Richard Zimler - The Warsaw Anagrams

I watched flames rising from the paper as if participating in a ritual linking the three of us into a conspiracy.

‘There’s a problem,’ I told Mikael. ‘The person responsible for identifying Adam and Anna to a German or Pole outside the ghetto may not be Rowy. It could be Ziv.’

‘Ziv?’ he scoffed. ‘No, that’s impossible. He’s so… so inoffensive. And Ewa adores him. They’re like brother and sister.’

‘Ziv volunteered to help Rowy identify children for his chorus. And he’s clever enough to have planned the murders. In fact, he once told me he can think a dozen moves ahead.’

‘But what could he possibly gain from killing Jewish children?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Imagine the note you received is from Ziv, not Rowy,’ Izzy suggested to Mikael. ‘Is there something he wouldn’t want you to tell us – or the police?’

He gazed off for a time, considering possibilities, then shook his head. ‘I can’t think of anything.’

Izzy and I questioned Mikael at length about Ziv, but nothing he told us seemed incriminating until he mentioned that when the young man had gone to him for a medical exam he had confessed that his mother was still alive and living in Łódź.

‘So he’s not an orphan?’ I asked, stupefied.

‘No, Ziv told me that he sends money to his mother every month. He made me swear not to tell anyone, because she disobeyed the Germans and never moved into the ghetto. She’s in hiding in Christian Łódź, with a family she’s paying, and when I talked to him about her, he said she was running out of money. The situation was getting desperate.’

‘When was this?’ Izzy asked.

‘Some time in early January. I’d have to check my files to know for sure – to see when he came for his medical exam.’

‘How does he get the money to her?’ I questioned.

Mikael shrugged. ‘Is that important?’

When I looked to Izzy, he told Mikael just what I was thinking. ‘He’d need the help of a Pole or German outside the ghetto to make sure the money reached her!’

We instructed Mikael to return to his office and said we would be in touch with him later that day. He left the workshop by the back exit.

Ewa and Ziv were both working when we stepped inside in the bakery. We took Ewa out to the courtyard. She swore that she’d never lent Stefa’s key to anyone, which meant that Ziv took it from her handbag and made a copy.

‘Stay here,’ I told her.

‘But why?’

‘I don’t want to risk you getting hurt.’

We went back inside. Ziv was kneading dough on a counter, a paper bag on his head, white with flour from head to toe. I asked him to come into his bedroom with us.

‘What is it you want, Dr Cohen?’ he asked, backing up, fearful, undoubtedly sensing that he might have to dash past me to make his escape.

‘Indulge me,’ I told him, enjoying my power over him. ‘I need to ask you something.’

Tears flooded his eyes. ‘What… what have I done?’ he stammered.

‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ I answered.

By now, all the bakery workers except Ewa had gathered around us. Ziv still didn’t move, but he glanced away for a moment, which was enough time for a skilled chess player like him to plan a strategy.

‘Get into your room!’ I told him harshly, determined to interrupt his thinking.

Taking the paper bag from his head, the boy turned and shuffled ahead of Izzy and me. Sacks of flour lined the back wall of the storeroom he lived in, and the wooden shelves were stacked with tins and jars. I shut the door behind us and turned the bolt to lock it.

Ziv’s cot was topped by a bright yellow blanket. His alabaster chessboard rested on top of his pillow. A photo of a dashing young man in a tuxedo was tacked to the left wall, and it was signed in blue ink by the chess champion Emmanuel Lasker. Below it was an old wooden chest. I started looking there.

‘What are you searching for?’ Ziv asked in a thin, apprehensive voice.

I made no reply. I began looking through his underwear.

‘If you tell me,’ he continued, ‘I’ll give it to you. Do you want the money I’ve saved up? I’ll give you everything I have.’

I continued hunting for evidence, tossing the clothing I’d already examined to the floor.

‘I… I think I understand now,’ the boy told me, but in so unsteady a voice that I looked at him. He sat down on the edge of his bed, gently, as if afraid to make any noise. ‘God, what an idiot I’ve been, Dr Cohen.’

That comment surprised me. Fixing my gaze, he said, ‘I should have known. I’ve played this all wrong.’

‘What should you have known?’

‘What you’re looking for is behind there,’ he said gloomily, pointing to his photograph of Lasker.

Ziv was crying again – and silently. He was an excellent actor, but I already knew that.

One of the bakery workers must have summoned Ewa. She began pounding at the door and yelling my name.

‘Go away!’ I shouted back. Turning to Izzy, I said, ‘Hold the gun on him.’

Taped to the back of the photograph was a white envelope. I ripped it away. Out of it spilled a slender gold chain holding a small enamel medallion of the Virgin Mary.

I would have expected a surge of righteousness or rage on finding the man who had betrayed Adam; instead, holding Georg’s pendant gave me a sense of having been moved around Warsaw by a will that was not my own.

I leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath. My mouth was metallic tasting, as if I’d swallowed rust.

Ewa was still banging at the door and calling out to me. The noise and heat pressed down on me. I hated Ziv for making me kill him.

‘It’s not mine, I swear,’ the young man told me, shaking his hands wildly. ‘You have to believe me!’

‘I know whose it is!’ I hollered. ‘It belongs to a boy named Georg – a street juggler. You remember him, I’m sure.’

‘I don’t,’ he replied, moaning. ‘I discovered the pendant in my room two days ago.’

‘Who left it here?’ Izzy demanded.

Ziv faced him and joined his hands together. ‘I don’t know. I asked everyone in the bakery about the pendant, but no one had lost it. You can ask them. Ask Ewa! I decided to keep it until someone claimed it.’

‘Is that the best story you can come up with?’ Izzy demanded.

‘What did you get in return for Adam?’ I asked.

Ziv looked helplessly between me and Izzy. Finding no sympathy in our faces, he gazed down and squeezed his head between his hands as if to hold his thoughts inside. His skilful performance only enraged me further.

‘What did you get for my nephew?’ I demanded again.

‘I didn’t hurt Adam! Oh God, I’d never have hurt him! Stefa loved him more than anything.’

‘Give me the gun,’ I told Izzy. He handed it to me. I pointed it at Ziv’s head. ‘Tell me the truth!’ I ordered.

‘Let me think!’ the young man pleaded. ‘Dr Cohen, now that I know I’ve been set up, I can figure this out. I’m good at figuring things out. You know I am!’

I put the barrel of the gun up to his temple. ‘This is no game, you little bastard! Who have you been working with outside the ghetto?’

‘I don’t know anyone outside the ghetto,’ he insisted, and he reached for my arm to implore me, but I batted it away.

A key turned in the door. Ewa opened it and faced me. ‘If you hurt Ziv, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’

‘I have no rest of my life,’ I replied.

‘Still, you should be pointing that gun at me, not him.’

‘After Papa and I moved into the ghetto, we had difficulties getting insulin for Helena,’ Ewa told me and Izzy. Seated next to Ziv, she was rubbing his hand to calm him – and to give herself the strength to tell me what she knew. Her lips were trembling, and she couldn’t look at me. She kept gazing off; she would have preferred to be anywhere but where she was.