircut in months. I tried to cut it myself with some old scissors I found in an abandoned factory—the one where all those young women died, the one people tell stories about, where the girls decided to end their lives together, all at once. But with just a shard of glass to use as a mirror, I didn’t get very far.

  That factory was a very nice place to stay, I have to say, even though it was haunted by the spirits of those dead girls. This whole town is inhabited by ghosts, anyway, so who cares? Even if you think you are in the cleanest place, living like a king, there is no escaping their memory. I liked sleeping in that old workroom for a time. The war was over, and I felt free once again. I didn’t have to hide in the train station anymore; I could begin to live. There was a feeling of warmth in the room that can’t be found in most old buildings in Kraków, and the machines had a certain comforting odor, like a mixture of oil and soap. Maybe that was the leftover girly smell.

  One day I realized it might not be such a good idea to live with just a group of lost souls, even if it was so comforting to me. Living with the dead
can be dangerous. That isn’t just a fairytale, you know. Spending too much time with them can make you lose sight of the border between worlds, and then you never can predict on which side you’ll get caught. Besides, those girls might not really want me around—they could have things to do, people to meet on the other side.

  So a couple of months ago my life changed when I found a room with an old blind lady who still lives in Kazimierz. She took pity on me because she lost all three of her sons during the war, and she wanted to save just one lost boy.

  “Just one,” I heard her whisper to herself, standing in the hallway the first time I walked out the door. She let me live with her for free, and I helped her with the shopping, the cleaning, and the cooking. Living in her house meant I could even take a bath once a week. I didn’t need the magic pill like I used to, which is partly why I am showing it to you, because it is important to share, because I can see that you too need rescuing.

  For a while I was really feeling like life was on my side once again. I could see a future, and it looked bright. I walked along the Wisła River at night and smiled. The earliest signs of spring were coming; I could feel the moon looking down on me and I would look right back up at it. I felt like saying, “You did it, moon. I know you did.”

  Spring is so beautiful in Kraków that it is easy to forget that winter ever existed, as if it would never come around again. You hide your heart from the deep freeze, from the cold.

  Two weeks ago the old lady got very sick. I woke up one morning to find her doubled over on the kitchen floor. A neighbor helped me carry her to the hospital. Now I am without a place to sleep again until she comes back home. I hope she comes back. I have returned to sleeping in the train station, or when nights are warm like this I roll out some newspaper (it has so many uses!) in Planty or by the river, and I lie down under the stars. In the evening I go and visit the old lady in the hospital, but these last few days she hasn’t looked so good. I still have hope she’ll get better. The pill helps me to believe in so many things. I know my hope won’t help to keep her in this world. I learned that a long time ago. She wouldn’t be the first Polish woman to ever lose her life to heartbreak.