Читать книгу Chasing the King of Hearts - Ханна Кралль - Страница 8

A Sign

They get married. She wears a sky-blue dress tinged with lilac. Her mother bought the fabric a long time ago, thinking she would sew something to wear for her son’s birthday dinner. The color was pervenche—very much in vogue because Wallis Simpson was so fond of it. The duchess had worn periwinkle when she married Edward VIII, or maybe it was to the banquet afterward. In the end Mother didn’t sew anything because her two-year-old son died of pneumonia. She dressed in black and announced she would wear mourning for the rest of her life.

Thanks to Jurek Szwarcwald (he was surprisingly quick to accept her breaking it off and he too got married; his wife, Pola, was a nice, smart woman and by no means unattractive despite a longish nose)—thanks to Jurek, who’s studying medicine, Izolda lands a job in a hospital, looking after the typhus patients. She gives them water with valerian, massages their bedsores, and straightens their pillows. For the first time in her life she sees corpses (which are carried off to the cemetery in wooden handcarts with two large wheels on both sides and four handles for pulling). She has yet to witness someone dying and she very much wants to. She’s not so curious about what visions the dying person might have—light, dark, angel, or God—but wants to know what she might see when someone else’s life comes to an end. A soul? A sign? Because if there is a sign, it ought to be read. She sits beside a young girl, very beautiful despite her illness. She keeps watch all night long, and just as the day breaks she hears a quiet sighing. The sick girl’s chest rises—and doesn’t fall. Izolda leans over the girl, alert and concentrated. She examines the girl’s face—peaceful, serious—but sees no sign of a soul. They load the girl’s body onto the black wooden wagon. Izolda takes off her apron and goes home. She tells her husband what death looks like: no soul, no sign. Then she adds, by way of encouragement: We’re still alive, though. To which her husband says: Even that is less and less certain.