Katya was silent for a moment, then said, “I think that’s horrible.”
Jeffrey shrugged. “There are bullies all over the world.”
“I wasn’t speaking of the boy. I can’t believe they brought schoolchildren to see such horrors.”
Jeffrey watched the canopy of verdant tree limbs sweep over their car like a translucent tunnel. Eventually he said, “When I arrived there, that’s exactly what I thought, too. I couldn’t believe there were so many buses in the parking lot—there must have been twenty or thirty of them, mostly Polish but some German and Czech and English. And kids everywhere. Well, not really young kids. Teenagers. Some probably in college, but I guess most were in their last couple of years of high school. And I thought the same thing. How can they allow their own children to come and see such a nightmare. Why keep it alive?
“Afterward, though, when I walked out, I understood. I don’t know if I agree with it, but I do understand, I think. There was one of those barracks, one of the camp halls, that had been set up as a Polish museum. And it wasn’t to the people lost in the camp—well, not most of it anyway. It showed life under the Nazi occupation. Alexander translated some of it for me; it was all in Polish. Besides the millions of Jews who were slaughtered, four million Polish Christians died during the occupation. Four million, Katya.
“That was about one-eighth of the entire population. And that was just the number killed. There was no estimate for those injured. I guess there wasn’t any listing. Let’s make it conservative and say another quarter of the population. And then on top of that, how many carried emotional scars?
“There was one document talking about the critical situation for children. By the winter of 1943, they were being restricted to a diet of two hundred calories a day. I stood there trying to remember what our daily intake is—something around three thousand, I think. Then beside the document they had a photograph of two little kids, ten or eleven years old. They were dressed pretty nice, ragged but clean-looking, the boy in a little suit with short pants and the girl in a dress with a petticoat. They looked like puppets, Katya. Just painted sticks inside clothes five sizes too big. They had little shoes on with newspapers for socks. Their legs were so thin I could have made a circle with my thumb and forefinger around their thighs and still have room left over. Their faces were so shrunken I could see the edges of their skulls jutting out from around their eyes. And their eyes . . . I can’t get them out of my mind. I have nightmares about their eyes.”
The driver turned onto a four-lane highway and speeded up. The road was almost empty. He glanced at his watch and said something. Katya did not reply. Her eyes were fixed on Jeffrey’s face, her attention unwavering. The driver glanced into his rearview mirror, and lapsed into patient silence.
“When I walked out of the camp,” Jeffrey went on, “I looked at all these kids visiting the camp in a totally different way. When I went in, I was watching them and half-wondering which one might have had a relative or the relative of a friend who had been here. When I came out, I wondered if any of them came from a family that didn’t suffer during the war.
“Auschwitz isn’t a monument just to a concentration camp. I didn’t understand that before I went. It is a monument to a tragedy that covered the whole country. Auschwitz wasn’t some isolated island of destruction and death, it was just the eye of the storm. And the storm almost destroyed them.
“Maybe Poland is wrong to show their children this factory of death. There’s always the chance that the kids will go away feeling only hate. But maybe they want their children to be able to come back and understand, this is why Auntie Martha walks funny. And why George’s father’s back is all crooked. And why Grandpa cries whenever he gets drunk and talks about the war. Not because of Auschwitz, but because of what Auschwitz represents.”
Katya’s violet eyes enveloped him. “You’ve changed, Jeffrey.”
He didn’t deny it. “These past couple of days, I have been seeing this whole place differently. Before, I couldn’t help looking down on them—the Poles, I mean. They’re so sad. And it’s really crazy how much they drink, Katya. After seeing Auschwitz, though, I’ve been kicking myself for ever feeling superior. This was just one more horror in centuries of occupation and oppression.”
“You have learned a lot this trip,” she said quietly.
“Back in the camp I was constantly bracing myself. Every time I entered one of those barracks, I felt I had to get ready to face something more horrible than what I’d heard about those places. But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t see anything new. I just came out feeling different.”
“That it was more real for you,” Katya suggested.
Jeffrey shook his head. “No, it’s always been real. But afterward I saw it in a different way. More personal, not for me, but for the people who had died there. They stopped being this incredible number, four million, five million, and started being individuals. The faces on the walls, the glasses, the names on the suitcases. Each belonged to a person. They shouted out, I was somebody. Me.”
He looked out the window. “After it was over I just walked out and returned to the world. I felt such an incredible shock. On one side of the fence is a place of death, and on the other a world of life. I felt as if there should have been a more gradual transition, a no-man’s-land, or at least a warning—beware, beyond this point life starts again.”
He was silent for a long while, staring out at the summer scenery, seeing the shadows of other days crowding up around them. Katya waited patiently, her eyes resting upon him with an unblinking steadiness. “Going there brought all the sadness I’ve found here in Poland into perspective. For the very first time, I’m beginning to understand why so many people walk around wrapped in tragedy. Why so many of the children already look so old.”
