Once Upon a Time

by Barbara Fradkin

“So your father thinks the whole amnesia business was faked?”

  “Brilliantly.”

  “But the shape Eugene was in—the typhus, the starvation. You can’t fake that. He took months to recover.”

  “Even villains can fall ill. Look at his life!” She was animated now, her dark eyes sparking. “He picks a quiet farming community with a mixed ethnic make-up including Germans and Poles. He lives a reclusive existence and does almost nothing to call attention to himself. Cooperative, law-abiding, unobtrusive—that’s exactly how war criminals have acted when they’ve come to North America.”

  “Did you or your father ever discuss this possibility with Howard?”

  “My God, no. It’s just a theory. What good would it do to raise it with Howard? This is tearing him up enough as it is.” She suddenly tensed. “What are you planning to do about it?”

  He pondered the implications of the theory. It seemed as viable an explanation as his camp survivor theory, perhaps even more viable. His intuition agreed with hers. What would Eugene Walker have to fear from his son marrying a Jew if he himself were a survivor? Why would he have hidden in the country, avoiding human contact and exposure? Camp survivors were scarred in many ways, haunted by fears and blunted of feelings. Many of them were never able to talk about the traumas they had endured. But they rarely hid themselves away for more than half a century as a result.

  She looked up in alarm as he rose from the table, pulling on his jacket, and tossed a couple of twoonies beside his cup.

  “Where are you going?” she cried.

  “To talk to an expert.” He paused. “And please, tell your husband that if he knows something, don’t keep it to himself. He may be playing in the big leagues.”

  Nine

  June 22nd, 1941

  The news scurries through the ghetto on the tongues of youth.

  The goose-stepping fool has invaded Russia!

  A flea leaps at the flank of a bear.

  The flea is doomed!

  Returning from the factories, workers hide their smiles

  but quicken their step,

  to reach home, to share the news, to cheer and dance.

  Our apartment brims with talk and merriment.

  Brotherhood, solidarity, the triumph of the oppressed.

  In the centre, my rebel princess smiles,

  her belly large with child again but her heart light as air.

  Homemade schnaps is lifted high. To life.

  Then in the quiet, my rebel princess adds

  Next year in Jerusalem.

  No need, we are all comrades in Russia’s great socialist dream.

  Comrades maybe, she replies, but is the Cossack far behind?

  David Haley, the former war crimes prosecutor, had just returned from court and was still charged with combative adrenaline from having lost his case. His office in the century-old Justice Building was dry and over-heated, and sweat trickled down his brow onto his flushed face, adding to his irritation. He listened impatiently as Green explained his request.

  “Almost impossible,” Haley said immediately. “Ten times worse than your proverbial needle in a haystack.”

  “But is there a way we can check? Isn’t there a list somewhere of suspected war criminals?”

  “Sure there is. We’ve got one, so has the OSI—that’s the Office of Special Investigations, the American War Crimes Unit. The Israelis have one, of course. And the Simon Wiesenthal Centre has a file on just about every guy who ever said Sieg Heil. There are pictures to go with some of these guys, fifty year-old pictures in most cases, but pictures. Your problem is you don’t have the guy’s name. Without his real name, how the hell can we check lists?”

  “But didn’t a lot of these guys change their names anyway?”

  “Surprisingly, no. The big guys like Mengele and Eichmann did, of course, but thousands of others—camp guards, Einsatzgruppen members, SS officers—they just walked into the U.S. and Canada as bold as you please. Lied a little on their forms, immigration looked the other way. Often at the request of the CIA or the RCMP, I might add. The Soviets were the big bogeymen after the war, and Nazis were good anticommunists; that was the view of the fifties and sixties. So these guys bought themselves a little homestead in the country and lived happily ever after. They’re laughing. Listen, they know damn well that even with names, we can’t find them. But without a name, you’ll never know.”

  The heat was beginning to prickle Green’s skin, and he rose to remove his parka. He had hoped his question would only take a minute, but nothing about World War II Europe was ever simple. “We do have a picture. We could compare the picture.”

