The Upright Heart
Page 1
Published by New Europe Books, 2016
Williamstown, Massachusetts
www.NewEuropeBooks.com
Copyright © Julia Ain-Krupa, 2016
Cover design by Oksana Shmygol
Cover photo by Vladimir Korostyshevskiy
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
ISBN: 978-0-9900043-8-7
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9900043-9-4
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Part I: The Exodus
Part II: Anna and the Child
Part III: In the Beginning
Part IV: The Feather
Also From New Europe Books
Acknowledgments
This book would never have been made possible without the generous grant awarded me by the Fulbright Commission, which originally took me to Krakow in 2012.
Life, laughter, love, and work would not be possible without my friends and family in Krakow, New York, and now also in Tel Aviv. You all make it possible for me to soar. To my Dotan and his friends, to Mara, to Alice and Teresa, to Lyn and Will, to Denise, Paulina, Marin, Anna, Asia, Esther, Verushka, Danae, Katie, Tala, Adel, Antosia, Samara, Liana, Alex, Alexis, Wendy, and countless others. There is no room in this world to express what you all mean to me. You make the world home.
Thank you to Jonathan Ornstein and Kasia Leonardi, who helped make Krakow my new home. Thank you to Rabbi Avi Baumol for his patience and interest in all my questioning. To my fellow Fulbrighters and writers, Denise Grollmus and Oksana Lutsyshyna, who encouraged me through the first pages of this book, and who held my hand during that first Polish winter. To the invaluable Joanna Sliwa, to Dara Bramson and Dara Weinberg, to survivors Sofia Radzikowska and Henryk Meller, and to Pan Mundek Elbinger, Pan Gamon, and Bernard Kuśka. Thank you to Slawek Pastuszek and the entire community of the Krakow JCC. To Malgosia Ploszaj and to all those Poles I have met who devote themselves to preserving Jewish culture and heritage in Poland, with no personal gain or reward but simply because they feel an absence and are moved to do something. Certain places and memories stand out for me, including the Jewish community of Lublin, and traveling with Justyna to the forests near Bialystok, where graves were overgrown with vines and little red berries grew wild.
Scott Morgan, Elspeth Treadwell, Andrew Seear, Tana Ross, Leah Rhodes, Didi Drachman, Deborah Kearns, Anne Thulin, Fred Pirkey, Randy Bloom, Zahra Partovi and Vincent Fitzgerald, Judy and Michael Sacks, Catherine Shainberg, Beth Biegler, and Kathleen Farrell.
Antosia Kondrat and her family, Olga, Janusz, and Marysia Stoklosa, Franek Mula, Esther, Nili, and Natty de R, the Mulji family, Gabi and Uwe Von Seltmann, Olga and Ania Szwajger, Teatr Stu, Muriel Shockley, Lisa Wells, Joanna Anderson, Maria Makuch, and the people who always encouraged me to write, especially Elysha Schneider, Zowie Broach, and Brian Kirkby.
Thank you for the help of Anna Spysz, Robert Braille, Elzbieta Mankowska, Dorota Nowak, and William Vidal, and historians Edyta Gawron, Tomek Jankowski, Anna Pero, Grzegorz Jezowski, and Katarzyna Zimmerer.
Thank you to my patient and kind publisher, Paul Olchváry, at New Europe Books, and to my cover designer, Oksana Shmygol, whose angelic spirit and beautiful design work helped make this book what I dreamt it to be.
For the cafés that serviced my imagination, especially Bliekle, in Krakow, and Cheder. To the New York Society Library’s beautiful writer’s room, which has provided me with a makeshift office for the past four years.
Thank you to Dotan. Your entrance into my life is a long-awaited blessing. Thank you for your incredible love and for being so uniquely you. I love you more every day.
And, finally, thank you to Krakow, my eternal home, with its beautiful cobblestone streets, its mist-filled air, and its loving people who have always made me feel that I too can belong.
For my ancestors, who took me by the hand,
Dorothy Ain, Wolf Ain, Viktor Frieholc, and Elzbieta Krupa.
For my parents,
Noa Ain and Olek Krupa
For rabbi Boaz Pash, who,
though he was afraid of my questions,
allowed me to ask them anyway.
And for those who passed away while I was writing this book.
For Deborah Jacobson, Ryo Murakami, Elzbieta Krupa, and Jonathan Ain.
Part I
The Exodus
We are all called Sarah. My name used to be Rachelka, but then it was changed, and now I am Sarah just like all the other girls. My house is built of fragile bones. They shine like crystal prayers in the moonlight. Breathing with the rest of the world, they tremble with mystery and become mirror images of that last living thing that gives us life, the night. These bones are built of the same calcium that once belonged to the stars. At least that is what Pan Kubilak taught us in science class, and I can never forget it.
And what are we now? Are we still living, trapped inside this old house with no visible walls, only bones to support a transparent roof? Are we like the house? Does an undetectable presence within us marvel at the beauty of our remains as they shine in the brilliant night? We cannot step beyond these invisible walls, and yet we wonder, after so much time, is there really anywhere to go? And where would forty-one Sarahs go to make a new home, anyway?
