The Warsaw Anagrams Read online

  The Warsaw Anagrams

  Richard Zimler

  It's Autumn 1940. The Nazis seal 400,000 Jews inside a small area of the Polish capital, creating an urban island cut off from the outside world. Erik Cohen, an elderly psychiatrist, is forced to move into a tiny apartment with his niece and his beloved nine-year-old nephew, Adam. One bitterly cold winter's day, Adam goes missing. The next morning, his body is discovered in the barbed wire surrounding the ghetto. The boy's leg has been cut off, and a tiny piece of string has been left in his mouth. Soon, another body turns up – this time a girl's, and one of her hands has been taken. Evidence begins to point to a Jewish traitor luring children to their death…In this profoundly moving and darkly atmospheric historical thriller, the reader is taken into the most forbidden corners of Nazi-occupied Warsaw – as well as into the most heroic places of the heart. Praise for Richard Zimler: 'A riveting literary murder mystery, [The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon] is also a harrowing picture of the persecution of 16th-century Jews and, in passing, an atmospheric introduction to the hermetic Jewish tradition of the Kabbalah' – "Independent on Sunday". 'Zimler [is] a present-day scholar and writer of remarkable erudition and compelling imagination, an American Umberto Eco' – "Spectator". 'Zimler has this spark of genius, which critics can't explain but readers recognise, and which every novelist desires but few achieve' – "Independent". 'Zimler is an honest, powerful writer' – "Guardian".

  Richard Zimler

  The Warsaw Anagrams

  © 2011

  DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For all the members of the Zimler, Gutkind, Kalish and Rosencrantz families – my many granduncles, aunts and cousins – who perished in the ghettos and camps of Poland. And for Helena Zymler, who survived.

  I am greatly indebted to Andreas Campomar and Cynthia Cannell for their unwavering support. I also want to thank Nicole Witt, Anna Jarota and Gloria Gutierrez for helping my books find homes in many different countries.

  I am particularly grateful to Alexandre Quintanilha, Erika Abrams and Isabel Silva for reading the manuscript of this novel and giving me their invaluable comments. Many thanks, as well, to Thane L. Weiss and Shlomo Greschem.

  A number of excellent books about the Jewish ghettos of Poland helped me in my research. Prominent among them are The Diary of Mary Berg and Emmanuel Ringelblum’s Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Erik Cohen’s original text for The Warsaw Anagrams was written in Yiddish, though he occasionally made use of Polish, German and English words. We have maintained a few foreign terms and expressions in this edition, where we believe that they help evoke the flavour of the original or clarify meaning. A glossary is included at the end of the book.

  Cohen’s manuscript of The Warsaw Anagrams was discovered in 2008, under the floorboards of a small apartment in the Muranów district of Warsaw that had belonged to a survivor of the Jewish ghetto named Heniek Corben. According to neighbours, he had passed away in 1963 and left no descendants.

  We owe uniqueness to our dead at the very least.

  Erik Cohen

  PREFACE

  I’ve had a map of Warsaw in the soles of my feet since I was a young boy, so I made it nearly all the way home without any confusion or struggle.

  Then I spotted the high brick wall around our island. My heart leapt in my chest, and impossible hope sent my thoughts scattering – though I knew that Stefa and Adam would not be home to welcome me.

  A fat German guard munching on a steaming potato stood by the gate at Street. As soon as I slipped inside, a young man wearing a tweed cap drawn low over his forehead raced past me. The flour sack he’d hoisted over his shoulder dripped dots and dashes of liquid on his coat – Morse code in chicken blood, I guessed.

  Men and women lumbered through the frigid streets, cracking the crusted ice with their worn-out shoes, their hands tucked deep inside their coat pockets, vapour bursts puffing from their mouths.

  In my disquiet, I nearly stumbled over an old man who had frozen to death outside a small grocery. He wore only a soiled undershirt, and his bare knees – badly swollen – were drawn in protectively to his chest. His blood-crusted lips were bluish-grey, but his eyes were rimmed red, which gave me the impression that the last of his senses to depart our world had been his vision.

