Nocturne

by Diane Armstrong

  ‘Matron, I’m want to talk to you, please.’

  Judith lay down the file. ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘I’m want to go,’ Elzunia said.

  ‘Go?’ Judith repeated. ‘Go where?’

  ‘Go from hospital.’

  Judith gripped the fountain pen. Kathleen had already told her that Adam would be discharged in a day or two. So that was it. ‘I suppose you’ll be leaving together?’ she said through dry lips.

  Elzunia nodded, surprised that Matron needed to ask whether she was taking the children.

  Well, that takes care of my dilemma, Judith thought as she stared into space. She glanced at her watch and with an effort heaved herself to her feet. It was time for her ward round. ‘I’ll give you a reference,’ she said stiffly, and left the room.

  She glanced perfunctorily at the patients’ charts and continued on her way without stopping to chat to anyone. When she came to the men’s ward, instead of hovering at the door to speak to the sister and then hurrying on, as she had been doing for the past two weeks, her eyes sought out the figure sitting by the window. Adam held a newspaper in his hands but was staring straight ahead. He turned and she was impaled on his stare. It was too late to retreat.

  She walked slowly towards him. ‘I hear you’re leaving soon.’

  He nodded.

  There were razors in her throat. ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Canada.’

  ‘They have very cold winters there,’ she said.

  He gave a bitter laugh. ‘It will be less cold than in here.’

  She looked down at her hands. ‘I suppose the children will enjoy the snow.’

  He frowned. ‘What children?’

  ‘Zbyszek and Gittel. Elzunia’s taking them, isn’t she?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I thought you … I thought Elzunia and you …’ She didn’t know how to finish.

  He flung his newspaper aside. ‘Thought what?’

  ‘I thought Elzunia would be going with you,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘Judith, what are you playing at?’ he shouted. ‘You told me in London that you were no good at games but I think you underestimated your deviousness and overestimated your honesty.’

  ‘You think I’ve been devious? What about you, pretending to care about me when all the time Elzunia was the one you wanted?’

  His face was taut and white. ‘Cholera psia krew,’ he swore. ‘Bloody hell! You’re crazy, you know that? Absolutely crazy!’ He stared at her for a moment. ‘So this is what it’s been about! You decided I was in love with Elzunia. And you didn’t even think of asking me. You just assumed you knew it all.’

  He was digging his fingers into her shoulder and she moved away from his grasp. She wanted to explain that it wasn’t like that, but he was too angry to listen. Whatever she said, she’d sound like a fool and, anyway, it was too late.

  Her face was flaming and she couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I should have asked you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’ he repeated. ‘You ruin everything and say sorry as if you’re late for lunch?’

  She rose. There was no point prolonging this torture. She was already walking towards the door when he said, almost under his breath, ‘Judith, why didn’t you trust me?’

  There was nothing she could say. His words resounded in her head as she strode to her office with a grim expression that defied anyone to stop her on the way. She closed the door but didn’t know what to do with herself. It reminded her of the time she had visited a friend’s sheep property near Bathurst and had sat on an ants’ nest. Thousands of furious insects had swarmed all over her but jumping up and down, stamping and flailing her arms had failed to dislodge them. She had wished she could run away from herself, and that’s how she felt now.

  She had to get away to some secluded spot where no one would hear her shouting in frustration. After giving Kathleen instructions to take over, she hurried from the hospital. The morning air felt cool on her skin and as soon as she turned towards the woods, she breathed in the scent of pine needles and began to relax. Sunlight dappled the ground between the trees and larks were twittering in the branches. When she reached the clearing, she sat down at the base of a massive oak, leaned against its hard, ridged trunk, and closed her eyes. Somewhere a cuckoo was calling to its mate. Coming to the woods was usually as calming as a meditation, but this time her agitated mind would not be stilled.

  What hurt most was knowing that it was all her fault. Arrogance and false pride. The cuckoo’s mate called back and the birds flew off. Judith scrambled to her feet and walked slowly back, shoulders hunched, head down. There was no escape from the pain and no solace in nature. As she returned through the hospital gate, she wondered whether she had thrown away her chance of happiness because she didn’t think she deserved to be loved.

  Back at her desk, she tried to focus on the report again when there was a knock at the door. Probably morning tea.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she called out.

  But the door opened and her heart stopped beating because Adam was standing there. She took a deep breath. From the look on his face, she supposed he’d come to tear strips off her again.

  He was already inside the office and had closed the door behind him. ‘I want to know one thing,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘If you didn’t want me, why didn’t you just say so? Or did you invent this absurd story because you didn’t have the courage to tell me the truth?’

  ‘If you think that, you don’t know the first thing about me,’ she said quietly.

  ‘How can I know you? You are completely irrational.’

  Judith opened her mouth to justify herself and stopped. Words could never explain or convey the regret that threatened to choke her.

  He was looking into her face with a searching expression. Then he gripped her arms and pressed her against him. Judith closed her eyes. When this moment ends, it will all be over, she thought.

  ‘Judith,’ he said hoarsely.

  She held her breath.

  ‘When I woke up in here that day and saw you standing there, I knew there was a God,’ he whispered.

