The Mystery of Right and Wrong

by Wayne Johnston

  you know what’s coming next, don’t you?

  “Let’s leave him here with his two Jews.”

  The German soldiers laughed and roared:

  “He really put them to the sword.

  He’ll never be much of a suitor,

  judging by that small pee-shooter.”

  How could a man feel more absurd?

  I shouldn’t write another word.

  I might forget but for that girl,

  the one still on her hands and knees,

  the one still staring at the floor,

  the younger of the Jewish whores—

  the raven-head looked up at me

  (the coldest eyes I’d ever seen;

  brown eyes with little flecks of green),

  her face a mask of plaster dust:

  she might have been some sort of ghost.

  She wiped her mouth with one small hand

  and, whispering, said, “Ik ben Anne.”

  That’s all she ever said to me.

  I can’t be sure; I can’t, you see,

  for Anne is such a common name

  and girls that age all look the same.

  And she was all but in disguise,

  except, of course, for those cold eyes

  that looked at me so scornfully,

  so gleeful was her mockery…

  “It’s easier for you,” I said.

  “You only have to lie in bed.

  The slightest touch and you get wet—

  you only have to wait for it.”

  At least that’s what I should have said,

  but all I did was turn my head.

  I can’t be sure; I can’t, you see—

  unsure is all I’ll ever be.

  Eight Jews, black hair, the greenest eyes…

  I’m almost sure I recognized

  her later when I found that book:

  I think I recognized that look.

  “Ik ben Anne” I heard again—

  I’ve heard it many times since then.

  That smirking face keeps me awake;

  I see it often at daybreak.

  I hear her say, to me, a man:

  “You can’t deny that I am Anne.”

  RACHEL

  I was in bed when I heard him come home, hours later. In the morning, I was not surprised when he told Mom that he had paid some friends of theirs an impromptu visit the night before. Nor did she seem to be, no more than she had been when I came through the door and told her he was driving home a hitchhiker we had picked up.

  That day, at school, I heard about a university student who was missing. Because of the cold wave, a search had been started when she didn’t get back from work, though it was dark. She had been found dead near the side of the road in a wooded area called Maddox Cove, near Cape Spear, just after sunrise. She was naked. She had been raped and strangled. The police said that, as yet, they had no suspects.

  In the evening, I happened to glance at the newspaper that lay on the coffee table in the front room, still folded in half because no one had read it yet. There was a story about the missing girl, as well as a photograph of her. I recognized her instantly. I turned the paper over so that her picture was face down and ran upstairs. I told myself it was possible that she was abducted after my father dropped her off at her house, while she was walking to her door.

  In the following days, accounts of her all-too-short life began to appear in the papers: she had graduated at the top of her class every year from kindergarten to the end of high school. She had thought she might become a doctor, but she loved books and hoped she might write books of her own someday. She was also, at her father’s insistence, taking courses in accounting in case she had to abandon her more ambitious plans. She was saving to go to university on the mainland and that was why she had a part-time job.

  Anne Wilansky’s mother told a reporter that, when her daughter was late, they thought at first that she was working overtime. She often did and didn’t always call to let them know. But when her father phoned the store at eight o’clock and was told that she’d left for home on foot at five, they called the police.

  Mrs. Wilansky said, “It was a long night. The police looked and other people with cars looked for her. Our car was in the garage for repairs. My husband went out with a friend in his car, but I stayed at home so that there’d be someone in the house if she came back. I guess I didn’t have to wait as long as the families of other girls have had to wait. A lot of them are still waiting. Some of them will wait forever.”

  No one had seen us stop to pick her up, so the police didn’t even know what kind of vehicle to look for. They said she might have been killed in someone’s house after being dragged into it and raped, then carried to a car and driven to the outskirts of the city.

  She was frozen to the ground when they found her. Several people had seen her but had driven by, mistaking her, they said, for a store mannequin that someone had thrown away.

