The Upright Heart

by Julia Ain-Krupa

  IV

  Wiktor has decided to take the soldiers over the bridge and into town. The smoking man is quiet, but the younger members of the group are enthusiastic about leaving the banks of the river behind. The group moves slowly, six tall men following one smaller Wiktor. The soldiers take care not to slip as their boots meet the warm ground and the snow melts away. Only the beetles can hear their sound.

  The smoke from the coal mines mingles with the foggy night air, and it is so dark that Wiktor becomes unmoored at moments, as if he cannot remember which way to go. He is careful not to reveal this uncertainty.

  On their way into town the group takes Strzelecka Street, and soon passes Wiktor’s house. The front gate is locked, but the lights are on upstairs, and Wiktor can see Waleria and Elżbieta sitting and talking. He wants to wave to them, but then remembers that he has no hands.

  In my empty heart, in the space where it once was, I am waving to you. I am sending you my love.

  The night has settled in, and as they walk down the hill, past the church, there is no one around.

  “It is so quiet,” the youngest, baby-faced soldier whispers to no one in particular, fumbling with the small, star-shaped gold pin dangling from the lapel of his jacket.

  “I say we go for a drink,” the smoking captain, who is the commanding officer, snarls as they pass a small bar at the edge of town. Inside, men are sitting at small wooden tables somberly drinking vodka. The only woman present is a short, middle-aged barmaid.

  “No. No drinks,” Wiktor says quietly. Despite his hushed voice, he is still heard.

  “There is someone that I would like to stop and see, if you don’t mind,” says the gaunt, slow-moving soldier, gesturing toward Wiktor, standing close behind him but never looking him in the eye. “A girl.”

  “It won’t work,” Wiktor says, turning to the young man. “I’m sorry, but it just won’t. Besides, we don’t have time. We have somewhere to go.”

  “I don’t know why you say it won’t work. It works just fine.…”

  There is the sound of a dog barking, and as is always true in Rybnik, when one dog barks, all the other dogs must chime in, and so a chorus of singing dogs resounds through the streets.

  “Funny,” the first young soldier remarks. “Everything sounds so far away.”

  “Left here,” Wiktor commands, as he takes the group around the side of the town’s old church.

  The barking dog wanders around the corner and saunters directly toward them, exhaling clouds of wet fog into the soft brown light of a nearby street lamp. From behind the German shepherd emerges a young couple, arms locked as they walk. They gaze at one another, just as people do in spring after war. Her hair is golden, and her coat is made of felt wool, burning bright red in the dark night. She is a beacon of light. She walks toward the young soldier, the gaunt one, as he stops moving and whispers her name, “Zosia.” She walks briskly past him, as if he wasn’t there at all.

  Zosia pulls her coat tightly closed and leans in to her lover. “It is chilly tonight, isn’t it?” she asks, a shiver crawling up her spine. Her lover simply looks down at her and smiles as they walk off into the dark night.

  The gaunt soldier shakes as he follows the group out of the light.

  Wiktor leads the men to a door at the back of the church. This is the crypt, he wants to tell them, but he doesn’t have the heart to say the word. The men have hopeful faces. The steps leading down are dark and damp, but the men can only perceive the cold. They shudder because they know they should.

  Being alive was like riding a boat and letting the waves knock you around until you could barely orient yourself to the world, the youngest soldier thinks quietly, not wanting anyone else to hear. It is all over now. It is all over. It is. Darkness enshrouds the group. Not even a footstep or the echo of footsteps can be heard.

  V

  They call it a nebula. What lights up the night sky in an explosion of blue, red, orange, green. Colors you don’t know about yet. Colors you’ve never seen.

  I know that there is a buzz in the heart that lingers long after you are gone. I know that it lifts you up, out of your body and higher until you are in the beyond. I am suspended here, above the nebula, in this ring of planets, and I cannot even remember where I come from or what came before. I can only remember a sound and maybe a feeling. I can recall needing someone once, I think.

