The Woman from Hamburg

by Hanna Krall

  Sometimes you wanted to know something about your mama.

  “She’s all right,” your grandmother would answer. “She’ll come to you in a couple of days.”

  A couple of days would pass.

  Grandmother would say, “She was busy; don’t cry.”

  A couple of days would pass.

  You understood, finally, that your mama would never come to you and you stopped asking.

  I shall tell you something now.

  I knew a certain girl. She was your age; she also had dark eyes like you and hair that was bleached with hydrogen peroxide. Her mother was a beautician. You won’t believe this, but her name was Fela and she graduated from the Cédib school which was founded by your grandmother.

  Strange, isn’t it?

  I knew that little girl quite well, because I know what the Aryan side was for a child.

  It was not death or fear. A five- or six-year-old child is not afraid of death.

  The Aryan side was an apartment from which everyone has gone outside.

  A window that you do not go near, even though no one is watching you.

  A courtyard from which the echo of footsteps and someone’s whistle, a melody broken off in the middle of a measure, reach you.

  A wardrobe that you enter at the sound of the doorbell.

  The Aryan side was loneliness and silence.

  Monika was expecting a child. She was unmarried and you associated her condition with the immaculate conception. Words that you knew from the book of prayer came to life. A virgin was to bear a son. The son might become a new Christ. You were ready to throw out the chamber pot, to move over, and make room for him in the wardrobe. You fell into euphoria. You talked too much and too loudly. One day you started praying to Monika, but at the words “and blessed be the fruit of thy womb,” she flew into a rage.

  “You little rat!” she screamed. “Are you making fun of me?”

  In vain, you explained that she had conceived like the Virgin Mary. She wouldn’t stop shrieking. She summoned your grandmother. She said that you were making a lot of noise, that you were behaving shamefully; she didn’t want to explain why and she demanded that you leave her home.

  “We have nowhere to go,” grandmother said, terrified.

  “Go to the Gestapo!” Monika screamed and moved toward the door.

  Grandmother barred her path.

  “And do you know what the Gestapo will ask about? The people who hid him. This is a big, smart boy, Panna Monika. He knows your address and your last name.”

  Grandmother’s voice was calm and reasonable.

  “Whatever happens to my grandson will happen to you, too,” she added for clarity, and put on her coat.

  After she left, Monika sat down, put her arms around her belly, and burst into tears. She cried for a long time, out loud, in a thin, wailing voice.

  Just in case, you went back into the wardrobe.

  In the evening, she called you out. On the table, as every evening, was a frying pan with rosy potatoes fried in lard, and two plates.

  Grandma came for you the next day.

  You went to a new, strange house.

  In it there was a new, strange wardrobe and you were not allowed to go near the windows.

  9

  I will tell you something.

  That girl, the one who was the same age as you and with bleached hair, also knew a lot about the Annunciation.

  A policeman in the station house on the Aleje, not far from the railroad station, asked her mother to recite “Anioł Pański,” “The Angel of the Lord.” A blackmailer had brought her there, straight from the train. Her mother had first-class looks and good papers. She was named Emilia Ostrowska; she was the sister of Maria Ostrowska, a Roman Catholic, but she did not know how to pray.

  “And you?” the policeman smiled at the little girl. “Will you recite ‘Anioł Pański’ for us?”

  Naturally, she would recite it. After all, she was a clever little girl with sad eyes.

  “The Angel of the Lord visited Our Lady and she conceived through the Holy Spirit. Hail, Mary, full of grace …”

  “What should I do with you?” The policeman was flustered. He was unshaved, in muddy boots with tall uppers; he yawned after every few words, and probably had been on duty since the previous evening.

  “One of them looks like a Jew but knows how to pray, while the other doesn’t look like a Jew, but she can’t pray. You know what? You figure it out for yourselves, which one is a Jew and which one is a Pole. The Pole will walk out of here, and the Jew will stay. Think it over; you can give me your answer tomorrow.”

  They spent the night in a cell, on stools, under the dim light of a bare bulb. They discussed it.

  “You go,” said the mother; “I’ve lived long enough already.”

  “You go,” said the girl. “They’ll catch me, and you have to rescue grandma.”

  “You have a good sense of people, you’ll manage,” the mother said.

  It was true. That girl could do two things unerringly: recognize decent people and salt red borscht just right.

  “I know what we’ll do,” said the girl. “We’ll both stay. Do you see what a splendid idea that is?”

  In the morning, the policeman brought in Maria Ostrowska, the one who had tried to find three thousand zlotys for Ruta Muszkatblat.

  “My sister a Jewess?!” she shrieked, offended. “Emilka, what are you doing here? I’ll have a talk with these gentlemen!”

  The three of them walked out of the police station. The mother thought that the policeman trusted Maria’s shrieks. Maria believed in the policeman’s conscience. Only the girl knew the truth: the Addressee of “Anioł Pański” had heard her prayer.

