I couldn’t stop myself. My skin crawled as I turned and spat on his nicely polished parquet floor. I tried to rise to my feet but his arm snapped out and he pinned my hand to the chess table. I refused to look at him, but I knew his eyes would be narrowed to arrow slits and a faint line of sweat would have sprung out along his hairline, his blond hair cropped so short I could see the shape of his skull.
‘Klara!’
‘No.’
‘Do as I ask.’
Why?
Why would I do what this man asked? This enemy whose forces had shot my husband out of the sky in flames and bombed my parents and brother to pieces of raw meat. This man who had personally ordered the execution of my friend Tomasz in the street; who had stood over me in an interrogation cell hour after hour, day after day, week after week, trying to extract from me a betrayal of my comrades in the Warsaw Resistance. Who had, with his own hands on the pincers, ripped out my fingernails, slowly, so that it would hurt more.
And when I was reduced to blood and mucus and a hatred so fierce it was like a machete in my chest, he threw a silk frock at me and brought me here to his apartment.
Why?
If it was sex he wanted, he could have taken it. But he didn’t touch me. Instead he took a hairbrush and slid its bristles through my matted mane, sprayed a sultry perfume on my throat and sat me here. At the chess table.
Why?
I was used to fear. Its grip on my heart was there with each beat. I was used to pain. I was used to the Totenkopf, the metal death’s head insignia on his SS cap, grinning at me. I was used to his voice, the kind that can steal your thoughts from you, winding itself through my mind. What I wasn’t used to was kindness.
He cupped my chin in his palm as gently as if I were a kitten. I became a chill and silent creature. His smile should have been angry; as hard and unforgiving as the iron in the German trains I had been blowing up. But his words were soft. Whispered across the table by candlelight.
‘Let me explain to you,’ he said gently, ‘why I can persuade you to say yes.’
I waited.
The minutes ticked past as slowly as though the hands of the wall clock were wearing leaden boots. Graufeld Camp’s Recreation hall was busy as always, crowded with people snatching at a moment of escape. From the boredom. From the mind-numbing despair that breathed its stale air into their faces when they opened their eyes each morning. Here they could pretend. They could be normal. They could clutch at laughter.
At one end two couples played table tennis. A circle of six women sat in the centre, scaring each other with ghost stories, their hands knitting all the time. Their wool hung in kinky twists from the needles because it was old wool, reused wool, make-do-and-mend wool.
I waited.
The card tables along one wall were occupied but everyone knew that the real card games, the ones where players staked their last Deutschmark and then their dead father’s watch or even an hour with their wife, those games took place elsewhere. Behind the huts or under the oak tree. I was sitting at one of the board-game tables. I’d chosen chess. I’d laid out the pieces and wrapped a pawn in each hand, one white, one black, for him to choose, but we both knew I would win. Black or white.
If we played chess, I wouldn’t have to look at him. And why would I want to look at a man I was going to kill?
He was late. Nearly an hour late. But not for one moment did I doubt that he would come. He was playing games. I looked at my hands and they were steady, no sign of shakes.
I waited.
Oskar Scholz opened the door. Jan Blach, as he chose to call himself – liar, liar – walked into the Reception hall. A cool spiteful draught slid in with him, stirring the smoke-laden air and nipping like a sly dog at our ankles.
I had three seconds to study him before his eyes searched me out. He was still in his disguise. Not tall any more but hunched and narrow, folded in on himself, his head low, his silver-grey eyes hooded and watchful. Still wearing the workman’s cords and collarless shirt. The lens of his spectacles was still cracked, creating a look of helplessness. It occurred to me in that second that he had cracked it himself. If I didn’t know him like I know the back of my hand, I could easily have missed him in a crowd.
He saw me.
We both knew this moment was coming, we were both prepared. Yet still, the moment our eyes fixed on each other, it felt like an act of violence. A kick in the gut. A mix of pain, shock and terror, but something else too. An overpowering desire to finish what we’d started, to put an end to . . .
To what, exactly?
An end to this.
