The Upright Heart (6 page)

Never a stone is thrown. Not even just to see if that little bird can move again.

And when Mateusz will turn eight years old and return home from a weeklong trip to the sea with his grandmother, Waleria, to heal his stomachaches that come every other day or so, he will
gather his newfound strength and learn archery. Never a stone has been thrown, but one day he will go out into the forest with his friends from down the road, his little brothers tagging along, the middle brother sitting on the handlebars of his bicycle, and the youngest on his shoulders while he rides. He is so talented with a bow and arrow that he wants to show off to his little brother and his friends his tight white shorts and the long lean muscles on his legs. He chooses a target on an old pine tree, but when Wojtek, his classmate, jumps before the pine, Mateusz misses piercing his face by a fraction of a second. Both boys run home crying, and neither one of them ever picks up a bow and arrow again. In fact, these two boys will cease to be friends. They still run around in the same little pack, but it will be years before they talk or look into each other’s eyes again. Wojtek remains afraid of Mateusz, and Mateusz, when he looks into Wojtek’s eyes, can see only his own vulnerability, and there is nothing so frightening in this world.

In the forests of Podlasie, spring is the reward for an endless snowfall and for the mud that follows. Wolf walks slowly away from the market square in the southern part of town, passing the old mikveh on Ulica Szkolna. Besides this charred and empty space is blackened ground that was once occupied by the central synagogue. Down the street in the house where the rabbi once lived there is now a storage room for the town. Abandoned chairs and desks and unused doors can be seen through the broken, stained glass windows. Stuffed velvet couches, ornate mirrors, mezuzahs scattered on the floor.

Wolf closes his eyes in order to see what was. He sees the rabbi at the bimah, and his father standing with him, opening the gates to the Torah. He recalls his own bar mitzvah, reciting his parsha, and the excitement of remembering, of being honored, of becoming a man.

Wolf continues to walk toward the forest with Wiktor and the little stray dog in tow. It is Sunday, yes, and the town seems empty as people find themselves hidden at home or in church. Not one store is open, not one public space has movement, none other than the town square where people are sitting outside after church, or the train station where people come and go.

Leather bag slung over his shoulder, Wolf takes careful footsteps as branches crunch beneath his feet. He makes his way to a desolate graveyard, a large pile of stones in its center.

*

When gravestones crumble they look just like any other ruin. A pile of rock in a desert or a field, a forest hidden from those who wish to forget. It begins with a word. A word marks the beginning, the destruction, that which binds me to you. If you reverse the letters you may find the hero inside. This is the last word. These tombstones are scattered letters, sparks of light, the Torah destroyed, Shekinah’s whisper in the night.

How can you identify which stones belonged to him? And which to her? They are all jumbled together. Some still stand, but they are only half of what once was. They have become a massive pile of rock, a jigsaw puzzle that might never be solved. I know. I have stood at the base of that pile and tried to envision their reconstruction, but I tell you, there is no way. They are the Pyramid of Giza, the pantheon opening up its vast eye to the gods. They are a testament to a people forgotten.

A call to the forgotten ones. Will you hear their sound? Look on them, the fragments of graves, and none of them say your family name. None of them tells the brief story of your mother, Sara Ain, beloved wife of Menachem, mother to Leye and Wolf, 1902–1942. None but you. You tell it. And even though you feel as
if you are in the dark, there is a world spinning around you, and all those souls are waiting to hear their name called. Tell it.

*

There are certain words that cannot reach Wolf’s lips without getting caught in a net of despair. Words get locked where they should be expelled. They hover in the air that lingers between breaths, returning to his body where they reside in the chest as woeful and unrelenting pain. There are some words that, once spoken, hit the brain like a signal that brings the truth to mind, words you have to live and go on living. You have to bring new life into this world and not fear for it this destiny. You must tell this life about the beauty and joy of living and try to forget. But in your deepest whisper that flows from your veins down to your child’s, you will say,
Inside these immoveable walls there is a story to tell
, and you will know it without knowing it, and it will be the secret that is spoken through actions and not words. It will be alive in your genes, and in your life you will speak it silently, but it will show in your movement and in your deepest fears. There are certain words that cannot be sung, even though they are this song. They catch in the throat and return to your heart, from which nothing must escape, and so you breathe slowly, carefully, never to breathe in her love again.

