‘What message?’ asked Trave. He wanted to help the old lady if he could. He remembered what had happened to Jacob’s parents, her son and daughter-in-law, in the war.
‘Tell him to come back to Antwerp and stop digging into the past. No good will come of it. I know that.’
‘I’ll give him the message if I find him, but I doubt he’ll listen to me. He’s a determined young man. I remember that from watching him at the trial when he gave his evidence.’
‘Yes — determined, headstrong, foolhardy. And obsessed too — obsessed with the letter Ethan wrote to him before he died. Jacob can’t stand it. That’s the problem. He can’t bear it that his brother wanted to tell him something but died before he had the chance. I suppose he thinks he could have saved Ethan’s life if Ethan had confided in him. There’s no basis for him thinking that, but he still feels it, and like you, he’s convinced that this man, Swain, had nothing to do with Ethan’s death. He says it was a set-up, a conspiracy. And I’m sure he thinks the same about poor Katya’s death as well, which I read about in the newspaper, although I haven’t seen him since that happened.’
‘Why? Why does he say it was a conspiracy?’ asked Trave, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.
‘Because Ethan wrote the letter from West Germany and not from England, and so Jacob says that Ethan must have discovered something there that led to his death. Jacob may well be right. After the trial in London a stranger came here to this building and told me to warn Jacob to stay away from the past. Jacob wasn’t here, fortunately, or there might have been violence, and after the man’s visit we moved.’
‘What did the man look like?’
‘Not tall; thin; small, cold, watchful eyes. He kept on his hat and had the collar of his raincoat turned up around his ears so I couldn’t see much of his face. He came in the evening, and it was getting dark outside my apartment, so I doubt I’d recognize him again. But I know what kind of person he was. I’ve seen men like him before when the Germans were here, people who worked for the security police. He spoke in Dutch, almost like a native. But not quite,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Languages are my speciality — they’re how I made my living once upon a time, and they’re also the one thing Jacob seems to have inherited from me. I don’t think the man who came here was Belgian by birth — German maybe.’
‘Did he give a name?’
‘No, of course not. People like that don’t have names,’ said the old lady, giving a hollow laugh. ‘He didn’t stay long — just long enough to make his meaning clear. And I was frightened — I don’t mind admitting that, and so I told Jacob. I wish I hadn’t now. The man’s visit just made him more determined to find out who killed Ethan. And by then he’d become convinced that Titus Osman was behind it all, which made me angry…’
‘Why? Why Osman?’ interrupted Trave, leaning forward in his chair.
‘I don’t know. It’s difficult to understand when someone’s so wrong-headed. I suppose it’s because Ethan went to stay with Titus to find out more about his parents and ended up dying in Titus’s house, and because he went straight back there after posting the letter to Jacob, but I think most of all it’s because Titus arranged for Jacob’s parents to escape from Belgium and they ended up getting caught. That’s the root of the trouble, you see — Jacob blames Titus for his parents’ deaths, and so he blames him for everything else as well. It was awful at Ethan’s funeral. Titus came to pay his respects, as was right and proper, and Jacob practically accused him of being a murderer in front of all the guests. Titus was very good about it, very kind and understanding, but it didn’t change what Jacob had done. He had shamed me, shamed our family, and after that it was never the same between us. But now, now I wish he would just come back.’
The old lady’s voice caught, and she took a small white handkerchief from the sleeve of her black cardigan and dabbed her eyes.
‘Why are you so sure Jacob is wrong about Titus?’ asked Trave. He felt a little ashamed of persisting with his questions when the old lady was so visibly distressed, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop their conversation just when it had become so interesting to him.
‘Because I wouldn’t be here speaking to you if it wasn’t for Titus,’ Aliza said quietly, recovering her composure. ‘He saved my life and the lives of my grandchildren, and for that he deserves our gratitude, not slander. He arranged everything: the false papers to get us into France and the guides who cut the wire and took us through the woods into Switzerland in the early morning with diamonds hidden in the heels of our shoes. Without the diamonds the Swiss would never have let us stay. At the border you had no chance — they handed you over to the Germans without a second’s thought, but in Zurich it was different. We paid money, and they put us in a labour camp. It was hard, but at least we were safe, and my son and his wife could have been there with us if Avi hadn’t been so stubborn, so pig-headed about staying in Belgium. It was Avi’s fault what happened, not Titus’s. He waited nearly a year, until the winter of 1943, and by then it was much harder to get out. Switzerland had become impossible, and so Titus tried to send them through Vichy and across the Pyrenees to Spain, but the borders were tighter and they were stopped, sent back
…’
‘Why did your son wait?’ asked Trave. ‘He must have known how dangerous it was here.’
‘He thought he would be safe because he and Golda were Belgian citizens, and for the first year after the deportations began in 1942 the Germans had a strict policy of only taking foreign Jews. It was easier for them that way. Almost all the Jews in this country were refugees, and exempting Belgian citizens kept the local population guilt-free. And the Germans were clever that way. They did everything gradually so as not to make us panic. They came in in May 1940, but it was two years before they made us wear the yellow stars. Registration was the key. Once we’d registered they knew where to find us when they were ready. They made a camp at Mechelen. Do you know where I mean?’
