Eichmann now again looked intrigued, and as Guenther proceeded to explain, his trademark crooked smile spread into a broad satisfied grin.
Prague, June 1992
The warm summer night enveloped them like a soft duvet when they finally left the arctic climate of the over-air-conditioned police station. Almost midnight, the physical and emotional exhaustion hung between them on the short drive to Jonas’s flat, dividing the Skoda into two self-contained sides between which interaction, beyond an occasional reassuring sad smile, was impossible.
Prague’s streetlights flashed by one-by-one. Vanesa leaned her head against the plastic headrest and closed her eyes, but re-opened them each time the visions of that morning’s sights revisited her. She feared this silent slideshow would remain with her forever, the imaginary slide projector clicking remorselessly during long wakeful nights. Click! The flies crawling on Agata’s lips, some entering her mouth. Click! Marek’s limp hand dangling from the bed, his manicured nails a light shade of purple. Click! Agata’s feet, toes turned inward, one shoe missing, a hole in the heel of the stocking through which a rounded callous peeked out. Click! Marek’s clouded eyes, their look of puzzlement, focusing upward. Click! Click! Repeat.
She’d had lots of time to absorb these images in the long minutes between their discovery of the bodies, the gulping hysteria of their futile calls for help, Jonas’s shaking hand dialing 156 to reach the police, and the actual arrival of the officers to the flat. She’d tried to look away from the horrors, look at anything but the two bodies, which drew her gaze inexorably to them in mortality-driven curiosity, ensuring that no detail would be lost in her never-ending mental slideshow. She’d had plenty of time to absorb other details in the flat, too, before the police officers tromped up the stairs of the apartment with weapons drawn, their voices tense and commanding. Most notably, she’d had a long look at the map on the ceiling of Marek’s bedroom, which Jonas pointed out to her after hanging up with the police, momentarily overcoming his shock as if realizing they must examine it now or forever lose this opportunity.
The two police detectives that questioned them in the flat, and later in the sparse yet freezing interrogation room, were both middle-aged and both wearing ill-fitting shirts with their neckties somewhat askew. One had some kind of sauce stain near the collar of his shirt, the other was unshaven, his combover flopping loose to reveal an expanse of pasty white scalp whenever he looked down. Vanesa had mentally dubbed them Abbot and Costello, since sauce stain was tall and slim, and combover short and rotund. They’d been at first suspicious, all the more so when they quickly deduced the connection between Vanesa and Marek—information which she and Jonas, by unspoken agreement, had not volunteered.
Luckily, airport personnel had reliably identified them, placing them together around Marek’s estimated time of death, sufficiently far away from the crime scene as to eliminate any suspicion. Despite this, Abbot and Costello had halfheartedly tried the “good cop, bad cop” routine, until they’d realized that neither she nor Jonas was trying to hide anything.
Thus the long afternoon, evening, and night of questions focused on the details of her attack in Prague—notably why she hadn’t reported it—the attack in Terezin, Jonas and Marek’s ongoing research, and the reason for Vanesa’s current visit.
She’d been forthcoming with details of her research, of the attacks, of the symbol, of her suspicions. Abbot and Costello had been unimpressed by her contention that there might be a connection between her research, the attacks, and the murders. She’d seen Abbot look at Costello knowingly when she’d brought that up. It was a look that clearly said “Yea, right. Can you believe the imagination on this one?”
The jerk of the Skoda pulling up next to an empty parking space on the cobblestone street woke her from what must have been a light sleep.
Jonas’s quick and deft parallel parking was clear testament to years of urban driving. He opened the car’s hatchback and took her suitcase for her, leading her to the heavy iron and glass entrance door just two buildings down.
They walked up two flights of narrow wooden stairs, Jonas lugging the suitcase uncomfortably but stoically. As they entered his flat, they were greeted by a large grey Persian cat that was either ecstatic to see her beloved master, ravenously hungry, or both. Gently sidestepping the cat, he showed Vanesa her room, deposited the suitcase neatly on the foldaway double bed, and went to attend to the feline, closing the room’s sliding door behind him.
