The Warsaw Anagrams

by Richard Zimler

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Fourteen.’

  Her big brown eyes were full of hope, but she quickly realized I was going to turn her down and reached for my hand. ‘Dr Cohen, I know what men need – even good men like you.’ She pressed my palm to her breast and, when I tried to jerk it away, gripped it with both hands. ‘I’ll do whatever you want. And I won’t tell anyone. I swear!’

  ‘Oh, God,’ I groaned, and my shuddering made her finally release me.

  ‘Our savings have run out, Dr Cohen,’ Bina told me, tears caught in her lashes.

  I wanted to shake some sense into her, or simply walk away, but what right had I to judge her? ‘Listen closely, Bina,’ I told her. ‘You’re a brave girl. And you should do whatever you need to do to stay alive. But I’m not who I was. I don’t know if I can-’

  ‘All I’m asking is a chance!’ she interrupted desperately.

  ‘Very well, I’ll send for you whenever I need a message delivered or a meal cooked.’

  I thought I was lying, but how could I be sure any more of my own intentions? Or the consequences of even my most seemingly harmless actions?

  We stared at each other for a long time, and because of what I now knew was possible between us, our solidarity terrified me. I don’t know what she saw, but I saw a girl crawling through the trenches of a long slow war, and whom I was powerless to protect – and whom I resented because of that.

  I handed her ten złoty, which made her rise up on her toes and give me a popping kiss on the cheek – transformed into a young girl again.

  ‘Now go,’ I told her. ‘Your mother must be worried.’

  As soon as Bina left, I headed to the bakery in our courtyard. Coming in from the arctic chill, the heat seemed tropical, and the workers were in their bare feet and shirtsleeves, with paper bags on their heads. Ewa wasn’t there – she was at home with her daughter – so Ziv agreed to look after Stefa.

  In the hour I had before Mikael Tengmann’s arrival, I intended to search for more border crossings, but when I reached the sidewalk I heard my name called from behind me. Turning, I saw the fox-faced woman I’d spotted at the funeral, still carrying her book. Her ears and nose were red.

  ‘Dr Cohen, excuse me for interrupting, but I need to speak with you,’ she said.

  Looking at her closely, I realized I’d seen her prior to the funeral, but I couldn’t remember where. ‘Why didn’t you knock on our door?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t want to impinge on your grief.’

  ‘You must be frozen. Let’s go upstairs.’

  ‘No, your niece may react badly to what I have to say. Where else can we talk?’

  ‘The Café Levone. We’ll get you something warm to drink.’

  As we started off, she said, ‘I felt I had to be at the funeral. I’m sorry if I seemed out of place. I didn’t know your grandnephew.’

  ‘There’s no need to apologize,’ I replied.

  She looked at me gratefully. ‘My name is Dorota Levine.’

  When I asked what she was reading, she turned the cover of Stefan Zweig’s Marie Antoinette to face me. ‘I take a book with me whenever I know I’m going to wait.’

  It was then that I recalled that she’d come to the Yiddish Library a few weeks earlier and asked me to help her find books on butterflies for her son.

  ‘I think we met briefly a couple of weeks ago,’ I told her. ‘At the library where I work.’

  She smiled. ‘You were very kind to help me.’

  She grew silent then, and she rubbed her hand over her lips as if to keep from making further revelations. My curiosity about her made me fail to spot a puddle in time and I stepped through its ice sheet into the mud below. Sopping, cursing under my breath, I trudged on. Once seated inside the café, I kicked off my shoes, which were as ugly as two dead bats. My toes had been stained brown by my wet socks and my nails were yellowing daggers. A waiter fetched me a towel and then produced a dry pair of socks, insisting I take them, which was so unexpected that I was struck dumb.

  The café smelled of cheap beer and cigar smoke. While we waited for our coffee, Dorota told me her cousin Ruti was married to the son of a university acquaintance of mine. The young man’s name was Manfred Tuwim, and although he was stuck in Munich, far away from lonely Ruti… Dorota launched into one of those wordy explanations that Jews cobble together to prove that they’re all part of the same club, linked through enough upstanding friends and relatives – and maybe even a rabbi or two – to fill up a bar mitzvah reception at the Berlin Sports Palace. My father had called this tiresome tradition Jewish knitting.

