by Mario Bolduc
Had it really been genuine? Once again, Max was being delusional. Caroline had known nothing of his true identity, what he did for a living. And she certainly hadn’t known what he’d dragged her husband into.
No, when it was all said and done, it was probably best for the Dandurand family to get far away from New York.
Months later, Max was sleeping soundly when his cellphone rang. Still half asleep, he’d felt Isabel turn and stretch out for his phone. Isabel, a secretary for a real-estate developer in Spanish Harlem — a bit player in the operation he was currently running. He startled awake and grabbed the cellphone out of her hand before she could answer. Isabel shrugged, mumbled an insult in Spanish, and got up to go to the bathroom. A few moments later Max heard the shower running.
“Robert? You’re with someone? Am I bothering you?”
“Caroline …”
She was calling from Montreal to give him the good news. It was a boy. Sacha.
Sacha-the-Red.
Max felt someone tugging on his sleeve. Toma Boerescu, his eyes insistent. Time for his medicine, probably. Instead, the former cop nodded at a small man seated alone a few rows away. Boerescu whispered in Max’s ear, “Petru Tavala.”
Confused, Max looked at Boerescu. The old man added, “He owns a café on Gabroveni Street. More of a restaurant, really.”
Max gestured for him to go on.
“Early in the morning last Thursday he served breakfast to your friend, Kevin Dandurand.”
Max glanced at the Tavala character, then back at Boerescu. The old dog had managed to pull a lead out of thin air, after all. He’d probably realized he was about to lose his cushy gig with Max.
The old man smiled. “Petru Tavala loves music. A shame these amateurs are just ruining poor George Enescu!”
Petru Tavala had no interest in confiding in two strangers he encountered in a church, but the café owner did love to talk. About this or anything else, why not? He didn’t have much time, though, only a few minutes. It was high season, after all. With this conference, with the holidays in full swing, all he had time for was working himself to the bone. But better that than starving, right? It could be worse; it’s always worse, or better! Who knows anymore! Anyway, sure, he’d seen a foreigner in his coffee shop early one morning.
“Kevin Dandurand?” Max asked.
“I only learned that was his name when the others came asking about him.”
“The police?”
“No, no. They were these guys who reminded me of the Securitate … you know what I mean? Serious, austere, looking like there was a conspiracy afoot! They snooped around, asking the same question ten different ways, as if to trick me.” They’d wanted to know whether he’d heard anything, overheard the conversation.
“What conversation?” Max asked.
“Dandurand was with another man. He had a moustache, the other one. I heard everything, but I didn’t understand a thing. They were speaking English together …”
Boerescu was translating for Tavala.
“Who was the other guy?” Max pressed.
“A Gypsy. That’s why I remember. They sat at the table farthest from the door. They ordered coffee and breakfast. They seemed on good terms. They started laughing all of a sudden.”
Old friends?
“Like I said, me and English …”
In any case, whether or not they were close friends, it was clear they weren’t strangers.
But a Rom who spoke English?
“They stayed, I don’t know, maybe an hour, maybe a little more.”
“And then?”
“Then they shook hands and the Gypsy left. The stranger seemed worried. He paid for the coffee and the breakfast. Then he left.”
“And you didn’t understand a word they said?”
“For years they forced us to learn Russian,” Tavala said. “And now they say English is the language that matters! Do you think that’s fair?”
The decline of Russian in Eastern Europe didn’t matter much to Max, but he was intrigued by the idea of Kevin meeting a Romani man in Bucharest. The guy from the Zăbrăuţi Street dwellings maybe, where Kevin’s personal effects had been found?
“I saw the picture of the man who died in the apartment,” Tavala said. “It wasn’t the same man at all.”
Clearly, Max would need to find this strange Romani man to understand what had happened. His meeting with Kevin had preceded the fire by a few hours at most.
They left the café owner behind and made their way out of the church. Once outside, Max turned to Boerescu. “Do you think the authorities are trying to hide something?”