Prague, June 1992
Fast forward. Stop. Play. Vanesa emerged from the shower, the thick white terrycloth robe pulled tightly around her, her hair wound into another towel in one of those unfathomable, gravity-defying knots women seem to intuitively know how to create. Barefoot, the red toenail polish she favored contrasted sharply with the snowy robe.
The living room was warm from the day’s heat. He sat on a plain-looking couch, staring at the slice of empty street visible from the flat’s open window. He wore a short-sleeved shirt that accentuated his muscled arms. His hair askew, tears streamed down his face as he recalled the day’s tragic events, finally mourning the loss of his friend after a day of repression. He looked up and saw her in the doorway, but didn’t look away, unembarrassed by his tears.
Her demeanor softened as she walked across the room and stood in front of him. She reached down and wiped his tears away with a tentative hand.
He took the hand and pressed it to his cheek, feeling the warmth of the palm, the smoothness of the fingertips.
She pulled his head to her belly and stroked his hair.
He smelled soap and body lotion emanating from the warmth of the damp robe.
Her breathing quickened as she pushed his head back, untied the robe, and pulled him to her with gentle urgency.
They came together silently on the couch, he lost in the clean warmth of her breasts, she lost in thoughts unfathomable.
Stop. Rewind. This was not necessarily how it happened. Vanesa claimed that nothing, in fact, had happened. She’d been annoyed at me for even alluding to impropriety on her part, and I believed her.
I felt terrible for doubting her, because I was supposed to trust her. What kind of supportive husband would suspect such things in the face of the horrors she’d witnessed? What kind of person would imagine ulterior attraction in a clearly dry, academic relationship with a fellow historian, especially given their shared trauma?
I believed her and apologized. I believed her because of who she was, because of what she sought. After all, who could suspect betrayal of someone who had clearly been so deeply, so grandiosely, so irreparably betrayed herself by those closest to her?
Yet it became clear that betrayal was itself, for the betrayed, an excellent instructor.
Tel Aviv, 1978
After school let out, thirteen-year-old Vanesa and her schoolmates walked the narrow streets of south Tel Aviv, arm-in-arm in the cool spring afternoon, singing Izhar Cohen’s quirky Eurovision hit A-Ba-Ni-Bi at the top of their lungs. They passed adults with transistor radios pressed to ears, eager for news of Operation Litani in Lebanon. She waved goodbye to the girls and entered her grandfather’s shop. He acknowledged her arrival vaguely, and she made a beeline—as she did nearly every afternoon—for the refuge she’d constructed in an unused corner.
She had chosen the spot carefully. It was important that her grandfather Jakub, working only meters away yet mutely uncommunicative, could not see her. But she could see him clearly, if she craned her neck—a balding grey head bent over the workbench, scraping, cutting, sewing. She could also see out a corner of the dusty shop window to the street. She’d surrounded the fort with faded high-backed chairs, their frayed seats turned inward, and filled it with pillows from the living room couch. She had covered it with a ratty blanket retrieved from high in the linen closet, and populated it with her own friends—the animals she’d adopted and made her own.
Even though she knew it was babyish, she had named them all. David the hoo
poe, his long bill hanging sadly down where it had been broken, was still regal and vigilant. Shula the hyrax had a permanent look of grief in her black eyes, having lost a cub to a marauding jackal, but her coat was so soft and lustrous. Kewpi the hedgehog was, of course, the villain of the group—as any hedgehog would be—and was forever picking on poor Hayim and Hedva, the shrew twins.
But it was Shlomit, the fox, who never stopped lovingly licking the neck of her cub, Shmulik, which Vanesa loved most. She would always take care of her cub. She would show the world how much she loved him. She would never retreat from his embrace in horrified silence, as if he were plague-ridden. She would never lock herself away and try to hurt herself. She would never die.
Since her mother’s death the previous winter, Vanesa had spent more and more time in her fort. Michael didn’t seem to notice her absence, even when she fell asleep, waking only at the sound of the Arab garbage collectors, who came banging trash cans and yelling to each other gutturally just as the sun was beginning to make the dim yellow streetlights redundant.
