The Mascot (34 page)

She looked at her watch. “I must go, dearie,” she announced. “Things to do. Let me know if there are any more developments with the photograph.” She bent forward and pecked me on the cheek.

I watched Elli as she made her way through the now crowded coffee shop and toward the exit.

Moments later I gazed down the street and noticed her as she hurried across Broad. It hadn't been my intention to spy on her, yet I couldn't help but observe her as she stopped to greet two men who had clearly been waiting for her on the steps in front of the Bodleian Library. They shook hands and all three then headed off in the direction of the High Street, talking animatedly among themselves.

For just an instant, Elli turned her head slightly and glanced back in the direction of Blackwell's wearing a quizzical, slightly suspicious look.

I jerked my face away from the window. I didn't want her to know that I didn't trust her.

Some months later, by early spring of the following year, I turned my attentions to our visit to Belarus and, most important, Koidanov.

I called my father to see if he could cajole Alice into joining us on the trip.

He picked up the phone but was not his usual bright self. His tone was cautious.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

He hesitated. “Somebody's been calling…”

“Daugavas again?”

“No. They won't identify themselves.”

I took a deep breath. “Only one person?” I asked.

“No. Different people.”

“What do they want?”

“Just to warn me to keep quiet about the Latvians. That I shouldn't bite the hand that fed me. One told me that consequences will be bad for us, and that the world would judge me as a Nazi. Would I or my family be able to live with that?”

My father sighed wearily. “It's got to the point where your mum won't answer the phone.”

“Have you told the police?”

“No. What can they do about it?”

“Put a trace on the calls, for a start.”

My father coughed nervously. “It'll be all right…”

“You've got to tell them.”

“Nobody will harm us.”

I argued with my father for several minutes, but the more I did so, the more obstinate he became. Finally, I gave up.

“Whoever they are,” he said with firmness, “they'll tire of doing this nonsense.”

I hoped he was right.

The next day, in a bizarre synchronicity with events in Melbourne, I, too, began to receive mysterious telephone calls. Whenever I picked up the receiver, however, there were no direct threats at the other end of the line, only silence. This happened about a dozen times; in normal circumstances I would probably not have given these calls too much thought, but now I found them unnerving—I suspected that they might be related to my father's story and to the appearance of the photograph. What did these people want from my father and me?

Matters escalated over the following week. Then, just as the calls stopped, I had a strange encounter in the Bodleian Library.

I was standing in a queue to use a photocopier, absorbed in a book and paying no attention to those around me. Suddenly, I heard a man's voice with an American accent directly behind me.

“The worst time of the day,” he said.

“Sorry?” I looked up from my book.

“The queue.”

I nodded in a not unfriendly way and returned to my book, but I had the uncanny sensation that the man's eyes were staring into my back.

“Reading history?” I heard him ask.

I turned and nodded once again.

He squinted at the cover of the book. “
Police Brigades in the Second World War.
That's a specialized topic,” he said.

“Some independent research,” I explained.

“You Belarusian?”

“My father is,” I replied.

“A little family history, then?”

“You could say that.”

“My family were Jews from the Ukraine. Many died at the hands of the police battalions in operation there.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I said. “My father's family died under similar conditions in Belarus.”

“Your father is from Minsk?”

“No. Most likely from a town not far from there. Dzerzhinsk.”

“Most likely?”

“It's a long story,” I excused myself. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with his intrusiveness.

“No matter,” he answered. “Another time?”

I nodded and turned once again to where I had left off in my book.

Then I heard his voice again and saw his proffered hand in front of me. “Samuel Schwartz,” he said.

“Mark Kurzem.”

At that moment a copier became free and I dashed for it, relieved to have broken contact.

About thirty minutes later, as I was coming down the stairs in front of the library, someone called my name. It was Samuel Schwartz. He caught up with me.

“Hello!” he said, full of cheer. “We meet again!” He glanced at his watch. “You feel like grabbing a bite to eat?”

I didn't want to, but he caught me off guard. I couldn't think of an excuse quickly enough. “That'd be nice,” I replied.

He looked around. “King's Arms?” he suggested.

We crossed to the pub on the opposite corner.

The King's Arms was crawling with students at this hour, but I managed to find a quiet corner while Schwartz fetched drinks.

He found the table and put down two pints of beer, even though I'd asked for a cola. He sat down closely beside me and raised his glass in a toast.

“To poor old Belarus and the Ukraine! So how's the research?” he inquired.

“So-so.”

“You're not English, are you?”

“Australian.”

“Ah. From Down Under.”

“It's all a matter of perspective,” I replied.

He laughed.

“And you?”

“The States. New York.” He took a sip of his beer. “This topic you're looking at…”

“Yes?” I gave him a questioning look.

“The shadow never leaves you, does it? Even if you're from a later generation.”

I nodded.

“So how is the situation in Australia with these war criminals?”

I shrugged.

