by B C Schiller
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Egon agreed, and I heard the men stomping up the steps again. Then there were loud bangs outside. Later I realised this was the sound of the men throwing all my father’s books, his medical equipment and papers out of the window and onto the street.
A short time later I heard the car starting, and they drove off. I stayed behind with the ghost-like silence towering over me like a dark wall. Much later I crawled out from under the coals and wrapped Mama’s coat tightly around me. I still didn’t dare go upstairs but sat down on the rough cellar floor, frozen.
When I looked out of the window again, I saw the heaps of books and all our other things, sodden by the rain, soon to disappear to a dump somewhere.
Then I saw Mister George, my teddy bear, lying out in the dirt. Without thinking I ran up the stairs, past the startled caretaker, out into the street and grabbed hold of him shortly before he was swept into the gully by the rain.
‘There you are, my little one,’ I said, pressing the sodden, dirty bear to my chest.
‘Come back immediately,’ the caretaker hissed. ‘Nobody must see you!’
The woman grabbed my arm, pulled me into the hall and pushed me towards the cellar steps.
‘Don’t you dare come out again,’ she whispered, threatening me with a raised forefinger. ‘You’ll get me into serious trouble.’
‘I’ll never do it again. Promise.’
When I was back by the coal heap, I stroked Mister George’s wet fur, just like my mama stroked my hair that last time. I wanted to push the teddy into one of my coat pockets, but he was too big.
‘I can’t leave you out here,’ I said to the bear. His button eyes stared back at me.
During the night, by the dim glow of the street lamp shining through the window, I crept through the other cellar rooms and eventually found some useful scraps of material. All I needed now was a needle and thread, but where to find it? I sneaked upstairs and scratched at the caretaker’s door like a cat.
‘You again?’ she whispered after she’d pulled the door ajar. ‘What do you want?’ Anxiously she looked around the hall. ‘You can’t stay here.’
‘I don’t want to. I only need a needle and some thread,’ I said and raised my hands imploringly. ‘Please.’
‘What for?’ The caretaker shook her head and considered it for a second. ‘OK, but then you have to disappear downstairs again.’
A short time later she opened the door and gave me what I’d asked for.
‘There you are. Tomorrow I’ll bring you something to eat. To the cupboard under the stairs where nobody can see it. That is all I can do for you.’
‘It’s more than enough,’ I whispered and wanted to take her hand to thank her, but she hastily pulled it back and slammed the door shut.
Down in my cellar I crept on top of the coal heap under the narrow window leading out to the street. In the light of the street lamp I began to sew a pocket for Mister George into the lining of the coat, using the scraps of material I’d found. It took me the whole night, but by the time it was getting light again, it was finished. My teddy’s button eyes were shining when I stuffed him into the pocket. Now at least he had a home.
I was exhausted, so I hid behind a wooden crate, wrapped the coat tightly around me and fell asleep.
I was woken by something softly touching me. I startled. Was it a rat? But then I saw the dirty face of a boy, somewhat younger than me, maybe eight years old.
‘I saw you yesterday in the street. I followed you,’ he stammered.
‘What do you want?’ I asked him, my heart in my throat.
‘You saved that teddy bear. Where is it?’ the boy asked as he looked around.
‘I’ve made him a home,’ I said and opened my coat. Mister George’s head was sticking out of his pocket. His eyes shone in the dim light.
‘What a lovely home,’ the boy said, sounding like an adult. He turned and clambered over the coal heap, and I heard his quick steps running up the cellar stairs.
‘What’s your name?’ I called after him in hushed tones.
‘Aaron,’ the boy said. ‘See you again.’
‘See you again.’ The words rang through my head when I was alone again in my hideaway. Would Aaron report me to the police? When all was quiet, I crept upstairs and hid in the small cupboard under the stairs. The caretaker had kept her word, and I found a crust of hard bread and a mug of milk. I lapped some of the milk like a cat and then dunked the bread in to soften it, but I couldn’t stay up there for too long, because the other tenants would soon be back from work, and among them were a few hardcore Nazis who would love to report a stray Jew.