  I cut her off. ‘Why did you want to talk with me?’ I asked.

  She took a black-and-white photograph from the pages of Marie Antoinette. ‘Because of my daughter, Anna,’ she replied, handing it to me.

  A slender girl stood by a fruit tree turned by springtime into a cloud of white blossoms. She wore a pleated skirt – dowdy and old-fashioned – and a dark, high-collared blouse that looked as if it reeked of mothballs. Their antiquity seemed to embarrass Anna, and she’d pulled her long tresses around to her front and was holding on to them for dear life. It was a pose that troubled me; children who cling to themselves generally have no one they can trust.

  Putting on my reading glasses, I spotted fierce resentment in Anna’s eyes, and saw, too, that she was leaning towards the right edge of the picture, anxious to flee. But the photographer’s finger had clicked the shutter too quickly, sending her image into the future – and here to me. Beside the girl was a figure that had been cut away except for the small hand that held hers. I guessed that the missing person had been her brother, and that he had been the anchor keeping Anna from dashing away.

  ‘That was a year ago,’ Dorota told me. ‘My husband took the picture in Bednarski Park – in Kraków. We were visiting my in-laws.’

  I’ve learned from my patients to pay close attention to the first offering they give you. Keeping the photograph with her was clearly Dorota’s way of proving to me that she’d never leave home without a reminder of her daughter – and that she was devoted to the girl. Yet why had she chosen such an unflattering shot?

  ‘Anna didn’t like being photographed,’ I observed.

  ‘No, she hated it – at least when my husband took the pictures.’

  Dorota seemed keen to convince me that mistrust characterized the relationship between Anna and her father. ‘Her clothes were an older sister’s?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but the blouse had been mine.’

  ‘Who was with her – holding her hand?’

  ‘Her brother, Daniel. He was seven then.’

  Our coffee had just arrived, and I was eager for the clarity of thought it would give me, but it was as bitter as acorns. Dorota was gazing away from me, and fidgeting with her collar. She seemed a woman who knew she was passing through life largely unseen. Under normal circumstances I’d have said she was leading a smaller life than was necessary, but inside our enclave, being overlooked could prove an advantage.

  ‘Does Anna get along well with Daniel?’ I asked, catching the waiter’s eye and motioning for him to return.

  ‘They used to fight like devils when they were little,’ Dorota told me, ‘but they’d become friendlier of late.’ She gazed down, as though she’d already said too much.

  Her retreat into silence – and use of they’d instead of they’ve – made me wonder if one or both of her children had died, though with any luck they’d merely been smuggled to Christian friends outside the ghetto.

  The waiter came to me, and I asked for a shot of schnapps. As he left, a pigeon flew in the door. Landing on an empty table, he began pecking at crumbs.

  I faced Dorota again. ‘So your son is a fan of butterflies,’ I told her, testing whether she’d use the present tense when discussing him.

  ‘Yes, he thinks they’re the most wondrous creatures in the world,’ she replied, beaming as if I’d made her day.

  So it was he
r daughter who resided inside the past. I handed her back the photograph. ‘What’s happened to Anna?’ I asked.

  Dorota looked around the café to confirm that no one was eavesdropping, then shifted her chair towards mine. ‘She’s dead,’ she confided. ‘The Nazis murdered her. She was tossed into barbed wire. Just like your nephew.’

  Stunned, I raised my hand over my eyes as though to protect myself. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ I told her. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘A little over three weeks ago.’

  ‘And you came to the funeral because you think there’s a connection between Adam and her – from the way they were found.’

  ‘Not just that. When she was brought to me, her right hand was missing.’

  CHAPTER 10

  ‘How did you find out that Adam had been disfigured?’ I asked Dorota.

  She took a quick sip of her coffee. ‘I’ve a cousin in the Jewish police who saw your nephew after what the Nazis did to him.’

  ‘So your cousin already knew about Anna.’

  ‘Yes, I’d told him, but he warned me not to discuss her with anyone. A man from the Jewish Council also made it clear that I was not to tell anyone about how Anna died. I almost didn’t come to talk with you.’

