Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 01 - Deadly Pedigree

by Jimmy Fox

  Where had that come from? Nick felt irresistibly drawn forward, too, for he suddenly sensed that this old fellow had led an interesting life.

  Nick was curious by nature, and he’d been in this business long enough to understand that oral history often revealed facts that written history missed. He unobtrusively foraged for a pencil and pad to take notes.

  “Very well, young man,” Corban said. “We work something out, yes? But first, I will tell you how they bled my family tree dry. Hah! and they call us blood-suckers, even today.”

  “I’m sorry, Max, but I don’t follow–”

  “Listen; you will. My father and mother owned a nice little hotel on the Bodensee–you may know it as Lake Constance–on the German side. The wrong side.”

  “You mean, because your family was Jewish?” Nick asked.

  “Yes. Oh, but we were Germans, too! Jewish Germans, weren’t we? So we thought. I was a youngster at the time, working at the hotel, of course. And going to school, dreaming about the rich lives of the guests who came to fish and swim and sail on the lake. Chasing the good-looking girls of our village. Expecting to go to university.” Corban gave a wistful sigh.

  “Do not think we were blind to the signs of what was coming. Everybody knew. They approved of what was going on, most of them. At first, it was gradual, but a secret? No, no.” He waved his hands as if refusing a second helping of something.

  “We were so sure that they considered us Germans first, not simply Jews who happened to be unlucky enough to be living in the Reich. We loved German culture, thought we shared it with the Gentiles. We worshiped the culture, just like we loved the Fatherland. To tell the truth, we were Jewish only in memory; my father and mother had nothing to do with the old ways. Oh yes, we were very modern, very modern. God help us!

  “A little cut here, a little cut there. That’s how it was. First came the pamphlets and posters with the Jews as vermin. Then we heard of the state propaganda films and the rumors against Jews, no longer just whispered, either. They had become bolder with their successes. We listened to the madman Hitler on the radio. We were shocked but still we did not see what was to come. How could anyone believe such craziness?

  “Soon, our loyal guests started to treat us like we were dirty, less than human. Then came the boycott, the Anschluss, the swastikas painted everywhere on our property. My father kept saying if it got too bad, we’d cross over into Switzerland. If it got too bad…it was bad enough already! When, when? He told us he knew some people who would get us through. I remember Kristallnacht like it was yesterday; I can hear the glass shattering, I can feel it crunching under my shoes. It got worse. There was blood in the streets, in the synagogues. When, when are we to leave, Papa? Already it was too late.”

  Corban raised his sleeve to reveal the blurred number. “You know about concentration camps?”

  “I, uh…yes, I know something about them,” Nick said, feeling suddenly like a student who hadn’t finished studying for that day’s big test. “My father served in the Army in Europe. He saw some of the liberated concentration camps as they marched into Germany in 1945. And he made sure I read pretty widely on the subject.”

  Corban shook his head. “You cannot know what it was like, what any of the camps were like, unless you were there. I never saw my parents or my two brothers or my three sisters again. All my aunts and uncles and cousins disappeared. Up in smoke.” He made a swirling gesture in the air. “You know, at the end, it happened so fast. We had no time to question, we didn’t know what to ask. Overnight we had become cattle led to slaughter.

  “The rest is like a dream to me, a nightmare that will not leave me. Why was I allowed to live? I do not know. Sometimes I wonder if I am not dead.” He looked around the room, as if he didn’t recognize matter and form anymore.

  “I worked in factories at first, because I was strong then, like you are when you are young, you know, a hard worker, determined to stay alive. I became ill, of course, but I managed to hide it for a time. They moved us as the fronts shifted. East, east I went, into the rising sun. It was cold, colder than I thought possible. Even the summers were without warmth and life. Don’t ask how long I was in this camp or that; I do not know. Time stopped for me. Somehow, God kept me alive, though there was less of me than you see now, thin and sick man that I am. I buried and burned the corpses and sorted the gold teeth and the hair for the Nazis as long as I could stand.”

