Miriam had let go of him and had been peering at the papers in her hand and now she lifted her chin and looked very closely at Kuyper.
‘Your stepfather’s partner was named Coenen?’
‘What? Oh, yes. Coenen.’
‘Isaac Coenen?’
Kuyper stared at her, and his nose, red now from his emotion, seemed to twitch.
‘That is his name,’ he said cautiously.
‘Of Albert Cuypstraat — ’
‘Then you know all about him already!’ Kuyper almost wailed it. ‘So why come here and drive me mad? Look, I told you, I know nothing more than I’ve said and I want to know nothing more. Leave me and my mother alone. I’ll want to hear nothing ever again, you understand me? Tell your friends, tell them all, next time I stay behind the door. I don’t come out.’ And he scuttled back through the door he had left open behind him and slammed it shut, leaving them both staring at its blank panels with equally blank surprise.
Thirty-two
‘Poor devil,’ Abner said and pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘The poor bastard.’
‘Why?’ Miriam demanded. ‘He’ll get over it soon enough. It’s not as though we’re going to come back to him. All he wants is to be left alone, so we will. Won’t we?’
‘I didn’t mean that. It’s the guilt. Poor bastard.’
‘Oh,’ Miriam said, and stood still. They had been walking along the small street that housed Kuyper’s office, towards the Ruyschstraat where they’d be able to find a taxi, but now she turned to look at him. ‘I suppose so. He must have survived because of Heine.’
‘That’s how I see it. Other Amsterdam Jews were taken off to the camps or had to hide in attics and annexes or wherever. This man and his mother belonged to one of the Gestapo Jews so…’
‘Poor bastard indeed,’ she said after a moment. ‘What a hell of a thing to have to live with.’
‘And inherit. You heard what he said — the business is his now, through his mother. He has to look after her, so he hadn’t much choice about the situation when she inherited. He had to keep it going for her, I guess. Her living, you see. But now she’s old, won’t live much longer, and then how does he live with his conscience? Throw the business away and start clean somewhere else? He’s past fifty and not the most dynamic of characters, I’d say. He’s as trapped in his stepfather’s guilt now as he was as a child.’
She started to walk again, and he fell into step beside her. ‘There’s more than one way to break your heart,’ she said then. ‘Worse ways to grow up than we did.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. I guess so.’
The taxi deposited them outside a narrow building on the corner of a small street that looked back down towards the park they’d skirted to reach it, and Miriam, looking at her map, said, ‘That’s called Sarphati Park, would you believe. I imagine it’s the same as Sephardi?’
‘I’d think so,’ he said. ‘Most of the Jews who were here in Holland were Sephardi, weren’t they?’
‘The ones who came early, from Spain and Portugal, the fifteenth-century ones, they were. But the later arrivals from Germany must have been mostly Ashkenazi. What are you?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Which are you? My mother took a great deal of pride in saying she was Sephardi through her own mother, not through David Novak. One of the grandee families, she said her maternal grandparents were. So what was yours?’
‘How should I know? No one ever told me. I explained that to you.’ He felt a chill creep between them, as the memories seeped in again, the old sense of outrage at never being told anything at all about himself that mattered. And here was yet another piece of the jigsaw that was Abner Wiseman having to be cut out by someone else. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Not at all,’ she said and looked away, shy suddenly. ‘I just thought — look, here’s the place. Not like Kuyper’s. It’s a shop.’
It was a very small shop with the windows filled with tired trays of cheap jewellery, all of which looked to have lain there undisturbed for years, and twists of faded once-coloured crêpe paper at the front that were deeply depressing in their attempts to look cheerful. The door of the shop had a cracked glass panel in it, and when they pushed on it a discordant bell made a half-hearted attempt to ring over their heads.
Inside the place was even more dispirited. A path had been scuffed through the dust on the floor and led to a narrow wooden counter, where watch straps on curling cards and trays of tarnished silver earrings jostled for space with a lamp and a scatter of jeweller’s implements. There was a very old man sitting with his head bent over a watch he was manipulating in the pool of light thrown by the lamp and he didn’t look up as they came in.
