The Train to Warsaw

The Train to Warsaw Read Free Page B

Book: The Train to Warsaw Read Free
Author: Gwen Edelman
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she said with a laugh. Who did she think she was? asked Jascha. The Countess Razumovsky?
    In Warsaw I want to walk down Marsza ł kowska, she said. Where we used to stroll before the war. And stop to look in the shop windows. My father wore his coat with the fur collar. My mother wore a small black velvet hat with a veil. I remember, she said, when the wind shifted and the scent of pines blew in from the Praga forests. And all of Warsaw smelled like a pine forest. His mouth tightened. When the wind shifted the smell of burning gagged us, he said, the place was rubble, the sky was black with ash, the facades had crumbled and the streets were full of corpses. That’s your precious Warsaw. She turned her face away. Why do you ruin it for me?
    Your beloved Warsaw is ashes and rubble, he said. There’s nothing left. Not a building, not a house, not a street that remains from before. Everything you knew is gone. Burned. Finished. Kaput. Forget your idea of going back. Have they changed the sky? she asked, her cheeks flushed. The air? Has the Vistula changed course? He sighed. My darling, you sound like a schoolgirl. Ach, Lilka. Poland is a morgue.
    Her thin bangle bracelets clinked against each other. Then I’ll go alone. Ha, he replied. Let you return to Poland on your own? Let you wander in the kingdom of the dead on your own? How could I? I would have to come and rescue you. Oh Jascha, don’t be so silly. It is no longer allowed to pull the earlocks of Jews in the third class carriages, he said. Nevertheless even now, forty years later, it is hardly a child’s garden of verses in our beloved homeland.
    The radiator clanked and the heat began to rise with a hiss. Lilka brought out a small chocolate cake. Is it the one I like? he asked. She nodded. With marzipan? His eyes grew shiny. Oh darling, he said. Come and sit on my lap. Let me hug you and kiss you. I’ll take you to Paris. We’ll go to Fouquet’s. I’ll buy you stockings with a black seam up the back. Like before the war. I don’t want to go to Paris, she said. Take me to Warsaw.
    She cut the cake into paper thin slices. He watched her. Do you think you are still Back There? Are you saving a sliver for tomorrow and another for the day after? She put one of the slices in her mouth and then another. Will you hide one under your scarf? he asked. Another in your underwear? Leave me alone, she said.
    I’m going to call Warsaw tomorrow, she said. Call the ghetto telephone, he said. I still remember the number. I’m not staying in the ghetto. I’m going to stay at the Hotel Bristol, she said, chewing her cake. What? he cried. The most expensive hotel in Warsaw? And who may I ask will pay for that? I will, she said, licking her fork. You’re crazy, he said. Where will you get that kind of money? I will get it, she said. He watched her. What a sweet girl, one might think. But behind that blonde hair, those big blue eyes, and goyish face lies Judah Maccabee. And who did I learn it from? she wanted to know. From you, my angel. She served them both another slice of cake. Eat, she said. Now that we can.
    Many nights they dreamed of food. They saw loaves of dark rye bread flying through the air, pails of cherries spilling out on the ground, piles of shiny apples, tables of endless cakes, buckets of chocolates. In waking life the refrigerator had always to be full of food, the shelves stuffed with all manner of canned goods. God forbid, he said, that we should run out of food. They kept chocolate bars in the drawers of their night tables. And often during the night they got up and came into the kitchen in their nightclothes and sat down for an entire meal as the stars shone down on them from the black night sky.
    I dreamed that I was hungry, he would tell her as he ate eagerly. I dreamed that I was dying of thirst, she would say. Who else could we live with if not each other? he would ask. Who else could understand?
    After

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