“Because of the two agents?”
Max nodded.
“They weren’t police, according to Tavala.”
“Okay, besides the police, there might be other groups, no? More secretive organizations?”
“The Securitate doesn’t exist anymore, hasn’t in a long time.”
“Don’t you find it strange that some unknown organization is after Kevin? They weren’t cops, it seems. And what about the English-speaking Rom? Why hasn’t he come forward?”
“He’s a Rom. He’s got everything to lose by revealing any ties to Dandurand.” Boerescu sighed. “Does your friend, Kevin, have anything to hide? I mean, besides the murder of Gypsies?”
“Maybe.”
The weather had warmed a little, and a fine fog had replaced the previous night’s snow. Winter was a lost cause in Bucharest. Max raised his collar and began to walk toward Unirii Boulevard, followed by Boerescu.
“Did you know that, traditionally, Gypsies stayed away from multi-storey buildings?” his fixer asked. “Nothing worse to them then all living stacked one on top of the other.”
Which hadn’t stopped the poor souls from piling up in that hellhole on Zăbrăuţi Street.
“Are we far?” Max asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Ferentari. Are we far?”
The first three cabs refused to take them to their destination. It was a rule taxi companies had put in place a few years earlier. Even the buses, the trains — barely anything made its way into the neighbourhood. There was less public transportation in Ferentari than in the rest of the city, but more police stations. Ferentari, the Bronx of Bucharest. The whole place had been left to rot, while the Roma, chased out of the countryside, scrabbled for a living in its ruined streets.
Much worse than the Bronx.
Only the walls of buildings remained, all lined up in Soviet fashion. Between them, trash heaps and dozens of wild, famished dogs. It was hard to even figure out which building it was that had burned. The Roma — the vast majority of the neighbourhood’s population — had already settled back into their apartments, moving their worthless knick-knacks back into soot-darkened rooms never to be repainted.
Probably the most unusual part of this whole story was that fire trucks had actually come to the neighbourhood that night. And that an investigation had been opened. It was a rare thing indeed for anybody to do anything to help the Roma’s lot. They were left to fend for themselves, to deal with their own problems and catastrophes. And yet, on Zăbrăuţi Street, an exception had been made. More signs of a setup.
Max tried to put together the pieces he’d found so far. Kevin had reached Bucharest a week earlier and met a Rom in a coffee shop. He’d then gotten into an argument on Zăbrăuţi Street with another Rom. There he’d allegedly killed the man and lit a fire to hide his tracks. But why, then, had he left personal belongings in the building, making himself easy to identify? Whomever had set him up hadn’t known about Kevin’s training. The first thing Duvall had taught Kevin was how to cover his tracks — unless he was leaving them purposely to confuse whoever was looking for him. Why was Kevin in Bucharest? A job gone bad? Which one?
“Do you want to se
e inside?” Boerescu asked.
The two men were leaning against a taxi, staring up at the building. The cab driver was nervously glancing this way and that. Max turned toward their driver, who, he noticed, had pulled out a handgun and was very visibly holding it aloft as a warning to whoever might be looking. It was clear now why he’d agreed to bring them to this neighbourhood: he was prepared.
“Let’s get out of here,” Max said. “I’ve seen enough.”
After taking his leave from his fixer and paying for a cab back to wherever the man wanted to go, Max thought of returning to the hotel but couldn’t resolve to end the day between the four walls of a poorly soundproofed room — despite the five very optimistic stars on the establishment’s brochure. Lost in thought, he wandered up Nicolae Bălcescu Boulevard and opened the door to a bar near Traian Vuia Street. Max ignored the conversation between the men at the counter dissecting the last World Cup results for — Max was certain — the hundredth time. Instead, he walked to the back of the room and sat down beneath a very old air-conditioning unit that probably hadn’t worked since King Michael’s abdication.
