Emilia hesitated until Karel appeared at the open door on Marta’s side and without asking lifted her again and carried her to the house. Emilia, meanwhile, helped Alfred into his wheelchair.
Marta was hustled up a grand white staircase to a bedroom on the second floor. Emilia drew a hot bath for Marta in an adjoining bathroom and helped her into it. Marta felt she was being boiled up for dinner. The heat was like acid, penetrating her skin, dissolving her extremities. If she could have thrashed about like a lobster, she would have, if only to reassure her body that she got all the painful messages shooting to her brain.
Emilia’s eyes were brimming with questions, but she had the decency not to ask any. As Emilia scrubbed down the unexpected visitor, they both stared at her arm: “181818.” It was Marta who volunteered her name, and Emilia simply nodded.
After the bath, the first thing Emilia asked, in German, was, “May I take these?” She was holding up Marta’s camp uniform.
“Please burn them. I’d rather leave here naked than in those.”
Emilia nodded. “That won’t be necessary,” she said, and she went to the closet. She returned with soft, warm underclothing and a satin peach dress with mother-of-pearl buttons that travelled up to its white lace collar.
“Alfred’s mother won’t mind?” Marta asked.
“That wouldn’t be possible, madam.”
“And no one else will mind?”
“There is no one else to mind.”
“Not even you?” Marta asked.
Emilia hesitated and looked at the young woman. “Of course not, madam. It’s not my place to mind.” She led Marta to a mirror and began helping her to dress. “But I thank you for asking.”
“Look at me,” Marta said. “I am red and bald.”
“You will be black and pink again in no time, madam. And very pretty, I’m sure.”
“Thank you, Emilia.”
“It’s not my fault I live in this town,” Emilia said, “and it’s not your fault you were brought to it. If we remember that, everyone will be fine.”
Marta turned toward the older woman and embraced her. “I have to get home to Hungary.”
“Of course you do,” Emilia said. “But let my master have the pleasure of seeing you well again.”
“I’m already much better.”
Marta followed Emilia out into the hallway. It was lit at both ends by Gothic windows, and up and down the corridor, portraits of family members regarded one another from both sides. “This will be your room,” Emilia said. “Mr. Paderewski is at the other end.”
For whatever reason, Emilia led Marta down the servants’ staircase. Halfway along the basement passage they came to the kitchen. The cook was killing fresh brown trout for supper. Marta watched as the cook, introduced as Teresa, took hold of the slippery live animals and thwacked their heads on a wooden block. The thud made Marta flinch, but she was surprised at how unmoved she was by what she saw.
They walked to the other side of the kitchen, and Marta’s heart quickened when Teresa said, “Up these stairs is the dining room.” Marta hesitated. “It’s all right,” Emilia said, “Mr. Paderewski is waiting for you. He hasn’t had a guest in some time.”
They climbed the stairs and stepped into the room, and Marta was taken aback by what she saw. Alfred sat in his wheelchair at the head of a long table, and a place had been set for her at his right hand. The room writhed with ornamentation unlike anything she’d ever seen. A great fireplace blazed behind him. On the stone mantel sat a life-sized jade mermaid embedded in black marble. Out of her head erupted carved onyx garlands and tumbling angels rising toward the ceiling, where they were met above the dining table by an immense chandelier of brass and crystal angels and elongated flowers.
The mermaid’s tail pointed to an ironwork candelabra at one end of the mantel that snaked upward and branched into sinuous iron fingers, each of which held a glass tulip bulb within which a candle burned. On the mantel’s opposite end sat a mysterious cobalt-blue figure in glass, suggesting ancient Greece, maybe Egypt, illuminated from within by another candle. Perched beside her was an extraordinary bronze. It captivated Marta. “It’s called Ariadne Abandoned,” Alfred said quietly so as not to disturb her gaze. The bronze body was folded over a rock in unbridled pain and grief.
On the wall to the right of the fireplace hung a great painting. “My mother favoured the Czechs over our own artists,” Alfred said, quietly still. “This, my parents acquired on one of many trips to Prague. It is called Finis, by Maximillian Pirner.” The painting, explained Alfred, depicted a tug-of-war between life and death. In it, a luminous and voluptuous Muse of Poetry holding a harp had encountered a Gorgon, out of whose back sprang a skull and the arm of a skeleton, extending toward Poetry’s supple flesh.
