Читать книгу Chasing the King of Hearts - Ханна Кралль - Страница 25

The Acquaintance

Her husband leads the parents of a friend through the sewers out of the ghetto. They can both pass as Poles. The mother is tall and hefty, the father has a mustache, so it’s all right to take them home. (Lilusia found an apartment for Izolda and Shayek on Mariańska Street. The former owners were Jewish and the caretaker, Mateusz, is kind and trustworthy. The place had been looted, but they repaired the windows, put in a stove, and installed a pipe and made themselves at home.)

Everything would be all right if Shayek’s friend had sensible parents: the apartment is close to the stairwell and the neighbors can hear every sound. Unfortunately they aren’t sensible. They boil water, they bang around lighting the stove, and eventually they have to move out.

Her husband finds them another place and takes them there.

On the street they see an acquaintance, a Jew from Łódź. The acquaintance sees them as well and gives a friendly smile. The couple smile back and go on.

They go inside the apartment. An hour later someone knocks at the door. They look through the peephole: it’s the acquaintance from Łódź.

When they open the door they realize he isn’t alone but with some policemen, who haul everyone down to the station. There they let Shayek go and take the elderly couple to the Kripo.

The next day her husband wakes up saying that they have to help those people. Her circumcised husband. Whose papers are forged. Whose wife dyes her hair. Whose parents are hiding under a windowsill. Who has sacks of Jewish belongings stashed in the ruins of the ghetto. And he wants to go to the Kripo. She blocks his way and yells: Why are you going? For whom? You’re the one who’s supposed to live, not them. He pushes her off and walks out. But he doesn’t accomplish anything. Lucky the Germans don’t check inside his fly.

A couple of weeks later a card arrives from the camp, with two words: “Save us.” Shayek’s friend sends a telegram, with six words: “Save them, where to send money?” If they were my parents, Izolda tells her husband, I would get on the train to save them myself, but her husband understands his friend well. She doesn’t want to lose her job housekeeping in a German home. She wants to stay there quietly until the end of the war. Shayek is right. His friend will survive, while her parents, who in their desperation were so bold as to put Shayek’s life in jeopardy, will die in the camp.