  Corban had a feverish look in his pale eyes, though the rest of him seemed exhausted. Nick moved his hand nearer the phone, ready to call for an ambulance.

  But the old man continued his story, his fervor hardly abated.

  “And then it was my turn. The war was going bad, very bad for the Nazis. They could not kill us fast enough, but they did not want the Allies to see what they were doing to us. Trains were scarce, so they marched us on the snowy roads. You see, they hoped we would drop dead and save them a bullet. I think we were going to Chelmno death camp. That was the rumor, anyway. One day, when there was nothing left of me except bones, a rag or two, and a weak pulse, I looked up–it was a sunny, cold, sparkling spring day, I remember–and there, there were horrified Russian soldiers in place of the Nazi guards.”

  He blew his nose with startling, loud vigor.

  “Acch, the things I could tell you.”

  The trance broken, Nick took a deep breath and shifted in the chair, making it squeak loudly in the sudden quiet of the room.

  Nick was strongly moved by Corban’s narrative. A hundred questions formed in his mind, the foremost being, If all of his relatives are dead, what the hell am I supposed to find?

  “Look, Max,” Nick said, “I know this is painful for you. You don’t have to tell me anymore. Let’s just move on to the specifics of the project you want me to–”

  “It helps, sometimes, to talk. No one wants to hear about it anymore.”

  “I understand. Well, if that’s what you want. What happened after the war? What did you do? How did you get yourself back together?”

  “After a few years in the displaced-persons camps, learning how to live like a human being again, for a while I cried, and a while after that I screamed in rage at the Nazis, all Germans, mankind, my parents for being so stupid–even at God. I got married to another survivor; she was French. God rest her soul, she is gone now. We came here, to New Orleans. You see, I liked the music and the river and the warmth; she liked the food and the street names.” He smiled sadly. “That is what we told ourselves. But really we both hoped that a few thousand miles would help us forget. It did not.” He paused for a minute, looked down, his eyes filling with tears.

  “She could have no children. The Nazi devils–‘doctors’ they called themselves–they did…experiments on her. For many years she worked at a nice place on Royal, selling lace things and gifts for the tourists. This handkerchief, she gave me, for our forty-fifth wedding anniversary…I was a traveling dental-supplies salesman.” Corban wiped his eyes and looked up, a trace of an ironic snicker shining through the tears. “It was the one trade I learned in the camps. I had to do something,” he said, shrugging.

  “I’m sorry, Max. That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard. You’re right, I can’t know what it was like. But–and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way–as a genealogist, I’m fascinated. There are few more difficult tasks in modern genealogy than tracing families torn apart or destroyed by the Holocaust. I’ve never actually worked on such a case, but truthfully, I’ve always wanted to. And more than that, since my father is Jewish, I understand your anguish on a more personal level.”

  “Mazel-tov. Welcome to the club. Wait until you see the dues. Oy, they’re murder!”

  “Well, I’m not a religious person. Currently, I mean.”

  “When you shed your first real tear, you’ll come crawling back, young man, back to God, whatever you call Him. Like me. Mark my words.”

  Nick felt sorry for the guy. How had he survived with those memories and remained s
ane? Was he sane? Well, clearly, he was eccentric, to put it charitably. Despite his compassion for him, Nick felt compromised, tricked into revealing such personal things to a stranger. He also believed he’d shed a sufficiency of genuine tears himself, thank you very much.

  Nick was a private person by nature; his humiliation at Freret University had made him even more so. Though he rooted around, sometimes literally, in the basements and attics of other people’s lives, he didn’t want anyone doing the same in his.

  “Max, if we could talk genealogy for a few minutes. From what you’ve told me, I think the best place to start is with your parents, and with whatever European records may have survived. It’s possible some line of your family escaped. There are several excellent archives in Europe and Israel which–”

  Corban suddenly lost his temper.

