Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series)

by Hanna Krall

  The waiter comes back and covers the entire table with the dishes she ordered. What about cutlery? she calls out. You forgot the cutlery! I didn’t forget, the waiter says, but you didn’t take off your coat. Please take your coat to the cloakroom, give me your ticket and I’ll bring you some cutlery. Do you realize how many foreigners are running around Vienna these days? Frenchmen, Italians, Poles, Yugoslavs – and they’re all trying to steal something. But it’s not such a huge concern, is it, gnädige Frau? All you have to do is take your coat to the cloakroom.

  She can’t take off her coat because then everyone would see her improvised suspender belt.

  She can’t eat with her hands, because she would draw attention to herself.

  She is on the verge of tears.

  A man at the table next to hers stands up. He calls the waiter over and says something. The waiter takes the man’s dirty cutlery and brings it back washed, in a starched white napkin. The man lays the cutlery on the table in front of Izolda, bows and says that there is a very nice café nearby. If she would care to join him for some coffee after her meal…

  She tries not to eat ravenously.

  She tries to cut with the knife and pick up with the fork.

  She tries to remember to hold the knife in her right hand and the fork in her left…

  The man takes the cutlery after she’s done and waits for his cloakroom ticket. She gets up and hurries out of Herr Zimmermann’s restaurant. She fishes the piece of newspaper out of her pocket (‘young, energetic, to begin immediately’) and checks the address.

  Kaisertorte

  The old lady leans on her walking stick and asks what she can do.

  Everything, she says, without hesitation. She can clean, cook, launder and speak French. And what about baking? Do you know how to bake a Kaisertorte?

  Unfortunately she doesn’t know how to bake a Kaisertorte (she doesn’t even know what it looks like). However, she quickly adds, she does know how to bake Buchteln – yeast rolls filled with preserves.

  The lady is genuinely surprised: a person who doesn’t know how to bake a torte is looking for work in a Viennese household?

  Madame… she turns to the lady and then goes silent, unsure of what she really intends to say. Madame… she repeats and hears herself delivering a tirade about the end of the world. The world is falling apart. The world is being bathed in blood and tears (she hopes she said it correctly in German) and meanwhile you, madame, cannot be happy unless you have your torte?!

  The lady listens very attentively, without interrupting.

  Listen, my dear, she says at last, you have a pretty face. And the lecture you’ve just given me is very interesting, but you don’t know how to bake a Kaisertorte – and with that she points her black lacquered stick at the door.

  Schwester Maria

  At the Employment Office they’re seeking doctors and experienced nurses. She assures them that she’s an experienced nurse (she lost her diploma in all the fighting) and shows the travel permit issued to the ethnic German Maria Hunkert. She’s directed to a military hospital. She puts on a long blue dress, apron, cape and bonnet. They assign her to the third floor, with eighty wounded men – Wehrmacht and SS.

  She washes, massages, changes bedpans, uncovers the wounds before the doctor makes his rounds and bandages them up afterwards. The wounds fill with pus, the bandages stick, she moistens them with hydrogen peroxide and removes them with great patience and care, one millimetre at a time. The doctor watches her work. I see you haven’t grown indifferent, he says. You know why that is? Because you haven’t seen death. She doesn’t contradict him, doesn’t look up from her bandages.

  (The doctor is old, he spent both wars in military hospitals, but she feels more mature. Perhaps because she has seen different types of death. The death he knows is fast, from the front lines. In the ghetto and in Auschwitz it was a slow expiring. It’s dying, not death, that makes you mature, she thinks as she changes a bandage.)

  One of her charges is eighteen years old and has an infected stomach wound. In his fever he calls out ‘Mama!’

  Another has red hair and freckles, and watery, lashless eyes. His leg has been cut off above his knee and his wound won’t heal. He never moans, but he occasionally faints when she changes his bandage.

  The oldest is forty years old. He has an amputated hand and burnt-out eyes. He used to be a stage designer and talks about a production he never managed to finish.

  Everything was supposed to be grey and black, he says – everything except for her, and she was going to be in yellow and red ochre.