The rest of the day I sat behind my coal heap, feeling very sad. How I missed my parents. In those dark hours I imagined being all alone in the world, dying a lonely death and being forgotten forever.
‘Hello, I’m back.’ Aaron’s face popped up, startling me.
‘I didn’t hear you coming,’ I whispered.
‘I can sneak like a Red Indian,’ Aaron declared proudly.
‘You have to go. It’s not safe here,’ I said, looking over the coal heap towards the steps.
‘I know, but there’s something I’d like you to look after for me.’ Aaron opened his hand and showed me a piece of silver jewellery.
‘It’s a pendant,’ I said and looked at the boy. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘From my mother. I’ve told her about you. She thinks you should hide it until these bad times are over, so we don’t get forgotten.’
‘What’s so special about it?’ I asked.
‘It’s not your usual piece of jewellery. It’s a locket. You can look inside.’ Aaron opened the ornament. Inside was a tiny photo of his family: grandparents, father, mother and children. Aaron was among them.
‘Why are you giving it to me? What am I supposed to do with it?’ I asked in surprise.
‘The locket was blessed by our chief rabbi, Israel Taglicht. No bad people must ever get hold of it. You have to keep it safe for our family, so we don’t get forgotten. Put it into one of the pockets inside your coat. Like you’ve done with your teddy bear.’
‘I’ll have to sew a pocket for it first,’ I said. It was true what Aaron said. If they rounded him up with his family, the locket would be the only evidence they ever existed. This family should not be allowed to be forgotten.
In the night I cowered again under the small window and sewed the next pocket into the lining of my coat. This one was smaller and made of a piece of red velvet, which I’d found on the floor in one of the empty cellar rooms.
‘Psst! Can you keep this, so it doesn’t get lost?’
I shot up from my half sleep and in a panic ducked out of my coal heap.
‘Don’t worry, Esther. It’s me, Rahel Rosenzweig.’
A young woman was kneeling in front of me, the yellow star of David stitched to her worn jacket. With trembling hands, she held out a small booklet, wrapped in blue paper.
‘It’s my diary. I don’t want the Gestapo to get it.’
‘Why me?’ I asked Rahel.
‘Aaron told me about you. That you have many wonderful pockets in your coat where you keep things so we don’t get forgotten. Please, would you do that for me as well?’ She was holding the book towards me in desperation.
‘Yes, I’ll keep it for you.’
Then came the night again and I felt my way through the abandoned cellar rooms looking for scraps of fabric. In a corner I found a musty tablecloth, one part of it still intact. It was brocade, and my fingers soon started to bleed as I had to press the needle through, time and again. That too took me until the morning, but then the new pocket for Rahel’s diary was finished.
The following days and weeks went very quickly. More and more people came to me in my coal cellar, asking me to keep their beloved items from being forgotten. Now they also brought me needles, thread and pieces of material, even a beautiful ornate thimble. Soon the legend of ‘the Coat of the Unforgotten’ ha
d spread all over the district, and I became worried that the story of the magic coat would also be picked up by the Gestapo.
‘And what happened next?’ Levi asked, his cheeks burning with excitement. ‘Are all the things still inside this coat?’
‘No, I donated them to the Jewish Museum Vienna,’ Esther said, her eyes welling up.
‘But why?’ Levi asked quietly.
‘Because none of the owners ever came back.’
15
The memories of his grandmother faded away, and Levi sighed and looked at the cabinet behind him in his office. He hadn’t opened it for five years, as he’d made a solemn promise to Rebecca. But the situation had changed, so Levi fished the key from the desk drawer and then, taking a deep breath, got up and opened the cabinet. He knew the contents very well, of course, but he still winced when he saw the photographs stuck to the inside of the door of a charred body, pictured from various angles. One showed a close-up of the blackened skull with the teeth, which had survived the fire, sticking out like those of a wild animal. Each image showed what was left of Lisa Manz after she’d been killed.
