But whatever had happened, it was clear that no one by the name of Esther Grunewald or Willie Ackerland was living in Israel now or had died here in the past ten years.
I knew I had to tell it to her straight, but that didn't mean I relished the prospect. I delayed by slowly draining my coffee cup. Her eyes didn't leave my face the whole time.
"I wish I could help," I said when I felt I could delay no longer. "But Reuben is right. He checked everything there was to check and found nothing. Finding someone after ten years is almost impossible in the best of circumstances. In this case, there is no hope. With the work Reuben did and the newspaper ad you placed going unanswered, there is only one conclusion to be drawn: Your son is dead."
I didn't tell her I was sorry for her loss. From experience, I knew such a sentiment would provide her with zero comfort. I simply told it to her like it was. The unvarnished, awful, gut-wrenching truth. She would have to deal with it in her own way.
And what she chose was denial. "My son is not dead," she said forcefully, and there was suddenly some color in her cheeks.
"Listen, I—"
She cut me off. "I said he's not dead. If he was dead, I would have known it, I would have felt it. Here." She pointed to her heart. "Do you understand? Do you?" Her face had taken on a resolute cast, her skin stretching taut across her facial bones. It made her look even thinner, as if she might suddenly tear apart from within and whatever was inside of her would come spilling out. "My son is not dead. He is out there, somewhere, and I need to find him. He needs me to find him. I have no one else to turn to. Will you help me?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. My throat had constricted and my tongue felt too heavy to move. With my heart racing and the blood pounding in my ears, all I could do was stare at her, at this woman who had harbored an irrational hope for ten years, that at some point she'd be reunited with her son. It was this hope, I was sure, that had kept her going during the long years of the war, even as Germany was reduced to rubble around her. It was this hope that drove her to get up each morning, to put food and water in her mouth, to live.
It took me a long moment to realize I was not breathing. I made myself draw a breath and let it out. Once I was breathing normally again, I knew two things. The first was that she would never give up on finding her son. If I refused to take her case, she would find someone who would. Some in my profession were not the most scrupulous of men. She might stumble upon someone who would not think twice about squeezing her for every penny she had, feeding her tidbits of false hope to keep the money flowing. I would not do that.
The second thing I knew was that I had to take her case. For my sake, not hers. When she told me how she would have felt it had her son died, it was like the butt of a rifle had slammed into the pit of my stomach. I could still feel my insides churning.
I swallowed hard, but the taste of ashes lingered in my mouth.
"All right," I said, my voice nearly cracking. "I'll give it a try."
After ordering each of us another cup of coffee, I asked, "You said Esther Grunewald and your son boarded a train from Berlin to Zagreb. How were they supposed to get from there to Israel?"
"Esther said they would take another train to Greece," Henrietta said. "A ship was to take them the rest of the way."
"What's the name of the ship? What was the departure date?"
Henrietta didn't know. Nor did she know which port the ship sailed from. Only that it was somewhere in Greece.
"Esther didn't know herself," she told me. "All she knew was that she and other Jews from all over Europe were to gather in Athens on March 1."
She did not have the names of any of the other passengers, nor those of the people who had arranged for the ship.
"If all had gone according to plan and you had followed Esther and Willie here, how were you supposed to contact them?"
"Esther was supposed to send me a letter as soon as they arrived and got settled. No letter ever came."
I did not voice my thought that this was another indication that Esther Grunewald and Willie Ackerland had never made it to Israel. Instead, I asked Henrietta to tell me about Esther.
"She was the most beautiful girl in our school. I remember being quite jealous of her. Her hair was black and shiny, her face exquisite, her skin like marble. Boys would follow her with their eyes wherever she went."
"She never married?"
"No. I'm sure there were suitors, but no."
"How tall was she? What was her build like?"
"She was tall. Five foot ten or so. And she was slim, but not like—" Henrietta paused to look down at herself, and a shadow crossed her face "—she was slim in a feminine way."
"And what was she like?"