  She lay on her right side, facing the road. Her left arm was draped across her chest and her legs were crossed. I wondered if he had posed her that way out of some vestigial sense of decency. I had to believe that she was dead when he left her, that she didn’t feel that brutal cold, that she went to heaven the second she died, that it was just her body that was dumped there in the dark. She didn’t care about the cars that didn’t stop or about being found with no clothes on when the sun came up.

  I wondered about her clothes. That thin coat of hers, her store uniform, her underwear and socks, her boots, her books, her knapsack—where could he have hidden all those things? Then I remembered that I’d smelled smoke from the fireplace after he came home. He had burned everything, I guessed, even as I lay in bed upstairs. Did he notice that Anne’s copy of the diary was missing? Perhaps he had, but it hadn’t occurred to him that she might have given it to me.

  Weeks after the murder, it was leaked that the killer had left a bite mark on the girl’s right breast, which was going to be compared to other bite marks found on the right breasts of girls in the city who had been raped while gagged and blindfolded, and then released. The whole city was talking about the involvement in the case of an odontologist from Montreal. Bite marks had never been used in evidence in Newfoundland before.

  A few days later, when I came home from school, my mother met me at the door. “He’s sitting in front of the fire,” she said. “He’s in a lot of pain.”

  “What’s wrong?” I said. “Is it his ulcers?”

  “Well,” Mom said. She flashed me an odd-seeming smile. “Well, dear, your father had all his teeth removed today. Every last one of them. He didn’t tell me he was going to do it. It was a big surprise to me when he got home.”

  “What? Why?”

  “He’s getting dentures.”

  “Were his teeth that bad? I don’t remember his teeth being bad at all.”

  “Well, you’re right, they weren’t, but he says he got tired of going to the dentist for fillings and cleanings.”

  “I don’t remember Dad ever going to the dentist.”

  Mom carried on as if I hadn’t said a word. “And the expense, well, he didn’t think his teeth were worth it. It’s not as unusual as you think, not for people of our generation.”

  “Are you planning to do it?” She tilted her head and frowned as if to say that I knew better. “So it’s normal for him, but out of the question for you?” I said. Mom turned the palms of her hands outwards and pressed her lips together in a kind of smile.

  I went inside and, as she said, Dad was sitting in an armchair in front of the coal fire, which was roaring. If Dad heard us, he gave no sign, but simply went on staring at the fire. Mom placed her hand on his shoulder. “Have you taken what the dentist gave you for the pain?” He nodded and
placed his hand on hers. “He can’t speak,” she said to me. “His mouth is too swollen. He’s been writing notes to me all day. I asked him if he would rather watch TV, but he shook his head. He hasn’t had anything but broth since he came home.” Dad nodded again.

  Mom and I sat on the sofa. It was almost comical, the two of us staring in silence at Dad, who had come home toothless to his wife, who had no idea what was wrong with him until he told her in a note.

  Months of police investigation turned up nothing. During March Break, Dad drove his car to the mainland and sold it there, somewhere, and came back in another one. His excuse was that it was much cheaper to buy a car on the mainland and drive it back than it was to buy one in St. John’s. He made the trip alone and none of us ever asked him why. Had he done it because of bloodstains I never noticed, or pretended not to, or because he knew the car bore hundreds of her fingerprints? He may have worried about someone coming forward after all to say they saw a car stop to pick her up. Or did he get rid of the car because it reminded him of her, because he could no longer bring himself to drive it, no longer stand to use it as the family car.

  I said nothing to anyone. In the months before he sold it, I often rode in the back seat of the car. Given what a cold night it had been, it was likely that everything had happened in the car, probably in the back seat, the very one that I was sitting on. I knew that, but…but I didn’t know it.

