The Woman from Hamburg

The Woman from Hamburg by Hanna Krall Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: The Woman from Hamburg by Hanna Krall Read Free Book Online
Authors: Hanna Krall
blond hair could personify a refined and safe world.
    Blatt’s cousin, Dawid Klein, lived in Berlin before the war. He survived Auschwitz and returned to Berlin. He found new tenants living in his apartment.
    “There’s no need to get upset,” they said. “Everything is where you left it.”
    Indeed, he found absolutely everything exactly where he had left it before the war.
    He married their blond daughter. She was the war widow of an SS officer. Blatt’s cousin raised their son. When his wife fell in love with a younger man, Blatt’s cousin died of a heart attack. (I phoned their daughter in Berlin. Her husband picked up the phone. I said that I wanted to talk about Dawid Klein, who was an Auschwitz survivor. I heard him call out to Dawid Klein’s daughter, “Was your father an Auschwitz survivor?”)
    Staszek Szmajzner, a jeweler from Sobibor, emigrated to Rio. True, he did not marry an Aryan woman; instead,he married a Miss Brazil. They got divorced. Staszek went to the jungle and wrote a book about Sobibor. When he finished it, he died of a heart attack.
    Hersz Cukierman, the son of a cook from Sobibor, went to Germany. His Aryan wife left him and Cukierman hanged himself.
    And so forth.
    Blatt is still writing his book.
    We were traveling east.
    Blatt wanted to ascertain if Marcin B. had returned to the village of Przylesie.
3
    We passed former Jewish towns: Garwolin, Łopiennik, Krasnystaw, Izbica. The stucco on them was yellowed, with dirty streaks. The wooden, one-story bungalows were sinking into the ground. We wondered if anyone lived in them. Probably yes, because there were pots of pelargonia in the windows, wrapped in crimped white tissue paper. Wads of cotton were spread out on some of the windowsills. Silvery “angel hair,” left there, no doubt, since Christmas, sparkled on the cotton. Men wearing gray quilted jackets were drinking beer outside the entryway. Apparently there were no unoccupied seats inside. Chunks of wall stuck up in empty lots among the houses. Grass was growing out of the smashed bricks. The little towns had flabby faces;they were deprived of muscle, deformed—either by exhaustion or by fear.
    In Izbica, Blatt wanted to show me a couple of things. We began with Stokowa Street. Generations of Blatts had lived there, including Aunt Marie Rojtensztajn, who heard everything through the wall. “Tojwełe,” she would say, “admit it, your father gives you nonkosher food to eat. You’ll go to hell, Tojwełe.”
    He was so terrified of hell that he ran a fever.
    “You’re only eight years old,” his aunt comforted him. “After you are bar mitzvah, God will forgive you everything.”
    He calculated that he could sin for five more years. Unfortunately, the war began before his bar mitzvah; God forgave him nothing.
    We looked around the market square. Idełe used to stand in the center, banging on a drum. He read out the declarations that the authorities posted. He banged his drum for the last time in September 1939, and announced that they were to cover their windows to protect them from bombs. He died in Bełżec.
    Itinerant musicians used to play in the market square; they sold the words to the latest hit songs for five groschen. Tojwełe bought “Madagascar”—“Hey, Madagascar, steamy land, black, Africa …”
    The fanciest house on the market square belonged to Juda Pomp, a dealer in sheet metal. He installed a flush toilet in his home, the first in Izbica. Everyone came to check it out; an inside toilet, and it doesn’t stink!
    We finally finished with the market square and moved on to the side streets. We came upon the house of crazy Ryfka “What Time Is It?” “Ryfka, what time is it?” the children called out to her. She would answer precisely and she never made a mistake. An old Jew, ugly and rich, arrived from America. He looked Ryfka over. He learned that she was the daughter of a deceased rabbi. He told her to comb her hair and they got married. The

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