  We are one system, this ring of tiny planets, this white feather and me. If I look back and try to remember, if I drop, the feather rises. If the feather falls, I float up.

  What is the measure of a heart? The weight of a feather, you might say.

  I am waiting to begin again.

  VI

  Wiktor and his group of soldiers make their way into the crypt of the Rybnik town church. The church spire extends toward the sky and can be seen from everywhere in town, a reminder that God is watching. There is a row of tombs on each side of the passageway, and the smell of mold hangs heavy in the air, but the group remains oblivious to it.

  “What exactly are we doing here?” the captain asks Wiktor, leaning against the cold stone wall. He might as well be standing in a bar holding a beer and talking to a girl.

  “There are tunnels that lead somewhere behind one of these doors.”

  “But where will they take us?” the young, gaunt soldier asks, his pale face haunting in the dim, basement light. He looks longingly into Wiktor’s smiling dark eyes. “She didn’t even see me,” he whispers. “She didn’t even say hello.”

  “No, she didn’t,” Wiktor replies, looking away. He turns back to their leader.

  “I know that these tunnels were used during the resistance. They go to Kraków, to Warsaw, maybe even to Berlin.”

  “They will lead us nowhere,” one soldier says. “Is the war over?”

  “It is. I am not certain where these tunnels lead, but you must try,” Wiktor replies. “There is a chance they will take you home.”

  The captain nods and the group moves carefully past the tombs of priests and of local saints. There is a wooden door at the end of the corridor that opens to a dusty tunnel. Wiktor takes the soldiers through. He stands at attention.

  “I must leave you all here,” he says. “Let you continue on your own.”

  “Thank you,” the captain replies, and Wiktor turns to leave. “Thank you for helping us get home. Maybe we will see each other again.”

  “You will be just fine if you follow the tunnels. Your mothers and your wives are waiting for you.”

  “But wait,” the young soldier says, turning toward Wiktor. “Please tell us, who won?”

  Wiktor turns his back and says nothing as he retraces his steps and walks past them, out of the crypt. They are transfixed.

  The captain bends down to examine something colorful on the ground.

  “What is it?” the gaunt soldier asks, taking a step back.

  “A flower,” the captain replies. “Growing here, in the dark.”

  VII

  Is it any good that we all share a name? Yes, it is. This way we can remind each other who we are whenever we forget. I am Sarah and so is she. We all wear the same uniforms and play the same games. Only now the games we play are different than before.

  The Łódź girl’s school was our haven in life and it is for us now as well. All of our classmates were Jewish except for four Polish girls. We all had things in common. All of us had refined clothing, a warm home to return to, and parents who could afford to give us a good education. Not only could they give it, but they also wanted their daughters to have it. Where are those four Polish girls now? Eating dinner somewhere in the countryside, perhaps? Still recovering from the war? They are Magdalena, Małgosia, Malwina, and Anna.

  We are left behind. We sit at our desks, dressed in uniform, making lace figurines out of water and light. We catch the slightest specks of matter and then we weave them into something beautiful.

  Daisy, Daisy

  Give me your answer, do.

&nb
sp; I’m half crazy

  All for the love of you.

  This is the chorus of Sarah’s favorite song. She learned it from an American musical that once played for three weeks in a row at the town cinema before the war. She snuck out to see it seven times and spent every night for months trying to learn to dance the way the lead girl did in the movie. Her name was Gingerogers, I think. Whenever we get sad or lonely Sarah tells us to stand in a circle and sing this song until we can’t sing it any more. She knows how to get us going, and sometimes she can even make us laugh. That is her gift. She would have made a wonderful actress or comedian. Besides, she is very beautiful.

  We like playing games. We do lessons sometimes as well, examining our old botany books, or even studying geography, which was a favorite subject for many of us. We used to dream together of all the places in the world we would one day go. Many of the girls wanted to go to Hawaii, but I have always dreamt of one day seeing the great mountains of Peru.

