“Yes. A week or two later he returned and delivered the figurine in an elaborately carved wooden box, along with a large quantity of paperwork attesting to its validity. He handed the box to Marco and said, ‘I will leave this with you and trust that you will treat it with respect and inform me of your decision.’ Then he left.”
“What were the results of your husband’s research? Was the figurine authentic?”
“Yes, Marco concluded so, after a quick trip to Seattle with one of his assistants to consult with two experts on jade figurines of the late nineteenth century. But such trips are often tiring, you know, even when one makes a point of taking some R&R at the family cabin on Bainbridge Island––or even an invigorating late evening sail in the boat Grandpapa Fellini built. Nonetheless, Marcus said both of the antiquities dealers he consulted agreed on the validation that the figurine was authentic, so Marcus paid for it and that was that.”
“How did he pay for the figurine?”
“How? By cashier’s check mailed to Bernardem Collections in Zürich, of course.”
“Yet you still seem to have doubts about the figurine’s provenance. I do not understand why you question its authenticity.”
“Because I’m not sure of the expertise of the dealers he consulted. You see, both were ‘found’ by Iona Duncan, my husband’s ‘traveling companion.’
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a terrible headache. I need to do some yoga and see if I can chase it away, then I’ll rest in my bedroom.” The widow marched out of the room, headed towards her yoga studio.
Yoko had noted the quotation marks in Sophia Fellini’s dismissive statements about Iona. Sophia, she thought, you’re trying too hard. That’s enough to give anyone a headache. I doubt the yoga will help.
14
Is there anything more poignant than a mother giving her newly born daughter away, in the hope that her baby will survive? Luludji Krietzman knew she would never see little Luminitsa again. At least she still had her beloved Hadji. For awhile, anyway.
She soaked the cloth in water, wrung it out and applied it to Hadji’s forehead. His fever had increased so much over the last three days. Hadji had been diagnosed with typhus upon their arrival at Birkenau and confined to the sanitary barracks. Luludji and the other healthy women, men, and older children trudged off to their work details. Some of the younger children, especially any newly arrived twins and some of the women, including Luludji, were tasked to assist in Dr. Mengele’s research infirmary. Luludji was allowed to spend her evenings nursing Hadji, knowing full well that she too could contact the disease, if she was not careful. She knew it was spread by contact with lice, particularly the feces of lice.
Over the last month, guards had refused to give Hadji any medicine or food, and he continued to waste away, losing strength. “He’s dying. We don’t feed the dying,” they had said. “Be grateful we do not shoot him.”
And now, this unending fever. To her dismay, Dr. Mengele had refused to provide any sulfa for Hadji, and Luludji hadn’t been able to steal any either. But there had been no shortage of food for her beloved. Healthy Romani who ate at the mess hall routinely secreted part of their daily allotment of swill to pass along to Hadji and others in the sanitary barracks.
To no avail. Hadji had been unable to take much nourishment, although he tried. The food simply would not stay down, and he continued to decline. The last week, he’d been able to hold only a little water in his stomach, and that for only an hour or so.
He was so emaciated and weak now, his brow so hot it boiled away the dampness from Luludji’s cloth almost instantly.
“Is typhus, Luludjiyo,” he said. “So many of us…” He winced as he licked the blisters on his lips. “So many dead….”
She bent and kissed his eyes. “Sleep now, my darling. You must rest. You will be better in the morning. You will see.” She pulled the threadbare woolen blanket up to his neck. “Just rest, dear Hadji. Sleep, and dream of Luminitsa.” Her man closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
He will survive, Luludji told herself. He must. We are all that’s left of our family. There’s only me and Hadji and Luminitsa left. Praise God, Luminitsa is with the Domanoffs!
The Domanoffs have been free for a month now, she thought. They weren’t on the trucks from Majdanek that came to Birkenau the day after she and Hadji arrived. Those who had arrived on those trucks that day had told her the good news: Andre and Mishka had escaped Majdanek during the night of the same day that Luludji and Hadji had been hauled off to Auschwitz-Birkenau. A total of six Romani had escaped, they told her. “The guards weren’t even watching the gate,” one of them had said. “And six Gypsies were able to sneak out.”
