‘So are you,’ I observed, smiling.
‘That’s because I don’t want to leave the ghetto with anything weighing me down,’ he replied. ‘But it’s different with you. Your time hasn’t come yet.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Let’s just say that traumas can sometimes improve our vision.’
To please him, I spooned up one of his prunes, but its burst of sweetness only served to distress me; I didn’t want to let myself believe that I could one day return to a life of small delights.
‘Did Esther ever say if anyone had threatened her in any way?’ I continued.
‘No.’
‘What did she tell you about Dr Tengmann?’
He took a thoughtful sip of his tea. ‘We’d only heard of him – of the procedures he performed. We hadn’t been to see him. In fact, we’d agreed that she would continue with the pregnancy – at least that’s what I thought we’d agreed. Esther went to him without telling me.’
‘And do you know who the father of her baby was?’ I was testing for anyone who might have known Adam or Anna.
‘Her fiancé, Felix Perlmutter.’
I didn’t know him. I explained briefly about Anna and Adam. Mr Szwebel looked away, revealing emotion only in his frequent blinking. In answer to my subsequent question, he shook his head. ‘No, nothing was cut from Esther,’ he told me. ‘At least nothing outside her body. She haemorrhaged badly on her inside.’
‘Do you know if she could sing?’ I asked.
‘What?’
‘Had Esther a good singing voice?’ I clarified.
‘I’m not sure. She wasn’t a musical girl. But I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.’
‘I’ve a friend who started a chorus for boys and girls. I’m wondering if she ever met him. His name is Rowan Klaus.’
‘No, she never spoke of him. Though I suppose it’s possible she was keeping one more secret from me.’
CHAPTER 20
It started to snow as I made my way home, and the moonlit cascade of those cold blossoms endlessly falling on to me and the rooftops and streets, covering all the muck and disorder, was so wondrous and complete that for one moment everything in the world seemed to be united against a common enemy.
The flakes stuck to my gloves – crystalline and perfect – then melted for ever.
I was moved.
Except that when my feeling of transcendence vanished, I hated all the beauty around me as one can only hate what one has loved as a child.
I spotted Bina and her mother down the street, selling their pickled vegetables, but I didn’t dare go to them.
Izzy was waiting for me in my apartment, seated on my bed. He’d taken down a figurative print by Kokoschka that Stefa had kept over her bed – a no-nonsense young woman with her hand on her hip, ready to vanquish any and all opponents. I’d bought it for her because the woman reminded me of her. He was polishing the glass.
‘Was it very dusty?’ I asked.
‘Filthy!’ He held up his rag to show me the yellow-brown grime he’d removed, then stood the print in his lap and sat up straight. ‘I’ve just heard that the Jewish Council is assigning tenants to move into the apartments of people who’ve died – to cope with the thousands of new arrivals from Danzig and everywhere else. So before you have someone move in that you can’t stand, I suggest you take in Bina and her mother.’
‘Izzy, you’re obsessed with that girl!’
‘You’d prefer she starve to death under our very eyes?’ he demanded.
‘But she’s like too soft a pillow. She irritates me.’
I made that silly criticism because I couldn’t think of a real reason to dislike her.
He eyed me angrily. ‘You’re behaving miserably! We have to help.’
I sat down beside him and took off my shoes. ‘Look,’ I told him, ‘how can anyone move in? All of Stefa and Adam’s things are still here. And I won’t pack them up. I couldn’t bear to look at them.’
‘I’ll take care of that,’ he said gently. ‘We’ll put them in my workshop. Nothing will be lost.’
‘Very well. Make a copy of your key for Bina and tell her that she and her mother can move in as soon as they want.’
‘There’s a slight problem – I think she also has an uncle living with her,’ he told me warily.
I gave a little laugh at the absurdity. ‘Well, I guess one more passenger won’t make much difference.’
He embraced me gratefully.
After Izzy left, I looked into Adam’s chest of clothes, to feel my pain as deeply as I could before giving it up. Afterwards, while splashing water on my face, there was a knock on the door.