“Australia seems to be full of them,” he commented. “Judging by their record to date, the Australian authorities haven't been keen to prosecute. The last wave—the vicious camp guards, the middle-ranking officers, the Balts—were given free entry to Australia and allowed to construct new identities or blatantly flaunt their old ones. The blessing of Australia, its freedom, bearing a poisonous fruit.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” I said.

“I follow the news. Besides, these criminals are part of my history,” he replied pensively. “I find myself thinking about what I might be able to do in hunting them down. Become a Mossad agent!” He laughed self-mockingly. But I could feel him shrewdly evaluating my reaction.

“Why not try the Wiesenthal Center?” I suggested lamely.

“A tough job. A necessary one, don't you agree?” he said, as if seriously considering my suggestion.

“Of course.”

“One is morally obliged to help in any search if one has information to offer.” He glanced at me meaningfully.

I understood then where his conversation was headed.

I hadn't been able to place this man but was certain that I'd seen him before. But now it struck me. He was the younger of the two men I'd seen with Elli on the steps outside the Bodleian. I immediately dismissed the thought. “I'm becoming paranoid,” I told myself. Whether this was the case or not, I felt uncomfortable in his company.

“Thanks for the beer, Samuel,” I said, rising from my seat.

Schwartz was nonplussed but reached out to shake my hand. “I hope we can meet again soon,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

What I hoped would be my last glimpse of Schwartz was of him seated, his clasped hands resting on the table, smiling benignly at me.

Three days after this incident, Elli invited me for a dinner at her house. I wanted to steer clear of her, but she insisted and I accepted reluctantly.

“My father will be here as well,” she said. “He's just arrived this morning from Israel for the weekend.”

As she led me into her dining room that night, I immediately recognized her father as the other man I'd seen with her and Schwartz outside the library days earlier. Over dinner he questioned me vigorously about my father's story, fishing for details, until I felt that I was being interrogated for some hidden purpose. He grew frustrated as I began to resist his probing with vague answers. We had barely finished the meal when I begged off, saying that I had a fierce headache. Rejecting their offers of medication and assistance, I quickly exited and hailed a taxi.

The taxi dropped me in front of my house. I noticed a car parked on the other side of the street, facing into traffic. This was not unusual, but my senses, already on the alert after dinner, registered that the man—it was too dark to notice anything other than that he appeared youngish—behind the steering wheel was closely watching my house.

I noticed that he sat more upright as I made my way along the path to the front door. I let myself in and went upstairs without turning on any lights.

I peered through a crack in the curtains of an upstairs window.

The man strained to look up at the house, and I saw his face at the windshield. It was Samuel Schwartz.

I decided to confront him and headed downstairs. But by the time I had fumbled with the door's inside lock and dashed out onto the street, his car had disappeared.

I never saw Elli's father or Samuel Schwartz again.

I never met with Elli again.

In the days that followed, I would occasionally spot her on the street in the city center, but was careful to avoid her. She called me a few times as well; I remained friendly but distant.

Ellie gradually disappeared completely from my life. I was glad to be free of her. I realized how naive I had been. I knew nothing about her background. I was to learn later that her father had been an investigator for Israeli intelligence. I wondered how much of the intrigue that had developed, and would continue to emerge, had been triggered by my decision to confide in her.

On the same evening of Elli's dinner, long after Schwartz's car had disappeared, my telephone rang.

Before I could even say hello, I heard my father's voice at the other end of the line. “Mark?” he said. “Are you there?”

“This is late to call,” I replied.

“The house was broken into last night,” my father blurted out immediately. “We'd been out and when we got home we noticed from the car that there was a light on in the bedroom. Your mum was sure we hadn't left it on by mistake. I told her to wait in the car while I unlocked the front door quietly. I opened it just a fraction, and the cats flew out with their tails on end. I got the fright of my life.

“I opened the door farther and called out. There was no reply. I went into the hallway and I could see immediately that somebody had trashed the living room. All our papers and documents were strewn everywhere. The bedroom had been completely ransacked, too. The lock on my wardrobe door was shattered, and all the contents dragged out.

“The strange thing is that nothing of value was taken. Not even our camera, television, or video, or Mum's jewelry. Only our papers had been gone through.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Nah…”

I'd had this same conversation with my father sometime earlier.

“Whoever it was, they were looking for something but not valuables. Probably the photograph…”

I agreed. The culprit would not have known that my father kept any item to do with his identity, including his photographs, in his brown case.

“Still, you need to report it,” I insisted.

My father ignored what I had just said. “Look, don't worry about things here,” he said. “I'll keep you informed.”

With that, he pleaded fatigue and hung up.

Now it seemed that with the appearance of the photograph my parents were in physical danger. Over the last week or so I had come to feel that the task of uncovering my father's past would also involve protecting him—and my mother—from something that I wasn't yet able to clearly identify.

Although I had not seen the photograph, its existence unsettled me more than any other of my father's mementos. How many more images of my father were floating out there in people's wardrobes, cupboards, and photo albums, the secret storehouses of their past?