I can’t talk about what happened before. If I had a mother or a father or a sister or a brother I would talk, but they are gone, and I cannot speak of them at all. I don’t want to call out their names or bring them any closer to me. I don’t want to remind them of what they lost.
Wolf says he wants to go to Kazimierz to say a blessing for the dead. I tried to explain that the best place would be anywhere in Kraków, maybe on Kopiec Kosciuszki or beside the Wisła River. The land around Kraków is the closest thing he will find to a real family grave, but he feels certain about wanting to go to an actual Kirkut (cemetery). He is strict about which rules he must follow, and upset that there are so many he is unable to observe here. My father was that way, too.
This man is lucky that he has his new family in America, but here he is lost. He doesn’t have the pill, like I do, to bring him luck and make the world around him beautiful again. But he does have me, and I can help him. He has the little dog, and the dead man who sits by his bed and waits. Maybe he is here to protect him, and so am I.
Wolf tells me that after he recites the prayer for the dead he will travel home to Brooklyn, USA. He says that he wants to leave this place forever. Now Wolf knows that New York is his home. He believes that after he recites the prayer, just like he tried to do in his hometown of N, then maybe his family will rest in peace. I tell him that he is right, that it will help, but I don’t know if this is true. If Wolf could see all of those lingering spirits, like I do, then he would know that it isn’t so easy to free the dead. They cling to the earth like animals grasping to their mother for milk. I shudder to think about it. When I remember having those feelings I begin to sink again, but thankfully I have the pill to lift me up from everything that wants to keep me down.
Maybe if I am lucky Wolf will bring me to America. Who knows? Anything is possible. Anything can happen. I believe that my pill makes dreams come true.
Tonight there will be a full moon. The sky will be beautiful and clear, and maybe there will even be a meteor shower. At least that’s what the lady in the corner shop told me, and I would like to believe her, even though she is always swiping the last of my hand-rolled cigarettes.
XXVI
I dream about Rachelka. She is standing on top of the roof of our old school, singing a song she used to love. It is a Yiddish lullaby in which a mother sings to her crying child. It looks like Rachelka is singing it to the moon, but she is turned away from me, so it is difficult to tell. I am also standing on the roof, and when I look down at the school below, I see that the building is now made of nothing but a frame of fragile bones. Gone are the schoolroom floors, the ornate engraved walls, the beautiful paintings of surrounding landscapes. Only the old spiral staircase and a couple of rooms remain, one with a long row of single beds lined up against the wall.
The beams of the house shine in the bright moonlight, and when Rachelka sees me, she smiles. “Anna,” she says, and walks toward me along the tightrope that connects her side of the roof to mine. She takes both of my hands in hers, and I notice that she is smaller now, or maybe I have grown, which is sad for me to realize, because we were once almost the same height. She points to the places where we used to live, and to the parks where we once played. She says that now all of them are gone. She gestures to the locked gate surrounding the schoolyard, and as I follow her hand, I see that outside the gate there are human figures writhing on the ground. They are moaning and crying, and when I look at her now, I feel afraid. But she holds my hand firmly and tells me to look one more time. She says that I can set them free. When I let go her hand I see that there is a ring of stars in the palm of my hand.
“Use it,” she says, pointing to the gate again.
XXVII
There is a rhythm to everything, and sometimes souls must return to the earth. If your work was not done—but when is it ever done?—at least once, maybe four times, maybe even more, you begin again.
If I could stay suspended here, disembodied forever, I would. Then there would only be the dance of joy, the feather, the universe, my heart.
Part III
In the Beginning
I
Beneath the soot of this passageway there is a flower blooming in the dark. I saw it with my own eyes when we first came down to these tunnels. We marveled at the beauty of its petals and the strength of its thorns that pricked our fingers but never drew blood. In this tunnel darkness exceeds the depth of night. There is a texture to the pitch. As if once the sky existed without any stars, and that is where we stand now, waiting for the world to begin.
I walk in front of them. The footsteps of my men seem nonexistent, as they never make a sound, but they do rouse the dirt that has settled on the ground. Every inch of the tunnel is filled with sediment. The air is impenetrable at times, but we can still breathe, so we march on. One man asked if the footfall of a homeless man is heavier than that of someone who knows where he belongs. We all stop to think, but nobody knows the answer. Maybe it is even lighter, I say. Now there is nothing to hold us down.
“But we are going home, right?” demands Thomas, the thin young soldier, the one who is always crying out for his mother in the dark. “What about when we get there? Then we won’t be lost anymore.” I look back at the others. Nobody responds. We are coming to terms with the fact that we aren’t going to find our way there anymore.
Now it is time to move through the dust and reach the end of the tunnel. We walk solemnly. Our conversation has come to a halt. Occasionally there is a grunt or a song. Thomas loves to sing German songs that were popular in Berlin before the war. His favorite song is “Lili Marleen.” I used to feel sentimental when I heard that melody, like my heart was leaping from my chest into shattered halves remembering my sweetheart and my family, but now I just hear it and smile a little, like I am witnessing the last thread of my life, the final thing that will keep me tied to the world. Perhaps it is good that we are stuck in this tunnel, for in the next place there might not be any force of gravity to keep us down.