  She tried to speak but no words came out, and all she could do was tighten her arms around him and press her face against his cheek. Then she looked up. For the first time since they had met, Adam was smiling.

  Sixty-Seven

  Dreams and premonitions were all very well, Elzunia thought as the train rushed through the Polish countryside, but what if she’d made a terrible mistake? Now that she had said goodbye to Adam, she felt like an empty husk. For six years she had fantasised about him, longed for him and idolised him, and now she had tossed the dream away. The train emitted a piercing shriek, hurtled around a bend, then gathered speed. Zbyszek sat with his nose pressed against the dust-streaked window, but Gittel was already dozing, her head against Elzunia’s shoulder.

  One cluster of small wooden houses with chicken coops and straggly tomato plants followed another until it seemed as if the whole country were a single village intersected by fields. Flocks of jays winged across the ripening wheat, corn and barley, which swayed in the light breeze. On the banks of slow-flowing streams, willows dipped their drooping boughs into the water. In contrast to the summery brightness of the countryside, she sensed a tired greyness about the people who bent over the fields or leaned against their fences.

  The other occupants of the compartment looked preoccupied and spoke little, except for a garrulous fellow who scratched his blotchy hands while eyeing his neighbours with an inquisitive gaze as he tried to engage them in conversation.

  ‘Just look at this country,’ he said in a querulous voice. ‘Small fields, smaller fields, and peasants ploughing with horses. How’s this country ever going to pick itself up, can you tell me that?’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Did we win the war or did we lose the war, that’s what I want to know.’ He scanned the faces around him for a response.
>
  The man who’d boarded the train at the last station unbuttoned his trenchcoat, placed his felt hat on the rack, and leaned forward. ‘What did you expect?’ he said with a shrug. ‘Our so-called allies sold us down the river and no one gives a shit.’ He lit a cigarette with fingers stained with nicotine and inhaled, releasing a column of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Twenty years of independence and three hundred years of oppression — that’s been our lot.’

  They continued complaining, but, from the way they skirted around the current political situation, Elzunia figured they were sounding each other out. After all, you never knew who you were talking to these days. Your fellow passenger could be working for the secret police.

  After a desultory conversation about postwar shortages and the problems of relocation, their glance rested on a young man with semitic features sleeping in the opposite corner. The man with the skin condition lowered his voice as he scratched his hands. ‘They reckon the Nazis killed them all off in those camps, but how come there’s so many of them left? People are shaking in their boots because they’re coming back in droves and demanding their houses back.’

  The smoker nodded as he blew another column of smoke towards the ceiling.

  ‘Why shouldn’t the Jews reclaim what’s theirs?’ Elzunia blurted out. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  The two men exchanged glances. ‘What’s it to you?’ the smoker said.

  ‘I can’t stand prejudice,’ she said and turned away.

  Gittel mumbled something and wriggled around until her head lay in Elzunia’s lap. The train clattered around a sweeping curve so that they could see the engine through the window.

  ‘Look at our train!’ Zbyszek shouted, pressing his nose harder against the glass for a better view. Elzunia nodded absently. This was her country, but, for people like these men, she and the children weren’t part of it and never would be. They were doomed to sit between two worlds, belonging neither to one nor the other, always listening out for what was said and what was left unsaid.

  As the train approached Warsaw, her heart beat wildly. In her haste to leave Germany and begin a new life, she hadn’t anticipated how emotional her return would be. Memories she had managed to suppress for the past year overwhelmed her. She fixed her eyes on the view and set her jaw. Perhaps one day she would let go and grieve, but for now she had to keep herself together.

  The train jerked to a halt at Gdansk Station, where sombre-faced people waited on the windswept platform. Downstairs, in the bare forecourt, she gripped the children’s hands and felt hers become damp with sweat. Hawkers hovered around the entrance selling books, touts offered accommodation, while black marketeers, their hats pulled low over their foreheads, looked over their shoulders as they accosted passersby with offers to exchange currency.

  It seemed to Elzunia that her whole life consisted of arrivals and departures, and once again she was alone in a strange place. She asked for a telephone book at the ticket office and scanned the pages for Aunt Amalia’s new address, wondering what kind of welcome she would receive. She hardly knew her father’s sister, who had moved from Warsaw many years ago after her husband died. If her father hadn’t mentioned it, she wouldn’t have known that her aunt had returned to her husband’s family home. Let her be home, please let her be home, she thought as she dialled her aunt’s number.

  Half an hour later, as the tram rattled towards her aunt’s place, she looked out of the window at the damaged tenements and bullet-scarred apartment buildings and her heart sank. This was Praga, the part of Warsaw on the right bank of the Vistula. Now that the bridges linking it with the Old Town had been destroyed, it seemed cut adrift from the rest of the city. Past the industrial section, with its vodka distillery, conserve factory and desolate streets lined with shabby buildings, they came to the leafy suburb of Saska Kepa. Before the war, international diplomats and affluent residents like her aunt had lived in handsome villas on streets that were named after their countries. Elzunia checked the scrap of paper on which she’d jotted down Aunt Amalia’s address. Her house was on Francuzka Street, where the French embassy had once stood.

