The Things We Cherished (13 page)

She looked down at the stack of yellowed papers before her, setting them on the floor so as not to jostle them. It was the first rule of research, whether poring over documents in a dusty archive in Kiev or going through a police locker in North Philly: preserve the materials intact in order not to destroy their evidentiary value.

“Well, this is interesting,” Jack said, straightening. Charlotte looked up to see him holding a brown leather portfolio. “Roger’s papers from when he was a student at the university in Breslau.”

Where Hans had also been stationed as a diplomat, she recalled. “And …”

He unfolded a piece of paper, which had yellowed with age. “My dearest Magda,” he began, translating from German.

“Dearest,” Charlotte repeated. “Who’s Magda, I wonder?”

“No idea. But I guess our Roger wasn’t such a loner after all.”

“What does it say?”

Jack shrugged indifferently. “Nothing much. Some routine talk about summer in Wadowice.” He paused, an eyebrow raised. “And that he’s counting the days until September.”

“When he could return to school,” she surmised. “Magda must have been in Breslau. But why would the letter Roger wrote still be in his folder?”

Jack turned over the envelope. “Because for whatever reason, he never sent it.” He set the paper aside. “Not sure it has much relevance to the case, though.”

Charlotte wanted to disagree. A relationship, or even an unrequited crush, could go to the very essence of who Roger Dykmans was, why he might or might not be guilty. But Jack had lowered his head and was engrossed in the papers before him once more, so she returned to the box before her. The documents appeared to
be routine, she observed. Bills that had been paid, a ledger recording household expenses, recipes held together by a rusty clip. The Dykmanses, it seemed, had not thrown anything out.

Pausing again, Charlotte peered at Jack out of the corner of her eye. He was more attractive than Brian now, she decided. His lean figure had not given way to paunchiness, as his brother’s had, and the lines that had formed at the corners of his eyes gave him a more interesting look than he had years ago.

She looked down at the papers once more, but her eyes, dry from the dust and reading, blurred. “Tell me more about the case,” she said, leaning back on her heels, eager for a break.

He lifted his head. “Well, generally speaking, Nazi war crimes prosecutions are a crapshoot. Some countries, like Syria and unbelievably Austria, refuse to cooperate with the international community at all. Sweden has a statute of limitations and takes the position that it cannot prosecute for that reason. Others, like the Baltic states, participate in a token manner but never really bring a case against anyone who is fit to stand trial. They’re really more interested in prosecuting former Communist leaders.”

Of course, she thought. Those crimes are so much fresher and more personal for the living population. Naturally there’s more of a mandate to pursue those cases than to vindicate Jews gone for decades, whom they never wanted in the first place.

“And even where there is a will,” Jack continued, “prosecuting crimes against Nazi war criminals is a ticking time bomb. Fewer and fewer are still alive and of those many are medically unfit to stand trial.

“The United States created a group at Justice in the seventies, the Office of Special Investigations, to track down Nazis who had somehow slipped into the U.S. and were living there undetected.” His face grew more animated as he delved into the topic, picking
up steam. “They’re unable to prosecute the Nazis for actual war crimes that took place outside their jurisdiction. So instead they use the tactic of having them denaturalized and deported.”

“I’ve read about it,” she said, recalling something from the files she’d reviewed at the hotel the previous evening. The approach had worked and the United States had successfully prosecuted several dozen cases, more than all of the other countries combined. But it was a drop of sand compared to the millions who had died, the thousands who had perpetrated the crimes against them. She had wondered several times if it was worthwhile, spending all of the money bringing to justice a handful of senior citizens while war crimes continued unabated in the Sudan and elsewhere. But it sent a message, symbolic and important:
We have not forgotten
.

“The cases seemed to flag for several years,” Jack explained. “Then the Soviet Union collapsed and a vast number of documents suddenly became available to help identify and find the former Nazis.”

She opened her mouth to ask how it all related to Roger’s case. But Jack had turned back to his documents and seemed to be concentrating deeply. They worked intensely for some time, the silence broken only by the sound of a bird chirping in the eaves. “Nothing in this box,” Jack announced sometime later. She could sense his frustration—so much time wasted and nothing to show for it. At this pace, they could be here for weeks, which was time they didn’t have.

“Mine either.” She stood up, stretching her right foot to relieve a cramp in her leg. “Are we missing something? Are there people, maybe, who we should be talking to, who could point us in the right direction?”

“I don’t think so,” Jack replied. “I asked Roger that when I told
him we were coming here, but he said that it’s been so many years, everyone who knew his family has either emigrated or died.”

Charlotte nodded. It was one of the great challenges of researching the Holocaust. The generation that had witnessed it all was dying off by the thousands each day, their experiences slipping away like sand through one’s fingers. “Maybe we should approach this differently,” she suggested, scanning the attic once more. He tilted his head. “I mean, the box that someone has been through is probably least likely to have what we’re looking for, because if there was something relevant, the person likely would have taken it, right?”

“Assuming they were looking for the same thing as us.”

“Assuming. So maybe if we try the places they didn’t get to …” She wove her way through the maze of boxes toward the far end of the attic. The light was dimmer there, making it difficult to see. She noticed something smaller then, wedged between the last stack of boxes and the wall. A trunk, she realized, reaching for it. But her reach was too short. “Help me, will you?”

Jack came to her side, his arm pressed against hers in the narrow space. “Let me,” he said.

She stepped back and he pulled the trunk out and dragged it back toward the window, where the light was better. “Is it locked?” she asked.

He pulled hard on the clasp at the front until there was a loud popping sound. “Not anymore.”

