The Warsaw Anagrams (6 page)

The death of a child is a single event, but the memory of it expands to cover a lifetime. Nothing I’d ever done – not even as a young man – was free of his loss: not my schooldays with Izzy, not my marriage, not Liesel’s birth.

Ewa appeared out of nowhere. Later, she told me she rushed out to the street when she heard a shriek, but I don’t remember any shouting. Nearly everyone on our block had known Adam since he was a baby; one of them must have let out a cry on seeing him.

Ewa began to wail. Women neighbours rushed to her. I must have entered their group at some point or summoned her to me. I must have asked her to find Stefa and told her where she had gone, but I don’t recall any of that.

Had I thought of our exile into the ghetto as a dream and interpreted it correctly, I’d have lived more cautiously, since I’d have known they moved us on to an island to make it easier to steal our future – and to keep the rest of the world from knowing. I ought to have been among the first to understand!

And I should have guessed that Adam would race across all the forbidden bridges in the world to save Gloria.

I will have to warn Stefa not to lift his blanket or she will be as damned as I am.

When I saw my niece running towards me, I put my hand atop Adam’s head, because his hair was the only part of him that was still soft, and I was terrified I’d forget its silken feel, and I knew I’d have to give up possession of him to his mother now.

Stefa crept forward, hugging her arms around her chest. She looked at her son and then at me with a puzzled expression, as though asking me to explain a great mystery. She didn’t cry. She was enveloped by a dark spell of silence. Her nose was running and her eyes were red. She was panting.

Ewa helped her up into the cart. Stefa kissed my brow and squeezed my hand. It was unlike her to express her affection so openly, but I didn’t think of that till later.

Taking off her mittens, my niece brought Adam’s hand to her cheek, then put it over her mouth and pressed her lips to his palm. She stepped his fingertips over her closed eyelids, and that’s when her first tears came, along with a choking sound.

‘Stefa …’ I began, but my niece’s moans covered my words.

When she embraced Adam, his blanket slid down to his waist. I had to tell her now not to look any lower, but my voice had been swallowed by the terrible strangeness of this moment – the sense that the entire future of the earth and heaven was turning around what was taking place here.

Stefa rocked Adam back and forth as if he were a baby. When she reached down to lift the blanket over his chest again, she saw what had been cut from him and began to howl. The sound was like an animal having its womb cut out.

I’d put Stefa’s woollen hat back on her head, but she was still shivering as though she’d fallen through the ice of a winter lake. She agreed to talk with Mr Schrei, the Jewish Council’s representative, on the condition that her son remain covered and guarded until we’d agreed on funeral plans. Ewa helped me prop up my niece as we trudged upstairs. On our landing, she began coughing as if her lungs were packed with grit.

Behind our closed door, I sat my niece on the bed and smoothed a shawl over her legs, then brought her a cup of the coffee I’d made earlier, lacing it with a little vodka, but she kept her hands knitted together and refused to touch her drink. She bent her head over her lap like an old widow curled around her loneliness, protecting herself from a world where she no longer had a home.

I think she had already vowed that her thoughts would never leave her son again – and was on strike against a world where a child could be murdered.

I took Adam’s Indian headdress off our faded leather armchair – I’d been planning to sew on the fallen feather – and invited Mr Schrei, who’d been standing by the door, to sit. Ewa brought him coffee. Taking a first sip, he leaned back with a long sigh, hoping, I think, to convince us of his exhaustion, which irritated me until I realized how awkward this must have been for him. I sat up as straight as I could to fight the urge to hide, and I tried to fill my pipe, but my hands proved too clumsy. Ewa leaned back against the windowsill, watching Stefa with motherly concern. She kept the loop of her amber beads in her mouth. When our eyes met, she shook her head as if to say,
I’ll never believe it
.

Mr Schrei told us that Adam must have been grabbed by the Nazis outside the ghetto and executed. ‘They tossed him into the barbed wire because they intended for us to find him,’ he said authoritatively. ‘I expect his death was a message.’

‘A message about what?’ I asked.

He leaned forward, his hands propped on his knees. ‘As a reminder of what’s in store for kids caught smuggling – a deterrent, if you will. The Germans have recently begun exercising pressure on the council to curtail illegal commerce. I believe that’s why they … why they cut off Adam’s leg – to frighten us into passive acceptance of our fate.’

