The Warsaw Anagrams

by Richard Zimler

  ‘So how can I know what I’ll do when I reach the final page of this mystery?’

  He scowled as if my comparison was silly. ‘Do you have any bread?’ he asked.

  I pointed to my stash of matzo on Stefa’s spice shelf. He took a rectangle and cut two reasonably mould-free slivers of cheese on top. ‘Eat this,’ he said, putting it in front of me.

  It was comforting to be given an order. While he made our ersatz coffee, I nibbled away – the third mouse in my family, and the only one who hadn’t yet had his neck snapped in two.

  We let silence settle the quarrel between us. I was grateful for that.

  ‘I want you to come to me when you find out who murdered Adam,’ he told me, putting a steaming cup of chicory in front of me. ‘Before you do anything stupid, I mean.’

  ‘All right, but I’m prone to doing stupid things. It’s a personality flaw.’

  Sniffing, he said, ‘No offence intended, Dr Cohen, but are you aware you smell like a dog’s behind?’

  His no offence intended made me laugh. I liked him more and more.

  To give ourselves a rest, we talked about the wretched weather for a time – a favoured subject in Warsaw for at least nine months every year. Then he asked about Stefa, and I told him how she’d given me back a belief in miracles. When I spoke of her Moroccan slippers falling off, and of the sores I discovered between her toes, he closed his eyes as if he might give up his Hollywood gangster persona and turn back into the softer man he undoubtedly was in the Before Time.

  ‘Hey, give me some more cheese,’ I asked, to move us beyond our impasse.

  He cut me a big slice, pulling the knife towards his thumb like a peasant, which made me realize how far he’d come.

  ‘Got a pen and paper?’ he asked while I was licking the crumbs from my palm.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m going to write down what I know about Georg.’

  I told him to fetch my dream diary from under my pillow and my inkstand from my desk. In the thirty seconds he was gone, I realized the obvious: he was too overworked to solve the murders of Adam, Anna and Georg; he wanted me to do that for him. And I also realized that he must be sure a Jewish accomplice inside the ghetto was at least partly responsible for Adam’s death or he wouldn’t be worried about what I’d do.

  ‘Who are the letters under your pillow from?’ he asked when he returned.

  ‘My daughter. She lives in Izmir. She’s an archaeologist. She likes old things.’ Except for her father, I almost added, but I hoped that was no longer true.

  ‘Thank God she’s safe,’ he told me.

  ‘Yes, that’s a very good thing. Listen, Schrei, after I find out who killed Adam, Anna and Georg, what’ll you do with me?’

  ‘Do with you? I won’t do anything with you.’ He was offended by my implication.

  ‘If the murderer turns out to be a wealthy smuggler who’s collaborating with the Germans, you won’t put a bullet in me?’

  ‘Not if you keep his identity to yourself.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘Dr Cohen,’ he replied wearily, ‘if I were a betting man, I’d wager you’ll never find out who the murderer is. But if you do, you can be sure I’ll take care of him – even if he turns out to be Keranowicz.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sorry – it’s my anagram for Czerniakow.’

  Adam Czerniakow was the head of the Jewish Council – and the most famous man in the ghetto.

  ‘You too?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Me too what?’

  ‘Rearranging things to fit the new world we’re living in.’

  ‘What else can I do?’ he replied, shrugging. ‘Anyway, I’ll take care of the murderer – if you find him. That’s my job.’

  He spoke so matter-of-factly that I believed him. He wrote a name in my dream diary – Georg Mueller – then the address he’d lived at before being orphaned: 24 Brzeska Street, which was in the Warsaw suburb of Praga.

  He also wrote down his own address. When he handed me my diary, he said, ‘Get in touch with me if you find out anything more – any time, day or night.’

  ‘You’re sure Georg’s parents are dead?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s what the boy told the people at the orphanage. And we managed to send someone to his home address, but none of his neighbours knew of any relatives in the area.’

  ‘He must have someone – an aunt, an uncle…’

  ‘He said he had cousins in Katowice.’

