The Warsaw Anagrams (29 page)

I wanted to take a quick look at Rowy’s apartment before leaving our note. It was on the ground floor of a stately neoclassical building, with impressive columns flanking the doorway, but much of the roof had imploded and was patched with wooden planks and burlap.

Luckily, I found the young man at home, practising the slow movement of what sounded like a Mozart concerto. His warm, full tone seemed to give form to my sense of abandonment. I could not bear it for more than a moment and knocked.

Rowy welcomed me warmly and put his violin back in its velvet-lined case. I told him I’d had some good fortune and handed him the caviar Mrs Lanik had given me – the price of putting him at ease. He insisted on opening the can right away, and on toasting some
challah
to eat with it. I sat at his worktable, which was piled high with musical scores. Next to me a rusted bicycle was leaning against a wooden dresser – Izzy and I would start by searching there.

A pink sheet hung from the ceiling halfway back, hiding the only window from view.

‘A young couple with a toddler moved in a few weeks ago,’ Rowy explained.

It was cold in the apartment, so he put more sawdust in his oven. Over our snack, we got to talking about the cramped conditions in the ghetto, and Rowy warned me that the Jewish Council had begun forcing residents with spare rooms to accept Jews who had arrived recently from the provinces. Waving off his concern, I said, ‘Izzy already told me. A girl I know named Bina just moved in with her mother and uncle.’

‘Three extra people – it must be hell,’ he said, and from the way he looked at me, I knew he meant more than sharing my home with strangers.

I couldn’t discuss my inner life with a man I didn’t trust, so I made believe I’d failed to understand his implication. ‘I’ll be fine living in Stefa’s room,’ I assured him.

On saying goodbye, he embraced me. I went stiff, but then kissed his cheek to throw off his suspicions. After leaving, I waited a
half-hour
, then slid our note under his door and fled.

*

By then, it was just after five in the afternoon. Izzy had suggested the Leszno Street gate because there was a small café run by an acquaintance of ours nearby, and from there we could see everyone entering or exiting the ghetto. We met there at 5.30. We took a table by the window. We kept the brims of our hats low on our foreheads to be less recognizable.

At seven, we went outside to make sure we didn’t miss any passers-by. I turned up my collar and stood with my back to the street to keep my face hidden, blocking Izzy from view at the same time. Whenever anyone approached, he would glance around my shoulder to see who it was.

We stood that way until fifteen minutes to eight. The coming curfew had emptied the street by then. A Jewish policeman told us we’d better make our way home.

We dragged ourselves off; we’d failed to trap Rowy, Ziv or Mikael.

Could the murderer’s accomplice inside the ghetto be someone we’d never even considered?

Izzy and I agreed to meet the next morning at his workshop to settle on another plan. In my brief conversation with Rowy, he’d mentioned that he’d given a copy of his apartment key to Ewa, and I intended to make up a reason for her to lend it to me.

At home, Bina handed me my dinner: a silvery perch lying on a bed of leeks sautéed in
schmaltz
. I hadn’t seen so beautiful a meal since the Before Time and told her so. The girl took off her apron and sat with me at the kitchen table, watching me eat with the pleased smile of a chef who’s appreciated. After a time, she moved her hands to her lap, wishing to speak her heart but afraid that I’d yell at her. Caressing her cheek, I said, ‘Listen, Bina, you’re a wonderful girl, but don’t grow attached to me.’

‘But why, Dr Cohen?’

‘Because one way or another I’m getting out of here as soon as I can, and I can’t take you with me.’

Guilt for so many bad choices I’d made throughout my life chased me to Stefa’s window that night to look up at the few stars that succeeded in penetrating the hazy gloom over the city. I puffed away at my pipe until long after midnight, grateful for the darkness and the quiet – and the comfort of good tobacco.

A first gunshot woke me from my half-sleep. I thought the bang had exploded out of a dream. Then a second shot thudded against the wall. Bina and her mother began screaming. I jumped up from my chair and pulled open my door. Uncle Freddi was slumped on the ground, a dark rose blossoming on his chest.

I pressed both my hands over Freddi’s wound, hard, but the blood sluiced out and ran down his bare chest on to the floor. Bina’s mother was staring at her brother and shrieking his name.

