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

that you will, he says, and he starts to cry. It’s nice that she isn’t expected to save that Frenchman, that she’s the one who’s supposed to survive.
    She climbs aboard the train.
    She doesn’t try to remember the French name or the address in Provence.
    She has to make a decision: Do I take a seat in the compartment? Stand in the corridor? Hide in the toilet?
The Aunt
    On Nawrot Street the caretaker whistles as he clears the snow with a shovel. A child is building a snowman. The linen press is open, Józio’s aunt carefully removes the sheets from the rollers and folds them. She looks at the kidney stone, moved, and invites Izolda to spend the night at the press.
    Józio’s aunt is officially in the Reich, Warsaw is in the Generalgouvernement. The border isn’t far, you just take the number 12 tram, make your way to Stryków and find someone to take you across. Everybody knows who they are: they trade sugar for stockings and vodka for warm underwear, or else sugar for warm underwear.
    Józio’s aunt generously gives Izolda some socks for the smugglers and a pair of stockings for her, with a long black arrow pattern. She assures Izolda that arrows are the latest fashion, they start above the ankle and have to be darker than the stocking.
Armchair. More Urgent Matters
    One year she will say: I have to look them up. I have to thank Mr Bolek, who led me through the sewers; Józio’s aunt, who gave me presents; the woman in Stryków who cooked dumplings; the German family in Berlin…
    A few more years will pass and she will say: It really is high time I pay them a visit. Mr Bolek. Józio’s aunt. The woman in Stryków…
    She won’t visit anyone. Not that she was ungrateful, on the contrary – she will think about them time and time again. That’s just how it will work out, because there will always be more urgent matters that need attention.
Number 12 Tram
    She takes the tram. She reads the German names of the streets and tries to guess (she doesn’t know why) what they used to be called. The tram comes to some barbed wire and slows down. There’s a guard post and behind it a bearded man wearing a yellow patch on his overcoat. The patch is in tatters, in the shape of a star. In Warsaw they had different stars – blue, on armbands. Seconds later itdawns on her: that man is a Jew. This is the ghetto. She didn’t realize that number 12 went through the ghetto. A few passers-by stop and peer inside the tram. She’s sitting by the window and they fix their gaze on her, on no one else but her. She turns away, but there are people on the other side as well. They just stand there stony-faced, peering inside…
    At the end of the line she gets off together with a young woman her own age. She tells the woman about the forced labour and her escape, the woman invites her home. The woman’s mother is very kind, makes her feel welcome. What do you like, she asks Izolda, dumplings? The mother cooks a pot of dumplings especially for her and mixes in some crackling: eat up, she encourages Izolda, for your health. Well, here things aren’t so sweet for us either, she explains that evening. Business used to be better, the gendarmes were fewer, and now they’re searching everywhere for Jews. They’re looking for Jews and finding all the goods. Eat, child, for your health. They make her bed, cover her with a down duvet and wake her in the middle of the night: the smugglers are here.
    The men look tired and dirty, a little like Bolek’s crew. They take vodka and sugar out of their rucksacks and pack women’s underwear. Izolda trades the socks from Józio’s aunt for a white sheet. They give her instructions: we hold the sheet over our head, we move by jumping and every few metres we crouch down. Then we keep still for a while. Make sure you’re covered by the sheet, it has to touch the snow. Please remember: keep absolutely still. Then we take a few more jumps and crouch down again. We call it rabbit-hopping, think you