The Upright Heart (17 page)

But somebody still loves us. This, I do believe. I don’t know why, but I know that even while I sleep on the grass beneath the bridge I am never truly alone. There is always another day, always a pigeon to nestle in my arms, always a chance to begin again.

Last night I dreamt that the war had never happened and I was with my classmates on the outskirts of Łódź. We were playing hide and seek, and at a certain point I was the only one around. I decided to hike up a hill that was wet with mud. When I got midway, I stopped to take in the view. When I turned to continue walking, I saw someone lying on the ground. I moved toward the figure, and as I got closer, I realized that it was Rachelka lying there, face blue, scattered black hair exposed, eyes closed, body buried up to the neck in a mound of mud. I wanted to wake her with a kiss, but just as I neared the earth she disappeared, and all that was left was a pile of white feathers that fell gently to the ground and a small paper sign that read
Rachelka
in painted cursive letters. It was as if a bird had disappeared in the wake of my kiss.

This cemetery was founded in 1800. It stands at the edge of Ulica Miodowa beside a stone overpass where elevated train tracks run diagonally alongside the grounds. Surrounded by a high wall made of brick and stone, it is not as beautiful as Remuh, but Remuh is no longer a working burial ground. Active for more than two hundred years, Remuh burial ground was shut down in 1799. There were also two other new Jewish cemeteries in Podgórze, across the river, but with the creation of Płaszow camp nearby, they were gradually destroyed. Remuh rests behind the tiny synagogue of the same name, and there you can find the tombstones of many important religious and historical figures, including the great Rabbi Moses Isserles, after whom the cemetery is named; Joel Sirkes; Rabbi Yom-Tov Lippman Heller; and many others who ask to be remembered. Remuh lies on tenderly sloping ground, the perfect
resting place for those who have reserved a place for their memory. One cannot peer at Remuh without wanting to enter, but it has been locked now for many years. The only way to enter is through the courtyard of Remuh synagogue.

This cemetery where we stand at the end of Ulica Miodowa is still in use, though during the war, once the ghetto was built, it was closed for a time. The main pathway was destroyed, and so was the front. Many of the most beautiful graves were destroyed, especially those built of expensive material, such as marble, granite, and syenite. Those gravestones could be used to pave roads, or reused in other, new Christian cemeteries. Now that the war is over, there have been several instances of people taking gravestones, especially those valuable ones that remain, though this practice is more common in other regions of Poland.

There is something in the atmosphere tonight that makes Wolf pause at every corner.

It is almost as if I am dizzy
, he thinks, perplexed by his disorientation.
Everything has happened so fast. What is most amazing is how the world can fall apart, and yet we are all alive, still standing, moving, breathing our air together as if we knew how to share. My heart, my limbs are cut off, and yet I walk down the street looking to the outside world as if nothing has changed, as if I am whole. One era ends, another begins
.

The little boy pauses at a stop sign to gaze up at the moon. Wolf notices his wiry frame, slight even for a boy of eleven. For the past five years this child has had hardly anything to eat. How can Wolf think to leave him behind? The muscles on the boy’s arms are pronounced, and his sandy hair stands on end, as if it too is on the lookout for trouble. How will years of struggle and malnourishment take a toll on his growth? It is hard to know. Somehow Wolf feels
protected by this child, and yet he wishes that he had the capacity to protect him more. He decides that he will have to take him back to New York with him, no matter what. He tells himself that no matter what they have to go through to make it happen, he is ready to suffer the consequences. He has no power to abandon another soul.

They arrive at the street that leads to the cemetery. It curves as if to create privacy and prevent outsiders from looking in. When the gates of the burial grounds come into view, Wolf is overcome by a wave of dizziness, and he finds it difficult to catch his breath.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go inside,” he says in a whispered tone, as if trying to convince himself, and grabs hold of the boy’s arm. The boy stops. The dog stops. Wiktor stops. Everybody waits for Wolf to continue.

“But this is why you are here, to do this,” the boy says, pleadingly.

“Yes, of course. You are right,” Wolf says, taking a breath and shakily buttoning his jacket closed. His next step is firm. The group continues.

