The Warsaw Anagrams

We decided we’d go to Lanik’s office and shoot him there if he was unprotected. If he had soldiers or guards with him, we’d wait until he left for lunch.

I wanted to strip him, as he’d stripped Adam, and make him beg for his life while kneeling in the filth of a Warsaw backstreet, have him weep for all the springtimes of Germany he’d never see. I wanted a hungry-for- vengeance crowd of Poles to learn what a wrinkled, shivering coward he was minus his uniform, gun and guards, and without his beloved, dog-eared copy of Mein Kampf in his hands, justifying his murder of the most defenceless among us.

And once he was dead?

Izzy and I would flee across the river for the suburb of Praga; Jasmin Makinska lived near the tram depot on Street. We would either stay with her or, if she could, she would drive us to Lwow, where we’d hide out in a rooming house or small hotel for as long as it took to sell my remaining jewellery. We didn’t have Christian identity papers, but a couple of hundred zloty stuffed in an innkeeper’s pocket would win us his grudging silence for a few days.

Our goal: the Soviet Ukraine. We’d bribe our way over the border and head to Odessa, where we’d catch a freighter across the Black Sea to Istanbul. From there, it would be easy to get to Izmir. After our reunion with Liesel, Izzy would catch a boat to the south of France, where he’d buy forged papers. Then he’d sneak into the German-occupied territory in the north, for a rendezvous with Louis and his sons in Boulogne-Billancourt.

I wanted to be there to see my old friend’s victory over all that had stood between himself and his dreams, but I knew by then I’d never leave Liesel again.

I felt strong knowing we had a plan, but Izzy started to cry.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘Nothing… and everything. The relief of knowing I’ll either be dead or free – it’s too much right now.’

I began gathering together all of the small valuables that I could sell, including the letter opener I’d stolen. Izzy sat at my desk to read through Adam’s medical file, and when he was done, he asked, ‘So why do you think Mikael let you have this?’

I was sitting on the ground by my dresser and had just taken Hannah’s ruby earrings out of the toe of one of my socks. ‘He must have thought that his openness would convince me he had nothing to hide,’ I replied. ‘And he was right. Since Adam’s death, he has been trying to outthink me.’

‘And he nearly did,’ Izzy observed.

‘Convincing Melka to sleep with me was his master stroke. She must be deeply in love with him to have gone along with a compromising plan like that.’

I got to my knees and slipped my hand under the mattress to take out the record book of Adam’s illnesses that Stefa had entrusted to me.

Turning round, Izzy said, ‘While you finish getting together what you’ll need, I’ll be writing something.’

He’d already slipped a sheet of paper in my typewriter and was obviously hatching a plot, but I didn’t question him; I had Hannah’s earrings to hide in case we needed to make an emergency bribe. I cut a small square at the centre of fifty pages of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, dropped the jewellery inside the resulting cubbyhole and slid the slender volume back into its place on my bookshelves.

I put all the valuables I’d sell inside my old leather briefcase.

When Izzy was finished hunting and pecking, I led him into the kitchen, where Bina was scouring the oven. She was wearing her coat and her black beret.

‘Give me your hand,’ I told the girl, reaching out for her.

I put five hundred zloty in her palm. ‘Make sure you stay alive!’ I ordered her. She replied that it was too great a sum, so I shook her hard. ‘Do anything you need to do, but promise me you’ll make it out of here!’

‘I swear,’ she replied, starting to cry, because I was bullying her.

Apologizing, I hugged her to me, then counted out another 500 zloty and handed them to her. ‘Give half of this to a little acrobat named Zachariah Manberg who performs outside the Femina Theatre every day at noon. But only give it to him a little at a time. Otherwise he’ll just squander it – or have it stolen by the older boys.’

‘And the other half, Dr Cohen?’

‘There’s a young woman who works in the bakery in the courtyard – Ewa. I want her to have it.’

‘I’ve met her. I’ll make sure she gets it.’

‘Good girl. Also, if you run out of funds, there are some reasonably good paintings in Stefa’s wardrobe, and first editions of psychiatry books on my shelves. Sell them on the Other Side if you can, but don’t take stupid risks. You can sell everything but Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. Leave that for me, in case I need to come back.’

Bina nodded.

I was left with a little more than a thousand zloty for myself, and Izzy had nearly six hundred at his workshop.

‘All right, let’s get going,’ I told him.

‘Where will you go?’ the girl asked.

‘We’ve one errand to run inside the ghetto, then we’ll head for the Soviet Ukraine. I don’t think I’ll be back.’

She brought her hands over her mouth and moaned. ‘You’re… you’re leaving for good?’

‘Yes, it’s time.’

‘But we’ll see each other when we’re free, won’t we?’ she asked in a petrified voice.

‘Yes,’ I replied, smiling. ‘I’ll come back and find you. We’ll have a reunion, right here in Stefa’s apartment. So take good care of it.’

‘I will. Now bend your head down, Dr Cohen,’ she requested.

‘What?’

‘Bend down.’

I did. And then that astonishing girl gripped my shoulders and kissed me on my brow as if I were her child setting out for his first day of school.

I’d put on my good suit so that I’d look like an elderly gentleman out for a leisurely stroll. At Izzy’s workshop, he, too, changed into his best clothes and put on his Borsalino. Then he counted his stash of zloty and grabbed his gold watch. I reminded him to take a lemon along. He took two. He slid his photographs from the Bourdonnais under his coat.

‘I need to say goodbye to Roza,’ he told me.

I waited outside his apartment. When he returned to me, his face was flushed.

I hailed a rickshaw. I had to decide now where to go: Mikael’s office or the Jewish Council.

‘Where to?’ the driver asked.

‘Just a minute,’ I told him. ‘I still don’t think I can kill Mikael,’ I confessed to Izzy.

‘Then let me do it,’ he requested.

‘It’s not your war,’ I told him.

‘Erik, I loved Adam too!’

‘Still, you should go to Louis guiltless.’

‘Me, guiltless?’ He grabbed my arm hard. ‘Have you heard anything I’ve told you about my life?’

I took his free hand and kissed it. A strange gesture, but this was not a day like any other, and a quarrel with him could have ruined all our plans.

Izzy understood. ‘Sorry,’ he told me.

I turned round to face the driver. ‘Take us to the Jewish Council’s headquarters,’ I told him.

Benjamin Schrei was in an office he shared with two other men. He rushed to greet us, smiling his million-dollar Gablewitz smile, and introduced us to his colleagues, who brought us desk chairs.

We sat down opposite our host. Four wilted, fire-coloured tulips sat in a turquoise vase on his desk between us.

‘You might try watering them,’ Izzy told him in his bantering way.

Schrei slicked back his gleaming hair and sighed. ‘They were doing great till this morning. You should have come yesterday. It’s your timing that’s bad.’