THE MADNESS LOCKER

by EDDIE RUSSELL

  Unexpectedly, the conversation turned to himself. The detective wanted to know when he had arrived in Australia. Sam was deliberately vague; he replied that he had arrived just before the end of the war. Where did he come from? Sam hesitated momentarily, wondering whether he should make reference to his original country of birth, or the fake identification that he had used to get into Australia. He decided not to risk it. What would be the point in lying? He wasn’t responsible for Ruth’s murder. He replied that he came from Germany.

  At this point the conversation, and now he was sure it was more of an interrogation, turned ominous: the detective asked him whether he could have a set of his fingerprints.

  For a split second Sam’s demeanour of bereavement dropped and he became tense and perturbed. He wanted to know whether it was common practice. Did all the tenants have to provide a set of their fingerprints? The detective was deliberately oblique: no. Then why was he being targeted? At the detective’s answer, Sam relaxed and resumed his bereaved countenance. No, he was not being targeted, but most likely his fingerprints were in Ruth’s apartment. If they could eliminate his fingerprints and hers, then what was left would belong to either Ernie, whom they could disregard, or more likely the intruder who caused her death.

  After some more rather inane questions, the detective departed. Any longer and Sam felt that he would start to suffocate under the pressure. And once that happened he would need to reveal what he knew in order to be able to breathe again. Except that he doubted that the detective would believe a word he said. He would either be sent off for a psychiatric evaluation or written off as a crazy old coot. There was absolutely no evidence to back up his story. Not a shred. Throughout the whole time the killer was in the apartment she wore a pair of surgical gloves. The one item that was broken was cleaned up and everything that had been disturbed was set right. He made sure of it. Ultimately the body was disposed of in a manner that made lividity impossible to determine, which is what the forensic team would use to pinpoint the time of death.

  He shut the door quietly and went back inside the apartment. He looked around the room: the table, the couch, the rug, the cushions. Pieces of a surreal event that took place no more than twenty-four hours ago. As he tried to conjure the images they seemed to be enshrouded in a white light, disjointed and soundless. The pall of madness, he imagined. What else? He slowly wandered over to the bedroom. It was immaculately neat and tidy, as he had left it. The bed made. The wardrobe doors closed. The few personal items neatly arrayed over the night table: clock, his allergy medication, a glass of water, a pair of cufflinks. No items of clothing discarded anywhere. The hardwood floor polished to a sheen. The louvre blinds pulled down and the slats slightly ajar, letting in a pall of grey light.

  He sat down on the corner of the bed, clasped his head in his hands and muttered to himself in German: “Was nun? Wie kann ich leben?”

  Now what? How do I live with this?

  For the first time in more years than he could remember, he heard his voice in his native tongue. In all the years since he deserted he had stopped speaking it. He always spoke in English, even when prompted to speak German by people that suspected it was his native language. In time he started to think and dream in English. It was easy to fall into the habit, living as he did in Australia. Everything was conducted in English: conversations, radio, TV, movies, social events, living with Emma, newspapers. Once, when he was in a bookstore he picked up a copy of Der Spiegel. The featured article was about Hitler’s diaries. He was tempted to buy it. Perhaps it would help him reconcile his desertion with his guilt over his abandonment of his family. But when the owner of the shop said something in German, Sam immediately set down the magazine and walked out.

  He wasn’t Friedrich Becker. That was another identity, moulded in a time and place that he had no control over. A time of madness. And he escaped. And now it was madness again, resurrected from that period, only this time, where was he going to escape to? He had escaped into a Jewish identity and made a life for himself in that persona. Perhaps not convincingly so, but a life just the same. As the years wore on he stopped feeling that he was escaping. He began to relax into his adopted skin. He even tried to mimic Jewish hand and speech mannerisms, with comical results. Once when he was practising in front of the mirror, Emma looked curiously from the doorway and laughed at him. At first he was ashamed to be caught in the lie. But then as he watched himself in the mirror he laughed too. He could work it, but unconvincingly. These were traits that just didn’t belong with his physical appearance and demeanour.

