‘I don’t know her personally,’ Irene replied, ‘but she has been holding clandestine meetings since December – telling anyone who will listen to her about the wretched conditions in the ghetto. She’s been heroic, I think. A week ago, I went to a meeting for foreigners living here – Mama took me. Jaśmin held up a note she’d received from your niece after her son’s death, and she told the audience what had happened to him – and how you were suffering. After her talk, I started thinking that you might agree to help me.’
A patient’s last words are often what they’ve been waiting to tell you since the beginning – which meant that Irene needed to make it clear to me that she was aware that Adam had been murdered. And that she’d wanted to talk to me since learning that.
‘There’s one other thing I should have told you,’ she added. ‘In my dream, the big man who ends up with the yellow flowers we’ve picked… I know his name. I know it because the man in the hat calls out to him when he’s walking towards the cottage. It’s Jesion.’
‘And do you think his name is important?’ I asked.
‘I have a feeling it is. Sometimes it seems the key to everything.’
Irene remained in her room, though she refrained from locking the door, which seemed a hopeful sign. I paused on the gallery to measure her closing words to me against my own interest in names, and to consider, too, what she’d told me about Jaśmin, but Mrs Lanik, rushing up the staircase, drew my attention. She carried her horn-rim glasses in one hand and a book in the other. In the yearning of her eyes, I saw she feared the worst.
‘Is Irene all right?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I told her, ‘we had a good talk. And, most importantly, she has promised not to hurt herself while we work together.’
‘Thank you for that, Dr Cohen. What else did she tell you?’
‘She fears she is in danger.’
‘What kind of danger?’
‘As I’m sure you know, she has adjusted poorly to her new surroundings. She feels threatened. If I were you, I’d do everything in your power to make her feel loved and cared for. And protected. Even if it means going away with her for a time. Maybe even to France – to Nantes.’
Mrs Lanik looked puzzled. ‘Why Nantes?’
‘Because of your parents.’
‘My parents? But they live in Bordeaux,’ she corrected me.
‘I must have misunderstood,’ I replied, wondering why Irene would have lied to me.
I was also astonished by her capabilities as an actress. How much else had she told me that wasn’t true?
‘Yes, I’ve been thinking of taking a trip with Irene,’ Mrs Lanik told me. ‘Dr Cohen, thank you.’ She grasped both my hands. ‘I’m forever in your debt.’
‘I only hope I’ve helped a little with whatever is troubling her,’ I replied, and as I said that I realized the real reason I’d stayed with Irene: she had needed to be heard, and my willingness to listen to her – to allow even the silence between us to speak to me – was part of a world of solidarity the Nazis wanted to destroy. By staying, I was fighting for all I’d once believed in. And I was asserting my right to live as the man I wanted to be.
‘I’d like for you to see her again as soon as possible,’ Mrs Lanik told me, ‘but my husband is coming back tomorrow. I’ll get word to you when I know he’s going away again. Is that all right?’
‘Yes, of course.’
She escorted me down the stairs. She had two wicker baskets of food waiting for me on the antique wooden table by the front door.
‘I managed to get you fourteen lemons,’ she told me, smiling happily.
Dispersed among red apples, the lemons were beautiful – a composition worthy of Cézanne.
‘You’ll never know how grateful I am for your help,’ I told her.
‘I only hope I’ve chosen well for you,’ she replied, and she handed me an envelope. ‘Here is your two hundred złoty.’
‘Thank you. And one last thing – I’d like to keep your daughter’s pills. She says you have them. If they are in the house, she might somehow find them.’
‘Yes, you’re right.’
While Mrs Lanik was gone, I put my pipe tobacco and two lemons in my coat pocket for safekeeping and examined the eggs, butter, cheese and ham. She’d even put in tins of Russian caviar and French foie gras. She handed me the pills as soon as she returned. I was in luck – Veronal, my tranquillizer of choice.
As I stashed them in my pocket, my relief made me close my eyes with gratitude.
‘What about my German escorts?’ I asked Mrs Lanik. I didn’t see them anywhere.
‘Already in their car, waiting for you.’ Smiling broadly, as people do who’ve been crying and are thankful for the help they’ve received, she said in French, ‘And I’ve told them in no uncertain terms to keep their mouths shut and their hands off your food!’
The Germans were in the front seat. I got in the back, next to my picnic baskets.