  In the hallway of Stefa’s building, the olive-green wallpaper had peeled away from the plaster and was falling in sheets, revealing blotches of black mould. The flat itself was ice-cold; not a crumb of food in sight.

  Underwear and shirts were scattered around the sitting room. They belonged to a man. I had the feeling that Bina and her mother were long gone.

  Stefa’s sofa, dining table and piano had vanished – probably sold or broken up for kindling. Etched on the door to her bedroom were the pencil marks she and I had made to record Adam’s height every month. I eased my fingertip towards the highest one, from 15 February 1941, but I lost my courage at the very last second – I didn’t want to risk touching all that might have been.

  Whoever slept now in my niece’s bed was a reader; my Polish translation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was splayed open on the ground by the headboard. Next to the book was an empty tin cup that had been filled with ghetto water; on evaporating, the ochre crust I remembered well had been left behind.

  Searching the apartment rekindled my sense of purpose, and I hoped that the world would touch me back now, but when I tried to open the door to Stefa’s wardrobe, my fingers eased into the dark wood as though into dense cold clay.

  What did it mean to be nine years old and trapped on our forgotten island? A clue: Adam would wake with a start over our first weeks together, catapulted from night-terrors, and lean over me to reach for the glass of water I kept on my side table. Stirred by his wriggling, I’d lift the rim to his lips, but at first I resented his intrusions into my sleep. It was only after nearly a month together that I began to treasure the squirming feel of him and his breathless gulps, and how, on lying back down, he’d pull my arm around him. The gentle rise and fall of his slender chest would make me think of all I still had to be grateful for.

  Lying in bed with my grandnephew, I used to force myself to stay awake because it didn’t seem fair how such a simple act as drawing in air could keep the boy in our world, and I needed to watch him closely, to lay my hand over his skullcap of blond hair and press my protection into him. I wanted staying alive to involve a much more complex process. For him – and for me, too. Then dying would be so much harder for us both.

  Nearly all of my books were gone from the wooden shelves I’d built – burned for heating, no doubt. But Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and some of my other psychiatry texts were still there. Whoever was living here now had likely discovered that most of them were first editions and might fetch a good price outside the ghetto.

  I spotted the German medical treatise into which I’d slipped two emergency matzos, but I made no attempt to retrieve them; although hunger still clawed at my belly, I no longer needed sustenance of that kind.

  Eager for the comfort of a far-off horizon, I took the apartment-house stairs up to the roof and stepped gingerly on to the wooden platform the Tarnowskis – our neighbours – had built for stargazing. Around me, the city rose in fairytale spires, turrets and domes – a child’s fantasy come to life. As I turned in a circle, tenderness surged through me. Can one caress a city? To be the Vistula River and embrace Warsaw must be its own reward at times.

  And yet Stefa’s neighbourhood seemed more dismal than I remembered it – the tenements further mired in shaggy decay and filth despite all our wire and glue.

  A voice cut the air with a raucous shout, dispelling my daydreams. Across the street,
leaning out a fourth-floor window, a shrivelled man in a tattered coat was waving at me frantically. His temples were sunken and his stubble was white.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘You there, you’re going to fall and break your neck!’

  I saw a reflection of myself in his shrunken shoulders and panicked gaze. I held up my hand to have him wait where he was, clambered off the roof and down the stairs, then padded across the street.

  Up in his apartment, the man recognized that I wasn’t like him right away. He opened his bloodshot eyes wide with astonishment and took a step back. ‘Hello there,’ he said warily.

  ‘So… so you can really see me?’ I stammered.

  His face relaxed. ‘Absolutely. Though your edges…’ He jiggled his hand and tilted his head critically. ‘They’re not so good – a bit indistinct.’

  ‘And aren’t you scared of me?’ I asked.

  ‘Nah, I’ve had visions before. And besides, you speak Yiddish. Why would a Jewish ibbur do me any harm?’

