Richard Zimler - The Warsaw Anagrams

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.