The Warsaw Anagrams (25 page)

‘Did you ever see him naked?’

‘Naked how?’ he asked, puffing out his lips in puzzlement.

‘I need to know if he had any identifying marks on his hip.’

As soon as I finished my question, a jolt of understanding made me gasp. I realized now what might have made Adam’s leg special.

‘No, I never saw his hip,’ the older boy told me.

‘Me neither!’ Zachariah chimed in.

I got to my feet. The two boys did, as well. I continued my questioning, but I felt as if I’d crossed an invisible portal into a myth, in which the only way to identify brothers and sisters separated at birth was by a telltale sign on their skin. And Adam’s telltale sign was on his ankle – his
right
ankle: a line of four birthmarks. But of what value could they have possibly been to anyone? And could something so small and insignificant really have summoned Death to my nephew?

‘How about Georg’s clothing – anything unusual?’ I asked the acrobats.

‘I know the answer to that one!’ Zachariah exclaimed, his eyes brightening. ‘He had newspapers stuffed into his shoes!’

‘That’s all?’ I asked.

‘And he wore a chain around his neck,’ the older boy told me.

‘What kind of chain?’

‘With a little Virgin Mary at the end. He said his mother was Jewish, but that his father was Russian. His father had hung that necklace around his neck when he was just a baby. He never took it off.’

‘And Georg juggled, right?’

Zachariah nodded.

‘Did he do anything else to earn money?’

‘No,’ the little boy replied, but the older acrobat added, ‘Georg sometimes sang while he juggled. Mostly Yiddish folk songs. He said it got him a bigger crowd.

‘Was he any good?’

‘Pretty good, but he wasn’t the best juggler in the world. He could do only four pairs of socks. And sometimes one would fall.’

‘Socks?’

‘That’s what he juggled – he rolled each pair into a tight ball.’

By now, I’d realized that Rowy or Ziv was sure to have noticed him sooner or later while looking for new singers. Was it possible that they were both involved in Adam’s murder? Rowy was terrified of being conscripted again into a labour gang, and perhaps he had exchanged the lives of three Jewish children for a guarantee of safety. As for Ziv, what did I really know about him, other than that he was shy and awkward, and an exceptional chess player?

‘Did Georg ever talk about singing in a chorus?’ I asked Zachariah and his colleague.

‘He said something like that once,’ the older boy replied. ‘He mentioned to me that a man told him he could sing at a concert he was going to organize.’

‘Did Georg tell you the man’s name or what he looked like?’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry.’

I gave him a złoty with my thanks, and he ran off.

‘Where’s mine?’ Zachariah whined.

‘If I give you more money, I need you to do something for me,’ I told him.

‘What?’

‘I want you to get disinfected at the Leszno Street bathhouse. You know where it is?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good.’ I dropped two złoty – one after the other – into his excited hands. I wanted to tighten the scarf I’d given him around his neck – as an excuse for holding him once more – but he dashed off before I could, one hand securing his crown.

Dorota refused to let me into her apartment once again. ‘My husband isn’t home,’ she confessed, ‘but if he ever learned that a man asking about Anna had been here …’ She shook her head as if dealing with his temper was a constant burden.

‘Just tell me about your daughter’s hand,’ I told her gruffly.

She drew back her head like a surprised hen. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘Did it have any birthmarks?’

‘No.’

‘Anything else that would make it identifiable to someone who’d never seen her before?’

‘I don’t know – just a small patch … a discoloration on the back,’ she said doubtfully. ‘But why are you—?’

‘What did the patch look like?’ I interrupted.

‘It was tiny and red – like a stain. On the skin between her thumb and index finger. People were always trying to wipe it clean when she was little.’

‘Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me that before?’ I demanded angrily.

‘It was so small. And it seemed so unimportant. Besides, Anna was ashamed of it.’ She reached for my arm. ‘The poor girl hated it!’

Outside Dorota’s apartment house I took my first steps too quickly and slipped on the fresh snow. The trunk of a beech tree saved me from a bad tumble. Embracing it, standing apart from the people hurrying past, I saw that Adam and Anna had both been marked at birth. And if I was right, then Georg had been, too. Someone had wanted their skin blemishes and birthmarks. But why?

