reckless courage.
She stood up and walked to the window, her steps precise, barely controlling her rage. When she turned, her eyes targeted me. ‘Pawel and the girl went out a few times,’ she told me, ‘but as soon as I found out, I put a stop to it.’
‘And Anna came here on the twenty-fourth of January.’
‘How could I possibly remember the exact date? In any case, when she came to my door, I told her that Pawel was at boarding school, but the silly girl didn’t believe me. She insisted on coming in – she even had the nerve to search his room without my permission.’ Mrs Sawicki grimaced. ‘She stank up the apartment – for a week it smelled like a stables in here.’
‘No, Mr Honec, if they were just filth,’ she replied in a lecturing voice, ‘they wouldn’t represent such a danger to us. I’m afraid they’re much more than that.’
‘Then how would you describe them?’ I asked.
‘As a subversive story that has finally come to an end.’
Her words rattled me, and I nodded my agreement to cover my unease. ‘If only you’re right,’ I told her. ‘Now, do you know where Anna went after she left here?’
‘Back to her stables,’ she replied, grinning as if she’d made another witticism.
‘Did she say if she was going to meet a friend?’ I asked.
‘She told me nothing. She was only here a minute – less than that…’
‘Did you see anything special on her hands – a ring or a bracelet?’
‘Not that I recall.’
‘Think back, if you can.’
‘What are you implying?’ she bristled. ‘You can’t possibly think she was wearing anything my son had given her! Mr Honec, this was just a minor fling for Pawel. It meant nothing.’
I stood up and handed her my photograph of Adam. ‘Have you seen this boy?’
She shook her head.
‘His name was Adam. Did Anna mention a boy with that name, by any chance?’
‘No.’
‘Did she give you anything? A letter?’
Mrs Sawicki glared at me over her nose as if I was trying her patience. I took a last puff on my cigarette and crushed it out on the windowsill. Tears welled in her eyes.
‘If you’re holding something back from me,’ I threatened, ‘then your husband will lose his job.’
‘Mr Honec, it’s clear to me that you don’t understand the Poles. We’re a proud people who have been oppressed for centuries, and we don’t like being given orders by foreigners.’ She was sitting up straight – she regarded herself as heroic and was posing for later recall.
‘Who’s giving orders?’ I asked in an amused voice. ‘I’m just asking questions.’
‘Questions can be orders under certain circumstances.’
‘You’re a clever lady, Mrs Sawicki.’
‘You better believe it!’ she exclaimed, as if she were giving me a warning.
‘But I don’t need to be clever,’ I told her. ‘Because I make up the rules as I go.’ I knocked my dead cigarette on to the parquet with the back of my hand.
The tendons on her neck stood out threateningly. ‘You are, I suppose, aware you have no manners?’ she demanded in an aristocratic voice.
‘I’m only rude when my patience is being tested,’ I retorted.
‘The Jewish slut gave me a photograph for my son,’ she admitted. ‘She’d written something on the back, but I burned it.’
‘What did she write?’
‘I don’t read Pawel’s correspondence!’ she snarled.
It was my turn to laugh.
‘I don’t appreciate being ridiculed by old Austrians!’
‘Then who do you enjoy being ridiculed by?’ I asked with a provocative smile.
‘Who or what I enjoy is not your concern.’
‘That’s true – nothing about you concerns me,’ I shot back with deadly contempt, ‘except what you know of Anna Levine.’
‘I didn’t read what she wrote!’ she shouted.
‘Mrs Sawicki,’ I said more gently, ‘if we banter back and forth, we’ll just keep offending each other. Just tell me what Anna wrote to Pawel.’
She straightened the shoulders of her dress, considering her options. At length, she said, ‘She wrote that she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t called. She had important news for him. She begged him to call her or at least send her his new address.’
‘Which he never did, because you never told your son that Anna had come here.’
‘Of course, not. Why would I help her trap my son?’
‘So you were worried he really was in love with her,’ I observed.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Do you really think a fifteen-year-old knows what love is?’
‘Do you?’ I asked pointedly.
‘Mr Honec, you can be very annoying.’
‘In any case, it’s curious that Anna disappeared just after visiting you,’ I told her.
‘I know nothing about what happened to her after she left here.’
‘Write down Pawel’s new address for me.’
She went to the secretary in the foyer, took out a sheet of paper and scribbled quickly. Pawel’s boarding school had an address in Zurich. Folding the paper in four, I put it in my pocket, and on a hunch, I said, ‘Did you think you’d fool me so easily?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Pawel is still here in Warsaw, isn’t he?’
‘Wait here.’ She disappeared through the door at the side of the sitting room and returned with an envelope bearing a Zurich postmark. Taking out the letter, which was written on thin blue paper, she handed it to me. ‘If you look at the date and signature, you’ll see Pawel wrote it two months ago.’
She lit another cigarette as I confirmed what she said. Her contemptuous stare gave me an exaggerated sense of being nowhere close to where I wanted to be. I had the feeling the world was speaking to me, but at a pitch so high that I couldn’t hear the message. I handed her back her son’s letter, though, like Anna, I wasn’t convinced that everything was as it seemed.
‘Now get out of my apartment,’ she ordered harshly, ‘or I’ll call my husband and have you arrested. He’s an important judge, and Governor Frank is a family friend. So if you think you will ever do anything to hurt my Pawel, then you are…’
‘If Governor Frank were such a friend,’ I cut in, ‘then why did you tell me the truth about Anna? You have to know that I suspect that you might be behind her disappearance. Or is it your son who’s responsible?’
Mrs Sawicki shot me a hateful look. ‘I only told you about the girl because she means nothing to me or my son – dead or alive.’
‘I never said she was dead!’ I declared.
‘Hah!’ she sneered. ‘If you think you’ve caught me out, then you’re a fool, Mr Honec. You must suspect she’s dead or you wouldn’t be here. In any case, I can’t imagine why she means anything to the Reich Ministry of the Interior.’
‘That, Mrs Sawicki, is no concern of yours,’ I told her with poisonous calm, and before she could come up with a reply, I went to retrieve my coat and hat from the sofa.
When I returned to the foyer, it was clear from her contemptuous face that we had nothing more to say to each other. I nodded by way of goodbye and reached for the door handle, turning away from her. A mistake. I felt a burn near my elbow. She’d pressed something through my sweater into my skin. Stinging with pain, I swung out my arm and caught her on the mouth with the back of my hand, knocking her into the wall. Righting herself, she dropped
