When Adam had finished interviewing Hannah he thanked her for all the valuable information she’d given him and praised her for her own heroism and contribution to the uprising, which she had made little of. They hugged each other and he wished her long life.
Seeing him packing up his equipment, Mr Leibowitz, who had been hovering, was unable to keep silent any longer.
‘So now you have some time for me?’
‘You bet. Can I take you out to lunch?’
‘I hope so. Oh!’ the old man said, suddenly remembering something else. ‘But before we go, will you do me a favour?’
‘Sure, if I can.’
‘You can. Downstairs is where they put the ones who have no use any more for their memory boxes. These people are famishte. You understand? They have lost their sense of themselves, they can’t control their minds and sometimes they can’t control their bodies. You understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘There’s a woman I know from when she used to live up here on this level. When they were moving her down there she was frightened of the change and I promised her that I would come visit her. She has no one. No one ever comes to visit her so I try to go. Can we go down there for a few minutes? I’ll introduce you. It will be the highlight of her day. It will be the only light.’
Adam agreed and the old man took him downstairs. After being granted entry through the glass security doors Mr Leibowitz introduced him to the woman he had talked about. Someone had brushed her hair but her eyes were wild as though blown about in a wind only she could feel, a gale inside her head. She could not be relied upon to know where she was.
‘Can you go and get me glass of water?’ she asked Mr Leibowitz.
‘Yes, of course, darling,’ he said, leaving Adam alone in a room full of broken old people moving around slowly, jerkily, in random directions. What private anarchy was it that made such frequent guerrilla raids on the minds of these people?
The friend of Mr Leibowitz suddenly entwined her arm in Adam Zignelik’s and whispered to him, ‘The camp guards won’t give me any more water. He always does better with them.’ Then taking his hand in hers for a moment she quickly turned it palm-up and stared at it.
‘You know, all the boys liked me. You ask anyone. All the boys liked me. My father is away on business now so you don’t need permission to visit me. I can read your palm. Do you want that?’
It took a little over thirty hours for Adam Zignelik to go from closing the door of his room at the Hotel Tolarno in Melbourne to opening the door to the apartment he rented from Columbia University. He put his luggage on the floor, closed the door, kicked off his shoes and flopped on the couch. Nobody knew he was home. Soon it wouldn’t be his home. Next week he was going to have to empty his office. He had to figure out where he’d put the contents. What do you pay for storage now? he wondered.
He noticed the light on his answering machine blinking and on his way to the bathroom to take a shower he hit the button. There was only one person he wanted to hear from. Adam stood in the bathroom, the shower running, and held Diana’s comb in his hand.
‘Pathetic,’ he said under his breath about himself. He’d been thinking about the comb, looking forward to it since some way across the Pacific.
From the other room came a woman’s voice not entirely unfamiliar but not immediately welcome, not from its tone. It was the woman William McCray liked to call Charles’ secretary. ‘Personal Assistant, PA, Administrative Assistant, whatever you call her, she’s his secretary,’ he would say. ‘Is there something offensive in the word?’ Over the sound of the water Adam couldn’t quite make out the message the woman had left but when he got out of the shower he heard it. There’d been a call for him while he was away that had come through to her. A man from Chicago had called. He left his number and asked Adam to call him back.
‘His name …’ she said, ‘I’m sorry, Dr Zignelik, I seem to have misplaced it … oh here it is! Wayne Rosenthal. Dr Wayne Rosenthal. Said he’s a psychologist. Something about your work … in Chicago?’
*
In the course of his research into the combat experiences of African American troops during World War II, Adam had found the 761st Tank Battalion of considerable interest. He had initially thought that this all-black battalion had been attached to the 79th Division of the US 7th Army in Lieutenant General Devers’ 6th Army Group only to learn that it had been attached to that division for no more than a couple of weeks. For most of its active duty in Europe the 761st Tank Battalion was attached to the 87th Division of the US 3rd Army, becoming attached to the 71st Division of the 3rd Army only on 28 March 1945. The reason this stuck out to Adam was that from his research thus far he knew that the 71st Division had advanced through Bavaria in April of 1945. It was not disputed that the 761st had taken part in the liberation of a satellite camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp known as Gunskirchen on 5 May 1945.
‘Did you know that the 761st had taken part in the liberation of Gunskirchen?’ Adam Zignelik, with a hint of triumph in his voice, asked his friend William McCray over coffee.
‘No, I have to admit, I did not. And this Gunskirchen, it was a satellite of Mauthausen, you say?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you just found this out?’
‘I only just discovered it but it’s known by people in the field.’
‘It’s not disputed?’
‘No, it’s widely accepted. As far as I know, no one disputes it.’
‘And Dachau?’ William asked, sipping on his coffee.
‘Black troops at Dachau?’
‘Yeah, anything?’
The disappointment on William McCray’s face when Adam let him know that he hadn’t uncovered anything to suggest black troops were involved in the liberation of Dachau made Adam feel as though he was letting William down. Perhaps this was how Charles sometimes felt.
‘Is it your friend?’
‘How do you mean?’ William asked.
