Freddi’s wound was deep. The killer must have hit an artery, because his blood was spilling out like wine from a spigot. The warmth of his life pulsing erratically below my hands made me shudder. His eyes were open, but they weren’t watching anything in our world.
‘Hold on, we’ll get help,’ I told him, but I knew it was too late.
I looked at Bina. Her eyes – darkly lit with terror – had just grasped the imminence of her uncle’s death.
‘Did you get a look at whoever shot him?’ I asked the girl, but as I spoke she turned towards the doorway; neighbours had just appeared.
When I felt a slackening in Freddi’s chest, I moved my hands to his wrist and felt for a pulse, but it was already gone.
While Professor Engal examined Freddi’s body, Ida Tarnowski tried to calm Bina’s mother, but she kept pushing the kindly old woman away. I fled the mayhem for the bathroom and scrubbed my hands over and over, but I couldn’t get the blood out from under my fingernails, since the ghetto soap melted to a useless mush when mixed with water. My legs were shaking, so I leaned back against the wall, staring at the gnarled backs of my hands, wondering if I would ever stop feeling Freddi’s life inside their grip. Then I summoned Bina into the bathroom and cleaned her face, which was splattered with blood. She went limp as soon as I touched her, like a small child, so I sat her on the rim of the bathtub.
‘Did you see who did this?’ I asked her.
She looked up at me as if unable to fit what had happened into her mind.
‘Take your time,’ I told her.
‘It was a man,’ she replied. ‘But it was too dark to see his face.’
She was shivering, so I fetched my coat and draped it over her shoulders.
‘How old was he – this man?’ I asked.
‘I couldn’t tell.’
‘What do you remember about him?’
‘He was small. Maybe only a little taller than me.’
Bina was about five foot two, by my estimation. ‘And did you see him shoot Uncle Freddi?’ I asked.
‘Only the second shot. The first… it woke me up. Maybe the man shot the lock. I’m not sure.’ Her eyes focused inside. ‘Then I saw him, and I knew I was awake but I didn’t understand – I thought maybe you’d come into the room.’ She showed me an inquisitive look, as if waiting for me to confirm that I hadn’t been there.
‘I was in my niece’s room, asleep,’ I told her gently.
‘Yes, I know that now. Uncle Freddi… I saw him standing next to the chair where he’d been sleeping. He spoke to the man. I think he said, ‘What do you want?’ Maybe he also thought the intruder was you. Then I heard a second shot, and Uncle Freddi fell. And then the man ran out and you were holding my uncle, and Mama was screaming…’
I held Bina close to me while she sobbed. When she could talk again, I asked, ‘Was Freddi involved in smuggling?’
‘I don’t see how he could have been. The Germans transferred him to the ghetto just two weeks ago. The only people he knew here were my mother and me.’
Professor Engal and another man carried Freddi’s body to the courtyard. Bina’s mother went with them to watch over her brother. The girl had wanted to accompany her, but her mother had said, ‘There are some things I need to tell your uncle alone.’
I saw such disappointment in Bina’s eyes that I steered her back to bed and covered her with a blanket. ‘Lie there, and I’ll make us some nettle tea,’ I told her.
First, however, I went to the front door. The lock was intact, which meant that both shots I’d heard had been fired at Freddi. Yet I’d only seen one wound; the killer must have missed on his first attempt, which meant he probably wasn’t a professional.
More importantly, he must have used a key to get in. Only Ewa and Izzy – and now Bina – had copies.
When we were seated together with our tea, Bina promised me that she had kept the key in her pocket since receiving it from Izzy and had not lent it to anyone. After I assured her that I believed her, she began to talk about her uncle in a frail, unsteady voice, as though pulling back details from out of the distant past. She told me that he had written a script for Conrad Veidt and had met with the actor at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin in the spring of 1939 to discuss changes.
She needed me to understand that her uncle had been on his way to becoming a famous screenwriter – and that he was irreplaceable.
We owe uniqueness to our dead at the very least, of course.
‘Uncle Freddi had promised to write a part for me when I was older,’ she told me.
‘So you want to be an actress?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I wanted to be a dancer before we came here. But it made Uncle Freddi so happy to think of us together in Berlin that I didn’t want to spoil his fun.’
I could see from the way Bina gazed off that she would write an entire future for her uncle over the next weeks and months. Another movie never to be made.
While I went to the window to see what was happening in the courtyard, Bina walked purposefully into to the kitchen and came back with a pot full of soapy water and a brush.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ I told her. ‘You have to rest!’