  I could have made sure that justice was done for her. I could have given her family some measure of peace, the relief, at least, of knowing who did it and how she came to be in his car. But I was afraid that nothing would happen to him if I went to the police, or informed on him to anyone, especially my mother. Even though I had the book, I believed that it could be explained away by them. I didn’t know how my parents would explain how I’d come to have the book, but I was certain they would find a way. Perhaps I had come across it lying on the sidewalk, dropped there by her by accident as she hurried home from work that night or some other one. By the time she died, it might have been days since she lost the book. Or the book might have come out of her knapsack during a struggle as her murderer forced her into his car. The police would only have had my word on it that Dad had stopped to offer her a ride. My word. And when my accusations were explained away, I would still be living in his house. Carmen was still there too, technically, but she often didn’t come home for days and nights on end and I had a feeling that she’d soon be moving out.We weren’t close anymore. I would soon be the only one of Dad’s daughters still at home. He had killed a girl and might kill others, or might already have done so, but there was nothing I could do. These—the thoughts of a thirteen-year-old who had always feared the House by Night—may be forgivable.

  But there was also this: I was to blame for her death. I didn’t want people to think—or to know?—it was as much my fault as his.

  I had given her the silent treatment. That didn’t put her off. I made it plain that she was an inconvenience, but she went on talking to me. I warmed up to her a bit when Dad agreed to drop me off first, and she acted as if I’d been nice to her all along. I gave her my phone number as if I was doing her a favour, and she gave it back to me. I’d had no childhood. She’d had one. But that’s all she had. When I got out of the car, she gave me a quick hug as if we were close friends, as if she thought I needed a hug or knew that we would never meet again.

  I couldn’t think it through. I tried but I couldn’t. I knew what he had done to me, so I should have known that he might do the same to her. Was that right? I knew what he had done to my sisters. Why didn’t it occur to me that she was in danger? Maybe it had. Had it? Why didn’t I stay in the car? He’d never have the nerve to hurt her, because I was a witness to the fact that he had picked her up, because I had spoken to her and because she’d told us her name. Was that how I’d thought it through? I couldn’t remember having thought it through. Mine was probably the last voice she heard except for his. It’s such a small thing, a normal thing for a girl that age, to want to get home in time to see her favourite TV show, and to be upset with her father, even to be spiteful, when she misses it because of him. And so, for spite, I made him drop me off and thereby served her up to him. And what of my sisters? If I had spoken up to him, or threatened to tell someone, could I have freed all four of us from him? I convinced myself that I couldn’t, no more than I could have protected Elsie or Nora or all the other maids who lived in the shed at the back of the garden. Who knows what he was up to the nights that, unable to sleep, in St. John’s and in Cape Town, he went out walking, or driving in his car? Who knows how many girls and women he hurt over the years? Who knows how many times Mom provided him with an alibi?

  I may have served up countless women to him, not just my sisters and Anne Wilansky. Was there no going back for me? He was accused of being an informer. Should I have been one?

  Anne Wilansky wasn’t one of his daughters. She wasn’t me. He wasn’t used to women fighting back. Anne Wilansky fought in fury and vicious desperation. Her fingernails were broken. There was no skin left on her knuckles. Her hair was soaked with her own blood. This might have been the first fight of his life, his first encounter with such terrifying fury. A woman. She was more than he had bargained for, more than he was able to imagine. So he crossed the only infinite divide that was left for him to cross. He took another life with his bare hands.

  I tried to shut out the thought that I had killed her as surely as he had, but I couldn’t and he knew it. He was so sure of me, he didn’t even bother to tell me to keep my mouth shut. He knew I wouldn’t speak up. Without saying a word about it to me, he held it over my head for years. I saw it in his eyes every time he looked at me. He saw it in mine.

  He stopped coming to my room after the night we picked up Anne Wilansky. He left me alone for six months. He never laid a hand on me. It was as if we had struck a kind of truce. He would spare me from now on if I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t think of it that way, but that’s how it felt. Maybe he left me alone because he didn’t want to push his luck. Or is that just a different way of saying that we struck a truce?

