‘But why?’
‘Because I’d kill myself if I was in any way responsible.’
‘Don’t say that!’ I pleaded.
‘But it’s true.’ She fixed me with a hard look. ‘And my death would only make things harder for my parents and my brother.’
Anna had needed to talk to Paweł because she was pregnant – and possibly for him to contribute to the cost of her abortion. Had Mrs Sawicki found out about the girl’s condition? Maybe Anna had demanded that Paweł marry her, and his mother had murdered her to safeguard his independence.
Or maybe Mikael had performed an abortion on her – one that ended tragically. Terrified of being held responsible, he’d discarded her in the barbed wire, so that we’d assume the Nazis were responsible. But to do so, he’d have had to obtain permission from the Germans to cross over to the Christian side, and they would have surely discovered he had a girl’s body with him. It seemed highly unlikely. And in any case, neither of these scenarios could explain why Mikael, Mrs Sawicki or anyone else would want Anna’s hand.
I headed off to Mikael’s office to speak again to Anka, his nurse, and to see if he’d already secured Stefa’s anti-typhus serum.
At first, Anka spoke to me brusquely, insisting she had nothing more to say to me, but by telling her about Adam and his connection to Anna, I managed to draw her out to the stairwell, where we could talk alone.
‘You don’t approve of abortions,’ I whispered to her as soon as we were hidden.
‘So you found out.’
‘As you wanted me to.’
She crossed her arms as though to defend herself and said, ‘Let’s get one thing straight – I do approve of abortions. These starving girls can’t bring a baby into this goddamned mess! But one girl died after her operation.’
‘And you were there when that happened?’
‘No, Dr Tengmann performs the procedures in the evening. But this girl, Esther… After going home, she went to bed, saying she was feeling a cold coming on, but in the morning her parents found her soaked in her own blood, unconscious. It was too late to save her. Maybe we’d never have found out, but her father came here asking questions. He’d known his daughter was pregnant, though he wasn’t sure she’d come here. He caught us off guard. Dr Tengmann admitted that he’d seen her, but he denied having given her an abortion. That was very wrong!’ At the thud of a door closing somewhere in the building, Anka flinched. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper. ‘I can’t forgive him for lying. And I can’t trust him any more. I’ve tried, but I can’t.’
‘If you didn’t help with the operation, how can you be so sure of all this?’ I asked.
‘I know a nurse who assists Dr Tengmann at night.’
‘Then she can tell me if Anna also got an abortion!’
‘I’ve already asked her. She never met any girl with that name.’
‘Anka, I’d like to talk to her myself. Can you give me her name and address?’
‘No, I’m sorry – she wants to keep her identity a secret.’
‘Then would you be willing to show her my photograph of Anna?’
‘Of course.’
I handed her the picture.
‘I’ll send you a message with what I find out,’ she assured me.
‘Listen, was anything… a hand, a leg… taken from Esther?’
‘Her father didn’t mention anything like that. God, I hope not!’
‘Can you give me his name and address?’
‘If you want. But I need my job here – you’ll have to be discreet.’
‘You have my word. Do you know if Dr Tengmann keeps records of his abortions?’
‘If he does, I don’t know about them – or where they’d be.’
Back in the sitting room, Anka wrote me out the name of the dead girl’s father – Hajman Szwebel – and his address. He lived on Solna Street, just two blocks from where Adam and Anna had been tossed in the barbed wire.
I waited a half-hour before I could get in to see Mikael in his office. After shaking my hand warmly, he held the serum up to the light. ‘Here it is!’ he enthused.
Our hopes resided in an amber vial.
‘I’ll go with you now to administer it,’ he told me.
‘But what about your other patients?’
‘They’ll have to wait – typhus is serious business.’
‘Look, Mikael, I’ll never be able to repay you,’ I replied, ‘but at least I can give you this…’ I handed him my envelope of money, making sure that Mrs Sawicki’s printed name was facing him.