  As I wrote that down, I asked, ‘And how did his parents die?’

  ‘The Nazis sent his father away on a labour gang and he never came home. Pneumonia killed his mother.’

  ‘Do you have a photo of him?’ I asked, and when Schrei shook his head, I added, ‘How about an identity card?’

  ‘Nothing. He was thrown naked into the barbed wire.’

  ‘From the Christian side?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said he’d run away from the orphanage. So where was he living?’

  ‘On the street. A nurse who worked at the orphanage said she used to see him juggling outside the Femina Theatre. But listen, Mueller may not be his real name. That’s the name he used, but he might have made it up. Apparently, he was that kind of kid.’

  ‘What kind of kid is that?’

  ‘The kind who lies to adults.’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ I told him. ‘In here, all kids lie. That’s one more way we can be sure we’ve been exiled to Gehenna.’

  CHAPTER 21

  A barber at a makeshift stall near the Femina Theatre confirmed to me that kids often performed there starting at noon and, sure enough, five boys and one girl, all in homemade black leotards, arrived only a few minutes after the hour. A crowd formed as they spread a worn red rug along the sidewalk.

  They performed flips and handsprings to much delighted applause. Only one of the kids – a boy with a shaved head who was maybe ten or eleven years old – seemed to be a trained gymnast, however; he did a twisting handspring into a back flip that made everybody gasp. But he never smiled; he seemed to be embarrassed.

  For a finale, the children formed a three-tiered pyramid. An imp with a shaved head stood at the top. He wore a gold papier-mâché crown and gripped a sceptre in his fist – a metal bar painted silver, with a blue light bulb fastened at the top. Surveying the onlookers, he held his head high, as if they were his subjects. He tried his best, but the whole amateurish spectacle only revealed to me how far we’d fallen.

  As soon as the show was over, the capable gymnast walked through the crowd with a black derby, asking for donations. I dropped a złoty in and asked if he’d known a young street juggler named Georg. He told me that he hadn’t, but the miniature king who’d reigned atop the pyramid overheard us and hollered, ‘I knew him!’

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Zachariah Manberg,’ he replied proudly.

  ‘He’s Tsibele!’ the slightly older acrobat beside him shouted with malicious glee.

  ‘’Cause he smells like an rotten onion!’ another shouted.

  ‘We all smell like onions!’ I challenged them.

  ‘Not you, Reb Yid!’ yelled the girl acrobat, hoping to win some coins in exchange for flattery.

  ‘True,’ I acknowledged. ‘I have it on good authority that I smell like a dog’s rear end.’

  She was too shocked to laugh. And Zachariah was too curious of me.

  ‘Come here,’ I told him, motioning him over. He had merry green eyes – intelligent and wily – and I imagined from the serious way he stared at me that he was trying to assess whether I was a hundred, or maybe even a thousand, years old. I felt an immediate affection for him.

  ‘My name is Erik Cohen and I’m sixty-seven,’ I told him. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Seven and a half,’ he answered proudly, puffing up his chest like a rooster.

  ‘Do you know if Georg was smuggling?’ I asked.

  He held out his palm, stuc
k the pink tip of his tongue between his lips and gave me a cheeky look. I reached into my pocket and took out a one-złoty coin, then gave it to him, which made his eyes pop. The four other boys and single girl in his troupe circled around us.

  ‘I’m sure he was smuggling,’ Zachariah told me.

  I squatted to his level so he’d trust me, but my knees were so sore that it felt as though broken glass were sticking into them. I dropped down on to my bottom to relieve the pain. When I asked my little friend to sit with me, he dropped down and crossed his legs.

  ‘Where’s your coat?’ I asked him.

  ‘My sister is holding it.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She went for food.’

  I took off my muffler and twirled it twice around his neck. ‘There, that’s better,’ I told him. ‘Now, what kind of goods did Georg smuggle?’

  He held out his hand again. I gave him another złoty. He inserted both coins into his sock, then told me happily, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I paid you so you could tell me you don’t know?’ I made an exaggerated, silent-movie frown. ‘You’re taking advantage of an alter kacker!’