  * * *

  —

  Six months after Anne. The door was closed but not locked. Anne’s book was on my bed. He walked in without knocking. I was getting undressed and had removed everything but my underpants. I don’t remember if he closed the door behind him or if the lights were on or off. I froze. Neither of us said a word. He walked up to me and put his hands beneath my breasts, which he moved up and down as if assessing their weight. “You’re getting to be a big girl,” he said. I wasn’t angry or afraid. I wouldn’t have resisted.

  I grabbed the book from the bed.

  “What’s that you’re reading?” he said as if he’d never seen a copy of that book in my hands before. He took it from me, gently tugging when I put up a token resistance. I was terrified that he would see the inscription to Anne Wilansky on the inside of the cover. “Ah, Het Achterhuis,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he knew, or suspected, that Anne had given it to me. He closed it and tossed it aside with enough force to send it spinning across the floor until it hit the wall.

  “Filthy Jewess,” he said. “She got what was coming to her. I made sure of that.” I wondered which filthy Jewess he was talking about.

  “She died in a concentration camp with her sister, Margot,” I said.

  “Yes, but you don’t know why. What if I told you that I was the one who tipped off the Gestapo about that secret annex of Anne Frank’s? What then, ha, what then? Do you think Anne Frank’s hiding place was given away by someone of prominence? It’s not as if the Germans were looking for her and the others. The Germans knew where thousands of Jews were hiding, but by 1944, they were too busy to bother with them. Amsterdam fell to the Germans in 1940. But the Germans didn’t put a bounty on the Jews until 1942. I saw the Franks walking through the streets. Many people did. We all knew what was up. I saw the whole f
amily trudging through the rain like refugees, on their way from Merwedeplein to Prinsengracht. I followed them. I watched them going in and out, moving in with their belongings in broad daylight. How stupid.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I knew men who worked with the Colonne Henneicke, Dutch men who made their living by finding Jews for the Germans. I could have told them to call the Gestapo right away. Zi waren brutale mannen. I didn’t want to make them mad with me. Those Jews might have gone right out the other side of Prinsengracht, for all I knew. They were very tricky. What then? Thousands of them were in hiding like rats. No one liked the Jews. It’s the same today, here, in Holland, in Canada. Everywhere. They are the scourge of humankind. I kept my eye on 263 and 265. I saw things. Heard things.”

  I told him to prove it was true. He told me to prove it wasn’t. “I lived two streets away from Anne Frank’s house,” he said. “I saw a lot of comings and goings, put two and two together, or rather four and four together, for there were eight of them, eight filthy Jews crammed into a couple of rooms. Eventually, I called the Gestapo. It was as simple as that. Yes. I’m the one. Eight Jews. Eight and they’re still trying to hunt down who did it.”

  “Seven Jews,” I said, tears streaming down my cheeks. “Otto Frank survived.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Just like a Jew to let his wife and daughters die so that he could live. But I got seven and a half guilders for each one of the Jews. Sixty guilders. Do you think I’m lying?”

  “Maybe you’re joking,” I said.

  “I’m not. There is only one way to deal with Jews.”

  He sighed as if he wished it wasn’t true. He sounded tired, disheartened, as if he had recently suffered some great and final disappointment. “I wasn’t a collaborator. I served with the Resistance. The ones who weren’t there don’t know what happened in the war. I helped the Jew-hunting Nazis, but that didn’t make me hate the Nazis any less. I helped to save my share of Jews, but that didn’t make me hate them any less. It wasn’t just this side or that side. There were many sides. I worked for them all, against them all. I was only a few years older than you. On my own in occupied Amsterdam. Can you imagine that? An unaligned young man of little consequence. I’d rather have been one of no consequence at all—but I survived. You should be proud of me, my little Rachel. I’ve read the version of that Jew’s diary with all the dirty parts left in. Disgusting. But she’s worshipped by so many, you’re not allowed to talk about that. We’re supposed to believe that she was a saint, but you should read the things her father cut out of that book. Anyway, a fat lot of good her diary did her in the end. Typhus was too good for her.”