Beneath the painting, seeming to swoop down upon the black marble pedestal on which it stood, was a bronze, which Alfred called The Embrace of Love and Death. He said, “It’s by Bohumil Kafka, a Czech again.” Kafka’s sculpture, with its wide attenuated wings, embraced a deep shadow out of which people were emerging and into which others were disappearing, the contours devouring the light within their frightening embrace.
It all seemed too much at first glance, but the candlelight and firelight together soothed the riot of detail in a calming glow. The warm light fell languidly over walnut tables and chairs, the white linen covering the dining table, set out as if for a little celebration, a small feast, the splendid tan carpet with its medallions of flowers and angels answering their brass and crystal relations in heaven, its warm spring beneath Marta’s feet kinetic, suggesting a carpet ride somewhere far away, maybe the East, Marta’s host the guide to strange new lands.
A tureen was brought in by Teresa and set down on the table. The tureen stood on goose feet. Marta realized how weak she felt and hungry. Emilia ladled out a steaming broth of potatoes and leeks for each of the diners. “Start,” Alfred said. “You must be very hungry.” But she was eating already. “You are hungry.”
She swallowed hard, her mouth fighting off the heat. “I’m sorry,” she said, after a few spoonfuls. It was the best soup she’d ever tasted.
“Just eat,” he said.
She took another spoonful as he watched.
After a while he said, “Why did you tell me you weren’t Jewish? Did you think it was necessary?”
“I didn’t know.” She set down her spoon, but he urged her to continue.
“Your uniform had a yellow star, like a Jew’s star, rather than a red triangle to signify a political prisoner.”
“I don’t have papers to prove it, naturally, but that was not my uniform I was wearing. It was the uniform of someone who went to the ovens.”
“The ovens,” he said. He spoke as if this was news to him, how people were being disposed of.
She set down her spoon again. She felt full already. “You don’t need to believe me.”
“Please eat,” he insisted. “I didn’t ask you for identification papers when I picked you up, did I?”
“I have to go.” She pushed back her chair. She felt preposterous sitting here. Istvan could be near death. She had to know, had to find him.
“You can’t go now. First you have to eat dinner. Then you have to rest and recuperate.” Marta glanced back at Emilia, who stood at the door. “You won’t make it on your own. I can help you get back to your home. Do you have people waiting for you?”
Marta didn’t know this man. She couldn’t tell him whether anyone was waiting. Istvan might not even be waiting anymore. He might be gone, or he might be dead. Or she might say to Alfred Paderewski that he’s there, and it could be Istvan’s final undoing, after such a long, hard struggle. She couldn’t even lie. She couldn’t say a relative was waiting or a husband because surely he could check.
The trouble was evident on her face. “I can contact them for you,” Alfred said. “I can reassure whomever. We can get word to them.”
“No, there’s no one. We were all depor
ted.”
“Who?”
“Everyone. I was the last one.”
“You were all political deportees?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where anyone is, but my home is there. I want to find people there. Maybe someone has come back, someone like me.” Then she added, “I have a brother in America. Frank Foldi.”
“If you went now, you might be overtaken by rampaging Germans.”
“Why are they rampaging?”
“Because rampaging Russians are coming. They might not befriend a wandering girl either.”
“How close are the Russians?” Marta thought of the poor souls still in the camp.
“Close,” Alfred said. “You have to wait a little longer.”
He was smiling, but there was a faint hunger in his eyes. As she gazed at him, Alfred brought a hand to his temple again to cover his birthmark.
“It hardly shows,” she said. “Please relax.”
He dropped his hand. “If you will, I will,” he said.
And then a platter of warm trout on a bed of cabbage and onions was brought in and set before them. Emilia served Alfred first and then the visitor. Marta ate with relish. She sucked the supple, succulent flesh of the fish as delicately and politely as her satin dress would allow. She cleaned every bone of every morsel so that not a milligram of this animal’s meat was wasted. She was done before Alfred had finished half of his, but he stopped, too, when she did, and he dabbed his mouth with his linen napkin.