‘Is it for your friend, the one in Boston, is that what makes it particularly important to you that someone definitively establishes African American troop involvement at the liberation of Dachau? I mean Gunskirchen was a satellite of Mauthausen. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Frankly, it would help a lot if he’d reconsider and agree to talk to me because –’
‘Adam, he’s not talking to anyone –’
‘I know, and I really do appreciate what he’s been through but if you could explain that –’
‘Adam, he’s not talking to anyone. He died,’ William explained, taking in a breath and trying to keep himself composed.
‘William, I’m so sorry.’
‘Yep, me too.’ William paused for a moment, taking in the room around him before continuing.
‘Look, Adam, I know Dachau wasn’t a death camp but it was the first concentration camp Hitler set up when he came to power. I mean, this was as early as 1933. And it was one of the last to be liberated. So it would have particular significance if it could be shown that African Americans were involved in its liberation. And the vehemence of the campaign against recognising the role of black servicemen there – ‘cause that’s what it is, you know, a campaign – this makes me all the more keen for somebody to get to the bottom of it. And yes, truth be told, it’s also for my friend.’
It was not for want of trying or for lack of regard for William McCray that Adam Zignelik had not managed to find any first-hand evidence, nothing from a primary source that placed a black unit at the liberation of Dachau. He tried to decide whether his time was best used further examining the combat experiences of the men of the all-black 761st Tank Battalion or whether he should bury himself in the transcripts and wire recordings of the Chicago psychologist, Henry Border. It was only when he turned his attention back to Border’s interviews that he saw the beginnings of something that sooner or later he might be able to discuss with his old friend, the civil rights lawyer and World War II veteran. In a period of three weeks he came ac
ross the evidence of three survivors interviewed by Border who mentioned, just in passing, that the military force that had liberated the camp they found themselves in at the end of the war contained black soldiers. One of these three survivors didn’t know the name of the camp he was liberated from or else Border hadn’t elicited it from him but the other two seemed to think it was either Dachau or one of Dachau’s Kaufering satellite camps. Of these two, one of them even mentioned his surprise at seeing a black officer, a captain, whose name he happened to have remembered with the help of a mnemonic.
From US Army records Adam found that although the 42nd and 45th Divisions of the US Seventh Army are credited with the liberation of Dachau on 29 April 1945, the 71st Infantry Division of the US Third Army, to which the black 761st Tank Battalion was at that time attached, was also not far from there at the relevant time. Eventually he was able to match the name remembered by Border’s interviewee with the name of an African American captain in the 761st Tank Battalion. Border’s interviewee was no longer alive but, by consulting US Army enlistment records, Adam was able to find the home address of the captain at the time of his enlistment in 1942. The address didn’t yield the captain but it led Adam to a relative of his, a granddaughter who lived in New York.
For so long he hadn’t made any progress with this but now, simply because one of the survivors Border had interviewed had spoken to the officer and had remembered his name and rank, Adam was able to track down the officer’s granddaughter. The man on Border’s wire recording had remembered the name because it was also the name of the country’s capital and its first president.
This was how it happened that Adam found himself contacting the only living relative of Captain James Washington of the 761st Tank Battalion. Dr Ayesha Washington, it seemed, was a very busy woman but Adam was more than happy to meet her at her place of work at a time convenient for her. She worked as an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
*
Charles McCray felt it had been a compromise to bring work home that night rather than stay back late in his office in the Fayerweather building on the Columbia campus. His wife Michelle had been less sure. At least she and their daughter Sonia had to worry less about the volume of music or the radio they were playing or the movie they were watching when Charles worked late in his office. What was the point of him being there if he wasn’t going to interact with anybody and, worse, was going to implicitly impose constraints on the way they spent the evening?
But he was trying. He wondered if she’d noticed. He wondered too about the point of what he’d been doing, looking through some recent journals only one of which had a paper in his area. Surely, he asked himself, a man in his position is expected to keep up with what was going on in his profession, even outside his specific area of expertise? Was he reading outside his area in order to be able to keep up with all his colleagues? With whom was he trying to keep up? Who was he trying to impress? Not his father. No amount of reading would impress him, not any more. Would it give him something to talk about? Maybe, but who was he going to talk to: colleagues, friends? His colleagues would talk to him at least until the chair was given to someone else in the department and if their need to engage him dropped off after that, what then? As for his friends … He wondered how Adam was faring with that Chicago research. He was going there often enough. Just because it was too late to save Adam’s position at Columbia didn’t mean Charles should ignore his friend’s work. His father wasn’t ignoring it.
Charles resolved to have lunch or at least coffee with Adam and to talk to him about his work, about his plans post Columbia. Was Adam still meeting up with William for coffee once every week or so? How was it, Charles wondered, that he didn’t know? Adam was a good man. How was he coping after Diana? Maybe Michelle would know. And so again his questioning reached back to where it had started. How much point was there in reading all these journals, in even scanning them? Who was keeping up with the latest developments in his wife’s life, in his daughter’s mood swings? They had each come to him and kissed him goodnight. That was good.