As Jack returned to the box he’d been searching, Charlotte knelt down, then opened the trunk and peered inside. It was filled with photographs, mostly loose, some in frames or albums. She began to rifle through them. The albums contained the older pictures, Dykmans family ancestors, she presumed. There were photographs
of Hans and Roger and Lucy, too, as infants, then growing through the years. A normal, happy family, or at least they had been, until the war destroyed everything. And they hadn’t even been Jewish.

She picked up a pile of loose photographs. There was one of Hans and a striking, dark-haired woman in a white dress standing before a fireplace, holding hands. A clock with a dome of glass sat on the mantelpiece behind the couple.

“Was Hans married?” she asked Jack, holding up the photograph. “I don’t remember reading anything about a wife.”

He nodded. “Briefly, in the years before his death. But I’m not sure what happened to her after he was arrested.” He looked down at the box he’d been searching once more, then stood up, brushing the dust from his pants. “This is pointless,” he declared. “I mean, what is it that we’re looking for exactly? A photo, a document, or something else? We don’t even know that there’s anything here worth finding at all.”

“There has to be,” Charlotte replied defensively. She searched for some evidentiary support for her assertion, but found none.

“Anyway, it’s getting late,” he added.

She looked past him out the window. Beyond the gritty rooftops and the trees, the sun was sinking into the mountains, faint in the distance. She blinked in surprise. “What time is it?”

Jack looked at his watch. “Almost seven.”

She blinked. “I had no idea we’d been at it so long.”

He stood, stretching. “We’ll have to come back and continue in the morning.”

“But you just said this is futile.”

“And maybe it is. But we’re here, so we might as well finish what we’ve started.” His expression was dogged. “I booked us hotel rooms in Katowice for the night, so we should try to find a cab and make our way back there.”

Why not Kraków, she wanted to ask. For the same drive, they could have enjoyed decent food and a stroll through the Old City rather than a bad hotel restaurant by the industrial airport. But she did not want to sound like a tourist. “All right,” she said, replacing the photographs. “Let’s go.”

They found Beata cutting some fresh flowers outside in the garden, which stretched expansively behind the house. “We needed to stop for the day,” Jack explained. “But we’d like to come back and look some more tomorrow morning, if you don’t mind.”

Beata nodded. “Certainly. Come with me.” She led them through the backyard to a small cottage. This must be where she lives, Charlotte realized. As Beata opened the door, then stepped aside to let them in, Charlotte hesitated. Katowice was a good hour away, and that was after they somehow found a taxi. She just wanted to get to the hotel, take a hot shower, and sleep. Exchanging glances with Jack, she could tell he felt the same way. But it would not do to offend the caretaker when they wanted to come back and search again tomorrow. Perhaps she was even going to give them a key to let themselves in the next morning. Reluctantly, Charlotte stepped inside.

The cottage was more spacious than its compact exterior suggested. A single room with a high vaulted ceiling, it had a small kitchenette at one end and a neatly made futon at the other. In the middle, a long table had been set for twelve, a collection of mismatched chairs crowded tightly around it. “Sit, sit,” Beata urged before disappearing through a door into what could only be the washroom.

“What are we doing here?” Charlotte whispered to Jack in a low voice.

“I don’t know.” He gestured toward the table with his head. “Must be a dinner or party of some sort.” He pulled out a chair for her. “We’ll stay for just a few minutes and then excuse ourselves.”

“Oh, Jack …” She wanted to tell him that there was no such thing as a brief social call at Polish gatherings, that one drink meant six and a casual stop by someone’s house invariably resulted in staying long into the night. She recalled going out for lunch with friends at Kraków’s main market square one day and the next thing she knew the whole night had passed. She’d woken up in the morning with very little recollection of how she’d gotten home and some fuzzy memories of a nightclub that were so strange she thought she had dreamt them. Even the performers at Polish concerts were obliged to return for about six encores as the audience remained on their feet, clapping methodically, refusing to leave.

Before she could speak, Beata reappeared in a floral dress. “This is very kind of you,” Charlotte began to demur, “but we really must—” She was interrupted by the ringing of a doorbell. The caretaker hastened to greet her guests.

A steady stream of people of various ages, arriving alone or in pairs, poured through the front door, and as they crowded around the table Charlotte doubted that they could all possibly fit, but there miraculously seemed to be a chair for everyone. When they were seated, Beata produced a bottle of vodka from the freezer and it was passed around, shots poured. Charlotte’s
“nie, dziękuję”
was ignored, the tiny glass before her filled to the brim.

“Na zdrowie!
” someone proposed, raising his glass in Beata’s direction, and as the group erupted into an off-key but enthusiastic rendition of
“Sto Lat”
(“May You Live to Be a Hundred”) Charlotte realized that it must be the caretaker’s birthday.

She turned to Jack, and was surprised to find him watching her. He smiled then, and there was a softness to his eyes that she had not expected. Her cheeks flushed.

She raised her glass in his direction. “Cheers,” she said, then looked away, downing the liquor with resignation. It was the first
real drink she’d had since leaving Philadelphia and she welcomed the searing burn, putting at a distance for a moment all that had happened.

Soon trays of deli meats and cheese were produced, along with cucumber and cabbage and beets in sour cream, always sour cream. Charlotte took some of everything that came in her direction, hungry and uncertain of when they would have the chance to eat again.

Underneath the table, Jack’s leg brushed against hers. She looked up. Was he trying to tell her something? But he was gazing off in the distance, seemingly distracted.

As they ate, introductions were made in Polish, too rapidly for Charlotte to follow. A white-haired man across the table gestured to the younger woman beside him, attractive despite the fiery shade of unnaturally red hair that seemed to still be popular here.
“Moja
ona.”