The Accidental Pilgrim
Day one of my synagogue’s Jewish heritage tour and we trudge through Kazimierz, which was until WWII Krakow’s vibrant Jewish quarter. The district now is mostly tourists who cruise the streets in Disney-like trolleys branded Old Town, Jewish Quarter, Ghetto. Day two we mourn and pray at Auschwitz-Birkenau and by evening, I want nothing more than to put my sick soul to bed. On the way to the hotel a fellow tourist mentions that the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, a painting of the Virgin and child said to bring healing, is a two-hour drive. By the time we get to the lobby I decide to skip day three’s city tour and drive by taxi to the Jasna Gora monastery in Czestochowa, where the painting hangs. I don’t expect to find healing, but I’m desperate for a break.
The next day when we arrive at the monastery, a monk with a moon face, wearing a white-striped knit cap and a long black coat hurries through the vestibule to meet me. He smiles and glances at his watch before directing me through a hash of stainless-steel construction supports leading to a basilica soaring heavenward in such a frenzy of alabaster and gold, winged angels, and jubilant carved arches that I hardly know where to look. I slide into worn wooden pews, one of many visitors, most clad in the tourist’s standard issue dark pants, easy shirts, and comfortable shoes.
Murmured prayers and hushed voices flow into a current of chanting priests, the organ’s surge, a percussion of heels on the gray and white, diamond-shaped stone floor. This river of sound rises and eddies through the chapel into a whirlpool of humankind. Above, beyond, and of it the Black Madonna glows behind a black and gold iron grate amidst a wild garden of silver candelabra, white flowers, flickering candles.
Some minutes pass, five, maybe fifteen. The monk catches my eye and waves, motioning me to join him in a slow-moving line of worshippers walking within close range of the Virgin. Beneath her heavy-lidded eyes she seems to gaze into something like Eyn Sof—the words Jewish mystics use to describe the unknowable, endless mystery of existence. I feel the Black Madonna’s waves of sorrow, the limitless compassion, her brown cheeks slashed, as legend has it, by marauding 15th century Hussites. She holds her child close, their golden halos overlapping. I see you in your suffering, she seems to say. I too have suffered.
The monk shepherds me forward through the line to a dark passage and up a narrow staircase. We arrive at an alcove with a view of the painting and the swirling crowd below. As I lean over the balcony the monk vanishes—and, just as suddenly, reappears, holding a trumpet. He joins two other monks and the three stand against bright, arched, paned glass windows, sheet music on stands, the monks’ robes lit by sun. Their cheeks swell, noon strikes, and like a flash— trumpets wail as a heavy silver shield rises to cover the Black Madonna, providing respite, perhaps, from pilgrim cares and private sorrows for the broken-hearted mother and her child. I grip the rail, transfixed.
When the trumpets cease, the notes linger like mist. I float with the monk to the bottom of the staircase, where I emerge into a hum of words and the taps of tourists’ shoes. I thank the monk, weave through still-gathering crowds, zip my coat, and stumble into cold, clean air. The taxi is where I’d left it. I ease into reality’s backseat and am soon lulled by the car’s vibration, enveloped, once again, in the Mother’s—as they call her—mysterious embrace. Outside my window sparse gray fields recede into grayer sky and looming clouds, as if the heavens are obscured by tears.
When I arrive at the hotel, I ride the elevator to my room, and once inside push open heavy curtains, and—despite the cliché—sun does shine through clouds.
I place coins on the bureau by the bed and go into the bathroom to wash my hands, feel water carried through ancient pipes to me. In the bedroom the Polish Zloty glow, dust motes race around a sunny corner by the door.
I dry my hands and gaze into the bathroom mirror. Blue eyes born years past Auschwitz, eyes that remember.
The door next to my room opens, slams, and a T.V sputters on, voices in a foreign language seep through walls. Soon night falls, stars appear, and one by one, travelers put out their lights. My breath slows and eyes close, my heart regulates its beat. From the dark a shadow leaps along the wall and waves its hand to follow.
