Then came the Angel of Death and killed the Shoichet
That slaughtered the ox that drank the water
That quenched the fire that burned the stick
That beat the dog that bit the cat
That ate the goat
That Father bought for two zuzim.
One little goat, one little goat.
chapter thirty-two
The white pavement curved through mountains of highrises on either side of Mayfair Avenue as Rebecca and Nesha walked wordlessly back to the car, each lost in thought. Their arms bumped intimately while they moved, each one’s trajectory slightly overlapping the other.
She had phoned the hospital from the lobby of the apartment building and spoken to Martha. Iris’ vital signs were hopeful, but she hadn’t regained consciousness.
“So what’s the deal with the gun?” Rebecca asked, though that wasn’t what had been on her mind.
“Oh. You mean, is it just for show? Let’s say I was hoping I’d get to it before she tried out the trigger.”
Rebecca put her arm around his waist so that she could feel the gun beneath the jacket. “Do you always live this dangerously?” she asked.
He unfurled her arm like a belt and deftly pulled it through his elbow, fitting his hand over hers. “Just when I’m with you.”
His full upper lip curved into a bow and she wished she could forget everything else. “I think there’s more to Chana’s breakdown than Isabella told us,” she said.
“What difference does it make?”
“I’m not sure. But I think it might be important. If Chana was so upset about Leo dealing with Nazi loot, it’s not very likely she’d knowingly marry a Nazi. And they were in the camp together, so she knew who he was.” They approached Nesha’s rented blue Oldsmobile. “If only she would speak.”
Rebecca stopped in mid-stride. Opening her shoulder bag, she pulled out the sheaf of letters. “Maybe she will speak!”
They climbed into the back seat of the Olds. She spread the letters out on both their laps, checking the postmarks and placing them in order of date. There wasn’t much daylight left.
“These are the letters Chana wrote to Goldie in 1977. Then she came to Toronto and they didn’t need to write to each other anymore. So we don’t have anything written around the time she actually had her breakdown. Still, I’d like to read through some of them to see if she says anything that’ll help us.”
Nesha picked up one of the letters. His lips moved silently till she bumped her knee against his. “’He goes out every night and I’m alone. I can’t complain about my surroundings, he keeps bringing home the most beautiful paintings. He says friends of his have asked him to sell them, but I’ve never met any of his friends. I can’t wait till you’re here.’”
Nesha took out a sheet from another envelope. “’Maybe we couldn’t have children as punishment for what I did during the war. Children are the innocents. I often think about that boy who died because of me. Do you think God has punished me by taking away my children?’”
Nesha stared stonily outside the window as Rebecca handed him a letter dated September 25, 1977. “This was the last one written before Goldie came to Toronto. It’s longer than the others.”
A full minute went by before he took the sheet from her and began to read. ‘“It’s almost Yom Kippur. Though I don’t go to schul I must again ask forgiveness from the soul of the boy who died because of me. Also this is the time of year I think of him because he died in the camp soon after the holiday in 1943. He showed up one day at the machine near mine on the factory floor. A religious boy, pale with thick dark sideburns where his forelocks used to be. I imagined his mother cutting them off before being led to the gas chamber. Orthodox Jews were the first to die. His hands large and smooth like baby’s skin. Probably never used those hands for anything but turning pages of religious books. I saw him struggling on the machine. Those long fingers trying to fit into the mechanism and cut the metal pieces. They had to be precise. I tried to show him how but he just couldn’t. He tried, but impossible. People who didn’t reach quota didn’t survive. Beaten to death, or taken to Werk C where the yellow powder for the explosives killed them. Skin turned yellow after a few weeks. I feared for him and did work for two. Thank God my hands were fast enough from the sewing. One day we got word about Yom Kippur prayers in the next barracks. After work we ate our watery soup and crust of bread quickly before sunset so we could fast next day. Even in the camp we felt we had to fast on the Day of Atonement. Next door was filled with people, but very quiet, everybody listening to a beautiful pure voice singing Kol Nidre. I looked to see who. It was my young orthodox friend (can’t remember his name) in a spot cleared in the middle between bunks, singing from memory, everyone in a trance. The song so sad and pure, surely God must’ve heard. Even the SS guard came to listen, and like jungle animals at the waterhole, we stood together listening. And the guard’s face — I can’t explain, he looked human for the first time. Soon after, I got the job cleaning officers’ quarters so I left the factory. I saved myself without thinking about the boy. When he couldn’t do the quota they transferred him to Werk C. He worked with the yellow powder but not for long. Something went wrong, it always did, and an explosive blew up in his hands. Pieces of him everywhere, what gruesome stories they told. He wasn’t more than sixteen. One day I went to clean the SS guard’s room and there it was. The Hand, encased in silver like a relic from a saint. I knew it was his. Recognized the shape of the long fingers, the silver melted over the hand, outlining even the nails. Little glass windows framed in gold over the knuckles so you could see through. A work of art. They said the guard had found a local silversmith. I was sick in the toilet. I had to look at it every day when I went to clean.”
