The Black Life

by Paul Johnston

  ‘What will become of the others?’ Father asked. He had aged even more in the last hour.

  ‘They probably have an old people’s home,’ I said, aware of the keenness of his stare.

  ‘And Dario?’

  ‘There are plenty of jobs he can do.’

  Isaak had caught up with us. ‘More than I can,’ he said.

  There was a revving of engines and we watched as the trucks drove away with their human cargo.

  ‘Kaput!’ shouted one of the uniformed men, cracking his whip at us. ‘Alles kaput!’ He pointed at the lowering sky.

  We didn’t know German but his meaning was clear, even if we didn’t yet know what caused the cloud. It wasn’t long till we found out. A Greek in stripes told us when we were queuing for delousing.

  ‘They burn them,’ he whispered. ‘After they’ve been gassed.’

  The others started moaning and crying, but my face remained dry. I was thinking about the knives, which I had dropped as we got out of the cattle truck, frightened by the weapons and stony faces of our captors. If I’d had the courage I could have saved the grandmothers. I could even have given Dario a friendly death. I would never be able to expiate that failure of nerve, whatever my mother thought. I glanced around. It was nearly dark and we had no idea where the women had been taken.

  ‘Do you think Mother and Miriam and Golda are still together?’ Isaak asked.

  I shrugged.

  ‘I’m sure they are,’ Father said, trying to convince himself as much as us.

  Then we were told to strip. My brother was no longer able to disguise his foreshortened arm. He was pulled out of the line by an SS man. I went to help and was floored by a blow that filled my eyes with colours that ran into each other. My father was wailing, then he too crashed to the ground. That was the last we saw of Isaak.

  We were dragged to our feet and shoved forward. I remained dazed for hours; in fact it was days till I became fully aware of our surroundings. We were without hair on our heads and bodies, wearing the vertically striped clothes, fighting for the bread and soup ration, as well as for tins and spoons to put the latter in. Some of the Thessaloniki community helped us. We slept crammed together in tiered bunks. It was suffocatingly hot at night and the more experienced men, the majority not Greek, told us to be quiet in languages that were easily comprehensible even though we had never heard them before. The capos, fellow prisoners given benefits to keep us in line by force, and the block master – ours a round-bellied Pole – were quick to strike at men who spoke out of turn or talked at night. Father and I had been separated, but I saw him several rows away; and at the roll calls, which often lasted for hours; and on the work details – scrubbing floors, marching at fast pace to dig pits and carry stones, toiling to the brink of consciousness.

  Until I and several other young men were pulled out of the hut one morning without warning. I turned and caught a glimpse of my father. He waved, but I could see the film of tears on his eyes.

  Outside we were lined up.

  ‘You’re going to love this,’ the capo said. He was one of our own, but he had successfully transformed himself into a lackey of the SS. He was said to have beaten several prisoners to death. ‘And volunteering is good for the soul.’

  ‘I’m not volunteering for anything,’ I said, as he passed. That earned me a punch in the belly and a knee in the face.

  An SS man watched as I got up. He berated the capo, telling him I was the Reich’s property and that the Sonderkommando needed men in good condition. I had picked up a fair amount of German in the weeks I’d been in the Lager, but I didn’t know what a Sonderkommando was.

  A couple of hours later I found out. As we were marched out of the main camp, I had a hallucination, not for the first time. I thought I saw my mother behind a window in one of the command buildings. Her head had been shaved like ours and her cheeks were damp. Unlike my father, she didn’t wave and her shoulders were bowed, as if they bore the weight of nations.

  I still don’t know if I imagined it or if she really was in that building.

  THIRTEEN

  Mavros thought about calling Niki. He decided against it because he didn’t want to wake her. It was after eleven when he got back to the hotel. He looked up at Rachel’s room. There were no lights. She must have finished working on her laptop and turned in. He ran upstairs, immediately aware that he had eaten and drunk too much, but determined to burn off at least some calories.