  David Haley gave a harsh laugh. “Have you got several thousand more men on the Ottawa Police Force that I don’t know about? We’re talking thousands of photographs, fuzzy, old and tiny. We’d have to go through them one by one. We don’t have nice modern computer technology in this business, Inspector. We’re using investigative technology that’s fifty years out of date. Old documents, letters, photos, scraps of unsubstantiated eyewitness testimony. It’s hard work. We hardly nail any of them, Inspector.”

  “Mike. And I can see that. What a challenge!”

  Haley tilted his chair back and loosened his tie. Some of the tension seemed to drain out of him. He was impeccably dressed in a charcoal, pin-striped suit and silk tie, looking every inch the senior government counsel. Green felt conspicuously shabby in his sports jacket that had long since abandoned its shape and his brown trousers that were rapidly following suit. But Haley seemed to be smiling at him with genuine respect.

  “Yesterday you were hot on the trail of a survivor, today it’s a war criminal. Can you give me a hint what’s going on?”

  “I’m investigating a man with a secret from World War II, and I’m trying to find out what it is.” Briefly Green summarized the facts surrounding Walker’s rescue in Germany and his slow, incomplete recovery in England.

  “That sounds more like a survivor,” Haley said without hesitation. “The alcoholism and the secretiveness—even they could fit the profile of a survivor.”

  “But the reclusive lifestyle is more characteristic of the war criminal, isn’t it? The survivors I know don’t hide out in the country for fifty years, shunning contact with people.”

  “That’s because most of the survivors we hear about are Jewish. Jewish suffering in the Holocaust has gained world sympathy, it has been legitimized. Support groups and networks have sprung up to help the Jewish survivor feel less alone and pursue legal remedies. But we’re talking about a non-Jewish survivor, and an anti-Semitic one at that. Where is his support and his legitimacy? Before the war, he and the Jew might have been on opposite sides. He can’t feel part of Jewish suffering and mutual support, but there’s no support and no place for him. All he can feel is shame. In the eyes of his fellow anti-Semites, in fact of most of the Polish community, he has become like a Jew. I can see such a guy easily finding his support in solitude and a bottle of booze.”

  Green tried to put himself in Walker’s shoes, to imagine how it felt to be so set apart. Who would he identify with? Who would he despise? But considered that way, Green still couldn’t make sense of Walker’s state of mind.

  “But if he were a survivor, I don’t understand why the continued anti-Semitism. Almost paranoia. He was very upset when his son married a Jewish girl. The girl said he seemed afraid. Wouldn’t a non-Jewish camp survivor feel some affinity towards the Jews?”

  Haley shook his head. “You got me there. I’m not a psychologist. But it always seems to me the shrinks can explain anything. Maybe it reminds him of those days in the camp, you know? Of his humiliation.”

  It was plausible. Each individual fact could be made to fit, but the entire picture just seemed wrong. Green told Haley about the bar fight twenty years earlier. “This is another guy from the same town in Poland. He knew something. But they both refused to say a word about it, even to their own families.”

  “And your
man Walker started it?” When Green nodded, Haley’s brows gathered in thought. “Maybe the other guy insulted him. But it could have been anything. It could have been a woman they fought over years earlier in the old country.”

  “But it could have been this guy calling Walker a Nazi. If he was a war criminal and he thought he was safely hidden, that would have freaked him out.”

  “Or if he was a survivor,” Haley countered, “it could have been the guy calling him a Jew-boy. That would freak a good anti-Semite out even worse.”

  Green grinned at him unexpectedly. “You know something? You’re a good devil’s advocate.”

  Haley laughed. He was totally relaxed now, his colour back to normal and the court loss evidently forgotten. “Poking holes in people’s arguments is my job. What did your camp survivor/possible war criminal do that you’re investigating? Are you allowed to tell me?”

  “Got himself murdered. No one else thinks so, of course. And they think I’m nuts to be digging fifty years into the past.”