  He giggled and squirmed. The ghetto hadn’t yet murdered his sense of humour, which was worth paying for. But more than that, I realized I’d found the child I wanted.

  When I learn who killed Adam, take me, but let this boy survive, I whispered to God – or maybe to Satan. It didn’t seem to matter which, as long as my wish was granted.

  ‘Do you know which secret passage Georg used to get out of the ghetto?’ I asked.

  He held out his palm for more money. I snatched his hand. ‘Listen, Zachariah, this goes beyond money – I need to know very badly.’

  ‘Georg went right through the wall,’ he answered. ‘He and some other boys knocked out some bricks one night.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘On Okopowa Street, near the cemetery,’ an older boy with a scab on his chin told me. ‘I was with him.’

  I motioned him over and he squatted down beside me.

  ‘Did he ever speak about meeting anyone dangerous or threatening?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  Zachariah agreed with that. He rubbed his eye with his knuckle. I noticed a louse crawling in his eyelashes. I took his shoulder. ‘Don’t move,’ I told him.

  I pulled out the wretched parasite between my thumb and forefinger, then crushed it with my nail.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  ‘Just a bug,’ I replied, tossing it away. ‘Listen, did Georg ever say why he didn’t go back to the orphanage?’

  ‘He hated being cooped up!’ Zachariah exclaimed, as if that answer might win him a ticket to the cinema.

  ‘And do you know where he was living?’

  ‘On Nowolipie Street.’

  ‘What number?’

  Zachariah made a face and hunched up his shoulders to indicate he didn’t know.

  ‘Georg was kind of secretive,’ the older boy said solemnly.

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘He had big ears – like an elephant,’ Zachariah told me. He tugged on his earlobes.

  ‘Did you ever see him naked?’

  ‘Naked how?’ he asked, puffing out his lips in puzzlement.

  ‘I need to know if he had any identifying marks on his hip.’

  As soon as I finished my question, a jolt of understanding made me gasp. I realized now what might have made Adam’s leg special.

  ‘No, I never saw his hip,’ the older boy told me.

  ‘Me neither!’ Zachariah chimed in.

  I got to my feet. The two boys did, as well. I continued my questioning, but I felt as if I’d crossed an invisible portal into a myth, in which the only way to identify brothers and sisters separated at birth was by a telltale sign on their skin. And Adam’s telltale sign was on his ankle – his right ankle: a line of four birthmarks. But of what value could they have possibly been to anyone? And could something so small and insignificant really have summoned Death to my nephew?

  ‘How about Georg’s clothing – anything unusual?’ I asked the acrobats.

  ‘I know the answer to that one!’ Zachariah exclaimed, his eyes brightening. ‘He had newspapers stuffed into his shoes!’

  ‘That’s all?’ I asked.

  ‘And he wore a chain around his neck,’ the older boy told me.

  ‘What kind of chain?’

  ‘With a little Virgin Mary at the end. He said his mother was Jewish, but that his father was Russian. His father had hung that necklace around his neck when he was just a baby. He never took it off.’

  ‘And Georg juggled, right?’

  Zachariah nodded.

  ‘Did he do anything else to earn money?’

  ‘No,’ the little boy replied, but the older acrobat added, ‘Georg sometimes sang while he juggled. Mostly Yiddish folk songs. He said it got him a bigger crowd.

  ‘Was he any good?’

  ‘Pretty good, but he wasn’t the best juggler in the world. He could do only four pairs of socks. And sometimes one would fall.’

  ‘Socks?’

  ‘That’s what he juggled – he rolled each pair into a tight ball.’

  By now, I’d realized that Rowy or Ziv was sure to have noticed him sooner or later while looking for new singers. Was it possible that they were both involved in Adam’s murder? Rowy was terrified of being conscripted again into a labour gang, and perhaps he had exchanged the lives of three Jewish children for a guarantee of safety. As for Ziv, what did I really know about him, other than that he was shy and awkward, and an exceptional chess player?