‘But I thought that was the only way the Jewish policemen could free Adam from the barbed wire.’

‘I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. In point of fact, Adam was found that way.’

I looked at Stefa. Her lips and eyes were shut tight, and she was swaying gently from side to side, as if imagining Adam in her arms. I wanted to be alone with her, and for night to fall quickly. In the darkness, floating free of all our previous expectations, my niece and I just might find a way to talk to each other that could be meaningful. Maybe she, at least, could find a way forward.

Ewa’s hesitant voice broke the silence. ‘Mr Schrei, how … how did the Germans execute him?’

‘I’m not certain,’ he replied. ‘There are no other injuries that our doctor could see.’

‘We’ll have to find out,’ I told him.

‘Why?’ Stefa asked, opening her eyes.

‘I think we ought to know what the Germans did to him,’ I told her.

‘It makes no difference now,’ she observed. Gazing down, she added, ‘I don’t want anyone but me to touch Adam.’

I knelt by her. ‘No one will touch him,’ I assured her, but I already knew I was lying, and I silently asked for her forgiveness.

My niece pressed her hand to my cheek by way of thanks, then took off her muffler and placed it neatly on the bed behind her. Her gestures – overly precise – gave me gooseflesh.

Perspiration had glued her hair to her neck. I reached up to remove her hat, but she stilled my hand. ‘No! I have to keep my thoughts inside!’ she said sharply. Anxious to flee from my intrusion, she got to her feet and took a deep breath. I stood up beside her but didn’t dare touch her. ‘I need to boil some water,’ she said. With a quick look at Ewa, then at Mr Schrei, she added, ‘Please excuse me.’

After a first step, her eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled. I caught her, and Ewa helped me lay her on the bed.

I pressed a cold compress to Stefa’s brow and called her name softly. As she came round, Mr Schrei fetched a glass of water, and Ewa held it to her lips. My niece drank in tiny sips, gazing around the room, surprised to find herself at home.

Ewa helped her sit up. ‘Come, I’ll put you to bed now,’ she said.

‘No, please,’ Stefa pleaded, her brow ribbed with worry. ‘Take me to the kitchen.’

‘She needs air,’ I observed. ‘Sit by the window, Stefa. I’ll open it a crack. You need to sit quietly for a few minutes.’

‘No, I need two towels – one small, one large. Uncle Erik, bring them to me from my wardrobe … the bottom shelf.’ She pointed to her room.

I understood what she intended, but Ewa must have showed her a puzzled look; Stefa took her hand and whispered, ‘I need to wash my son and make him ready for … for …’

She stopped there, unable to say the word
burial
.

While Ewa led my niece into the kitchen, Mr Schrei stood up. Stepping to the mirror by my desk, he put on his hat and tilted it at a stylish angle. I could see he was proud of being handsome, and I imagined it would be difficult for him to grow old. Like me, in other words, though I’d been vain without the benefit of good looks. Turning to me, he said, ‘Please accept my condolences and those of the council.’ At the door, he added, ‘Just one more thing. We would be most appreciative if you were to refrain from speaking to anyone about your nephew’s missing leg. It could create problems. Please tell your niece and the other woman. I’m sorry, I don’t know her name.’

‘Ewa. What kind of problems?’ I started filling the bowl of my pipe again; I was desperate to smoke.

‘You know how superstitious some of the rural Jews are, about burying a body that’s incomplete … forced to walk the earth as disembodied spirits and all that rubbish.’ He rolled his eyes at the very notion. ‘Spreading news of what’s happened could cause panic. And since this is an isolated case, it’s best if we just … well, I think you know what I mean.’

‘No, actually I don’t,’ I told him.

‘A little discretion will go a long way in keeping things under control,’ he observed.

When he shook my hand to take his leave, I snarled, ‘Do you really believe that
keeping things under control
is of any importance to me now?’

Outside, the undertaker, whose name was Schmul, told me that I would need to go to Pinkiert’s headquarters to pre-pay the funeral. And that he really ought to get going. I gave him five złoty to have him stay with us until Stefa had had a chance to wash her son. He helped me carry Adam into the courtyard. Then I took a couple of swigs from the vodka bottle I’d carried downstairs, put on my reading glasses, kneeled beside my nephew and adjusted the blanket so that it concealed only his face. You see, Heniek, I had only one purpose left.