  He had a shower and lay on the bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. He got up and went to the window. The lights of the square below were still on and there were plenty of people around – the cafés and bars on the seafront would be open for hours. He looked out to sea. The lights of the ships at anchor shone dimly through the thin mist rising from the water. The suburbs around the bay to his left were bright nearby, but soon faded to a blur.

  Beyond the airport was the beach resort of Ayia Triadha. He’d seen it when they came into land, but had managed to push the memories back. Now, after Shimon Raphael’s mention of Andonis, he couldn’t block them out any longer. Mavros had been nine and his brother twenty when the family had stayed in an old comrade’s house in Ayia Triadha for a month. It was the summer of 1971. Their father was four years dead and the dictatorship still in power. The train journey from Athens had been uncomfortable, his mother in particular out of sorts because of the heat and other passengers’ sweat. His sister Anna, fourteen at the time, had her nose permanently in the air to discourage the attentions of boys, not that any had risked coming close. They took a taxi from the railway station in Thessaloniki to the village, Dorothy saying ‘hang the cost’.

  What followed was a golden summer for them all. Back then Ayia Triadha wasn’t developed – as Andonis pointed out, it had been founded as a refugee village after the exchange of populations in 1922 – and the beaches weren’t busy. The comrade and his family were in the Peloponnese and had left a rattly old Fiat that Andonis used to take them further afield. Mavros remembered jumping with his brother from rocks on the shore, while their mother read manuscripts and Anna fashion magazines. He recalled late lunches at deserted tavernas, fresh fish and salads, his first sip of wine passed to him by Andonis when Dorothy wasn’t looking. Then Anna met a boy she actually liked and they capered around on the beach like much younger kids. Andonis and Alex built sandcastles, threw balls at each other, had swimming races that his brother often let him win, even read books together. Andonis usually pored over illicit tomes of Marxist theory, but he liked adventure stories and they went through Treasure Island aloud, doing the accents. Dorothy insisted they speak English for at least a couple of hours every day.

  Then there were the excursions into the city. They visited the sites – the Roman and Byzantine remains, the church of the city’s patron Saint Dhimitrios, and the narrow lanes of the upper town. They even had a look at the old fortress of Gedi Koulé at the summit of the defensive walls, still in use as a prison. Many Communists had been executed there during and after the Civil War. Andonis stared at it with a mixture of wonder and revulsion. On the way down he told Alex to wait at a corner, returning a quarter of an hour later.

  ‘Don’t tell Mother,’ he said, with conspiratorial smile. ‘Ice cream?’

  Alex ran after him, excited to be part of his brother’s secret activities against the regime. Under a year later Andonis was gone, whether taken by the security police or responsible for his own disappearance nobody – least of all Mavros – knew; or was telling.

  And here he was back in the co-capital again. Andonis’s feet had walked these streets. The same applied much more in Athens, but somehow that was different. To his shame Mavros had got used to the ghost of Andonis there. Here in Thessaloniki his brother seemed tantalisingly tangible.

  He looked out over the square again and his heart skipped a beat. Walking towards the hotel in a dark jacket and trousers was Rachel Samuel. Where, he wondered, had she been? A nightcap after a long evening at the typeface? She didn’t
strike him as the drinking kind, either solitary or in company, and she certainly wasn’t dressed for it.

  ‘What’s going on up there?’ Niki sounded out of sorts.

  Mavros wiped the phone with the edge of his towel. ‘I’ve just come out of the shower. I know nothing.’

  ‘Turn on the TV.’

  He did as he was told. ‘Martha the talking dog?’

  ‘Idiot. Find a channel with news.’

  He pressed buttons on the handset. ‘Ah.’

  ‘Ah?’

  ‘I see what you mean. “Jordanian man shot dead in Thessaloniki”. That’s shocking – if not exactly germane to what I’m doing.’

  ‘Still, it’ll make things livelier in the city. And no doubt keep you away from me even longer.’

  Mavros was at the window. It was raining and people were walking quickly across the square. Dark-skinned men selling umbrellas were on several corners. ‘I don’t see why it should. You’re having a hard time, aren’t you?’

