The Woman from Hamburg (18 page)

“Now the Spirit of Andrzej will appear to you and you will give it shelter.

“Love,

“H.”

So:

She left me your papers and your Spirit in her will.

Could I refuse?

Halina suspects that you are among us. She was talking about you when she suddenly turned pale and fell back onto the bed. The doctor ran an EKG and sent her to the hospital. I returned home. I was laid low with back pain.

When both of us recovered, Halina asked me, “Do you remember what we were talking about when I passed out?”

Naturally, I remembered. We were talking about your attempts at summoning a son named Gaspard to life.

“That couldn’t possibly please him,” Halina exclaimed. “You mustn’t write about that.”

Is that the truth? Do you intend to interfere with my
writing? The hero’s spirit would be an even greater annoyance than a living hero?

An acquaintance of mine, the editor of
The Fortune Teller
magazine, assured me that the spirit was all right, but the cause of the sicknesses was Scorpio, the zodiac sign. Five planets were within Scorpio’s reach at the same time. Because it is a sign of carnal love and of death, good energy, flowing toward us from the planets, was negated. That is the source of the many recent sicknesses and misfortunes, like the bursting of the hot water pipes, or flooded apartments. But the power of Scorpio is already coming to an end. On the twenty-third of November the planets will pass into the sign of Sagittarius and will send good energy.

Andrzej.

We are constructing little jokes here out of the stars, but, after all, you were born on the first of November.

You are a Scorpio!

The sign of death and carnal love!

One more thing, in connection with your presumed interference.

David Ferré, a middle-aged bearded guy, an American engineer with General Motors and Boeing, and also a music critic, read about the skull in the newspapers. It was July 1982. The news was reported by the Associated Press:
“André Tchaikowsky, the Polish-born pianist who died of cancer in Oxford, has willed his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.”

Some newspapers wrote that all your life you had dreamed of being an actor. Others, that you loved the theater and it bothered you when Hamlet held a plastic skull in his hands.

David Ferré was touched by this news. He took leave from Boeing and flew to London to hear some music and to inquire about you. He rented a car at the airport. He looked for somewhere to stay; a rental agency recommended a house in Chelsea. He walked into the front room. A book was on the table:
My Guardian Devil: The Letters of Andrzej Czajkowski and Halina Sander
. The house in which he found himself belonged to two close friends of yours.

Conversations about you took up six years of David Ferré’s life. He wrote a biographical sketch titled “The Other Tchaikowsky.” When he finished it he settled in a mountain village and took up carpentry.

Thanks to him and a few other people I know a lot about you. I intend to tell you about this; you used to like stories about yourself. You would listen with interest, insisting that you don’t remember your own life.

Your grandmother, Celina S.

She was born in the last century, in 1889. That is what is
recorded in the registry of Jews who survived. She may have been older; when replacing destroyed documents women liked to make themselves younger.

She had a daughter, Fela, and a son, Ignacy. Her husband, a doctor, came back from the First World War with syphilis. They divorced. Two admirers proposed marriage; she asked the children which one they preferred. They cried out, “Uncle Mikołaj,” because he brought better candies. She married Mikołaj, the owner of a law firm, but she lived with the other man.

She was a brunette of medium height, with a short neck and light, impudent eyes. She played the harp, knew foreign languages, liked poker, and sought out strong men. She was one of the first beauticians in Poland. She founded her own school and a beauty-cream plant under French license. The firm was called Cédib. When the business starting going under, she sold half the shares to a doctor named Muszkatblat.

Your mother, Fela.

She was prettier and taller than Celina. She was her opposite: calm, pensive, lacking energy and strength. She graduated from the beauty school. She liked changing hair color. She played the piano fairly well and read a lot. She grew weary of that very quickly. She got married in Paris to a refugee from Germany, and gave birth to you a year later. She left her husband and fell in love with Albert. She was with him until the end. She died in Treblinka at the age of twenty-seven.

Your father, Karl.