“With my Luminitsa?” she asked.
“Yes. Your Luminitsa was with them.”
Such joy had filled Luludji. Such hope, hearing that news. Luminitsa was free! She was alive! God had answered her prayers.
Luludji bowed her head to Hadji’s, and again gave thanks to the Virgin. “And please, Holy Mother, spare Hadji from this plague. Allow him to live. Make him strong so he can lead us to our freedom and to our daughter.”
Early the next morning, Hadji’s forehead finally was cool when she knelt to kiss him. His eyes were closed, his body relaxed, at peace. It took Luludji a few moments to realize that Hadji had died.
“No!” she cried, beating her hands on the floor. “Not Hadji. Oh my darling Hadji, don’t leave me!”
Comforting Romani hands sought Luludji, held her tight as the guards entered the barracks. The guards tied rags around Hadji’s ankles and feet and carried his body out the door and onto the cart already half loaded and headed for the pit, a 100-foot long, 10-foot wide, 12-foot deep trench that would contain the twenty-seven Gypsies who had died that night. Their bodies would be doused with gasoline and burned at mid-day, then covered with a thin layer of lime in preparation for the next night’s harvest.
After breakfast on that sorrowful late June morning in 1944, Luludji took comfort from the crystal ball she’d secreted in a pocket of her infirmary tunic. She knew not why she had it with her, but knew that she would need it. She had felt little comfort from her fellow Romani after Hadji’s death, only despair, until she had picked up her crystal ball. Now, as she walked with the procession of women and children towards Mengele’s infirmary, she felt the coolness of the crystal turn to a faint warmth, which helped her center her soul as she wondered what fresh atrocities Onkle Mengele would unveil on her first day as a widow. Another experiment on twins? The doctor was fascinated by twins. Such wonderful subjects: one body to “treat,” the other to serve as an untreated control. He could induce an illness in one, or remove the spleen from one, or dye one set of eyes a different color—then dissect both twins, to see how they differed in death—Mengele’s version of the scientific method.
Whatever the Doctor had planned, Luludji knew she had to thwart him. Although Josef Mengele claimed to be both a good doctor and a careful researcher, he was neither; his incompetence as a doctor was exceeded only by his delusions as a scientist. But he was an accomplished butcher and a good Nazi who had found a satisfyingly sadistic niche for his outsized ego.
Luludji could only fantasize about an appropriate end for the doctor who had denied her Hadji the medication that would have kept him alive. She shuddered as she recalled seeing two sets of twins arrive in yesterday’s shipment from concentration camps in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: pre-adolescent dark-haired boys. She knew that Dr. Mengele would be too captivated by fresh Gypsy twins to remember his Hippocratic oath to “Do no harm.”
What horrors would der weisse Engel perform on this double set of Romani twins? Sew them together to produce the twins called Siamese, like he had done with little Marta and Lina? Those four-year-olds had lasted three days in the sanitation barracks after Mengele had joined their bodies, back-to-back. Their wounds had become infected and suppurating and their screams pierced the night—until Luludji finally had been
able to smuggle morphine to the girls’ mother, so she could end Marta and Lina’s misery. When informed of the death of the twins, the doctor had performed the autopsies himself, not seeming to be affected at all by their deaths and that fact that his experiment had failed. He saw no reason to test for the presence of narcotics or the specific cause of their death. He simply split the girls apart, opened them up and weighed and dissected their internal organs and carefully charted the variations of tissue necrosis in the two bodies. Then sent their remains and trays of their chopped-up organs to the crematorium.
Shaking off the memory, Luludji Krietzman entered the infirmary, tightly clasping the crystal ball in her pocket.
“Guten tag,” Dr. Mengele said. “How is your husband this morning, Frau Krietzman? Better, I hope.”
Luludji couldn’t speak, taken aback Mengele’s outward concern. Until she remembered his unwillingness to provide medication for her husband, despite her repeated requests. Mengele’s concern for anyone’s welfare was a sham, as always. All he cared about was twins, and then only until he had completed whatever experiments he had in mind. When once again, the bodies of the twins reverted to trash to be disposed of with minimum fuss.