She’d wake up, tell Kewpi to leave the twins alone today, for goodness’ sake, and run upstairs to get dressed for school. Racing down the building’s stairs, she’d tear down the street, stopping breathlessly on the way at Moshe’s kiosk to get her sandwich.
Moshe was a portly middle-aged man with a kindly face, a Time cigarette permanently dangling from one corner of his mouth, and small, pudgy fingers that deftly worked the cash register. He supplied most of her meals in those days—omelet sandwiches on a baguette in the morning, chicken schnitzel in a pita with humus on her way home from school, and bread and white cheese with cucumbers in the evenings. He also supplied her father’s primary sustenance: cheap vodka.
Despite her erratic behavior, Vanesa Sr. had been the glue holding the Neuman household together. Without her, seams split, boards cracked, pipes sprung sudden leaks. Laundry was ignored until Vanesa learned to take her and Michael’s dirty clothes once a week to Shoshana, the Yemenite woman at the laundry on Nahalat Binyamin street with the kerchief on her head and the dark powerful hands, who spoke such exacting Hebrew. Dishes piled up in the sink, beds were constantly rumpled, and dust bunnies danced gaily, without fear of sweeping, when the fresh ocean breezes of spring whirled into the flat’s open windows.
Michael stopped going down to the shop to work with Jakub, leaving the older man to shoulder the burden, which he did in stoic silence. Each morning, every day of the week, including Saturdays, Jakub came down from his two-room flat at precisely 8:00 a.m., breaking for lunch at noon and stumping back up the stairs at precisely 5:00 p.m.
Thereafter, the door to his flat would remain locked, and Vanesa quickly learned that even her most pleading entreaties would not open it.
On Friday evenings, she would go to Uncle Tomas’ small flat for an actual cooked dinner, usually a whole chicken with potato dumplings and fried onions on the side. She’d walk the two blocks back to the store after dark, her tummy full and warm, her head full of the stories Uncle Tomas would tell her of faraway places like Prague and Berlin. Then she’d let herself into the shop and curl up with a blanket in her fort, her dreams guarded by David, Shula, Kewpi, and the rest.
On this night, a light still shone in the shop when she came back from dinner. Jakub, working late on a rush job, looked up briefly when she came in. He smiled absentmindedly, then turned back to his workbench. Vanesa curled into her fort, shutting her eyes against the light, and mentally wished her friends a good night, a good sleep, and good dreams.
She was awoken much later by a loud slam, and the equally loud slurring of her father’s voice. She’d heard him speak like this, of course, most often to himself and sometimes to her mother, but never to Jakub. Michael, as far as she could recall, never spoke to Jakub at all, belligerently or otherwise. She sat up and peeked silently out of the fort, seeing the alarmed expression in Jakub’s eyes as he turned to face his son.
“You… you….” Michael spluttered drunkenly, unable to find the right word. “You… piece of garbage. How long do you think you can hide in here? Huh? How long before someone figures it out? Your art. Remember your art? Oh, you are a piece of work, you are. You feel safe here? Do you feel all warm and cozy, you here and your art there? Do you, you piece of garbage, you animal, you shit?” Michael raised an arm and swept the workbench clear.
Vanesa gasped, but Michael didn’t hear her as he continued to rage.
Jakub cowered, head bent as if in prayer, hands trembling on the work bench.
“You wanna stay here? Maybe we could just put you on display. Then everyone can come see the great Jakub Neuman, artiste par excellence. What do you say about that, you evil shit? Yea? You know what? I think that’s a really good fucking idea. Yes I do.”
Michael’s drunken voice rose to a hysterical pitch. His arms, at first flailing uselessly as if seeking an outlet, something to help them express the disgust they shared with his mouth, now became dexterous. He grabbed the closest of Jakub’s wrists, immobilizing it against the workbench, and expertly drove a sharp awl through the flesh between forefinger and thumb. The awl sunk deep into the soft wood of the workbench.
Jakub’s scream made Vanesa put her fingers into her ears in mute terror, although she never averted her eyes.
Michael swiftly repeated the action with the other hand.
Jakub made no move to resist.