The second his gaze hooked on mine, I saw him forget himself. His spine straightened, his chest swelled, his chin lifted. Before me stood the powerful SS Sturmbannführer Scholz once more, eyes cold as a rifle barrel, and his mouth hardened. I flicked a pointed glance at the chair opposite, summoning him to me.
As fast as the SS Sturmbannführer had arrived, he vanished. In his place stood the imposter, Jan Blach, shoulders slumped, jaw loose, hands hidden in pockets. He shuffled over to my chess table and sank down on the seat.
‘Good day, Frau Janowska,’ he smiled politely.
As if he’d never stolen my daughter.
‘You’re late,’ I said sharply. ‘My note said an hour ago.’
‘I apologise.’ He widened his smile but his eyes remained cold and suspicious. ‘The note came as a surprise. I had no idea you were here in Graufeld Camp.’
That was it.
No more words. Just silence. No apology from him. No begging for an absolution, which I could no more give him than fly. Neither of us spoke and there seemed no way to open a pathway to negotiation that might save at least one of us from a bullet in the brain.
I held out both hands to him, fists closed tight. ‘Choose,’ I instructed.
He raised one blond eyebrow in surprise, then with a neat grim nod he tapped the knuckles of my left hand. I flicked it over and uncurled my fingers. On my palm lay a pawn. It was black.
I moved my bishop to Queen 4 and silenced my flutter of satisfaction. I was white, therefore I had the advantage. I had gained control of the centre of the board, so I sat back, studied my opponent and waited.
Chess used to be my addiction. I would use it like a drug to make me forget. You cannot play chess and think of anything else. This meant that for a brief respite each day it wiped my mind. When I sat at the board, rows of black and white squares hypnotised me and the fate of my chess king became my obsession instead of this man in metal-rimmed spectacles. For an hour, sometimes two or three, my world would begin and end at the edge of the board.
Chess is a game of war. The middle-game is always carnage. In the early days I had encouraged Alicja to play against me because it would teach her to work out strategies, to think ahead. To focus her mind.
But today my opponent was Oskar Scholz and we fought our war in silence. He was strong in defence on the board, but less skilful in attack. That fact galled him. I intended to turn the screw today. I’d opened with the queen’s gambit and his position was now cramped, but I saw a flicker of a smile on his lips. I knew he was about to exchange pieces. The way he had exchanged me.
With a sudden sweep of my hand I sent the board and all the chess pieces flying off the table. Kings and bishops and castles rained through the air and crashed on to the floor. Heads turned to stare at us and a young boy came running over to pick them up, but Scholz waved him away. I gripped the sides of the table with both hands, my knuckles white as bone, and I leaned forward until my face was within spitting distance of his. I could feel blood draining from my cheeks as I fought to keep my hands off him.
‘This is not about the deaths,’ I said to him, my voice so low I could scarcely hear it myself. ‘Not about the violence. Not about loss or about rage. It is about the removal of personal freedom by people in positions of power. That is what you Nazis did.’ I made myself sit back. ‘You are not in power now,’ I hissed.
His eyes gleamed behind his spectacles in a way I found hard to understand. He was in danger from me every moment of the day. All I had to do was report him as a war criminal. Didn’t he comprehend that?
‘Klara.’ He let the word linger in his mouth. It set my teeth on edge. ‘We are both a constant threat to each other because of what we know about each other’s past. Let’s accept that, Klara.’
He rubbed his boxer’s square chin thoughtfully. His features were heavy, their bones strong, no hint of weakness anywhere in his face. It would have had a certain attraction for some, had his eyes not been so deep, nor so secretive.
He smiled at me now, a cold shark smile. ‘So what do you suggest?’
‘I wish to make a deal.’
At the other end of the hall a man whooped with triumph and waved his table-tennis bat in the air when he won his game, but neither of us looked away for a second.
‘What kind of deal?’ Scholz asked softly.
‘I don’t report you to Colonel Whitmore who would throw you to the dogs for war crimes, and you don’t report me. As simple as that.’
