Richard Zimler - The Warsaw Anagrams

‘You have my word. Do you know if Dr Tengmann keeps records of his abortions?’

‘If he does, I don’t know about them – or where they’d be.’

Back in the sitting room, Anka wrote me out the name of the dead girl’s father – Hajman Szwebel – and his address. He lived on Solna Street, just two blocks from where Adam and Anna had been tossed in the barbed wire.

I waited a half-hour before I could get in to see Mikael in his office. After shaking my hand warmly, he held the serum up to the light. ‘Here it is!’ he enthused.

Our hopes resided in an amber vial.

‘I’ll go with you now to administer it,’ he told me.

‘But what about your other patients?’

‘They’ll have to wait – typhus is serious business.’

‘Look, Mikael, I’ll never be able to repay you,’ I replied, ‘but at least I can give you this…’ I handed him my envelope of money, making sure that Mrs Sawicki’s printed name was facing him.

Spotting the embossed lettering, he grinned. ‘I see you’re still playing at detective.’

‘I’m not playing at anything!’ I replied gruffly, more aggressively than I’d intended, probably because I’d been secretly hoping that the name Sawicki – and the implication that I’d spoken to her – would disquiet him.

‘I’m sorry – that came out wrong,’ he told me. ‘Forgive me, Erik. It was a stupid thing to say. It’s just that I’m worried about you.’

‘I’ll be fine. The worst has already happened. But listen, you might want to count the money.’

‘There’s no need – I trust you.’ He took his coat down from its hook by the door, tucking the envelope and serum away in an inside pocket. ‘So were you able to speak to Paweł?’ he asked.

‘No. Mrs Sawicki told me he was in Switzerland – at boarding school.’

‘I see.’ Putting his coat down on his desk, he tucked his glasses into their case and rubbed his eyes. ‘Do you understand now why I couldn’t answer all your questions? And why I lied about what was wrong with Anna? You gave me no choice.’

‘Yes, I can see that now. But you no longer have any reason to hide the truth. So I need to know if Anna was certain Paweł was the father.’

He started. ‘Do you have reason to believe he wasn’t?’

‘One of Anna’s friends told me she had her doubts.’

‘All she told me was she was in love with Paweł and that her parents didn’t approve of their relationship. That’s all I know. I help the girls the only way I can. To tell you the truth, I don’t want to know more about their lives. I just can’t take it.’

We took a rickshaw to Stefa’s flat. Mikael gazed away, troubled. Guessing what was on his mind, aware now of how fate had trapped him, I patted his leg and said, ‘Given our circumstances, what you do is a good thing.’

‘You think so? I’ll be honest, Erik. I have my doubts at times, but when the girls plead with me, how can I refuse? And you know what they fear most? That their baby will die of starvation inside their womb. How’s that for something to keep you awake at nights?’ He surveyed the massive, swirling crowds on both sides of the street as if looking for strength. ‘I just want Ewa and Helena to be able to get out of this place alive,’ he added. ‘That’s the only reason I keep going.’

Kids in little more than rags began running after us, shouting for money. Mikael tossed coins to the pavement. The boys and girls, hollering, swarmed upon them.

For the first time, I saw how the youngest among us would lead us into the grave. That was now the meaning of Adam and Anna’s death.

Mikael and I sat in glum silence. The low-lying winter sun was blocked by the tenement roofs, leaving the streets in deep, penetrating shadow. I couldn’t stop shivering.

Finally, I asked, ‘So Anna never confirmed to you that Paweł was the father?’

‘No, I assumed it.’

‘Did she come right out and ask you for an abortion?’

‘Yes. And I agreed to help her, but on the evening of her procedure, she didn’t show up.’ I started to ask a question, but he raised his hand. ‘I have no idea why not. I never heard from her again.’ He shrugged. ‘And then you appeared, telling me she was dead. That’s all I know.’

‘Was her abortion scheduled for the twenty-fourth of January?’

‘It’s hard to recall, though that sounds about right. But how did you know?’

‘That’s the day she went missing.’

The icy wind pushed against our faces. I lifted my muffler over my mouth, so the rest of our brief conversation seems to me now to be textured by thick, dark wool.

‘Have all the girls recovered well from their procedures?’ I questioned, wanting to test Mikael’s honesty.

‘What do you mean?’

‘No complications, infections…?’

He glared at me. ‘All the girls have left my office healthy – tired and upset, but healthy. What happens to them after that, I can’t control. Or do you think I can?’

Ewa was waiting for Mikael and me in Stefa’s apartment, sitting on my bed, her arm over Helena’s shoulder, her eyes red and puffy.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked, rushing to her.

‘It’s Stefa,’ Ewa moaned, and she pointed to the window. ‘She’s in the courtyard, but…’

Looking down, I saw a woman’s body covered from the waist up by a newspaper and two men standing nearby – our building supervisor, Professor Engal, and a Jewish policeman. The policeman held Stefa’s Moroccan slippers, one in each hand.

I clambered down the stairs. Two bricks had been placed atop the newspaper to keep it from blowing away. Kneeling, I tossed them aside.

Ewa told me later that on seeing Stefa’s face I immediately let out a cry for Ernst – my younger brother and her father. I have only the most vague recollection of that.

Silver coins covered her eyes. That’s what I remember clearly.

I began shaking. The Jewish policeman helped me to my feet and told me my niece had jumped.

‘No, no, no – she was too weak to do that,’ I insisted.

He pointed to the window of my bedroom. ‘She sat on the ledge and pushed off.’

Turning round, I noticed Ziv sitting in the corner of the courtyard, rocking back and forth like a lost child. I called to him, but he didn’t answer.

I sat with Stefa for a time, holding her hand, whispering to her about when I’d first seen her as a baby. While clinging to the soft, searching sound of my voice, I realized why she had me keep Adam’s medical history and the portraits she’d drawn of him.

I took the złoty coins off her eyes; I didn’t believe in ghostly ferryboats across mythological rivers. Professor Engal told me they were Ziv’s, so I tossed the money by his feet, hoping to get his attention, but he didn’t stir.

While caressing Stefa’s hair, I apologized to her again for not protecting Adam, speaking to her in Yiddish and Polish, because each language had its own nuances of guilt and remorse, and ways of asking for what could never now be given to me, and I wanted her to hear them all. When I trudged back upstairs to try to figure out how she’d managed to end her own life, I found Mikael seated on my bed. He stood up to embrace me, telling me how sorry he was. He said that Ewa had taken Helena home.

On handing me back my thousand złoty, he said, ‘Stefa had to do it now – she didn’t want to waste the serum. I’ve seen that sort of sacrifice before. I should have warned you. I apologize for being thoughtless.’

I understood then why my niece had been so angry with Izzy and me for finding anti-typhus serum. Maybe she hadn’t been ready to meet Death in a Warsaw courtyard, but she knew she couldn’t wait.