  10

  You never asked where your grandmother lived, where she was going, or where she got the money for your landladies.

  You didn’t ask about your mother—you already knew that she wouldn’t visit you.

  You didn’t ask about your uncle Ignacy, your uncle Tadeusz, or your cousin Jaś, so she didn’t mention them.

  She wouldn’t have, even had you asked her.

  Not because she considered you a child. She knew you were mature enough to understand.

  She didn’t tell you because she could not waste her energy.

  She was saving you.

  It took an enormous amount of strength.

  You yourself know how much strength goes into surviving. You must not expend it on words, crying, sadness …

  So I will tell you about Ignacy, your grandmother’s son.

  He was Celina S.’s pride and joy.

  Tall, raven-haired (“a tall, handsome Jew,” as one of his friends described him in a postwar memoir), he got his degree in chemistry and married Irena, a green-eyed blonde with a Semitic nose.

  During the war he ran a chemical laboratory for the Popular Guard. He produced incendiary bombs out of materials that could be purchased in stores. They were intended to destroy German grain warehouses and fuel tankers that were headed to the front.

  He loved you very much. When they took your mama to the Umschlagplatz, he told his wife, “We will raise him. We will adopt him right after the war.”

  Three months later, Irena, his wife, on her way home from work noticed a crowd in the street. People were standing there in silence, their heads raised. It took her a while to transfer her gaze to the street lights, from which the bodies of men were dangling. She walked faster. The bodies were still hanging there the next day; she walked past them and went to work. She worked in the Institute of Hygiene. She fed lice—she placed them on skin, they drank blood, typhus vaccinations were made from the blood. When she was on her way home, the wind was howling. The bodies were swinging like gigantic pendulums. This time she walked over to the wall and read the announcement posted on it: “Communists used explosives to blow up the railroad line near Warsaw. For this criminal act fifty communists have been hanged.”

  Contrary to German custom, their names were
not given.

  She looked closely at the blue, deformed faces. On one of the lampposts her husband, Ignacy, was hanging—your uncle, the only son of Celina S.

  Irena survived. She married and bore two children.

  In March 1968, when her son was eighteen years old, she revealed to him that she was a Jew. She traveled to France, underwent cosmetic surgery, and returned with a new nose. Her son was shocked. She had left with a normal Jewish nose, with a slight hook, and came back with a flat, expressionless, Aryan nose. Furthermore, she pretended that nothing had happened, that she had always had such a nose. To the question, Who are you, a Jew or a Pole?, she would reply, “A plant geneticist.” She developed new varieties of tomatoes and green peas. In August 1980 she named a pea “Victoria” in honor of Solidarity. It had no taste, like her altered nose, like all these artificially cultivated vegetables.

  Every Sunday your grandmother came to their home for dinner. She always brought a Wedel chocolate torte. They weren’t available in stores, then; they were purchased at a bazaar, from third parties, for twice the price. Grandma was pleasant, quiet, and very helpful. She was drawn to her former daughter-in-law because memories of Ignacy existed only in her. They did not talk about him. They talked about you, about your playing, about everyday concerns, as one does at family dinners. One Sunday your grandmother took the Wedel torte out of her bag and said, “I don’t feel so well.” She was feeling cold. Irena brought her a basin of hot water and suggested she soak her feet. Someone said that the water should be cold. A discussion developed about the water. Your grandmother lay down and didn’t want to soak her feet. Someone whispered, “She’s dying.” Irena’s son wanted very much to see what death looks like, but they threw him out of the room. An ambulance arrived. Your grandmother died in it, on the way to the hospital. They tried to notify you, but they didn’t know where you were. You didn’t spend that night at home. You found out the next day. Some other time I’ll remind you where you spent that night, although it is one of the few things that you remember very well.

  I shall tell you about Jaś, your cousin.

  He was the son of a communist, Edward L., and Dorota, a Jew who was a religious fanatic. Dorota was Celina S.’s sister. She converted to Catholicism during the war. She went to church every day, always to the early mass; she took communion and lay prostrate for hours near the main altar. Their Polish nanny, who lived in the countryside, wanted to take Jaś with her, but Dorota wouldn’t agree to that. The nanny was a communist; she didn’t believe in God, she might have a bad influence on the child. “How could I entrust him to such a woman?” she explained after it was all over, when the boy had been found in his hideout and shot in Pawiak prison with a group of grown men.

  Dorota survived. For a while, she lived with you. She continued to attend mass every day and to lie prostrate. She would say, “How fortunate it is that before his arrest Jaś took his First Communion.”

  I shall tell you about Tadeusz, Celina S.’s nephew.

  He was sensitive, with a pretty, delicate face. He got married in the ghetto, to Stefa, a girl from the neighborhood. They lived on Leszno Street. Every night, after curfew the tenants in the apartment house would gather in the courtyard under a tree. They would surround Wajcman the tailor, who knew when the war would end. They listened eagerly. The tailor was an optimist and he knew the end was near. He gave the final date as June. June passed and the war did not end. In July, “relocation to the East” was announced. Wajcman the tailor died in August, together with his wife, his son, and two daughters.