Wolf stands amid a sea of matzevot, a pile of rubble that was once the Jewish cemetery of N, and begins to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. He knows there should be nine other men standing with him, but it doesn’t matter today. Those nine men are lost in the ashes of a forgotten world. They are scattered in Bełżec, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, in the forests near Zabłotczyzna, names that will occupy his mind for a lifetime. He sings for them, for his mother and father, for his sister, Leye, and for Olga, who burns bright inside him. She died trying to save them. Who will save her now?

*

Wolf, if only you could see me now. “Olga,” you would whisper, saying my name the way no one else can, but I know you would be afraid. My face is so pale, I cannot recognize my own reflection. How I missed you during the war, but how grateful I was that you were not there to see me anymore. How I thanked the heavens that you could not witness the anguish and fear that ravaged my face and body, leaving me a remnant of myself. I clung to the image of myself in your mind. I remembered that girl, too, that beautiful me.

In the distance, the lights of Kraków look like fairytale lanterns decorating the pages of a storybook life. They remind me of a story I used to read as a child before I went to sleep at night. It was about a Swedish family that celebrated Santa Lucia every year at Christmastime. They knew well how to illuminate the night. I see those lights and how they want to sparkle bright, keep hidden the stories that passed through those Wisła River waters in recent years. Who is it who wants to tell of how the world was divided into parts; of how if you could not adhere to this division you would lose your life; and even if you did adhere, you might lose your life anyway? Those parts still remain. That separation will stay. This game of lottery took from you first what you loved, and then your beloved. Who wants to tell the story of how the Jews were taken first from their homes and led into a ghetto, and then pulled and pulled, heart at its seams, those walls that separated the world of color from a realm of gray despair? And who chose which world on the inside? Don’t ask me again why I chose to abandon my freedom. For me, love was always more important.

Oh Wolf, how this train does hoot and howl as it pulls into the Kraków station. Not the station you know of, not the one that takes you into town, but the one that took us away. To where the track ends, leading nowhere. This is where my train comes in, where the duchy, the spirits, get on and off. Those little fairy lights can only distract for so long. If only I could go into the Jewish cemetery
and bury myself in the earth, praying that it accepts me at last. May some great force of life take pity on me and let me be free.

*

This prayer offers freedom from pain for the one still living: Even though I walk.

Even though I walk, I shall not want.

In this prayer there is a valley and a shadow and someone to guide.

People need to believe that there is always someone there to comfort, even on the other side.

Sometimes Sarah and I like to imagine which movie star we would marry if we could. We found a silent movie magazine on an old dusty bookshelf in the library, and when we are happy and gay we all agree that it is the most fascinating thing in the world. All of us but little Sarah, who sits above us perched on top of the stuffed velvet chair at the corner of the room reading St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s book
l’Histoire d’une Âme
. She is stubborn and curious, and I love her all the more for it. If only I could soothe her heart just a little more, then mine would feel lighter as well. But I am bound just like everyone else to the uniform, to the dress. I am bound to be, I am bound to love, I am bound to Sarah.

*

The Wisła River may be of comfort to some, but not me. Would drown myself in her waters and die a second death if I could. I see her as a silent truth teller, a witch’s brew leaking the fires of Smok, Wawel Castle’s dragon, down through Kraków’s riverbanks, swollen and pregnant with pain and regret. Behind this sixteenth-century hand-carved icon of Madonna and Child lies a secret you’ll know one day. How many Jews converted in this very chapel? I’ll
tell you: many. Behind this door, a relic of dreams left behind. This doorstep. This candle. This whisper, this vestment hangs in perfect order. Some say we Poles were ordered by God to serve as martyrs for all humankind. “The Christ of all nations,” our beloved romantic poet, Mickiewicz, once called us, but I say, let’s spare ourselves that title once and for all.

