I can see, or rather I should say that I imagine Sofia and her loneliness at four in the afternoon, waiting for Yakov to come back from an errand he is running for Samuel Pawlicka, his father. She is imagining everything she wants to do in these days of bliss, all that she associates with happiness and wants to happen. It is beyond her scope and she has to make choices. Thus, for example, she acknowledges that she is happy with the clothes she bought shortly after they arrived with the money her mother gave her—a red dress and shawl—in a shop recommended by Frankie, one of her cousins, who has now moved from Jakuba Street to the ghetto with Artur Sugar, her husband, and their daughters. Sofia and Yakov visited them on their first day in Krakow only to slope off, first repelled by the sad tedium of their visit with its meager offering of rancid Pomeranian jam, but driven above all by the desire to make love in their bedroom at the Merkur, making love conscious that they were different, new, untouched and pure compared with the filth in the lives of those living in the ghetto. They can neither believe it or reproach themselves. And then they will make love until they are blissfully consumed, at dawn, when, without their knowing, the ghetto doors open and many workers leave in trucks for the factories and some are shot down by bullets from drunken soldiers amusing themselves from the sidewalk, as the trucks drive by, with a little shooting range practice. But what can they know of any of that, if they are in the throes of love? Nausea and panic coexist parallel to their love. Anesthesia, consolation and self-defence are words Sofia once heard on the lips of her mother Raca’s doctor, and stored away. Who could ever have anticipated she would use them now, in the midst of happiness.
But what is happiness? A pleasant, straightforward principle like a holy law: today happiness for Sofia is going out with Yakov to eat in a modest restaurant down the sidestreets of the old city, after walking down Grodzka Street, in Rynek Glowny, and then kissing passionately with wet lips under the century-old tower of the Town Hall. A German soldier on leave asked them to take a photo of him in the square with the tower in the background. Yakov took the camera and the German held Sofia by the arm, and she didn’t resist. They both smiled as Yakov pressed the shutter release. Blissful ignorance of victims and their executioners. Now, I stiffen all of a sudden: what if that photo were the one I think my bedroom companion, here in Frankfurt, is using as a marker in the book he is reading? What if that photo were an old family photo, and that soldier—who never again saw that Polish couple, was unable to imagine they were two young Jews who barely two years hence were to enter a gas chamber, starving, humiliated, dying—were the father, uncle or grandfather of the man in the bed next to mine, who voted for the Social Democratic Party, is a Bayern Munich supporter and even has an extremely tolerant attitude toward Turkish immigrants, now that the Wall has fallen, and they are once again a single united Germany, a Germany über alles?
And what is happiness? I ask a second time. No doubt, for Sofia, it is about giving Yakov a hug in the fairground where they go every afternoon, before having dinner in a tavern that has Hungarian music, violins, tambourines and all that. They will get on the Ferris wheel they saw in the distance the day they arrived in the city and then go for a spin on the colorful carousel; she sits on his legs, while they whisper words of love and desire and she imagines herself back in bed at the Merkur under Yakov’s embrace, intent, loving, gasping. Happiness for Sofia are those eternal moments when time comes to a halt, when she runs her fingers through Yakov’s hair and nothing else matters; when night falls and together they don’t feel the chill of Spring, despite the open window that looks over a gray street where paving stones have been lifted and brick walls plastered with orders from the Nazis, along which carts pass carrying corpses to the ghetto cemetery, where they beat youngsters who straggle behind, or perhaps say nothing and simply shoot them in the temples, for the purposes of ethnic cleansing. Neither Yakov nor Sofia are capable of understanding what is happening around them, in that street or in every street throughout the country, because love is deaf to gunshots; love is deaf to everything.
And is Sofia happy? Yes, she is, leaning on the window frame, watching the Nazis in their cars in the distance by the entrance to the ghetto, with a mind only for the imminent events of their evening that is about to begin: 1)Yakov will come—he’s late, but he will soon be there—2) they will leave the hotel, 3) he will cling to her waist and they will walk down the street, and 4) they will get on the Ferris wheel, their way to climb into the sky, and when they reach the very top, someone at the bottom will stop the motor for a few moments so they can survey the rooftops of Krakow and kiss. Fortunately for the pair of them, one cannot see the ghetto from the top of the Ferris wheel.
