Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 (20 page)

I found myself discussing Chicago architecture with
Michael Loewenthal’s first cello instructor. Over wine and little squares of
goat-cheese polenta, the Cellini’s manager suggested today’s anti-American
sentiment in France resembled anti-Roman feelings in ancient Gaul. Near the
piano Morrell was deep in the kind of political controversy he delights in. We
forgot our idea of leaving early.

Around nine, when the rest of the guests had gone into
the back of the house for dinner, the doorbell rang. I had lingered in the
sunroom, listening to Rosa Ponselle sing
“L’amero, sarò costante.”
It
had been one of my mother’s favorite arias and I wanted to hear the recording
to the end. The bell rang again as I crossed the empty hall to join the rest of
the party—the waiters were apparently too busy serving dinner to respond to it.
I turned back to the heavy double doors.

When I saw the figure on the doorstep, I sucked in my
breath. His curly hair was thinning at the temples, but despite the grey, and
the lines around his mouth, his face had a kind of childlike quality. The
pictures I’d been looking at showed him contorted with anguish, but even with
his cheeks creased in a shy, eager smile, Paul Radbuka was unmistakable.

Contact Problems

H
e looked
around the hall with a kind of nervous eagerness, as if he had arrived early
for an audition. “Are you Mrs. Loewenthal, perhaps? Or a daughter?”

“Mr. Radbuka—or is it Mr. Ulrich—who invited you
here?” I wondered wildly if that was what Lotty and Max had been fighting
about—Max had found the guy’s address and invited him to come while Carl was
still in town; Lotty, with her intense fear of reawakening the past,
strenuously objected.

“No, no, Ulrich was never my name; that was the man
who called himself my father. I’m Paul Radbuka. Are you one of my new
relatives?”

“Why are you here? Who invited you?” I repeated.

“No one. I came on my own, when Rhea told me that some
of the people who knew my family, or perhaps are my family, were leaving
Chicago tomorrow.”

“When I talked to Rhea Wiell Friday afternoon, she
said you didn’t know there were any other Radbukas and that she’d see how you
felt about meeting them.”

“Oh. Oh—you were part of that meeting with Rhea. Are
you the publisher who wants to write my story?”

“I’m V I Warshawski. I’m an investigator who spoke to
her about the possibility of meeting you.” I knew I sounded chilly, but his
unexpected arrival had me off-balance.

“I know—the detective who went to see her when she was
talking to her publisher. Then you’re the person who is friends with the
survivors from my family.”

“No,” I said sharply, trying to slow him down. “I have
friends who may know someone from the Radbuka family. Whether that person is
related to you would depend on a lot of details that we can’t really get into
tonight. Why don’t you—”

He interrupted me, his eager smile replaced by anger.
“I want to meet anyone who could possibly be a relative. Not in some cautious
way, going back to you, finding out who these other Radbukas are, checking to
see whether they could really be related to me, whether they want to meet me.
That might take months, even years—I can’t wait for that kind of time to pass.”

“So you prayed and the Lord directed you to Mr.
Loewenthal’s address?” I said.

Spots of color burned in his cheeks. “You’re being
sarcastic, but there’s no need to be. I learned at Rhea’s that Max Loewenthal
was the man who was interested in finding me. That he had a musician friend who
knew my family, and that the musician was here only until tomorrow. When she
put it like that, that Max and his friend thought they might know someone of my
family, I knew the truth: either Max or his musician friend must be my missing
relation. They are hiding behind a cloak of pretending to have a friend—I know
that—it’s a common disguise, especially for people who are frightened of having
their identities known. I saw I would have to take the initiative, come to
them, overcome their fears of being found out. So I studied the newspapers, I
saw the Cellini was visiting from England, with their last concert today, I saw
the name
Loewenthal
as the cellist and knew he must be Max’s relation.”

“Rhea told you Mr. Loewenthal’s name?” I demanded,
furious with her for breaching Max’s privacy.