‘Turn on the light!’ I shouted at her, but she didn’t move.

Bina was next to me, on her knees, her hands clamped over her mouth. When I pleaded with her for more light, she jumped up and pulled the cord of the lamp by the bed.

Freddi’s wound was deep. The killer must have hit an artery, because his blood was spilling out like wine from a spigot. The warmth of his life pulsing erratically below my hands made me shudder. His eyes were open, but they weren’t watching anything in our world.

‘Hold on, we’ll get help,’ I told him, but I knew it was too late.

I looked at Bina. Her eyes – darkly lit with terror – had just grasped the imminence of her uncle’s death.

‘Did you get a look at whoever shot him?’ I asked the girl, but as I spoke she turned towards the doorway; neighbours had just appeared.

When I felt a slackening in Freddi’s chest, I moved my hands to his wrist and felt for a pulse, but it was already gone.

While Professor Engal examined Freddi’s body, Ida Tarnowski tried to calm Bina’s mother, but she kept pushing the kindly old woman away. I fled the mayhem for the bathroom and scrubbed my hands over and over, but I couldn’t get the blood out from under my fingernails, since the ghetto soap melted to a useless mush when mixed with water. My legs were shaking, so I leaned back against the wall, staring at the gnarled backs of my hands, wondering if I would ever stop feeling Freddi’s life inside their grip. Then I summoned Bina into the bathroom and cleaned her face, which was splattered with blood. She went limp as soon as I touched her, like a small child, so I sat her on the rim of the bathtub.

‘Did you see who did this?’ I asked her.

She looked up at me as if unable to fit what had happened into her mind.

‘Take your time,’ I told her.

‘It was a man,’ she replied. ‘But it was too dark to see his face.’

She was shivering, so I fetched my coat and draped it over her shoulders.

‘How old was he – this man?’ I asked.

‘I couldn’t tell.’

‘What do you remember about him?’

‘He was small. Maybe only a little taller than me.’

Bina was about five foot two, by my estimation. ‘And did you see him shoot Uncle Freddi?’ I asked.

‘Only the second shot. The first … it woke me up. Maybe the man shot the lock. I’m not sure.’ Her eyes focused inside. ‘Then I saw him, and I knew I was awake but I didn’t understand – I thought maybe you’d come into the room.’ She showed me an inquisitive look, as if waiting for me to confirm that I hadn’t been there.

‘I was in my niece’s room, asleep,’ I told her gently.

‘Yes, I know that now. Uncle Freddi … I saw him standing next to the chair where he’d been sleeping. He spoke to the man. I think he said, ‘What do you want?’ Maybe he also thought the intruder was you. Then I heard a second shot, and Uncle Freddi fell. And then the man ran out and you were holding my uncle, and Mama was screaming …’

I held Bina close to me while she sobbed. When she could talk again, I asked, ‘Was Freddi involved in smuggling?’

‘I don’t see how he could have been. The Germans transferred him to the ghetto just two weeks ago. The only people he knew here were my mother and me.’

Professor Engal and another man carried Freddi’s body to the courtyard. Bina’s mother went with them to watch over her brother. The girl had wanted to accompany her, but her mother had said, ‘There are some things I need to tell your uncle alone.’

I saw such disappointment in Bina’s eyes that I steered her back to bed and covered her with a blanket. ‘Lie there, and I’ll make us some nettle tea,’ I told her.

First, however, I went to the front door. The lock was intact, which meant that both shots I’d heard had been fired at Freddi. Yet I’d only seen one wound; the killer must have missed on his first attempt, which meant he probably wasn’t a professional.

More importantly, he must have used a key to get in. Only Ewa and Izzy – and now Bina – had copies.

When we were seated together with our tea, Bina promised me that she had kept the key in her pocket since receiving it from Izzy and had not lent it to anyone. After I assured her that I believed her, she began to talk about her uncle in a frail, unsteady voice, as though pulling back details from out of the distant past. She told me that he had written a script for Conrad Veidt and had met with the actor at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin in the spring of 1939 to discuss changes.

