The Black Life

by Paul Johnston

  Zvi came up and slipped a gold coin into my hand. Some prisoners kept them till the end. I knew where it would have been secreted, but I didn’t care. I was making a collection of tarnished money and battered jewellery. We would need funds.

  The end of the Lager came with bewildering speed. Yes, we had heard the Soviet guns getting closer. The SS did nothing, their faces as steel-stupid as ever. Then we were set to destroying the gas chambers and crematoria, our fingers and toes freezing in the winter wind. Capos joined in, eager to take part in the demolition of facilities that could have sent us after the rest of our communities. Not that order in the Lager disappeared. People were still shot all day long. Zvi and I only escaped by slipping out of the SK line and joining those prisoners who had been deemed fit enough to travel to camps further west. We survived the so-called death march, leaving behind many who collapsed on the snow and were dispatched by the guards. Our march to freedom was marked by the frozen corpses of those who had gone before.

  We were chilled to the marrow in open railway trucks, moved from Lager to Lager and ending up in Buchenwald. Some of the prisoners there attacked the guards and killed them. Then the Americans liberated us, fresh-faced boys wandering around the mounds of corpses as if they were in an open-air but foul-smelling museum.

  ‘What now?’ Zvi asked, after we had been eating decent rations for two weeks.

  ‘What now?’ I looked into his pale blue eyes. ‘The real war begins.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Rachel Samuel woke at six. She had a coded text message that sent her to her laptop. There was a report on the encrypted site from her contact in Thessaloniki.

  ‘Two shaven-headed young men in jackets with the Phoenix Rises emblems entered Allegra Harari’s apartment block at 20.25 hrs yesterday evening. They were interrupted while hammering on her door and shouting. One has a broken left radius and the other a broken right humerus. The attackers were gagged and dragged down the stairs. Local operative on watch.’

  That was probably my fault, Rachel thought, making a spectacle of myself at the rally. She had sent a report before she turned in. She was still waiting to hear from her controller, but he could hardly complain – one of her instructions was to destabilise the neo-Nazi group however she deemed appropriate. Then again, she and her contact weren’t the only people with that aim. Baruh Natzari and the young men who had shaken Mavros from their tail might have had a similar agenda. But was there someone else involved?

  Mavros rang Shimon Raphael.

  ‘I saw you on TV!’ the customs broker said.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘What happened? You were only on for a few seconds.’

  ‘We … got involved.’

  ‘I noticed that. I take it the black-haired beauty with the useful moves is your client.’

  ‘His daughter, yes. She got a bit carried away.’ To put it mildly, he thought. Rachel must have spent her summers in a seriously aggressive kibbutz. Then he remembered what she’d told him about her assault-protection training.

  ‘I hope Niki didn’t see it. You’re all right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘Good. The Youth Party got stuck into the bastards and sent some of them home with sore heads.’

  ‘I saw that on the news. Disgraceful behaviour blah blah blah from the talking heads.’

  ‘Stooges of the special interests,’ Shimon said dismissively. ‘Listen, I’ve got something for you on Zvi Tsiako.’

  ‘Hit me.’

  ‘Can’t on the phone, can I? When can we meet?’

  ‘Let me get back to you. I don’t know what Miss Karate and I will be up to today. Is what you’ve got hot?’

  ‘Warmish, I’d say. Get on with whatever else you’re following up.’

  Mavros signed off. He looked at his notes – Tsiako, Baruh Natzari and his racing-driver friend, Ester Broudo’s hard words about Aron Samuel; none of that led anywhere. The Phoenix Rises was a sideshow. Then he thought of the murdered Jordanian. He’d been taken out by someone who sounded like a professional, two shots to the back of the neck as well as one to the thigh that brought him down, the forensic surgeon confirmed; in Greece, those experts presented their findings to the media as soon as they finished the autopsy. An icy finger ran down Mavros’s spine. He’d had dealings with a highly skilled hit man – none other than the Son, who had taunted him about Andonis the previous year, using that as a reason not to kill Mavros. Could he have been given the contract on Tareq Momani? Or could he have found out about the Samuel case and decided to make the waters muddier than those of the Axios delta?