“It wasn’t just the Nazis,” Katya said quietly. “You must understand this to understand Poland. Stalin ranks with Hitler as the greatest murderers of modern times. They scarred Poland so deeply that the wounds may never heal. There are no records of how many Poles he shot or sent to Siberia. None. Records were simply not allowed.”
“I tell you,” Jeffrey said. “These have to be the strongest people on earth, not to be crying all the time.”
CHAPTER 18
Rain transformed this world. So long as there was sunshine, it was possible to believe that at least one direction was open to escape. With the rain the sky closed down, a gray ceiling to a wet gray world. The sense of imprisonment was complete.
Jeffrey hurried through the blustery summer rain to Gregor’s apartment, climbed the stairs, found him propped up in bed and looking very worried. “What’s the matter?”
“There has been a most unfortunate change of plans. Have you ever heard of a place called Wieliczka?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“No matter. Poland’s most famous salt mine is located in that village. We store our purchased antiques there.”
“In a salt mine?”
“It has served us well for over twenty years. Cool salt air is ideal for preserving fine wood.” He plucked fitfully at his shawl. “The mine is a labyrinth longer than Poland is wide. During the last war whole airplanes were constructed in its depths. We have handled a number of articles for people of that region, and like miners all over the world, they are experts at keeping secrets.”
“They want more money,” Jeffrey guessed.
“It seems that they too have been hit by the economic crisis,” Gregor agreed. “It is not just that they want more money. I am now concerned at just how long they will remain trustworthy.”
“How much do I pay them?”
“They want another five thousand dollars. I would suggest you agree. Otherwise there is the risk that the articles may not stay sold.” Gregor reached to his side table, and handed over three sheets of paper covered with a cramped scrawl. “I have prepared an inventory of those items I purchased before your arrival. You should use this as an opportunity to make sure
none of the pieces have grown legs.”
Gregor leaned back and seemed to melt into his pillows. “Have a successful trip, my boy. I shall be with you in my prayers.”
* * *
The salt mines’ central building was painted a bright pastel, its wrought-iron gate and ornate veranda giving the place a very cheerful look. Children swarmed and laughed and did nothing to hide their excitement. The adults around them, both those with the children’s groups and other visitors to the mines, watched their antics with genuine fondness.
Katya returned from calling for their contact. She saw the direction of Jeffrey’s gaze as she sat down beside him. “The Polish people truly love their children,” she said. “Oh, there are some exceptions, mostly brought on by too much stress and hardship and alcohol. But for the most part children here are really loved. The majority of parents have forced themselves to develop an incredible amount of endurance and patience for the sake of their children.” She brushed at a wayward strand of silky black hair and went on, “They remain patient with an impossible life, all for their children. They endure suffering so that their children may have a home and food and learn hope. They imagine a better world for their little ones, and now, God willing, they may see it.”
“There is so much to learn here,” Jeffrey said.
Katya pointed to a marble plaque alongside the entrance. “It’s a line of poetry from a Polish writer. It says, ‘You praise what is foreign, and remain blind to the riches at your feet.’ ”
Jeffrey returned his gaze to the children. “This really is a land of contrasts. Night and day. I’ve never been in a place where there is so much to hate, but so much to love as well. So much beauty.”
“A land of night and day,” Katya said, and smiled at him. “I like that very much.”
A young man in miners’ coverall and torch-lit hat made his way through the children. He gave them a perfunctory greeting, asked about Gregor, shrugged at Katya’s reply. He was a short, solidly built man who spoke in quick bursts, which she hurried to translate.
“He says his name is Casimir,” Katya said. “We are here for a private tour if anyone asks, and we are going to take the standard route as far as we can.”
Casimir pushed his way through the heavy fire door and led them down a sloping narrow tunnel. They came to a square mine shaft lined with wooden stairs. Jeffrey took time to look over the banister and saw a group of teenagers descending far below them; beneath that was nothing save the stairs tunneling into darkness.
“There are 320 kilometers of tunnels,” Katya continued to translate. “We’ll go down 300 meters today, which is 890 stairs. He says not to worry; we’ll take the miners’ elevator back to return to the surface.
“This is the oldest working salt mine in the world, and has been in operation for over eight hundred years. The earliest commercial sale document they have is dated 1281, but it speaks of a mine that’s been in existence for at least one hundred years before that.”
It took them almost fifteen minutes to reach what Casimir said was the first of three stages of descent. Jeffrey flexed his knotted leg muscles and reached over to touch what looked like logs frosted with ancient ice. It was salt.
Cramped halls made for people far shorter than he opened unexpectedly into massive domed caverns. Their guide took evident pride in the mine, and showed no hurry in reaching their goal. They passed cavern after cavern filled with statues, all carved from salt by the miners in their free time.
