Richard Zimler - The Warsaw Anagrams

I’d needed to take something of value from her. I didn’t know or care why. My belly was aching with hunger and anxiety, and that seemed far more important.

I sat back down when I heard Mrs Sawicki’s footsteps approaching and lit another cigarette. She entered in a tightly fitted long blue dress. Her high heels were black and her lipstick blood red. Her eyes were thickly shaded with dark brown mascara, so that they looked bruised. She’d become the dramatic heroine of an Erich Maria Remarque novel.

Walking to the coffee table in front of me, she straightened the Film Kurier I’d noticed so that it was flush with the others and then sat opposite me again, joining her hands together in her lap as if afraid to be too expressive; perhaps my presence was worrisome, after all. Maybe her beloved Paweł had murdered Anna – or had been witness to a tragic accident – and she was worried I’d learn the truth and bring scandal on the family.

I took off my coat because I was sweating heavily. ‘I’ll get to the point,’ I told my host. ‘The missing girl’s name is Anna Levine. I believe she might have come here. Her mother says that your son was her boyfriend.’

Mrs Sawicki forced a laugh. ‘Paweł would never take a Źydóweczka as a girlfriend.’ She pronounced Jew-girl as if spitting out dirt. I’d have liked to drag her back to the ghetto and leave her to fend for herself for a few weeks.

‘Still,’ I told her, ‘I know she came here on the twenty-fourth of January.’

She pinched a piece of lint from the hem of her dress. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘She’d needed to talk to Paweł,’ I observed. ‘She was ill, and she wanted his help.’

‘I told you, my son didn’t know any Źydóweczka named Anna.’ Noticing the curl of ash at the tip of my cigarette, Mrs Sawicki moved the crystal ashtray closer to me.

‘I’d prefer to keep our talk friendly,’ I told her. ‘Are you sure you never met Anna?’

‘Absolutely.’

I tapped the ash on to the rug. She gave me a murderous look but didn’t move. I had the feeling she could have held her hand over a candle flame to spite me.

‘I have a reliable witness who told me Anna was here,’ I challenged her; my anger was giving me a kind of reckless courage.

She stood up and walked to the window, her steps precise, barely controlling her rage. When she turned, her eyes targeted me. ‘Paweł and the girl went out a few times,’ she told me, ‘but as soon as I found out, I put a stop to it.’

‘And Anna came here on the twenty-fourth of January.’

‘How could I possibly remember the exact date? In any case, when she came to my door, I told her that Paweł was at boarding school, but the silly girl didn’t believe me. She insisted on coming in – she even had the nerve to search his room without my permission.’ Mrs Sawicki grimaced. ‘She stank up the apartment – for a week it smelled like a stables in here.’

Because we have no hot water, and we have run out of proper soap , I wanted to shout at her. Instead, I said, ‘Jews are filth.’

‘No, Mr Honec, if they were just filth,’ she replied in a lecturing voice, ‘they wouldn’t represent such a danger to us. I’m afraid they’re much more than that.’

‘Then how would you describe them?’ I asked.

‘As a subversive story that has finally come to an end.’

Her words rattled me, and I nodded my agreement to cover my unease. ‘If only you’re right,’ I told her. ‘Now, do you know where Anna went after she left here?’

‘Back to her stables,’ she replied, grinning as if she’d made another witticism.

‘Did she say if she was going to meet a friend?’ I asked.

‘She told me nothing. She was only here a minute – less than that…’

‘Did you see anything special on her hands – a ring or a bracelet?’

‘Not that I recall.’

‘Think back, if you can.’

‘What are you implying?’ she bristled. ‘You can’t possibly think she was wearing anything my son had given her! Mr Honec, this was just a minor fling for Paweł. It meant nothing.’

I stood up and handed her my photograph of Adam. ‘Have you seen this boy?’

She shook her head.

‘His name was Adam. Did Anna mention a boy with that name, by any chance?’

‘No.’

‘Did she give you anything? A letter?’

Mrs Sawicki glared at me over her nose as if I was trying her patience. I took a last puff on my cigarette and crushed it out on the windowsill. Tears welled in her eyes.

‘If you’re holding something back from me,’ I threatened, ‘then your husband will lose his job.’

‘Mr Honec, it’s clear to me that you don’t understand the Poles. We’re a proud people who have been oppressed for centuries, and we don’t like being given orders by foreigners.’ She was sitting up straight – she regarded herself as heroic and was posing for later recall.

‘Who’s giving orders?’ I asked in an amused voice. ‘I’m just asking questions.’

‘Questions can be orders under certain circumstances.’

‘You’re a clever lady, Mrs Sawicki.’

‘You better believe it!’ she exclaimed, as if she were giving me a warning.

‘But I don’t need to be clever,’ I told her. ‘Because I make up the rules as I go.’ I knocked my dead cigarette on to the parquet with the back of my hand.

The tendons on her neck stood out threateningly. ‘You are, I suppose, aware you have no manners?’ she demanded in an aristocratic voice.

‘I’m only rude when my patience is being tested,’ I retorted.

‘The Jewish slut gave me a photograph for my son,’ she admitted. ‘She’d written something on the back, but I burned it.’

‘What did she write?’

‘I don’t read Paweł’s correspondence!’ she snarled.

It was my turn to laugh.

‘I don’t appreciate being ridiculed by old Austrians!’

‘Then who do you enjoy being ridiculed by?’ I asked with a provocative smile.

‘Who or what I enjoy is not your concern.’

‘That’s true – nothing about you concerns me,’ I shot back with deadly contempt, ‘except what you know of Anna Levine.’

‘I didn’t read what she wrote!’ she shouted.

‘Mrs Sawicki,’ I said more gently, ‘if we banter back and forth, we’ll just keep offending each other. Just tell me what Anna wrote to Paweł.’

She straightened the shoulders of her dress, considering her options. At length, she said, ‘She wrote that she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t called. She had important news for him. She begged him to call her or at least send her his new address.’

‘Which he never did, because you never told your son that Anna had come here.’

‘Of course, not. Why would I help her trap my son?’

‘So you were worried he really was in love with her,’ I observed.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Do you really think a fifteen-year-old knows what love is?’

‘Do you?’ I asked pointedly.

‘Mr Honec, you can be very annoying.’

‘In any case, it’s curious that Anna disappeared just after visiting you,’ I told her.

‘I know nothing about what happened to her after she left here.’

‘Write down Paweł’s new address for me.’

She went to the secretary in the foyer, took out a sheet of paper and scribbled quickly. Paweł’s boarding school had an address in Zurich. Folding the paper in four, I put it in my pocket, and on a hunch, I said, ‘Did you think you’d fool me so easily?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Paweł is still here in Warsaw, isn’t he?’

‘Wait here.’ She disappeared through the door at the side of the sitting room and returned with an envelope bearing a Zurich postmark. Taking out the letter, which was written on thin blue paper, she handed it to me. ‘If you look at the date and signature, you’ll see Paweł wrote it two months ago.’