  No, Mavros told himself – that was just paranoia. If the Son had discovered he was in the co-capital, the bastard would have made his presence known much more directly.

  His phone rang. It was Allegra Harari. After the usual exchange of greetings, she said, ‘Something happened outside my flat yesterday evening.’

  ‘More spray painting?’

  ‘No, it was worse than that. Hammering on the door, vile insults and threats.’

  ‘Did you call the police?’

  ‘No, I called my nephews. They were over in less than fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Still, that’s a long time to have your door pounded.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that. The sounds suddenly stopped. As you know, I don’t have a peephole, so I could only rely on my ears. There were two loud cracks then screams that were quickly cut off. I’m sure I heard tape being ripped off a roll. After that there was scuffling and sliding in the direction of the stairs.’

  ‘When was this?’ Mavros asked.

  ‘About 8.30. When my nephews arrived, I opened up and we looked around the landing. There wasn’t much to be seen, only a few drops of blood.’

  ‘Drops of blood? What did the police say?’

  ‘They didn’t come. They were too busy with the Nazi rally and its aftermath.’

  Mavros thought about that. The interrupted door-knockers could have come from Eleftherias Square to take out their anger at the triumph of the young Communists on Allegra. But who had dealt with them?

  ‘Any other sign of the intruders?’ he asked. It sounded as if they had sustained serious injuries. ‘Did people in the block see them?’

  ‘No, everyone was keeping their heads down. But one of my nephews spoke to the pizza boy across the street. He said he saw two skinheads in Phoenix Rises jackets staggering away, clutching their arms, later in the evening. Their faces were bloody and raw.’

  ‘Anyone else out of the ordinary?’

  ‘No, he’d just come back from a delivery.’

  ‘Maybe a group of Communist Youth caught up with them.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Allegra sounded doubtful. ‘They would have made noise – shouting, that kind of thing – on the landing, wouldn’t they? It was almost as if a ghost disabled them and got them out of the building.’

  A ghost, Mavros thought. That was all he needed. The only person he knew with the qualities of a violent ghost was the Son. Surely he couldn’t be taking such a close interest. Plus, his father had been a torturer during the dictatorship. It seemed unlikely the Son would sympathise with the Jews. Unless someone was making it worth his while.

  ‘Alex?’ Allegra’s voice was shrill.

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘I was saying, come round in the late afternoon with your young lady. I should have something by then.’

  Mavros couldn’t help smiling. If Rachel heard herself described in those terms, she’d go into fight mode. As would Niki. Then he remembered that she might have seen him with Rachel on the news.

  After breakfast, Rachel and Mavros took a taxi to Kalamaria and rang Baruh Natzari’s bell. There was no answer. The street door was open, so they went up to his floor. Ringing the bell and knocking had no effect, until a door down the corridor opened. An elderly lady with blue hair came out in her slippers.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, peering through thick glasses.

  Mavros stepped forward
. ‘We were looking for Mr Natzari.’

  The woman answered in a tongue Mavros had heard before in recent days.

  ‘I’m sorry. Is that Judezmo?’

  ‘You’re not one of us? The young lady looks like she is.’

  Mavros translated, saying that he would give her name and see where that led. Rachel nodded.

  ‘This is Rachel Samuel,’ he said, smiling at the woman. Her face was wrinkled beneath poorly applied make-up, but she had a ready smile.

  ‘I knew a Samuel family. Please, come inside.’

  Mavros ushered Rachel in after the old woman, glancing at the label by the doorbell. ‘Mrs Catan, is it?’

  ‘That’s right. Aliki Catan.’ She led them into a pristine sitting room, the furniture dark, but the fabrics bright white. ‘I do it all myself,’ she said proudly. ‘I won’t let a cleaner in here.’

  Rachel sat down on the sofa. Mavros stood at a cabinet, looking at the photos. Some were faded black-and-white, others more recent – small children, smiling parents.

  ‘My children, my grandchildren,’ Mrs Catan said, with a smile. Then she turned to the older shots. ‘My grandparents, my parents, aunts and uncles, siblings, cousins …’

  Rachel appeared behind her and touched her hand. ‘The lost,’ she said, in a tone Mavros hadn’t heard from her before. He translated.