  “No! I have had enough of eating the dust of my past in Europe! I know what you will find there: a dead vine, uprooted and burned and scattered to the four winds. You must find the new shoot, the graft that may have been saved from the fire. No, forget Europe, I tell you! I have seen the death of more genealogy than you can know. The Nazis–may they rot in Hell!–made us carry a card–”

  “The ahnenpass,” Nick said. “I’ve heard of it.”

  “Yes, that’s it. It had the names of ancestors, so that even they became informers on you. ‘Look, he’s a Jew!’ the Nazis made them shout. They wanted it all written down, so there would be no trouble in a German mind when it came to denying us freedom, travel, property, love, livelihood, life. It’s the law, you see, and the law must be followed. Cut, cut, cut, until our lifeblood flowed from us. Oh, it was all very properly done, stamped and signed and filed. They were rounding us up, drawing in our history to the ovens.

  “My every waking and sleeping moment is a vision of what they did to those I loved. What they are still doing to me. You will find nothing of me and mine in Europe, young man, or in Israel. Take my word. But there was a story among my family that a cousin of my grandmother came to Louisiana from Alsace and made good.”

  “When was this?” Nick asked, glad finally to have something to write down.

  “In the 1840s or ’50s. I remember only his last name: Balazar. It is all that is left, except me. This man’s name is the last prayer in an empty boxcar.”

  Damn! Nick thought. There went his chance for some outrageously overpriced overseas research.

  “Okay, Max, I’m on the case–that is, if you want me. But I can’t promise any definite timetable. For one thing, I’m extremely busy with current projects”–a slight exaggeration bordering on a lie; Nick had already missed one utility bill. “For another, this is likely to be a bit complicated–and, I might add, worth more than I’m going to charge you. In your case, there are special problems. Usually I begin a pedigree search with fairly specific information on identity or locale. One line is involved, and you work backward from the client himself. Another thing–most of my clients don’t especially want to meet their newfound relations. They’re just curious, or looking for something in their family history that makes them feel important in their otherwise ordinary lives. Say, descent from an early distinguished colonist or from a soldier of the Revolutionary War. Your search may involve several lines, hundreds of people. But I think I can keep within a budget of”–he took a quick look at Corban to gauge the effectiveness of the sales pitch, and doubled his original idea for the fee–“fifteen hundred dollars. A turnkey job.”

  “You really should make it $750, young man.”

  “Let’s say a thousand, then, plus expenses.” Might as well throw that in, too. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m offering a professional service, not a piece of furniture at auction. It’s not too late for either of us to change his mind.”

  His words had come out more harshly than he’d intended. It was the old imperiousness he once used so effectively on students who mistook his kindness and willingness to help as weakness or a sign that he’d do their work for them. He’d always hated himself for a few minutes after crushing a student’s fragile blossom of self-confidence.

  With a sour expression on his face, the old man capitulated: “Yes, yes, all right!”

  “You can pay me when I finish. I’ll keep you informed of any expenses, which I expect to be minor, anyway.” Damn, too honest. “If you would write down for me the spelling of the ancestor’s name, as well as your phone number.” Nick handed him the pencil and the pad, turned to a fresh page.

  “Who? What ancestor?”

  Great, the old guy’s got Alzheimer’s, on top of everything else.

  “The ancestor you mentioned, the one who might have immigrated to Louisiana. Remember?” The one who sounds suspiciously like the well-known fictional Cajun, Belizaire, Nick almost said, wondering if Corban’s ancestor was a fiction, too.

  “Oh, that ancestor! Why didn’t you say so.”

  Corban hesitated, then wrote the information.

  Still terrorized, watching over his shoulder, after all these years, Nick was thinking. A strange little man. He’d be a bit addled, too, after such horrors.

  He decided he’d better accompany Corban on his trip down the stairs, and to the streetcar stop, which was his stated destination. But Corban waved him off.

  “Young man,” said Corban, “I survived the Nazis. New Orleans I can handle.”

  “Well, okay, if you’re sure–oh, one more thing. Where did you hear about me?”