There are no forests in Kraków to remind me of you. No birch trees to stand naked and witness what passes them by, so I close myself to the world and hold that image of us entwined against a tree in my mind as I walk. Here there are only cobblestones lining the streets. They amplify the cacophony of horse and carriage, of human footfall as it passes, even of butterfly wings as they brush the ground, but I can assure you that my feet don’t make a sound.

*

A thick blanket of moss covers the ground beneath Wolf’s feet. The prayer for the dead moves inward, the words, the letters retreating down his throat. Drops form a puddle at his feet as a stream pours from his face into the earth. He has the thought that he is participating in creation. This water will help the flowers and grass to grow, and they will crowd the pile of rubble, ultimately covering it. Nature will bury the buried and swallow the lost.
Why would I wish to contribute any life to this place that has taken so much life from me? Why would I smile at the sight of one petal blooming on account of my tears?
Wolf drops his prayer book and lifts his hands to cover his face, wanting to stop the water from flowing and hide himself from the world.

Wiktor steps a few meters away from Wolf. They cut two lonely figures in this forest where all of the local peoples have mixed at one point or another: Russians, Poles, and also Jews. Slight Wiktor with his dark skin, cropped hair, and loose pants stands with his once clean, now invisible worker’s hands thrust into his pockets watching Wolf as he tries to stop his own tears.

Or maybe the salt from my tears will kill all life within reach? Perhaps my pain will be transmitted into the earth, and caterpillar skulls will soon line the route taken by ants and spiders, and everyone who passes will know that death lived here
.

Wiktor looks around at this forest in the prime of spring. The ground is still wet with mud, but in the air trees transition from bud to blossom in an instant. Tiny white puffs of pollen are carried on the wind, transported from tree to tree, from flower to flower, and eventually down to earth. Wiktor wishes he could breathe once again and smell the sweet dampness of springtime. Now he knows there is no stopping this world from continuing without the ones we love, and even without ourselves that we have also loved. This is our bittersweet destiny, to love and build a world, a house, a body of our own, and then to discard it all.

*

Wolf stands to retreat from the pile of stones. Tears, like words, move back down the throat and into the heart. There is such a thing as an ache in the heart. The breeze picks up and a flood of pollen floats through the air.
If my daughter were here, I would tell her that this is a kingdom of fairies coming to greet her. What will I tell myself? Is this a sign that they hear me now? And now?
And for just a moment, Wolf can almost detect their whisper in the wind.

Wolf knows that it is time to go. He wipes his face, turns away from the rubble and from the remaining stones, gathers his book and his bag, and whistles for the little dog to come. The dog comes running eagerly, a clump of old leaves stuck to his back.

It is time for Wolf to leave town. But leaving town is not as easy as it might seem. First, there is the pull of memories and the knowledge that after today he will likely never see this place again. It is so tempting to walk back through the streets, to stand at the
corner that looks out over the remnants of synagogues and homes, to find something to remember them by.

A rose from my mother’s garden. I could wrap the stem in wet paper and try to keep it alive until I get back to America. I could replant it in the backyard in Brooklyn. And the rose bush would blossom every spring.…

Church services are letting out and people are strolling through town, ice cream cones in hand. Young and old, every Pole loves ice cream to assure them that summer has arrived at last. The townspeople have not yet made it over to the back streets, where Wolf is already walking, Wiktor and the dog in tow.

Wolf considers going back the way he came, but instead decides to take a different route, one that will get him in and out of town more quickly. He passes a row of old houses on Ulica Nadrzeczna, all of them completely quiet, their lights dim, except for one. From an open window, the sound of a somber piano can be heard. Chopin études mix with the smell of boiling potatoes and the aroma of freshly chopped parsley and dill filling the air along with the sounds of romantic heartbreak, and for a moment, Wolf can close his eyes and recall another life: Mama standing in the kitchen, dinner waiting on the table, Leye sitting at the piano, Papa at his desk, an open book before him, his mind traversing the world. The only thing separating Wolf from his past is a closed eyelid. A closed eyelid has the capacity to usher in another world.