  ‘You should retrain as a psychiatrist, Alex.’

  ‘I was going to call you last night, but I thought you’d be asleep.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I wish you had.’ She let out a sob. ‘Alex, I can’t handle this. I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t get pregnant.’

  ‘Come on, my love. There are plenty of therapies if they find something irregular. It’s too early to get down about it.’

  ‘I know … I know. It’s just … Oh, there’s Maria. I have to go. I love you.’

  ‘Love you too,’ he managed, just before the connection was cut. He cursed himself for not calling the previous night. He should have known she’d be awake worrying.

  His mobile rang again.

  ‘This is Rachel Samuel. Were you busy at work?’

  ‘What? Oh … yes. Checking something.’

  ‘Why don’t you join me for breakfast and tell me about it?’

  He agreed and rang off, looking around for his clothes. With a clean T-shirt underneath, his denim shirt had another day in it, he reckoned. On his way out of the room, he rang the Fat Man.

  Rachel was sitting in a corner table, the remains of a continental breakfast in front of her. She had her laptop open.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ She turned the screen towards him.

  Mavros looked at a Reuters article about the shooting.

  ‘I checked the map. It happened only a kilometre from the home where Ester Broudo lives.’

  ‘Really? Is that significant?’

  She looked at him coolly. ‘Should it be? I was orienting myself. Go and get something to eat.’

  He did as he was told, picking up croissants, jam, yoghurt and juice from the buffet and ordering a Greek coffee from a passing waiter.

  ‘It says here that swastikas were sprayed on the dead man and a nearby door.’

  ‘Bloody fascists. That should put the Phoenix Rises right in the spotlight.’

  She closed the computer. ‘So, what were you working on so early in the morning – by your standards, at least?’

  He had a story worked out – in fact, he’d already put it into action. ‘I was asking my colleague in Athens to see if there’s any reference to your great-uncle in the Communist Party records.’

  Rachel raised an eyebrow. ‘Why would there be? There was never any mention of him being a member.’

  ‘There was never mention of him at all, according to you and your father. Besides, we have a contact, so why not use him?’

  ‘Why not indeed?’

  Mavros nodded to the waiter as his sketo appeared. ‘How was your evening?’ he asked. ‘Work, work, work?’

  She looked straight at him. ‘Until ten or so. Then I got bored and went for a walk. The seafront was pretty.’

  ‘Pretty chilly, I would think.’ He was impressed by her directness, but two things bothered him: the vagueness of ‘ten or so’ and the fact that when he saw her she was coming from the back streets across the square, not from the front. Then again, maybe she stopped being a robot when she’d finished work.

  ‘Chilly? I didn’t notice.’ She dropped her gaze. ‘Do you have an agenda for today?’

  She had him there. He took a large bite from a croissant.

  ‘Only,’ Rachel continued, ‘I have the name of an elderly gentleman who knew my father’s family. He survived Auschwitz. That’s all my father said, but I have the address and he’s expecting us this morning. Well, me, but I’ll need my trusty translator.’ She smiled briefly.

  Mavros concealed a sigh of relief. Short of suggesting they visit the Jewish Museum, he was out of ideas till Shimon, Allegra and the Fat Man reported back.

  They took a taxi that passed the White Tower and headed south-east.

  ‘There are some amazing buildings here,’ Rachel said, pointing at a run-down villa surrounded by apartment blocks. ‘Hang on.’ She looked at her guidebook. ‘That one was built by a Jewish merchant. It became a school after the war, but it’s been empty for thirty years.’

  ‘Shame.’

  ‘Mm. I wonder what happened to the owners.’

  Mavros let that go unanswered. From what he’d read in Years in Hell and Shimon had said, the few Jews who returned from the camps were not treated well. Maybe the man they were going to interview could expand on that. His name was Baruh Natzari. Mavros took the anthology of memoirs from his shoulder bag and checked. He hadn’t contributed.