I
Wiktor Frieholtz is running late again. He awakes this morning to a strange aching in his head, a burning sensation in his stomach. Not wanting to go to work, he retreats beneath the warm coziness of his duvet cover and tries to hide from his wife, Waleria, for as long as he can without being noticed. Praying for invisibility, he caresses the lace trim of his blanket with his toes. My wife made this, he tells himself, and examines the outline of his hands, which are so closely connected to those of his wife after so many years of marriage. He knows that she will come into the room and yell at him (with maternal kindness, of course). He knows that he will get up and go, running as always, but for this moment in time he claims total ignorance. He peeks from beneath the covers as a child would, absorbing the first signs of spring as they cast shadows on the newly painted wall. The war has been over for a year. Life begins again.
When her shouting becomes unbearable, he dresses and shaves before the old brass mirror. Wiktor always shaves, even when he is late. He runs his hand across his closely cropped hair and touches the cross that hangs humbly over the doorframe, as he always does, even on mornings like this. He takes a sip of coffee and in three bites eats his morning bread and butter, while almost simultaneously kissing his daughter, Elżbieta, her newborn son, Mateusz, and his wife on the head. Before they know it he is out the door.
“Wiktor Frieholtz is running late again,” Pani Ewa says as she removes a saucer of milk from the stove for her husband’s morning coffee and catches a glimpse of his back as he brushes the branches of her rose bush, its tiny buds bursting at the seams. Traces of his silhouette linger in the patterned lace curtain that shelters her kitchen from the outside world.
Wiktor is running late, but he is almost there.
Adjusting the knot on his tie, he passes Pan Buchta’s yard, where a group of drunken soldiers nearly blasted all the fin
e tomato plants away for good last year. Small vines retrace their paths, remembering with pride where they once did reside. Wiktor notices Pan Buchta’s bent figure like the classic representation of an old crone, his hand as it rustles through newly turned soil, but by the time Pan Buchta is able to look up and see him, he is already gone.
Past the Makowski twins, who are arguing over who will get to carry the wounded sparrow, and through the brush, across the little bridge and into the fields that every morning carry Wiktor to work and that at the end of every day bring him home. It wasn’t long ago that soldiers were camped here, along this very stream. Its banks were their tiny trenches, and when the war came to a close, they left behind their helmets, their bayonets, what little treasures the neighborhood children could collect and trade, and headed straight for a nonexistent home. Now these stream banks are all free land. The only permanent inhabitants are rabbits and squirrels. As it should be, Wiktor whispers to himself while climbing the hill to the train tracks where he works. The air is fresh and smells of wild thyme and hay, and Wiktor has the idea that spring exists for the first time. After a lifetime of winter, of war, Wiktor cannot help but smile at the awakening
Wiktor has no chance to check in with the train dispatcher, and having just buttoned his jacket and tied his tie, he gingerly removes his jacket, rolls up the cuffs of his white starched shirt, and begins to work. His newly cut hair whistles in the wind, but he has no time to pay attention to the sound. He crouches before the tracks, checking the switch that enables trains to change paths as they approach the station. The local train is headed his way as he busies himself with an old rusty track. In fact he is so busy with his work that he does not notice the wind as it changes directions, does not hear the train approaching, does not see it barreling down. There is a tremendous sound. He does not realize that it is the sound of his own blood boiling, his own mind racing, as his body is being crushed.
Mid-breath now. Is there an exhale that takes place up in the sky? Out in the ether, Wiktor, did you watch how we cried? How people came all the way from Katowice to mourn your loss? How Waleria locked herself in her room, cross in hand, berating herself for letting you go? How she held her baby grandson in her arms and cried that he was a gift from God? Did you see us weeping when the doorbell rang every day at five and there was no one waiting to be let inside? For weeks the bell rang, but still you were never there. We knew you were gone, but we waited for you anyway. Did you take one last breath before you took flight?
Wiktor rises from beneath the weight of the steel train, now resting like a feather on his new form. He walks slowly, sensing every atom of his movement as he never has before. He does not look behind. He does not see the wreckage of his body, but rather moves with some kind of childlike delight. Each step feels like a gentle transition in space, the thrill of each molecule of matter spurring him on, as if his body has no separation from the earth or the sky. Must be the headiness of spring, he tells himself. But even spring cannot induce such exaltation. He thinks better of what has happened, recalling that morning and the feeling in his stomach that told him not to go. He thinks of Waleria’s hands. Suddenly frightened by his weightlessness, Wiktor looks down at his hands for reassurance of his existence, but there is nothing there. He discovers now that he has no hands, only space where dexterity lived just moments ago.
He cannot move quickly, and there is no way to go home. There is only one movement, only one direction in which to go.
II
Wiktor returns to the banks of the stream, and daylight has dimmed as if it is already evening and morning light is turning to night. The smoke from Rybnik’s coal-burning stoves blows across the stream, and Wiktor strains to see. He notices a strange lump on the ground and bends down to find a muddy helmet obstructing his path. Not far away lies a pile of bayonets, which leads him to a group of German soldiers sitting by the river. In silence they look out over the stream. One man with broad shoulders and features so identifiably unlike that of a Pole smokes a hand-rolled cigarette, flicking the ashes into the slow-moving current. His cheeks are ruddy from too many nights spent out in the cold, and his shirt is torn across the chest. There are patches of snow where the men are sitting. Winter is in their hearts as they wait for something to change. Wiktor walks up to the smoking man and nods a hello.