  “A retired dentist who used to be my best customer told me you were good at whatever it is you do.” Corban mentioned the name. Nick remembered the job. “Also he said you were reasonable. Ha! What does he know? These dentists and their fast cars.” He left, shaking his head.

  So the Yellow Pages ad still had not produced.

  Standing at the open door of his office, Nick listened for a few minutes to make sure his new client made it down the stairs safely. He heard Corban’s not quite convincing hack echoing up the stairwell, and regretted not having asked for half of the money in advance.

  2

  This was crazy, really crazy. She knew it was. What a chance she had taken! It was all highly illegal.

  But the money! There was the power that had fortified Elzbieta throughout the seemingly interminable train and plane rides.

  She worked at the District State Archive in Poznan, Poland. Her long journey had taken her to Zurich, to New York, and finally here, to the New Orleans airport.

  Hunger pangs pulled at her stomach. She forced herself to stay away from all the tantalizing aromas wafting from the restaurants that seemed to fill every niche. There would be time for such things, later.

  She had encountered no delays in customs in New York, but she did witness a drug bust in the line next to hers. Some very nervous young men were apparently trying to smuggle heroin into the country in condoms they’d swallowed. She had figured out what was happening from the odd word overheard and understood and from the desperate pantomime of the situation.

  Elzbieta knew this trip would be the most momentous event of her life; she tried to memorize every detail of her journey.

  What a day! What a wide, astounding world it was! What a lot of money this strange errand of hers would bring. A hundred thousand American dollars! It was almost unbelievable that she had found the courage to make the additional demand. The future belonged to the bold in the new Poland; and, in truth, she had done worse things during the nightmare years. Now, she would be able to take her son for the operation in Germany; she could buy new clothes; some jewelry; she could maybe even get a car, one of the fine new ones from the West, not the smoke-belching Eastern Bloc jalopies she recalled from her childhood.

  Some new glasses. Yes, she would buy them here, before she went home. A small indulgence, but she deserved it.

  The richness of the rest of the world had shocked Elzbieta anew twenty-four hours ago; but now she was just plain numb from exhaustion and sensory overload. Though she was only an assistant librarian at the Archives, s
he had already seen something of the world. She’d attended a small religious college in Virginia on an American Baptist scholarship just after the Berlin Wall went down and communism imploded. She had not actually been interested in being a Baptist, but even a short Western education was worth the two-year charade of faith for the benefit of those earnest Americans. Especially an education that gave her knowledge of English. A very peculiar, difficult language, but a definite asset that got attention. Elzbieta went after what she wanted.

  But in the hubbub of the moment, she realized her English wasn’t as good as she’d believed. She struggled with the direction signs. Announcements from speakers distracted her; she couldn’t help trying to figure out what the rapid-fire words meant.

  Concentrate, concentrate! she berated herself silently. She was looking for the taxi area, where someone would be waiting for her with a sign with her name on it.

  Everybody except her seemed to know where to go. Would her contact wait? This was like a spy novel, more fun to read than to enact.

  Lugging her one small taped-together suitcase she struggled through crowds of people. The suitcase contained most of her meager worldly belongings–a few precious bootleg cosmetics, grooming items, two changes of underwear, one blouse, one pair of old, mended, but genuine Levis, which she coveted from her college years and could still fit into, almost without painful pinching. In Zurich, using a good deal of her advance money–$5000–she’d loaded up on over-the-counter medicines she’d never heard of; she could sell them when she returned home. Not that she would need such piddling sums then. Just a habit of survival.

  In her other hand was a briefcase, with the merchandise she was delivering. One hundred thousand dollars’ worth, though you’d never know it to look at it! On the jet, she had sat protectively next to it at first, and had reacted perhaps a little too violently when a Swiss Air stewardess politely offered to stow it under the seat in front of her.

  TAXIS, and an arrow. Then other signs with the same thing. She didn’t have to consult her dictionary for that. At least she was going the right way. In spite of her exhaustion, she quickened her steps. Soon she would be rich.