When they squeeze through an empty space between the cemetery’s locked gates, they do not notice the three men struggling with a well-rooted gravestone in the right corner of the cemetery. They walk to the left.

“Maybe we should just smash the thing and sell it off in large pieces,” one of the workers suggests, his slim pants clasped shut with an oversize safety pin, a smoldering hand-rolled cigarette permanently resting between clenched lips.

“No, we have to be more careful, otherwise there’ll be no point,” his overweight friend remarks, meticulously removing garden shovel after garden shovel of dirt from around the toppled headstone. “We’ll ruin the grave and have nothing to show for it.” The two men continue their hushed debate while their friend Paweł, an experienced stonemason ten years their senior, sits in silence on an old tombstone. He takes a swig from a small flask of vodka and
leans back along the cool mausoleum to gaze up at the stars. As he lies down, a carefully engraved floral pattern winds around his head like a halo or a painted laurel wreath intended for the bust of an alabaster queen. It is hard to see everything through the newly sprouting branches of the big old trees, but much of the night sky is still visible, as it is still early spring. Little green shoots have no power to obfuscate the sky. Paweł pulls a toothpick from the deep grooves between his teeth and uses it as a baton to gesture at astrological configurations in the night sky. He cannot be bothered with his friends’ debate. They are the ones who work here, who ripped a hole in the gate. They are the ones who need to figure this out. He was asked to come along as an extra pair of hands, as muscle, as backup, and nothing more, so he is happy to keep his mouth shut. He would rather focus on the outline of the big dipper anyway.

The gate is locked for the night, but the stonemason and his friends have left a gap large enough for a man to pass through. As for getting stones out, the men have a plan. Tonight the moon is so bright that every path is lit and there is no need for a lantern. It is the perfect night for doing this.

Wolf and the boy squeeze through the gates.

Anna stands breathless outside the cemetery gates, peering onto the scene.
What the hell am I standing here for, anyway?
she shouts internally, but for whatever reason, she is unable to move.

As they proceed toward the left side of the cemetery, Wolf and the boy are so focused on the task at hand that they are oblivious to the three men at work behind some trees on the right. They do not notice Anna standing behind them, breathless at the gates. Even the boy does not see Olga lying on the ground. She is doing her best to disappear into the earth, though she knows it is an impossible dream. Wiktor senses the presence of someone else like him, and moves off from the group to find this person. Olga lies there recalling an image of two swans floating along the Wisła River earlier today. Love and devotion are everywhere in nature,
but she cannot keep anything for herself. When she sees the tall thin man standing above her, she does not blink an eye.

“I am ravaged,” she says to him without even opening her mouth to make a sound.

“I know,” he responds gently, bending down at her side, removing his hands from his pockets to demonstrate that he has none to show.

“I have nowhere left to go, and for some reason my spirit cannot move on,” Olga says to the man. “I want to cry, but I cannot. I am empty.”

“I know,” he repeats, speaking in his Silesian dialect. He reaches down to scoop her up into his arms. “Come with me,” he says. Olga rises to follow him, her long gray skirt rustling in the wind.

Wolf places his bag on the earth beside the newly erected grave of Róża Berger. She was fifty-six years old. She was killed in a pogrom in Kraków on August 11, 1945. People are coming back. People are coming home. Those Jews that remain in this town are working to find the bodies of their families and friends all around Poland, so that they can return them to Kraków and bury them where they belong. Wolf doesn’t see them, but he hears them call. He removes his prayer book from the bag and strains to see the Hebrew letters in the moonlight. The little dog sniffs around the surrounding area, where there are plenty of hidden treasures beneath the old twisted vines, the moss that for more than a century has spread across these grounds, blanketing the earth with its love and devotion.

“Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.” These are the words that come to him from the Torah as a way to begin. “I traveled back to Poland so that I could be close to you. I thought I would feel you here, but you are already so far away. We regret everything. We weep for you.” Wolf looks up at the night sky as a great black bird flies overhead, the sound of its wings stirring the leaves on the trees. The bird rests on the upper branches of a tree. Wolf takes a
deep breath and sighs, “Please look over those of us who remain.” He begins to recite
“El Malei Rachamim,”
the prayer for the soul of the departed, with the quiet soulfulness of the brokenhearted. “God who is encompassed with mercy.” With each word a weight is lifted from his chest. Soon he feels light. For a moment Wolf imagines he could leave this world behind, shirk his responsibilities and the unbearable pain of living with so much loss. But then how would he do justice to his life and to theirs? No, he must remain here, in Kazimierz, in Poland, in America, on the ground.

