Read Online Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series) by Hanna Krall - Free Book Online Page A

women… An air-raid siren goes off. They take shelter in an entrance. I’m here, the Frenchman whispers, and shields her with his manly arm, to protect her from the bombs. Panes go flying out of the windows, his words get drowned out by the shattering glass. The planes quieten down one minute and come back the next, like a storm unable to pass. It reminds her of the air raid in Warsaw and the garrison church.
    There was this priest who asked me to pray for him, she tells the Frenchman.
    And?
    Nothing. I didn’t do it.
    Not once? That’s not nice, the Frenchman scolds. Not nice at all…
    She tries to explain as she walks him to the station: I’m saving all my prayers for one person, I don’t have strength to pray for anyone else. Do you understand?
    Of course he does,
ça se comprend.
    The Frenchman goes back to Raddusch.
    An idea hits her and she looks around the station for a train schedule. It’s easy to travel from Raddusch to Cottbus and from there to Łódź, renamed Litzmannstadt.
The Coat
    They don’t work Sundays… No one checks to see if they’re there… That means that all Sunday long no one will be looking for her…
    Saturday evening she takes the local train to Raddusch. She plans to spend the night at Józio’s and leave in the morning. The bed in the little room is occupied, but Józio has important information: he has an aunt in Łódź. Go to Nawrot Street, he says, find the linen press and tell my aunt that I say hello. And give her this (he reaches under his straw mattress and takes out a matchbox containing an oval stone he passed in his urine, in great pain because of his ailing kidney). What’s this for? A present. A keepsake.
    The Frenchman smuggles her inside the POW camp and takes her to the shower room. She can sleep there since it isn’t used at night. He spreads his coat on the floor. He brings her an envelope and a sheet of paper. She sits on the coat – the floor reeks of soapsuds and Lysol – and writes a letter.
    The Frenchman asks who she’s writing to.
    My friend Stefa.
    Is she pretty? asks the Frenchman.
    She has pretty dark-blue eyes, with long lashes.
    (Stefa had a grandmother from Vienna, a crazy mother who ran off with a younger man and a father who was bitter and not good at much. They rented out rooms. When they didn’t have lodgers, Stefa couldn’t afford textbooks or school trips. Izolda very much wanted to help and collected money from friends or sold film tickets at school. So Stefa went on the trip to Wieliczka, but didn’t even give Izolda so much as a crib for the algebra test. I didn’t have time – she explained – I barely managed to finish myself.) Thanks to her Viennese grandmother, Stefa is fluent in German and works at the offices of the Ostbahn railway. She has a locked drawer where she can keep valuables. Izolda left her silver compact there every time she went to see Franciszek.
    Sitting on a coat in the shower room of the French prisoners, she tells her friend that she’s been sick lately. ‘I don’t know if we’ll meet again. If we don’t, give the compact to my husband. If you don’t see my husband, keep it for yourself. I hope it brings you luck.’
    The Frenchman looks over her shoulder and asks what she’s writing about to her pretty friend.
    About a compact.
    The Frenchman is enchanted by her handwriting, by her hand that’s holding the pencil, by her knee that’s holding the paper, by her dusky, silken skin…
    She gets up, undresses, stands under the shower. She turns on the warm water and washes her neck, her breasts,her thighs, her stomach… Here she has no disguise. And here she is no worse than anyone else. She’s not Jewish, not Polish. And she’s prettier than the women who haven’t had teeth knocked out, who don’t get dragged out of rickshaws or shoved into an entrance at dawn.
    Early in the morning they go to the station. She asks the Frenchman to post the letter. He begs her to make it through the war. Promise