  Tadeusz left the ghetto. He found a place to live in the Żoliborz district. Two civilians took him away. A neighbor had denounced him, a woman who owned a grocery store. He was twenty years old.

  Stefa survived. She married, had a son, and is a professor of history.

  She saw Celina S. for the last time forty years ago. She was sickly. She undid her blouse; she had open, bloody wounds under her breasts. She was suffering from diabetes. She had neither the energy nor the strength for doctors. She had no strength left for anything any more; she wanted to last until the Chopin Competition and hear you play. She missed it by three weeks.

  Stefa saw you fourteen years ago. You and she had a conversation in Paris. You had a beard, were animated, and your complexion was unbelievable.

  You confessed to her that there were two people in your life whom you couldn’t stand. Your grandmother, Celina S., and Dorota, her sister.

  11

  You survived.

  Celina S.’s daughter died, her son died, you survived.

  Celina S. reminded you that you have a certain obligation: you have to prove that you are deserving of life.

  Celina S. decided that you would become a pianist. A great pianist, of world renown. You had to be great to be deserving of life.

  You could not betray your mother, who died in order to improve your chances. You could not betray your murdered family and even, perhaps, your entire people. You were to triumph over fascism. You were to show the world that Jews … and so on.

  You never studied music. You didn’t have time to before the war; you tried to play in the ghetto, but the grown-ups complained that you were getting on their nerves. Despite this, Celina S. believed that you had talent.

  You did have talent.

  Celina S. decided that you would have the best teacher in the world. At that time, it was Lazare Lévy, a professor in the Paris conservatory.

  She brought you to Paris.

  Lazare Lévy taught you. He chose you from among three hundred and forty candidates.

  In Paris you met your father and numerous West European cousins, uncles, and aunts. They welcomed you emotionally.

  “Darling,” said one of the aunts to her husband, who was in a wheelchair following a stroke and couldn’t hear well. “Look who’s come to see us. This is the happiest day of my life since the day our son returned from the war in Spain!”

  “Who? Who has come?” the uncle inquired.

  “Cousin Celina and her sweet little Andrzejek.”

  “But you said that they had died,” the uncle exclaimed, clearly irritated at her.

  “Not at all; they survived, the only ones in the family. Isn’t it true that you are very happy?”

  “The family …,” the uncle muttered. “First they perish, then they’re resurrected, you never know what to expect from them.”

  And encouraged by his son, the hero of the Spanish Civil War, he maneuvered his wheelchair toward the door.

  Relations among your family members weren’t simple. Your grandmother bore a grudge against your father for not getting you and your mother out of Poland. Your father bore a grudge against your grandmother for distancing him from looking after you. Your grandmother bore a grudge against your father for forgetting about her wartime devotion. And against you because you did not deserve that devotion since you don’t resemble Ignacy, her ideal son, her pride and joy. Your father bore a grudge against you for playing gloomy pieces, like Chopin’s nocturnes, instead of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody—and so forth.

  You returned to Poland two years later with the deep conviction that the world could happily exist without parents under one condition: that music would exist.

  In Poland you were invited to attend a camp for young virtuosos. Your colleagues subjected you to tests. In the morning you received a Bach fugue that you weren’t familiar with and which experienced pianists had to study for a couple of days. You played it that evening, from memory, with an extraordinary feeling for its polyphony. Each one of your fingers had a different sound, as if it were a different musical instrument. They didn’t believe that you hadn’t known that fugue, so they gave you their own new compositions. You sight-read the score, then played it without changing a single note. You overwhelmed them. They looked at you as if you had arrived from outer space.

  At age fifteen you decided to join the Union of Polish Composers.

  You submitted your application and lis
ted thirteen works: ten études (you added in parentheses: “manuscript in preparation”); ten dances (you added in parentheses: “manuscript lost”); piano sonata (“lost”); Variations on a Theme by Handel (“lost”); Variations on a Theme by Cohen (“in preparation”); Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (“in preparation”). And so on. Only one piece of the thirteen, Suite for Pianos, was neither in preparation nor lost.

  On the basis of that one composition you were accepted and recognized as having exceptional talent.

  12

  In the Union of Composers you met a young, handsome, well-educated man.

  “He appeared in my life like a little rabbi,” he said about you when I visited him fourteen years later.

  “He was a little rabbi,” he repeated several times. “He had that special Jewish inner vibration. He also had impeccable taste, absolute pitch, and absolute musicality.”

  You confessed your love for him.

  You drove him to distraction. He was older and felt responsible for you.

  You became temperamental and mercurial. You would walk out in the middle of a performance without saying good-bye; you would get up from the dinner table in the middle of a sentence. The next day you would explain that you had had to play the piano immediately. This seemed to him like mere caprice. He couldn’t stand capricious behavior, but he reciprocated your feelings. He became your first lover.