‘Mr Coenen?’ Abner said. ‘Could you spare us a moment?’
The old man stopped working, his hands remaining fixed in the position they had been in when Abner spoke, as a child holds a rigid pose when he plays a game of statues. He did not lift his head.
‘I’ve come here, with my colleague, from Mr Kuyper, over at Oosterpark, and we just wanted to ask you — ’
The old man lifted his head then and sharply pulled his hands away from his work and the watch which he had been working on clattered as it landed on the counter. He looked at them with wide pale eyes, faded with age and with milky rims around the irises.
‘Another one?’ he said, and leaned back so that he was in the shadow outside his working lamp. ‘How many more? I told him what he wanted to know. I can’t do more. I told the man.’
‘Told who?’ Miriam said. ‘Told what?’
There was a little silence and then the old man said in a guarded voice, ‘So? You tell me what Kuyper sent you for. A watch repair? This I won’t believe. This is what the other one told me, and I believed him. Why should he send work to me, that Kuyper, feeling as he does? But I believed the other man. You I won’t believe. Why did he send you?’
‘We’re doing some research,’ Miriam said, ‘historical research, to help members of the Allied services who escaped from prisoner of war camps through Holland to — ’
‘No, we are not,’ Abner said abruptly. ‘I’m sorry Miriam, but we’re not. I’m doing research for a film, Mr Coenen. I’m interested in the effects of the labour camps and the Holocaust on the children and grandchildren of the survivors. That’s the theme of my film, but I’m exploring it via real stories of real people. And as part of the work I’ve done already I’ve heard about a man who, when he was a boy in Cracow, betrayed some hidden Jews for a bag of apples. One of the people who knows who this man is and won’t say, recently collected information about the diamond dealers in Amsterdam in the Forties. I don’t know why he wanted this information, but we now have it too. Your name is one of those on the list we got from the museum computer. So was Mr Kuyper’s — or rather his stepfather’s, Heine. We went to see Mr Kuyper, who told us something about his stepfather’s dealings in the war. He told us you were Heine’s partner and took over some of his papers and so on after Heine died. I don’t know what the connection is between you and Brazel — the man who was seeking this information and who knows the identity of the boy from Cracow — but since it’s the only lead I have at present, I’m following it up. There! Now you have it all straight and true. Can you help me?’
There was a long silence and Abner’s spirits spiralled down-wards. He could have followed Miriam’s lead, done it her way, with a devious tale of seeking Dutchmen loyal to the Allies during the war; that approach flattered, made people willing to talk. His own had clearly been a disaster. And he was very aware of Miriam silent at his side.
There was a scraping sound as the old man pushed back his stool and got to his feet.
‘You’d better come in,’ he said, and his voice sounded tired and a little shaky. ‘I can’t talk out here,’ and he went shuffling off into the dimness behind him. After a moment, Abner, seeing a gap away on the left, followed him round the counter through a door that was just behind it, with Miriam on his h
eels.
The room the door led to was startlingly different from the dusty old shop outside. It was furnished with a mass of heavy, lovingly polished mahogany furniture and carpeted with a clearly costly Persian rug on which, in front of a large tiled stove that glowed richly with banked-up coke, a deep leather sofa was set. A vast marmalade cat was asleep in one corner of it, and it raised a sleepy head to stare balefully at them as they came in and then curled itself into sleep again. The old man moved one hand towards the sofa to invite them to sit down and dragged another chair from the far side to sit and face them.
‘You want coffee?’ he said wearily, and Abner almost laughed; the automatic offer of hospitality was so ludicrously irrelevant.
‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘Miriam?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Look, Mr Coenen, we don’t want to upset you, you know. It’s just that we need some information to help us and if you have it, we’d be really grateful. There’s no risk — we’re not after you or anything. No one wants to hurt you. Just answer a few questions, and we’ll go. That’s all.’
