X
You would never imagine this place as a stage set for a performance at dawn, but here it is, the gate outside Birkenau. Before you extends a great expanse of green and rows of empty bunkers. You ask yourself, why did you come?
When Mateusz climbs down from his place suspended above the crowd, he is still floating. It is not unusual for a performer to remain in the spotlight for long after the audience has gone. He carries the spotlight with him.
When Mateusz steps out into the night to light a cigarette, he sees that the audience has gathered. They are drinking, singing, building a bonfire. It is a strange sight, this merry crowd sitting at the edge of Birkenau, but this is the Polish landscape. Every space has a story to tell.
A tall figure walks toward him through the grass. It moves slowly, long white skirt gleaming in the night. Mateusz takes a drag from his cigarette and walks past the group to greet the figure. The light rain has lifted, and the fog is rolling in. His exhalation creates a stream of heat in the cool night air. Mesmerized as he nears the edge of darkness, he sees the woman from the audience, the one whom he imagined to be a mirage. He wishes to meet her, but as he gets closer he realizes that she is crying, her broad bony shoulders heaving uncontrollably as she looks out at the void, at the empty buildings so lonely and still in the quiet night. Mateusz stands there helplessly for several minutes, clearing from his throat a sudden unknown fear. He moves to face her. She is like no one he has ever seen. She is the most beautiful woman in the world, his wildest dream.
Different sounds converge, trying to emerge from his body, but he can only stumble. Finally he points to himself and says, “Mateusz,” a murmur emitted from someone who has little practice making conversation. His introduction makes the woman smile. “Leah,” she replies, and puts out her hand. In silence they walk back to the group, Leah looking out at the landscape, Mateusz watching her every move. He wants to ask her questions, find out if she can hear the haunting cry of this night, but he has no language with which to speak.
XI
The trip to eastern Poland is long, six hours to be exact. Though it is summer now, the weather has taken a turn for the worse, and a cold rain is beating down the road. The car Mateusz is driving was borrowed from a friend, and it lurches forward every so often, for he is new to shifting gears. He is new to driving as well, but he doesn’t let on. Leah leans back against the stiff leather headrest of the tiny, canary yellow Fiat Maluch, her wild black hair spilling up toward the roof of the car. She watches the passing landscape, a constant rain of teardrops sliding down the window at her side. Yes, now she feels it. There is a great sadness bubbling up inside. Who have I never met? Leah wonders. Who died? How many people did my parents mourn for? I can only look and wonder. I can never ask. I can never know. It would break their hearts to talk.
Steam lifts from Mateusz’s chest as he parks the car outside the town of N. He follows Leah as she walks up a faded path into the woods. It isn’t far to walk before the first headstone, a matzevah, appears. This one is upright, like an obelisk, warning against intruders. And now the discovery begins. The dimensions of the old cemetery are not so big, but there are enough scattered gravestones left to inform passersby that Jews once lived here. Some matzevot are still standing but extremely faded. Others are practically buried beneath the earth, moss growing over their rough surfaces. Hebrew letters meet nature and dirt. Who wants to preserve this memory? Nothing can escape the weathering of time.
When she does finally discover her ancestor’s grave, she is relieved to see that it has not been toppled, that it is still standing. Mateusz hangs back as Leah sits on a pile of wet leaves on the ground beside it. He can think only of how her long white skirt will be ruined, but he says nothing. Leah covers her face for a few minutes and murmurs something, though it is impossible for him to hear. When she rises and walks back to join him, she has an expression of strange bewilderment on her face and a different look in her eyes, almost as if she is accusing him of something. As they walk slowly back to the road, she stays off to the side. When they reach the car, Mateusz gets inside, but she remains standing, her back turned toward him, staring out at the open green field across the way. She climbs inside. Mateusz begins to drive. Leah opens her door and vomits outside of the moving car. Mateusz pulls over, offers her a handkerchief and some water, wishing to hold her in his arms. They drive through the woods for an hour in silence, the bumpy road knocking them about. She wonders if they will ever get out. At this moment the only thing Leah can think of is her bones.
When at last they emerge on the other side of the forest, they register at a small hotel near town.