  With our knowledge of astronomy we can sometimes locate the constellations through the roof of our broken home. This is another one of our favorite activities, especially little Sarah’s. She was only nine when we died, and so had less time to learn and to love. Often she becomes angry and doesn’t want to participate or agree to anything, but we must be patient. Her time was even shorter than ours.

  When she is inconsolable, I take her by the hand and lead her to the grand hallway that looks out over the road where factory smoke billows in the distance. Łódź is filled with factories, many of which were opened by our relatives. The sky is vibrant here, and I try to teach her the names of all the constellations: Andromeda, Cassiopeia. Every so often she dares to crack a smile.

  “Will it always be this way?” she asks, her eyes still wet with expectation, even long after the answer has been found.

  “No it won’t,” I tell her, looking into her eyes, trying to reassure her and maybe even myself. “It won’t always be this way, but I don’t know how or when it will change.” We are waiting for someone to come and unlock the gate.

  Nobody knows for sure just when we will be allowed to leave this home and move on to the next.

  Sarah, whose grandfather was a great rabbi, says we are caught between worlds because we died too fast and did not complete our tikkun. Sarah is the one we always turn to when we have important questions. Her name used to be Irina, which is a Russian name. Her mother was a Jewess who fell for her father one night in Petersburg. He was a traveling salesman, and was so taken by her mother’s beauty that he laid his most beautiful Persian rug at her doorstep as a sign of his devotion.

  Sometimes when the moon is full and we feel most at peace, Sarah tells us stories her grandfather once told her. She says that maybe, since we died so soon, we will return and live again. Maybe, Sarah says. This is all we know. We love our books and our stories. They are our tradition, our history. They may not be much, but they are what we still have. After all, we are only thirteen years old.

  VIII

  This night is quiet. All the dogs have gone to bed.

  Wiktor is running again. Out of the crypt, past the church where he crossed the threshold with his wife on their wedding day, where his three children were baptized, where people came to mourn when he died.

  Elżbieta is leaning against the kitchen table on Strzelecka Street, crushing rose petals and sugar with a spoon. The roses are freshly picked, as they always are in spring, still wet from the morning dew. It is almost midnight now, but she is still standing, trying her best to hold up the world. Making jam is a sign that home still exists, and so she turns the petals in a rhythmic motion, releasing their perfume into the night air that wafts from the cracked window into the room. Spring is on the tip of nature’s tongue, and for a moment there is harmony. In one breath, life persists. As rose petals transform into a paste that will later become the jam of the gods, Elżbieta looks out the kitchen window onto the fields and scans the distant skyline, so soft that it is almost like a painting whose edges have been blurred by the addition of a splash of water. Somewhere Papa is still running, she thinks with a smile. He is out there, up in heaven, now entering through those glistening gates.

  You see that star down there? It explodes every seven days or so. It gathers its strength for a little while, and then day after day it grows brighter until it bursts forth with the intensity of its own energy. I watch how it grows, how it catches remnants of the passing sun and competes with other stars for ultimate glory. You win, we all want to say, and oh how we laugh. Nobody cares up here about who is strongest, because here everybody is strong, even my little feather, who flies higher than all the rest.

  IX

  This is the night that Wiktor says goodbye to Rybnik, his hometown.

  Ulica Strzelecka, goodbye. Town square, goodbye. River that runs, goodbye. Goodbye to all of the places and people I have loved.

  Tiny newborn flowers are sprouting from the ground. They are deep red, pale violet, yellow, white. The colors of my childhood, the colors of my life. Green. And, of course, gray, the color of the Rybnik skyline.

  Wiktor runs back toward the train tracks without knowing why. He sees the fields where he lived his entire life and they fill him with the memory of profound joy.

  No more maybes. There is always a light shining somewhere beyond.