Now that we understand the truth about our lives, there is no longer any reason to cry. How did we discover everything packed into a tunnel underground? It is not as if there is a discarded match to be found or an old newspaper to tell us the truth about who won the war. But at some point we began to realize that we are among those who have died. Maybe it is the fact that these resistance tunnels seem to have no exit. Maybe it is because we noticed that our footfall no longer makes any sound. All at once our minds are coming together, recalling the quiet by the river, and that moment when a grenade exploded and time stopped for us. When winter lasted forever. Sometimes I wonder why that Polish man brought us down here. Did he know something we didn’t? Did he wish us harm or did he wish us well? He knew who we were and the truth about what had happened, and yet he told us nothing.
II
When the dark is so deep I have moments in which I am afraid. Will leaving you, my feather, mean that one of us will disappear? Is it not our love for one another that keeps us suspended here so perfectly? Without me here, what will you do? Will you wait for me to return? When you see me again, many years from now, what if I am changed? How will you recognize me then? And if you don’t know who I am, how will you find your way to love me once more?
III
I step on a mound of dirt, and another explosion of dust rains over us, extinguishing our last little light.
“What will we do now?” Matthias asks, cleaning his face with an old dust rag.
“How am I supposed to know?” I answer, annoyed by my position of power. Death has not made me a subordinate yet.
Thomas kneels on the ground, his head in his hands. “Oh mama,” he moans. “I can’t take it anymore. I want to die! I cannot stand it!” He grabs a knife from Matthias’s belt, and with shaking hands, slits his own throat. Nothing happens. His suicide has no effect. He screams in horror, and though we hear his howl inside ourselves, on the outside world, in the caverns of this tunnel, it makes no sound. H
earing his cry feels like dying for the first time.
Thomas grabs onto Matthias’s boots and tugs at them. Matthias, who is quick to anger, bends over to slap him. Thomas cowers and cries, and the sound of his terror penetrates us all. Matthias grabs the collar of Thomas’s jacket and shakes him, as if he could rid him of his sadness by making him more afraid. Thomas holds the knife up in the air, his strained right hand fiercely gripping the ivory handle, now rocking and emitting an open-mouthed moan of lost desperation. We feel the reverberations inside our chests.
The anger drains from Matthias’s face. “That’s alright, kid,” he says, gently now, pulling the knife from Thomas’s taut hand. “That won’t help you anymore.” Matthias tucks the knife into his belt and kneels beside Thomas, who is now crying into the hollows of the earth, just like a child weeping into his pillow at night.
Matthias sighs. “We’ve got to keep on, Thomas. You’ll see. Everything will be better soon.” Thomas grabs onto Matthias’s legs as if they are his last chance for salvation. Matthias gives in and cradles Thomas’s lanky frame in his strong arms. He rocks him gently, petting his hair like a mother would her child, soothing him with all the kindness he can muster in the world.
How small is one tear? Not even a spider could bathe in its expanse, but his tears continue to pour forth and collect into a body of water, forming a miniature ocean that swells with the movement of his heart, a well that springs from him and moves upward, shifting airborne dust into a singular wall that separates my men from the end of the tunnel. His tears create an upward moving waterfall that rushes behind the wall of dust, casting raindrops of sediment in our direction. We are silent and amazed.
Thomas is the first to notice. A shiny button from his uniform deflects light onto his face. He looks up from the comfort of Matthias’s lap and sees something shining in the distance. It is subtle at first, but then it grows stronger, emitting a humming sound loud enough for us to turn in its direction. The light filters through the layers of water and dust, creating a dim glow that shifts across our bodies, illuminating us to ourselves. We are no longer hidden in the dark as we step through a cascade of dust and water and into the light. I am first. I lead my men. The river of tears washes all the dirt and soot from my uniform and body, and I emerge in the mouth of a cave that opens onto the night sky.
This feels nothing like being on the earth below. It is as if we are up in the sky, floating on a cloud. Stranger is the sense that this was our reality all along. Something kept us ignorant. My men come out in awe, one by one. As babies we came into this world and proved our force of life with a wailing cry. Now we stand in silence and there is nothing concrete to separate us from the spheres all around. With just one step, the heavens rise to meet us. We are at one with this metallic atmosphere, these rotating planets in the night sky, our bodies drifting toward a crescent moon.
IV
It is incredible to think that even after you have died you can still have the capacity to dream, but you can. It feels so different, like there is no separation between one moment and the next. You can choose to call one experience a dream, while the other, you don’t. In the dream where the man sets me free, I return to the school completely changed. It is easy for me to reenter the building, and for a moment I wonder why I am doing so. Why don’t I lay my sandy sheath down on the ground, or on top of a factory roof, stand naked beneath the moon, and let my blanket of sand give rise to a desert landscape? I could wander aimlessly for one thousand years, but it would make no difference. There isn’t one Sarah that doesn’t know the secrets of my heart.