Adam was badly scratched from the barbed wire, particularly on his belly and chest, which was where he must have been gripped by the coils. But none of the scratches were bloody, which seemed to indicate that he’d been dead for an hour or so – with his veins and arteries dry – before being discarded.

I was unable to find any bullet hole or puncture wound, but button-sized, reddish-brown bruises marked the skin over his ribs, all of them between the sleek rise of his right hip and his sternum: a handprint.

I conjectured that the largest corresponded to where a thumb had pressed down, and I tried to match my fingertips to the marks but couldn’t quite spread my hand far enough. Whoever had severed Adam’s leg had been almost certainly a man, and probably larger than I was.

The killer – or his accomplice – must have used his left hand for leverage while he sawed with his right. To have made such deep bruises, he’d have to have pressed down hard on the boy’s chest.

When I imitated what I imagined he’d done, a small shift inside Adam, like a latch opening, made my heart tumble. Leaning down and pressing again, I heard a click – a rib was broken.

I closed my eyes to keep from being sick again. I realized that whoever took Adam’s leg must have leaned over the boy hard enough to crack bone. Why the need to apply so much force? Perhaps his saw had been dulled by age or overuse, and he’d required leverage to cut through bone. Or maybe he had worked in feverish haste and had been careless – either because he risked being spotted or disliked what he was doing.

Had a Nazi ordered a Polish Christian or even a Jew to mutilate Adam?

Anguished by the sweaty confinement of my clothing, I wriggled out of my coat and threw down my hat. Knowing what I had to do next, I gulped down the rest of my vodka.

Peeling the blanket off Adam’s face, I discovered a tiny cut on his bottom lip. A scrape from the barbed wire? With the tip of my finger, I touched it, then gently prised his lips apart. The end of a white string was caught between his teeth. Holding my breath, I pulled at it but it wouldn’t budge.

I couldn’t risk breaking his jaw or scarring his lips. I covered Adam’s face and asked Schmul how long it would take for the boy’s body to become malleable again.

‘Up to three days,’ he replied.

Stefa was more religious than I was and would never wait that long to bury Adam, which created a dilemma. ‘I need for you to get a message to a friend right away,’ I told the undertaker, handing him all the złoty I had left in my pocket, which he refused, saying I’d given him enough. I told him where to find Izzy and what to say to him.

Stefa might appear at any moment, so as Schmul headed off, I turned my attention back to Adam. I could find no bloodstains on his belly, chest, or behind, which was another indication that whoever disfigured him had let the boy’s blood coagulate before starting his work. Yet the murderer or his assistant hadn’t waited very long, for if he had, the capillaries on Adam’s chest wouldn’t have released any blood at all on being pressed and no bruises would have been visible.

Of course, it was possible that Adam had been mutilated right after being killed and had bled profusely but had been carefully washed afterwards. Yet it seemed unlikely that anyone would spend so much time cleaning a Jewish boy soon to be discarded.

A right-handed man – larger than me – who worked as fast as possible because he disliked what he had been made to do or feared being caught.

By now, the vodka was starting to turn my thoughts to mist, so I eased my head back on to the flagstones. And amidst the ceaseless flow of clouds, I saw that Adam’s murder had taken away my terror of death; nothing worse could ever happen to me.

Izzy and Schmul helped me up when they arrived.

‘Any sign of Stefa?’ I asked.

‘None,’ Izzy replied. ‘You want me to check on her?’

‘No, don’t go. If she hasn’t come down yet, it’s because Ewa managed to convince her to try to get some sleep.’

When I told Izzy what I wanted him to do, he shook his head and held up a hand between us like a shield. ‘I’m sorry, Erik, I can’t – it’s impossible.’

‘Please, look at what they’ve done to Adam. We need to find out what happened.’

After I pulled the blanket off the boy, Izzy reached behind him for the stability of a wall that wasn’t there and nearly tumbled over. We looked at each other across fifty years of friendship; two old men realizing there were no words in any language to describe a loss – and crime – like this.