The Warsaw Anagrams

His no offence intended made me laugh. I liked him more and more.

To give ourselves a rest, we talked about the wretched weather for a time – a favoured subject in Warsaw for at least nine months every year. Then he asked about Stefa, and I told him how she’d given me back a belief in miracles. When I spoke of her Moroccan slippers falling off, and of the sores I discovered between her toes, he closed his eyes as if he might give up his Hollywood gangster persona and turn back into the softer man he undoubtedly was in the Before Time.

‘Hey, give me some more cheese,’ I asked, to move us beyond our impasse.

He cut me a big slice, pulling the knife towards his thumb like a peasant, which made me realize how far he’d come.

‘Got a pen and paper?’ he asked while I was licking the crumbs from my palm.

‘What for?’

‘I’m going to write down what I know about Georg.’

I told him to fetch my dream diary from under my pillow and my inkstand from my desk. In the thirty seconds he was gone, I realized the obvious: he was too overworked to solve the murders of Adam, Anna and Georg; he wanted me to do that for him. And I also realized that he must be sure a Jewish accomplice inside the ghetto was at least partly responsible for Adam’s death or he wouldn’t be worried about what I’d do.

‘Who are the letters under your pillow from?’ he asked when he returned.

‘My daughter. She lives in Izmir. She’s an archaeologist. She likes old things.’ Except for her father, I almost added, but I hoped that was no longer true.

‘Thank God she’s safe,’ he told me.

‘Yes, that’s a very good thing. Listen, Schrei, after I find out who killed Adam, Anna and Georg, what’ll you do with me?’

‘Do with you? I won’t do anything with you.’ He was offended by my implication.

‘If the murderer turns out to be a wealthy smuggler who’s collaborating with the Germans, you won’t put a bullet in me?’

‘Not if you keep his identity to yourself.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Dr Cohen,’ he replied wearily, ‘if I were a betting man, I’d wager you’ll never find out who the murderer is. But if you do, you can be sure I’ll take care of him – even if he turns out to be Keranowicz.’

‘Who?’

‘Sorry – it’s my anagram for Czerniakow.’

Adam Czerniakow was the head of the Jewish Council – and the most famous man in the ghetto.

‘You too?’ I exclaimed.

‘Me too what?’

‘Rearranging things to fit the new world we’re living in.’

‘What else can I do?’ he replied, shrugging. ‘Anyway, I’ll take care of the murderer – if you find him. That’s my job.’

He spoke so matter-of-factly that I believed him. He wrote a name in my dream diary – Georg Mueller – then the address he’d lived at before being orphaned: 24 Brzeska Street, which was in the Warsaw suburb of Praga.

He also wrote down his own address. When he handed me my diary, he said, ‘Get in touch with me if you find out anything more – any time, day or night.’

‘You’re sure Georg’s parents are dead?’ I asked.

‘That’s what the boy told the people at the orphanage. And we managed to send someone to his home address, but none of his neighbours knew of any relatives in the area.’

‘He must have someone – an aunt, an uncle…’

‘He said he had cousins in Katowice.’

As I wrote that down, I asked, ‘And how did his parents die?’

‘The Nazis sent his father away on a labour gang and he never came home. Pneumonia killed his mother.’

‘Do you have a photo of him?’ I asked, and when Schrei shook his head, I added, ‘How about an identity card?’

‘Nothing. He was thrown naked into the barbed wire.’

‘From the Christian side?’

‘Yes.’

‘You said he’d run away from the orphanage. So where was he living?’

‘On the street. A nurse who worked at the orphanage said she used to see him juggling outside the Femina Theatre. But listen, Mueller may not be his real name. That’s the name he used, but he might have made it up. Apparently, he was that kind of kid.’

‘What kind of kid is that?’

‘The kind who lies to adults.’

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ I told him. ‘In here, all kids lie. That’s one more way we can be sure we’ve been exiled to Gehenna.’

CHAPTER 21

A barber at a makeshift stall near the Femina Theatre confirmed to me that kids often performed there starting at noon and, sure enough, five boys and one girl, all in homemade black leotards, arrived only a few minutes after the hour. A crowd formed as they spread a worn red rug along the sidewalk.

They performed flips and handsprings to much delighted applause. Only one of the kids – a boy with a shaved head who was maybe ten or eleven years old – seemed to be a trained gymnast, however; he did a twisting handspring into a back flip that made everybody gasp. But he never smiled; he seemed to be embarrassed.

For a finale, the children formed a three-tiered pyramid. An imp with a shaved head stood at the top. He wore a gold papier-mache crown and gripped a sceptre in his fist – a metal bar painted silver, with a blue light bulb fastened at the top. Surveying the onlookers, he held his head high, as if they were his subjects. He tried his best, but the whole amateurish spectacle only revealed to me how far we’d fallen.

As soon as the show was over, the capable gymnast walked through the crowd with a black derby, asking for donations. I dropped a zloty in and asked if he’d known a young street juggler named Georg. He told me that he hadn’t, but the miniature king who’d reigned atop the pyramid overheard us and hollered, ‘I knew him!’

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Zachariah Manberg,’ he replied proudly.

‘He’s Tsibele!’ the slightly older acrobat beside him shouted with malicious glee.

‘’Cause he smells like an rotten onion!’ another shouted.

‘We all smell like onions!’ I challenged them.

‘Not you, Reb Yid!’ yelled the girl acrobat, hoping to win some coins in exchange for flattery.

‘True,’ I acknowledged. ‘I have it on good authority that I smell like a dog’s rear end.’

She was too shocked to laugh. And Zachariah was too curious of me.

‘Come here,’ I told him, motioning him over. He had merry green eyes – intelligent and wily – and I imagined from the serious way he stared at me that he was trying to assess whether I was a hundred, or maybe even a thousand, years old. I felt an immediate affection for him.

‘My name is Erik Cohen and I’m sixty-seven,’ I told him. ‘How old are you?’

‘Seven and a half,’ he answered proudly, puffing up his chest like a rooster.

‘Do you know if Georg was smuggling?’ I asked.

He held out his palm, stuck the pink tip of his tongue between his lips and gave me a cheeky look. I reached into my pocket and took out a one-zloty coin, then gave it to him, which made his eyes pop. The four other boys and single girl in his troupe circled around us.

‘I’m sure he was smuggling,’ Zachariah told me.