  And anyway, he was much too self-conscious to be able to act the part. So he maintained the lie and let people accept him or not. Ernie and he became close friends. Played bowls, sat in the café regularly, on occasion even went to the movies without their wives. Ernie was Jewish. He didn’t question Sam’s Jewishness. Most likely because he was avowedly secular and couldn’t care less about the not-so-subtle distinctions. To Ernie, Sam was just another German. Whether he was inherently Jewish never entered the equation. He liked him and that was enough for Ernie. Besides, Emma was unquestionably Jewish and she married him - as Ernie sternly pointed out to Ruth during one of her paranoid suspicions. “Have you considered that he might be a convert, after all? We do have those in the Jewish sect.”

  For an unfathomable reason Sam suddenly remembered another time, long ago, when he was sitting on another bed in a small apartment in Utrecht. And here he was again. But instead of being full of hope, he was filled with dread and sorrow. And there was no door out. He was caught in his own misery. The escape caught up with the escapee. And he was now totally alone. There was no country to return to. There was no family to reach out to. There were no friends to befriend. The only life left for him had been wrenched away by some demonic lunatic possessed with the idea that her life had to be vindicated.

  She should have killed him too. What point was there in leaving him behind? And maybe that was the point. Mad people have an uncanny ability to think at an ingenious and devious level. She wanted him left behind to suffer.

  “How could this happen?” he kept repeating to himself. It was as if a masterful player had tricked him into this position from which he could not extricate himself. He had been controlled like a marionette, the strings pulled from somewhere above him as he was twisted one way and then another, all the while made to believe that his life was going somewhere. It was going nowhere except the inevitable denouement; he had cheated fate in Germany only to be revisited by that same inevitability a half-century later.

  He started to look around the room as if expecting a secret panel to open up offering a chance to escape into another life. His eye caught a dark, glistening object by the glass of water. He leaned over to the nightstand and picked it up, studying it curiously. It was a hairpin. He brought it close to his nose and sniffed it. The fresh scent of spring rose up into his nostrils and warmed his interior. It was Ruth’s. The smell of her hair.

  He collapsed onto the bed, clutching the hairpin as the only remaining memento from their short time together, and started sobbing uncontrollably. “I have failed you. Oh, how I have failed you. I thought that I was protecting my life. But I have no life to protect.” He cried for the first time in his life. For all the suppressed memories that rendered him impassive: his sister and parents - did they pay for his desertion? Emma, whose love he abandoned and then redeemed; the Dutch partisans who, at her behest, put themselves at risk to help him escape; Ernie, who loved him like a dear friend but never truly knew who he was; and now Ruth. The guilt of accumulated lies heaved up from within and the load lightened. The more he cried, the better he started to feel. He felt relieved to be finally letting all the guilt out and facing up to the reality of who he was.

  Slowly he stopped shuddering and lay quietly on the bed as he had lain with Ruth the previous afternoon. That dreadful moment when the knocking on the door roused them both from their light sleep as they lay in bed, holding each other. It wa
s Sam’s apartment; so he untangled himself gently from Ruth, went over to the closet and took out his robe, shut the bedroom door and walked into the living room. Waited for the knocking to repeat itself. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he could return to lying in bliss in a warm bed with Ruth while it rained outside.

  It was no mistake. The knocking repeated itself.

  He walked softly over to the door and peered through the peephole. An elderly woman with scraggly grey hair bundled into a kerchief stood staring intently at the door. She had on a thick overcoat that looked tattered and dirty. A friend of Emma’s? He couldn’t remember anyone who looked like that. A friend of Ruth’s? She wouldn’t be knocking at his door.

  “Yes?” He could hear his voice, reedy and uncertain. He tried again, this time more boldly. “Yes? Can I help you?”

  “I am sorry to disturb you, sir. I am from the Jewish Agency. We have some forms that I need you to fill out.”

