The Thief of Auschwitz (9 page)

This retrospective certainly wasn’t my idea.

They could have waited and done it without me. After all, I’m pushing ninety or thereabouts, depending on who you ask. But no. The National Gallery is the National Gallery and they do what they want to do when they want to do it. They don’t ask you what you think.

A person can’t help being flattered, though. At least a little.

Wyeth had to put himself through all of that Helga business to get his day at the National Gallery. I mean it. Don’t think he wasn’t fishing for the attention, for the
Time
cover and the
Newsweek
cover and all the rest of it, one last hurrah in his declining years. A nice infusion of cash, too.

Once his wife found out, I figure the two of them cooked up the whole deal together. It must have been harder on Betsy than it was on him, but what else was she supposed to do? Her husband spends ten or fifteen years making naked pictures of this Helga and hiding them in his buddy’s place down the road. His old buddy Frolic Weymouth. That’s right.
Frolic.
A full-grown man named after a foxhound. That tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t it?

So when Betsy finds the pictures, what’s she supposed to do? Anybody could answer that question. Lemons into lemonade. It’s the American way. She capitalizes on her own misfortune, picks up the phone, and the two of them ride their pathetic little homegrown scandal all the way down to Washington, D.C.

The important thing is this: even though the Helga show came toward the end of Andy’s life, it wasn’t a retrospective by any means. It was just Helga. Helga and the chance for every curiosity seeker in the world to have a peek into Uncle Andy’s private little world.

I guess they’d had their fill of
Christina’s World
by then. Everybody had.

This retrospective of mine they’re mounting, though? It’s the real deal.

Five

“How shall we go on without Lydia and Max?”

That’s the message the deliveryman carries to Jacob. He knows exactly where to find him. He knows his commando and he knows his block. There’s no reaching Jacob during the workday, though, not with the Ukrainian guards keeping an eye on things. His commando has dug their way under the road and come out the other side with only a half-dozen men lost to Slazak’s temper and the guards’ eager trigger fingers, and the road presents an additional barrier even if it’s not a physical one. The delivery commando has no obvious business over there, not with coal and definitely not with flour, and time has proven again and again, to the little junkman and to every other individual who has passed through his commando either to be reassigned elsewhere or to die of overwork or to be shot for one offense or another, that the minute you have to start explaining things it’s already too late.

The delivery commando works long hours, though. Longer than most, impossible as it seems, for just this reason. A black market operation requires access and access requires opportunity and opportunity requires a flexible schedule. So they start work early and quit late, and they constantly adjust their route to accommodate certain ever-shifting exigencies.

Thus they arrive at Jacob’s block when the men are done for the day. They’re done working and done with the first evening roll call—the one that happens before they get their rations, the one that sometimes goes on forever and supersedes the meal altogether—and now they’re lingering for a few precious moments in the yard. The junkman wipes his brow with the back of his wrist, adding black to black. The day is still warm and he’s wearing his coat in spite of it, for the usual reasons. Bits of coal collect in every fold of it. He tore the flaps from the outside pockets long ago to help the process along, and then he sold the fabric for a couple of cigarettes. It’s the pockets inside where he tucks whatever secret merchandise he’s transporting on any given day, although at this moment the merchandise is strictly in his mind.

He looks around for Jacob, stretching his shoulders and taking a shovel from the wagon. His partner draws the horse nearer to the building and the junkman lets down the gate and they begin scraping coal into the bin. They’re in no hurry. There’s not a capo to be seen, no authority figures at all except for the guards scattered around the perimeter of the yard with their machine guns and their flat looks and their eyes like coin slots.

The junkman spies Jacob squatting in the dirt alongside the building, his head bent in conversation with a younger man. A boy almost, a boy who’s big and strong enough but a boy all the same. He can’t get Jacob’s attention but he gets the boy’s. He winks at him and jerks his head. The boy speaks to Jacob and Jacob looks over toward the junkman and the junkman does it all over again. Standing there pretending to work, going slow, dribbling coal onto the dirt and over his shoes and into his pockets.

Jacob looks away but the boy looks back. He says something to Jacob again, and Jacob shakes his head. The boy begins to stand but Jacob puts a hand on his knee. His touch doesn’t stop the boy. He rises and slaps dust from his trousers—long, comical trousers doubled over at the cuffs and doubled over again—and then he approaches the wagon.

“I’ve got a message for Rosen,” says the junkman.

“I’m Rosen,” says the boy.

“Good for you,” says the junkman. “But this is for the other Rosen.”

“You mean my father.”

The junkman almost stops shoveling, but not quite. One of the guards has turned his attention their way, so he keeps his eyes down and his hands busy.

“I’ll go get him,” says Max.

“No no no no no no,” The junkman doesn’t look up. “Not so fast. The guards.”

By the way he’s speaking not to him but to the ground, Max gets the picture. Slowly, slowly, hardly moving at all, he takes a half step away and leans his back against the green tarpaper wall of the block as if he isn’t here to talk to the junkman at all. After a minute the guard has turned his attention elsewhere.

The junkman goes on. “You Max?”

“I am.”

“Max Rosen?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Son of Jacob and Eidel Rosen?”

Max steadies himself. “What do you know about my mother?”

“I know she thinks you’re dead is what I know.” More coal goes onto the ground and he stoops to pick it up, slipping a few grams into his pocket along the way. “I take it Lydia would be your sister, then?”