In my dream I feel so free wandering the dark city at night. Naked and invisible beneath my shimmering shawl, I come to a group of men on the outskirts of the city. They are standing around a large metal garbage can where a fire is burning, drinking from amber bottles, talking excitedly. They have shaved heads and are wearing sport clothes. Some of them have black drawings painted onto their skin, just like the tribe leaders in Papua New Guinea. I notice their empty eyes, their wild smiles, and their brisk movements, and for some reason I remember the German soldiers who locked us up in the school and burnt us alive. I recall the sound of their voices and the sour smell of their breath that traveled with the shouts that sent our souls running. And oh how it felt when there was nowhere to go.
I watch them without being seen, but when I move closer, my shawl slips, and so does my invisibility. They spot me bending over to pick it up.
A warm breeze picks up fragments of dust in the night air, which sparkle as they pass over the fire. The man with the most drawings on his body, the one who seems to be the leader of the group, stands up and points at me, and the others nod in agreement. My heart races wildly as they kneel down in a circle, and the man gestures for me to come. I have no choice but to go. I pick up my desert blanket and walk over to them. They lay me down beside the fire and take turns marking my body with black ink and a pen that sizzles. I don’t resist them. I give in to the initiation. They draw lines across my wrists and make a big double loop that twists around my belly button. They write Hebrew letters in a constellation pattern on my back. How do you know them? I ask, but they just point up. Then they write the words, oved kochavim, the servant of the stars. Even though I don’t see the words, I know they are there. Now I understand that this phrase can have new meaning. These are letters I know by feeling. Together, they can recreate the world.
Each man writes something different. When they finish and change turns, the one who is done kisses me on the forehead, and allows the next man to come in. I have never made love. I never in my life had even the chance to kiss someone before I died. The way these men take care of my body, the way they mark it and release it, somehow makes me feel that they are helping to set my soul free, which is how I always imagined it would feel to make love.
When they are finished, they wrap my body back in the blanket of sand. They show me the way. I say goodbye to all of them, one by one, and with each farewell, I kiss them on the lips. I see how our tender exchange has changed them. Their gaze is no longer filled with hatred and emptiness. They tell me I have saved their lives.
I pass invisibly back through the streets of the town that I have known and loved. Now it is no longer a burnt-out wasteland. Everything has reversed to a time when the city was still happy and alive. I pass by families coming out of the theater, see businessmen laughing in local cafés. I even see my dear friend Anna walking down the street. She looks older and tired. She walks beside a very thin man with a mustache. They speak together in a quiet, serious manner. I call out to her, but there is no need. She doesn’t hear me at all.
I pass by the storefront of what was once the best clothing store in town. All of the lights are turned off, and in the big glass window there is only the faint trace of a mannequin dressed for her wedding day, her young groom standing beside her in a gray suit. There are young fashionable mannequins, all standing at attention, looking out at the world, waiting to be chosen. I don’t know how it happens, but I catch my reflection in the glass window. My body looks the same as it always has, artful, even, with all of the paintings that it carries. My hair, which was always black, is now long and silver, as if it has captured the light of all the stars.
When I arrive at the school gates, I pause before I reenter. The same man is still standing there, the one who let me out, ready to let me back in. It is as if he has been waiting for me there all along. He doesn’t smile or wink this time, only solemnly opens the metal bars, which he closes as I enter, my shimmering sheath catching onto the latch of the gate, remaining there. I walk inside. I am in my school uniform again. As I climb the winding staircase toward little Sarah, who sits solemnly with her head in her hands, I wonder, how can it be that everything is different but nothing has changed? When little Sarah sees me, she smiles and touches my long gray hair.
V
It is easy to wait when you know that somebody you love is coming. I had thought we were close enough that not even de
ath could sever our communication, but I must have been wrong. Wolf, I have called for you not once, but over and over. From the eastern border of Poland to the western tip, I have asked for you to hear me, begged for you to come. Waiting for you is worse than waiting for the messiah. At least he offers prayers for his people to speak.
Have you become my God? I thought better of myself.
Today I wandered the bridges that cross the Wisła River and even penetrated its depths, just to see what was there waiting. There I saw a girl, a beautiful Jewish girl. Her hair was long and intertwined with the reeds that extend for miles beyond her figure, fish feeding on plankton that grew at its tips. She wore no clothes, but showed me how she loves to dance, to lay her tawniness beneath the surface of the water so that it catches the sun at just the right moments. I asked her name.
“Uh oh,” she mouthed, and swam away. A few minutes later she came back with a long stick, and in the sand she wrote out her name. Maryna. I smiled and told her it was a beautiful name. She showed me a small cache of things she kept to help entertain herself. There were old trinkets, like children’s toys and colorful foil wrappers from candies discarded before the war. Memorabilia from happier times. There was even an SS hat, which alarmed me, especially when she tried it on and marched around as if she herself were a German soldier. I could not hide my disgust.
The Upright Heart Page 12