Everything pointed to their having been murdered outside the ghetto and then dumped in the barbed wire. And it seemed clear now that Georg was recruited by either Rowy or Ziv. One of them must have identified the children to the murderer – a German or possibly Pole – who had had the kids followed and snatched.

I was anxious to question both men, of course, but doing that would do little good, I reasoned; if one or both of them were guilty, they’d try to cast the blame on someone else – probably on Mikael, since there was no reason why they wouldn’t be able to make the same deductions I had. Or would they simply tell me that they couldn’t have known that Adam and Georg had any skin blemishes? After all, it was unlikely that they’d seen either boy naked or – during our frigid winter – in short pants. Only one person could have – Mikael.

Maybe Anna had threatened to denounce him for his abortions and he had asked whoever was working with him on the outside to kill her when she left the ghetto. In that case, the murderer had waited until she visited Mrs Sawicki, then lured her away.

I hailed a rickshaw, sure of only one thing: I’d resume following Mikael as my most likely suspect. But as soon as we set off for his office, a fact I’d overlooked made me call out to the driver that we needed to change our destination.

I discovered Stefa’s apartment door open. A squat young Gestapo officer with his cap in his hands was gazing out the window. Another Nazi, older, his hair turned to silver by the light from my carbide lamp, was reading.

They’ve learned I was on the Other Side and did nothing to prevent the murder of a colleague of theirs
, I reasoned.

Before I could slip away, the younger man turned to me with a surprised expression. Sensing a change in the room, the German at my desk also faced me. Putting down his book, he showed me a cat-like grin.

My legs tensed, and if I’d been younger, I’d have raced down the staircase. Instead, I slipped out of my coat and stepped inside. At times, the state of one’s body can determine everything.

‘Are you Dr Erik Cohen?’ the German who’d been reading asked me. He put on his cap and stood up.

‘Yes.’

‘We need you to come with us.’ His Prussian accent made me shrink back.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘Out of the ghetto. I’ll explain in the car.’

I hung up my coat to give me time to take a couple of deep breaths. ‘I’ve done nothing,’ I told him.

He smiled, amused, revealing fine Aryan teeth – the teeth of a man who ate satisfying meals served by starving Jews.

‘We’re not going to kill you just yet – that would be too kind,’ he told me.

Apparently, that was what passed for wit amongst the Nazis; the young German laughed in an appreciative burst.

‘Why do you want me?’ I asked.

‘I’ll explain on the way down the stairs.’

‘Do I need to bring a change of clothing?’ I was trying to learn if I’d be incarcerated.

‘Do you
have
a change of clothing?’ he replied sarcastically, looking me up and down as if I were a peasant, and the two men had another good laugh at my expense.

I waited for the Nazi comic to give me a real reply, but none came.

‘I need to check one thing before we go,’ I told him.

‘We’re already late.’

‘I’ll only need a minute.’

Frowning, he gave his permission with a patronizing twist of his hand.

I rushed to my desk and got out the medical folder on Adam that Mikael had given me. My heart was thumping, and I fumbled my reading glasses. Once I had them on, I discovered that at the bottom of the second examination sheet, Mikael had written in his neat script: ‘Four birthmarks at the base of his right calf muscle, the largest 1.5 centimetres in diameter and hard-edged.’ He’d also drawn them.

Birthmarks –
Geburtsmale
– was in German, but the rest was in Yiddish.

My intuition had been right; as chorus director, Rowy could have had access to this examination sheet, and it was just possible that he might have mentioned something to Ziv about the peculiarities on Adam’s leg – in passing, thinking nothing of the consequences. Indeed, Stefa might also have made some innocent remark about them to either man. So neither of them would have had to see Adam naked to know he was marked for death.

The Gestapo comedian and I rode in the back of a Mercedes down Franciszkańska Street. He carried the book he’d been reading. It had been Adam’s: a German edition of
The Lost World
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that I had bought for him. He held the book with the title facing out, undoubtedly eager for me to protest in an outraged voice so that he could laugh in my face. But his thievery didn’t concern me; by now, I believed that Rowy – maybe with Ziv’s help – had betrayed Adam and Anna to a Nazi murderer; after all, if Mikael were guilty, he wouldn’t have let me keep Adam’s medical file, which was clear evidence that he had noticed the boy’s birthmarks.

