Richard Zimler - The Warsaw Anagrams

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.