Levi’s finger glided over the files on the shelves. Copies of the Lisa Manz case documents. He should be happy that the case now seemed to have been solved. Jonathan Stade was Lisa Manz’s murderer, Reiter had told him. When Levi asked for evidence, Reiter had at first been reluctant but then became more open, for old times’ sake. The chain of evidence was nearly complete. Jonathan Stade had been in the same clinic as Lisa Manz and had no alibi for the night that Lisa was burned to death. Stade had stated that he was sitting in the gardens of the clinic, but no one had seen him there. There had been an unknown car in the car park and Stade could easily have used it to drive to the scene of the murder in Burgenland and back. At the time that had not been enough to arrest him, but now they’d found Lisa’s rucksack in Stade’s flat and the handwritten confession. Levi would also have probably closed the case, if he’d still been in charge.
Somehow, he was just not able to let go of the files and photos. He’d thought of Lisa every day for five long years of his life – could it really be over at last? Lost in his reflections, Levi took out one of the files and turned the pages. It contained transcripts of the interviews of the suspects, and he knew them all by heart. He’d read them so often as he searched for contradictions.
His mobile rang. An unknown number.
‘Hello?’ he asked reluctantly.
‘Olivia Hofmann here. Remember me?’
‘Of course.’ Levi pictured the attractive woman with the pale green eyes. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘There’s a secret archive containing a videotape at the clinic where Lisa Manz last stayed. Did you know that?’ Olivia came straight to the point.
‘What clinic do you mean, and what are you talking about?’
‘The clinic she disappeared from. I’m going there now to have a look. Do you want to come with me?’
‘Do you know how late it is?’ Levi asked. ‘And, by the way, I have nothing to do with it any more. Plus, the Lisa Manz case is closed.’ Levi leaned against the cabinet. This psychiatrist is certainly stubborn, he thought.
‘I know. I’ve spoken to Inspector Reiter. But Jonathan Stade was not a murderer. Quite the opposite – he himself was murdered. Are you coming now or not?’
‘Wait until tomorrow. Nobody will be around now who could help us.’
‘OK. If you say so. Sorry for the late call.’
Before Levi could respond, Olivia hung up. Shaking his head, he looked down at his mobile and put it back in his pocket.
‘You’re not getting into that again, are you?’
Levi jumped at the sound of Rebecca’s voice. Slowly he turned around and lifted both hands in defence.
‘There’s some news,’ he apologised and was about to close the doors to the cabinet, but Rebecca prevented him.
‘You have a serious problem, Levi Kant,’ Rebecca said. ‘How can you live year after year with this picture of someone who was burned to death?’ She pointed to the photo of the charred skull. ‘Do you dream of it? Do you smell the charred flesh? Do you get some kind of kick out of it?’
‘I’ve not opened this cabinet for five years,’ Levi said defensively. ‘As I promised you.’
‘But you constantly think about it,’ Rebecca shot back. ‘Did you deliberately seek out danger because you couldn’t solve the case?’ She indicated Levi’s damaged leg.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Levi was overcome by a wave of exhaustion. He was tired of arguing with Rebecca about a case that was not even his any more. He told her what had happened.
‘So your colleague has solved the case after all,’ Rebecca said. Then she stepped closer to Levi and stroked his stubble with both hands. ‘And now we can take this ugly cabinet and everything in it to the dump. Who rang, by the way?’
‘Olivia Hofmann, a psychiatrist. She doesn’t believe that the Manz case has been solved. And maybe she’s right,’ Levi added.
‘I won’t stand for it if you start meddling with that case again, Levi. Last time, the tension between us meant I couldn’t even play the piano and I couldn’t bear that to happen again.’ She dropped her hands. ‘You’re a lecturer at the police academy. You promised me that our life from now on would be settled. If you start trying to dig up more dirt again, we’ll both be very lonely.’ Rebecca’s dark eyes stared at him. ‘Understood?’
‘Please calm down,’ he said. ‘It’s just that this psychiatrist is very persistent. It was one of her patients who killed himself. You have to understand.’