2
They were also together in Krakow just over a year ago, in February 1940. They told their families white lies, they said they’d be staying with cousin Frankie, though they stayed in a boarding house on Miodowa Street, in Kazimierz, with help from Frankie, who found them the best non-Jewish place in the neighborhood. On that occasion, the train journey was rather longer. Via an irony of fate, the train went through the city of Oświęcim without stopping. From their window they saw nothing odd on the outskirts of the town, except for large numbers of soldiers and howling dogs straining on their leashes everywhere. Himmler had yet to order the erection of the barbed wire fences, though the SS had arrived. Sofia was irrationally afraid for a few seconds, since she couldn’t imagine the most crucial, intense moments in her short life would take place there, on that terrain the train was now leaving behind. A year later, on their honeymoon trip, everything in the area was slightly different: the train changed track before entering the town, with a points change in Babice. They saw men everywhere working under the eye of guards who were aiming their guns at them. Yakov assumed they had perhaps made a new branch line. There were still rails and crossties next to the soil dug up by the tracks. He told Sofia something amusing he had just remembered: Alfred Loewy, Kafka’s uncle, had worked on that rail line in his youth as a second-grade administrator. Yakov knew that because he’d perhaps read about it in one of the Yiddish magazines in his parents’ library. Yakov was a great admirer of Kafka.
“You see? We engineers also read,” he then commented ironically to his wife.
On that occasion they spent four days and three nights in Krakow. The ghetto didn’t exist as yet and the whole city had adapted to the hostile presence of the Wehrmacht and was returning to normal social life and entertainment, apparently unperturbed. Sofia and Yakov arrived in a city that was striving to get a feel for the artificial good cheer they all knew was threatened by brutal beatings, surprise round-ups and increasing murders of Jews in the streets and outskirts of Kazimierz. They all preferred to look the other way, unhappily, imperatively. The young couple loved to dance and, unworried as they were by the events slowly condemning the city, they simply looked for somewhere to let themselves go on the dance floor, something they could rarely or never do in Rzeszów, that was no more than a shtetl as far they were concerned. Consequently, when they saw a leaflet in their boarding house on Miodowa Street advertising a polka, mazurka and waltz competition, they didn’t think twice about going along. It was on Bracka Street, in the old city, in a mansion that had been converted into a large café and dance hall, the Klub Camelot. It was packed with people pressed against each other and one could barely fit inside. The green of German uniforms predominated and cigarette smoke hung in a white pall over the heads of the dancers. An orchestra on a dais was playing a lively waltz and the couples eddying in the center of the floor made Sofia dizzy with excitement. She grabbed Yakov by the arm and kissed him on the cheek. She loved him and held her hands out toward him. They started to walk through the crowd. They quickly joined the whirlwind dancing and didn’t stop the whole night. Waltzes gave way to polkas and polkas to the charleston, then back to a waltz, hour after hour. Sofia always danced with Yakov, but sometimes a young German soldier or another young Pole asked her for a dance. They a
ll sweated and smelt of camphor or strong eau de cologne. The competition began at midnight and lasted for an hour, and the jury immediately started eliminating couples until they were down to three, one being Yakov and Sofia, who were awarded second place. When the owner of the dance hall handed them their prize he apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, there’s no money for second prize, but you do get a voucher to come and dine here five nights for free.”
Sofia and Yakov would leave the next day, as planned, so they couldn’t enjoy their prize. That saddened Sofia but she perked up when she thought that Frankie and her husband Artur could certainly use the voucher. That made Sofia happy once again, and a few days later, when she was talking to her mother Raca, she kept repeating that the best part of the whole trip was being able to give that voucher to her cousin.