Michael stepped back to admire his handiwork. Satisfied, he grunted, “You’ll live,” and staggered out of the shop.
Jakub was hunched over, red-faced and sweating, a vein standing out in his forehead as he gritted his teeth against the pain. He was alone, and unable to free his bleeding hands without ripping the flap of skin that each awl held. He searched the room frantically for assistance, and when he finally found Vanesa’s own wide eyes peering from behind the chair backs, in shock at the violence they’d just witnessed, it was with utter surprise. He had forgotten she’d come in, had perhaps never actually registered her presence.
She met his eyes, one of the few times she’d ever actually done so, and saw not just a man in physical pain, pleading for relief. She saw the eyes of a man who knew he was damned. She saw resignation and utter self-loathing. She saw the eyes of someone who felt, who knew, that he completely deserved what he got.
Prague, June 1992
Vanesa watched the light flowing in the small bedroom’s single window turn from streetlight-yellow to dawn-grey. Individual vehicle noises, so intensely audible in the lonesome dawn silence, rose jointly into a cacophony, morphed into a diesel-tainted buzz, and faded into the urban background.
The morning was bright and warm. The scars on her back pinched as she got up from the low foldaway bed, and her neck was stiff from the over-stuffed pillow. With a low morning groan, she fished a pair of shorts and a t-shirt out of the open suitcase next to the bed. After pulling on the shorts and then, more painfully, the t-shirt—sans bra—she opened the door to an empty yet cheerily sunny flat.
“Jonas?” she called, and received only monotonous traffic buzz, broken by an occasional loud horn or siren, in reply.
As she brushed her teeth, already fantasizing about finding a large mug of coffee waiting in the kitchen, the front door banged open. She stepped out into the hall, and one hand went automatically to her disheveled hair as Jonas came in, smiled sweetly, and said good morning.
His voice struggled to maintain the proper note of somberness in light of the events of the previous day, but was unable to completely mask his obvious pleasure at seeing her. His eyes wandered unconsciously down her body, and he quickly forced them back up to her face, blushing slightly at his own impropriety.
“I brought us some coffee and croissants. Hungry?”
Vanesa nodded, her eyes darting to his hands.
He clutched a greasy paper bag and a cardboard tray with two steaming cups of coffee. He smiled again, offered her a cup, and gestured for her to follow him into the kitchen.
; They sat in the bright space, the kitchen windows flung wide to reveal a view of the cobblestone courtyard three stories below. They drank in silence as a warm summer morning breeze flowed through the kitchen.
Jonas’s excitement at finding Vanesa awake, not to mention scantily clad, faded into the shared malaise of yesterday’s loss. Finally, he spoke again, in a voice that betrayed sadness tinged with the sparkle of curiosity.
“I woke up thinking of how excited Marek was the night before you arrived. ‘It’s in the map!’ he kept saying. He was laughing, giggling actually, like a schoolboy with a new toy. Finally he hung up, or maybe the phone fell. Agata used to prop it by his ear. In any case, he had to have been talking about the map on the ceiling. You got a good look at it before the police arrived. Did you recognize anything?”
Vanesa shook her head, silently conjuring the image she’d seen on Marek’s ceiling and vaguely wishing she’d had the presence of mind to take a picture of it. The image in her mind’s eye kept morphing into Agata’s torn stocking, Marek’s purple fingernails, the flies. The flies! She shook her head, as if to forcibly remove these extraneous snapshots from it.
When she finally spoke, her voice was still slightly scratchy from sleep.
“I saw what it was, but I have no idea what it means. What I am guessing is that whoever killed Marek and Agata was not thinking like a bedridden quadriplegic.”
Jonas nodded in agreement.
Marek had been in the hospital bed with the expensive bedsore-relieving mattress for several months already, constantly on his back except for the daily physical therapy sessions. If the intruders had been looking for something Marek had found, the likelihood of that something being hidden in a drawer or cabinet was nil. They had probably left empty-handed, despite the fact that a clue—if it was a clue—was right above their heads the whole time. For what a bedridden person unable to even turn his head sees most is the ceiling above his bed.
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