Benjamin Schrei stood on the landing. He wore a pinstriped grey suit, and shimmering on his lapel was a golden Star of David that meant: I represent authority!
I stank to high heaven, and I hadn’t shaved since Stefa’s death, but I was glad for it; I wouldn’t have wanted to be anything but a rumpled, smelly eyesore.
‘What the hell do you want?’ I demanded, tossing my towel behind me on my bed.
‘I was sorry to hear about your niece,’ he told me, taking off his hat.
‘Sure you were,’ I replied with a sneer, more than anything else because his slicked-back hair was Hollywood-perfect. Imagine a man preparing for a grievance call as if he had a date with Carole Lombard!
‘We need to talk,’ he told me, which meant, you need to listen!
‘No, I need to talk and you need to shut up!’ I retorted, gratified by the snarl in my voice. ‘You told me that Adam was the only child who’d been mutilated, but a girl named Anna had her hand cut off – and you knew it!’
‘How did you find out?’ he demanded.
‘None of your business!’ I snapped back.
‘Everything that happens in the ghetto is my business.’
‘Oy gewalt,’ I replied, rolling my eyes. ‘Did some Hollywood rabbi make you memorize that line for your bar mitzvah?’
‘What makes you think that I was under an obligation to tell you about Anna?’ Schrei retorted, seething. ‘Because you were once an important man? You assimilated Jews make me sick!’
So, Schrei’s playing Clark Gablewitz in the Yiddish gangster movie of his own making was all about turning the tables on the Jewish elite. Didn’t he realize that his pinstriped suit – even if tailored by a Hasidic hunchback – implied assimilation? ‘You don’t need to remind me that I’m nothing in here,’ I told him, ‘or that the man I was outside the ghetto has vanished. I’ve no illusions – the Germans will grind up my bones and make glue out of me. But I’ll tell you this, Schrei – before I’m sold for four pfennig a jar in Munich, I’m going to find out who murdered Adam! So why don’t you just save us both some time and tell me if any other kid has been killed.’
I saw from his throbbing jaw that my brutal honesty had unnerved him. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what you want to know,’ he said in a voice of restraint, ‘but only if you tell me what you’ve found out about Adam and Anna.’
‘Why should I bargain with you?’
‘Because,’ he observed, eager to prove we were playing on the same team, ‘we both need to know who killed your nephew.’
‘Why do you need to know?’ I questioned.
‘To keep order in the ghetto.’
‘Is there an order in the ghetto?’
‘There is, even if you can’t see it!’
‘So the God of Moses and Abraham isn’t the only invisible being you believe in.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’
‘Probably because I don’t trust you.’
‘The council doesn’t pay me to be trusted.’
I laughed maliciously. ‘There you go again with your bar-mitzvah lines. So you consider yourself a martyr to the Jewish cause? Do you often dream you’re on Masada holding off the Romans, by any chance?’
‘Has anyone ever told you you’re too clever by half?’ he asked.
‘
Just my wife. But I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten dumber since she died – especially over the last few months.’
‘Look,’ he said, sighing with exasperation, ‘I know you don’t like me, and I know I don’t like you, but I’ve had a hell of a day and I need to get off my feet.’
‘That’s the first thing you’ve said that makes any sense,’ I told him admiringly. I gestured for him to step inside. ‘Take the armchair,’ I told him.
He dropped down and undid his coat as if he might not move again for quite some time. I sat on my bed.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ he asked, taking out his cigarette tin.
‘Not if you give me one.’
He lit mine – a gentleman even to his enemies, I had to give him that. I fetched us the clay ashtray Adam had made and plonked it down on the arm of his chair.
‘Well?’ he prompted.
‘Well, what?’ I replied.
‘What have you found out about your grandnephew?’