He gave a supercilious smile. “She made it clear she
wanted me to learn it: she’d written Max’s name next to mine in her appointment
book. Which made me sure Max and I were linked.”

I remembered reading her square hand upside down
myself. I felt overwhelmed by his easy manipulation of facts to suit his wishes
and demanded sharply how he’d found Max’s house, since his home phone isn’t
listed.

“Oh, it was simple.” He laughed with childish delight,
his anger forgotten. “I told them at the symphony I was Michael Loewenthal’s
cousin and that I badly needed to see him while he was still in town.”

“And the CSO gave you this address?” I was staggered:
stalking is such a serious problem for performers that no symphony management
worth its salt gives out home addresses.

“No, no.” He laughed again. “If you’re a detective,
this will amuse you, maybe even be useful to you in your work. I did try to get
the address from the symphony management, but they were very stuffy. So today I
went to the concert. What a beautiful gift Michael has—how wonderfully he plays
on that cello. I went backstage afterward to congratulate him, but that wasn’t
so easy, either—they make it hard to get in to see the performers.”

He scowled in momentary resentment. “By the time I got
backstage, my cousin Michael had left, but I heard the other performers talking
about the party that Max was holding tonight. So I called the hospital where
Max works and told them I was with the chamber players but I had lost Max’s
address. So they found someone in the administration—it took a while, because
it’s Sunday, that’s why I’m late—but they called me with the address.”

“How did you know where Mr. Loewenthal works?” I was
reeling so hard in the face of his narrative that I could only grasp at the
corner points.

“It was in the program, the program for the Birnbaum
conference.” He beamed with pride. “Wasn’t that clever, to say I was one of the
musicians? Isn’t that the kind of thing an investigator like you does to find
people?”

It made me furious that he was right—it’s exactly what
I would have done. “Despite how clever it was, you’re here under a false
impression. Max Loewenthal is not your cousin.”

He smiled indulgently. “Yes, yes, I’m sure you’re
protecting him—Rhea told me you were protecting him and that she respected you
for it, but consider this: he wants to find out about me. What other possible
reason could there be than that he knows we’re related?”

We were still standing in the doorway. “You yourself
know there’s a party going on. Mr. Loewenthal can’t possibly give you proper
attention tonight. Why don’t you give me your address and phone number—he will
want to meet you when he can give you his total attention. You should go home
before you find yourself in the embarrassing predicament of trying to explain
yourself to a room full of strangers.”

“You’re not Max’s daughter or his wife, you’re only a
guest here as I am myself,” Radbuka snapped. “I want to meet him while his son
and his friend are still here. Which one is his friend? There were three men of
the right age playing in the concert.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a couple of people
drifting back from the dining room toward the front of the house. I took
Radbuka, or Ulrich, or whoever he was, by the elbow. “Why don’t we go out to a
coffee shop, where we can talk this over privately. Then we can figure out
whether there’s any chance you could be related to—anyone in Mr. Loewenthal’s
milieu. But this public forum isn’t the best way to do it.”

He wrenched himself away. “How do you spend your time?
Looking for people’s missing jewelry or their lost dogs? You’re a property
investigator. But I am not a piece of property, I am a man. After all these
years—all these deaths and separations—to think I might have some family that
survived the Shoah, I don’t want to waste one more second before seeing them,
let alone one more week or years, even, while you file information about me.”
His voice thickened with feeling.

“I thought—in your television interview last week, you
said you’d only recently discovered your past?”

“But it’s been weighing on me all this time, even
though I didn’t know it. You don’t know what it was like, to grow up with a
monster, a sadist, and never understand the reason for his hatred: he had
attached himself to someone he despised in order to get a visa to America. If I
had known what he really was—what he had done in Europe—I would have had him
deported. Now, to have the chance to meet my true family—I will not let you put
any barriers in my path.” Tears started down his face.