  The taxi dropped them in a narrow street not far from the seafront in the southern suburb of Kalamaria. A plane was visible on its way to the airport.

  ‘Here it is,’ Mavros said, pointing to the name in Greek letters. He rang the bell.

  There was a squawk and then a high-pitched voice asked who was there. Mavros explained and the entry buzzer rang.

  ‘It’s the fourth floor,’ he said, looking at the list of residents in the hall. He inclined his head towards the stairs. ‘Shall we?’

  Rachel kept ahead of him all the way.

  ‘Impressive. You work out?’

  ‘I swim. Half an hour every morning and evening.’

  ‘Except when you’re on business trips.’

  ‘I always stay in hotels with pools.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mavros rang the bell.

  The door opened as far as the chain allowed.

  Mavros nudged Rachel forward. She introduced herself in English. The old man replied in a different language and she shook her head.

  ‘Another Judezmo speaker,’ she said. ‘Over to you.’

  The chain was removed and they were welcomed with old-fashioned warmth, their host smiling and bowing. Baruh Natzari was small and shrivelled, his head completely bald and the skin brown. The loose clothes he wore were clean and ironed, and he moved with surprising agility. He turned to them in the well-appointed living room that smelled of old books and floor polish, dark eyes twinkling.

  ‘What can I offer you?’ he said to Mavros in Greek. ‘I usually have a brandy about now.’

  Rachel shook her head, but Mavros wanted to keep the old man company. He watched as glasses of brandy and water were filled with a steady hand. A bowl of pistachios was pushed towards them across a low table.

  ‘Sit down, sit down,’ their host said. ‘I like to stay on my feet. Don’t let it bother you.’

  In fact, his constant movements were a distraction. Mavros tried to ignore them as he consulted Rachel about what to ask.

  ‘Mr Natzari,’ he said, ‘Miss Samuel—’

  ‘First names,’ the old man said, with a cackle. ‘I am Baruh, she is Rachel and you are …’

  ‘Alex.’

  ‘Proceed, Alex.’

  Mavros smiled. ‘You weren’t by any chance a lawyer, were you?’

  ‘Indeed. My forensic manner is so obvious?’

  ‘To me, yes. But then I see a lot of lawyers.’

  ‘Too bad. But you don’t want to know about my former profession.’

  Mavros shrugged. ‘I always find it useful to hear as much as possible from the peo
ple I interview.’ He glanced at Rachel. ‘I’m not sure about my client.’

  There was another cackle as Baruh Natzari looked at the card Mavros had given him. ‘Missing-persons specialist? You are a private investigator like in the old noir films?’

  ‘Of sorts. I drink too much on occasion, but I’ve given up smoking and short-lived love affairs. And I don’t have a gun.’

  ‘Ha! I think I like you, young man. And who are you looking for now? I received a message about the Samuel family. I must admit I haven’t thought about any of them for decades.’

  Rachel stared at Mavros and he realised he hadn’t translated for some time. He did so and she told him what to say.

  ‘Mr … Baruh, the Samuel in question is Rachel’s great-uncle, Aron.’

  The change in the old man was immediate. He stopped hopping about and moved to the sofa, sitting down as if his strings had been cut.

  ‘Aron … Aron Samuel?’

  Mavros and Rachel exchanged glances.

  ‘But Aron Samuel has been dead since Auschwitz-Birkenau was evacuated.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  This time the laugh was sardonic. ‘We, the prisoners, could be sure of nothing. The Germans were the ones who kept detailed records.’

  ‘Many of which were destroyed, although we are looking though recently discovered ones now.’

  ‘And why is that, may I ask?’

  ‘Do you know Ester Broudo?’

  Baruh nodded. ‘A good woman. We were never close, but we often met at community events over the years. Still do, although she doesn’t get about much these days.’

  ‘Did you attend the wedding of –’ Mavros looked at his notes – ‘Ilias Tsiako and Stella Vital the week before last?’

  ‘Of course. I am a distant relative of Ilias.’