  ‘An ibbur?’

  ‘A being like you – who’s come back from beyond the edge of the world.’

  He had a poetic way with words, which pleased me. I smiled with relief; he could really see and hear me. And it eased my worries to have a name for what I was.

  ‘I’m Heniek Corben,’ he told me.

  ‘Erik Benjamin Cohen,’ I replied, introducing myself as I had as a schoolboy.

  ‘Are you from Warsaw?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I grew up near the centre of town, on Bednarska Street.’

  Puckering his lips comically, he gave a low whistle. ‘Nice neighbourhood!’ he enthused, but when he flashed a grin I saw that his mouth was a ruin of rotted teeth.

  Interpreting my grimace as a sign of physical pain, he came closer. ‘Sit, sit, Reb Yid,’ he told me in a concerned voice, pulling out a chair for me at his kitchen table.

  Formality seemed a little absurd after all that we Jews had suffered. ‘Please just call me Erik,’ I told him.

  I lowered myself in slow motion, fearing that I’d fail to find a solid seat, but the wood of his chair welcomed my bony bottom generously – proof that I was getting the knack of this new life.

  Heniek looked me up and down, and his expression grew serious.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘You faded away for a moment. I think maybe-’ Ending his sentence abruptly, he held his gnarled hand above my head and blessed me in Hebrew. ‘With any luck, that should do the trick,’ he told me cheerfully.

  Realizing he was probably religious, I said, ‘I haven’t seen any sign of God, or anything resembling an angel or demon. No ghosts, no ghouls, no vampires – nothing.’ I didn’t want him to think I could answer any of his metaphysical questions.

  He waved off my concern. ‘So what can I get you? How about some nettle tea?’

  ‘Thank you, but I’ve discovered I don’t need to drink any more.’

  ‘Mind if I make some for myself?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  While he boiled water, I asked him questions about what had happened since I’d left Warsaw the previous March.

  Sighing, he replied, ‘Ech, mostly the same old misery. The big excitement was during the summer – the Russians bombed us. Unfortunately, the numbskull pilots missed Gestapo headquarters, but I’ve heard that Theatre Square was turned to rubble.’ He lowered his voice and leaned towards me. ‘The good news is the Americans have entered the war. The Japanese bombed them a week ago according to the BBC – I’ve a friend with a hidden radio.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’

  He pointed up to heaven. ‘I don’t want to sound optimistic – God might pull some more pranks on us if He thinks I’m being arrogant.’

  Heniek’s superstitiousness would have provoked a sarcastic remark from me in times past, but I’d evidently become more patient in death. ‘So where do you work?’ I asked.

  ‘A clandestine soap factory.’

  ‘And you have the day off?’

  ‘Yes, I woke up this morning with a slight fever.’

  ‘What’s the date?’

  ‘The sixteenth of December 1941.’

  It was seven days since I’d walked out of the Lublin labour camp where I’d been a prisoner, but by my count I’d taken only five days to reach home, so I’d lost forty-eight hours somewhere under my steps. Maybe time passed differently for the likes of me.

  Heniek told me he’d been a printer before moving into the ghetto. His wife and daughter had died of tuberculosis a year earlier.

  ‘I could live with the loneliness,’ he said, gazing downward to hide his troubled eyes, ‘but the rest, it’s… it’s just too much.’

  I knew from experience that the rest meant guilt, as well as more subtle and confusing emotions for which we had no adequate name.

  He dropped his nettle leaves into the white ceramic flowerpot he used for a teapot. Then, looking up with renewed vigour, he asked after my family, and I told him that my daughter Liesel was in Izmir. ‘She was working at an archaeological site when the war broke out, so she stayed there.’

  ‘Have you been to see her yet?’

  ‘No, I had to come here first. But she’s safe. Unless…’ I jumped up, panicked. ‘Turkey hasn’t entered the war, has it?’

  ‘No, no, it’s still neutral territory. Don’t worry.’