  Who is she? asks Izolda.

  Joanna… Do you see her? Do you see? In yellow and red ochre. And gold.

  She places a gauze wick on his eyes and lifts his amputated arm. Under his armpit, level with his heart, is a tattoo showing his blood type. The distinctive, dark-blue letters are the same size as her number from Auschwitz.

  You’re looking at me, the SS man surmises. And what do you see?

  She studies his emaciated face and the eyeballs without pupils. Where exactly do yellow and red ochre fall in the spectrum?

  Every morning the enemy planes cross into Austrian airspace. She quickly moves the wounded on to stretchers, helps out the orderlies, and everyone clambers down into the shelter. ‘Licht, Luft und Sonne…’ – the designer shouts out the German propaganda slogan. Light, air and sunshine! Sunshine, air and light! Air and light! Air and light! Air… In the afternoon the radio calls off the alarm and they return to the third floor. It’s nothing, she calms the patients down, in just a minute you’ll be able to relax.

  The Red Army enters Vienna.

  The hospital puts out white flags and Red Cross signs. The nurses and doctors stand to attention inside their rooms, their aprons spotless white.

  The Russians burst in, rifles at the ready. Kto SS? Who is SS? they ask the doctor.

  The doctor says nothing.

  They go to her. SS?

  She, too, says nothing.

  The soldier points the rifle barrel in her direction: A teper, sestra? – And now, nurse? Uzhe znayesh – Now do you know? She unbuttons her cuff and rolls up her sleeve. She shows them the number and says: Auschwitz. I’m Polish. Uzhe znayesh?

  They call an officer.

  She stands there with her rolled-up sleeve. Auschwitz… Oświęcim… Polish…

  All the more so, says the officer. Are you saying they didn’t kill any of yours?

  They killed everyone. Vsekh ubili.

  So get even… The officer claps her on the shoulder. Now you can take revenge. Nu? Kotory SS? – Well? Which one is SS?

  But I don’t know. I know who doesn’t have eyes and who doesn’t have legs. But who is SS, I don’t know – ya ne znayu.

  The soldiers withdraw.

  The designer covers his face with a towel and cries out loud. The doctor leans over her number: Schwester Maria, mein Gott…

  She lets down her sleeve. Takes off her bonnet. Walks down three flights of stairs, one step at a time, holding on to the rail. She feels that all her energy has escaped.

  She thinks: What will happen now? I have to go. I have to make it to Mauthausen but I don’t have the strength.

  She leans against the hospital wall.

  The war is over, she thinks. And I am alive.

  The war is finished. So why aren’t I the least bit happy?

  The Bicycle

  Nu chto, sestra? – What’s the matter, nurse?

  She opens her eyes. The officer who told her to get even is standing next to her. You thought we wouldn’t find them. But we found them, don’t you worry.

  And the one without eyes?

  Every single one. Feeling sorry?

  Not sorry, she shakes her head, just tired. How am I going to get to Mauthausen if I don’t have any strength?

  Take a bicycle, the officer suggests. You want a bike? Wait, I’ll find one for you.

  He goes to the hospital yard and comes back with a noisy, rund
own piece of junk.

  He asks how she knows Russian.

  My mother spoke it.

  And German?

  My father spoke it.

  (She thinks: Why am I talking about both of them in the past tense?)

  So get on and go – the officer waves goodbye.

  Listen… she calls after him. Kuda? Where should I go now? Do you happen to know?

  The officer thinks a moment.

  You’ll need papers – bumaga. Bumaga and headquarters. Go straight, past the roundabout.

  A crowd is milling in front of the Soviet headquarters. Czechs, French, Yugoslavs, Poles… wearing striped prison issue, civilian rags. Prisoners from the camps and Stalags, forced labourers… They come from everywhere – except Mauthausen.

  One of the Poles has heard about some abandoned apartments belonging to Gestapo officers and SS men. They’re free for the taking but you need permission from the Russians.

  She parks her bicycle outside the entrance.

