Eric straightened his silk tie, smoothed his hair, and made his way quickly to the club exit. He stomped up the stairs and looked for the bouncer. He saw him examining two kids' driver's licenses. "You see a woman come out, dark-haired woman, few seconds ago?"
He nodded, jerked his thumb along the street, and Eric took off, swearing loudly that he should have put on his overcoat. It started to pour; the bouncer cursed and huddled in the doorway.
Magda opened up the soft leather clutch bag. It contained only a gold and diamond embossed compact, a matching lipstick, and a gold cigarette case. There was no wallet, no credit cards, nothing. She sniffed the lining; there was a faint smell of perfume. "You sure it was hers?"
The bartender nodded, said the woman had left it at the bar when she went into the office. "Okay, you can go."
The bartender left as Magda took a magnifying glass from a drawer and examined the compact. She squinted, then lifted her eyebrows; it was gold, so the diamonds must be real. She checked the cigarette case; it too was eighteen-carat. Maybe the bitch wasn't lying, maybe she was a baroness. Magda laughed, lit another cigarette, then turned the cigarette case over in her hand. She'd hang on to it and the compact; they would cover what the little bitch had stolen all those years ago. Hell, she thought, nowadays the leather bag alone would cost two hundred dollars. She opened a drawer and put the bag inside, slamming it shut. It was funny, but she hadn't meant to turn nasty, she hadn't wanted her debt repaid, so much water had passed under the bridge.
Magda sucked on her cigarette. The room stank of smoke. It was the way the bitch refused to admit who she was that really pissed Magda off; who did she think she was kidding? All the handouts she'd given, all the helping hands to the young punks, yet they always turned around and slapped you in the face. She thought about the girls and the pimps she had set up, buying their trailers, even the bitches' clothes, all they had to do was stand outside them and pick up customers. She paid off the police, she, Big Mama, covered everything — and they still robbed her when they could.
Magda reached for the carving knife. The blade was eight inches long, the handle carved but worn; Ruda had probably stolen even that, or found it in one of the bombed-out houses. In those days it was surprising what you could find poking around in the rubble. Magda ran her fingers along the serrated edge, now brown with rust.
She gulped her vodka, slowly calming down as she remembered the good times. The Americans, the English... those soldier boys wanted women, young, fat, thin, they wanted them, and Magda filled their needs. She tried to accommodate every sexual preference: even for underage kids, boys and girls. Children roamed the streets, hundreds of them, hungry and homeless; they'd turn a trick for a meal, for a crust. That's how she got her nickname "Mama," even that bitch Ruda had called her Mama.
Magda closed her eyes, and saw Ruda as clear as yesterday. Ruda, no more than eight or ten years old, infested with lice, dressed in rags, her skinny legs covered in open sores. She was like a stray dog, no matter how often Magda and her boys sent her packing, she returned, hand out, begging. Magda had taken pity on her, let her scrub out the cellars Magda had started to convert into makeshift brothels. She clothed her, fed her, and the child never said a word. For weeks they didn't know her name, or was it months? She couldn't remember how long it was before the girl had started talking, and when she did she had an odd, gruff voice, and used a strange mixture of languages: Polish, German, Yiddish. They never found out her real nationality; but they could see because of the tattoo that she had survived one of the camps — which camp they never discovered.
They nicknamed her Cinders, after Cinderella, and wondered if she was deaf because she spoke so little. Then one day, she hit one of the young boys who tried to mess with her. She hit him with a broom and knocked him unconscious. Mama Magda had been called to attend to him. Ruda was huddled in the corner, clenching the broom, and then in her odd gravelly voice she said that her name was Ruda. Magda had slapped her hard, told her she had to behave if she wanted to be fed.
"My name is Ruda."
Magda asked if Ruda had a last name. She was worried about the police rounding up her kids. At every bomb-blasted corner there were long notices of missing children; Magda always read these lists in case one of the missing children was working for her. If any were, she got rid of them fast, even dragged them to the depots. The families could cause a lot of aggravation. Soldiers, doctors, and nurses from the many orphanages being set up tried to get the kids off the streets. It seemed like a hopeless mission; no sooner were some picked up and housed than others took their places — the pitiful bedraggled aftermath of war. Some kids, diseased and sickly, simply died on the streets. The ones who knew their way around landed with Mama Magda.
Magda often asked Ruda if she had a last name, but the child acted dumb. Once she had shown Magda her wrist, as if the number were a surname. Maybe it was that gesture that had touched Magda, maybe that was what made her take such an interest in the skinny wretch. Magda let her work in her own apartment, washing and cleaning. She was all fingers and thumbs, but the good thing about Ruda was she didn't talk, just got on with her work. She put on weight, her hair became free of lice, and her sores healed. She was not a pretty girl, but she had something, and Magda's men friends soon started to take an interest in her.
Magda would probably have kept Ruda on as a maid, had she not been visited by health inspectors, who regularly checked on missing kids. They had a long list of kids who had escaped from orphanages. Magda listened to the names and shook her head. "I look over the lists, I make sure none of them are around here. If I find one, you know me, I drag them to the depot, I'm known there."
Then they asked if she'd come across a girl called Ruda. They had no last name, and they were still trying to trace any living relative. Ruda had arrived at Auschwitz but had been removed to Birkenau until her release. She had been kept in a mental institution for four years right after the war. She was a survivor of Birkenau, could be recognized by her tattoo; they described her as possibly eight to twelve years of age. They had a place for her in an orphanage but she had run away.
Magda said she had no child of that age working for her. She was sorry she couldn't help, but she would keep her eyes peeled. For a moment she was scared they were going to search her apartment, but they folded their papers.
"I hope, Magda, you don't keep any underage girls, because if you do, we'll keep on coming, and we'll bring the police with us."
Magda had given them a black market bottle of scotch. Laughing and joking, she told them she drew the line at kids. "You think I'd use kids? — what kind of a woman you think I am?!"
They had no illusions about her, but what could they do? They had no search warrants, no time to really look, there were too many children... Even the threat of bringing in the police was an empty one, but they had to make a show, at least try to salvage some of the children roaming the streets. They took the scotch and left.
After they had gone, Magda had to look for Ruda, guessed she must be hiding. She went into her bedroom and opened the wardrobe. Ruda was crouching inside. "Don't send me back there, Mama, please... please don't."
"I can't keep you here, sweetface, they'll shut me down. I don't want trouble; I said I didn't know you. They find out I lied and I won't get them off my back."
Ruda had clung to her, sobbing. It was the first time Magda had seen her shed a tear. "I can't keep you here, but I'll see what I can do."