Tea was brought in, along with caramelized bananas for dessert. How on Earth did bananas make it to Poland? Had a single bunch been flown in from the tropics through a war zone and delivered directly to this house marked with a “P”?
Marta was bursting, but she devoured the sweet treat until her stomach throbbed and she had to sit back to catch her breath.
Alfred said, quietly, “We can take our tea in the sitting room. I have a surprise for you.”
“You have a surprise?” Marta couldn’t help herself; she started laughing uncontrollably, a real belly laugh that threatened to disturb its contents. What could be next? Alfred smiled with her and waited patiently for her to settle down.
Then he led the way by wheeling himself toward the far door. He paused and turned to Emilia. “Has Judyta arrived with Tadeusz?”
“Yes, Mr. Paderewski. Karel went to get them.”
Marta understood enough of the Polish to be alarmed. Her heart thumped against her satin dress. Emilia pushed her master into the room, but Marta hung back, wondering, now, how she would escape. She looked around at the door, then the door leading possibly to the front.
And then Karel came in to fetch her. “Madam?” He was indicating the door through which Alfred had gone. Karel didn’t say more; he was not as confident in German. “The concert,” he managed.
“The concert?” Marta asked. She put her hand on her beating heart. Was this a joke? A ruse? She was trapped. She couldn’t run now.
The room she was led into was simpler than the dining room. It, too, had a blazing hearth, but the fireplace was fashioned out of basic black granite, and the whole was decorated with a rustic warmth. Colourful folk art and naïve art, like art done by children, adorned the walls. A great grand piano, cherry wood, possibly, or even walnut, sat opposite the hearth, and a single chair had been positioned to face the instrument. Beside it, Alfred was waiting in his wheelchair. Their tea was set out before them on a small walnut table. Extra caramelized bananas were heaped in an oval blue dish with duck’s feet.
A young woman and man came out from behind a velvet burgundy curtain, evidently hung for this purpose, and Alfred clapped enthusiastically. “Judyta!” he called out. He looked at Marta, and she clapped, too, if weakly.
The young man, dressed formally in black tails, arranged himself and his music at the piano. Judyta was wearing a white evening gown and black shawl. She shrugged off the shawl, which Emilia rushed to take from her. The woman’s shoulders were white and slender. She was slight—they both were. The woman gazed for a moment at Marta before she began. She announced in Polish that she was going to sing a Bach cantata, “Ich habe genug.”
Tadeusz played the first notes. He closed his eyes. The music was plangent, doleful. At first, Judyta clasped her hands in front of her, but when she began to sing, she raised them like slender wings.
The music was transcendent. Marta felt unworthy to receive it, her ears still grimy with human ash. She was struck by the unreality of the scene, sitting here as she was, in someone’s satin dress, her head shorn, her body tingling with nourishment, wanting to rise aboard the notes to enlightenment. It was too much. No soul could shuttle so quickly between these two poles.
But what was reality anymore? The tears flowed down Marta’s face. Beautiful Johann. Beautiful. Of course, Ich habe genug. Of course you have enough. You have beauty. You have inspiration flowing in on beams of coloured light in your cold church in your cold time. And so you have enlightenment, floating on the voice of a human bird. You have your keyboard as the lovely Trieste first sings these notes in all their charm and sadness, the pure notes ringing out over the Thomaskirche’s stone floor. You have enough, Johann. You have a pudding in your belly, and you have beauty, you have transcendence, and not up the chimney in smoke. You have the girl with the slender shoulders and that voice, all the sadness of her charming notes lifting you both toward the beams of light.
Du hast genug. You have life. But even that’s not enough. You want it all, don’t you, Johann? You want death, too. The ultimate beauty. The ultimate transcendence.
Marta wiped her wet cheeks with the palms of her hands. She stood up, and the singer stopped singing; the pianist stopped playing. “Please,” Marta said. “I have to go to bed. I’m much too tired. But please don’t stop on my account.”
“Of course you’re tired,” Alfred said. “You need rest.” He turned to the musicians. “Thank you for coming. Karel will take you home. Thank you.”
“Please don’t break up the lovely party,” Marta said.
