by Joan Dempsey
“No, Izaac. I remember nothing.”
“Are you back with me now?”
She nodded. He smiled.
“That was a close one. Do you want to go back to the apartment?”
“I am fine. Food first, then we go back.”
She clung to him. Izaac looked up and down the street for a place to eat.
“Well, what do you know,” he said. “Do you remember? Up there on the gold building across from our apartment. The eye of providence. See it there?”
“I had forgotten.”
“Me, too. Astonishing. It’s as familiar as the back of my hand. I stared out at that thing all the time. Your mother had told me it was the eye of God watching over us, and even then I remember thinking he wasn’t doing the best job of it. Still, I prayed and prayed and prayed. I wonder, kochanie, if you would indulge me for a minute? If you’re okay?”
She nodded that she was fine, and again she steered her mind away from the dog. Izaac gently freed his arm from hers, and removed his gloves and hat.
“Hold these?”
He pulled from his pocket the yarmulke, and held it tentatively in both hands. He appeared shy, almost embarrassed, and Ludka hugged his hat and gloves and reminded herself what year it was, that Izaac was free to do what he was about to do.
“I haven’t done this for so long. I feel a little stupid.”
He backed up against the wall near the gate and gazed up at the eye of providence.
“Being here, though, seeing all of this, is worth an offering of thanks, don’t you think?”
“And it is God you will thank, after all this time?”
She hadn’t meant to sound accusatory. She stepped aside and averted her eyes to give him some privacy as he reached up to put on the yarmulke. She could see him out of the corner of her eye. He patted at it awkwardly, his head bent low, chin thrust forward. He could have done with some bobby pins. He straightened, took another look around, gave her an embarrassed smile, closed his eyes, and began to murmur.
“Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melekh ha’olam …”
When he finished, he opened his eyes. They were teary.
“The first time I tried to follow you when you went to meet Oskar, I didn’t get beyond the sidewalk. I was terrified. I almost rushed back in, but instead I prayed on this very spot. Of course I didn’t have a head covering, so I pretended I was picking through my hair for lice and kept my palms over my head. I expect I recited the same prayer.”
Ludka felt a bit sick, thinking how exposed he had been, how one false move …
“What does it mean, this prayer?”
“In essence it means thank you. The best translation is probably something like Blessed is God, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion. And here we are, Ludka, can you believe it? I don’t credit any god, however, so don’t get any ideas. This is nostalgia talking, that’s all.”
He palmed the yarmulke and discreetly slid it off the side of his head. Ludka sent up her own little prayer of thanks, not only that they had lived to return together, but also that she had not slipped into a terrible memory that might have marred this first night. Again she took hold of Izaac. She’d never held on to him this tightly, for this long.
Partway down Piwna, she realized with disbelief that she’d walked right past the entrance to St. John’s on Swietojanska on their way to the square. She had been baptized at St. John’s, and taken her first communion there, and it was in the hallways of its chilly crypt that she had first met Oskar during those initial hushed meetings of Żegota, when at fifteen she had still believed it was possible to defeat the Nazis.
“Please we will just make tiny detour. Through alley here back to Swietojanska so I can see St. John’s.”
“Didn’t they firebomb it—after the uprising?”
Ludka stopped and waggled her foot, trying to pull her blistered ankle away from the side of her boot, but as soon as she returned her foot to the ground, the pain returned.
“Everything they burned.”
They moved slowly. For Ludka, each step was a misery, but she forced herself not to think about it; they were in Starówka, walking on cobblestones, on their way to St. John’s! All around them the people spoke Polish. A chilly wind blew up from the Vistula, bringing with it a familiar smell of icy mud and something that hinted of the spring rains to come. Ludka’s thoughts flashed happily on Oskar’s vision of Eugeniusz Zak’s Boy, sitting by the river; she imagined the boy rising and stretching languidly and turning away from the water to climb freely onto the bridge to scamper home. All through the alley she patted the walls, as if she still couldn’t quite accept that they were standing.