“I don’t think they are very flush,” she told her mother.
They returned to the boarding house in the early hours, occasionally dancing down the street and humming tunes the orchestra had played. The city was frozen and they saw no German soldiers on patrol. The disbelief prompted by being in that moment of history and that precise place meant Yakov and Sofia brimmed with contentment because life had given them the gift of knowing and loving each other. Nothing mattered apart from themselves. The world was a place where phantoms roamed amid the terror, but they alone were alive, and they alone had feelings. They hugged and kissed each other endlessly. Happiness dwelled up to the confines of their embracing bodies, and everything beyond was absurd, vapid and silly. It was the early morning of February 16, 1940 and that was the scene Sofia remembered on the final day of her life when they put her in a Birkenau gas chamber. She wanted to die remembering that now distant warmth from Yakov’s body, but the other bodies, in that sealed chamber, were screaming too loudly in their despair.
3
Yakov has been delayed. He knows Sofia is waiting for him at the Merkur to go to the fair and the Ferris wheel. He has talked to her such a lot about that wheel! He couldn’t have imagined it would take so long to find the bookshop owned by Simon Azvel, whom he owed a courtesy visit and news from his father, an old friend. He should have found the bookshop in an alleyway off Estery Street, but when he got there, after asking several questions that he phrased carefully depending on the appearance of the passers-by, he discovered the bookshop had in fact been bricked over and the number of the street scratched out with the point of a knife. Along the bottom someone had painted JUDE. He looked for another entrance via a front door and got access thanks to a concierge who peered out just then.
“Please, is Simon Azvel’s bookshop here?”
“Of course, but Mr. Azvel has gone to live in Podgórze. He won’t be back for a long time. Do you want a book? He left me in charge.”
“No, I just wanted to give him my father’s best wishes.”
“I can easily open the shop. It’s been bricked up outside by government order, as it is a Jew’s business. You aren’t Jewish, are you? I’ve got nothing against them but the law is there. They say they will all soon be forced to wear a white armband with the star of David, did you know that?”
“No, but I’m not Jewish,” Yakov was quick to reply.
He said goodbye to the concierge, but before leaving had second thoughts and spoke to him again.
“Got any maps?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“And postcards?”
“I couldn’t say. Take a look for yourself. Come with me.”
The concierge took a key from his pocket and opened a small door opposite his cubbyhole. He switched the light on. It was very dusty in the bookshop, but it didn’t look untidy. Everything gave the impression they’d been forced to abandon it in a great hurry.
Yakov lingered looking for maps of Jamaica but didn’t find any. On the other hand, he found a box with bundles of postcards tied round with a rubber band. Each bundle had a label with the country or region they were from. There were none from Jamaica, but nailed to the wall, above the place where the postcards were kept, was a 1931 calendar that said JAMAICA: VIEW OF KINGSTON HARBOR. It was a reproduction of an old English engraving of views of the bay where several sailing boats and steamers were anchored. Yakov interpreted this find as a piece of luck that was enough to justify his trip and frustrated visit to his father’s friend. He insisted on buying it from the concierge but the concierge gave it to him as a present.
“I doubt Mr. Azvel will miss it, if he comes back,” he said.
When he was back with Sofia in the Hotel Merkur, both of them lounged on the bed and stared at that old calendar for ages. Resting his head on Sofia’s belly, Yakov daydreamed about going there one day; he told his wife it was the next best thing to Paradise and if they had children he couldn’t think of a better place in the world for them to grow up than that island.
“It’s better than Palestine. We’ll have coffee plantations.”
“But you don’t even know if there is coffee in Jamaica,” said Sofia.
“We will plant some,” he said.
Then the noise of the boots of German soldiers on the sidewalk out in the street brought them back to reality. They were both suddenly scared and realized they were in danger. They held hands and their expressions clearly said that Jamaica didn’t and couldn’t exist. But the noise disappeared and was immediately forgotten. The loving couple went out to dinner before going on the Ferris wheel, as they had planned.