Spotting the embossed lettering, he grinned. ‘I see you’re still playing at detective.’
‘I’m not playing at anything!’ I replied gruffly, more aggressively than I’d intended, probably because I’d been secretly hoping that the name Sawicki – and the implication that I’d spoken to her – would disquiet him.
‘I’m sorry – that came out wrong,’ he told me. ‘Forgive me, Erik. It was a stupid thing to say. It’s just that I’m worried about you.’
‘I’ll be fine. The worst has already happened. But listen, you might want to count the money.’
‘There’s no need – I trust you.’ He took his coat down from its hook by the door, tucking the envelope and serum away in an inside pocket. ‘So were you able to speak to Paweł?’ he asked.
‘No. Mrs Sawicki told me he was in Switzerland – at boarding school.’
‘I see.’ Putting his coat down on his desk, he tucked his glasses into their case and rubbed his eyes. ‘Do you understand now why I couldn’t answer all your questions? And why I lied about what was wrong with Anna? You gave me no choice.’
‘Yes, I can see that now. But you no longer have any reason to hide the truth. So I need to know if Anna was certain Paweł was the father.’
He started. ‘Do you have reason to believe he wasn’t?’
‘One of Anna’s friends told me she had her doubts.’
‘All she told me was she was in love with Paweł and that her parents didn’t approve of their relationship. That’s all I know. I help the girls the only way I can. To tell you the truth, I don’t want to know more about their lives. I just can’t take it.’
We took a rickshaw to Stefa’s flat. Mikael gazed away, troubled. Guessing what was on his mind, aware now of how fate had trapped him, I patted his leg and said, ‘Given our circumstances, what you do is a good thing.’
‘You think so? I’ll be honest, Erik. I have my doubts at times, but when the girls plead with me, how can I refuse? And you know what they fear most? That their baby will die of starvation inside their womb. How’s that for something to keep you awake at nights?’ He surveyed the massive, swirling crowds on both sides of the street as if looking for strength. ‘I just want Ewa and Helena to be able to get out of this place alive,’ he added. ‘That’s the only reason I keep going.’
Kids in little more than rags began running after us, shouting for money. Mikael tossed coins to the pavement. The boys and girls, hollering, swarmed upon them.
For the first time, I saw how the youngest among us would lead us into the grave. That was now the meaning of Adam and Anna’s death.
Mikael and I sat in glum silence. The low-lying winter sun was blocked by the tenement roofs, leaving the streets in deep, penetrating shadow. I couldn’t stop shivering.
Finally, I asked, ‘So Anna never confirmed to you that Paweł was the father?’
‘No, I assumed it.’
‘Did she come right out and ask you for an abortion?’
‘Yes. And I agreed to help her, but on the evening of her procedure, she didn’t show up.’ I started to ask a question, but he raised his hand. ‘I have no idea why not. I never heard from her again.’ He shrugged. ‘And then you appeared, telling me she was dead. That’s all I know.’
‘Was her abortion scheduled for the twenty-fourth of January?’
‘It’s hard to recall, though that sounds about right. But how did you know?’
The icy wind pushed against our faces. I lifted my muffler over my mouth, so the rest of our brief conversation seems to me now to be textured by thick, dark wool.
‘Have all the girls recovered well from their procedures?’ I questioned, wanting to test Mikael’s honesty.
‘What do you mean?’
‘No complications, infections…?’
He glared at me. ‘All the girls have left my office healthy – tired and upset, but healthy. What happens to them after that, I can’t control. Or do you think I can?’
*
Ewa was waiting for Mikael and me in Stefa’s apartment, sitting on my bed, her arm over Helena’s shoulder, her eyes red and puffy.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked, rushing to her.
‘It’s Stefa,’ Ewa moaned, and she pointed to the window. ‘She’s in the courtyard, but…’
Looking down, I saw a woman’s body covered from the waist up by a newspaper and two men standing nearby – our building supervisor, Professor Engal, and a Jewish policeman. The policeman held Stefa’s Moroccan slippers, one in each hand.
