Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series) (9 page)

The cell has two bunks, two chairs and a toilet bowl, all fastened to the wall and the floor. The window is barred and boarded from the outside. Light seeps in through the crack between the plywood and the window frame. The bed folds up like a bunk in a sleeping compartment, except it has a lock – and the key is with the guard. If she sits on the toilet bowl she can rest her legs on one of
the chairs. She glances over the newspaper, then folds the printed sheets and tears them into strips, which she wraps around strands of her hair. She sleeps in the curl papers, under a drab-coloured, coarse, thin blanket. In the morning they give her a new paper, a cup of ersatz coffee and a slice of bread. The guard locks the bunk and looks at her curled-up hair. Why are you doing that? he asks. Because… She takes out the curl papers and combs her hair. They fall on to her shoulders the way she wanted, with a nice curl at the bottom. Get ready, says the guard, you’re going to the Gestapo.

The black van with the barred windows stops in the courtyard. Izolda enters room 121. A man is seated behind the desk. He has a nondescript face, light hair and a darker moustache, closely cropped and stiff. He orders her to stand next to the wall and asks her the purpose of her trip to Vienna. She says that she was carrying tobacco. The Gestapo officer gets up, walks around the desk, slaps her across the face and returns to his seat. This slap is different from the one in Radom, the motion lasts longer, the hand is heavier and the pain is more severe. The blow knocks her head against the wall and her false tooth goes flying out. She can feel the sharp, metal screw inside her mouth. She looks around anxiously; the tooth is underneath the desk. The Gestapo man reaches for a cigarette, inhales, looks to see why she is crawling under the desk, examines the tooth and lets her put it in her
pocket. He asks where she got her
Marschbefehl
. She tells him the truth, because the engineer’s colleague’s signature was on the permit. Why were you going to Vienna? I was carrying tobacco… and the Gestapo officer gets up behind the desk.

Every other day the same van takes her to Gestapo headquarters. The same officer orders her to stand next to the same wall.

On the second day he asks how long she’s been working for the Polish underground –
die polnische Untergrundbewegung
. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about and tells him she isn’t working for any underground.

With each blow the back of her head hits the wall. The tooth no longer goes flying out, since she takes it out herself while still in the van. After a few slaps she feels a ringing in her head and has trouble hearing. The Gestapo officer assures her he knows all about the couriers between Poland and Anders’s army in Italy. She ran the route from Warsaw to Vienna, but who went from Vienna to Italy? Have you remembered?

Izolda is aghast.

The Count is getting her husband out of the camp. He’s going to need money. She didn’t send any packages to Mauthausen and the Gestapo officer thinks she’s working for the Polish underground.

The idea of working for the underground didn’t even cross her mind. The Polish underground was not her
cause. Her cause was her husband and joining the resistance would only jeopardize that. If the underground wanted to help her husband, then maybe she’d do something for them, but since Shayek didn’t matter to General Anders, what did she care about him or his couriers?

I don’t care about Anders, she repeats, but the Gestapo officer doesn’t believe her: You don’t fool me, all you Poles are working for the bandits.

She can’t contradict him, she has to be like all you Poles. There, you see, the Gestapo officer says, with a note of triumph. So who was the link between Vienna and Italy?

The door to the next room has a thick hook set inside the frame. The Gestapo officer orders her to stand on a stool. He twists her arms behind her back, cuffs them and hangs her on the hook. First he makes sure it will hold and then he kicks the stool out from under her legs. The pain in her shoulders is excruciating. She dangles just over the floor: if she could only stretch her toes out just a little bit, she thinks, then she could support herself. She tries with all her might to touch the floor.

It’s July, the sun is shining, she notices a bright, sunny circle on the floor. She is still conscious. The Gestapo officer paces up and down the room. He’s bored, he makes a phone call, arranges to meet someone for a walk on Sunday. He returns to Izolda, adjusts the hook, raising her feet. He tells her he’d prefer to treat a woman more politely, but he has to find out a few details. For example, who ran things to Anders in Italy?

He takes her off the hook and lets her clean up. The room has a marble sink with a crystal mirror – clearly the Metropol was a high-class hotel.