“Danka,” she said, forcing herself to not yield to the hate she felt and the sorrow that nearly overwhelmed her. She would not give Mengele the satisfaction of seeing her grief.
“It is kind of you to ask, Herr Doktor,” she lied. “My Hadji passed this morning. He is now in the embrace of Jesus.” She looked out the window toward the pit. At least his soul is, she thought.
Mengele appeared distressed. “My most sincere condolences, Frau Krietzman. I am so sorry to hear of his passing. I wish I had been able to provide some medication to help him, but as you know, what little we have must be reserved for patients undergoing therapy, and for our brave Wermacht boys who are evacuated here from the eastern front, of course.
“And how are you feeling, Frau Krietzman? No signs of the typhus, I trust?”
Ah, Luludji thought. So that is the source of his concern: that I might not be fit to assist him today. She shook her head, looking at the floor, then at the doctor. Her face, but not her heart, was devoid of emotion.
“I have kept myself clean and I remain healthy, Herr Doktor. It will be good for me to work today, to keep helping. Who will we be treating this morning and what do you wish me to do?”
Der weisse Engel’s face glowed with pleasure. “A new set of twins from Lety by Pisek, and another pair from Hodonin. Boys, all four of them. Half of each pair has typhus, not as advanced as your husband’s, thankfully. The other twin in each pair is, as yet, uninfected. I shall transfuse from the healthy twin to the sick and keep all four of the boys alive.”
“Then I will make them ready, Herr Doktor. I assume you will be wanting catheters in their jugular veins?” Luludji knew the doctor had little interest in curing the sick twins. Rather than transfusing from the healthy twin to the sick one, she knew he would do the opposite, to see which twin would succumb first. She had witnessed this perverse game of chance too many times already, and she’d only been working with Mengele for a month.
Luludji would not let that happen again. She also knew that, though she lacked his formal medical training, she was much more skilled than the “White Angel” at locating jugular veins and inserting catheters properly. Mengele, careless and impatient by nature, would be as likely to pierce their carotid arteries as their jugular veins and the boys would bleed to death in minutes.
“That is correct, Frau Krietzman. Gather the supplies needed and prepare the boys, and I will join you shortly to draw their blood. The boys are in surgery suites D and E.”
“Immediately, Herr Doktor.”
Luludji gave a slight bow and opened the door to the surgical wing of the infirmary. She would have to work quickly but she knew exactly what she needed to do, what she would do to save these Romani children. She rubbed her crystal ball as she walked quickly down the corridor to the dispensary.
15
In the spacious office on the second floor of the Fellini brownstone, Iona Duncan and Jessica Ware, Marco Fellini’s assistants, waited for the police investigators to question them again.
Iona sniffed, swiping at the tears that were ruining her makeup. “Sophia’s no pushover, she surely won’t let the police bully her.” Her damp fingers twisted a strand of her long blonde hair.
“Get a grip. No one’s going to push around Madame High Society,” Jessica said, irritated that her voice was shaky.
“I can’t concentrate on anything. I want to go home. It’s bad enough we have to come in on a Sunday morning. The benefit last night ran so late, I’m exhausted.”
“So what’s new? We’ve always been overworked, always will be….”
Except it’s not the same now, Jessica realized. Marco was dead and nothing would ever be the same.
For years, their routines were predictable. She and Iona—Marco always had two assistants––attended all his business and charity functions, then were expected to come in early the next morning to compare notes: which clients were interested in which pieces of art, which artist was the current darling of the jet set, which potential client was building a second or third home—or in the middle of a messy divorce and needing to sell some art speedily. Fruitful snippets of gossip that often paid off, big time.
Mid-week, they’d usually have a day off. In the summer and over most holidays, the auction houses and galleries were shut or on a short schedule. During dog-day Augusts, they were closed entirely because that’s when everyone had plenty of time for playing in the Hamptons, more wheeling and dealing artfully disguised as R&R.