I clambered down the stairs. Two bricks had been placed atop the newspaper to keep it from blowing away. Kneeling, I tossed them aside.
Ewa told me later that on seeing Stefa’s face I immediately let out a cry for Ernst – my younger brother and her father. I have only the most vague recollection of that.
Silver coins covered her eyes. That’s what I remember clearly.
I began shaking. The Jewish policeman helped me to my feet and told me my niece had jumped.
‘No, no, no – she was too weak to do that,’ I insisted.
He pointed to the window of my bedroom. ‘She sat on the ledge and pushed off.’
Turning round, I noticed Ziv sitting in the corner of the courtyard, rocking back and forth like a lost child. I called to him, but he didn’t answer.
I sat with Stefa for a time, holding her hand, whispering to her about when I’d first seen her as a baby. While clinging to the soft, searching sound of my voice, I realized why she had me keep Adam’s medical history and the portraits she’d drawn of him.
I took the złoty coins off her eyes; I didn’t believe in ghostly ferryboats across mythological rivers. Professor Engal told me they were Ziv’s, so I tossed the money by his feet, hoping to get his attention, but he didn’t stir.
While caressing Stefa’s hair, I apologized to her again for not protecting Adam, speaking to her in Yiddish and Polish, because each language had its own nuances of guilt and remorse, and ways of asking for what could never now be given to me, and I wanted her to hear them all. When I trudged back upstairs to try to figure out how she’d managed to end her own life, I found Mikael seated on my bed. He stood up to embrace me, telling me how sorry he was. He said that Ewa had taken Helena home.
On handing me back my thousand złoty, he said, ‘Stefa had to do it now – she didn’t want to waste the serum. I’ve seen that sort of sacrifice before. I should have warned you. I apologize for being thoughtless.’
I understood then why my niece had been so angry with Izzy and me for finding anti-typhus serum. Maybe she hadn’t been ready to meet Death in a Warsaw courtyard, but she knew she couldn’t wait.
CHAPTER 16
Stefa must have crawled out of bed and used all that was left of her strength to drag our armchair to the window. I know that because two parallel scratches from the chair legs marked the wooden floor. The window had been shut tight to keep out the frigid wind. My niece had been unable to lift a spoon to feed herself, but she must have somehow managed to throw it wide open.
Later, when I questioned Ewa, she swore to me that the door was locked the last time she came to check on Stefa. As always, she’d let herself in with her spare key. There was no sign of anyone having been there to help her commit suicide. Stefa had been asleep in bed.
‘Or she looked asleep,’ I noted.
‘Or that,’ Ewa agreed.
Why did my niece put on her slippers before jumping? True, her feet were always cold of late, but she must have known she’d feel no discomfort soon enough. Maybe she didn’t want the person who found her to see the open sores between her toes. I’d known nothing about that small corner of her misery. She’d hidden quite a lot, as it turns out.
In any case, she put on her red and gold Moroccan slippers, climbed up on the chair and eased herself down on the window ledge. Her brittle arms must have been trembling under the strain. One after the other, she swung her legs over the rim until she was sitting on it and facing out – a complex manoeuvre. I know that because I tried it myself, and I’d swear in any court that it required a dexterity and strength that were beyond her.
Ziv was on break and sitting outside the bakery, reading a chess newsletter that had been printed in the ghetto; it had an article on Szmul Rzeszewski, one of his heroes.
Did Stefa hear him call out to her not to move, that she was in danger of falling?
‘I’ll be right up!’ he shouted. ‘Wait for me!’
What did she think as she pushed and swivelled herself closer to the edge? Perhaps that gravity was a blessing.
I hope she imagined she was about to see Adam again, but maybe it would have been best if she was thinking nothing at all.
Ziv told me later that she didn’t seem to hear him or even notice he was there.