‘For one thing, he led a double life, as you suspected. Though I haven’t found out yet where he used to cross to the Other Side. He left the ghetto on the day he was murdered to try to find coal. What else he was smuggling, I’ve no idea – probably cheese. He and his mother could live on cheese. We come from a long line of mice.’
‘And Anna?’ he asked, unamused.
‘The way this works, Mr Schrei, is you ask a question, then I ask one. That can’t be too hard for you to understand even if you’re too pooped to punch me in the face.’
He grinned, since I’d read his thoughts accurately.
‘Have any other kids been mutilated?’ I asked.
‘One, a boy – ten years old. Just three days ago.’
‘What was missing – a hand or a leg?’
‘It’s my turn, Dr Cohen,’ Schrei told me. ‘What did you learn about Anna?’
‘She had a boyfriend outside the ghetto – a Pole named Paweł Sawicki. By the way, when you found her body, were there any signs of her having put up a struggle?’
‘No.’
‘So maybe she knew whoever killed her. Or whoever betrayed her to a murderer living outside the ghetto. Maybe Adam did, too.’
‘That seems possible,’ he agreed.
‘So what was missing from the murdered boy?’ I asked.
‘The skin over his right hip – it was sliced away.’
I cringed. ‘How much skin?’
‘A lot.’ He held his hands half a foot apart. ‘Tell me about Paweł.’
‘A nice boy, by all accounts. Went to the cinema with Anna, took her on picnics. Only one problem: his mother is a Jew-hating witch who banished him to Switzerland to keep him away from Anna. So was there anything special about the skin that was taken from the boy?’
‘We can’t find anyone who knew him well enough to say. Was there anything special about Anna’s hand?’
‘Her mother didn’t think so. What was the boy’s name?’
‘Georg.’
‘And where was Georg found?’
‘Chłodna Street – in the barbed wire, just like Adam.’ Schrei smoked thoughtfully and disregarded my next question. ‘So maybe Paweł’s mother had Anna killed,’ he conjectured in a slow, cautious voice. ‘Anna knew her, so maybe she could have been lured somewhere to be murdered by her, or by someone helping her.’
‘Maybe. I mean, that’s what witches do – kill children. But I’ve no reason to believe that Anna ever met Adam, and in any case, it’s nearly impossible for me to believe that Mrs Sawicki knew anything about him, so why would she have had him murdered?’ I went to the window and gazed down into an image of Stefa lying under the Berlin Morgenpost. Schrei tossed me his next question, but I let it fall between us. ‘You know what Mrs Sawicki told me?’ I said to him. ‘That our story is over – the Jews, I mean.’
‘She may be right,’ he replied glumly.
Schrei closed his eyes and angled his face up, as though trying in vain to recall the warmth of summer sunlight, and just like that we were on the same team – fighting to keep The End from being written into our four-thousand-year-old autobiography.
‘You want something to drink?’ I asked him in a conciliatory tone. ‘I’ve still got a little schnapps left.’
‘Any coffee?’ he asked.
‘Some chicory substitute that isn’t too bad.’
On the way to the kitchen to boil water, I patted his shoulder. Surprised by my gesture of friendship, he stood up and accompanied me.
‘Georg – did anyone see who left his body in the barbed wire?’ I asked.
‘No. Was Anna smuggling?’ he shot back, leaning against the cabinets.
‘I don’t think so. She left the ghetto to see Paweł, but he was already in Switzerland.’ To keep my word, I refrained from revealing she’d been pregnant. ‘She never made it back inside,’ I added. ‘Not that she had much to return to.’
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘There’s a second witch in her story.’
‘Who?’
‘Her mother forbade her to date Goyim,’ I replied, ‘and she beat Anna when she refused to give up her Polish Prince Charming. Do you know if Georg had ever met Adam or Anna?’
‘No, I’ve no idea,’ Schrei replied.
‘And you know where he lived?’
‘He’d been in the Krochmalna Street orphanage, but he’d run away.’
‘The orphanage run by Janusz Korczak?’ I asked.
‘That’s right. Have you discovered anything that Adam and Anna had in common?’