Nesha’s voice had become increasing lower while reading. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back on the seat. Rebecca took his hand in hers.
“We have to speak to her again,” she said softly. “Maybe if we ask her the right questions....”
Rebecca drove the Olds up Bathurst Street while Nesha slouched in the passenger seat, eyes glazed over, staring out the side window. Bathurst was lined with senior’s buildings, which often meant that old men in plaid hats held up traffic driving big cars too slowly. She manoeuvred around them in the fast-falling dusk past Lawrence, past Wilson, past Sheppard, past Finch. In twenty minutes she pulled into the parking lot of Sunnydale Terrace.
They approached the front desk. A semi-circle of people waited to speak to the pudgy blonde who had taken Rebecca up to Chana’s room the other day. Pulling Nesha by the hand, she skirted the crowd and headed for the stairs.
Nesha seemed to come awake once they were on the second floor. He strode to Chana’s room and knocked quietly, then opened it. Rebecca knew something was wrong when he turned on the light and stopped on the threshold. Chana was lying on her back, one eye open, one closed. An IV dripped into her arm and the metal sides of the bed had been raised up as a restraint. The open eye saw nothing; she was unconscious. Her mouth hung partly open, her skin a paper-thin white.
Nesha approached the bed, his eyes large with fear. “Meema Chana!” he murmured. “Meema Chana, it’s me! I’ve come back.”
Rebecca fought the urge to pull him away and picked up the chart at the foot of the bed. The attending physician, Dr. Chan, had written “Provisional Diagnosis — CVA,” cerebral-vascular accident, and had prescribed blood thinners. Blood samples had been sent out to a lab for testing but Rebecca knew by looking at her that it was serious. She put the chart down and lifted Chana’s wrist to take her pulse. The rate was high and irregular. Chances were she’d thrown off an embolus. Rebecca checked her pupils: they were fixed and dilated, a bad sign. Drawing back the covers at the bottom, she pinched her leg. No response.
She turned reluctantly to Nesha. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It looks like she’s had a stroke.”
He took her small immobile hand. “Meema Chana, I’m here. Wake up.”
Rebecca couldn’t bear it and left them alone. She stepped outside and breathed in the nursing home smell of stale urine. Down the hall a few rooms away, the frail old man she had seen last time hovered as if waiting. At once he began a quirky waddle toward her, punctuated with his cane. Curious, she met him part way.
“Do you know what happened to Mrs. Feldberg?” she asked.
“Here today, gone tomorrow,” the little wisp of a man muttered. “Weren’t you here the other day?”
“Has her husband come to visit in the last few days?”
He peered up at her through thick bifocals and fluttered a hand in the air. “He don’t come no more. That’s what happens. You come here, people forget about you. It’s no good.”
“Did she have any visitors yesterday?”
The old man leaned on his cane, nodding, a satisfied smirk on his face. “That’s what I wanted to tell someone. No visitors, no. But a workman came late last night.”