I’d have to follow the young conductor to try to learn whom he was working with on the outside.

We exited the Okopowa Street gate, with the Jewish cemetery on our right.

‘They start with the eyes and lips – anything soft,’ the Nazi beside me told me lazily, as if in passing.

He pointed to a group of crows huddled on the cemetery wall, probably waiting for mourners to leave a frozen burial site.

‘They’ll tear their beaks into anything, and they’ll wait hours if need be,’ he added. ‘I’ve even seen them tug the lid off a casket. Admirably intelligent creatures.’

I said nothing; I’d learned in my work that there are people who are barren inside – who feel no solidarity for anyone. The amazing thing was that they looked just like the rest of us. And now they had the world’s most powerful armaments and their very own empire.

‘I suppose in the long run the mass graves are a blessing,’ he observed, giving me a playful nudge. ‘The grass will grow better with all that fertilizer. What do you think?’

‘Me? I don’t think anything,’ I replied, refusing to look at him.

Outside my window, dismal apartment houses and grubby streets zoomed by. Both Germans tried to bait me several more times, but their comments soon decayed into centuries-old clichés. I played with the coins in my pocket to keep calm – an old strategy for dealing with Jew-hating colleagues in Vienna.

Still, maybe their antagonism had an effect on me; the bump and tumble of the car, the glide of winter landscape, the musty leather smell in the car – everything soon left me panicked that I’d be killed before taking vengeance. And the further we moved from the ghetto, the deeper my sense of vulnerability became.

As we pulled into the gravel driveway of a three-storey villa with Palladian windows, my travelling companion elbowed me. ‘Get out,’ he growled.

A handsome, middle-aged woman met us in the foyer, which was floored with black and white marble squares, as in a medieval Italian painting. She was tall and slender, with a man’s closely cropped blonde hair. Her healthy face was red-cheeked, and her blue-blue eyes were the stuff of Aryan mythology. Scandinavian, I’d have bet. And eating three square meals a day, just like my German escorts.

I will always remember the first lingering look she gave me, her eyes moistening, as though she had been hoping to meet me for years, and the way, too, that she breathed in slowly, filling herself with this moment.

‘Thank goodness you’re here!’ she exulted in French-accented German, and she reached out for my hand with both of hers. ‘It’s an honour to meet you, Dr Cohen. I’ve heard so much about you. My name is Sylvie Lanik.’

The Gestapo men stood stiffly by the door, which meant that my host was a powerful woman.

‘
J’aimerais savoir pourquoi vous m’avez convoqué
,’ I asked her.

I tried my rusty French because I preferred the Germans not to know that I was asking why I’d been summoned.

‘It’s Irene … it’s my daughter,’ Mrs Lanik answered, also in French, embarrassment reducing her voice to a whisper. ‘She’s not well. I’m hoping you can help her.’

‘Send the Germans away,’ I told her.

‘Yes, whatever you want.’ Mrs Lanik summoned her elderly housekeeper and asked her to give the men coffee and cake in the kitchen. The Gestapo comedian showed me a predatory smile as he strode off, no doubt envisaging the revenge he’d take. The only question was whether I’d survive.

‘You must be important,’ I remarked in German as soon as they’d left.

She flapped her hand. ‘My husband is the important person around here.’

‘Is he a Nazi?’

‘Yes, though he and I both know that what Hitler says about Jews is all lies.’

Did she expect me to thank her for not hating me? I forced a laugh.

‘Have I offended you, Dr Cohen?’ she questioned fearfully.

I despised her for being a traitor to her own beliefs and refused to give her the satisfaction of an answer. ‘Where’s your husband?’ I asked roughly.

‘He left yesterday morning and will be gone until tomorrow.’

‘Does he know I’m here?’

‘I told him we were sending for someone who could help Irene.’

‘But not a Jew.’

‘No, that was my decision,’ she said firmly.

‘Mrs Lanik, I may have been reduced to nearly nothing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a life. I have to get back to the ghetto.’