I was sitting on the ground by my dresser and had just taken Hannah’s ruby earrings out of the toe of one of my socks. ‘He must have thought that his openness would convince me he had nothing to hide,’ I replied. ‘And he was right. Since Adam’s death, he has been trying to outthink me.’
‘And he nearly did,’ Izzy observed.
‘Convincing Melka to sleep with me was his master stroke. She must be deeply in love with him to have gone along with a compromising plan like that.’
I got to my knees and slipped my hand under the mattress to take out the record book of Adam’s illnesses that Stefa had entrusted to me.
Turning round, Izzy said, ‘While you finish getting together what you’ll need, I’ll be writing something.’
He’d already slipped a sheet of paper in my typewriter and was obviously hatching a plot, but I didn’t question him; I had Hannah’s earrings to hide in case we needed to make an emergency bribe. I cut a small square at the centre of fifty pages of Freud’s
I put all the valuables I’d sell inside my old leather briefcase.
When Izzy was finished hunting and pecking, I led him into the kitchen, where Bina was scouring the oven. She was wearing her coat and her black beret.
‘Give me your hand,’ I told the girl, reaching out for her.
I put five hundred złoty in her palm. ‘Make sure you stay alive!’ I ordered her. She replied that it was too great a sum, so I shook her hard. ‘Do anything you need to do, but promise me you’ll make it out of here!’
‘I swear,’ she replied, starting to cry, because I was bullying her.
Apologizing, I hugged her to me, then counted out another 500 złoty and handed them to her. ‘Give half of this to a little acrobat named Zachariah Manberg who performs outside the Femina Theatre every day at noon. But only give it to him a little at a time. Otherwise he’ll just squander it – or have it stolen by the older boys.’
‘And the other half, Dr Cohen?’
‘There’s a young woman who works in the bakery in the courtyard – Ewa. I want her to have it.’
‘I’ve met her. I’ll make sure she gets it.’
‘Good girl. Also, if you run out of funds, there are some reasonably good paintings in Stefa’s wardrobe, and first editions of psychiatry books on my shelves. Sell them on the Other Side if you can, but don’t take stupid risks. You can sell everything but Freud’s
Bina nodded.
I was left with a little more than a thousand złoty for myself, and Izzy had nearly six hundred at his workshop.
‘All right, let’s get going,’ I told him.
‘Where will you go?’ the girl asked.
‘We’ve one errand to run inside the ghetto, then we’ll head for the Soviet Ukraine. I don’t think I’ll be back.’
She brought her hands over her mouth and moaned. ‘You’re… you’re leaving for good?’
‘Yes, it’s time.’
‘But we’ll see each other when we’re free, won’t we?’ she asked in a petrified voice.
‘Yes,’ I replied, smiling. ‘I’ll come back and find you. We’ll have a reunion, right here in Stefa’s apartment. So take good care of it.’
‘I will. Now bend your head down, Dr Cohen,’ she requested.
‘What?’
‘Bend down.’
I did. And then that astonishing girl gripped my shoulders and kissed me on my brow as if I were her child setting out for his first day of school.
I’d put on my good suit so that I’d look like an elderly gentleman out for a leisurely stroll. At Izzy’s workshop, he, too, changed into his best clothes and put on his Borsalino. Then he counted his stash of złoty and grabbed his gold watch. I reminded him to take a lemon along. He took two. He slid his photographs from the
‘I need to say goodbye to Róźa,’ he told me.
I waited outside his apartment. When he returned to me, his face was flushed.
I hailed a rickshaw. I had to decide now where to go: Mikael’s office or the Jewish Council.
‘Where to?’ the driver asked.
‘Just a minute,’ I told him. ‘I still don’t think I can kill Mikael,’ I confessed to Izzy.
‘Then let me do it,’ he requested.
‘It’s not your war,’ I told him.
‘Erik, I loved Adam too!’
‘Still, you should go to Louis guiltless.’
‘Me, guiltless?’ He grabbed my arm hard. ‘Have you heard anything I’ve told you about my life?’
I took his free hand and kissed it. A strange gesture, but this was not a day like any other, and a quarrel with him could have ruined all our plans.
Izzy understood. ‘Sorry,’ he told me.
I turned round to face the driver. ‘Take us to the Jewish Council’s headquarters,’ I told him.
Benjamin Schrei was in an office he shared with two other men. He rushed to greet us, smiling his million-dollar Gablewitz smile, and introduced us to his colleagues, who brought us desk chairs.
We sat down opposite our host. Four wilted, fire-coloured tulips sat in a turquoise vase on his desk between us.