“It’s not a party, just an entertainment, really,” Alfred said. “Enough,” he said to the musicians. “Thank you again.”
If he could have, Alfred would have stood with Marta. He seemed to want to scramble in his wheelchair to see to things. They watched Karel lead the musicians out, and then Emilia led the way to a lift Marta hadn’t noticed before. After Emelia had wheeled Alfred in, she told Marta to join them and they rode to the second floor. They escorted Marta to her room. “I have set out some flannel nightclothes for you,” Emilia said. “I hope you’ll find them comfortable.”
“Please make yourself at home,” Alfred added. “I’m glad you’re here with us and safe.”
“Thank you,” Marta said. She waved weakly and waited for the two to turn down the hall.
As Emilia wheeled Alfred to his room, Marta opened her door and saw that a warm fire was burning, a lamp had been switched on beside her canopied bed, and as promised a flowered flannel nightdress was folded on the bed waiting for her.
It just then dawned on her. This was the next day after her death. It was November 8. Where had Libuse got to? Marta brought the flannel nightclothes to her face and breathed. Libuse had held Marta’s hand as surely as she’d held onto life. Blind already and sick, she still spoke her mind, and she clutched Marta’s hand until she had to release it and press herself into the others in the chamber—the woman with the cloche hat, the Transylvanian boy, the young man with the erect penis which he concealed before entering the chamber, the last speck of shame before inhaling the broth of death.
Libuse played piano. She would have known this Bach that Marta had heard Judyta sing on November 8.
Oh, Johann, what did you do following your afternoon at the Thomaskirche? Did you come in for dinner, the girl with the slender shoulders still fluttering behind your eyes? Did you come in to your children and make them be still so that the song could go on? Did Anna Magdalena, pregnant again, always pregnant
with another Bach, greet you with a peck, the sweat of the day on her cheeks and neck? Did she ask you how your day was, and did you say you’d written a little ditty for her and the children, one they could remember and be proud of? Did you tell her you called it “Ich habe genug”? And did the children romp and scramble and slap and kick and run all around the table as the mutton stew was brought in, because they’d quite lost that little box of pride you’d wrapped for them that afternoon?
Marta was suddenly afraid to get out of her dress and into her nightgown. She didn’t want to lose the dress and be trapped here in nightclothes. Maybe all the dresses and coats would be gone in the morning. She sat on the bed for a moment, then lay down on top of the duvet. She tried to smooth out the dress as she did so to preserve its freshness. She reached over and switched off the lamp, but the fire’s embers still illuminated the wood-panelled walls. She rested her arms straight beside her, not across her chest, which could wrinkle the top. She closed her eyes, but then a strange foul smoke crept into the room. She groped for the nightdress still folded on the bed and brought it to her nose again to breathe through the flannel. And then she knew what it was and shot up in bed. She threw aside the nightdress and gulped. It was not wood smoke she was smelling at all. Her nose knew the difference between wood and bone. How far was she from the camp? How far could she have run? The smell was indescribable, repulsive, something between charred fat and ash.
She dashed to the window and looked out into the darkness. Not a light shone in Oswiecim, though she couldn’t have said which way her window faced. A rain fell as lightly as snow and brushed against her window. She heard a faint creak. Could it be that he was coming to Marta? The sound stopped and she caught the distant clink of a latch being lifted or a key turned, so far away it could even have come from downstairs, deep within this big house.
Marta waited quite a while longer. Not another sound came. She heard the wind buffing her window, but nothing more. She didn’t want to be heard, either, so she crept back to her bed and resumed her orderly repose on top of the duvet.
But it was Istvan, now, who came to visit her. Where was her Istvan? Where was her man, without his keeper, with just small Smetana to keep him company? How could they possibly have managed? Maybe she would find them dead, both of them likely, curled against one another in that pose of the transcendent. Ich habe genug. Surely, the two of you have had enough, without your hunter-gatherer, your jailer, your lover and mother. Surely, surely—how wonderful it must be, finally, not to need to eat or breathe or hide. The grave forgives all its occupants. The grave absorbs the passions—the protagonist’s, the antagonist’s, the artist’s, the demagogue’s, the servant’s, the master’s.
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