The Upright Heart Read Online Free

was so taken by her mother’s beauty that he laid his most beautiful Persian rug at her doorstep as a sign of his devotion.
    Sometimes when the moon is full and we feel most at peace, Sarah tells us stories her grandfather once told her. She says that maybe, since we died so soon, we will return and live again. Maybe, Sarah says. This is all we know. We love our books and our stories. They are our tradition, our history. They may not be much, but they are what we still have. After all, we are only thirteen years old.
VIII
    This night is quiet. All the dogs have gone to bed.
    Wiktor is running again. Out of the crypt, past the church where he crossed the threshold with his wife on their wedding day, where his three children were baptized, where people came to mourn when he died.
    Elżbieta is leaning against the kitchen table on Strzelecka Street, crushing rose petals and sugar with a spoon. The roses are freshly picked, as they always are in spring, still wet from the morning dew. It is almost midnight now, but she is still standing, trying her best to hold up the world. Making jam is a sign that home still exists, and so she turns the petals in a rhythmic motion, releasing their perfume into the night air that wafts from the cracked window into the room. Spring is on the tip of nature’s tongue, and for a moment there is harmony. In one breath, life persists. As rose petals transform into a paste that will later become the jam of the gods, Elżbieta looks out the kitchen window onto the fields and scans the distant skyline, so soft that it is almost like a painting whose edges have been blurred by the addition of a splash of water.
Somewhere Papa is still running
, she thinks with a smile.
He is out there, up in heaven, now entering through those glistening gates
.
    You see that star down there? It explodes every seven days or so. It gathers its strength for a little while, and then day after day it grows brighter until it bursts forth with the intensity of its own energy. I watch how it grows, how it catches remnants of the passing sun and competes with other stars for ultimate glory. You win, we all want to say, and oh how we laugh. Nobody cares up here about who is strongest, because here everybody is strong, even my little feather, who flies higher than all the rest.
IX
    This is the night that Wiktor says goodbye to Rybnik, his hometown.
    Ulica Strzelecka, goodbye. Town square, goodbye. River that runs, goodbye. Goodbye to all of the places and people I have loved
.
    Tiny newborn flowers are sprouting from the ground. They are deep red, pale violet, yellow, white.
The colors of my childhood, the colors of my life
. Green. And, of course, gray, the color of the Rybnik skyline.
    Wiktor runs back toward the train tracks without knowing why. He sees the fields where he lived his entire life and they fill him with the memory of profound joy.
    No more maybes. There is always a light shining somewhere beyond.
X
    Wolf Ain is sitting at the window of wagon number four on the night train to Białystok, watching an endless stretch of darkness rush past. Just hours ago he was traveling through Austria. Now he is passing through Katowice on his way to Warsaw, and he will then go further east. This night is long as the train moves across the Polish landscape. If it were daylight he would see passing fields—humble, soft, endless green. A house in the distance where there is always a chimney smoking, even in summertime. Little red berries along the tracks, nettles pert and ready to prick any animal that dares approach; shadows, branches, and forests filled with the last traces of snow. But night shrouds the country in darkness. Wolf counts the occasional lamppost and chimney. Everything is silent other than the sound of the train rumbling over the tracks. It is that feeling of being cradled that rocks him to sleep, that sensation which brings him back to the first months of life, when there was always someone to hold him in her