  Before Elzunia had time to ring the doorbell, her father’s sister was already at the door, arms outstretched to enfold her. Several times Aunt Amalia tried to say something but each time the words died inside her throat. She drew Elzunia and the children inside and, without speaking, gazed at her niece with such compassion in her eyes that Elzunia choked up. Stroking her head, Aunt Amalia kept saying, ‘Thank God. Thank God you’re alive.’

  Tears flowed down Elzunia’s cheeks. She had found her own flesh and blood, someone who cared about her. At last there was a warm corner of the world where she belonged, someone’s affection she could count on.

  Aunt Amalia’s glance fell on the children, who were watching her, wide-eyed and silent. ‘Poor little mites!’ she cried. ‘Look at them; they’re as quiet as mice. They must be hungry and exhausted.’

  She disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later she emerged, and Gittel and Zbyszek’s eyes lit up when they saw her carrying glasses of milk and big slices of yeast cake. She watched with an indulgent smile as the children tucked in.

  After the children were in bed, Elzunia and her aunt sat up talking late into the night. All the pent-up sadness, grief and disillusionment of the past six years finally poured out and Elzunia cried as she hadn’t cried since she was a child.

  She cried for her mother and for all the parts of her own life that had died with her, for the world that had vanished never to return, and for the innocence buried beneath the ashes. She cried for the betrayal of humanity and the betrayal of nations. She cried for those who had enriched the world by their courage and those who had besmirched it by their cruelty. She cried for her friends whose future had been swept away, but most of all she cried for the love that had been snatched from her.

  And then she cried because Aunt Amalia was holding her and crying with her. When her sobs finally subsided, she felt lighter, as though the tears had washed away her loneliness.

  When she woke the following morning, Aunt Amalia was fussing over Gittel and Zbyszek, who were already at the table, stuffing themselves with bread and cottage cheese. She beamed when she saw Elzunia, and, sitting down beside her, took her hand.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about your poor mother, and what you both went through,’ she said softly.

  She poured Elzunia some black coffee from the enamel jug and sighed. ‘There’s so much cruelty in the world. The priests say it’s because of original sin, but I don’t believe that.’

  She buttered another slice of bread for Zbyszek. ‘You know, my science teacher used to say that the stars in the sky outnumber all the people that have ever lived on earth. Whenever I’m upset with the human race, I look up at the stars.’ She shook her grey head. ‘I can’t begin to comprehend how you managed to survive in the Old Town during the Uprising, let alone look after these two.’

  At the mention of the Old Town, Elzunia winced. Now that she was back in Warsaw, memories of Andrzej hovered in the air around her like wasps waiting to sting. She swallowed and forced herself to turn her attention to Aunt Amalia. Absorbed in her own experiences, she hadn’t asked how she had managed during the war.

  ‘There were times I thought I’d go deaf from all the bombing and shelling, but we didn’t have it nearly as bad on this side of the river as you did,’ she said. ‘We thought it was all over when the Red Army stopped practically on our doorstep just before the Uprising broke out. But, as you know, instead of advancing to help the insurgents, they stayed put.’ She sighed. ‘Life is so strange. One of my most vivid memories of the war was the day they bombed the zoo in 1939. The power of the blast made the metal grilles fly off the cages like iron filings. The poor animals were either wounded or covered in flames. The keepers shot some of them to put them out of their misery, but most of the animals died in agony. I’ll never forget the sight of the elephants’ hides all blistered from the white ph
osphorus,’ she said. ‘I can still hear them trumpeting and screaming, as though they were crying over their dead.’

  She blew her nose. ‘It seems to me that during the war, the animals behaved like humans, but so many humans behaved like wild beasts.’

  After a pause, she sat forward. ‘I’ll tell you something interesting. After the zoo was destroyed, the director found another use for it. He used the empty cages to hide the Jews whom he and his wife rescued from the Ghetto. Isn’t it strange how life takes so much away but gives something back when you least expect it?’

  While Aunt Amalia was talking, Elzunia looked for some resemblance to her father. Her hair, twisted into a bun, was completely grey but the well-shaped head was the same, and they both had a long upper lip, which her father concealed with his moustache. Although their features were different, there was something similar about their smile.

  At first, whenever Aunt Amalia asked about her brother, Elzunia’s curt, detached replies discouraged her from pursuing the subject. But after several days had passed, she broached the subject again.

  ‘I sense you’re reluctant to talk about him, and I’m sure you have your reasons,’ she said gently, ‘but I need to know what’s happened to my brother.’

  Unable to suppress her confusion and anger any longer, Elzunia launched into a lengthy, disjointed account about her father. ‘He said someone told him we were dead,’ she said at the end. ‘But how come he never checked if it was true? And then there was that business about the girl next door …’ She trailed off, tearing at her thumbnail.

  Aunt Amalia placed her wrinkled hands on Elzunia’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. ‘That must be very upsetting for you,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know how easy it was to find out what was going in the Ghetto after it was closed. And I have no idea whether my brother told you the truth about that girl or not. All I know is that he has always been a man of his word, but war sometimes changes people.’