The Upright Heart by Julia Ain-Krupa Page B

stepfather, he learned about gardening and acquired many other hobbies. He was given opportunities to experience things that he never would have dreamt of had he stayed at home. He could build furniture, make shoes, and grow prize roses with ease.
    Albert would grow up to be a rather small man in size, a big man in stature. His family liked to tease him with the nickname “little emperor.” He worked in a factory that produced enamelware, weighing ore on weekdays. On Sundays he would dress in a three-piece suit and gold watch, and, awaking at six, he would go to church and then walk twenty kilometers to meet with a master gardener on a nearby estate. For hours on end these two men would sit on apple crates in the tool shed or on a bench under the shade of an old oak tree, drinking homemade wine from a large jug corked withnewspaper, discussing the best way to till the soil, to keep plant-eating snails at bay, to cultivate the perfect, most fragrant roses.
    Albert and his wife, Maria, had a garden so clean that you could eat from the soil. These were Waleria’s parents, Elżbieta’s grandparents on her mother’s side. They lived down on the west end of Ulica Strzelecka, where they had a field, a vegetable patch, pear trees, even a small bridge over a pond beneath which floated pink water lilies. On this tiny plot of land everything was beautiful and serene, even the last wisps of wheat floating off the fields in the late day sun, taking comfort in the final waves of the August heat.
    Maria kept a small drove of cows, and they produced milk so pure that it became popular among Rybnik’s Jews. Maria gave her Jewish customers open accounts, and she used these accounts to trade with her customers for beautiful fabrics. As a result, she was always well-dressed, even in difficult times.
    During the war, the roses in the flower shop brought back familiar memories of Elżbieta’s grandparents’ garden, which was still vibrant, though much diminished in those difficult times. The roses’ fragrant beauty was Elżbieta’s link to St. Thérèse—to prayer and to unbridled hope. Like a beautiful melody that came from the heart, the roses were a reminder of family life and of peace, of the love and cultivated beauty that surrounded her. The sweet smell of roses was a promise that life was not over. Happiness would come around again one day soon.
    Spending her days amid that heady aroma was a pleasure for Elżbieta, except when an SS officer would come into the shop to buy flowers for a lover or for his wife.
    One afternoon, while Elżbieta was working alone, a tall, handsome officer with closely cropped blond hair and a pronounced jaw bound in to buy two-dozen roses for his Polish mistress. Elżbieta took pleasure in arranging his bouquet, though something made her nervous about the man. He stood there, backtoward her, hands clasped behind him, eyeing the street, breathing heavily. She supposed that with a body that tall and that strong one would need to breathe heavily to survive. She watched him flick a piece of lint from the zigzagged double “s” embroidered in his collar. Elżbieta noticed her own hands trembling as she tied the pale violet ribbon into a perfect bow.
    “Done,” she said, meekly, calculating the cost of the bouquet.
    The officer turned around and handed her the money for the flowers, and as she gave him his change, he slapped her right hand down onto the counter, and held it there tight, looking into her eyes. She tried to squirm away, but he was too strong, and besides, she was mesmerized by his stare.
    “Don’t you use soap?” he asked, face still, emotionless. “You’d better wash your eyes.” And then he let go her hand, and left the store as loudly as he had come in.
    As the door shut behind the officer, Elżbieta turned to look in the mirror at the back of the store. She looked just like any other Silesian woman, light hair, clear skin, pronounced nose, narrow lips. She was the prettiest of her