He studied law in Lipsk, fled from Hitler to France. He worked in the fur business. He couldn’t stand either furs or business. He wanted to be a lawyer, but France did not recognize his German diploma. He suffered bouts of depression; he was treated with electric shocks, after which he developed Parkinson’s disease. It tormented him until the end of his life. He died in Paris. He saw you when you were twelve and when you were forty-five.

In a 1938–39 telephone book there is an S. Mikołaj, attorney, Przejazd 1, telephone 115 313. All of them lived there: Celina and her husband, her son, her daughter-in-law, her daughter, and you. They had affairs, played poker, danced the fox trot, liked lilies of the valley, sent snapshots from Ciechocinek—the men in white panama hats, the women in veils and with a swirl of hair falling over one eye. Prehistoric times. Some kind of Tertiary period, but with the useful discovery of photography.

Przejazd 1 …

In the same building lived a medical student, one J.S., who was in love with the singer Marysia Ajzensztadt. In the same building lived Helena, pale and morose, the
queen of the ball in the Lwów Literary Casino, and her little daughter.

Downstairs, in the Art café, Władysław Szlengel read his poems.

Yes, the same building. Two stairwells, with an entrance on Leszno Street.

Celina S.’s partner, as I have said, was Dr. Muszkatblat.

His original first name was Perec; after he converted, he became Bolesław. His wife managed the Cédib firm on Three Crosses Square. Their two children were looked after by “Panna Marynia.” With the savings she accumulated in the doctor’s household, M. purchased a modest apartment on Sienna Street. When the children entered school she completed a course of study in tailoring with Pani Wiśniewska—the most expensive course in Warsaw (it cost 200 zlotys, not counting chalk and the paper for patterns).

The war broke out. (That was the end of prehistoric times—of harps, betrayals, the fox trot, and resorts.)

Bolesław Muszkatblat, Celina S.’s partner, swallowed potassium cyanide. His son and daughter were in a camp. Ruta Muszkatblat decided to go over to the Aryan side. She made a mistake: it was a sunny day and she dressed in
a warm overcoat. A
szmalcownik
, a blackmailer, brought her to the police station.

“That will cost you four thousand,” said the policeman. “We’ll wait until 1:00 p.m.”

Ruta M. asked them to notify Maria Ostrowska, “Panna Marynia,” the children’s nanny.

Maria had one thousand at hand.

It was 10:00 a.m.

She ran to her wealthiest client, the owner of a dairy store on Pańska Street. She wasn’t there; she hadn’t returned from her summer home.

She remembered a doctor, one of Dr. M.’s colleagues from medical school. He lived on Poznańska Street; it was the third or fourth house on the left if you approached it from Aleje Jerozolimskie.

He opened the door.

She said, “Pani Ruta is at the police station on Krochmalna. They want four thousand and I have one thousand …”

“I have nothing in common with Jews!” the colleague from school days shouted, and slammed the door.

She went to Anin to see an acquaintance who used to sew ball gowns before the war. It was almost twelve o’clock. She said, “I have one thousand …”

Her acquaintance gave her a gold ring. She asked her to pawn it, keep the receipt, and redeem it after the war.

There was no train back to Warsaw. There was no time for pawning it. Maria ran with the ring to the police station.

“You’re fifteen minutes too late,” said the policeman.

Celina’s husband, the one who brought the children the better candies, died. Tactfully, in his own bed, just in time. Celina S. buried him and left the ghetto with a group of laborers who worked outside the wall. One of her former pupils gave her Aryan papers; from then on she was Janina Czajkowska. Another pupil prepared a hiding place for her. She went back for her daughter and grandson, but Fela did not want to leave.

“Just the two of you will manage to survive; as a threesome, we’ll all perish.”

Celina tried insisting.

“Save him,” Fela repeated. “I don’t have the strength; I’m going to die.”

With her beautician’s skill, Celina S. applied hydrogen peroxide to the boy’s hair. She put a dress on him. She said goodbye to her daughter.

“Mama will come back to you in a couple of days,” Fela promised.