She needed me to understand that her uncle had been on his way to becoming a famous screenwriter – and that he was irreplaceable.

We owe uniqueness to our dead at the very least, of course.

‘Uncle Freddi had promised to write a part for me when I was older,’ she told me.

‘So you want to be an actress?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I wanted to be a dancer before we came here. But it made Uncle Freddi so happy to think of us together in Berlin that I didn’t want to spoil his fun.’

I could see from the way Bina gazed off that she would write an entire future for her uncle over the next weeks and months. Another movie never to be made.

While I went to the window to see what was happening in the courtyard, Bina walked purposefully into to the kitchen and came back with a pot full of soapy water and a brush.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ I told her. ‘You have to rest!’

‘No, I have to clean up,’ she replied, and she got on her knees to begin scrubbing the bloodstains off the floor. Soon she was in tears again, so I lifted her to her feet, led her back to bed and instructed her to sleep. Now and then she would open her eyes to make sure I was still sitting with her. ‘I’m right here,’ I’d whisper.

When she drifted off, I began lightly caressing her hair. I learned the smoothness of her neck and the shadowed curves of her cheeks. I learned the way her chest would rise once, then once again before easing back down, as though she were overcoming her own resistance to life.

And once I’d learned these things, I walked away.

I took a rickshaw to Izzy’s workshop just after eight in the morning. He came to the door in his winter coat, but with his pyjamas on underneath. Reading in my face that I’d had a bad night, he reached out for my arm. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, leading me inside.

When I explained about Freddi, he went pale. I sat him down at his worktable, where he’d been drinking coffee out of a bowl. ‘And no one else was hurt?’ he asked.

‘No. Listen, did you ever give Stefa’s apartment key to anyone?’

‘Of course not,’ he replied defensively. ‘I just made the one copy for Bina.’

‘Then Ewa must have given out our key. Or Stefa did.’

‘How do you know that?’

I sat down next to him and took a quick sip of his coffee, but it was too weak to do me any good. ‘The lock on the door wasn’t shot. Freddi’s killer let himself in.’

‘Someone might have taken it from Ewa just long enough to have a copy made,’ Izzy speculated. ‘Ziv works with her and could have easily done that. So maybe you were right about him. Maybe he fled Łódź to get away from the police or something.’

‘Except that Mikael could also have gotten it from Ewa. Though he let me see Adam’s medical file, which I don’t think he’d have done if he were involved in the murders.’

‘Poor Freddi,’ Izzy sighed. ‘He must have made some bad enemies really quickly.’

‘Freddi? This has nothing to do with him! The bullet in his chest was meant for me.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Only you and I knew that Bina’s family moved in yesterday. Though …’ Remembering the talk I’d had with Rowy the previous afternoon, I cut my sentence short.

‘What is it?’ Izzy questioned.

‘Listen to my thinking and tell me if I’m right. The murderer outside the ghetto and his Jewish accomplice must have thought I was still living alone. One of them came to put a bullet in me, or, more likely, sent someone else. Whoever it was panicked when he saw two women and a man in the room. It was dark, and he assumed the man was me. His first shot missed, which may mean he wasn’t a trained killer. We’ll probably find the bullet lodged in the wall somewhere. In any case, his trying to get me out of the way means that our note convinced Mikael, Rowy or Ziv that we were on to him.’

‘So you think that whoever sent a killer knew that what we wrote was made up – and that it hadn’t been sent by his accomplice outside the ghetto?’

‘Yes, though I have no idea how. In any case, since he knew the note wasn’t genuine, he also knew that I had to have sent it.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Because I’m the only one who’s been investigating Adam’s murder! It could only have been me. But listen, Izzy, this also means that Rowy can’t be guilty.’

‘Why?’

‘Because while I was with him yesterday afternoon, he warned me that the Jewish Council would make me take on tenants, and I told him Bina and her family had already moved in – and that I was living in Stefa’s room. If he sent a killer, he would have told him to walk through the main room into the bedroom – that I’d be sleeping there.’

‘Unless the killer panicked and didn’t follow Rowy’s instructions. You said yourself he might not be a professional.’

‘True, but after he took down Freddi, he’d have come for me in the bedroom.’