4
A few days later, Yakov and Sofia are strolling cheerfully through Krakow without a care in the world prompting knowing smiles from other passers-by. They walk along whispering very private, sometimes naively erotic sweet nothings to each other, most of them meaningless because they only show how love has put them in a world apart. They cross a bridge over the Vistula. The huge mass of Wawel Castle looms threateningly behind them.
They walk arm-in-arm, holding hands, feeling their faces almost cheek-to-cheek. Yakov is wearing a light-colored hat that doesn’t match his dark striped suit. They innocently laugh and joke. Suddenly, a cyclist in sporting gear rides past at the end of the bridge and turns right before pedalling off at top speed. He seems to have broken away from the pack behind. Yakov loves cycling and watches him in awe like a wide-eyed child. The Pawlickas halt and watch the other cyclists race by and then realize it isn’t a race but a single team, RKS Sport, the Polish champions, who are training on the outskirts of Wawel. Yakov applauds and cheers them on.
After skirting the rock under the fortress, the couple heads on to their destination for that morning, Poselska Street, and enters the Papugami Cinema. The film showing that day was The Blue Angel. Sofia thought the young Dietrich seemed frivolous and affected. Yakov found the stupid, cackling character of Professor Unrat very unpleasant, but maybe that was all to do with Emil Jannings, the actor playing Unrat, the Führer’s favorite actor, together with Henny Porten, Zarah Leander and Jenny Jugo according to a magazine report he had read. A ghastly performance, Yakov decides. A young woman sold drinks during the intermission; Yakov wasn’t to know this but he coincided at that drinks stall with Hans Haupt, the same Nazi officer who a few months later would lead off the convoy of trucks that was to take him and Sofia to Auschwitz in different vehicles. Shoulder to shoulder, now, in front of the refreshment seller, the two men don’t look at each other, but they do collide slightly, quite unintentionally, before returning to ther seats. “I’m sorry,” said Yakov. The officer said nothing and just politely waited for him to walk by.
5
On another occasion, a few days after their visit to the cinema, Yakov is wandering around the bookshops and antiquarians in the center searching unsuccessfully for maps of Jamaica like a hard-boiled collector. I picture him quite clearly, walking purposefully, seemingly at a loss, through the disturbing, suspicious city, hands in pockets, gabardine raincoat over one arm and hat on the tilt.
He goes in and out of bookshops, wa
stes time, and reclaims it thinking about the future, the big engineering enterprise he may set up in the city, while he waits for Sofia, whom he has agreed to meet in a couple of hours time, when she finishes her stroll down the shopping streets, on the trail of a present for him, a tie perhaps, cuff links or a handkerchief. While Yakov is poking around the street stalls, belonging to scared Jews, looking as if their minds were elsewhere, in another part of the city, Sofia stood outside the shop belonging to Josefina Luftig, who specializes in off-the-rack clothes for men (prêt-a-porter, as several signs next to the garments written in red ink indicate), where two dummies in the window wear suits and ties that she likes for her husband. Folded shirts, overcoats and jackets full of empty air hang on an invisible wire attached to the ceiling above the window display. Sofia finally walks in the shop and buys a pale purple shirt and a tie with a cheerful geometric pattern.
She remembers how on a previous occasion, in 1940, also on a trip with Yakov, she had entered that shop and bought nothing. She even remembers talking to Josefina Luftig, a slim woman, recently widowed, who was very jovial and animated and wore her hair tied back. Her children—she then told Sofia—worked with her in the shop. “We all make ends meet together,” she concluded. Mrs. Luftig wasn’t there now, and Sofia asked after her, prompted by no particular reason other than curiosity that was a prelude to fate, but no one could tell her where she was. Perhaps she was measuring up a customer in their house, the shop assistant suggested. She regretted not being able to say hello to her again. Nevertheless, Sofia did see Josefina Luftig again, but in the gas chamber, when they were both naked and, in an instinctive, desperate desire for a final gesture of affection, they embraced and died together.
The Birthday Buyer Page 14