The dog lies down in the dirt and listens to the song of his new master, glassy blue eyes tilting toward the heavens. The boy steps off to the side, in the direction of an intact family grave, and sits down on the cold stone lip of a tomb. He feels shy about Wolf’s words. Wolf has distance from the war in a way that he cannot. For Wolf there is a process of mourning and praying and remembering, but for him, there is only a way to live. He leans back against the cold stone tomb, unknowingly mimicking the posture of the man lying at the cemetery’s opposite end.

Now the full moon is rising to a visible position in the sky. It is coming up over Kopiec Piłsudskiego and the abandoned buildings of Podgórze, where the sounds of the ghetto and of the Płaszow camp are still audible to some. The moon is turning its way around the stars, the stars are revolving around the moon, and our world circles around the sun. Everything is moving all the time, and yet if you look up and out, are you able to know and remember that you are on a rotating globe suspended in the atmosphere and that only gravity is holding you down?

This prayer is underway as Olga and Wiktor approach Wolf and the boy. When Olga hears Wolf’s voice her eyes dart around madly, desperate to seek out the source of the sound. Wiktor carefully observes how her face transforms. When she sees Wolf, she jumps behind a tree. She has waited for too long, and doesn’t know how to behave. Will Wolf see her there? Will he feel her presence at all?

At this moment a mouse runs beneath the vines twisted beside the stone walkway, and the dog jumps up to follow the mouse, barking excitedly. Wolf continues his prayer, only louder now, and the chaos of sound reaches the front gate, where Anna is standing. The cacophony floods the cemetery, extending to its four corners, including the place where the men are busy debating the best method of removing a headstone. Paweł, the lazy stonemason who is resting against a tomb, flask in one hand, cigarette in the other, jumps in attention at the noise coming from the other side of the grounds.

“Did you hear that?” he asks his buddies, but they pay him no mind. He asks again.

“Must be from the street,” the thin one says.

“Maybe it’s a ghost,” the other man laughs.

The barking continues, and so does the prayer in song. Filtered through the branches of the trees at the center of the cemetery, the sounds become distant and formless. Paweł listens carefully, jumping to his feet.

“No, it is something,” Paweł insists, reaching for a rock from beside the grave. Sweating now, he edges toward the sound. There is an unexplainable anxiety pumping through his blood. He is unable to distinguish fear from anger, unsure what he is anticipating, if it is just some kind of ghostly presence or else another man, a stonemason, maybe, trying to beat them to the best gravestones around. Determined not to let them win or hurt him, whoever they are, he walks through the trees, approaching the source of the sound, a large rock in hand. Startled by the sudden rush of wings as a black bird flies overhead, he ducks down, nearly falling back into a freshly dug grave. He has to scramble to retain his balance. His head reels from the rush of alcohol and adrenaline. Now his heart is in his throat and he is in a rage as he approaches the figure in the shadows. This area is dark, but he can make out the silhouettes of two men. One man is standing, the other is sitting down. There is also a small animal on the ground.

Wiktor is waiting amid scattered trees. He resembles the stark branch of a tree that has yet to develop new leaves. He is lost in the moment.

Olga is swooning in the moonlight against a tree trunk.

Anna is standing at the gates, tiny beads of sweat pouring down her face as she sees a man crossing the cemetery toward Wolf and the boy. Screaming on the inside, she is suddenly frozen and unable to act.

Just as he did after the train hit him, Wiktor’s body rises and sweeps now through the branches and the tombs, aboard the faint breeze of spring. “Wait for me!” he would shout if only he could. “Don’t move.” But there is no longer any possibility for sound. The best he can do is to rustle the branches of a tree and make a leaf fly into the approaching man’s face, but his diversions are useless, and they come too late.