The Warsaw Anagrams

were compelling me to believe in the power of amulets and spells, like Dorota and so many others.

‘Did Pawel’s parents approve of Anna?’ I asked.

‘My daughter told me they adored her, but I checked on the family and learned that the judge had become a vicious anti-Semite since the Nazi occupation.’

I asked if I could keep the photograph while I hunted for Anna and Adam’s killer, and Dorota agreed. She went on to tell me that Pawel and his family lived at 24 Wilcza Street. ‘He promised to visit Anna in the ghetto. At least, that’s what she told me. He never came or even called that I know of. Then Anna announced that she wouldn’t eat again until she saw him – announced it like a decree! That’s why she lost so much weight and couldn’t wear her ring. My husband started forcing her to eat supper, but after bed she’d sneak off to the bathroom and make herself sick. It took me two weeks to realize that’s what she was doing. By then, she was a living skeleton. Dr Cohen,’ Dorota said, opening her hands as if to make an appeal to reason, ‘her wilfulness was killing our family.’ She hunched forward, circling those secrets of hers again, though this time I sensed it was to hold something back. ‘This will sound strange, but I felt I was living in a house that was falling to pieces. Every shadow was menacing. And Anna’s appearance – it scared me. Once, I stood her in front of the mirror in my bedroom and showed her how gaunt she was, but she insisted she was disgustingly fat. Can you believe it? Of course, she blamed my husband and me for everything – for insisting she eat, for keeping her apart from Pawel. She put us through hell.’

‘Did she ever succeed in speaking with him?’

‘Not that I know of. When I called Pawel’s mother, she told me she’d sent the boy to a boarding school. I told Anna, but she screamed at me that I was lying. She wrote letters to him. I allowed that in exchange for her agreeing to eat again. But she never received any replies – at least, not that I know of.’

I went on to question Dorota about her daughter’s schooling and friends, hoping to chance upon a connection to Adam, and for once, Jewish knitting proved helpful; she soon told me that Anna had been very close to her maternal grandfather, whose name was Noel Anbaum.

‘The musician – he’s your father?’ I questioned.

‘Yes, do you know him?’

‘I saw him perform when I was much younger. Dorota, Anna wasn’t in a chorus, by any chance?’

‘No.’

‘How about your son?’

‘No, why?’

‘Adam was, and I saw your father at the concert.’

When I asked Dorota for her father’s address, she looked at her watch and replied, ‘If you hurry, you’ll be able to catch him playing outside the Nowy Azazel Theatre.’

CHAPTER 11

The fingers of Noel Anbaum’s black leather gloves had been cut away and his crocheted blue muffler had a corner that was unravelling in a payot curl, but he still cut a slim, dashing figure – a grey-templed, Roman-nosed Casanova – in his wine-red zoot suit and black gaucho hat. Standing on Nowolipie Street in front of the Nowy Azazel, his right foot up on a fraying green and gold brocade chair that looked as if it had been nicked from a local bordello, he was playing an undulating blues song on his accordion, bellowing the roller- coaster chord changes in and out with his left hand, the wizened fingers of his right coaxing a sensual vibrato out of the chipped and yellowing keyboard. He doubled the melody in his gritty voice, braving an English that was twisted into absurd shapes by Yiddish vowels. One line he must have improvised stuck in my head because he sang it with the provocative bravado of a gunslinger: If I cabaret on Saturday and curse Herr Hitler all day Sunday, ain’t nobody’s business if I do…

On the high notes, Noel’s voice sounded like sandpaper being scratched, and its raspy imperfection made me fear he’d teeter off the melody, but he never did. His singing was a kind of high-wire act, which was probably why so many zloty had been tossed into the slate-grey velvet of his accordion case; after all, if his performance were effortless, would it be worth paying for? He himself kept his eyes closed, swaying luxuriously, as though his music were a slow tide carrying him deep into himself.

I threaded through the crowd towards a clearing that had formed around a bearded beggar sitting on the sidewalk about ten paces to Noel’s left. The ribs of the bare-chested man jutted out dangerously, like a galley with its construction exposed, and his caved-in belly was criss-crossed by bloody scabies tracks. The stench of his having soiled himself made me cup my hands over my mouth and nose.

After Noel had finished his song and bowed to his audience, I went to him. ‘My name is Erik Cohen. My wife and I used to see you play at the Esplanade. You were amazing.’

‘That was during a previous lifetime,’ he replied, laughing merrily. ‘As you can see, I’m paying for my past sins in this one.’

‘No, you’re still wonderful!’ I told him.

Smiling gratefully, he shook my hand. His trembled badly. Laying his hat on the seat of his chair, he picked up a Zywiec beer bottle from the ground. As he took a sip, he spotted me eyeing his shaking hand. ‘Damn thing has a life of its own these days,’ he told me. ‘Except when it gets near a keyboard.’

‘I need to talk with you.’

He cupped his hand behind his ear with sweet-natured eagerness and leaned so far towards me that he started to fall over and I had to prop him up. He was a bit drunk.

‘Let’s go somewhere warm,’ I proposed.

‘No, if I get comfortable now, I won’t want to come back out. Let’s stay here.’

‘Listen, Noel, your daughter Dorota came to see me. She told me about Anna.’

His expression darkened.

‘You see why I’d prefer to be alone with you,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry, but talking about Anna does me no good,’ he replied.

After he showed me the smile of a man excusing a frailty, he put down his beer, lifted his accordion and started to play, but I grabbed his wrist.

‘Why do you want to torture me?’ he asked glumly, looking at me with so solemn a wish to be understood that I felt ashamed.

‘Please, Noel,’ I pleaded, ‘my grandnephew, Adam, he was also murdered – just like Anna. All I need is for you to tell me why you attended a choral concert at the end of January. Twelve children sang Bach. Adam was one of them. It was-’

‘I remember the concert,’ he interrupted. ‘I was there because of Rowy Klaus – the conductor. He studied piano and music theory with me when he was a boy.’

‘So Rowy invited you?’

‘Yes, we’ve stayed in touch all these years.’

‘Thank you, Noel. I’m grateful.’

As I started away, he called my name and said in a resonant voice, ‘“May the angel who redeems me from all evil bless the children.”’

After I’d nodded my agreement, his eyes fluttered closed and he entered the tide of another song. Its melody rose ghost-like out of my childhood, and though I was unable to identify it at the time, I later recalled that it was Schubert’s setting of Psalm 92, which reads, ‘My eyes have seen the defeat of my adversaries; my ears have heard the rout of my wicked foes.’

A marketplace had formed behind Noel, taking advantage of his popularity, and I zigzagged around shoppers until I was brought to a halt by a group of ghetto mushrooms: shoeshine boys sitting on wooden stools, their soot-smudged faces hidden in shadow by the peaks of their woollen caps, their hands stained black. One waif had a shaved head and a crone’s joyless face. Cuttings of an old rug were tied around his feet. He looked at me with dull, lifeless eyes.

I ought to have led him off to buy boots or simply smiled at him, but I didn’t – a measure of how far I’d let exile draw me away from myself.

Passing a small pyramid of cauliflowers in a pushcart, I realized they’d make a tasty supper. My heart soared to