  She shows the officer at the desk her number from Auschwitz and grazhdanka Pavlitskaya receives her bumaga – Citizen Pavlitskaya receives her official papers: The Headquarters of the 4th district hereby grant permission to occupy residence in the Operngasse… She leaves the building.

  Next to her beaten-up piece of junk she finds a splendid shiny, chrome-plated bicycle. The guard understands her look. Beri, he says, take it – and wheels the bike towards her. Beri, he encourages her. Vsyo ravno, voyna… Who cares, it’s war…

  Father

  The apartment on Operngasse has everything: clothing, dishes, bedding. She finds a down cover, folds out the sofa bed and falls asleep.

  She wakes in the dark and doesn’t know where she is. Strange. Throughout the entire war – in the ghetto, the camps, the prison cells and the various houses along the way – she always woke up at the slightest sound and remembered everything. Now she touches the wall, confused. She locates a switch, turns on the light and breathes with relief: she’s in the SS man’s apartment.

  She looks around but the things she finds are ordinary, boring: shoes on shoe trees, a gramophone, a few records, framed family pictures, a photography manual, an old map of Europe and some stale ginger cake.

  She puts on The Barber of Seville and takes the cake back to bed.

  She’s imagined the end of the war many times. Envisioned herself standing eye to eye with a Gestapo officer or an SS man. The one who slapped her because she looked at him. The one who hung her on the hook. Who waved her to the right with a careless, sloppy gesture. She saw herself watching their fear as she meted out justice. She even thought those words: ‘mete out justice’ – but what exactly might that mean? Was she supposed to kill them? By herself? She doesn’t even know how to fire a gun. Was someone supposed to hand her a rifle? Show her how to pull the trigger? Was she supposed to watch the body lying on the ground, the convulsions, the blood, perhaps the guts spilling out?

  Iza, that’s unsightly, her father would say.

  She imagines her highly cultured father standing next to her in the military hospital.

  Nu, sestra? Well, nurse?

  Nu, otets? Well, father?

  She wouldn’t have to ask for a rifle. Or how to pull the trigger.

  All that was needed was a short answer to a short, simple question.

  It would have been enough to say: The one behind me. That one with the towel over his eyes… And one more, in the corner… Can you believe he never once groaned when I changed his bandages? And there’s an entire room next door, on the other side of the wall…

  Iza, her father would whisper, that’s enough.

  What do you mean that’s enough, what do you mean? Didn’t he summon you to the trains, as a specialist who knew German? Didn’t he shoot my husband’s mother at Pawiak? Didn’t he…

  Hush… Her father would raise both arms, appalled at how loudly his daughter was talking, and at her strange, high-pitched, quarrelsome voice. I understand what you’re saying, but where did you get that voice? And how can people be shot without being tried in a court?

  Her father’s indignation and the idea of a trial for SS men strike her as highly amusing.

  We found them, don’t you worry, she says, delighted. What of it? Feeling sorry?

  That’s the first conversation she’s had with her father since he left to explain everything to the Germans…

  It’s the first of many she will have with all of them in her stylish home on Mount Carmel.

  Ebensee

  At the former Polish consulate they’re doling out soup. People stop by, drink their soup and move on. When asked where they’re going they wave their hands vaguely towards the east or in the opposite direction.

  Izolda stops by every day. She stands at the entrance and asks anyone wearing stripes: Mauthausen? She drinks her soup, then returns to the apartment in the evening. The next morning she’s back: Mauthausen?

  It’s evening. On her way home it starts to rain. Her priceless bicycle might get wet, so she quickly ducks inside the nearest entrance. Some men are standing there dressed in camp clothes and speaking Polish.

  She asks where they came from.

  Ebensee.

  Oh, in that case excuse me. She takes hold of the handlebar and turns to leave.

  What camp are you looking for? the men ask.

  Mauthausen.

  What address did you use for your letters?

  Mauthausen, block AKZ.

  Well, that’s Ebensee – it’s a subcamp. What’s the name?

  It would be stupid if she fainted now, she thinks, and leans on the bike for support.

