Chasing the King of Hearts (Peirene's Turning Point Series) by Hanna Krall Page A

key is with the guard. If she sits on the toilet bowl she can rest her legs on one ofthe chairs. She glances over the newspaper, then folds the printed sheets and tears them into strips, which she wraps around strands of her hair. She sleeps in the curl papers, under a drab-coloured, coarse, thin blanket. In the morning they give her a new paper, a cup of ersatz coffee and a slice of bread. The guard locks the bunk and looks at her curled-up hair. Why are you doing that? he asks. Because… She takes out the curl papers and combs her hair. They fall on to her shoulders the way she wanted, with a nice curl at the bottom. Get ready, says the guard, you’re going to the Gestapo.
121
    The black van with the barred windows stops in the courtyard. Izolda enters room 121. A man is seated behind the desk. He has a nondescript face, light hair and a darker moustache, closely cropped and stiff. He orders her to stand next to the wall and asks her the purpose of her trip to Vienna. She says that she was carrying tobacco. The Gestapo officer gets up, walks around the desk, slaps her across the face and returns to his seat. This slap is different from the one in Radom, the motion lasts longer, the hand is heavier and the pain is more severe. The blow knocks her head against the wall and her false tooth goes flying out. She can feel the sharp, metal screw inside her mouth. She looks around anxiously; the tooth is underneath the desk. The Gestapo man reaches for a cigarette, inhales, looks to see why she is crawling under the desk, examines the tooth and lets her put it in herpocket. He asks where she got her
Marschbefehl
. She tells him the truth, because the engineer’s colleague’s signature was on the permit. Why were you going to Vienna? I was carrying tobacco… and the Gestapo officer gets up behind the desk.
Regret
    Every other day the same van takes her to Gestapo headquarters. The same officer orders her to stand next to the same wall.
    On the second day he asks how long she’s been working for the Polish underground –
die polnische Untergrundbewegung
. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about and tells him she isn’t working for any underground.
    With each blow the back of her head hits the wall. The tooth no longer goes flying out, since she takes it out herself while still in the van. After a few slaps she feels a ringing in her head and has trouble hearing. The Gestapo officer assures her he knows all about the couriers between Poland and Anders’s army in Italy. She ran the route from Warsaw to Vienna, but who went from Vienna to Italy? Have you remembered?
    Izolda is aghast.
    The Count is getting her husband out of the camp. He’s going to need money. She didn’t send any packages to Mauthausen and the Gestapo officer thinks she’s working for the Polish underground.
    The idea of working for the underground didn’t even cross her mind. The Polish underground was not hercause. Her cause was her husband and joining the resistance would only jeopardize that. If the underground wanted to help her husband, then maybe she’d do something for them, but since Shayek didn’t matter to General Anders, what did she care about him or his couriers?
    I don’t care about Anders, she repeats, but the Gestapo officer doesn’t believe her: You don’t fool me, all you Poles are working for the bandits.
    She can’t contradict him, she has to be like all you Poles. There, you see, the Gestapo officer says, with a note of triumph. So who was the link between Vienna and Italy?
    The door to the next room has a thick hook set inside the frame. The Gestapo officer orders her to stand on a stool. He twists her arms behind her back, cuffs them and hangs her on the hook. First he makes sure it will hold and then he kicks the stool out from under her legs. The pain in her shoulders is excruciating. She dangles just over the floor: if she could only stretch her toes out just a little bit, she thinks, then she could support herself.