  ‘Yes, dear. Almost all of them.’ Mrs Catan dabbed a tissue to her eyes. Then she pointed to a bull-chested man in a good suit, who was smiling expansively at the lens. ‘That’s my husband, Shlomo. Solomon,’ she added to Mavros. Her forefinger wavered at other photos, showing the man getting older, the final ones with heavily ringed eyes. ‘The cancer took him.’

  Mavros and Rachel offered condolences.

  ‘You know what my Shlomo always said? “Every day is a new life.” He came back from Auschwitz, you see.’

  There was a respectful silence.

  ‘I grew up in Athens,’ the old woman continued, ‘and my parents managed to get us into the mountains. They worked for the resistance and I went to the schools EAM set up. After the war I trained as a nurse and moved up here to be with Shlomo. We met at a wedding down south.’ She looked at Rachel. ‘Are you one of the Toumba Samuels, my dear?’

  ‘Remember the football stadium we passed on the way to the old people’s home?’ Mavros said. ‘That area.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Rachel replied. ‘To be honest, I don’t know where my family used to live.’ He translated and explained about her infant father’s departure from the city.

  Then he decided to push the discussion forward. ‘Did you ever hear of an Aron Samuel, Mrs Catan? He’s Rachel’s great-uncle.’

  ‘Aron?’ she repeated, brow furrowed. ‘I don’t think so. Baruh would know.’

  ‘That’s why we’re trying to find him,’ Mavros said. ‘Have you any idea where he might be?’

  ‘Since he isn’t here, he’ll be at his cottage.’

  Mavros’s stomach clenched. ‘Ah. And where is that?’

  ‘Outside the village of Exochisti on the slopes of Mount Hortiatis. You’ll find it easily. It’s the last house on the right on the way to Asvestochori.’

  ‘Does he have a phone there?’

  ‘No. It was his family’s place and he’s kept it as it used to be. Not that I’ve been there for many years.’

  ‘Does he have a mobile phone?’

  Mrs Catan shook her head. ‘He doesn’t hold with them. Neither do I. New-fangled rubbish. Why don’t people talk face to face any more?’

  Mavros stood, nodding to Rachel. They were out of the flat quickly and, after trying the old man’s door again, on the street. He told her what the old woman had said.

  ‘I presume we’re going to this Exochisti place,’ Rachel said, fiddling with her phone. ‘Here’s a map.’

  ‘New-fangled rubbish,’ he said, with a smile she didn’t fathom. The village was about fifteen kilometres away, to the east of the city.

  ‘We need some wheels,’ Rachel said. She located a nearby car-hire firm on her phone. Twenty minutes later they were in a Jeep Cherokee, getting off the ring road and heading for Panorama. Rachel was driving a lot more skilfully than Mavros would have managed.

  ‘This looks like a nice place,’ she said.

  ‘Where the nobs live,’ Mavros replied, taking in the large, detached houses.

  ‘What is a nob?’

  He swallowed a laugh unsuccessfully. ‘In this case, a wealthy person.’

  ‘So I am a nob?’

  He wasn’t sure if she was teasing him. ‘The word has two spellings and several meanings in the UK.’

  ‘I’m French and I’ve only rarely stayed longer than a week in Britain. Enlighten me.’

  ‘Your new-fangled rubbish will do that much more effectively,’ he said, deciding against talking dirty. ‘There’s a sign to Exochisti.’

  She followed the road indicated. It rose quite steeply and then traversed the mountain. There were views over the gulf and towards the city. Exochisti was a pretty village of red-roofed houses, with modern developments on the outskirts. They went in the direction of Asvestochori and reached the end of the village. The last house on the right was a single-storey building covered in bougainvillea and vines, the latter covered in withered leaves. There was no house door on the roadside, but a wooden gate stood between the trees. The nearest house was fifty metres or so away, on the other side. Theirs was the only vehicle close by.

  Mavros breathed in the mountain air, feeling the chill of it in his lungs. He waited till Rachel had locked the car, then opened the gate. A path lined by oleanders led to the other side of the house, which had a stone terrace looking over a well-tended garden. Olympus was visible across the water.

