The Street Sweeper (68 page)

‘You wrote to me …’ Adam pulled a letter from a file out of his day pack and began to read it. ‘You wrote … He paid “particular attention to Rosa’s story”.’

‘Okay, I believe you. If that’s what I wrote then that’s what I remembered.’

‘Do you remember it now?’

‘Look, I have to be honest, this Dr Border … he’s not so important to me. He’s just a man who interviewed me in the DP camp. Estusia was important to me … and Ala.’

‘And Rosa?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t know Rosa so well. She was in
Kanada
. I wanted their story to become known. Why is it important to you? Why does it matter if he showed more interest in Rosa’s story?’

‘Because I think she might have been his wife.’

Adam Zignelik pictured the one photo he had seen of Henry Border and tried to imagine the man, the face on the inside sleeve of the barely read
I Did Not Interview the Dead
, when he quite unexpectedly learned what had happened to his young wife Rosa, the woman he had abandoned, the mother of his child. What Border had heard from Hannah Weiss all those years ago must have undammed a flood of feelings and thoughts and images, all of them heart-rendingly painful, and eclipsing all of them, unbearable guilt. It was there in his voice at the end of his very last interview when he asks the listener, ‘Who is going to sit in judgement over all this? And who is going to judge … me?’

Who could ever begin to know how he had felt? Whenever Border had thought about it, and he must have often, other than learning she had survived, he must have hoped never to learn what had happened to the young woman Rosa Rabinowicz, the girl formerly of Ciechanow he had promised to protect, the woman he had married and had a daughter with, the daughter he had stolen from her when he abandoned her.

When Adam had finished interviewing Hannah he thanked her for all the valuable information she’d given him and praised her for her own heroism and contribution to the uprising, which she had made little of. They hugged each other and he wished her long life.

Seeing him packing up his equipment, Mr Leibowitz, who had been hovering, was unable to keep silent any longer.

‘So now you have some time for me?’

‘You bet. Can I take you out to lunch?’

‘I hope so. Oh!’ the old man said, suddenly remembering something else. ‘But before we go, will you do me a favour?’

‘Sure, if I can.’

‘You can. Downstairs is where they put the ones who have no use any more for their memory boxes. These people are
famishte
. You understand? They have lost their sense of themselves, they can’t control their minds and sometimes they can’t control their bodies. You understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘There’s a woman I know from when she used to live up here on this level. When they were moving her down there she was frightened of the change and I promised her that I would come visit her. She has no one.
No one ever comes to visit her so I try to go. Can we go down there for a few minutes? I’ll introduce you. It will be the highlight of her day. It will be the only light.’

Adam agreed and the old man took him downstairs. After being granted entry through the glass security doors Mr Leibowitz introduced him to the woman he had talked about. Someone had brushed her hair but her eyes were wild as though blown about in a wind only she could feel, a gale inside her head. She could not be relied upon to know where she was.

‘Can you go and get me glass of water?’ she asked Mr Leibowitz.

‘Yes, of course, darling,’ he said, leaving Adam alone in a room full of broken old people moving around slowly, jerkily, in random directions. What private anarchy was it that made such frequent guerrilla raids on the minds of these people?

The friend of Mr Leibowitz suddenly entwined her arm in Adam Zignelik’s and whispered to him, ‘The camp guards won’t give me any more water. He always does better with them.’ Then taking his hand in hers for a moment she quickly turned it palm-up and stared at it.

‘You know, all the boys liked me. You ask anyone. All the boys liked me. My father is away on business now so you don’t need permission to visit me. I can read your palm. Do you want that?’

It took a little over thirty hours for Adam Zignelik to go from closing the door of his room at the Hotel Tolarno in Melbourne to opening the door to the apartment he rented from Columbia University. He put his luggage on the floor, closed the door, kicked off his shoes and flopped on the couch. Nobody knew he was home. Soon it wouldn’t be his home. Next week he was going to have to empty his office. He had to figure out where he’d put the contents. What do you pay for storage now? he wondered.

He noticed the light on his answering machine blinking and on his way to the bathroom to take a shower he hit the button. There was only one person he wanted to hear from. Adam stood in the bathroom, the shower running, and held Diana’s comb in his hand.

