With all my love,
Vati.
A lump in his throat, Tadek handed it back. On Gerlinde’s cheeks, wet trails shone.
“I’m sorry for not showing it to you earlier. I should have. I just… wasn’t ready. I’ll give it to Morris tomorrow. There’s nothing important in it anyway, no location, nothing. Just an insufferable amount of words, apologies… It’s not me he should be apologizing to but the people… Willy. His other friends. The man who drew that portrait in his bedroom. You. Your family. Your friends. Their graves.”
“They don’t have graves.”
“No, they don’t. Not even that.”
He didn’t know what possessed him but Tadek was suddenly on his feet, pulling Gerlinde into a suffocating embrace. Tears found their way out, the first time in so many months. His voice, full of sobs, was thick with them. Gerlinde’s hands stroked his hair, his back. She was crying too and laughing at the same time. “You’re not mad at me then? I thought you were so mad at me but couldn’t figure out why exactly. Because of my father or because of Erich—”
“Never because of Erich. I love Erich like a brother. And I love you like a sister and you’re back now.”
“I never went anywhere, you silly goose.”
“For some time, I thought that you did. I was so very afraid that you did. But now I know. Now I’m sure that you shall never go away.”
“No.” Her voice was solemn not with a simple promise but with an oath in it, which one must never break. “Never.”
15
Clear as day Tadek read it all in Morris’s eyes. It’ll come back and bite you yet, this blind trust of yours, boy. But Tadek stared at him with stubborn determination in his eyes. In them, hope pulsed, radiated and glowed from his very core – she’s on our side, don’t you see? She understands it all, she knows the truth. She’ll never go back to the old way of thinking…
Morris thought him to be wrong but nodded nevertheless and even that nodding of his, Tadek understood all too well. Even if he, himself, doubted Tadek’s conclusions, Morris was too decent of a fellow to take that last hope away from the Polish survivor. The American agent didn’t start arguing and saying that he knew human nature far too well, that blood bonds were the most indestructible and therefore, who knew if it would only take Otto Neumann one word, one single touch – a loving hand on top of his daughter’s tear-stained cheek and she’d forgive him everything – the crimes, the people’s deaths, and even Tadek.
He was her father, after all. It seemed only natural.
Gerlinde Neumann was her father’s daughter. She could know him to be a murderer and love him still.
Tadek saw it all in Morris’s eyes and was grateful that the latter didn’t utter any of those things and instead only instructed the two plain-clothed agents to watch Neumann’s daughter as closely as was humanly possible.
It turned out that agent Morris needn’t have worried. Gerlinde hardly ever left his sight when not at school and recently, had adopted a new habit, which had soon grown into an obsession of sorts. It was her now, who had set up her temporary headquarters in her father’s former study and interrogated Morris while jotting down his replies in her notebook.
“Who exactly served in the camps? Who was in charge? What was my father responsible for? And Herr Pohl? And who was above them? And below? Has anyone ever tried to revolt? Refused to carry out orders? What happened to them? Nothing at all? So, one could refuse? Depends on the rank? How high should have been the rank? Could have my father refused?”
Most questions Morris had no difficulty responding to. Some, however, left him wondering himself and offering the girl mere speculations, which always made him feel dishonest and guilty, for no apparent reason.
“Your father was sort of a chief accountant, attached to Amtsgruppe D of the WVHA. He was in charge of camps’ administration and was subordinate only to Gruppenführer Glücks in his Amt and Pohl himself as the chief of the WVHA. In short, your father decided how many hours each inmate would work a day and how many grams of bread they would eat.”
“How many?”
“A slice of sawdust bread. About twenty grams.”
“Per meal?”
“Per day.”
A pause. Mechanical pencil, frozen over the page. “What else?”
“A smear of margarine. A cup of soup. A cup of tea or coffee. The ersatz type, of course. This was
