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

She tries with all her might to touch the floor.
    It’s July, the sun is shining, she notices a bright, sunny circle on the floor. She is still conscious. The Gestapo officer paces up and down the room. He’s bored, he makes a phone call, arranges to meet someone for a walk on Sunday. He returns to Izolda, adjusts the hook, raising her feet. He tells her he’d prefer to treat a woman more politely, but he has to find out a few details. For example, who ran things to Anders in Italy?
    He takes her off the hook and lets her clean up. The room has a marble sink with a crystal mirror – clearly the Metropol was a high-class hotel.
    In the mirror she sees a ghastly, swollen face, with eyes popping out of their sockets. She steps back in horror – and so does the face. She steps forward – and the face comes closer. She takes another step and realizes there’s nothing to be afraid of because she is walking towards herself.
    After the interrogation she returns to the prison, which the locals nicknamed Liesl, from Elisabeth – the street used to be called the Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Promenade. Liesl’s guards aren’t the worst. They unlock her bunk even though it’s daytime and give her some cold compresses. A doctor sets her shoulders.
    I don’t know a thing about any Anders, she tells the guard. Because I’d say something if I did. She is speaking Polish. The guards think she’s raving or else revealing some conspiratorial secrets and warn her to calm down. But she’s not raving. She would confess any secret – Polish, Jewish, it doesn’t matter. First she’d try to make a deal: I’ll tell you about Anders, if my husband… and maybe she’d get him out of the camp. Unfortunately she doesn’t know any secrets. She lies on the bunk and thinks these thoughts with no guilty conscience, only regret.
The Count
    Izolda is walking down the corridor to room 121.
    And coming from the opposite direction, from the depths of the corridor, is the Count, led by two escorts.
    They walk past each other. The Count has a calm, almost cheerful face, he doesn’t look at her, doesn’t betray her with the slightest gesture. Of course, she thinks– Vienna, Anders, northern Italy… it’s the Count. He was helping the resistance, not her husband. She feels a bitterness rising within her. The resistance has thousands of people, but she has only one husband, and now he’s alone and defenceless, robbed of all help.
    That night she dreams about both men. They’re inside a church, she’s standing off to the side, while the Count leads her husband through all the holy icons, flowers and candles. She doesn’t know if she’s allowed to join them, so she stays where she is, and they pass by with indifferent, unseeing faces. Like the Count at the Gestapo headquarters. Like Izolda when she passed her husband’s mother… In her dream, her husband is very handsome, slender, his hair like a golden helmet. And his eyes so intensely blue that they can be seen right across the whole church.
    On her way to the interrogation, she wonders what her dream might have meant.
    She steps into room 121.
    The Gestapo officer stands up from behind the desk, steps towards her – and does not put her in handcuffs.
    He offers her a chair and says: Please sit down.
    She sits.
    The Gestapo officer gives a faint smile. We know the truth, he says. You are a Jew, or am I mistaken?
    She says nothing.
    A Jew. And then? They’ll shoot me. Within twenty-four hours, like the Jews at Pawiak. And then? There won’t be any stool. There won’t be any hook…
    I think I’ve had enough, she says in Polish, and hears Halina’s voice.
    The Gestapo officer doesn’t understand Polish.
    I’m saying that you are right. I’m Jewish.
    Something strange happens. The Gestapo officer’s face lights up and he leans towards her with the gallantry of a waiter: Would you like some tea? Coffee? A woman in a summer suit brings in a coffee pot, two cups and a plate with some cake. The