One cavern showed a salt peasant kneeling before a salt queen and her warriors beneath a hoary salt icicle ceiling. “In 1251,” Casimir said through Katya, “Queen Kinga’s father gave her a salt mine in Hungary as a wedding present. She threw her engagement ring into the salt pit to commemorate her ownership. The legend is that a miner here in this very mine, some thousand kilometers away, found the ring. He went to her court, offered the ring, and told her that it was a sign from God for her heart and her wealth to remain in Poland. She went on to become one of Poland’s greatest rulers.”
In the next cavern, another set of salt men knelt and crawled in narrow passages with salt torches held above their heads. “Ever since a fire in 1740,” Casimir told them, “the highest paid miners were the ones who crawled the new passages with torches held to the ceiling. Methane was given off in the mining of salt, and they tried to ignite the little gas bubbles before they gathered. These miners did not usually live long.”
They passed down a second long set of stairs to the mine’s next level, where the air took on a crisp feeling. It tingled in the throat and left the lungs feeling scrubbed.
They entered the largest of the mine’s forty-four underground chapels, where saints, altar, chandelier, walls, chalice and cross were carved from salt. “Construction was started in 1600,” he told them. “And it was used by the miners for weddings, baptisms, funerals, masses, and daily prayers until the Austrians conquered Poland about two hundred years ago. Their governors decided that the Poles prayed too much, and closed all the chapels down.”
The hall was over two hundred feet long. Light came from six fifteen-foot-high salt-crystal chandeliers. He walked in awed silence across a floor shaped like geometrical flagstone, which was also carved from salt. The walls were decorated with salt crystal bas-reliefs from the Gospels—the stable birth, the flight to Egypt, Christ carrying the cross, the Last Supper, Thomas doubting the resurrected Christ.
The passage from the second to the third levels was through a cavern so vast it was hard to catch its height. It twisted around in a rough-edged spiral, crowned with a roof like a thatched cottage—only here the thatch was made from entire trees, and each of the supporting columns from two dozen logs lashed together with iron bands.
At the cavern’s base, Casimir stopped and waited in silence. Jeffrey understood why this place had been chosen; its size gave them the possibility to look both ahead and behind to spot any nearby groups, and the distant walls were perfect reflectors for footsteps and voices. They stood there for about three minutes before Casimir placed a finger to his lips and led them on.
A hundred meters beyond the cavern, Casimir turned off the main corridor into what appeared to be a dead end. He reached inside a box set above the wall’s support logs, and switched on a light; instead of a simple indentation in the tunnel, they faced a metal gate. Beyond it a narrow corridor stretched down at least a quarter mile.
Walking the corridor’s length was the only moment during the entire passage that Jeffrey felt the weight of stone and salt and earth bearing down above his head. From ahead of him Casimir spoke in a low voice, and Katya translated, “Down here they developed chambers where the entire collections of both the Vavel Castle Museum and the National Museum can be kept in an emergency. Otherwise they aren’t used—except by us.”
He stopped before a door recessed in the side wall, like hundreds of others they had passed, marked in no way at all.
The overhead bulb came on to display a chamber stuffed with antiques. Jeffrey fumbled for Gregor’s list, began checking off items, resisted the urge to hunker and gawk. A set of Louis Phillippe furniture. An early German secretary so inlaid with burl veneer it was hard to tell the original wood. An English commode of mahogany in impeccable condition. A bureau cabinet, possibly of fruitwood, definitely central European, the ornate carving around its edges creating a frame for the grain’s natural artistry. A fin de siècle glass-fronted cabinet, its sides carved into a bouquet of blooming lilies.
Jeffrey maneuvered his way among the room’s treasures through the narrow U-shaped passage. When he returned to the entrance he was sweating. “All there,” he reported.
“Of course it is,” the man replied through Katya, his eyes turning hard. “For now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Prices of everything are going up faster than anyone can believe,” Katya translated. “Storage space especially.”
“We were told that you wanted another payment,” Jeffrey repli
ed, forcing his voice to remain steady. “I’ve been authorized to pay you.”
The miner’s eyes held a greedy light. He spoke again, and Katya said, “There’s a lot of wealth here. Somebody is getting very rich from all this.”
“You’re getting your share.”
“That’s good to hear.” Casimir nodded in the direction of the room. “We have to work day and night to make sure nobody gets in and steals away these riches.”
* * *
“The furniture has to be moved soon,” Alexander told him by phone that evening.
“Gregor agrees with you. He said that if we can’t get the export documents and move it out of Poland, he has another place where we can take the items. It’s an old folks’ home he works with who’ll give us part of their cellar.”
“Such a move would be expensive,” Alexander said. “And risky.”
“Gregor wants to know how long you think it will be before the furniture leaves Poland.”
“That is hard to say,” Alexander replied. “I needed to make new contacts this trip.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“It would be far better to obtain the proper export documents and ship the furniture immediately.” Alexander paused. “I am indeed sorry to burden you with all this your first trip, Jeffrey.”
“It happens. To tell the truth, I’m really enjoying myself.”
“Indeed. Experience is most certainly the best teacher.”
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