“Of course, I believe that,” she replied, annoyed. “Do you believe that the sun rises in the East?”
“Yes. I also believe that I put my own brother’s body on a gurney in the crematorium where I worked.”
“Did the Amis teach you to say it to me?” She was growing agitated.
“No.”
“There were no crematoriums in Auschwitz! In any other camp either!”
“Not anymore. The SS blew them up before pulling out and sending the survivors on a death march. I hid in the barracks and decided to wait for the Russians instead but I still saw the columns march off. Some walked barefoot on the snow. Whoever couldn’t keep pace was shot.”
“Rot!” Gerlinde objected crossly. “Why would anyone shoot them? The SS was there to protect you! You were all valuable workers! Who shoots valuable workers?!”
“If I’m lying about it all, answer me this. What am I doing here in your house, when I could have been home with my family? Where did my family go, if not into the oven? Where did all of those displaced people’s families go?”
She stepped toward him, her hands clenched into fists as she studied his eyes as though searching for signs of betrayal in their black mist. Tadek held her gaze, perfectly calm and infinitely patient.
“You’re lying,” she repeated once again but her voice faltered this time.
“No.”
“They told you to say it to me. Perhaps, they promised you money. It’s a trick of some sort, just like with Margot. You all are just trying to confuse me with all these lies.”
“No one is trying to confuse you. And the Americans promised me nothing. They only wanted me to tell you how it was.”
“But it isn’t how it was!”
“I’m afraid, it is. They’re looking for your father because he was one of the men who were in charge of the camps’ administration. He is guilty, in part, for all of those people’s deaths.”
“No, he’s not! I know my father. He wouldn’t do anything of that sort!”
A faint, sorrowful smile was back on Tadek’s face.
“Stop looking at me with such pity! I know what I’m saying!” She was outright screaming now.
It should have been the other way around. He should have been screaming his accusations at her and shaking his finger in her face and she was supposed to stand there, arrogant and aloof, and calmly deny everything until the sun had set and he would have run out of steam, much like as happened with her American interrogators. Not Morris, from what Tadek had learned but the others.
“I’m sorry, Gerlinde.” It was odd addressing her by her first name but somehow appropriate. Everything was out in the open between them now and the occasion itself called for such a familiarity.
“I still don’t believe you.”
“It is your right. Some people don’t believe the earth is round.”
“Those people are idiots.”
“They also believe that there’s such a thing as Jewish physics.”
After a very long pause, she suddenly said, “those people are idiots too; physics is physics,” and Tadek smiled a bit wider this time, thinking that perhaps nothing was lost with her yet.
The sun was beating down unmercifully. Tadek didn’t know any longer whether Gerlinde’s cheeks were flushed due to the sun exposure or her excited nerves. She made another small step toward him, having seemingly calmed herself.
“Look, Tadeusz. I can imagine that a working camp was no vacation, by any means. I don’t argue with that.”
Tadek waited while she was searching for the needed words. For a moment, she just stood there chewing on her lip and then, raised her face to his, shielding her eyes from the sun, with her hand.
“Were you close to your father?” she asked.
“Yes. Very. We were all very close to each other.”
She nodded, as though encouraged by such an answer. “Would you say that you knew your father well?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And now imagine that I came to your house and told you that your father was guilty of the deaths of countless people. What would you say to that?”
“Nothing. I would laugh. My father wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Neither would mine. Do you know that he hit a baby deer with his car accidentally at night and brought it home, wrapped in a blanket and sat over its body all night by the fireplace and cried like a child when it finally took its last breath?”
Tadek didn’t know that. But what he did know was that his family was dead and he would bet any money that Gruppenführer Neumann didn’t cry over them.
“I believe that you believe that he’s a good man,” he finally said, carefully choosing the words. “I also believe that he was a very good father to you. But, can you imagine, just for one moment, that he could also be his Führer’s loyal servant, who would send people to their death because he was under orders and said nothing about it to you because he didn’t want you to think badly of him?”
For the first time, Gerlinde was silent and Tadek welcomed that silence, for it meant that she was finally listening.
“Let’s go before the Amis send a search party,” he said and resumed his jogging.
She quickly caught up with him. For the first time in years, Tadek was enjoying the run.
In the library, all the windows stood open, curtains billowing in the light summer breeze like the sails of some great ship. Tadek was reading “The Invisible Man.” For a dedicated Nazi, Gruppenführer Neumann certainly had quite a number of books which he shouldn’t have had but Tadek was glad that he did. He couldn’t imagine reading anything Third-Reich-approved on such a fine summer’s afternoon.
Faint voices argued about something in the drawing-room but Tadek paid them no heed. The pages were too crisp and the words much too riveting; his chair was too comfortable in the shadow of the corner.
“You have no right!” A shout this time, incensed and loud.
Tadek lifted his head
