Читать книгу Chasing the King of Hearts - Ханна Кралль - Страница 24

The Widow

Her husband’s parents spend all day sitting on the floor; they crawl to the bathroom. The honest widow doesn’t allow them to walk around the apartment, and she’s right: someone in the building opposite could look through the window and see everything. His parents have terrible looks and a terrible accent. They need to be well hidden and the greater the risk, the more you have to pay.

Her husband starts working for Bolek. He’s no longer Shayek or Wolf, but Władek. During the day he enters the ghetto and loads bricks onto horse carts; at night he goes back through the sewers to pick up the Jewish belongings stashed in the ruins. He sells them to regular customers, uses the proceeds to buy food for the Jews, and gives what’s left to the widow. When the fighting breaks out in the ghetto and he can no longer work day or night, the widow still keeps her lodgers—a magnanimous woman.

Izolda and her husband look at the flames. At the black smoke rising over the wall. They listen to the shooting and guess where the shots are coming from, what is burning, where people are trying to escape. (Will they manage to get out or will they die in the flames?) Every now and then someone walking on the pavement or waiting for the tram turns to them and says: “Holy Jesus, what a terrible thing,” or words to that effect, and when that happens they are afraid. Why is the person saying that to them? Dear God, why them? They don’t answer, just head off as fast as they can. They want to keep as far as possible from people who are saddened and sympathetic. But if someone says: “Look at those Yids getting fried,” then they’re calm, because it’s clear no one suspects who they are. When that happens they don’t hurry away, just stand there: Oh well, they’re getting fried all right.

In the middle of May the uprising dies down. Bolek’s people return to work. It’s high time, the widow is beginning to get impatient.