The old policeman abandoned his duties as translator with relief, went out of the room and left Anwaldt alone. Closing the door, he cast a concerned eye back at the tired German policeman who had rested his forehead on the coarse, green felt.
He was wrong. Anwaldt was not asleep at all. It was easier for him to transport himself in time and space with eyes closed. He was now sitting in Franz Huber’s agency with the old detective in his sights. In the agency, its walls covered in wood, floated specks of dust which settled as a powdered carpet on the thick files and glass panes behind which old photographs were turning yellow. Franz Huber was tapping the top of his desk with his engraved cigarette holder and slowly drawling out his words:
“Schlossarczyk worked for the Baron from 1901–1902. That’s presumably when she got pregnant. Thereafter, Baron Ruppert von der Malten, Olivier’s father, never again employed a woman, not even as cook. So her son must be thirty-one or thirty-two. His name? We don’t know. Certainly not the same as the Baron. His mother got a handsome sum to keep quiet, enough for her to live comfortably to this day. Where does the bastard live now? That we don’t know either. And what do we know? That until he became of age, he lived in an orphanage in Berlin, where he landed up as a baby from his loving mother’s arms.”
“What orphanage?”
“She doesn’t know herself. Some merchant took her there. An acquaintance of hers.”
“The merchant’s name?”
“She didn’t want to give it to us. She said he had nothing to do with it.” (I’m better than Schubert, the detective from Huber’s agency. I know what that merchant was called. The same as me except without a “t”. An orphanage in Berlin and a mercer from Poznan, Mieczyslaw Anwald. Two cities, two people, one surname, one death sentence.)
POZNAN, THAT SAME JULY 17TH, 1934
SEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
The establishment of Mieczyslaw Anwald’s blue textiles on Ulica Polnocna near the Goods Station was already rumbling with life at this hour. Workers were carrying bales of material, carts and delivery vans were driving up to the ramp, a Jew was pushing a trolley constructed out of planks nailed together, the trade representative of the Bielschowsky establishment was waving his business card in front of the manager’s nose, abacuses were clattering in the counting-room, Police Officer Banaszak was puffing away at a small ivory pipe and Anwaldt was repeating in his mind: “it’s a pure coincidence that Schlossarczyk’s and Baron von der Malten’s son was brought up in a Berlin orphanage as I was, it’s pure coincidence that he was taken there by a man with the same surname as mine, I’m not the Baron’s son, it’s pure coincidence that Schlossarczyk’s and the Baron’s son was brought up …”
“Can I help you?” the well-built fifty-year-old squeezed a fat cigar between his fingers. “What do our dear police want from me?”
Banaszak got up and, with reluctance, glanced at the unshaven Anwaldt who was muttering something to himself. He pulled out his identification and, stifling a yawn, said:
“Police Officer Banaszak, and this is Criminal Assistant Klaus Uberweg from the Breslau Police. Did you know Hanna Slusarczyk of Rawicz?”
“No … no, I don’t … where …” the merchant glanced at the cashier women who were suddenly counting more slowly. “Let’s go to my apartment. It’s too noisy here.”
The apartment was large and comfortable. From the agency, the way in was through the kitchen door. Two servants threw a flirtatious eye at the young man for whom the night had been too short; under their employer’s glaring eyes, they immediately reverted to their plucking of a fat duck. The men’s footsteps rang on the sandstone floor. The merchant invited the policemen into the library where the spines of untouched books glittered and the green armchairs standing under a palm spread their soft insides. Through the open window wafted the nauseating, sweetish smell of a slaughterhouse. Mieczyslaw Anwald did not wait for Banaszak to repeat his question.
“Yes, I know Hanna Slusarczyk.”
“Do you speak German?” the police officer’s pipe was blocked.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps we could switch to that language. It will save us time since Assistant Uberweg doesn’t speak Polish.”
“Certainly.”
Banaszak finally blew his pipe through and the library filled with scented smoke.
“Let’s be exact, Herr Anwald. You knew her. Yesterday morning your friend was killed.”
Mieczyslaw Anwald’s face contorted in pain. There was no verbal reaction. Anwaldt ceased to repeat his mantra and started to ask questions:
“Herr Anwald, is it you who took Hanne Schlossarczyk’s illegitimate child to the Berlin orphanage?”
The merchant did not reply. Banaszak moved uneasily and said in Polish:
“My dear fellow, if you want your family to find out about your romance with a woman of ill repute, if you want to walk out of your establishment led to the police station by two uniformed policemen, then persist in your silence.”
The host looked at the unshaven man with flaming eyes, and answered in German with a Silesian accent:
“Yes. It was me who took the child to the orphanage in Berlin.”
“Why did you do so?”
“Hanna asked me to. She could not part with the child herself.”
“So why did she part with it at all?”
“My dear Assistant,” Banaszak bit his tongue at the last instant so as to not say “my dear Anwaldt”. He was angry at himself for having agreed to Anwaldt’s strange request to introduce him under a fictitious name. “Please forgive me, but this question has nothing to do with the case. Firstly, it should have been addressed to the deceased; secondly, the answer won’t give you what you’re looking for: the son’s address.”
“I’m not, sir, going to come to Poznan again in order to ask something you’ve not allowed me to ask.”
Anwaldt examined the books through the yellow glass and admired the large collection of Greek literature in translation. A verse from Oedipus the King roared in his ears: “Terrible though it is, Sir, while the witness/ Does not the truth confess, hold fast still to your hope.”
“She was young. She still wanted to get married.”
“Which orphanage did you take the child to?”
“I don’t know. Definitely a Catholic one.”
“How’s that, were you in Berlin or not? You went there at random with the child, not knowing where you were going to leave it? How did you know they would take him in anywhere?”
“Two nuns were waiting for the child at the station. It had been decided by the family of the child’s father.”
“What family? Name!”
“I don’t know. Hanna kept it absolutely secret and never told anyone. I expect she was generously rewarded for her silence.”
“Had anything else been decided?”
“Yes. The family paid in advance for the boy to be educated at a secondary school.”
Anwaldt suddenly experienced a painful spasm in his chest. He got up, strolled across the room and decided to put an end to the pain by means of its cause. So he lit another cigarette. But the effect was such that he was gripped by a dry cough. When it had passed, he quoted Sophocles: “Terrible though it is, Sir, while the witness/ Does not the truth confess, hold fast still to your hope.”
“I beg your pardon?” Anwald and Banaszak asked simultaneously, looking at the Breslau policeman as if he were mad. The latter walked up to Mieczyslaw Anwald’s armchair and whispered:
“What name did they give the child?”
“We christened the boy in Ostrow. The kind-hearted priest took our word that we were married. He only asked to see my passport. The godparents were some chance people who got paid for it.”
“Tell me, dammit, what was the child’s name?!”