The television was playing on low volume. Max could see flashing images reflected in the large mirror placed behind another row of seats. On the news, tears, lamentation, and anger. Roma demonstrating in front of Parliament, begging for compassion for their brothers and sisters. And a speech by Victor Marineci. The Romani MP was demanding justice for his brethren. Pleading for a more just and fair Romania, even for the travelling people, as they were sometimes known. The patrons sitting at the bar clearly couldn’t care less. Another small tragedy of life.
“Let them all burn!” the barman shouted in English before approaching his new customer. “What can I get you?”
“Peace and quiet. And a pint.”
Max sank deeper into his seat. Those who were trying to hang Kevin Dandurand out to dry clearly lacked imagination. According to Pavlenco, in the past six months, there had been four other fires in derelict buildings inhabited by Roma.
After the first beer, another. And a third. The server’s animosity had turned into indifference. Max had almost forgotten the man’s existence when he approached the table again. “Someone on the phone for you.”
Max raised his head. He wasn’t sure he’d understood. But the bartender was pointing to a phone booth on the other side of the room. Max got up and squeezed himself into the cramped, dusty phone box, closing the door behind him. He picked up the phone.
“As cold as in New York, right? Nice weather to sell Christmas trees on a street corner.”
Kevin.
“What’s going on? Where are you?”
Close by, clearly, since he’d seen Max walk into the bar.
“I’m in a bind, Max. I need your help.”
Kevin’s specialty. Calling Max to the rescue. After Astoria, Bucharest.
“Tell me where you are. I’ll be right there.”
“It’s more complicated than that, Max. Too complicated.”
Silence on the other end of the line. Max was waiting for the rest.
“I didn’t set the fire. Didn’t kill the Roma.”
“I know that. Just tell me what happened.”
“All in good time. For now I’ve got more urgent matters. I need to ask you a favour.”
“Nothing is more urgent than getting you out of here. I’m bringing you back to Montreal and —”
“Listen, Max, I don’t have much time.”
Max fell silent.
“Tonight you’ll get a phone call from a friend of mine. Cosmin Micula.”
“Kevin, this isn’t the time to —”
“Let me finish.” Kevin’s voice was firm, bordering on hard. “Just do what he says, okay? Go with him. You can trust him.”
“Kevin, please, this isn’t the time to play games.”
“Don’t tell anyone anything, Max.” He added, “And be careful. The people who are after me, well, suffice it to say they’re powerful. Very powerful.”
“Who?”
Kevin ignored the question. After a long silence, he continued. “I knew you’d come. I knew I could count on you.” Then, “Be careful, Max.”
“Kevin …”
But he’d hung up already.
9
Auschwitz-Birkenau, September 28, 1943
Emil Rosca glanced through the crack in the drapes. That was when he saw it for the first time: a gigantic birthday cake, transported by three camp aides assigned to the Stammlager’s kitchens. A celestial vision for Emil, who still went hungry every day. The men had transported the cake through the camp right before the eyes of famished detainees.
The young Rom let the curtain fall back. Behind him the other musicians hadn’t noticed a thing. Emaciated faces, half-dead men and women barely able to hold up their instruments, much less play them. An hour ago they’d been ordered to wait in this large room, a former office, perhaps. There was no furniture here now, and the floors were covered in dust.
Upon reaching the house of SS-Obersturmbann-führer Rudolf Höss, they’d been forced to remove their rags and put on fresh clothes. Real clothes. This did nothing at all to improve their looks — quite the contrary. One knew what to expect when everyone was wearing stripes. Prisoners looked like prisoners. Man and costume were one. But now, floating in a dark jacket and white shirt two sizes too big for him, Emil felt as if he were participating in a sinister masquerade.
The sight of the cake reminded him he hadn’t eaten anything yet that day. Being in the orchestra was no picnic. Every morning at dawn the musicians played military airs to accompany the kommandos as they left for the work sites. At night, more music, this time for the return of the detainees. Between the two, the musicians also had to break their backs over piles of rocks. Except for Roma like Emil, who’d been exempted from forced labour for reasons he didn’t quite understand. Perhaps it was so that Dr. Josef’s guinea pigs could remain in decent shape to be harvested.
