Читать книгу Chasing the King of Hearts - Ханна Кралль - Страница 14

The Handbag

. . . she hands fifty zlotys to the guard and walks out of the ghetto with an unhurried step.

She carries a handbag (which her mother bought for her at Herse’s right before graduation) and a small beach bag containing a nightdress, a toothbrush, and her favorite yellow beach robe, which can also double for indoor use.

She knocks, the door opens, and standing at the threshold is Captain Szubert’s wife, Kazimiera, their neighbor from the summer house at Józefów, whom everyone calls Lilusia. Lilusia is already dressed. She’s tied her braid up in a bun and is holding a cigarette. She’s neither surprised nor frightened. Come in, she says, and quickly chains the door. And don’t cry, please, we mustn’t cry. “We,” she says. To a person who shouts “save me” to a padlock. Who tries to hide in an undersized barrel. The wife of a Polish officer (her husband is a prisoner of war in Germany, she has a weapon hidden inside the folding table and underground newspapers in the sofa bed) and she says, “We.”

Izolda stops crying and eats breakfast. She feels increasingly better. Part of a better world—an Aryan world, tasteful and tidy.

A hairdresser friend treats her hair. First he bleaches out her natural color with peroxide and then he dyes it ash blond. She looks in the mirror, pleased: that’s perfect, not like all those other little Jewish girls with hair as yellow as straw.

She has nothing in common with the straw color of those other little Jewish girls. She becomes a blond, and a tall one at that, because her long, sturdy legs give her height. Satisfied, she returns to Lilusia Szubert.

Lilusia has company: the caretaker of the building and his son. It’s secret school in the kitchen, today’s subject is Polish history: King Władysław Jagiełło fought, conquered, and died . . . Where did he die? asks Lilusia. Władysław Jagiełło died in Gródek, very good, on the Wereszyca River, tomorrow we’ll look it up on the map, and what happened next? The boy doesn’t know what happened next, so Izolda excuses the interruption, greets the guests, and drops her bag on the table, the carefree gesture of a tall blond. Lilusia breaks off the lesson: Maria, take that handbag off the table, you can’t go tossing your bag around like some Jew girl. Izolda quickly picks up her handbag, excuses herself, and laughs out loud with all the others. The guests take their leave, and Lilusia explains that she was being crafty, that her remark was meant to clear any suspicions on the part of the caretaker. Izolda understands Lilusia’s cunning, but then she takes a closer look at the handbag and sets it on the floor. How’s that? Does the bag look Jewish there? She tries the sofa, the stool, the chair. Because if it does, what exactly about the bag is Jewish? The patent leather is thin and soft, the color of café au lait. The finish is scratched up and is coming off in places, but she can’t spot anything suspicious about the leather itself. How about the handle? Slightly bent, wrapped with braided silk, a little dirty, but it’s probably not about the braid. Or the lining, also silk, which can’t even be seen and which her manicure kit has torn in a couple places. Once again: on the floor, the stool, the chair . . . Does the bag look Jewish?