  ‘Pretty spot,’ Mavros said. He walked to the French windows and looked in. One of them had a handle and keyhole. He knocked on the glass.

  No one appeared.

  Rachel joined him. ‘What’s that?’ she said, her eyes angled towards the depths of the room on the right.

  ‘Shit!’ Mavros took out a handkerchief and tried the handle. The door was locked. He saw a stone that was probably used to prop the door open and picked it up. ‘Stand back!’ Then he smashed the pane nearest the handle and stuck his hand in. ‘Key’s in the lock.’ He turned it with some difficulty. ‘Don’t touch anything.’

  Rachel held up gloved hands.

  Mavros ran in, flicking a light switch as he passed it.

  ‘It’s him,’ Rachel said, stepping past him.

  A chair was lying on its side beneath Baruh Natzari, whose body moved slowly in the wind coming through the door. A rope had been slung over one of the wooden ceiling beams. The old man’s head was bent to the right, a thickly wound knot under his left ear. Mavros touched his hand. It was colder than the stone he’d used to break in.

  ‘Interesting choice of clothes for an Auschwitz survivor,’ Rachel said. Her voice was level and Mavros got the impression this wasn’t her first dead body.

  ‘Pyjamas with blue-and-white vertical stripes,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean.’

  She moved to the other side of the sparsely furnished room and looked at the photographs on the ledge above the fireplace.

  ‘Look at this,’ she said, with barely suppressed excitement.

  Mavros joined her and peered at the black-and-white image. ‘Shlomo Catan,’ he said. The husband of the dead man’s neighbour must have been in his late thirties when the photo was taken. The short-sleeved shirt and shorts suggested a hot location, but the vegetation in the background wasn’t Mediterranean. ‘And Baruh himself.’

  But Rachel wasn’t looking at them. Her eyes were on the middle of the three figures.

  ‘That’s my great-uncle,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sure of it.’

  Mavros examined the tall, thin figure, his hair combed back from a high forehead. He certainly resembled the pre-war shots of Aron Samuel he’d been shown. That wasn’t the only thing that caught his eye. While the men
to each side had only holstered pistols on their belts, he was holding what looked like an army-issue rifle. A machete or something similar had been stuck into the ground between his legs.

  Rachel bent closer. ‘Those aren’t footballs, are they?’ she said.

  Mavros took in the glassy eyes and broken lips on the severed heads in front of the trio.

  ‘No,’ he said, glancing back at the hanged man. ‘They’re not.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Zvi and I fattened ourselves up as the first spring of freedom blossomed in the land of the Thousand Year Reich. The Americans were generous. They were also nearly as bureaucratic as the Nazis. I had decided early on that my real name was of no more use to me. When the clerks asked for our details, I called myself Anjil Gerson after my doomed friend from the Lager and gave them a false date of birth. There seemed no point in changing my home city, especially as it was already apparent how few of Thessaloniki’s Jews had survived. Like me, the people I spoke to either knew for certain that family members had been killed or had minimal hope of them turning up alive. I didn’t mention that I had been in the Sonderkommando.

  By summer, we had been moved to a displaced-persons camp near Frankfurt. On the way I was pleased to see that Germany’s towns and cities had been heavily bombed. Some Greeks had already arrived. Zvi and I found a member of our community who had worked in the I. G. Farben chemical plant at Monowitz-Buna, originally a sub-camp of Auschwitz and later one in its own right. Shlomo Catan was still getting over dysentery, but there was a cold light in his eyes that attracted me. He was also wide-chested, though there was little flesh or muscle on him. I had already told Zvi what I intended to do and he was enthusiastic. When Shlomo was fit, in early September 1945, I started gathering together what we would need.

  The basis of all camps – whether labour, extermination or rehabilitation – is commerce. The American soldiers, bored by their repetitive duties and desperate to get back home, had little interest in military discipline. What they wanted was money, valuables, souvenirs – anything to impress their families and help them get on after demobilisation. It took time, because initially we had little to trade, only the few coins we had been able to hide about our persons on the march. We didn’t even know much English, though I quickly picked up the basics, as I had with German in the Lager.