  Haley’s expression grew sober. “Well, you’re not. The bitterness of those times can last a lifetime, believe me. I’ll never forget the survivors I dealt with. Their experiences were burned into their memory forever. I remember one woman, survivor of Auschwitz, who couldn’t stand to hear “The Merry Widow”. Apparently the SS had created an orchestra of young Jewish girls, dressed them up in navy skirts and white blouses, and made them play for the trains when they pulled into the station. For entertainment, like they were arriving at some exclusive spa.” He sat thinking for a minute, stroking the crown of his bald head and seeming to be caught up in the incredibility of it all.

  Then he shook his head as if to clear it and switched back to business. “You might try a few things. First, if you can find a survivor from Ozorkow—in fact, anyone from Ozorkow— you could show them this man Walker’s picture and see if they can identify him as either a survivor or a Nazi collaborator.”

  “I already have someone from the Holocaust Remembrance Committee searching for survivors for me.”

  “Naomi Wyman?” Haley nodded. “She’s a good lady. If there’s anyone out there who’s still remotely alive, Naomi will find them for you. The second thing you can do is ask the Simon Wiesenthal Centre to check his picture against all their known collaborators from Ozorkow. Provided there aren’t too many.”

  “It’s a pretty small town. There shouldn’t be.” Green’s eyes were alight, and he was already reaching for his parka when Haley held up a cautioning hand.

  “Of course, it could all be a complete wild goose chase, you know. If this guy is a war criminal lying about his past, who’s to say he’s from Ozorkow at all? Who’s to say he’s even a Pole? He understands and speaks Polish, but lots of Germans do, especially those living near or inside what was then Poland itself. The border between the two countries, and the allegiances of the inhabitants, shifted back and forth over the centuries anyway. Many of the ethnic Germans living in Poland joined the SS and served Hitler admirably. Your man could be a full-blooded member of the master race, hiding out in the midst of a snowy Canadian backwater and hoping everybody passes him by. It would explain his not mixing with his neighbours, rarely speaking Polish and not going to the Polish Catholic Church. He figured the masquerade might not hold up under closer scrutiny.”

  Green sucked in his breath. What had that old farmer Dubroskie said? “Nothing but a drunken old Polack, and I’m not even sure about that.”

  The case reminded him of one of those Russian dolls his father had told him about, where you open up one doll and there’s always another inside.

  * * *

  By the time Green emerged from the Justice Building, November darkness had fallen. Light snow was sifting through the street lights, and Wellington Street was a snarl of rush hour traffic inching westward towards the suburbs. Green thought of the hour-long crawl awaiting him and felt his spirits sink. In the old days, he would have zipped across the canal and been home in his apartment in ten minutes. Black spots laced his vision, and he suddenly realized he’d forgotten lunch. He’d never survive the drive home in this shape. And besides, he’d no sooner get there than he’d have to turn around and go out again to meet Sullivan at the airport. With any luck, Sullivan might have some light to shed on who the real Walker was.

  Pulling out his cellular, he phoned Sharon and told her he was going to stop by his father’s on his way home.

  “So don’t hold supper for me, honey. I’ll pick up some smoked meat for him and me as a treat.”

  He heard her groan. “But Mike, I wanted to talk about the party.”

  He was tempted to ask “What’s to talk about?” The party was Sharon’s idea—invite a bunch of their high-tech young neighbours and some of Sharon’s friends from the hospital, who all thought Green was cute but hopeless husband material. She had told him he could invite some of his friends, but they both knew it was an empty suggestion; Green didn’t fit in any better at the station than he did in the neighbourhood. His father would be his only ally.

  Tony, of course, would be the centre of attention, but he wouldn’t be much of a judge of whether the party was a success. And would care even less. Give him cake, ice cream and a couple of plants to chew, and he’d be on cloud nine.

  “I won’t be late,” Green said instead. “Just an hour or two. I may have to pick up Brian at the airport.”

  “Have you bought anything for Tony yet?”

  He thought fast. “I could stop at the Billings Bridge Mall on my way to the airport.”