“Workman?”
“Plumber or something. Wore overalls and carried a toolbox. Saw him come out of her room.” “What time was that?”
“Couldn’t sleep last night. I’m a bad sleeper, too old you know. I got up for a glass of water and heard something outside. So I opened the door and saw him come out. Maybe midnight.”
“Isn’t that unusual, a plumber coming here at midnight?”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Did you see what he looked like? Hair colour? Age?”
“Had a cap on. Just an average fella. All I know was he was younger’ n me.” He chuckled. “Maybe a young fella of sixty.”
“This is important: do you think it could’ve been her husband?”
The man squinted at her through his thick lenses. “Now that’s an interesting question. Sorry I can’t answer it.”
“Did you tell someone downstairs?”
He waved the suggestion away. “Aw, they’re idiots. Don’t listen to a word I say.”
Rebecca excused herself and went downstairs. The blonde was still being monopolized by visiting relatives. Rebecca approached the reception desk and spotted, further back, a woman wearing a nurse’s cap busy with some papers.
“Excuse me,” Rebecca said, “I’d like some information about Mrs. Feldberg.” When the woman stared back at her without moving, she added, “Am I not speaking English? I’m a doctor and I want information on one of your patients.” Damn she was riled. If this woman didn’t watch out, Rebecca would take everything from the past three days out on her.
The middle-aged nurse rose heavily and trudged toward the desk.
“When was Mrs. Feldberg found in her present condition?”
The woman’s grey eyes observed her with barely concealed anger. “Night nurse found her going off her shift this morning. Maybe seven.”
“Did she mention anything unusual? Something that didn’t look right?” The woman tilted her head. “For instance, did it look like she’d been in any kind of a struggle?”
Her eyes grew into circles. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that in Mrs. Feldberg’s condition a stroke could’ve been caused by undue stress, a threat perhaps. Did you know that a workman went into her room at midnight? Possibly a plumber?”
“I... I don’t understand....”
“Can you check if a workman was called to fix something in Mrs. Feldberg’s room last night?”
The nurse flipped the large lined page of a book on a nearby desk. Scowling, she approached the buxom blonde and whispered something in her ear. The blonde looked over at Rebecca and disengaged herself from her entourage.
“Now what’s this about someone coming into Mrs. Feldberg’s room at night?” Her lips were tight and nervous, her eyes waiting.
“So there was no workman called last night?”
“Where are you getting your information?” asked the blonde in a too-pleasant voice.
“The small thin man on the cane two doors down from Mrs. Feldberg. He says he saw a man coming out of her room.”
The taut lines that had stiffened the blonde’s round face relaxed. She smiled. “Oh, Duncan! I should’ve known. He says he’s an insomniac but he really falls asleep and has vivid dreams that he thinks are real. You should hear some of them! Well, I think you already did.”
On her way back upstairs Rebecca asked herself why Feldberg would dress up and come late at night to do something he could easily have managed on a regular visit. If he wanted to make sure Chana didn’t tell anyone what she knew, he could’ve visited legitimately during the day and if she happened to have a stroke — well, she was fragile and no one would have been surprised. Maybe he was a perfectionist and wanted to be certain no one connected him to her deterioration. Or maybe the hefty blonde was right and the old man couldn’t tell a dream from the real thing.
When she got back to the room, Nesha was standing at the window. She approached Chana, getting close enough to search for petechiae, tiny broken blood vessels around the eyes that occurred with strangling or choking. There were none. There were no bruises visible on her upper body, no signs of a struggle. She looked at Chana’s hands. No broken nails. Nothing beneath them, like maybe a killer’s skin. Yet Rebecca had an uncomfortable feeling about this. It was too convenient. If her husband had entered her room to silence her, would she have resisted?
“What are you looking for?” Nesha asked.
“I don’t know.”