“Even so, if you leave your details with me, I will
see that Mr. Loewenthal gets them. He will arrange an appointment with you at
an early date, but this—confronting him in a public gathering—what kind of
welcome do you think he would give you?” I tried to hide my anxiety and dismay
under a copy of Rhea Wiell’s saintly smile.

“The same welcome I will give him—the heartfelt
embrace of one survivor of the ashes to another. There is no way you can
understand that.”

“Understand what?” Max himself suddenly appeared with
the Cellini oboist on his arm. “Victoria, is this a guest whom I should know?”

“Are you Max?” Radbuka pushed past me to Max, grasping
his hand, his face shining with pleasure. “Oh, that I had words to express how
much this night means to me. To be able to greet my true cousin. Max. Max.”

Max looked from Radbuka to me with the same confusion
I was feeling. “I’m sorry, I don’t know—oh—you—are you—Victoria—is this your
doing?”

“No, it was all mine,” Radbuka crowed in delight.
“Victoria had mentioned your name to Rhea, and I knew you must be my cousin,
either you or your friend. Why else would Victoria be trying so hard to protect
you?”

Radbuka adapted himself quickly to the environment: he
hadn’t known my name when he arrived; now I was Victoria. He also made the
childlike assumption that the people in his special world, like Rhea, must be
familiar to anyone he spoke to.

“But why discuss me with this therapist at all?” Max
said.

The crowd growing behind him included Don Strzepek,
who stepped forward. “I’m afraid that was my doing, Mr. Loewenthal—I mentioned
your first name, and Rhea Wiell immediately guessed it was you because you’d been
on the program at the Birnbaum conference.”

I made a helpless gesture. “I’ve tried to suggest to
Mr.—Radbuka—that he come away with me to talk over his situation quietly.”

“An excellent idea. Why don’t you let Ms. Warshawski
get you some supper, and go up to my study where I might be able to join you in
an hour or so.” Max was off-balance but trying to handle the situation
gracefully.

Paul laughed, bobbing his head up and down. “I know, I
know. Rhea suggested you might be reluctant to be public with our relationship.
But truly, you have nothing to fear—I am not planning on asking for money, or
anything of that nature—the man who called himself my father left me well off.
Although since the money came from acts of monstrosity, perhaps I should not be
taking it. But if he couldn’t care for me emotionally, at least he tried to
compensate with money.”

“You came to my house under false pretenses. I assure
you, Mr. Radbuka: I am not related to the Radbuka family.”

“Are you ashamed?” Paul blurted. “But I’m not here to
embarrass you, only to finally find my family, to see what I can learn about my
past, my life before Terezin.”

“What little I know I will tell you another time. When
I’m at leisure to attend to you properly.” Max took his elbow, trying futilely
to propel him to the door. “And what you know about yourself you can tell me.
Give your phone number to Ms. Warshawski and I will get in touch with you.
Tomorrow, I promise you.”

Radbuka’s face crumpled, like a child about to cry. He
reiterated his speech about not being able to wait one more minute. “And
tomorrow your musician friend will be gone. What if he’s the one who is my
missing cousin—how will I ever find him again?”

“Don’t you see,” Max began helplessly. “All this
flailing around with no information is only harder on you, harder on me.
Please. Let Ms. Warshawski take you upstairs and talk to you in a quiet way. Or
leave your number with her and go home now.”

“But I came here by taxi. I can’t drive. I don’t have
a way home,” Radbuka cried out in a childlike bewilderment. “Why won’t you make
me welcome?”

As more people finished dinner, they began filling the
hall on their way to the front room. An altercation at the foot of the stairs
was a lightning rod for attention. The crowd began to grow, pressing against
Max.

I took Paul’s arm again. “You are welcome—but not
arguing in the hall in the middle of a party. Rhea wouldn’t want you to be so
distressed, would she? Let’s sit down where we can be comfortable.”