In the mirror she sees a ghastly, swollen face, with eyes popping out of their sockets. She steps back in horror – and so does the face. She steps forward – and the face comes closer. She takes another step and realizes there’s nothing to be afraid of because she is walking towards herself.

After the interrogation she returns to the prison, which the locals nicknamed Liesl, from Elisabeth – the street used to be called the Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Promenade. Liesl’s guards aren’t the worst. They unlock her bunk even though it’s daytime and give her some cold compresses. A doctor sets her shoulders.

I don’t know a thing about any Anders, she tells the guard. Because I’d say something if I did. She is speaking Polish. The guards think she’s raving or else revealing some conspiratorial secrets and warn her to calm down. But she’s not raving. She would confess any secret – Polish, Jewish, it doesn’t matter. First she’d try to make a deal: I’ll tell you about Anders, if my husband… and maybe she’d get him out of the camp. Unfortunately she doesn’t know any secrets. She lies on the bunk and thinks these thoughts with no guilty conscience, only regret.

Izolda is walking down the corridor to room 121.

And coming from the opposite direction, from the depths of the corridor, is the Count, led by two escorts.

They walk past each other. The Count has a calm, almost cheerful face, he doesn’t look at her, doesn’t betray her with the slightest gesture. Of course, she thinks
– Vienna, Anders, northern Italy… it’s the Count. He was helping the resistance, not her husband. She feels a bitterness rising within her. The resistance has thousands of people, but she has only one husband, and now he’s alone and defenceless, robbed of all help.

That night she dreams about both men. They’re inside a church, she’s standing off to the side, while the Count leads her husband through all the holy icons, flowers and candles. She doesn’t know if she’s allowed to join them, so she stays where she is, and they pass by with indifferent, unseeing faces. Like the Count at the Gestapo headquarters. Like Izolda when she passed her husband’s mother… In her dream, her husband is very handsome, slender, his hair like a golden helmet. And his eyes so intensely blue that they can be seen right across the whole church.

On her way to the interrogation, she wonders what her dream might have meant.

She steps into room 121.

The Gestapo officer stands up from behind the desk, steps towards her – and does not put her in handcuffs.

He offers her a chair and says: Please sit down.

She sits.

The Gestapo officer gives a faint smile. We know the truth, he says. You are a Jew, or am I mistaken?

She says nothing.

A Jew. And then? They’ll shoot me. Within twenty-four hours, like the Jews at Pawiak. And then? There won’t be any stool. There won’t be any hook…

I think I’ve had enough, she says in Polish, and hears Halina’s voice.

The Gestapo officer doesn’t understand Polish.

I’m saying that you are right. I’m Jewish.

Something strange happens. The Gestapo officer’s face lights up and he leans towards her with the gallantry of a waiter: Would you like some tea? Coffee? A woman in a summer suit brings in a coffee pot, two cups and a plate with some cake. The Gestapo officer urges her to eat and starts to explain, in a normal, human voice.

If you were working for General Anders, you would be our enemy. Naturally you would die just like an enemy does. Since you are a Jew, naturally you’ll also die, but you aren’t guilty…

She doesn’t quite understand.

You can’t be guilty for the faith of your fathers, the Gestapo officer explains.

I can’t be guilty, she repeats. But naturally I will die…

That’s the law, Frau Maria. Good that we got things cleared up…

Frau Izolda, she corrects him.

What a beautiful name. But why,
Isolde
, are you admitting that you are a Jew?

Because I’ve had enough!

That’s what her husband’s sister Halina had said. Halina, who is no longer alive. Izolda thinks: And I won’t worry any more that I didn’t fetch her in time. I won’t worry about anyone any more.

Dawn. She lies on her bunk and hears the clanging of keys. The door opens. Two guards are waiting outside her
room. She gets up off the bed. They move without haste, she in the middle and the guards on either side. They go down into the yard. It’s exercise time and the prisoners are walking one behind the other. She recognizes her husband right away: he’s taller than the rest and stands very straight… He notices her – and quickly looks the other way. She understands: he’s afraid she’ll give him away with a look… That she’ll say something… Her husband knows exactly where she is going and wishes she would go a little faster… Perhaps he even prays that she will step more quickly… There, says the guard, and points to the prison entrance. The gate is open and she can make out a faint light, as though a lantern were burning in the distance. There, the guard repeats. Can you make it by yourself?