Back on Swietojanska, a keyboard player was braving the cold in fingerless gloves, a tin box opened for donations on the sidewalk in front of him. He met Ludka’s eyes and nodded before ducking his head to monitor his fingers as he raced into a heavy chord pattern. It built in speed and intensity and volume and was then joined by a wild trilling with his right hand that all at once made Ludka want to throw out her arms in celebration. She turned to Izaac with an openmouthed smile that ended in a laugh. He smiled back and gave her arm a little shake, as if to say he knew exactly how she felt because he could feel it, too.
“Of course it’s Chopin,” he said. “Has to be.”
And in a rush her sudden high spirits were dashed and it all came back to her—Stanley, the Chopin, the assault on Tommy—everything she’d been able to put behind her during the long flight, everything that hadn’t seemed to matter quite as much once they’d taxied out of the gate and turned the plane toward the east, because what could you do from thirty-five thousand feet above the earth, what could you affect from an ocean away? For one terrible moment she thought she might collapse.
“We need to get you something to eat, kochanie. What about the church?”
He stepped away from her. She swayed, then caught herself. Izaac dropped a two złoty coin into the pianist’s box, and the pianist lifted his head and said “Dzięki.”
“Proszę.”
Izaac joined Ludka across the street, where she stood in front of the church.
“But St. John’s is Gothic Revival, not this brick …” she said.
Izaac clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward to read a brass plaque bolted next to the door.
“Bazylika Archikatedralna święty Jana. Apparently they rebuilt it the way it was in the fourteenth century. But it’s the same church all right.”
“It is most certainly not same church.”
She stared up at it, vexed by the garish illuminated facade of staggered brick pillars that formed a tall triangle, high at its apex the cross. Gone were the vast arches, the ornate turrets, and the statues of saints watching over the city.
“Maybe the inside’s the same, kochanie. Should we go in?”
She wondered if the crucifix had been saved, if there’d been a miracle like the one at St. Hedwig’s that Frank had described to her nearly twenty years ago now, when that arsonist had burned so much of their church, but the crucifix remained unscathed. She briefly closed her eyes and imagined St. John’s as she had known it, and then she winced as she pictured it in flames. She couldn’t bear the thought of finding it utterly altered. She shook her head, but Izaac had already tried the door and, finding it open, walked in and held it for her. She shook her head again, but Izaac was peering into the church, and so she stepped inside.
The hush was total in the deserted church, the only sound that of Izaac’s shuffling steps as he moved beyond the vestibule entry and into the dimly lit nave. In one swift glance Ludka took in enough to know that everything had changed, and she dipped her fingers into the holy water, made the sign of the cross, and forced herself to think of this as simply an unknown, foreign church and not an imposter standing on ashes. A spider’s web of brick supports ran up the white plaster walls and crisscrossed the vast white ceiling. A checkerboard marble floor paved the way
to the sanctuary, and the small, unfamiliar crucifix, isolated on a pedestal off to the side, gleamed with shiny gold.
Ludka swayed again, still not sure of her land legs after so much time in the air. She held on to the end of a dark-stained pew and took her weight off her throbbing ankle. A moment later, she was glad for the pew’s support, because there above the priest’s chair was a reproduction of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, exactly like the one at St. Hedwig’s, and at her old St. John’s. Ludka gazed at it gratefully, the holy water still damp on her forehead, and wondered if this was the very painting she’d known as a girl? She began then to see other familiar items—the priest’s chair, the chandeliers, a marble statue of St. John the Baptist—and a burble of unexpected laughter burst forth, because once again the Black Madonna had lived up to her legend and saved the church from annihilation by fire. Izaac, startled by Ludka’s laughter, hurried back.