  He poured boiling water over his nettle leaves in a slow and perfect circle, and his exactitude charmed me. I sat back down.

  ‘Excuse my curiosity, Erik, but why have you come back to us?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. And I think that any answer I might be able to give you wouldn’t make much sense unless I told you about what happened to me in the ghetto – about my nephew most of all.’

  ‘So, what’s stopping you? We could spend all day together, if you like.’

  A mischievous glint appeared in Heniek’s eyes. Despite his grief and loneliness, he seemed to be eager for a new adventure.

  ‘I’ll tell you a little later,’ I replied. ‘Being able to talk with you… it’s unnerved me.’

  Heniek nodded his understanding. After he’d had his tea, he suggested we go for a walk. He carried a bag of potatoes to his sister, who shared a two-bedroom flat with six other tenants near the Great Synagogue, then, together, we listened to Noel Anbaum singing outside the Nowy Azazel Theatre. His accordion made the most brilliant red and gold butterfly-shapes flutter across my eyes – a glorious and strange sensation, but one I’ve gotten used to of late; my senses often run together now, like glazes overflowing their borders. In the end, might they merge completely?Will I fall inside too great a landscape of sound, sight and touch, and be unable to grope my way back to myself? Maybe that will be the way death finally takes me.

  Heniek, when I hear the patient hum of the carbide lamp that sits between us, and watch the quivering dance of its blue flame, the gratitude I feel embraces me as Adam did when I told him we would visit New York together. And my gladness at being able to talk to you whispers in my ear: despite all the Germans’ attempts to remake the world, the natural laws still exist.

  So I must tell my story to you in its proper order or I will become as lost as Hansel and Gretel. And unlike those Christian children, I have no breadcrumbs to mark my way back home. Because I have no home. That is what being back in the city of my birth has taught me.

  First we will talk of how Adam vanished and returned to us in a different form. And then I will tell you how Stefa made me believe in miracles.

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  On the last Saturday of September 1940, I hired a horse-cart, a driver and two day labourers to move me from my riverside apartment into my niece’s one-bedroom flat inside the city’s old Jewish quarter. I’d decided to leave home before the official establishment of a ghetto because much of Warsaw had already been declared off-limits to us, and I hardly needed a crystal ball to know what was coming next. I wanted to go into exile on my own terms – and to be able to c
hoose who would take over my apartment. A Christian neighbour’s university-age daughter and her barrister husband had already moved in.

  In my best woollen suit, I walked closely behind the horse-cart, making sure that nothing slipped off into the mud. My oldest friend, Izzy Nowak, joined me, hoping to escape his dispiriting home for a little while; his wife Róźa had suffered a stroke earlier in the month and could no longer recognize him. Róźa’s younger sister had moved in to help take care of her.

  While Izzy stooped down to collect leaves painted red and yellow by autumn, he kept me talking so that I wouldn’t seize up with despair. I’ve always lost my voice at the worst of times, however, so after only a block, I had to simply wave him off. Still, my feet kept going – a minor triumph – and after a time, as if through the rhythm of walking itself, an ethereal calm spread through me. As we passed the bomb-destroyed tower of the Royal Castle, though, a group of youths looking for a fight began calling us names. To foil their effort to provoke us, Izzy began singing a popular French song in his wobbly baritone; he and I have protected ourselves with the sound of our own voices since we were schoolboys teased by Christian classmates.

  Jews from where we come from learn defensive strategies early, of course.

  Along Freta Street, we joined a queue of refugees in our own city. Who knew so many of us had samovars, wicker furniture and bad landscape paintings? Or that a young mother with her small daughter clinging to the fringe of her dress would think of carrying a toilet into exile?

  I looked at the faces around me, grimy with dust and sweat, and etched with panic. Sensing that the direction of my thoughts was straight down, Izzy hooked his arm in mine and pulled me forward. On reaching the door to Stefa’s apartment house, he took me aside and said, ‘Heaven, Erik, is where the most soft-spoken people win all the arguments.’