“Is it winter now?” Wiktor asks, squatting beside the German.
The young soldier turns to him slowly, his eyes glassy and pale as if his vision is obfuscated by the world. He looks at Wiktor’s tiny frame and shrugs his shoulders as if he could care less what time of year it is. He wipes his nose with the back of his sleeve and looks off toward a distant field.
“Who knows?” the man mumbles. “It is always winter now. We’ve been waiting for days and days and nothing. No one has come to get us. No one has told us who is winning. Who cares if it’s winter? We might as well be dead.”
Wiktor swallows.
“He’s right!” chimes in another soldier, gaunt and tired as he leans his baby face against his pack, the heels of his boots digging into the fresh, snowy mud. He laughs hysterically and caresses his groin as if looking for comfort.
A gentle moan is emitted from the group as a soldier of about eighteen stands above the rest and begins to shout, his legs trembling, spit forming at the corners of his mouth.
“I keep asking, why don’t we do something!” he cries. “I cannot continue to sit by this river without knowing what is happening! I need to know! Captain, please! I keep thinking about my mother sitting at the kitchen table waiting for a letter. She isn’t moving. She isn’t eating or sleeping. She is in a warm house but she is worse off than we are. Please! She is just waiting! Please help us to find out what is happening! Help us to get home.” His eyes are pleading as he looks to the smoking man, who blows perfectly formed smoke rings that mingle with the foggy air. He barely flinches an eye.
“Upon your order, captain,” he mumbles, shrinking back into a seated position.
“I can tell you,” Wiktor whispers.
He clears his throat and begins again. He wonders why his voice is quivering when he feels so calm. “I can help you find a way to get home.”
III
It is dinnertime in all the houses on Strzelecka Street except one. Here, nobody has the will to cook. They eat bread and butter. They don’t wash the dishes. They do what they can to get through the day. Elżbieta is living in a dream in which the world is distant and alive. She can taste, see, and smell the dust molecules in the air. She asks herself, Is this what death brings? The atmosphere is humming.
On the wall to the left that separates this room from the next is a layer of paint so fresh that the paintings meant to hang there are placed carefully on the floor. It wasn’t long ago that this wall was no more than a gaping hole. It wasn’t long ago that soldiers took Elżbieta and her family from their house at gunpoint.
“Just shoot!” Elżbieta’s sister Henia shouted. Elżbieta shook at the invitation.
When the family was finally allowed to return to their home, Wiktor spent every Sunday evening carefully repairing the wall and reconstructing their world. He had just finished applying the second coat of paint.
Elżbieta takes Mateusz from her mother’s arms and rocks him to sleep. “Aaa, kotki dwa,” she sings. There are two cats. Lullabies emerge from the recesses of her memory when holding her baby in her arms. It is as if they went to sleep somewhere in the back of her mind, and waited for that moment when they would offer shelter to another human being. Motherhood is new to Elżbieta. So is orphanhood.
There is nothing but this baby to hold me down, she thinks. If it weren’t for this little baby and his unquenchable thirst, I would surely fly away. I would rise up into the sky and I would meet you there. How many years will it be before I see you again, Papa?
She rests her feet on a little stool as she switches the baby from her right breast to her left. She stares at the westward wall of the room and through the windows that look
out over the garden and surrounding fields. She rocks herself gently. The sun is misty and pink, as if peering down on their little town through a lens of clouded glass. In this region of Poland daylight can seem like a pale and hallucinatory dream, so white that it is as if God were trying to erase the world.
Through the open window Elżbieta can hear the sound of eager raindrops even though there is no rain. They hit the tender grass, patches of brown and green moss so soft that they seem to belong to a fairytale much more than they do the streets of a coalmining town. The trees are swiftly shedding frost accumulated overnight. To the right is a stream that has set the stage for so many events in her life, and beyond are the train tracks where her father was killed. As far as the eye can see looking west, there are only fields and forests beyond. Other than the sound of the drops as they fall, everything is so quiet. There is only the bubble of rain and the sound of her heart beating, racing inside her head, but there is nowhere for her to run.
At this moment, those worries that have always tugged at the back of her mind begin to surface. Elżbieta thinks of her little brother, Karol, now in kindergarten, now without a father. Will he live to fight in another war? Or, like their father, will he live to see another war through, only to die needlessly once it is over? Will he get picked on in school for being so small? What time is it? Will he make it safely home? She hopes the front door is locked, so that they are all safe, so that her baby is safe. Is it locked? She cannot remember. And then she repeats the questions to herself, for they sound like a comforting song.
Elżbieta’s mother comes into the room and sits beside her.
“Oh Mama,” Elżbieta cries, and buries her face in her mother’s chest. The baby awakes and begins to wail. Elżbieta rocks him to sleep. There is only silence. Even the little rain has come to an end.