The Warsaw Anagrams

She stopped, unsure what to do. Trudging back to me, as though punished, she took off her aviator’s hat. Her face was solemn. ‘How did you know?’ she asked.

‘I’m beginning to understand more about what you children are going through.’

She bit her lip. ‘I gave her twenty zloty. But you can’t tell anyone!’

‘I understand. An abortion is…’

‘No, you don’t understand, Mr Honec! I didn’t care whether she had an abortion or not. I did something unforgivable, something that…’

‘You stole money from your parents,’ I cut in – to relieve her of the need to speak her crime aloud.

‘No, from my younger brother,’ she whispered, and her eyes moistened. She rubbed the tears away roughly, as if she didn’t deserve them. ‘God forgive me, I took two ten-zloty notes out of his wallet. He’d been saving them for months. Mr Honec, he’d even ironed them to make them perfect. He cried for days when they went missing. And my parents were furious with him.’ Henia shook her head at her own treachery.

‘Anna was desperate,’ I told her. ‘You helped her. You were a good friend.’

‘But I betrayed my brother – badly.’

I gazed into the distance, at the brick wall blocking off Prozna Street, trying to read what to say to Henia in our landscape of confinement. ‘On this island, even a mitzvah can cause harm,’ I told her. ‘Though I wish none of us had to learn that.’

‘Making my brother feel hopeless wasn’t a mitzvah!’ she declared, unwilling to be prised free of the moral trap she’d stumbled into. ‘And I couldn’t ever face my parents or brother again if they found out what I’ve done. Never! So you can’t say anything!’

‘I won’t say a word. I promise.’

Henia put her hat back on. ‘Mr Honec, do you… do you have any idea why the Nazis killed Anna?’ At that moment, she seemed a small girl imprisoned high up in the tower of her best friend’s death.

‘No, not yet,’ I replied.

‘Then I want you to do me a favour. If you find out, don’t tell me – at least, not until we get out of here.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I’d kill myself if I was in any way responsible.’

‘Don’t say that!’ I pleaded.

‘But it’s true.’ She fixed me with a hard look. ‘And my death would only make things harder for my parents and my brother.’

Anna had needed to talk to Pawel because she was pregnant – and possibly for him to contribute to the cost of her abortion. Had Mrs Sawicki found out about the girl’s condition? Maybe Anna had demanded that Pawel marry her, and his mother had murdered her to safeguard his independence.

Or maybe Mikael had performed an abortion on her – one that ended tragically. Terrified of being held responsible, he’d discarded her in the barbed wire, so that we’d assume the Nazis were responsible. But to do so, he’d have had to obtain permission from the Germans to cross over to the Christian side, and they would have surely discovered he had a girl’s body with him. It seemed highly unlikely. And in any case, neither of these scenarios could explain why Mikael, Mrs Sawicki or anyone else would want Anna’s hand.

I headed off to Mikael’s office to speak again to Anka, his nurse, and to see if he’d already secured Stefa’s anti-typhus serum.

At first, Anka spoke to me brusquely, insisting she had nothing more to say to me, but by telling her about Adam and his connection to Anna, I managed to draw her out to the stairwell, where we could talk alone.

‘You don’t approve of abortions,’ I whispered to her as soon as we were hidden.

‘So you found out.’

‘As you wanted me to.’

She crossed her arms as though to defend herself and said, ‘Let’s get one thing straight – I do approve of abortions. These starving girls can’t bring a baby into this goddamned mess! But one girl died after her operation.’

‘And you were there when that happened?’

‘No, Dr Tengmann performs the procedures in the evening. But this girl, Esther… After going home, she went to bed, saying she was feeling a cold coming on, but in the morning her parents found her soaked in her own blood, unconscious. It was too late to save her. Maybe we’d never have found out, but her father came here asking questions. He’d known his daughter was pregnant, though he wasn’t sure she’d come here. He caught us off guard. Dr Tengmann admitted that he’d seen her, but he denied having given her an abortion. That was very wrong!’ At the thud of a door closing somewhere in the building, Anka flinched. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper. ‘I can’t forgive him for lying. And I can’t trust him any more. I’ve tried, but I can’t.’

‘If you didn’t help with the operation, how can you be so sure of all this?’ I asked.

‘I know a nurse who assists Dr Tengmann at night.’

‘Then she can tell me if Anna also got an abortion!’

‘I’ve already asked her. She never met any girl with that name.’

‘Anka, I’d like to talk to her myself. Can you give me her name and address?’

‘No, I’m sorry – she wants to keep her identity a secret.’

‘Then would you be willing to show her my photograph of Anna?’

‘Of course.’

I handed her the picture.

‘I’ll send you a message with what I find out,’ she assured me.

‘Listen, was anything… a hand, a leg… taken from Esther?’

‘Her father didn’t mention anything like that. God, I hope not!’

‘Can you give me his name and address?’

‘If you want. But I need my job here – you’ll have to be discreet.’

‘You have my word. Do you know if Dr Tengmann keeps records of his abortions?’

‘If he does, I don’t know about them – or where they’d be.’

Back in the sitting room, Anka wrote me out the name of the dead girl’s father – Hajman Szwebel – and his address. He lived on Solna Street, just two blocks from where Adam and Anna had been tossed in the barbed wire.

I waited a half-hour before I could get in to see Mikael in his office. After shaking my hand warmly, he held the serum up to the light. ‘Here it is!’ he enthused.

Our hopes resided in an amber vial.

‘I’ll go with you now to administer it,’ he told me.

‘But what about your other patients?’

‘They’ll have to wait – typhus is serious business.’

‘Look, Mikael, I’ll never be able to repay you,’ I replied, ‘but at least I can give you this…’ I handed him my envelope of money, making sure that Mrs Sawicki’s printed name was facing him.

Spotting the embossed lettering, he grinned. ‘I see you’re still playing at detective.’

‘I’m not playing at anything!’ I replied gruffly, more aggressively than I’d intended, probably because I’d been secretly hoping that the name Sawicki – and the implication that I’d spoken to her – would disquiet him.

‘I’m sorry – that came out wrong,’ he told me. ‘Forgive me, Erik. It was a stupid thing to say. It’s just that I’m worried about you.’

‘I’ll be fine. The worst has already happened. But listen, you might want to count the money.’

‘There’s no need – I trust you.’ He took his coat down from its hook by the door, tucking the envelope and serum away in an inside pocket. ‘So were you able to speak to Pawel?’ he asked.

‘No. Mrs Sawicki told me he was in Switzerland – at boarding school.’

‘I see.’ Putting his coat down on his desk, he tucked his glasses into their case and rubbed his eyes. ‘Do you understand now why I couldn’t answer all your questions? And why I lied about what was wrong with Anna? You gave me no choice.’