She’s gone into her nurse-to-the-old mode, Abner thought; the specially soothing voice with a hint of firm commonsense practicality beneath it to make sure the old man does as she wants. And he felt a pang of shame on her behalf.
‘You think I’m frightened?’ the old man said. ‘I’m not frightened any more. Once I lived with it, there was nothing in my veins but terror, but now what does it matter? I’m old. It’s too late now for anything like frightened.’
‘So you don’t mind talking to us?’ Abner said, and a wave of gratitude slid over him. There was something so distasteful about harrying people, and yet it was so often a necessary function of honest research. Anyone who made it easier had to be loved, and for a moment Abner loved this tired old man who gazed at him with those pale eyes that looked as though they had been boiled.
‘Mind? What does that mean to me? I’m tired, that’s all I know. Very tired. Talking is work, so maybe — no, I don’t mind. What is it you want to know?’
‘Brazel came to see you?’ Abner said.
‘If that was his name. A small man, in black, like a suit of armour, it looked, black and shiny, eyes the same, and a little moustache,’ and he ran a gnarled finger over his wrinkled upper lip in a gesture that was suddenly perky and which ended on a little flick of his wrist, and it conjured up the bluebottle nature of Brazel exactly.
‘That was the man,’ Abner said. ‘What did he want?’
‘The same as you, I imagine,’ Coenen said dryly. ‘Money. Or the way to get it.’
‘We don’t want money!’ Miriam said with a sudden sharpness, and her voice was frosted with scorn. ‘Do you think that?’
‘Everyone wants money,’ Coenen said. ‘Until they get so old they discover it doesn’t matter any more.’ He shook his head, in an odd little gesture. ‘Oh, to be born now, or to go backwards and take your knowledge with you! That would be the dream, hey? Such a dream. You’re young and wouldn’t understand, would you? And you want money, like everyone else.’
‘I want to make my film honestly,’ Abner said. ‘And that’s why I’m asking. What did Brazel want exactly?’
The old man took a deep breath and seemed to slump a little in his chair. ‘I’ll have to tell it all from the start, like I did him. It’s easier that way. If I try to tell it backwards in answer to your questions it takes longer, and me, I’m tired. I don’t have much time left for things that take too long. So listen and you’ll see. Don’t interrupt, all the time. The other one, he interrupted — ’
‘We’ll listen,’ Abner said and sat with his hands clenched inside his pockets as he leaned back in the sofa, prepared to listen with his mouth clamped shut. And Miriam looked at him and opened her mouth, and he gave her a minatory shake of the head and she too leaned back and said nothing.
‘Menschen, yet!’ the old man said with an ironic chuckle. ‘Children who listen and, who knows, perhaps understand! Such menschen! All right, I’ll tell you. But I need schnapps. You?’
Abner and Miriam shook their heads together and again the old man produced that faded chuckle and without getting to his feet leaned back and extracted a bottle and a small glass from the cupboard behind him and set them on the table at his side. He poured a drink with careful deliberation, swallowed it in one gulp and then poured another before he leaned back in his chair and stared at them both.
‘All right. So, I’m Isaac Coenen and for the past hundred, hundred and fifty years, maybe, my family have been diamond dealers here and in Rotterdam. Not in a big way of business, you understand, but well established and well thought of in the trade. People trusted us. God, how they trusted us. That was why it all happened — my father, rest his soul in peace, was a man such as you don’t find everywhere, if anywhere at all. So honest, you could lead him to your own diamond mine and he’d brush off the soles of his shoes as he left for fear of taking away something that was not his. So, when the bad times come and the Germans start their games, it’s natural enough that people come to him to protect their fortunes, hmm?’
Abner felt Miriam stir beside him and he reached out and put a warning hand on her leg and she relaxed, and the old man glittered slightly at him and went on.