Marco Fellini had brilliantly replaced golf with the far more exclusive sport of archery. Except for his fear of horses, water polo also would have been on the list of skills needed to work for Marco.
Jessica stared at Iona. Iona’s tear-filled eyes told her that she had been thinking along the same lines: drastic changes were coming.
“We just have to wait a little longer for the police,” Jessica said, as soothingly as she could. “Remember? They said they needed to see us one more time after talking to Sophia. Then we can go home…. Wait, what about that auction at Gump’s in two weeks? Did you finish our input for their catalogue?”
“Already emailed it to the printer. Everything else on my desk needs Marco’s approval…Oh…” Iona’s face crumpled.
“Here,” Jessica said. She tossed a box of tissues at her partner, not even trying to mask her irritation. “Don’t worry. Sophia will keep everything moving along. She always does.”
“I don’t understand why the police need to see us again. How many times do we have to go over and over the same questions?”
“Until they think they’ve got all the right answers,” Jessica said.
Iona mopped her face and straightened her shoulders, tears replaced by hiccups.
“What do you think happened?” she said.
“How do I know? It probably was an accident, like Sophia says. Or maybe he just got some pay-back from someone he told off once too often. You know how Marco was. There were two ways to do something, his way and the highway, if you didn’t agree. You know how rigid he could be.”
Iona grabbed another handful of tissues as her tears started again.
“That’s just not true, Jessica. Marco only wanted to help people. You didn’t know him. Look at all he did for us, the archery lessons, the therapy at the eye doctor.”
“Sure, and don’t forget our weekends of R&R on Bainbridge Island or Squaw Valley after whirlwind trips to Chicago and San Francisco.”
Iona’s mouth hung open as she stared at Jessica. “‘Our’ weekends?”
“Oh, don’t be such an innocent. Marco took me on a few of those trips, too,” Jessica said.
“He did? I never…. But…?”
“Relax dear, it was a couple of years back, a short fling that didn’t last long. Before you were hired. Look, you’re not
the only one who’s tense right now, I’m as jittery as Jell-O. But you need to face facts. Marco sent us to the eye doc for one reason only, to improve our aim at archery. That was the reason for the archery lessons, too. He wanted some good PR for himself. That was the driving force behind everything he did that looked like charity. Public relations, it all boiled down to PR. The optometric vision therapy for the kids at PS 41. The archery lessons for the police. Everything. It was all PR.”
“You’re so cynical. You, and Sophia too.”
Jessica tried not to smile. Finally, she’d gotten Iona mad enough to dry up those silly tears.
Iona continued to sputter. “I’ll bet Sophia’s just been blowing smoke, saying it could be an accident. Marco told me that Sophia said she’d give him a divorce over her dead body.”
“Iona, Marco’s the one who’s dead. Sophia’s alive.”
“That’s what I mean. What if Marco said he had to have a divorce? What if Sophia lost it?”
“Sophia never ‘loses it,’ Iona. She’s into yoga, and you know that she hasn’t been up to the archery run for the longest time.”
“But still knows how to use a bow and arrow, I’ll bet––and she’s strong from all that yoga.”
Jessica could see that Iona wasn’t going to give up her suspicions about Sophia. “She does have quite a temper under that sophisticated veneer,” Jessica said, choosing her words carefully. “Did you talk to the police about this?”
“Not yet. I just thought of it. But you bet I will. When are they coming? What’s taking them so long?”
“Relax, dear. Have a cup of tea. It’s herbal. Chamomile with lemon balm. Great for the nerves.”
16
From containers on the open shelves of the dispensary, Luludji Krietzman selected fresh rubber gloves, four transfusion bottles, two catheters, a roll of white tape, lengths of sterile rubber tubing, and four in-line valves. Then she moved over to the cabinet containing the infirmary’s supply of anesthetics and antibiotics. She removed a small bottle of rubbing alcohol and a slightly smaller bottle of a sulfonamide liquid and one syringe. The syringe and the two bottles went into the left-hand pocket of her smock. The other items she placed in a shallow white metal pan. Then hurried to Suites D and E.
Eye Wit Page 6