Celina S. led the blond “girl” to the gate on Leszno Street. She held the child’s hand firmly in one of her hands;
with the other, she slipped the gendarme 50 zlotys. They crossed the street and set off in the direction of Theater Square.

“Don’t look up,” she whispered.

They were on the Aryan side.

You moved in with Panna Monika. There was a wardrobe in the main room. The apartment was on the ground floor; tenants passed by your door, neighbors looked in—the safest place was inside the wardrobe. A chamber pot was placed there. You found it by touch and learned to pee without making any noise. The clothing had been taken out; in the wardrobe were darkness, the chamber pot, and you.

Every so often grandmother would visit you. You would come out of the wardrobe and Panna Monika would stand watch over the front door. Grandmother would give her money, after which she would take a bottle of hydrogen peroxide out of her bag and wet your hair where it was growing out dark. Next, she would set the liquid aside and take out a prayer book. She taught you prayers (she did not know them herself; she had to look at the book). At the end, she would drink tea and listen to the landlady’s complaints about the rising cost of living and the danger your presence exposed her to. Both the one and the other
were true, so grandmother would reach into her wallet again. Finally, she said goodbye, promising that she would visit you soon. She kept her word. She kept coming—with money, prayers, and hydrogen peroxide. You didn’t ask her where she was living, where she was going, and where she got the money. You didn’t ask why you had to sit in the wardrobe—children didn’t ask stupid questions then.

Sometimes you wanted to know something about your mama.

“She’s all right,” your grandmother would answer. “She’ll come to you in a couple of days.”

A couple of days would pass.

Grandmother would say, “She was busy; don’t cry.”

A couple of days would pass.

You understood, finally, that your mama would never come to you and you stopped asking.

I shall tell you something now.

I knew a certain girl. She was your age; she also had dark eyes like you and hair that was bleached with hydrogen peroxide. Her mother was a beautician. You won’t believe this, but her name was Fela and she graduated from the Cédib school which was founded by your grandmother.

Strange, isn’t it?

I knew that little girl quite well, because I know what the Aryan side was for a child.

It was not death or fear. A five- or six-year-old child is not afraid of death.

The Aryan side was an apartment from which everyone has gone outside.

A window that you do not go near, even though no one is watching you.

A courtyard from which the echo of footsteps and someone’s whistle, a melody broken off in the middle of a measure, reach you.

A wardrobe that you enter at the sound of the doorbell.

The Aryan side was loneliness and silence.

Monika was expecting a child. She was unmarried and you associated her condition with the immaculate conception. Words that you knew from the book of prayer came to life. A virgin was to bear a son. The son might become a new Christ. You were ready to throw out the chamber pot, to move over, and make room for him in the wardrobe. You fell into euphoria. You talked too much and too loudly. One day you started praying to Monika, but at the words “and blessed be the fruit of thy womb,” she flew into a rage.

“You little rat!” she screamed. “Are you making fun of me?”

In vain, you explained that she had conceived like the Virgin Mary. She wouldn’t stop shrieking. She summoned your grandmother. She said that you were making a lot of noise, that you were behaving shamefully; she didn’t want to explain why and she demanded that you leave her home.

“We have nowhere to go,” grandmother said, terrified.

“Go to the Gestapo!” Monika screamed and moved toward the door.

Grandmother barred her path.

“And do you know what the Gestapo will ask about? The people who hid him. This is a big, smart boy, Panna Monika. He knows your address and your last name.”

Grandmother’s voice was calm and reasonable.

“Whatever happens to my grandson will happen to you, too,” she added for clarity, and put on her coat.

After she left, Monika sat down, put her arms around her belly, and burst into tears. She cried for a long time, out loud, in a thin, wailing voice.

Just in case, you went back into the wardrobe.

In the evening, she called you out. On the table, as every evening, was a frying pan with rosy potatoes fried in lard, and two plates.

Grandma came for you the next day.

You went to a new, strange house.

In it there was a new, strange wardrobe and you were not allowed to go near the windows.

I will tell you something.

That girl, the one who was the same age as you and with bleached hair, also knew a lot about the Annunciation.