‘Pathetic,’ he said under his breath about himself. He’d been thinking about the comb, looking forward to it since some way across the Pacific.

From the other room came a woman’s voice not entirely unfamiliar but not immediately welcome, not from its tone. It was the woman William McCray liked to call Charles’ secretary. ‘Personal Assistant, PA, Administrative Assistant, whatever you call her, she’s his secretary,’ he would say. ‘Is there something offensive in the word?’ Over the sound of the water Adam couldn’t quite make out the message the woman had left but when he got out of the shower he heard it. There’d been a call for him while he was away that had come through to her. A man from Chicago had called. He left his number and asked Adam to call him back.

‘His name …’ she said, ‘I’m sorry, Dr Zignelik, I seem to have misplaced it … oh here it is! Wayne Rosenthal. Dr Wayne Rosenthal. Said he’s a psychologist. Something about your work … in Chicago?’

*

In the course of his research into the combat experiences of African American troops during World War II, Adam had found the 761st Tank Battalion of considerable interest. He had initially thought that this all-black battalion had been attached to the 79th Division of the US 7th Army in Lieutenant General Devers’ 6th Army Group only to learn that it had been attached to that division for no more than a couple of weeks. For most of its active duty in Europe the 761st Tank Battalion was attached to the 87th Division of the US 3rd Army, becoming attached to the 71st Division of the 3rd Army only on 28 March 1945. The reason this stuck out to Adam was that from his research thus far he knew that the 71st Division had advanced through Bavaria in April of 1945. It was not disputed that the 761st had taken part in the liberation of a satellite camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp known as Gunskirchen on 5 May 1945.

‘Did you know that the 761st had taken part in the liberation of Gunskirchen?’ Adam Zignelik, with a hint of triumph in his voice, asked his friend William McCray over coffee.

‘No, I have to admit, I did not. And this Gunskirchen, it was a satellite of Mauthausen, you say?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you just found this out?’

‘
I
only just discovered it but it’s known by people in the field.’

‘It’s not disputed?’

‘No, it’s widely accepted. As far as I know, no one disputes it.’

‘And Dachau?’ William asked, sipping on his coffee.

‘Black troops at Dachau?’

‘Yeah, anything?’

The disappointment on William McCray’s face when Adam let him know that he hadn’t uncovered anything to suggest black troops were involved in the liberation of Dachau made Adam feel as though he was letting William down. Perhaps this was how Charles sometimes felt.

‘Is it your friend?’

‘How do you mean?’ William asked.

‘Is it for your friend, the one in Boston, is that what makes it particularly important to you that someone definitively establishes African American troop involvement at the liberation of Dachau? I mean Gunskirchen was a satellite of Mauthausen. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Frankly, it would help a lot if he’d reconsider and agree to talk to me because –’

‘Adam, he’s not talking to anyone –’

‘I know, and I really do appreciate what he’s been through but if you could explain that –’

‘Adam, he’s not talking to anyone. He died,’ William explained, taking in a breath and trying to keep himself composed.

‘William, I’m so sorry.’

‘Yep, me too.’ William paused for a moment, taking in the room around him before continuing.

‘Look, Adam, I know Dachau wasn’t a death camp but it was the first concentration camp Hitler set up when he came to power. I mean, this was as early as 1933. And it was one of the last to be liberated. So it would have particular significance if it could be shown that African Americans were involved in its liberation. And the vehemence of the campaign against recognising the role of black servicemen there – ‘cause that’s what it is, you know, a campaign – this makes me all the more keen for somebody to get to the bottom of it. And yes, truth be told, it’s also for my friend.’