  “Green…”

  “Your parents have bought him everything he’s going to need for the next five years,” he countered in what had become a ritual between them. “All that’s left is a two-wheel bike, and he’s only one year old! What’s left for me?”

  “You’re his father. Think of what a father gives his son.”

  “I don’t know,” he grumbled, feeling his stomach contract. He was too starved to duel effectively with her. “When I was growing up, my father could never afford anything. A baseball glove? A jock strap?”

  She chuckled. “I’m not giving you hints, Green. This is for you to come up with—a special gift from you to your son.”

  He rang off with a sigh. Perhaps after a few moments with his father and a huge, mouth-watering smoked meat sandwich to fill the hole in his stomach, inspiration would come to him.

  Sidney Green was sitting in his brown tub chair watching a rerun of The Red Green Show when Green let himself in. The sound was very loud, because Sid was slightly deaf, so he didn’t hear his son until Green walked into the middle of the living room and stood in front of him. Sid peered up at him in confusion, as if he were out of time and place. His rheumy eyes blinked into focus to see his son holding out a large paper bag in his hand.

  “I brought smoked meat and french fries. You hungry?”

  “I ate already, in the cafeteria.”

  “So keep me company.”

  Sid’s eyes had strayed to the television, but now they flicked back to his son with sudden alarm. “What’s wrong? Sharon? The baby?”

  Green shook his head, set the bag down and headed for the kitchenette, where he kept a modest store of beer in his father’s fridge for his own use. A moment later he emerged with a bottle, as well as a glass of ginger ale for Sid.

  “I just dropped by to say hi. I have to do some shopping for the baby tonight.”

  Sid’s eyes lit up. “One year old! Oy, I can’t believe it!” He laughed and clapped his hands. His father’s laughter was such a rarity that Green felt his own spirits lift. Sid appeared to have forgotten Bernie Mendelsohn and the depressing rate at which his friends were dropping dead around him.

  Green sank into a chair and propped his stockinged feet on the scarred coffee table. He held out a smoked meat sandwich to his father, who shook his head.

  “Come on, it’s Lester’s. None of that synthetic stuff.”

  Still Sid shook his head. “Now I have a gran
dson, I want to stay alive.” Unconsciously, he patted his chest. The reference to his heart condition reminded Green of Eugene Walker and of the past the two men might have shared. Deliberately he leaned forward and switched off the television.

  “Dad, do you know anyone who comes from Ozorkow?”

  “Ozorkow?” Sid stared at the blank TV, as if wondering where Green had got the idea. “In Poland?”

  Green nodded. “Western Poland.”

  “I know where it is.” There was a peevish rebuke in his tone. “Why do you want to know about Ozorkow?”

  “I’m investigating the death of an old man who might have come from there.”

  “What does it matter where an old man comes from?”

  “Dad,” Green exclaimed in exasperation, “just answer me, okay? It might matter.”

  “Give me part of that sandwich. I don’t know anyone from Ozorkow. Bernie, Marv and me, we’re all from little villages. But no one is from Ozorkow.”

  “What happened to all of you during the war?”

  “Happened? We survived.”

  Green put down his beer and frowned at his father, who busied himself picking the peppercorns off his smoked meat. Eventually, Sid sighed. “Marv was hidden by a Polish family for a while. Bernie was in three camps, the last one Mauthausen.”

  “Labour camps?”

  “Labour camps, death camps, ghettoes—they were all the same. People died.”

  “Were any of you sent to Ozorkow or Lodz?”

  Sid raised his eyes from his peppercorns in astonishment. “Lodz, Ozorkow! What have you been reading, Mishka?”

  Green held his eyes. “I’ve been reading about the Holocaust, Dad. I’m trying to figure out what role this old man played in it.”

  “Why?” Then Sid clucked his tongue as if at his own stupidity. “Why should I ask why? Since when does my son need a reason to solve a puzzle? It’s enough it’s a puzzle.”

  Green grinned. “You got it close enough.”

  Sid’s eyes lit with affection as they met his son’s, then gradually the light faded. “So,” he said softly, “you’ve been reading about the Holocaust.”