Michelle had gone to bed an hour and a half before him and by the time he had brushed his teeth, put on his pyjamas and got into bed, she was long asleep. Was she dreaming? he wondered. When she was younger did she ever dream, did she ever even imagine the man she would end up being married to, a man like him, an intellectual, an academic? And if she had, how much of a disappointment had he, the man she’d actually married, turned out to be? He rolled over on his side in bed and looked at her. Was it her moisturiser or her shampoo that smelled like that? He closed his eyes and breathed in his wife deeply. It calmed him and soon he was asleep. It was almost 3 am and he had been asleep for just a little over two hours when the phone on his bedside table rang, waking both him and Michelle. Because it was next to him he was the one to answer it.
‘Hello?’ Charles said blearily.
‘Is this the home of Mrs Michelle McCray?’ a man asked.
‘Who is this?’
‘I’m sorry to bother you at this time of night, sir. I’m a police officer. Is this the home of Mrs Michelle McCray?’
‘Yes, it is, I’m her husband. What’s this all about?’ Michelle stirred. Her first thought was of her clients. But she didn’t give out her home number so that couldn’t be it.
‘May I speak with Mrs McCray please, sir? Again, apologies for –’
‘It’s for you,’ Charles said, handing the phone over to Michelle.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s the police.’
‘Police? Hello? Who is this?’
‘I’m very sorry to trouble you at this hour, ma’am. Am I talking to a Mrs Michelle McCray?’
‘Who is this?’
‘This is Officer Brooks, NYPD. Am I talking to Mrs Michelle McCray?’
‘This is Michelle McCray.’
‘Sorry to bother you at this hour, ma’am. My partner and I were called to a disturbance in the north Bronx and we have a pretty severely distressed man here who has asked us to call you to confirm his story. The gentleman in question has no ID on his person and we have reason to believe that he might be under the influence of a prohibited substance … Ma’am, are you there?’
Sweating, unable to catch his breath and with a heart rate he felt was only a few beats away from flatlining, he had an urgent need to get himself outside no matter how late it was, no matter how cold it was, no matter how many floors down. As he leaned against the side of the downward moving elevator his only desire was to breathe the outside air. But when he reached the ground floor of his apartment block and went into the street he found that the cold air didn’t help. Unsteady on his feet, he was terrified. He was losing control. Hot and cold and stumbling, under-dressed for the night and for the season, he mouthed something unintelligible to some passing kids coming home late from a night out. They thought he was tripping, possibly crazy, possibly dangerous. Not wanting to get involved, one of them called the police from a mobile phone and then at the end of the call used the phone to record scenes of the man as he spiralled out of all normal human ways of being. Now Officer Brooks was putting him on the phone to Michelle McCray.
‘’Chelle?’
‘Hello?’ The man was panting furiously. His mouth was dry, and his tongue, stuck to the roof of his mouth, made the sound of consonants as he tried, unsuccessfully, to speak. Painfully, he forced out a few words.
‘’Chelle, it’s me … It’s Lamont.’
‘Lamont? What’s –’
‘’Chelle, she’s dead. Grandma’s dead.’
part eleven
SONIA MCCRAY WAS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD when she stood a few feet from the grave, slightly behind but with one foot edged between both her father Charles and her grandfather, William. This was the first funeral she’d ever been to. Before this, death had been confined to stories in books, on television, in the movies and sometimes in songs in which the singer would suggest that without the person being sung to, the
singer would die. It was a feeling she had never experienced. But here was a gaping gash in the cold earth containing someone Sonia had known, even loved in a way, someone she had never had enough time for, and yet someone who had loved her beyond reason. Standing there, almost hiding, behind her father and grandfather, she wanted to apologise for not visiting her more often, for not sharing more of her life with her great-grandmother, for rejecting the apple juice she always offered her. When had she last been to her apartment?
In front of both Sonia’s father and her grandfather stood her mother Michelle, and next to her mother, also at the mouth of the grave, stood a man she had no memory of ever having met before. But apparently she had met him when she was very young. Her father and her grandfather were dressed in dark suits under their winter coats while her mother wore a black skirt with a black shirt and jacket under her coat but the man was dressed unlike all of them, completely informally. He was wearing jeans with a flannel shirt and a sweater under his coat but she understood that it did not reflect a lack of respect for Sonia’s great-grandmother nor was it evidence that he felt any less grief at the loss. In fact, he was the most visibly moved. Sonia could not bear to look at the man any more than she could bear to look at the grave. As he rocked before the mouth of the grave, Sonia’s mother, who was holding on to him, rocked with him. The man was her mother’s cousin, her, Sonia’s, great-grandmother’s grandson, Lamont.
From the way they shared their grief Sonia pieced together that her mother had once been very close to him but that he’d been away and they hadn’t been in touch again till now. He had been the one who had found Sonia’s great-grandmother. She had died in her sleep. Sonia wondered whether she was meant to comfort her mother or whether she could leave that to her father and her grandfather. She looked at her grandfather standing bundled up in his coat. He was older than her great-grandmother had been. How would the funeral have made him feel? she wondered. Thank God he was still there. He hadn’t changed. She vowed to see a lot more of him. Where was Lamont’s family? she wondered. Then she realised that her mother and now Sonia herself were probably all he had. No wonder he rocked that way. How long before they could leave?
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