"She didn't reciprocate?"
"I never told her how I felt. Not until years later. But I think she knew all the same. I think that's why she kissed me that night. Needless to say, I didn't expect it. I carried the memory of that kiss throughout the war. In the hardest moments—of fear and homesickness and exhaustion—I would cling to it. I think it saved my life."
"You had no contact with her during the war?"
He shook his head. "I thought about writing to her many times, but I was afraid to. I didn't want to find out that she had met someone, maybe even gotten married. I wanted to make it through the war and get back to her. Ridiculous, isn't it?"
"Not at all," I said. In times of strife, like in war or in the camps, people manufacture the most outlandish reasons to survive, to carry on through another day of suffering. Geller's motivation was far from the oddest I'd encountered.
He said, "I promised Anna I would liberate Prague and save her family. It didn't turn out that way, of course. Her family was dead by the time the war was over, and I never made it to Prague. I fought in North Africa and later in Italy and served in Belgium and France for a time after the war. I met people like you there."
"People like me?"
"With numbers on their arms. The stories they told, those who were willing to talk at all, were horrible beyond imagination. Were you in Auschwitz too?"
I nodded, then retook control of the conversation before it veered into even more dangerous territory.
"You said you hated the theater. How come?" I said.
"I wasn't a very good actor, and I was reminded of this fact—excruciatingly—after nearly every performance."
"Let me guess—by Dahlia Rotner?"
"Not just her. She was the ringleader, but nearly everyone else joined in the fun."
"Including Anna?"
A needle of pain shot across his features. "Only twice. Not too long after we joined the theater. I didn't blame her. It was hard not to add your voice to the chorus of criticism. Social pressure is a powerful thing."
"Then why did she stop?"
"Because deep down Anna was a good person, and she saw how hurt some people could get when they were on the receiving end of all that criticism and mockery. And once she did, she apologized to me and any of the others she hurt, and never did it again. But the others kept at it, and it got to the point where I couldn't stand it anymore. So I went to fight the war instead."
I felt of flash of anger at Dahlia. She might have been as exceptional as people said, but that didn't give her the right to treat others like dirt.
I said, "You told me you last met Anna in 1945."
"Yes. I was on a three-week leave, and I was a different man than the boy who'd gone to fight the war in 1940. I was braver, and I knew that life was very short indeed. So I went to see Anna, told her how I felt, and asked her to marry me."
"What did she say?"
"She smiled. That was her initial reaction. It was a strange sort of smile. Happy and sad all at once. Then she took my hands in hers, rubbed her thumbs along the back of my hands—" Geller mimicked the caress now, staring down at his own hands before lifting his gaze to meet mine "—and then she turned me down."
"She simply said no?"
"Not exactly. She told me I was courageous and kind and beautiful, and that had things been different, she would have loved being my wife, but I was too young for her."
"Too young? I thought you were the same age."
"Actually, I was born nine months before her. But when I pointed this out to her, she made it clear she was looking for someone not simply older than her, but much older." He drew a deep breath and eased it out in a long sigh. "I asked her what she meant by things that might have been different, but she refused to answer. I can say that she cried when she turned me down. And that she had never looked as beautiful as at that moment when she broke my heart."
He fell silent, and so did I. I knew what Anna had meant. I cursed that old industrialist who had taken advantage of her when she was still a child, and had marked her indelibly. I also realized that Anna's neighbor, Margalit Blissberg, had misheard what Anna had told Margalit's husband as she rebuffed his advances. Margalit thought Anna had said she did not want a man who was younger than her, but what Anna had really said was that she didn't want a young man at all.
And judging by the tears Anna had shed as she declined Geller's proposal of marriage, she was well aware of her proclivities and hated them, but felt hopelessly trapped by them.
I was thinking of this, and descending deeper into a well of rage-tinged sorrow, when I remembered something else I'd been told during this investigation. Something that didn't fit.
"You've never seen Anna with a young man?" I asked.
Geller shook his head. "Never."
"Not even during high school?"
"No. She never went out with any of the boys, and plenty were interested."
I sat a bit straighter as a cold sharp-nailed finger began scratching a meandering path up my spine. "I was told Anna was involved with a man not older than twenty-one during her final year in high school."
"Who told you?"
"Menashe Klausner."
Geller made a face. "That old fart. Is he still at Gymnasia Herzliya?"
"I take it you don't like him all that much."
"I think he's a pompous ass, and a talentless one at that. One of the best days of my life was when I went to inform him that I was hired by Shoresh Theater. Klausner auditioned for the theater several times and always failed. From what I heard, last time he tried, Dahlia and Eliezer Dattner humiliated him, told him he was the worst actor they'd ever seen. Since he never thought I was any good, it stunned him to learn that I'd succeeded where he'd failed." Geller chuckled, but then his face went hard. "He made Anna cry that day, the bastard."
"Cry?"
"I found her on a bench as I was leaving the school. Apparently, she had gone to see Klausner just before I did. She was his favorite, so I guess she thought he would be happy for her. But that's not how it went."
"What did she say happened?" I asked.
"That Klausner railed at her, told her that Shoresh Theater was the crummiest theater in Tel Aviv, that she was too good for it, that he forbade her to work there."
"Forbade her? Who was he to forbid her anything?"
Geller shrugged. "I guess he thought that since he was the director of the drama club, he had a say in how Anna chose to pursue an acting career. I told you he was a pompous ass."
"What else did Anna say?"
"What do you think? That she wasn't going to do what he said. This was her dream, to be an actress. She wasn't going to give it up just because Klausner had a thing against Shoresh Theater."
That cold finger turned icy as it reached the nape of my neck, making all those small hairs stand on end.
"Once she told me her decision, she calmed down quickly. I walked her home to Gordon Street, and that was that."
"Gordon Street?" I said. "That's where Anna moved after graduation?"
He shook his head. "No, she lived there throughout our senior year. I remember her saying she'd moved to that apartment the previous summer. Apparently, she had to leave very soon, because she asked if I knew anyone who was looking for a tenant."
A memory popped into the forefront of my brain: Mrs. Chernick telling me it had been fourteen years since Anna had lived in her house. This was 1951. Fourteen years ago was 1937, one year before Anna graduated high school.
Later in that same conversation, I'd asked Mrs. Chernick if Anna had left her house post-graduation, and Mrs. Chernick said she had.
That was a lie. Her earlier slip was the truth. Anna had lived on Gordon Street during her senior year. And someone had to pay her rent.
"Do you know why she had to move in a hurry?" I asked.