Trave shook his head.
‘It’s a pretty town — twenty kilometres from here on the road to Brussels. There are good rail connections into Germany and from Germany to Poland. And Mechelen’s where they told the Jews to report for deportation to labour camps in the east, except it wasn’t a labour camp they went to. You know where they went, don’t you, Inspector?’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Trave, bowing his head, experiencing that same sense of empty despair that he always felt when he thought of the Holocaust.
‘Many Jews suspected too, I think,’ said Aliza. ‘They went into hiding, and when only a few thousand answered the work orders, the Germans began the round-ups, the razzias — beating down people’s doors, dragging them from their beds in the middle of the night.’
‘And yet your son stayed?’
‘Yes, for more than a year. Like a fool he believed he was safe even while the Shoah was occurring all around him. And he didn’t want to leave his home, his business — everything that he’d worked so hard to achieve.’
‘But surely he wasn’t able to carry on his business?’
‘He used gentiles to run it as a front. And that worked for a while. Until the Germans changed their minds and went after the Belgian Jews too. And then Avi and Golda went into hiding, sewed diamonds into their clothes, and got caught at the border. They were on one of the last convoys that went from Mechelen to Auschwitz, and they didn’t come back. Almost no one came back.’
Auschwitz: the dread name that Aliza had hitherto avoided using fell like a stone into their conversation, reducing them both to silence. Outside the sun had set, and the fire’s blaze had died down so that Trave could hardly make out the expression on the face of the old lady. She seemed far away, lost in places where he could not follow.
‘How do you bear it?’ he asked her. ‘This terrible suffering — how do you go on?’
‘Because I must,’ she said simply. ‘It is my fate, the fate of my people. I have a choice — to live or to die. I cannot choose to l
ive and die.’
Trave shook his head, thinking of his own life — the death of his son, the loss of his wife, all the murdered men and women whose deaths he’d been called on to investigate, but it was all as nothing compared with what had happened in the war. Auschwitz was beyond measure — it stripped the world of meaning.
‘It’s not easy,’ said Aliza, looking at Trave as if she understood what he was thinking. ‘My life has been hard, but there’s been good as well as bad amid all the wandering. My name, Aliza, means “merry and joyful” in Hebrew. I think my parents called me that because they were so pleased to have me. My mother had had difficulties before — several miscarriages. Many times during my life I have thought of changing my name, but I never have because it is who I am, who my poor parents intended me to be, who I must try to be despite all the suffering.’
‘You said you wandered,’ said Trave. ‘So you are not from here?’
‘Antwerp? No. I came here from Poland after the first war, fleeing from pogroms, dreaming of America, but I ended up staying like so many others. I got work at the bourse, the diamond exchange, as an interpreter. I met my late husband there and we had Avi. And Antwerp became my home. I could have gone to Israel after the war, but I had to come back. They say that Antwerp is now the last shtetl in Europe
…’
‘Shtetl?’ repeated Trave, not understanding.
‘It means “little town” in Yiddish. Like one of your villages in England where everyone knows each other and everything is familiar and yet life is always fresh and new and colourful.’
Trave nodded, remembering the vivid bustle of the Jewish Quarter earlier in the afternoon.
‘But perhaps I was wrong,’ said Aliza meditatively. ‘Perhaps I was selfish. Maybe in Israel the boys would have looked forward rather than back. Every day in Switzerland they waited for their parents to come, and then in Antwerp they thought constantly of what might have been.’
‘Were they close, Ethan and Jacob?’
‘Yes, they were inseparable, even though they were so different. Ethan was two years older, and he was more like me I suppose — steady, patient, persevering — whereas Jacob is headstrong, ruled by his emotions, in love with extreme positions. After Ethan’s death he left our synagogue and became a Hasid, and then two months later he gave that up and said he was a Zionist. I don’t know what he is now. Or where he is…’
‘Has he written to you, telephoned you, made any kind of contact since he left?’ asked Trave.
‘No, nothing. As I said, our relationship deteriorated after Ethan’s funeral.’
‘Do you have a photograph of him? I saw Jacob once when he gave evidence in London, but a picture would help with finding him.’
‘Yes, I thought of that,’ said Aliza. She leaned forward to pick up an old weather-beaten black bag that was lying on the ground by her feet, and the white cat on her lap stretched and jumped softly down, looked quizzically at Trave for a moment, and then stalked away out of sight.
Aliza took a small framed picture out of the bag and handed it to Trave, who got up from his chair to take it from her.
‘It was taken two years ago,’ said the old lady. ‘And Jacob wears glasses now. He was always short-sighted like his father, but it got a lot worse at the beginning of last year. I’ve written my address and phone number on the back.’
A young, good-looking man with thin cheeks and wide eyes stared back at Trave out of the photograph. He was neither smiling nor scowling, but the line of his mouth was resolute and his chin was firm and set. He looked like a man on a mission, Trave thought — a soldier about to go to war.
‘I will look for him,’ said Trave slowly, feeling like he was taking a vow. ‘I can’t promise anything, but I will try, and if I succeed, I’ll tell him your message.’