‘As soon as she hit the ground, she was dead.’ That’s what Professor Engal told me when I returned to the courtyard, which was what he had heard from Ziv. Maybe they wanted to spare me more anguish. Still, thirty feet is a long way for someone to fall, and maybe he was right.
Ziv rushed to her but couldn’t find a pulse. He dashed into the bakery for help. Ewa and several others tried to revive my niece, but it was too late.
Stefa’s slippers had fallen off. Ziv retrieved them while waiting for the Jewish police to come, then sat down in the corner of the courtyard, his head in his hands. He didn’t move from there all afternoon and slept there that night. I brought him a blanket, and he let me cover him with it, but he refused to speak to me or come inside.
I’d learned by then that going on strike against the world’s injustice was a common ghetto strategy. Not that it ever changed anything.
I’d never previously considered that he’d been in love with Stefa. After all, she was seventeen years his senior. Still, if I’d have been paying attention, I’d have understood that the rose blossom and fresh eggs he gave her on the evening of our first Sabbath banquet represented his opening gambit in what was probably a ten-move strategy. And maybe age differences are unimportant to those who live with queens and rooks dancing through their dreams.
My niece’s corpse waited all night for the body collectors. They only came at ten the next morning, explaining that disease and starvation were taking a hundred residents a day and they couldn’t cope. By then, I’d dragged her into the hallway of our building; it had started drizzling. I’d wanted to hire some boys from the street to carry Stefa up to her apartment, but Professor Engal told me that the collectors would resent having to walk up the stairs – and might even refuse.
Stefa’s miracle…
At 3 a.m. on the morning after her death, standing at the window in my room, I looked down at her in the courtyard, and I noticed Ziv jump up and chase after a vague, darting shape. Fearing it was a feral cat or worse, I threw on my coat, hurried downstairs and sat with my niece. Ziv was back tucked into his corner by then, but now he was whimpering to himself. A little later, I looked up to the window of my bedroom, and in the hazy moonlight it seemed the entranceway to a fairytale world, out of which magic had spilled into this place only a little while before. My wonder at how Stefa had found the strength to open her window, climb out on to the sill and jump now seemed to contain everything I’d ever failed to grasp throughout my life – even how men and women could believe in God. And that’s when I realized that miracles do indeed occur, though �
� unfortunately – they aren’t always the glorious affirmations of transcendence that we have all been led to believe.
PART II
CHAPTER 17
I’ll have to be more wary on my excursions. Early this afternoon, Heniek, while you were working at your factory, I crossed the bridge to the Praga district to make sure my old friend Jaśmin was still alive. Unfortunately, the entrance to her apartment house was locked. I waited outside, watching the passers-by, until, finally, after a couple of hours, she appeared at her window, gazing at the powdering of snow that had begun to fall. I stayed there a long time after she went back to whatever she was doing, grateful that Izzy and I hadn’t caused her death. But on the way home, feeling my strength renewed and wanting a small adventure, I decided to go to the Little Ghetto to see what wonders were gracing the shop windows of Sienna Street. A mistake.
I never made it there; I found a crowd swarming out in front of All Saints Church, and at its centre was a burly butcher hacking away at the emaciated, mud-brown carcass of an old mare. Hot blood kept spurting on to his grimacing face. I could tell from the way the poor beast’s ribcage stood out that she’d been an underfed, work-damned tram horse. A poisonous-looking steam was rising from the wormy ravine of her open belly.
The ghetto devours itself and will never die, I thought.
I’d never seen a horse without a head and backed away slowly.
‘You’ve grown silent again,’ Heniek tells me.
‘I thought I was telling you about a dead horse,’ I reply.
‘No, you haven’t said a word in twenty minutes.’
Heniek says I can go an hour or more without speaking, even though I can hear my voice clearly and am sure I’m talking to him. He says my silence scares him, because my edges begin to darken, as though I’m being engulfed by a greedy shadow.
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