He stepped over to a cardboard box near the table. Bending over, he picked out one of the rag dolls Chana had sewn. “I thought I’d have another chance to talk to her. This is all that’s left of her,” he said.
Rebecca approached. Someone had unceremoniously dumped the dozen or so dolls into the box on the floor. She took them out and lined them up on the tabletop. A crude uneven lot fashioned from coarse grey cotton, their faces a few stitches of yarn. All but one wore slapdash striped skirts and trousers. The exception was dressed in a little black jacket with matching pants and cap. Three of the dolls’ heads were sheathed in red gauze: the uniformed one, and two prisoners. The last time she had visited, Chana had made a fuss about Rebecca picking them up. But now that she could examine the three of them closely, she wondered if they mattered at all.
“What do you suppose this means?” she said to Nesha. “These three who have red gauze covering their faces.”
He took the uniformed doll from her and turned it over in his hand. That was when she took note of the irregular grey object sewn onto the end of its arm. Last time she had seen it, she’d assumed it to be a gun. That went along with the uniform. Her father’s words echoed in her ear: “assume” makes an ass out of “u” and “me.”
“It isn’t a gun,” she said out loud.
Nesha held the tiny grey appendage away from the doll’s body. Up close she saw the fingers sewn around in wobbly grey thread.
“It’s the Hand,” she said breathlessly.
“The Hand!” he said.
“The silver hand from the camp. In the guard’s room.”
They both stared at the doll. “Creepy,” he said.
“These dolls represent something,” she said. “Only three have red faces. One officer and two prisoners, one male, one female. The officer is the SS guard in her letter. What if she was the female and the young orthodox boy was the male?”
“Why are their faces red?” he said.
“When I was here before, she called the dolls kinder. But then when I tried to hold one of these, she shouted “Nisht kinder!” You know, maybe it just means innocent. She said in her letter, children are the innocents. Maybe these three are not. Red is for blood. They’re guilty of something.”
“That makes sense for the SS and even her, considering she felt responsible for the boy’s death. But the boy, himself. She wouldn’t consider him guilty of anything.”
“There’s another thing,” she said.
“If the guard has the hand, that means the boy’s dead already.”
“So
who’s the third doll?”
“What about Vogel?” she said.
“The guy in the fish store?”
“He’s involved in Feldberg’s business. From both ends. He’s supplying fish to the club and he’s selling a painting he has no business owning. And we know they were in the camp together.” She dug the catalogue card with Vogel’s home address out of her purse. “And I know where to find him.”
Before they left, Nesha approached Chana’s bed. “You should’ve seen them when they were young. Knock-outs, both of them. Shiny brown hair, trim figures, stylish, always stylish. And full of energy. I followed them around when they came to our house that time. I was just a pisher. They were like movie stars.”
He stroked the pale downy hair, bent forward, and whispered something in her ear. He pressed his lips to her forehead, then stepped away.
chapter thirty-three
Rebecca once again got behind the wheel of Nesha’s rented Olds. Night had fallen and brought with it a brisk clear sky whose stars were invisible above the canopy of street lamps. Nesha stared out the windshield as she pulled out of the parking lot and drove down Bathurst Street to Wilson Avenue. She turned west. Murky fields ranged on both sides, the landing area for a military airport somewhere in the distance. Here some stars winked out of the high black sky.
One of the stars up there had Iris’ name. A ray of hope. Rebecca had reached the hospital again, this time from a pay phone at the nursing home. Martha said Iris had opened first one eye, then the other. The doctor was optimistic.
Past Dufferin Street an endless series of strip plazas lined Wilson Avenue. Metal signs loomed in shadow above Italian restaurants, dress shops, and fabric stores set back from cracked asphalt parking lots. She turned north at Keele Street where a ragtag of small family stores and houses had been erected with no obvious plan, before the building code separated commercial from residential and some Einstein realized it was cheaper to build queues of stores joined at the hip. An architecturally interesting old church stood on a corner, but in the company of frame houses the government had constructed after the war for soldiers returning from duty.
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 21