  Pawlicki… she whispers. Tall… Very straight and tall… And blond… She’s afraid that the men will say: We don’t know anyone like that. Or else: Pawlicki – yes, he was there. They’ll say was, so she speaks quickly, all in one breath, so she won’t hear their answer.

  I know Pawlicki, one of the men cuts her off.

  What do you mean, you know him… Tall? Straight? Blond?

  Please, lady, the man says. There’s no reason to be afraid. He’s alive.

  The Bridge

  Mauthausen is in American hands and Vienna is occupied by the Russians. The border crossing is at Enns, both sides of the bridge are occupied by soldiers of the victorious armies.

  She approaches the Soviet sentry and tells him she’s trying to get to her husband. He orders her back. If you know what’s good for you, he repeats several times, you better go back, because I’ll shoot.

  She climbs on a truck – sadis! Have a seat! The drunken officers with Austrian girls on their laps call for her to get in, but the trip is a short one since they don’t have passes. The whole group staggers over to the guardhouse, the sentry gives them a canister of vodka and tells them to wait for the captain.

  The captain stumbles in soon afterwards. He checks how much is left in the canister and asks what’s going on.

  My husband’s in the camp… she begins. We survived the war… Now we’re so close but not allowed to meet. Can you understand?

  Not allowed, da, da, I understand, the captain confirms and bites into the blini a soldier has placed in front of him.

  Tell me, she says with a charming smile. Why can’t life be like in a film?

  And how would it be in a film? The captain dips his blini into the melted butter and waits for her to answer.

  In a film I would tell you my story, you would be moved, you would speak with the sentry and I would walk on to the bridge.

  Yes, that would be a beautiful film… The captain stops eating. He thinks for a moment, blini in hand, a warm, yellow stream of butter dripping towards his sleeve. But I’ll tell you a real film. When the front was in Russia, we stopped near my village… maybe five kilometres away. I wanted to say goodbye to my wife and to my mother, but our commander said: You’re not going anywhere, the war isn’t over yet. And when the war was over, you know what? The captain leans across the table, as if he wanted to confess an unusually im
portant secret. My village was no longer there. My mother, my wife, the whole village… Can you understand? So you’re not going anywhere either. I didn’t get to say goodbye and you’re not getting to say hello, there won’t be any film.

  The officers are silent. The captain stands up from behind the table. He signals for her to follow him to the storeroom. Nu… The captain wears high boots, with a revolver on his belt. He staggers a bit. The rancid butter makes him burp. He points to the camp bed, inviting her: You wanted a film…

  She places her bag and jacket on the bed. Just a minute, she says, I’ll be right back.

  The same soldiers who stopped the truck are sitting outside the barracks. She prefers one drunken captain to an entire sober patrol and returns to the storeroom. The captain is lying on the bed, snoring loudly.

  She spends the night on the floor, her head resting on one of the captain’s boots. In the morning she goes back to the crossing. The officer on duty is one of the merry group from the truck. He greets her like an old friend, gives a signal and the sentry looks the other way.

  She steps on to the bridge.

  The American side also has a sentry.

  My husband… she says in English.

  The American listens politely, says: Oh, yes, and points to the Soviet side.

  No, she says. My husband is there – and points to the American side.

  Yes, yes – the American soldier pushes her away and points to the bridge.

  No, no, Mauthausen is there…

  The sentry calls someone.

  An older officer with salt-and-pepper hair comes over.

  He happens to be an army doctor.

  He happens to be an American Jew from New York.

  America

  She tells both men, the one who let her off the bridge and his younger colleague (who is Irish), about the war.

  Ghetto – trains – Aryan side – Gestapo – Auschwitz…

  The older man sighs, and with each sigh he gives her another serving of powdered eggs, alternating with beef out of a tin and pieces of halva. The younger man asks about the balance of forces at Umschlagplatz in the ghetto and specifically how many Germans were there. And how many Jews? So why didn’t you defend yourselves? Oh, come on, there’s always something to fight with. If you really want to.