‘Yes, I can see that now. But you no longer have any reason to hide the truth. So I need to know if Anna was certain Pawel was the father.’
He started. ‘Do you have reason to believe he wasn’t?’
‘One of Anna’s friends told me she had her doubts.’
‘All she told me was she was in love with Pawel and that her parents didn’t approve of their relationship. That’s all I know. I help the girls the only way I can. To tell you the truth, I don’t want to know more about their lives. I just can’t take it.’
We took a rickshaw to Stefa’s flat. Mikael gazed away, troubled. Guessing what was on his mind, aware now of how fate had trapped him, I patted his leg and said, ‘Given our circumstances, what you do is a good thing.’
‘You think so? I’ll be honest, Erik. I have my doubts at times, but when the girls plead with me, how can I refuse? And you know what they fear most? That their baby will die of starvation inside their womb. How’s that for something to keep you awake at nights?’ He surveyed the massive, swirling crowds on both sides of the street as if looking for strength. ‘I just want Ewa and Helena to be able to get out of this place alive,’ he added. ‘That’s the only reason I keep going.’
Kids in little more than rags began running after us, shouting for money. Mikael tossed coins to the pavement. The boys and girls, hollering, swarmed upon them.
For the first time, I saw how the youngest among us would lead us into the grave. That was now the meaning of Adam and Anna’s death.
Mikael and I sat in glum silence. The low-lying winter sun was blocked by the tenement roofs, leaving the streets in deep, penetrating shadow. I couldn’t stop shivering.
Finally, I asked, ‘So Anna never confirmed to you that Pawel was the father?’
‘No, I assumed it.’
‘Did she come right out and ask you for an abortion?’
‘Yes. And I agreed to help her, but on the evening of her procedure, she didn’t show up.’ I started to ask a question, but he raised his hand. ‘I have no idea why not. I never heard from her again.’ He shrugged. ‘And then you appeared, telling me she was dead. That’s all I know.’
‘Was her abortion scheduled for the twenty-fourth of January?’
‘It’s hard to recall, though that sounds about right. But how did you know?’
‘That’s the day she went missing.’
The icy wind pushed against our faces. I lifted my muffler over my mouth, so the rest of our brief conversation seems to me now to be textured by thick, dark wool.
‘Have all the girls recovered well from their procedures?’ I questioned, wanting to test Mikael’s honesty.
‘What do you mean?’
‘No complications, infections…?’
He glared at me. ‘All the girls have left my office healthy – tired and upset, but healthy. What happens to them after that, I can’t control. Or do you think I can?’
Ewa was waiting for Mikael and me in Stefa’s apartment, sitting on my bed, her arm over Helena’s shoulder, her eyes red and puffy.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked, rushing to her.
‘It’s Stefa,’ Ewa moaned, and she pointed to the window. ‘She’s in the courtyard, but…’
Looking down, I saw a woman’s body covered from the waist up by a newspaper and two men standing nearby – our building supervisor, Professor Engal, and a Jewish policeman. The policeman held Stefa’s Moroccan slippers, one in each hand.
I clambered down the stairs. Two bricks had been placed atop the newspaper to keep it from blowing away. Kneeling, I tossed them aside.
Ewa told me later that on seeing Stefa’s face I immediately let out a cry for Ernst – my younger brother and her father. I have only the most vague recollection of that.
Silver coins covered her eyes. That’s what I remember clearly.
I began shaking. The Jewish policeman helped me to my feet and told me my niece had jumped.
‘No, no, no – she was too weak to do that,’ I insisted.
He pointed to the window of my bedroom. ‘She sat on the ledge and pushed off.’
Turning round, I noticed Ziv sitting in the corner of the courtyard, rocking back and forth like a lost child. I called to him, but he didn’t answer.
I sat with Stefa for a time, holding her hand, whispering to her about when I’d first seen her as a baby. While clinging to the soft, searching sound of my voice, I realized why she had me keep Adam’s medical history and the portraits she’d drawn of him.
I took the zloty coins off her eyes; I didn’t believe in ghostly ferryboats across mythological rivers. Professor Engal told me they were Ziv’s, so I tossed the money by his feet, hoping to get his attention, but he didn’t stir.
While caressing Stefa’s hair, I apologized to her again for not protecting Adam, speaking to her in Yiddish and Polish, because each language had its own nuances of guilt and remorse, and ways of asking for what could never now be given to me, and I wanted her to hear them all. When I trudged back upstairs to try to figure out how she’d managed to end her own life, I found Mikael seated on my bed. He stood up to embrace me, telling me how sorry he was. He said that Ewa had taken Helena home.
On handing me back my thousand zloty, he said, ‘Stefa had to do it now – she didn’t want to waste the serum. I’ve seen that sort of sacrifice before. I should have warned you. I apologize for being thoughtless.’
I understood then why my niece had been so angry with Izzy and me for finding anti-typhus serum. Maybe she hadn’t been ready to meet Death in a Warsaw courtyard, but she knew she couldn’t wait.
CHAPTER 16
Stefa must have crawled out of bed and used all that was left of her strength to drag our armchair to the window. I know that because two parallel scratches from the chair legs marked the wooden floor. The window had been shut tight to keep out the frigid wind. My niece had been unable to lift a spoon to feed herself, but she must have somehow managed to throw it wide open.
Later, when I questioned Ewa, she swore to me that the door was locked the last time she came to check on Stefa. As always, she’d let herself in with her spare key. There was no sign of anyone having been there to help her commit suicide. Stefa had been asleep in bed.
‘Or she looked asleep,’ I noted.
‘Or that,’ Ewa agreed.
Why did my niece put on her slippers before jumping? True, her feet were always cold of late, but she must have known she’d feel no discomfort soon enough. Maybe she didn’t want the person who found her to see the open sores between her toes. I’d known nothing about that small corner of her misery. She’d hidden quite a lot, as it turns out.
In any case, she put on her red and gold Moroccan slippers, climbed up on the chair and eased herself down on the window ledge. Her brittle arms must have been trembling under the strain. One after the other, she swung her legs over the rim until she was sitting on it and facing out – a complex manoeuvre. I know that because I tried it myself, and I’d swear in any court that it required a dexterity and strength that were beyond her.
Ziv was on break and sitting outside the bakery, reading a chess newsletter that had been printed in the ghetto; it had an article on Szmul Rzeszewski, one of his heroes.
Did Stefa hear him call out to her not to move, that she was in danger of falling?
‘I’ll be right up!’ he shouted. ‘Wait for me!’
What did she think as she pushed and swivelled herself closer to the edge? Perhaps that gravity was a blessing.