His chest was rising and falling faster.
‘We go our separate ways,’ I stated.
He folded his arms across his threadbare shirt and made no response.
‘You agree to the deal?’ I asked.
‘I agree.’
‘Then there is no need for us ever to speak to each other again.’
He didn’t like it. Didn’t like to be told. I saw a flash of the SS officer in the way he pulled back his wide shoulders and held out his hand to shake.
‘It’s a deal,’ he said.
I turned away from it, rose to my feet and walked out of the hall.
Did Oskar Scholz really think I believed his word?
This had nothing to do with my personal freedom. It had everything to do with saving my daughter.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I stood behind the Recreation block and vomited up the bile in me. I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and sucked in clear air to rid my nostrils of the stench of him. But still I could not rid my head of that moment Scholz opened the door of his apartment and invited Oberführer Fleischer to walk his jackboots into my life.
I was still seated at Scholz’s chess table. I must have looked a mess, a toad among the exquisite marble-carved nymphs and naiads that were draped suggestively about the room. In contrast to their perfection I was damaged. Fingers bloodied. Face bruised. My bones visible beneath my skin. I sat where I had been told to sit. Like a dog.
‘Guten Abend, Frau Janowska.’
‘Good evening, Oberführer Fleischer.’
Fleischer. Do you know what the surname Fleischer means in German? It means butcher. A man who butchers. I was sitting there waiting to be butchered.
Oskar Scholz greeted him warmly with an immaculate ‘Heil Hitler’ salute. The two men in their tailored grey uniforms with oak leaf patches, shoulder boards and iron crosses at their throat looked like respectable men you would want to know. Capable officers you would want on your side, blond and strong-necked, though Fleicsher was sinewy and lithe rather than muscular like Scholz. You would not look at them and think, These men are killers.
Until you got to know them better, that is.
‘What will you have to drink, Axel?’ Scholz offered.
‘What do you have? I fancy something special tonight.’ He laughed lightly and glanced across at me, but I did not play his game.
‘I have the most wonderful Polish vodka for you,’ Scholz declared, throwing open the doors of his maple-wood cocktail cabinet that was designed to resemble an Egyptian temple. ‘It’s a Soplica.’ He started to pour a silky clear liquid into two shot glasses. ‘Created by that Polish genius distiller in Gniezno, Boleslaw Kesprowicz. I’ve brought him to Warsaw.’ He raised his own glass. ‘Na zdrowie. Good health.’
‘Good health to you, Oskar.’
Axel Fleischer turned and studied me. I studied him right back, ignoring Scholz’s pointed frown. He downed his drink in one and murmured, ‘A fine vodka, Oskar. Smooth as a Fraülein’s thigh.’ He refused a second drink, approached the chess table and sat down opposite me. I was close enough to spot weaknesses now, the way his tongue touched his full top lip when he was nervous, but also to smell anticipation on him. An excitement. I wondered if I smelled the same.
The lights were low and a recording of classical music was playing softly in the background, something bold and Germanic. Wagner, I suspected. Fleischer picked up two pawns, beautifully carved out of marble, one white, one black, and concealed them in separate hands, which he held out in front of me. I noticed his fingernails were groomed and buffed, his nails just a fraction longer than was normal on a man. I could imagine them scratching my eyes out.
‘Choose,’ he ordered.
I chose. He turned over his hand. The pawn was black.
‘Are you good?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
A trace of a smile curved the corner of his mouth. ‘Can you beat me?’
‘Yes.’
He raised one sceptical eyebrow. Not for one second did he believe me. ‘Let play begin.’
Axel Fleischer was good, yes, I admit it, but not as good as he thought he was. I let him win the first game. But only after I could have taken his king at least ten times. Fleischer was over-eager pushing forward at the wrong moments. Is that what he was like on the battlefield too, a commander too willing to sacrifice his troops? I didn’t care to think of that.
