The Warsaw Anagrams

‘Because you’re the one causing it?’ I asked, hoping I’d come near the truth; I needed to build up her confidence in me if I was going to help her.

She thought about my theory. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ she told me, but she didn’t sound convinced.

To my subsequent questions, Irene went on to tell me that the killer wasn’t interested in robbing her. She pictured him stabbing her in the heart. She would bleed to death.

‘When did you start believing your life was in danger?’ I asked.

‘Maybe a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Did something unusual happen then?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did you get ill? Or did you have a quarrel with your mother or father? Maybe it was something that you-’

‘My father is dead to me!’ she interrupted roughly, probably hoping to shock me; perhaps my questions about the timing of her troubles were too threatening, and she wanted to push me away.

‘Dead to you, how?’

‘He’s never wanted anything to do with me.’

‘I don’t understand. I thought you lived here with your-’

‘Rolf Lanik is my stepfather,’ she cut in. ‘My father is a radiologist named Werner Koch. He lives in Switzerland, though he visited us here in Poland – once, two months ago.’

‘How long has your mother been married to your stepfather?’

‘Let’s see, I was six, so that makes… eleven years. He’s a good man. In fact, Rolf is the best thing that ever happened to me.’

She spoke as though I’d obliged her to defend his honour, which led me to believe he might have been her tormentor, though he might not have been aware of the damage he was doing.

‘Why is he so good for you?’ I asked.

‘Because he gets us whatever we need. And I’m in an excellent school for foreigners. He’s kind and generous, and he loves us – me and my mother.’

‘And yet he’s made you move to a house that you hate.’

‘That’s not his fault, Dr Cohen! Or do you think it is?’ she snapped.

I was glad that she felt secure enough to reveal her anger. ‘I’m not in a position to say,’ I told her. ‘But tell me, what does your mother think of your new surroundings?’

‘Mama? She loves it here,’ the girl replied resentfully. ‘She certainly doesn’t say otherwise.’

Irene seemed to have concluded that her mother valued their new house – and her husband – more than her daughter.

Sensing that her father’s sudden appearance two months earlier might have touched off Irene’s current problems, I returned to her mother’s first marriage. The girl told me that it had ended in divorce after six years. She had been four when her parents separated. Her mother had lost everything, and had started a new life in Zurich, where they had relatives. She’d found work as a barmaid in a small hotel.

‘Ah, so that explains your Swiss accent,’ I observed.

Sticking out her tongue and groaning, Irene replied, ‘So you noticed.’

‘Yes, but you don’t sound too pleased.’

‘Should I be?’

‘I don’t know. All I can say is that, in my opinion, your accent is charming.’

She smiled, hesitantly at first, then broadly, and for the first time she looked relaxed. My compliment changed her; in a voice that raced ahead into her emotions, she went on to tell me that she and her mother had lived for two years in a one-room garret that was infested with bedbugs and had a leaky roof. ‘Mama even lost her reputation,’ she told me, outraged.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Thanks to my dear father,’ she said, sneering.

To my subsequent questions, Irene told me that he had spread malicious rumours about an affair that her mother had carried on with a Jewish surgeon, which, in their circle, had sentenced her to ridicule. She told me several stories of how her mother had been made to suffer – and how she’d fought back through guile. It was clear that Irene admired her mother and had formed a close identification with her.

The girl had only seen her father three times since the divorce, the last time in early January when he’d shown up one Friday evening at their home without warning.

‘I have reason to believe,’ she told me, using a wily tone that implied she’d done some eavesdropping, ‘that he came here to get money out of my mother.’

Could he have been blackmailing Mrs Lanik with information about her previous life?

‘Did your mother actually tell you that?’

‘No, she refused to talk about him with me, but he was looking wasted – as if he was drinking again.’

‘Did you have a chance to talk with him?’ I asked.

‘No, he said hello to me, then spoke to my mother for a few minutes, and then he staggered off.’

Irene’s replies turned evasive when I asked about her feelings as a child with regard to her father. She clearly wasn’t ready to revisit that part of her past, so I returned to her stepfather. She told me that Rolf Lanik had grown up in Zurich and moved to Hamburg after medical school. He’d fallen in love with her mother eleven years earlier, while vacationing with his parents. Irene had lived in Hamburg with her mother and him before moving to Warsaw. Now, he had an office in the centre of the city and only came home late at night. In a disappointed voice, she added, ‘Once we moved here, he started living a separate life. We hardly ever see him. He works all day, and even in the evenings, too.’

‘Tell me a little about him.’

‘What would you like to know?’

‘You could start with your first impressions of him.’

‘I didn’t like him.’

‘Why not?’

‘He tried too hard. I mean, it was as if he was always kneeling to my level and reaching out to me. But I didn’t want him like that – as a friend. It was so awkward!’ She spoke desperately, as if needing me to confirm that her feelings were justified. ‘I wanted something else. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Rolf never had any children of his own,’ Irene volunteered. ‘I guess he didn’t quite know how to approach me.’

‘But he learned?’

‘Yes.’

‘And when did you begin to like him?’

‘I think it was when he started reading to me. I’d be in my pyjamas, lying in bed, and he’d take a book down from my shelves and sit with me.’ She smiled gratefully. ‘I loved the sound of his voice, and how he’d look at me expectantly, waiting to see my reaction to the story. I could tell he was really listening.’ Nodding at the rightness of her words, she added, ‘Dr Cohen, when Rolf is with you, you know you have all his attention. Maybe that’s why his patients like him so much.’

‘How do you know they like him so much?’

‘Because I go to his office sometimes, and I talk with them.’

‘So he’s your doctor?’

‘He wasn’t when I was little. Though he is now.’ She looked down, as if she’d said something shameful.

As Irene told me more about her present relationship with her stepfather, I began to suspect that her continued talk of his separate life meant that she might have spotted him with another woman – maybe before or after a medical appointment with him. If so, then she was probably petrified that he would abandon her and her mother – would ‘kill’ their family, in other words. She was likely convinced that history would repeat itself – her stepfather would spread foul rumours about his wife, and she and her mother would become outcasts again. Her father’s sudden appearance may have reinforced that fear. She may have also had good reason to worry that she wouldn’t be believed – and might well be punished – if she informed her mother of her stepfather’s infidelity, since Mrs Lanik undoubtedly shared her daughter’s fears of renewed poverty and ostracism. To Irene, the only way out of her predicament had seemed suicide.