‘They come with cash and convert it to diamonds and they say, “Joseph,” they say. “I’ve bought these diamonds from you and now I want you to take care of them. Later, when it’s safe, when I have my wife, my children, my old parents, out of Germany, I’ll come and collect them. Take care of them for me.” So he does. And after the first comes two more and then ten more and then a hundred more. People hear that you can leave money with Joseph Coenen, safe in diamonds, and one day you can come and get them back and you’ll be sure it will be there, safe as you left it, not a fraction of a carat missing. And he didn’t mind what he took. Small fortunes, no more than one or two decent diamonds and a handful of bits and pieces, or millions of marks in big stones, uncut stones, good stones. And by the time the Germans came here to Holland he had a big store of such fortunes, all pledged to be returned — and he will return them — because he’s Joseph Coenen, and people trust him. Jews don’t trust German banks and safe deposits. Or Dutch banks, either. They’re no safer than Germans, and Joseph Coenen, he’s safe.’
He stopped speaking then and after a moment reached for his second glass of schnapps and drank it in one sharp throwing back of his head, and then sat in silence for what seemed a very long time. But neither Miriam nor Abner said a word.
‘They took him and my mother,’ Coenen said eventually. ‘I wasn’t here, I was in the country. I had a girlfriend then, not a Jewish girl, and that upset my father. He wouldn’t have her in the house, so I used to go and visit her in her father’s house near Delft. In the country. And when I came back I hear what has happened, and in my father’s special safe, which the Germans don’t find — they’d emptied all the others, of course — I find the letter he left me and all the store of diamonds he’s holding for people. There were accounts in a book, all listed so neat and tidy. He had a wonderful clear handwriting, my father, wonderful. Millions of guilders’ worth there were. Millions. You can pack a lot of money in a small space in diamonds, my friend, you know that? And there I sat, a boy of twenty-five, my parents taken off to a labour camp, nothing left in the business I can sell, no way of making a living and afraid they will come and take me too. And I go to my father’s friend, Uwe Heine, and I beg him to help me, and he tells me he will, and — ’
The old man swallowed and tried to speak again and couldn’t, and again reached for the bottle of schnapps. Abner watched him anxiously. If he drank too much, surely he’d stop being able to talk coherently? But even after three glasses he seemed unaltered in his manner, and was able to go on speaking.
‘I did what he did. Why not? When times are bad, you do what you must. I was a good enough boy, no better, no worse than that, but I was twenty-five, I had my girl, my lovely girl, and I wante
d to live, so I turned. All right, I turned. I wasn’t the only one. My father’s best friend, old Uncle Uwe I’d called him all my life, he did it, and others, many others. Why shouldn’t I? I’d have walked over other people’s dead bodies to stay alive, you hear me? Over dead bodies…’
And he leaned forwards and rested his head in his hands. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘I did just that.’
Still Abner and Miriam said nothing. He looked up at Abner and said loudly, ‘So? What do you say to that?’
‘Nothing,’ Abner said quietly. ‘You said to say nothing. And anyway I don’t want to say anything.’
‘You don’t want to tell me what a bastard I was? What a devil incarnate, what a criminal? A thief, murderer and robber of the dead? You don’t want to speak of this? What sort of man are you?’ And his voice became shrill.
After a moment Abner said, ‘Just a man. Not a judge. What would I have done in your shoes? Not a great deal differently, I imagine. You weren’t alone.’
Coenen looked almost as though he were going to weep then but he managed to restrain himself. ‘Well, there it is. It’s what I did. When I needed money, there were the diamonds in my father’s special safe to lean on. I didn’t care what would happen afterwards. If the owners came back to get it, what would I know? My father was dead. I couldn’t help it if there were mistakes in what was left for them. You see how far down I went? Willing to lay the blame for my own evil on my father’s back after he was gassed at Treblinka. Oh, yes, I knew what happened to them. The Gestapo made sure I knew. It kept me in line, they said. But I never told them of the special safe. They never ever knew what I had hidden. And there it stayed…’
Again his voice dwindled away and Abner ventured a question. ‘You didn’t go on drawing on it after the war?’
Postscripts Page 35