‘Do I really have to ponder why a patient of a psychiatrist has killed himself?’ Rebecca said, fiddling with a strand of her grey-streaked black hair.
‘No, but I’m thinking about it,’ Levi replied.
‘And why? Is she more interesting than me?’
‘No, certainly not. I promise you that by the end of this week the cabinet will be taken to the dump.’ Levi gave Rebecca a kiss on the forehead. ‘The music you were playing earlier was very beautiful. Who’s the composer?’
‘It was by Einaudi. I’ve often played it before, but you never listened.’
‘From now on I will always listen,’ Levi answered, pulling her closer, but she wriggled out of his grasp.
‘First this horrible cabinet has to disappear from our lives,’ she said. ‘Only then will Lisa Manz no longer stand between us.’
16
It was a moonlit night when Olivia arrived at the imposing building that housed the clinic. It was housed in a restored palace that a relative of the Stonborough-Wittgenstein family had donated to the Psychiatric Association between the wars.
Walking across the car park, Olivia could see there was a light on still in the acute wing. She wanted to avoid running into anyone, so waited until the night nurse on reception disappeared into the small staffroom to make herself a cup of coffee. Quickly she went in through the front door and crept along the walls to avoid the surveillance cameras. Reaching the heavy iron basement door, she opened it carefully and sneaked down the steps. The light at the bottom of the stairs was dim and all she could tell was that she was standing in a broad corridor. She pulled her mobile from her rucksack and turned on the torch to light her way.
The long corridor was crammed with discarded hospital beds, walking aids and wheelchairs. Mattresses leaned against the walls next to tall metal drip stands that reminded her of the gallows. Numerous iron doors on the right-hand side mostly stood open. Many of the rooms contained stacks of old furniture and were unlikely to serve as an archive.
The left-hand side of the corridor was taken up by the pathology department, where they carried out the post-mortems on patients who had died at the clinic. That left only two rooms at the end of the corridor. Both doors were locked. Olivia knew from her father that the rooms in the basement were interconnected so that in an emergency you could run from one to the next.
She walked quickly back to the path la
b. The small emergency lamps gave barely any light, but she could see that most of the gleaming steel tables were empty, apart from two. These tables stood side by side and each contained a body covered with a green sheet. As she passed them, she noticed a pale arm sticking out from under the sheet. The skin on the inner arm bore numerous fine cuts and scratches from pieces of glass or razor blades. Carefully Olivia peered under the covering.
She saw the smooth face of a girl who had been in therapy with Nils. Her young face looked relaxed, as if she was sleeping. Olivia had to swallow hard. She knew about the circumstances of this case; everybody at the clinic had been talking about it. They’d found the girl dead in her bed. In her anxiety she’d swallowed a spoon and choked. We’re here to help our patients, to show them the way back to the light. But for many the black tunnel ahead is too long, and the light is drowned in darkness, Olivia thought. Gently she pulled the sheet back over the girl’s face.
Holding up her torch, she noticed a screen standing against the far wall and moved it back to discover an inconspicuous sliding door leading into the next room. As expected, it was locked. Carefully Olivia took out the keys she’d found in her father’s sugar bowl. She tried one after the other, becoming impatient when none of them worked. Offering up a small prayer, she tried the final key. It fitted, and she slid the door open, sighing with relief.
The beam of light glided over the walls of the secret archive. The high shelves contained hundreds of files in large cardboard boxes. She checked shelf after shelf by the light of her torch. Each cardboard box was labelled with a date and the name of the patient, each one documenting the tragic fate of a disturbed soul.
But there was nothing for the relevant year, nor under the name she was looking for. She did, however, find a photo of herself, her father and Nils, who at the time had been the clinic’s assistant director. Presumably it had fallen out of one of the boxes. Instinctively Olivia put it in her rucksack. By the time she’d searched through most of the aisles of files, she was covered in dust, but hadn’t found anything about Lisa Manz. Disappointed she sat down on the floor to think.