In the second game I boxed him into a corner, forcing an exchange of queens and I saw a flicker of panic in his neat fingers, so I opened up a path for him to my king. When he won this time he made no secret of his disappointment in me. He lost interest, having expected more of a challenge. I’d underestimated him. Scholz was prowling behind me, restless as a cat. He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder.
‘Enough,’ Fleischer announced, pushing back his chair. ‘No more chess. Danke, Frau Janowska.’
‘One more,’ I said.
For the first time I smiled at the Oberführer. I peeled away one of the layers of indifference that coated my eyes and I saw him hesitate. He glanced with irritation at Scholz as if he were to blame for my inadequacy. In that assumption he was right. Oskar Scholz had ordered me to lose. He had misjudged his man.
‘Oberführer Fleischer,’ I said, pushing back from my face a strand of long hair still stiff with blood, ‘I would like a drink.’
I was given one. A shot of vodka. I drank it straight down and wondered why Fleischer was here. There must be other chess-playing women in Warsaw, ones without nail-less fingers and bruises on their skin. Why me?
I put down my glass and leaned forward, my eyes on his. ‘Now let us play for something worth playing for.’
The blue of his eyes grew more intense, suddenly intrigued.
‘Like what?’ he demanded.
‘My daughter’s freedom.’
He coughed, an uneasy bark of annoyance. ‘I know nothing about your daughter.’
‘But Sturmbannführer Scholz does.’
Scholz’s thumb dug into the side of my neck.
‘Leave her alone, Oskar,’ Fleischer muttered impatiently. ‘Das is genug! I want her mind sharp.’
Scholz removed his hand.
‘What’s your first name?’ Fleischer asked.
There was something different about him now, something sharper. The row of medals above his left breast pocket appeared to swell and the heavy metal insignia on his chest pulsed in the lamplight. My fingertips started to throb.
‘Klara,’ I said.
‘Well, Klara, this is what we’ll do. We’ll play one more game and whoever wins gets to stay out of Sturmbannführer Scholz’s blood-soaked interrogation room. How does that suit you?’ He smiled playfully. His mouth was very full and wide, and I wanted to reach across the table and peel it off his face. ‘Agreed?’ he prompted.
‘Agreed.’
As if I had a choice.
Fleischer set up the board, eager now. Why? I didn’t know. The deal was meaningless to him. He lit himself a cigarette, clearly expecting a long drawn-out game.
I demolished his king in six moves.
He laughed, the loud satisfied laugh of a man who has won. Which, of course, he had. I let him lean over the decimated board and kiss me on the lips, hard and triumphant. I let him drive me in his sleek black Mercedes-Benz 170V into the warm night and through the bombed-out streets of Warsaw, its powerful headlights picking their way over the pathetic shattered ruins of a once proud city.
I let him take my arm. Walk me through the grand archway of his fine apartment. I let him slide the straps of my borrowed finery off my chill shoulders. I let his full wide lips invade my throat and neck with their soft demanding heat.
I let him take me to his bed. Tumble me between his silk sheets and take possession of my body as brutally as I had taken possession of his king.
But didn’t they know, these men? This Oberführer Axel Fleischer. This Sturmbannführer Oskar Scholz. Hadn’t they learned? That when it came to war on a board of black and white squares, the king may be taller. But the queen was more dangerous.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘Thank you, Klara.’
The young woman in my hut with the golden curls and the pretty doll’s face beamed at her reflection in the hand mirror I had just presented to her. It had a tortoiseshell frame and a handle that fitted snugly into the palm. To the other woman who loved to sew I gave a choice of three different pairs of spectacles, two with wire frames, one with small round lenses in a black frame. She tried on each one, selected the one that helped her most, the black ones, and hugged me hard.
‘Thank you, Klara.’ She was weeping with relief. ‘You are a magician.’
They both paid me well.
A magician? I wish.
I checked on my daughter. She was well enough now to be impatient with my constant hovering at her side, but whenever I left her I made certain one of the other children took my place. Today it was Alzbeta. They were seated side by side on my bunk bed, heads together while Alicja demonstrated to her friend how to do one of the maths puzzles I had set them. I sat beside her.
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