It was not for want of trying or for lack of regard for William McCray that Adam Zignelik had not managed to find any first-hand evidence, nothing from a primary source that placed a black unit at the liberation of Dachau. He tried to decide whether his time was best used further examining the combat experiences of the men of the all-black 761st Tank Battalion or whether he should bury himself in the transcripts and wire recordings of the Chicago psychologist, Henry Border. It was only when he turned his attention back to Border’s interviews that he saw the beginnings of something that sooner or later he might be able to discuss with his old friend, the civil rights lawyer and World War II veteran. In a period of three weeks he came across the evidence of three survivors interviewed by Border who mentioned, just in passing, that the military force that had liberated the camp they found themselves in at the end of the war contained black soldiers. One of these three survivors didn’t know the name of the camp he was liberated from or else Border hadn’t elicited it from him but the other two seemed to think it was either Dachau or one of Dachau’s Kaufering satellite camps. Of these two, one of them even mentioned his surprise at seeing a black officer, a captain, whose name he happened to have remembered with the help of a mnemonic.

From US Army records Adam found that although the 42nd and 45th Divisions of the US Seventh Army are credited with the liberation of Dachau on 29 April 1945, the 71st Infantry Division of the US Third Army, to which the black 761st Tank Battalion was at that time attached, was also not far from there at the relevant time. Eventually he was able to match the name remembered by Border’s interviewee with the name of an African American captain in the 761st Tank Battalion. Border’s interviewee was no longer alive but, by consulting US Army enlistment records, Adam was able to find the home address of the captain at the time of his enlistment in 1942. The address didn’t yield the captain but it led Adam to a relative of his, a granddaughter who lived in New York.

For so long he hadn’t made any progress with this but now, simply because one of the survivors Border had interviewed had spoken to the officer and had remembered his name and rank, Adam was able to track
down the officer’s granddaughter. The man on Border’s wire recording had remembered the name because it was also the name of the country’s capital and its first president.

This was how it happened that Adam found himself contacting the only living relative of Captain James Washington of the 761st Tank Battalion. Dr Ayesha Washington, it seemed, was a very busy woman but Adam was more than happy to meet her at her place of work at a time convenient for her. She worked as an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

*

Charles McCray felt it had been a compromise to bring work home that night rather than stay back late in his office in the Fayerweather building on the Columbia campus. His wife Michelle had been less sure. At least she and their daughter Sonia had to worry less about the volume of music or the radio they were playing or the movie they were watching when Charles worked late in his office. What was the point of him being there if he wasn’t going to interact with anybody and, worse, was going to implicitly impose constraints on the way they spent the evening?

But he was trying. He wondered if she’d noticed. He wondered too about the point of what he’d been doing, looking through some recent journals only one of which had a paper in his area. Surely, he asked himself, a man in his position is expected to keep up with what was going on in his profession, even outside his specific area of expertise? Was he reading outside his area in order to be able to keep up with all his colleagues? With whom was he trying to keep up? Who was he trying to impress? Not his father. No amount of reading would impress him, not any more. Would it give him something to talk about? Maybe, but who was he going to talk to: colleagues, friends? His colleagues would talk to him at least until the chair was given to someone else in the department and if their need to engage him dropped off after that, what then? As for his friends … He wondered how Adam was faring with that Chicago research. He was going there often enough. Just because it was too late
to save Adam’s position at Columbia didn’t mean Charles should ignore his friend’s work. His father wasn’t ignoring it.

Charles resolved to have lunch or at least coffee with Adam and to talk to him about his work, about his plans post Columbia. Was Adam still meeting up with William for coffee once every week or so? How was it, Charles wondered, that he didn’t know? Adam was a good man. How was he coping after Diana? Maybe Michelle would know. And so again his questioning reached back to where it had started. How much point was there in reading all these journals, in even scanning them? Who was keeping up with the latest developments in his wife’s life, in his daughter’s mood swings? They had each come to him and kissed him goodnight. That was good.

Michelle had gone to bed an hour and a half before him and by the time he had brushed his teeth, put on his pyjamas and got into bed, she was long asleep. Was she dreaming? he wondered. When she was younger did she ever dream, did she ever even imagine the man she would end up being married to, a man like him, an intellectual, an academic? And if she had, how much of a disappointment had he, the man she’d actually married, turned out to be? He rolled over on his side in bed and looked at her. Was it her moisturiser or her shampoo that smelled like that? He closed his eyes and breathed in his wife deeply. It calmed him and soon he was asleep. It was almost 3 am and he had been asleep for just a little over two hours when the phone on his bedside table rang, waking both him and Michelle. Because it was next to him he was the one to answer it.