Usually, Oskar Müller could be counted on to be tolerant, even understanding. Other times, however, he’d lose his temper. On the ground floor of Block 24, where the rehearsals were held, he’d snap his conductor’s baton in two and go on a rampage, breaking everything around him. The first few times Müller had gone mad Emil had folded himself protectively around his Paolo Soprani, making himself as small as possible, trying to become invisible.
Soon enough, however, Emil had seen that Müller’s outbursts — as spectacular as they might look — were fundamentally harmless. The officer would eventually calm down, give a few taps of a replacement baton on his lectern, exactly like Herbert von Karajan had done at a concert Müller had seen in Paris in 1940, a little after the German invasion. Backstage, Oskar had had the exceptional privilege of shaking the hand of his idol, the famous conductor, the Third Reich’s favourite child. No, in the end, Müller’s anger was usually without consequence. But if the conductor came near a musician to tell him softly, “The way you play is a complete insult to Carl Robrecht,” it meant he’d just received his death sentence. The man would disappear with his violin or his flute, soon to be replaced by a new musician. Emil sat in the still-warm chair of a Jewish accordion player, a Pole from nearby Kraków. Another musician was likely waiting in the antechamber, ready to take Emil’s seat if his accordion squeaked.
In order to last, to survive, the only thing he could do was to play his best. Until the orchestra, the accordion had simply been a distraction for him, a pleasant one, surely, but a way to pass time. He couldn’t even remember the first time he’d held a gormónya; it had simply always been a part of him. Emil’s father loved the instrument, played it magnificently himself, and had shown his son how to hold it. The accordion was kept under a satin cloth in a corner of the vôrdòn, their means of transport. Emil was too small back then to hang it over his shoulder, but he’d managed to play it, anyway. He played ca
sually without looking to improve. What would be the point of that? He played the accordion naturally, as others breathed, without effort. But in Auschwitz, improving was the only way to survive.
And so for the first time in his life Emil made an effort. He was getting better, learning what made Oskar Müller tick. Müller was completely unsophisticated when it came to the accordion, despite what he claimed. What he loved best were flights of lyricism, painful memories that induced tears, throbbing sounds. Emil gave him as much as he could. He’d conclude every one of his solos with pirouettes, acrobatics, flash, and thunder, keeping one eye on Müller’s face. Sometimes, carried away by his false enthusiasm, Emil exaggerated and could sense a grimace taking shape on Müller’s face, could sense his mood darkening. Immediately, Emil would change approach, adjust his interpretation. The others, bent over their instruments or looking elsewhere, didn’t adopt the same strategy. They never saw the storm coming.
Emil had left the Romani camp, and for the past ten days, since he’d joined Müller’s orchestra, he’d lived in one of the Stammlager’s Cell Blocks in the main camp. He shared the place with the other musicians, Jews mostly. Also at Stammlager, the women played in the orchestra of Alma Rosé, Gustav Mahler’s niece. Altogether there were six orchestras in Auschwitz, all of them led by prisoners, except for Oskar Müller’s.
As well as accompanying morning and evening work crews, Emil Rosca and his colleagues played at special occasions. The day following his enrollment, Emil had been summoned to the camp commander’s home. A reception that gave Oskar Müller an opportunity to impress Rudolf Höss and his wife, both lovers of Verdi. And of Romani music. Attracting Höss’s favour had been Müller’s reason for integrating an accordion player into his orchestra. That night Emil had seen, among the guests, Dr. Josef and Hans Leibrecht, his dreaded subordinate. When Leibrecht noticed Emil, he walked over and posted himself right in front, observing him, a sadistic smile on his face. Immediately, Emil’s fingers lost the rhythm. Müller noticed. He rebuked his accordionist as Leibrecht left for the buffet, caressing his own ear menacingly.
