Masja is rosy-cheeked, flustered with excitement. The little girl holds her hand, and it is she who gives me the bag from Manfred.
‘Herr Hauptsturmführer gave us this. He says he is to say hello from Aunt Anna.’
I hear her say the same to Etke. I cannot make out the words, only the name, Dadja Anna. I untie the ribbon around the bag and spread out the contents on the glass-topped table.
‘What are they?’ Masja asks, as curious as the girl.
They look like dried apple cores, the colour of pale flesh.
‘Are they sweets?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘They’re not.’
They are larynges, rinsed in water. One adult, two smaller.
Aunt Anna, and the cousins Karol and Agnezka.
_ _ _
I close the French windows.
I had no idea what to say to Masja; I shouted at her and sent them away. Etke cried, Masja shielded her. Now Manfred is sitting in my wicker chair with his legs crossed.
He has lit another cigarette.
I am furious. Manfred picks up the bible from the table and weighs it in his hand.
‘Spare me the sermon. I know what you’re going to say,’ he says.
‘And what would that be?’
‘That it’s brutal and base, but you’re a sentimental fool, Heinrich.’
‘I gave you a crucial lead and you destroyed it, and now …’
‘They knew nothing.’
‘And that’s something you can be sure of, is it?’
‘As a matter of fact, it is. And if they did know anything, I’m sure this famous Uncle Vitek will come looking for them. We’ve got men posted in the building, so congratulations on a fine piece of work, Heinrich. But you need to give me more. We need more. Spiked shoes, Jew language … some beggar from Koreletjy with eyes on top of his arse … What’s going on, Heinrich?’
‘I think she’s been very precise indeed. Anyway, she’s a child, what more do you expect?’
I go over to him and take the bible from his hands. I look up the page I’d marked, find the verse and read it to him:
‘And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.’
‘And what the hell has that got to do with anything?’
‘The Book of Judges, chapter twelve, verses five and six. Etke says the leader wanted Steiner to say something with a sjib or sjip sound … She also said it was Jew language …’
‘So what?’
‘He didn’t say sjip or sjipko – it was nothing to do with fast, or spiked shoes. What he said was shibboleth. And shibboleth is Hebrew and means ear of grain. Or river. But on top of that it’s a sound too … sji …’
‘Ear of grain? Sji?’
‘It’s a password, or a code. If you can say it, it means you’re Jewish …’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Think, Manfred. Steiner’s injuries.’
‘What are you saying? Are you implying they circumcised him?’
‘That’s what I suspect, yes.’
Manfred jumps to his feet and walks over to the window. He throws up his hand.
‘Like a … a fucking Yid?’
_ _ _
The jar is sealed with wax, with a glass lid. Dr Weiss holds it up for us to see, turning it in the light. He has removed a piece of the groin and the perineum with it, a swirl of flesh, a little whirlpool in the alcohol, and now we see the deep incision around the glans and along the shaft, the empty scrotum.
‘Perhaps,’ Weiss says. ‘It’s a possibility. I perform a number of circumcisions in Munich, at the hospital there, purely medical grounds, and I must say the commencement …’
Weiss puts the jar down on the table again, crouches down and points a finger at the penis head, his eyes swimming in the glass, finger grotesquely enlarged.
‘The commencement, the manner of the initial incision, corresponds very closely to a circumcision. But then …’
‘Then what?’
‘Then we have sheer rage, the cuts are impure …’
We stand for a moment looking at the pale, purple organ in the jar. Weiss has affixed a label to the glass on which he has written 1–233 in ink, Steiner’s code. To which cabinet of curiosities will it be consigned? Weiss’s own study, perhaps? Or will future medical students back home in Germany traipse along behind some consultant with his hands behind his back to be shown Sexual punishment, Eastern Front? Will they stand and scratch their necks and exchange whispers with their peers? Will they snigger? Will they ever know who it is? That this is Dr Hubert Steiner, the Obergruppenführer, the Beast of Minsk, with more than 70,000 dead Israelites on his calling card, teeth knocked out and a gag stuffed in his mouth, knees bleeding, ankles broken, three shots to the chest, mutilated by a Jew? Did he pray for his life? Should I demand it be seized as evidence? Should it be sent to Berlin for the state funeral, in its own casket of zinc?
‘So what you’re saying,’ I venture, ‘is that we’re dealing with someone who is able to perform a circumcision, but who is not necessarily a surgeon?’
‘That, I think, would be my conclusion,’ says Weiss.
‘A mohel?’
Manfred, silent until now. He is standing behind me with a cigarette in his hand. He drops it to the floor at the same instant and crushes it beneath the toe of his boot. He unbuttons his pistol holster, takes out his PPK, removes the magazine and checks its contents.
‘What’s a mohel?’ I ask.
Manfred leaves without reply.
_ _ _
The ghetto is completely silent, broken only by the loudspeaker vehicle issuing Manfred’s threats, thin and metallic.