‘They had the ghetto in common,’ I replied.
Thinking I was trying to be funny, he grinned – a tough guy’s grudging smile – and took a quick, determined puff on his cigarette. He was starting to like me and getting his energy back.
‘And what else?’ he asked.
‘Being half-starved… becoming adults before their time… wanting to get to a warmer climate.’ I refrained from mentioning Mikael or Rowy just yet; I didn’t entirely trust Schrei and couldn’t risk him alerting my suspects that I’d be following them. ‘How long a list do you want?’ I asked him.
‘I meant,’ he said, sighing mightily, ‘have you found anything specific they had in common?’
‘Not yet,’ I lied.
‘Were Anna and Adam friends with any of the same kids?’ Schrei asked.
‘Not that I know of. Was there any string in Georg’s mouth when you found him?’
‘String?’
‘Adam had a small piece of white string in his mouth. Did anyone look in Georg’s?’
‘No, but he might have been keeping a tiny square of gauze in his fist.’
‘Might have? What’s that mean?’
‘We found a piece of gauze in his fist. But maybe it had been in the barbed wire and got stuck to him when he was tossed there. It had been raining – the gauze must have been wet and clingy.’
‘What kind of gauze?’
‘The kind used in wedding veils, that sort of thing.’
‘Did you save it?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘It didn’t seem important. Look, Dr Cohen, hundreds of Jewish kids die each month in the ghetto – should we save everything they’ve got in their hands?’
‘Was the gauze bloody?’
‘No, it was clean.’
‘Which means it may have been put in his fist after he was murdered. Or he may even have snatched it up.’
‘Why would he do that?’ Schrei questioned.
‘I don’t know. What was Georg’s surname?’
‘If I tell you that, you have to promise not to go public with anything you find out.’
‘Whatever you want,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll even leave you my first editions of Freud in my will. You can read, can’t you?’
‘This is serious, Dr Cohen. You’re already in trouble.’
‘With whom? Besides God, I mean – for being an assimilated Jew.’
I thought that w
as witty, but he glared at me as if I’d gone too far. ‘With… me,’ he said slowly and darkly, and he took a long and greedy puff. He had fantastic lungs – I’d give him that.
‘Mazel tov! ’ I told him sarcastically. ‘God and Benny Schrei regard me as too clever by half. Do you and He perform together often?’
‘This is useless,’ he concluded, frowning. ‘You’re useless. And I’m too sick of my life to go on hitting verbal ping-pong balls back and forth with a crusty old bugger like you.’ He strode past me, chin high and elbows swinging, just like the cowboy hero in a Karl May Western.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told him, and when he faced me at the kitchen door, I said, ‘I really am, but what can I do?’
I saw in the willingness of his eyes that he’d wanted someone to apologize for a long time – for what, I didn’t know, but every Jew in Poland woke up with an urgent need for someone, even a stranger, to tell him he was sorry.
‘You want me to follow your orders,’ I went on, ‘but I’m exhausted, and underneath my exhaustion is an anger so deep it’s probably bottomless. And besides, I’ve always been bad at doing what other people want.’
The water was boiling by now, but I’d used up all my strength bantering with him. I sat at the table and propped up my head with my hands.
‘When was the last time you had a good meal?’ he asked me.
‘Define good.’
‘I’ll make the chicory,’ he told me.
‘It’s in there,’ I said, pointing to one of the cabinets.
‘So what are you going to do when you find out who killed Adam?’ he asked me, taking out the tin. He also found a wedge of cheese that Stefa must have hidden for an emergency.
‘Have you ever been to London?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he replied.
‘How about Paris?’
‘Once, why?’
He took a paring knife from the towel on which I’d let the washed silverware dry and started scraping the outside of the cheese.
‘Was Paris exactly as you thought it would be?’ I questioned. ‘I mean, when you were walking along the Seine did you feel just as you thought you’d feel?’
‘No, of course not.’
The Warsaw Anagrams Page 18