She tried to tell him not to worry, but couldn’t get out the words. She could feel the laughter coming on, the hysterical kind that originates from tension and exhaustion, a laughter that has to run its course. Still hanging on to the pew, she laid the other hand on Izaac’s chest and met his eyes. She tried to shush herself, but that set her off again. She made a clumsy effort to genuflect, moved into the pew and sank down onto the seat and began to rock with laughter. Izaac stood uncertainly, but her laughter was infectious, and he began to chuckle, asking “What is it? What is it?” But Ludka could only shake her head and wipe away her tears as her laughter ricocheted throughout the cavernous church. Finally, Izaac sat beside her, and his own laughter overtook him, infusing Ludka’s with new life. Wave after wave rolled through them, and Ludka clutched at her tightened stomach, and Izaac threw back his head and hooted and slapped his thighs, and all at once Ludka thought she might be sobbing, but it was so much like the laughing, she couldn’t be sure, until Izaac turned to her and he was crying, too, both of them crying and crying.
25
The Jewish Historical Institute
The next afternoon, standing in front of the Jewish Historical Institute’s polished wood doors, Ludka’s mouth was completely dry, and her palms grew damp inside her leather gloves. She had slept well but woken early because of the time change; now, at home, it would be almost 11:00 p.m. Even though she’d taken a nap earlier in the day, she felt mildly disoriented, as if she had a slight hangover, and her limbs felt too heavy to manage. She had doctored her ankle with ointment and bandages Izaac had gone to fetch that morning, and the sharp throbbing had subsided. One edge of the tape pinched, though, and she hoped she wouldn’t develop a new hot spot. A chime not unlike a fork hitting a wine glass sounded from her shoulder bag.
“What the hell is that?” said Izaac.
“This is text sound, I think?”
“From Tommy? More good news?”
Earlier in the day, Izaac had gotten a detailed e-mail from Abe, letting them know the arbitration hearing had gone better than expected, but had been extended into a second day. Connie Clough and the school seemed to be steering clear of sexual harassment. The media, however, was having a field day thanks to the Westboro Baptist Church picketers. Judging by the clips Abe had forwarded, Channel 7 was the only station airing reasonable reports.
Ludka took off her gloves, shoved them into the bag, and found her phone. On the screen was a photograph of the Chopin with a San Francisco Chronicle next to it. The message said “Happy now?” The photo was too small, of course, to see at a glance either the date on the paper or the condition of the painting, and she wondered when she might slip away to inspect it more closely. Had he gone back to San Francisco after all? Or gotten the paper locally? She muted the phone and slipped it back into her bag.
“Phone company,” she said. “I have told and told them not to text when bill is ready and still they persist.”
Her heart hammered so hard in her ears that she was sure Izaac would hear it.
“I am wishing now we had stayed home.”
“Come, kochanie. You’ll be okay. Let’s see how those sketches have held up.”
The next several minutes were a blur of preparation in Ezra Mandelbaum’s office, as he took their coats and walked them through the program and the staging. The names of the panelists flew from Ludka’s mind as soon as she’d heard them, and later, during the program, she’d have to be prompted when it was her turn to speak, since she’d barely heard Mandelbaum’s instructions. She drank a glass of water and was grateful when a student intern brought her a bottle. She tucked it into her bag, and then they were climbing the wide marble stairs to the exhibition hall. In his lovely Polish, Mandelbaum explained to them that most of the permanent exhibition was on view, that they’d used one side of the hall to display a large portion of her sketches, while the rest were shown in a glossy book they’d printed for the occasion. Mandelbaum, a portly man with a trim white beard, wiped a hand across his sweating brow, and Ludka realized he was as nervous as she was.
“Had we known about you sooner, we would of course have consulted with you, and if you’re willing, we would like to work with you to produce an updated edition. We of course will give you a copy of the one we have.”
She lifted her hand in a noncommittal gesture, exhausted just thinking about a project of that magnitude. She hauled herself up the stairs by the wrought iron rail, Izaac just behind her. It hadn’t occurred to her that the Institute might be concerned about her intentions, might be worried she would demand to keep the sketches for herself, a thought that hadn’t even crossed her mind. Now that it had, she did wonder how she’d feel when she saw them, whether she’d want to take them home. And then they were at the top of the stairs, the exhibition hall open before them.
