Читать книгу Chasing the King of Hearts - Ханна Кралль - Страница 11

Left Hemisphere

The film is playing in slow motion and the sound has been turned down—that’s why everyone is moving more slowly and speaking more quietly. Or not speaking at all, they’re just sitting on their bags and rocking back and forth, back and forth. Or they’re whispering to themselves, very possibly praying. They’ve calmed down, stopped bustling about—there’s no more running away. They wait. They don’t have the strength for anything else.

She is unable to wait. (By now the roundup must be over, the man has unlocked the door, and the workers have come out of the factory. Are you Shayek? the man asks. Your wife was here . . . Shayek runs down onto the street, Iza, he calls out, Izolda, and Jurek Gajer repeats: Izolda’s gone, she went to Umschlagplatz . . . Stop shouting, listen to me, Izolda isn’t here.)

Izolda looks around. There’s a barrel next to the wall. She can tell at a glance that it’s too small, but she tries to climb inside anyway. The barrel flips over and so does she. The hospital is locked, but even so she stands near the entrance and waits there for hours. A doctor from the typhus ward looks out of the window and sees her. That’s our nurse, he tells the policeman. They let her in, she lies down on an empty bed. Surely they won’t take the sick people, she thinks, but someone enters the room and announces that they’re taking all the patients. She gets up and mops the floor, thinking they won’t take away the orderlies, but someone enters the room . . . She puts on a white apron, they won’t take the nurses . . . A Jewish policeman lines up all the workers and holds out his cap. People toss in rings, necklaces, watches . . . Izolda takes out the silver compact Shayek had given her as an engagement present. She opens it, wipes the powder off the mirror, checks herself, and tosses it into the cap. The policeman picks up the compact and returns it without a word, he’s not interested in silver. They’re allowed to leave the hospital. Umschlagplatz is now empty. A few people are scurrying through the streets. The wind picks up newspapers, bangs on abandoned pots, slams open windows. A horse whinnies somewhere close by. Lying on the pavement is an overturned bowl, white pockmarked with black where the enamel chipped off—a bowl someone had wanted to take along but it was too unwieldy for the journey.

Izolda tells her parents she isn’t spending another day in the ghetto. That’s right, you’re absolutely right, her father agrees, making a slight gesture with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. She knows that gesture, that’s how her father underscores his pronouncements. You’re not going to your death like some docile little lamb, he states in a solemn voice, raising his right hand once again. She’s not thinking about how she will go to her death. She isn’t going to her death. She’s thinking about her father’s reflexive gesture, how it originates in the left hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for speech and the movements of the right limbs. She learned about reflexes at nursing school, but can people on the Aryan side distinguish between the workings of the left hemisphere and Jewish gesticulation? It’s good you’re getting out of here, he assures her, and hugs her tightly, so that his hands are behind her back. And because his hands are behind her back, she doesn’t have to wonder what people might think who don’t know about the workings of cerebral hemispheres.

Early the next morning her husband accompanies her to the guard post.

She takes out the money she borrowed from Mr. Rygier and Mr. Borensztajn, hands fifty zlotys over to the guard, and walks out of the ghetto with a calm, unhurried step.