‘Thank you. That’s all I ask,’ said the old lady, holding out her hand in farewell. ‘I feel you are a good man, William Trave. I think you have suffered too like me and so you understand what I have told you. May God go with you and be your guide.’
CHAPTER 17
Vanessa shivered, pushing her hands deep into the pockets of her overcoat. She’d wrapped up warm to come out, but it still wasn’t enough to keep out the stabbing cold. There’d been a forecast for snow in the morning paper, but for now there was only the cold and the clinging mist that hung over the river beside which Vanessa was sitting, rendering the line of black, leafless trees on the far bank into tall, ominous shadows that filled her with unease.
Vanessa hated January — the month when winter seemed like it would never end and it was dark by half past four in the afternoon. It was like an annual endurance test — bedraggled Christmas trees awaiting collection at the end of the road, the ground hard and barren, nothing to look forward to but more of the same. It made Vanessa think, as she often did, that she’d been born in the wrong country, that she was a southerner at heart, forever longing in vain for the warm sun of the Mediterranean or the hot countries beyond.
She knew, of course, that she could go there now on a cheap ticket, lie on a beach for a week, burn the cold from her bones. She had some money saved up, and she was sure Titus would go with her if she asked him. He’d jump at the idea. But something held her back. It felt too much like an escape, an abdication of responsibility. Because it wasn’t just the winter that was making her feel anxious and hemmed in. Her unease had deeper roots. She felt she was at a crossroads in her life and would soon have to choose a road to go down for better or worse. And yet she distrusted the signposts, feeling unready to make a decision.
Titus had been patient with her for months, but she could sense that soon he would press her for an answer to his marriage proposal. Vanessa believed she loved him — certainly she thought of him constantly when he wasn’t there and looked forward with hungry anticipation to their evenings together. But was this a basis for married life? She’d loved her husband with all her heart once, years ago, and yet their union had failed. Vanessa was burdened with her past: however hard she tried, she was unable to free herself of her life experience. She feared commitment and yet could no longer enjoy the independence that she’d worked so hard to achieve in her little flat behind Keble College. She was always restless now, taking long, directionless walks after work, and at night she was oppressed by loneliness, turning on the radio beside her bed to fill the vacant space and then waking up in the small hours to the sound of alien, disembodied voices discussing the parlous state of the world.
But she knew that it wasn’t just indecision over her future with Titus that had upset her peace of mind. It was guilt too — a gnawing guilt that was eating away at her inside. The months had passed since David Swain’s arrest, and now his trial was fast approaching, and yet she still maintained her silence about what Katya had said to her that September night in the drawing room at Blackwater Hall. Vanessa remembered the terrible effort the girl had made to reach her, to get her words out before she lost consciousness. ‘They’re trying to kill me,’ she’d said. And a few weeks later someone had killed her, and yet Vanessa had stayed quiet. Why? At first because Titus had asked her to, but that was all right because at that early stage she’d only agreed to think about what to do; she’d made no binding commitment. And then when Franz Claes had pressed her on the issue a week later, her immediate instinct had been to rebel against his pressure and tell Titus that she had decided to go to the police. She had always thought of her husband as essentially a fair man, and she’d been unable to credit the idea that Bill would twist Katya’s words to try to implicate Titus in the murder because he was conducting a jealous vendetta against his wife’s lover. But then within hours of her conversation with Claes she’d been forced to revise her opinion. Vanessa shuddered even now, months later, at the memory of her husband lying sprawled on his back in the courtyard of Blackwater Hall like some pathetic, angry schoolboy who’d just lost a playground fight. It was obvious he couldn’t be trusted, and so she’d reluctantly agreed to remain silent wh
en Titus raised the matter with her again later that day. And she’d felt bound to stay quiet even when her husband was taken off the case.
Then, as the weeks passed and Swain’s trial got closer, she tried to tell herself that her silence didn’t matter because the case against the defendant was so overwhelming, but her conscience kept getting the better of her. She couldn’t suppress the memory of Katya’s white, agonized face from her mind, and every day she felt more torn between her need to do what was right and her desire to protect Titus.
What troubled Vanessa most was that she wasn’t just shielding Titus; she was shielding Claes too. Vanessa had no doubts that Titus was entirely innocent of all wrongdoing, but she was far less sure about Claes. She had always disliked Titus’s brother-in-law with an intensity that she didn’t understand, and at their most recent meeting the previous Sunday their unspoken mutual antipathy had almost erupted into open hostility.
They’d been in the dining room at Blackwater — Osman at one end of the polished oak table and Claes at the other, with Vanessa and Claes’s silent, severe-looking sister sitting on either side between the two men. Outside, it had been raining all day and the atmosphere was heavy and oppressive. Vanessa had to force herself to eat the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding that Titus always liked to have served on Sundays in a strange culinary homage to his adopted country, and she was counting the minutes until Titus and she could be alone. With dessert they began a desultory conversation about politics and the state of the world. It was not a subject in which Vanessa had any great interest, but she had enjoyed watching the Kennedy inauguration on the television a few days earlier and had felt infected by the mood of excitement and hope inspired by the new young president.
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