  He was surprised at the tone. He didn’t expect a woman who looked so scruffy to sound like that. She had a distinct Germanic accent, officious and hurried.

  “Just a moment.” He quickly looked around the apartment. They had left their clothes scattered on the couch and the dining-room table. He smiled inwardly. Like a pair of lustful teenagers. He quickly bundled up the clothes, opened the door to the bedroom and dropped them just inside.

  “Who is it?” Ruth’s sleepy voice enquired from the bed.

  “Sorry to wake you. It’s a woman from the Jewish Agency. Some forms that I need to sign. I suppose it is to do with Emma.”

  “Jewish Agency? Are you sure? What forms? What’s her name?” Ruth, who was acquainted with the agency, thought it rather bizarre that they were calling this late and this long after Emma’s death.

  “I didn’t ask.” Sam smiled inanely.

  “Ask before you let her in.”

  “OK.” He closed the bedroom door and returned to the front door. The woman was still standing there with the same intensity, staring at the door.

  “Can I ask, what forms are these?”

  “They are to do with your late wife. She left a bequest and we need you to sign the release form.”

  It made sense to him, although he couldn’t remember what particular bequest this could be. But Emma, who was Jewish on her mother’s side, might have signed some bequest that was not part of her will.

  He unlatched the chain, unlocked the door and opened it.

  As soon as the door was open a .45 appeared from under her overcoat. “Step inside. Don’t make a single sound. Understood?” The woman who at first had appeared elderly and scruffy took on an air of menace and resolve that made Sam unhesitatingly obey her orders.

  Still facing him head on, she stepped inside, then pushed the door closed with her back, locked it and then pointed the barrel of the gun at the table. “Sit down.”

  “Listen, if you want money, you don’t need to threaten me with a gun.”

  “Shut. Up. Just. Shut. Up. And don’t say anything unless I ask you a question. Now, sit down!”

  With the last command it suddenly occurred to Sam that the conversation had reverted to German. She was giving him orders in German and he was responding in kind. Without any further conversation Sam walked, crab-like, all the time keeping his eyes on the barrel, over to the lounge and sat down.

  “That’s better. Now, where is your lovely friend Ruth Lipschutz?” As she uttered the unfamiliar surname she bared her teeth with menacing delight.

  “Who?” His first instinct was to assume that it was another lady in the neighbourhood and that all this was a misunderstanding.

  “I asked you once. I am going to ask you again in case you didn’t hear me the first time: where is your lady friend? The one you came back from the movies with?” Her wild eyes averted to the kitchen, the closed bedroom door, the hallway leading to the bathroom and the second bedroom.

  “She went back to her apartment,” Sam replied firmly, to leave no doubt in her mind that it was the truth.

  “Really? I saw you two come in here about an hour ago. Then the lights went out. But the front door never opened again. So how did she end up in her apartment?”

  “What is it that you want?” Sam raised his voice in the hope that Ruth would hear the conversation and exit out the window to the deck below and flee.

  “Stay where you are and don’t move. Don’t even flinch.” She moved with surprising agility over to the kitchen and peered quickly inside. Focused her eyes down the hallway. Came back into the living room. “Is she in the bedroom?”

  Sam remained quiet.

  “What is your name?”

  Sam was momentarily relieved that the focus had shifted from Ruth. If she realised what was going on she might already be making her escape. This change in attention would buy her more time.

  “Sam,” he replied offhandedly, eager not to betray his anxiety.

  “Sam what?”

  “Sam Steimatzky. What do you care?”

  “I don’t know. You look familiar. Older. But definitely familiar. Now, why don’t you knock on the bedroom door and invite your friend to join our little party?” Once again she was pointing to the hallway leading from the back of the living room.

  “It’s not a bedroom. It’s a study. And there is nobody in there.”

  “I don’t care if it’s a horse barn. Get up. Go over to the door and knock on it.” Suddenly her eyes flashed with anger and her voice adopted a shrieking tone.

  Sam, jarred by the change, stood and walked shakily over to the ‘study’ door. He knocked.

