Izzy left our umbrella at the door. I took Jaśmin’s phone number from my wallet. The owner of the hotel was standing behind the counter of a wooden bar, polishing glasses with a tea towel. When I explained what I needed, he lifted out a black phone and put it on the counter.
‘Where are you boys from?’ he asked us as I sat down on a bar stool.
‘Muranów,’ answered Izzy, drying his hands on his trousers. ‘We’re on our way to a wedding, but we got a little lost.’ Izzy smiled and shrugged as people do to excuse their frailties. ‘I rarely come to this side of the river.’
‘How’ bout a little drop of something to take the bite out of the cold weather?’ the man asked, slapping his cloth over his left shoulder.
‘Two vodkas,’ Izzy replied.
I picked up the receiver and began to dial. Our host was pouring our drinks when Jaśmin answered. Thank God she’d returned home.
‘It’s me,’ I told her, unwilling to let the hotel owner overhear my name.
‘You who?’ she asked.
That had me stumped. ‘Stefa’s uncle,’ I finally told her.
‘Dr Cohen? Oh, my God! I thought I’d never hear your voice again.’
‘We’re lost,’ I told her. ‘We’re outside Praga, but I’m not sure where.’
Izzy took the phone and described our location. ‘Listen, baby,’ he added casually, ‘can you pick us up in your car and drive us to the wedding?’
After a moment, he nodded towards me to let me know that Jaśmin had agreed.
‘Meet us down the street,’ Izzy told her. ‘We’ll be waiting under a blue umbrella.’
The vodka didn’t scorch my throat, as it usually did. Or more likely I was too far away from myself to feel it.
Izzy paid for our drinks and our phone call. Outside, he began walking away, towards the countryside. I stayed put.
‘Erik, come on!’ he exhorted me, summoning me with whirling hands to follow him. ‘I don’t want that hotel owner to see the car that picks us up.’
I obeyed. We both knew I was useless now and he’d have to take charge.
We waited in an empty lot strewn with refuse, out of sight of the hotel. Izzy held our umbrella over our heads, hiding our faces from the occasional cars that drove by. He hooked his arm in mine and held me close.
The rain had subsided a bit, but I was still freezing.
Irene would be grief-stricken on hearing of her stepfather’s murder. Unless her keen affection for him had been part of her performance.
If she didn’t intend for me to kill him, then why did she send for me? Maybe she feared that she, too, would end up on a butcher’s table unless her stepfather was stopped. Perhaps she had been marked at birth, like Adam, Anna and Georg.
There were so many things I’d never get to ask her. Though perhaps Izzy was right and she’d told me all she could.
He put his arm around my waist because I was shivering. ‘Look, Erik,’ he observed cheerily, ‘the worst that can happen is that the Nazis will find us and shoot us.’
Black humour under other circumstances, but in this case he meant:
A big black car with wooden doors pulled up a few minutes later. Jaśmin rolled down her window. She was wearing a peaked green hat topped by a golden feather – the kind of cap Robin Hood might wear in a theatrical production. On her slender hands were white kidskin gloves. ‘Get in!’ she urged us.
I sat in front and Izzy got in the back.
‘You’ve saved our lives,’ he told her right away.
I started to introduce them, but Jaśmin reminded me they’d met at my birthday parties.
She took off slowly, concentrating on the road. Her lips were pressed tightly together. She knew she might lose her nerve if she faced me, so she didn’t.
Izzy began explaining what we’d done. Jaśmin said nothing, though when he told her how he’d stood up to address Lanik, she began hiccupping – an old sign of failing nerve I recognized from our sessions.
‘You can drop us any time you want and get on your way,’ I told her when Izzy had finished. ‘We’ll still be grateful for the help you’ve given us.’
She took her eyes off the road for just an instant and brushed my cheek. ‘You once told me, “Terror traps us all from time to time, but the important thing is not to let it build walls around us.”’
‘I remember,’ I told her, but in truth I’d said that to most of my patients.
‘Do you recall what you did then?’ she asked, showing me an eager look.
‘No, I’m sorry. It was a long time ago.’