  ‘Was it Benjamin Schrei who spoke to you?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, do you know him?’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ I replied, furious; Schrei had known that Adam’s death had not been an isolated killing and had lied to me. How many more children’s bodies had been defiled? I gulped down the last of my coffee, savouring the burn of the schnapps I’d poured in. While I filled the bowl of my pipe, considering how best to confront Schrei, Dorota gave me a hard look.

  ‘I’m listening,’ I told her.

  Leaning over the table, she circled her arms together, as though around a stash of secrets she’d accumulated since her daughter’s death. ‘Anna didn’t return home on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth of January,’ she began. ‘It was a Friday, and she was supposed to help me prepare our Sabbath dinner. She was found by the Jewish police the next morning.’

  ‘Excuse me for asking this, but was your daughter naked when she was found?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And was there anything special about her hand that was taken?’

  She looked at me as if I was insane. ‘It was a girl’s hand,’ she told me resentfully. ‘I’d say that was special, wouldn’t you?’

  I lit my pipe, eager for the comfort of an old vice. ‘Were there any wounds on her body?’ I asked from inside the swirl of smoke around me.

  ‘None.’

  ‘Was anything in her mouth?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she replied.

  ‘I found a piece of string in Adam’s mouth. I think the murderer put it there.’

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t look. But why in God’s name would the murderer put string in the mouth of the children he kills?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  It occurred to me then that Adam might have been returning to the ghetto with valuable goods. Wanting to know whether robbery could have been a motive for Anna’s murder – and the theft of her hand – I asked, ‘Did your daughter wear a ring – maybe one she’d worn since she was tiny and could no longer remove from her finger?’

  ‘No. She had a pretty garnet ring, but she stopped wearing it in the ghetto because she’d lost so much weight that it would slide right off her finger.’

  ‘How about a bracelet?’

  Dorota shook her head. ‘She only ever wore pearl earrings. They were a gift from me – pink pearls dangling from a silver chain. But she didn’t have them on when she was found. They must have been stolen from her. Though they weren’t worth very much – I mean, if you’re thinking that a thief may have killed her. The only thing that anyone might have found valuable was her hand itself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She leaned towards me, her head low to the table, and whispered conspiratorially, ‘The killer may be using parts of our children’s bodies to make something inhuman.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘A golem,’ she mouthed, her eyes fearful, as if saying the word aloud might summon one from its hiding place.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To protect us!’ she declared.

  I felt cornered by Dorota’s beliefs. ‘My God, woman, your daughter has been murdered! And a real person killed her. Don’t you want to find out who it was?’

  ‘All right, Dr Cohen,’ she replied with controlled anger, ‘maybe you don’t believe that making such a creature is possible, but what if there’s a lunatic out there who thinks he can?’

  She showed me a challenging look, and I had to admit that madness might explain what had been done to Adam. Except that there was a problem with her argument. ‘If a Jew killed my nephew,’ I told her, ‘then how could he have tossed the boy’s body into the barbed wire from the Christian side of the border?’

  She tapped her chest. ‘I only know what I sense in here. And I know that there’s more to these murders than we think.’

  Eager to steer our conversation towards rational ground, I returned to the details of Anna’s disappearance. ‘Do you know if your daughter had snuck out of the ghetto before being murdered?’ I asked.

  Dorota leaned back in her chair. ‘Yes, I’m fairly certain she went to see her boyfriend.’

  ‘He doesn’t live inside?’

  ‘No, he’s a Pole.’ Sneering, she added, ‘An Aryan.’

  If Anna hadn’t fallen in love with the wrong young man and refused to give him up, she’d still be alive. Although Dorota never spoke those words over the next half-hour, her resentment turned nearly all she said to accusations against her daughter. As we talked, it seemed to me that she would polish her grudge for years.

  ‘And what makes you feel certain she went to see her boyfriend?’ I asked.

  Breathing deeply, as if she were entering dangerous territory, Dorota replied, ‘Let me explain about my daughter.’ She took off her headscarf and held it in her lap. ‘Anna turned fifteen in June, and at her birthday party I looked at her and I realized my little girl was gone. But make no mistake, over the next few weeks, she proved she was still just a wilful child. Belligerent and selfish – that’s how my husband always described her.’ Dorota patted her thinning hair, as though putting her thoughts into place. ‘And he was right – though you must think I’m heartless for saying so.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I told her, beginning to suspect her husband of ruining his daughter’s life. ‘Children can be difficult in desperate situations. They need our reassurance.’