  “Knock louder.”

  He did as she commanded.

  Ruth’s sleepy voice resounded from behind the closed door. “What is it, Sam?”

  “Tell her that an old friend from Berlin can’t wait to see her.” The woman sniggered.

  Again Sam did as she ordered him to.

  “Which old friend? What’s her name?”

  Sam turned away from the door. “She wants to know your name.”

  “I heard. I am not deaf. Tell her it’s a surprise.”

  Ruth did not wait to hear the answer. The door opened and she appeared, wary, in the doorway. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness in the living room. She strained to see who the person was that was claiming to be her friend.

  “Well hello, Ruthy darling. Isn’t this a cosy set-up? Meeting up at the butt end of the world after all these years,” she berated Ruth caustically.

  Ruth came further into the room, squinted at the speaker, looked puzzled at Sam by her side. Then saw the gun. “What’s going on? Sam? Helga? My God! Helga? Is that you?” Recognising Helga her surprise moved from the gun. Despite all the intervening years Ruth did not fail to recognise the menacing voice instantly, even though the face and hair had altered considerably. She had lived constantly with the fear that one day there would be a price to atone for her omission. The older she got, the more she felt that she had cheated that fate. But now it was here to exact its price.

  “I am so glad you remembered; I would have been really angry, really angry, if you hadn’t.”

  Hugging her housecoat tighter around herself, Ruth came further into the room so that she could see Helga clearly. “What are you doing here? When did you get to Sydney? How did you find me?”

  “Shut up, you witch. This is not a social call. I didn’t come here to catch up with you. You and that man, Sam or whoever he is, go sit over on the couch.” Helga raised the gun higher and pointed it directly at Ruth, then at the couch.

  Both Ruth and Sam moved meekly over to the couch and sat down on the edge of the seats. As soon as they were seated, Helga dragged out a chair from the dining table, pulled it over to the other side of the coffee table and sat facing them.

  “Now, Mr Sam, you are going to be the jury. I will be the prosecutor and the judge. On trial is a Jew called Ruth Lipschutz, who let me take her place in Berlin - oh, what, Ruth dear? Fifty years ago. Left me to die in her place. I spent over six ye
ars in a concentration camp. I was raped. Starved. Frozen. Had to endure horrors I will never forget. All because this bitch sitting next to you wouldn’t come forward and tell the SS that I am not her.” Helga glowered at Ruth, all the time keeping an eye on Sam to make sure that he wasn’t going to try and make a move for the gun.

  “It’s not her fault.” Sam intervened without being asked.

  “OK, Mr Jury. You can also be the defence counsel. If I am going to play two roles, you can also have two roles. You will be the defence counsel and the jury.

  “Now, Ruth, your defence counsel says it was not your fault. I say that it is. You knew exactly what happened and hid in the Jodls’ attic for God knows how long, and let me take your place. What do you say to that?”

  Ruth remained stone-cold silent, stunned by the surreal developments. Despite the heater being on and being bundled in a warm housecoat, she started shivering.

  “It was a terrifying time for all of us. She did what she could to survive,” Sam offered.

  “Very good. Now, as judge I can ask the defence counsel a question: where were you during the war?”

  Sam hesitated for a moment, then looked directly at Helga. “Same. Concentration camp.”

  “Really?” Helga jumped off her seat and came over to him.

  “Pull up your left sleeve.”

  “Why?”

  Helga lurched forward and struck Sam across the shoulder with the barrel of the gun. Wincing with pain, he unbuttoned his cuff and folded his sleeve upwards.

  “Turn your arm so that I can see your wrist. Now!”

  Sam obeyed instantly, fearful that she would strike him again.

  “Where is the number tattoo, Mr Sammy? Huh? Lying scoundrel.” She looked over at Ruth, who was trembling uncontrollably. “What’s the matter? You are afraid that I am going to hurt your friend? Don’t worry about him.” She turned back to Sam. “Let me see your wallet.”