She is awakened by the clanging of keys. She jumps up from the bunk, the guard opens the door. No, he hasn’t come for her at all. He’s simply brought another prisoner.

The woman introduces herself: Nicole, I’m French, and you?

Izolda, I’m Jewish…

She hasn’t said that since the war began. It’s not so hard to say, either, perhaps because she says the word in German:
Jüdin
. She tries it out in French:
Juive
. Then a little louder, in three languages:
żydówka, Jüdin, Juive.
It sounds worst in Polish, because of the hard consonants.

Nicole studied history at the Sorbonne, then worked in a factory. She travelled to Vienna with her fiancé. Both were arrested, her fiancé is also locked up in Liesl.

Why did you work in a factory? asks Izolda.

What do you mean why? To be with the proletariat.

And why did you go to Vienna?

What do you mean why? Somebody has to do the work here.

She’s never heard that kind of talk before. She figures it must be communist jargon, but she’s never seen a communist in person before. Nicole amazes her. Do you think they might kill your fiancé? she asks.
Naturellement
. And then what will happen? Nothing, others will take over his work. I’m asking about you, not about his work. Nothing, either they will kill me as well or else I will try to do the work without him.

She tells Nicole about the Gestapo officer who knew she wasn’t guilty.

If I survive this war… she says. If my husband survives… And if our children are bound to die… But what am I blabbing about? she says, and superstitiously spits on the floor of the cell.

Every morning they hear the men marching past their cell on their way to the toilets. Every morning someone whistles a French song outside their door. That’s him! Nicole cries out, and rushes to the spyhole, overjoyed. The footsteps fade away and Nicole sings the whole song out loud, all the way to the end.

Following Nicole’s example, Izolda sings sentimental hits from before the war:
So what does our love really matter, it’s between you and me, who cares if our lives
become sadder, that’s between you and me, who’ll cry after harsh words are spoken…
When she comes to the line
and who’ll die when hearts both get broken
she starts to cry. She pulls her cards out from under the straw mattress and lays them out to read. She just wants to know one thing: What’s happening with the king of hearts? Is he once again out the door and on the move?

She made the cards out of the margins of the
Völkischer Beobachter.
She borrowed a safety pin from a guard and marked the spades and clubs by punching different-sized holes in the paper. For the diamonds and hearts she pricked her finger and used her blood. She shuffles carefully, but – unfortunately – the king usually winds up stuck in the middle of the other cards. The only one out the door is herself, the queen of hearts, which Nicole interprets rationally: The Red Army is on its way. Our Soviet brothers are coming closer, they’re already in Hungary. Their tanks will attack Vienna at any moment.

Nicole firmly believes that the cell doors will burst open and our Soviet brothers will be standing there and say: Comrades, you are free. (Nicole doesn’t know what this will sound like in Russian, so Izolda tells her:
Tovarishchi, vy svobodny
.)

The door does open and the guard – the same one who gave her the safety pin and sometimes brings her an extra portion of bread – says to Izolda: Pack your things, you’ll be leaving today. How should I know where?

She says goodbye to Nicole: Greet your Soviet brothers for me (
Bon voyage,
queen of hearts, replies Nicole) – and follows the guard.

The cells in Liesl don’t open on to corridors but are arranged around a kind of hall with a stairwell in the middle. Izolda goes down the stairs to the office, where they return her medallion and her
café au lait
handbag from Herse’s. It has a comb and a Bakelite compact (she left the silver one with Stefa). She adds her curling paper and the cards she made from the newspaper. She also puts in her false tooth, although that doesn’t make much sense: the Gestapo officer knocked out two more, at the front. She didn’t pick them up, she didn’t have the strength, but she carefully stows the artificial one, even though it’s no longer of use. The guard waits for her to pack her belongings and takes her to the black van.