  ‘Did Georg ever talk about singing in a chorus?’ I asked Zachariah and his colleague.

  ‘He said something like that once,’ the older boy replied. ‘He mentioned to me that a man told him he could sing at a concert he was going to organize.’

  ‘Did Georg tell you the man’s name or what he looked like?’

  He shook his head. ‘Sorry.’

  I gave him a złoty with my thanks, and he ran off.

  ‘Where’s mine?’ Zachariah whined.

  ‘If I give you more money, I need you to do something for me,’ I told him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want you to get disinfected at the Leszno Street bathhouse. You know where it is?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good.’ I dropped two złoty – one after the other – into his excited hands. I wanted to tighten the scarf I’d given him around his neck – as an excuse for holding him once more – but he dashed off before I could, one hand securing his crown.

  CHAPTER 22

  Dorota refused to let me into her apartment once again. ‘My husband isn’t home,’ she confessed, ‘but if he ever learned that a man asking about Anna had been here…’ She shook her head as if dealing with his temper was a constant burden.

  ‘Just tell me about your daughter’s hand,’ I told her gruffly.

  She drew back her head like a surprised hen. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘Did it have any birthmarks?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anything else that would make it identifiable to someone who’d never seen her before?’

  ‘I don’t know – just a small patch… a discoloration on the back,’ she said doubtfully. ‘But why are you-?’

  ‘What did the patch look like?’ I interrupted.

  ‘It was tiny and red – like a stain. On the skin between her thumb and index finger. People were always trying to wipe it clean when she was little.’

  ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me that before?’ I demanded angrily.

  ‘It was so small. And it seemed so unimportant. Besides, Anna was ashamed of it.’ She reached for my arm. ‘The poor girl hated it!’

  Outside Dorota’s apartment house I took my first steps too quickly and slipped on the fresh snow. The trunk of a beech tree saved me from a bad tumble. Embracing it, standing apart from the
people hurrying past, I saw that Adam and Anna had both been marked at birth. And if I was right, then Georg had been, too. Someone had wanted their skin blemishes and birthmarks. But why?

  Everything pointed to their having been murdered outside the ghetto and then dumped in the barbed wire. And it seemed clear now that Georg was recruited by either Rowy or Ziv. One of them must have identified the children to the murderer – a German or possibly Pole – who had had the kids followed and snatched.

  I was anxious to question both men, of course, but doing that would do little good, I reasoned; if one or both of them were guilty, they’d try to cast the blame on someone else – probably on Mikael, since there was no reason why they wouldn’t be able to make the same deductions I had. Or would they simply tell me that they couldn’t have known that Adam and Georg had any skin blemishes? After all, it was unlikely that they’d seen either boy naked or – during our frigid winter – in short pants. Only one person could have – Mikael.

  Maybe Anna had threatened to denounce him for his abortions and he had asked whoever was working with him on the outside to kill her when she left the ghetto. In that case, the murderer had waited until she visited Mrs Sawicki, then lured her away.

  I hailed a rickshaw, sure of only one thing: I’d resume following Mikael as my most likely suspect. But as soon as we set off for his office, a fact I’d overlooked made me call out to the driver that we needed to change our destination.

  I discovered Stefa’s apartment door open. A squat young Gestapo officer with his cap in his hands was gazing out the window. Another Nazi, older, his hair turned to silver by the light from my carbide lamp, was reading.

  They’ve learned I was on the Other Side and did nothing to prevent the murder of a colleague of theirs, I reasoned.

  Before I could slip away, the younger man turned to me with a surprised expression. Sensing a change in the room, the German at my desk also faced me. Putting down his book, he showed me a cat-like grin.

  My legs tensed, and if I’d been younger, I’d have raced down the staircase. Instead, I slipped out of my coat and stepped inside. At times, the state of one’s body can determine everything.

  ‘Are you Dr Erik Cohen?’ the German who’d been reading asked me. He put on his cap and stood up.