MICHAL GOVRIN
567
Getting off the train, and simply wallcing into the light-flooded square,
among ancient buildings, whose carved far;:ades are sparkling in the sun.
Wallcing among the other people on the boulevard with the autumn chest–
nut trees, on Planty, Mother's route to the tennis courts. Leaves struggle on
my shoes. Entering the Rynek Square resounding around itself. The
Renaissance arches, the Sulciennice market in the middle like an island in
the heart of a lagoon of light, the breeze rising from the Virgin Mary
Church....all those names, with a soft
r,
as I ("wonderful child!": the only
two words I understood in the foreign language) would accompany
Mother to the nightly suppers on an aunt's balcony, with a smell of down
comforters and the saltiness of the sea air on hot Tel Aviv nights, when
friends from "there" would gather. All those names, when the conversation
would climb in the foreign tremolo, and in the cafe downstairs, in the yard
of the building, the cards would be shuffled on tables. The places frozen in
slides on the wall of the high school, in commemorations held with a sud–
den frenzy. Places that were stopped in the thirties, with an amazed look of
some Jew who came on the camera by mistake....The warm-cool air
caresses the fur of my coat, my face, moves the parasols over the flower
vendors' booths.
The road rises to a high hill overlooking the city and the Vistula
River. Above, the Wawel Castle covered in ivy burning with autumn
leaves. And here, on the slope, along the banks of the Vistula, the way to
Paulinska Street, Mother's street.
The three o'clock twilight lingers and softens. Mothers with babies in
buggies at the river. (Mothers and babies? Still? Here?) Paulinska Street. On
the secret side of the street the wall of a convent, and behind it fruit trees.
Someone passes by on the corner. A woman in a heavy coat and old boots.
Number eight. The staircase floored with blue tiles. A list of tenants in
fountain pen. First floor on the left-a strange name. The door is locked.
On the first floor a balcony. Closed glass doors, covered with lace curtains.
To throw a stone at them mischievously, a schoolbag on the back and
stoclcings stretched up to the knee? As I walked there, dressed carefully by
Mother, among the children giggling at my different clothes. To sit down
at a steaming lunch, close to the breath of forefathers I never saw? Only
crumbs of medicines and old lipsticks in the drawers of the aunt who died.
That silence. The quiet of houses. Take a picture? A picture of air? Quiet.
Across the street, in the convent garden, a bell rings. Children pour out of
the gates of the school, climb on the fences, chew on apples.
Spotted far;:ades and the street spins. Not far from there, Kazimierz, the
Jewish quarter. The soot of trams on the doorsills of the houses. In the
windows of the reform synagogue, the "Temple," spiderwebs, and in the
yard, a tangle of weeds. In the alley of one of the houses is a blurred sign