  X

  Wolf Ain is sitting at the window of wagon number four on the night train to Białystok, watching an endless stretch of darkness rush past. Just hours ago he was traveling through Austria. Now he is passing through Katowice on his way to Warsaw, and he will then go further east. This night is long as the train moves across the Polish landscape. If it were daylight he would see passing fields—humble, soft, endless green. A house in the distance where there is always a chimney smoking, even in summertime. Little red berries along the tracks, nettles pert and ready to prick any animal that dares approach; shadows, branches, and forests filled with the last traces of snow. But night shrouds the country in darkness. Wolf counts the occasional lamppost and chimney. Everything is silent other than the sound of the train rumbling over the tracks. It is that feeling of being cradled that rocks him to sleep, that sensation which brings him back to the first months of life, when there was always someone to hold him in her arms.

  Wolf twirls a pink string given to him by baby Leah around his left fingers and tries to remember the Polish word for “spirit.” In Russian it is dusha, and in Hebrew, ruach, like the wind. In Polish, it is dusza. This language is so difficult to learn but even harder to forget. Wolf plays with languages the way other people play with cards.

  What kind of person would I be if I didn’t go back to see? He asks himself, nodding off as the surrounding scenery fades into the background. The train lulls Wolf slowly to sleep, and his glasses slide down to the tip of his nose, so they might easily fall and shatter, but never do they let go.

  XI

  Running beside a train, you would normally feel the strength of steel as it barrels across the land. You would know your vulnerability, and would sense, suddenly, the fragility of your body as it pales in comparison to a great machine, to a product of man’s imagination and not a figment of nature. But without a solid body, things are different, and running beside steel is no different than running beside a stream. You are like water, the steel is like a chariot waiting to take you in its arms. You can swim together. In fact, you could just as easily unite with the whole world. It is almost like flying. Wiktor feels that ecstasy as he leaps aboard the local train to Katowice. Not even a thought is needed to make it happen. Just the slightest intention, and he is already there.

  Wolf’s reflexes are fast enough to catch his eyeglasses before they fall to the floor of wagon number four, but it takes him longer to come to terms with his surroundings, and for a time he still hears a baby crying, still sees delicate pine needles pricking at his peripheral vision, as if his dream does not yet want to release him back into reality. The first signs of pink are appearing along the
horizon in prelude to the dawn.

  Having taken the leap from the fields that surround Rybnik onto the train, and then swiftly jumping to the Białystok train as it passes through Katowice, Wiktor walks through the corridor of wagon number four looking for the one who is calling him. Wiktor recognizes him immediately. Though he isn’t wearing his kippah, he still looks like a stranger. (Not wearing a kippah is the one concession he felt he had to make in returning to Poland—that and leaving his tefillin and his tzitzit at home. This decision came after a big internal debate, though he felt he was making the right decision in the end.) Alone in the darkened car, Wolf sits below a small brown leather bag placed on the metal rack above his head. His dark beard is thick, and his wavy hair is carefully parted. He wears a lightweight brown woolen suit and a starched collared shirt. There is a discreet tear on the pocket of his shirt, barely visible as he leans against the window, asleep. He flinches, grabbing his glasses before they fall to the floor. Wolf’s eyes open in a blurry manner that reminds Wiktor of his grandson, Mateusz, who always grins absentmindedly while drifting off to sleep. Wolf smiles in the direction of the open train car door, and Wiktor smiles, too, feeling for a moment that he is being seen. Wolf rallies himself and returns to gazing out the window at the last vestige of the night and the passing fields. He questions the world that streams before him. Now I know, he thinks. Now I know that whatever you are away from feels like a dream.

  Wiktor comes to sit beside Wolf on the lumpy old bench. Just as it was with the soldiers in Rybnik, he feels compelled to be here with this man.

  Now Rybnik is behind him. Now Rybnik is everywhere.

  Wolf looks out the window, and Wiktor watches Wolf. The world drifts away as night gives way to dawn and heartbreak, their backs turned toward the future.