  ‘People who only met her once or twice – they didn’t understand what she was like,’ Dorota continued in a frustrated voice. ‘Life was never easy with her – never! I can assure you of that. No punishment could make her do what she didn’t want to. And she believed she was in love with a Polish boy. She couldn’t live without him.’ Dorota shook her head, clearly regarding her daughter’s affection as absurd.

  ‘What was his name?’ I asked.

  ‘Paweł Sawicki. Dr Cohen, how could my husband and I approve? The daughter of a Jewish tailor and the son of a Polish judge? I saw heartbreak ahead. Was I wrong?’

  ‘I no longer know how to answer that,’ I told her, holding back my criticism; by now, I realized that Dorota had chosen a photograph that would give me an idea of how difficult her daughter could be – and possibly, too, to help convince me that the measures she and her husband had taken to break the girl’s will were necessary.

  ‘When you told Anna you disapproved of Paweł, what did she say?’ I asked.

  ‘She shouted that I was a mean-spirited witch.’ In a resentful voice, she added, ‘My daughter used to call me Fraulein Rottenmeier.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The hideous housekeeper from Heidi. That was Anna’s favourite book.’ Dorota sighed. ‘If only… if only I could talk to her just once more – make her understand.’
The impossibility of that made Dorota gaze inside herself. ‘Anyway, she refused to give up Paweł, so we quarrelled, and when my husband joined in…’ She shook her head at the troubling memory. ‘He threatened to use his belt on her. Which was when Anna promised she’d never see her boyfriend again. And maybe that really was her intention. I can’t say. But if it was, then she changed her mind because she started leading a double life.’

  ‘In what way?’ I asked, concluding that if Anna had given in without a longer quarrel then it was probably because she’d felt the stiff leather sting of her father’s belt before.

  ‘You know the sort of thing girls do,’ Dorota replied. ‘She’d tell me she was going roller-skating with a girlfriend, then meet Paweł at a cinema. After we moved to the ghetto, I searched her dresser and found photographs of the two of them at a picnic in Saski Gardens.’ She produced another picture from the pages of Marie Antoinette and slid it across the table to me as though pushing an evil talisman out of her life.

  Anna was laughing freely in the photograph. Paweł was embracing her from behind, though only his hands were visible – his face and arms had been cut away. Given how Anna and Adam had been disfigured, it seemed dangerous for Dorota to have cut away pieces of the young man’s image.

  My uneasiness on holding the photograph seemed a bad sign for my own mental state; it was as if the ghetto were compelling me to believe in the power of amulets and spells, like Dorota and so many others.

  ‘Did Paweł’s parents approve of Anna?’ I asked.

  ‘My daughter told me they adored her, but I checked on the family and learned that the judge had become a vicious anti-Semite since the Nazi occupation.’

  I asked if I could keep the photograph while I hunted for Anna and Adam’s killer, and Dorota agreed. She went on to tell me that Paweł and his family lived at 24 Wilcza Street. ‘He promised to visit Anna in the ghetto. At least, that’s what she told me. He never came or even called that I know of. Then Anna announced that she wouldn’t eat again until she saw him – announced it like a decree! That’s why she lost so much weight and couldn’t wear her ring. My husband started forcing her to eat supper, but after bed she’d sneak off to the bathroom and make herself sick. It took me two weeks to realize that’s what she was doing. By then, she was a living skeleton. Dr Cohen,’ Dorota said, opening her hands as if to make an appeal to reason, ‘her wilfulness was killing our family.’ She hunched forward, circling those secrets of hers again, though this time I sensed it was to hold something back. ‘This will sound strange, but I felt I was living in a house that was falling to pieces. Every shadow was menacing. And Anna’s appearance – it scared me. Once, I stood her in front of the mirror in my bedroom and showed her how gaunt she was, but she insisted she was disgustingly fat. Can you believe it? Of course, she blamed my husband and me for everything – for insisting she eat, for keeping her apart from Paweł. She put us through hell.’