That’s enough. Max can’t contain himself. He springs away from the wall and leans in toward the junkman, avid. “She is.”

“Watch yourself. The guards.”

But the guards haven’t taken note.

“What do you know about Lydia?”

The junkman makes as if to wring his own neck. “Sorry, pal.” The look on his face would suggest that he’s sincere. It doesn’t last, though, because the capo has materialized in the doorway. He stands on the top step surveying the yard and sniffing the air, on his way to see about rations. “Oops,” says the junkman. “Slazak.”

Poor Max is so overwhelmed with thoughts of his mother and his sister that he can hardly understand.
Slazak.
It’s the name of some demon conjured from another realm, a word that suggests something not entirely real, and he can’t quite grasp its meaning. He can’t quite grasp anything. He has been raised up and stricken down all at once, brought low in a way that all of the ditch-digging and starvation he’s endured have been unable to accomplish.

“Slazak,”
hisses the junkman again.

Max falls back against the wall, leaning there like lumber, and the junkman finishes his work. Max hardly breathes. He closes his eyes and keeps them closed for a minute and then opens them again as if he expects the world to have changed in the meantime. To have gone back to the way it was before the junkman arrived. But it hasn’t. The junkman throws his shovel in the wagon and raises the gate. He drags a chain across it and the clanking of the chain gets Max’s attention the way a ghostly visitation might. “Tell your old man,” he says to the boy.

Nothing. Slazak clomps down the steps and stalks toward the kitchen.

The junkman climbs back into the wagon. “Tell him she wants to know what they’re going to do without you and your sister. And tell him I owe her a message back. He can give it to me next time.”

Nothing from Max.

“Don’t forget.”

He won’t.

*

“How shall we go on without Lydia and Max?”

It was a hopeful message, now that she thinks about it. She hadn’t meant it that way. It had been a cry from the heart and nothing more, the first thing that had come into her mind. But she sees now that within its context of despair is the notion of moving forward, which is hopeful. She wonders if Jacob will understand it that way.

When the delivery commando arrives with the flour, she practically accosts the junkman. “Were you able to get to him?” she asks.

“I was.”

“And he said?”

The junkman shrugs. “He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t time.”

She glares up from her cutting.

“The capo, the guards, you know how it goes. This place isn’t always conducive to a long talk.”

“But he gave you a message.”

“No ma’am, he didn’t.” Taking a step away, lifting the white shovel. “I’m sure he’ll have one for you soon enough.”

Eidel crumples forward in spite of herself. No word. No word from Jacob at all. It’s not possible.

The junkman begins shoveling. He looks back at her over his shoulder and asks himself if he should tell her about Max. How he’s seen him and talked to him. How he’s all right. Alive, at least.

Eidel picks up her knife again and turns away. “No message?” she says, turning resolute. “In that case, you won’t get your second kilo.”

It’s the junkman’s turn to be aghast. God knows what he’s promised that ravenous Slovak guard of his. He could be right on the verge of that old familiar
pop pop pop
that he was so quick to bring up a couple of days before.

“No message,” she says, “no radishes,” believing that he’s up to something. That he has a message—surely Jacob wouldn’t have permitted him to leave without one—but thinks he can extract a little bit more for delivering it.

The junkman hardly believes his ears, although he knows he has it coming.
No message, no radishes.
The idea of leaving empty-handed turns his face as pale as the flour that covers the rest of him. “Wait a minute,” he says, lifting his hat and giving his shaven head a theatrical scratch, “I seem to remember that there might have been a message after all.”

“Is that so?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you’re just remembering now?”

“I have a lot on my mind.” He screws the hat down. “But I think it’s coming back.”

She’s still cutting. Rutabagas today, although there aren’t many of them and they’re softer than they should be. Nearly rotten. She keeps cutting, and she doesn’t look up.

The junkman slaps himself on the side of the head. A white cloud blooms. “The boy,” he says. “The boy is alive.”

She drops the knife. “Max?”

“Yes! Max! I’ve seen him with my own eyes.”

“My son?”

“None other.” He stands there beaming. “Your husband pointed him out.”

She can’t believe the reality of anything so wonderful. It must be verified. “Tell me about him,” she says. “Tell me what he looks like.”

“Very much like his father,” says the junkman.

“Good guess. Go on.”

The junkman looks hurt. “I’m not guessing,” he says. “Beyond the resemblance to his father, I must say he looks pretty much like the rest of us. No hair. Shabby clothing. Nothing but skin and bones.”

“Anything else?” She doesn’t want to lead him, but there must be something. There
is
something. And she knows what it is.

The junkman pulls at his lip. “He’s tall for his age,” he says. “At first I thought he was a fully grown man.”

“Max,” she says, clutching her throat and putting down the knife. She has run the tip of that blade down a vein before and she’s told herself she’ll never do it again, but now she knows for certain. Not with Max alive. She’d been convinced that her husband was enough—
dayenu,
she’d said—but now, wonder of wonders, she’s found herself in a world that still has her son in it too.

*

Ever since the disappearance of his twin, Schuler has been weakening steadily. When he kneels to sort clothing in Canada, his bones crack like firewood. The pain in his joints dims his eyes and twists his mouth into a grimace. His walking pace has slowed to a shuffle, and officers waiting for their Friday trim grow peevish at his absence even though when he finally arrives his hands shake so badly that his work is worse than ever before. When the word circulates then that a new barber has passed Drexler’s scrutiny, there’s a general rejoicing among the highly placed.