Izaac gripped Ludka’s elbow and thanked Mandelbaum, who told them to make themselves at home and enjoy the exhibition, that the formal program would start in half an hour. Izaac steered Ludka away from the stairs and backed them up against a wall. In front of them a wide entryway opened into the exhibition area, and above the packed, milling crowd soared a twelve-foot-high black-and-white photograph of a long-bearded and serious old Jew wearing a short-brimmed Greek fisherman’s cap and holding a book to his chest, hand loosely curled around the spine. But for the book and his slight smile, he might have stepped out of Roslan’s Prelude, 1939, and for the first time Ludka realized that the Institute’s permanent collection might feel far more like home than Warsaw itself. The portion of the crowd visible through the entryway seemed mostly elderly, with a few middle-aged couples mixed in and only a handful of students. Ludka sought out all the old men, wondering in what condition she’d find Oskar. Mandelbaum had shown them the anonymous typed letter that had alerted the Institute to her identity; if Oskar had, in fact, written it, he had apparently recognized her work in the poster advertising the symposium. She wiped her palms on the sides of her long gray skirt. Izaac shook her elbow. High on the wall hung another photograph, mural-sized and sepia-toned: two vast hills of pulverized ruins separated by a narrow valley and a bumpy, dusty jeep track that ran the valley’s length. The only building still intact, far in the distance, was the tower and steeple of the Catholic Archdiocese. This photo was a still from the scene Ludka had watched only that once in The Rape of Europa. Her mouth went dry again, as if she had been breathing brick dust and smoke. She groped in her bag for the tin of strong peppermints.
“I do not think I can do this, Izaac.”
“I’m not so sure I can either, kochanie. I’m not so sure.”
Ludka opened the peppermint tin, popped one in her mouth, and gave one to Izaac. She wondered if Oskar would be bald, stooped, using a cane or a walker. All she could picture was Stanley as he’d appeared that day in her office. She frowned.
The exhibition area was crowded enough that it was nearly impossible to move without touching someone, but the noise was muted as people spoke quietly, or not at all. Hanging high on the walls for unobstructed viewing were more enlarged photographs. Ludka glanced at t
hem only long enough to register a penetrating dread. Izaac studied them for signs of his parents. Throughout the hall, freestanding display boards showed pieces of their history.
“What’s the story with the puppet’s head?” asked Izaac.
Ludka followed his gaze, let out a little “oh,” and pressed a hand over her mouth.
“Kostucha, we called them.”
“As in the Grim Reaper?”
“During resistance, we stuck Kostucha’s head on a pole, put a hat on it, and poked him above the street barricades to draw fire, while we crouched and scampered like rats to the other side of the street. It became like sport to Nazis. Never did we have enough hats.”
“But the Grim Reaper doesn’t prevent death, he ushers it in.”
Ludka looked on him with pity.
“Not always, Izaac, did Kostucha succeed.”
A waiter interrupted with a tray of drinks, and Ludka unthinkingly took a glass of white wine. She winced as the tepid sour taste mixed with the peppermint.
“Is it me only, Izaac, who thinks it is like leafing through an old yearbook, all of this? Or an old family photo album. Do you understand? How surreal?”
“Probably more so for you than for me.”
Ludka wondered how many of the other old people in the room felt the same way, as if they were seeing not the preserved history of a people and a genocide, but their own scrapbooks.
Two college-aged women looked closely at a set of vulgar posters depicting Jewish caricatures crawling with typhus-infested lice.
“Żydzi Wszy,” one of them read. “Jews! Lice! Who could have possibly taken these seriously?”
Izaac raised his eyebrows in disbelief, but Ludka thought of her initially dismissive reaction to the Westboro picketers, her visceral relief at learning they were small in number. Now she imagined Tommy trying to get past the picketers to attend his arbitration hearing, the boy with lamb’s-wool hair berating him with vulgar placards, and for the first time since the assault, she wasn’t able to deflect the terrible question that had been loitering at the periphery of her mind: What, exactly, had arisen in their midst? She tightened her grip on her shoulder bag.