As if an alarm clock goes off inside, Leah awakes just before dawn. Mateusz is still sitting in the same armchair where he sat the night before, as if waiting for this moment. Leah rises from the bed, naked, her pert breasts erect in the cold morning air, her long limbs graceful as she saunters to the window. She opens the curtains to reveal a view of the woods, tender with possibility in the early morning light. Everything is new. Life is predawn. She leans her back and buttocks against the window and stretches open her arms toward Mateusz. He runs. Right there, against the window, a crow screeching in the woods just beyond, these two foreigners, born on opposite sides of the same culture, making love into the early morning light.
XII
There is a melody played in that subtle twinkle of stars in the vast summer night. Anna moves between worlds as her eyelids become heavy and she dozes on the bus. Here the gray, rainy day, drunken men snoring at the back of the bus, the sweet child resting in her mother’s arms, and rain drifting along the windowpane, like tears of nostalgia flying out of the past. With eyes closed she reaches the inside world, the one filled with night. The moon is full in the dream world. The school gates open: Anna walks inside. Rachelka descends the old crumbling staircase, running. Her hair is long and gray and wild, but she still wears her old school uniform. She extends her hand toward Anna and speaks with the same, childlike voice.
“Kochana (dear) Anna, we have been waiting for you all this time.”
“I know,” Anna replies. “I tried to come, but it took me so long.” She hugs Rachelka and looks up to see all of their old classmates standing along the stairs, watching them.
“I have a candle for you,” Anna says, handing the blue glass memorial candle to Rachelka. The glass is frosted from the heat of her hands.
Rachelka smiles. “To remember us by?” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small matchbox. “We can light it.”
Rachelka lights the candle and places it on the ground.
Tears begin to pour down Anna’s cheeks. She falls to the ground at Rachelka’s feet. “Yes! Yes! To remember you by! I am sorry! I am so sorry!” She cries into the dark and luminous night, her tears falling deep into the grooves of the stone walkway. A strong wind picks up all of the dust in the old abandoned schoolyard.
One by one, all the stars begin to fall to the ground. There is a rain of light as the girls emerge from the building and spill out into the courtyard. In silence, they band together as stars cascade above their heads.
Anna ceases to cry. She stands there, mystified.
“Come on, let’s run,” Rachelka says, taking Anna by the hand.
And up they go. Those stairs that they have known for all of their lives now become a road to freedom. Forty-one Sarahs on their way home.
XIII
This bird has a map of the whole world engraved in its memory. It knows the best way to travel from South America to North, to reach the Holy Land, to travel from Kraków to Białystok. It knows all there is to know, as if it has lived everywhere and always, and through all time, which in fact it has. This bird saw the beginning. Watched clouds as they separated into dust, lands unhinge, and water as it collected into vessels built into the land. This bird was transformed from airborne white-feathered being to shadowed creature as it saw the commotion of separation, like two lovers saying goodbye, as light lifted
from darkness, and sky from earth. Now there is a world. Now there is longing. Now there is a wound. Now there is intimacy experienced by the earth only through the extended rays of light, through the feet that wander, the animals that run, the grass that grows and heaves on the side of this mountain like a great wild bear breathing secretly with the rhythms of life that circle all around. This bird heard the first sounds emitted in the dark, the touch that brought stars down from the heavens, the one that brought man into a woman’s arms. Then the bitter fruit.
The bus is traveling fast now, along a narrow road that connects one highway to the next. They call it a shortcut. There is a row of poplar trees on either side of the road, and they look so strong in that delicate wash of rain, as if no act of nature could wipe them away. Anna wants to stay awake, to view the passing countryside, to contemplate her past, her future, to remember the way to Łódź, but she is so tired that her head keeps dropping and she nods off to sleep.
She is in full slumber now, standing with the girls on the rooftop of her old school, stars everywhere around them, on their bodies and in their hair. She is so far removed from the reality of this journey by bus that she has no way to know that the driver, too, is succumbing to the sleepy mood of the day, his eyelids so heavy, his head caught every few minutes on its way down to his chest. He finds this extreme sleepiness alarming, and therefore accelerates his speed and opens the window, hoping that the fresh air and the swift movement will keep him awake.
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.
XIV
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.
XV
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.
XVI
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.
XVII
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.
XVIII
The swelling of the heart is like a call to prayer o
r 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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