Ten Years Gone

I went to him, grabbed him by one arm and his belt and pulled him to his feet. I shoved his wallet into his pocket. Max was stirring. I prodded him with my foot. He cracked his eyes open. I yanked him up. He swayed on his feet, but did not fall.

"Don't ever come back here. Yuri will explain what will happen if you do."

His mouth was all bloodied and his breaths wheezed through his caved-in, blood-clogged nostrils. He looked half-dazed, but he got the message. One glance at Yuri was enough to tell him what the situation was. He gave me a quick nod and staggered out, not waiting for his friend. I shoved Yuri out and locked the door and returned to where Rachel was standing.

She had her arms folded across her chest. She gazed at the bloodstains Max had left on her floor. I picked up the money I took from Yuri and held it out to her.

"It probably won't cover what you paid him, but—"

She kept her arms folded. It was warm in the restaurant, but Rachel was trembling as if a cold wind had touched her skin. I suddenly felt cold as well. Maybe it was the battle sweat evaporating from my skin. Maybe it was something else.

"I don't want it," Rachel said, raising her eyes to me. The gratitude I had expected to see in them was nowhere in evidence. It had been replaced by…I wasn't sure what. I felt a stab of disappointment. I realized that I liked Rachel and wanted her to like me back. This filled me with surprise. For five years, ever since my wife, Deborah, died in the gas chambers, I had felt nothing for any woman. Not emotionally and not physically. It was as if this particular passion that had once burned brightly within me had guttered out and not even embers remained of it. Only now I felt glimmerings of that dormant emotion, mixed with a touch of shame, as if I had already betrayed the memory of my wife.

"How could you?" Rachel asked.

I didn't understand. "How could I what?"

"Do that. To him. You broke his hand."

I was beginning to get it. "I had to do it."

"No, you didn't. He'd already put down the knife. He was about to leave. And you just…you just attacked him."

Now I recognized what her eyes held. It was horror, disgust, perhaps even hatred for me.

"If he had gone out of here unharmed," I said, "by tomorrow his mind would have begun painting a different picture of this night. He would have started thinking that he had been too quick to leave, that he could have gotten his way if he'd stuck around. He would have blamed Max or found some other excuse. He would have come back. Maybe not this week or the next. Maybe it would have taken him a month. But he would have been back here. Now he won't, and you know why?"

I waited, but she didn't respond. She just glared at me with those scornful eyes, as if I were something that needed to be kept at arm's length, something dangerous.

"He won't be able to forget the pain, that's why. His hand will heal, his fingers will mend, but the pain will live on in his mind. He won't risk revisiting it. He'll stay away."

"You don't know that," she said, tears springing from her eyes and running down her cheeks. "You're guessing. You're making excuses for what you did."

"I told you that this is what it would take to solve your problem. I told you I would need to hurt him. You agreed."

"I never agreed to this," she said, shaking her head. "Never to this. Know what I think? I think you enjoyed this. You enjoyed stomping on his hand."

I said nothing. What was there to say? Nothing that would change her mind. Nothing that would change the truth.

"I want you to go," she said, fairly spitting out the words. "Get out. I don't want the money. Take it with you and go."

I was still holding the money out to her. I made to lay it on the table. "I'll just leave it here—"

"No." Her voice was strident, almost hysterical. "I said I don't want it. I don't want it near me. You take it. Take it and get out of here."

For a moment I considered disobeying her and leaving the money behind. Then I thought, Goddamn her. Who is she to suddenly grow a conscience? I risked myself on her behalf and now she behaves as if I have some sickness.

I took the money. Rachel might have thought it was dirty, but I certainly didn't. I had earned it. The knife I refolded and slid into my pants pocket.

I thought of saying something—maybe to make one final stab at changing her mind, or maybe just to tell her off—but all of a sudden I wanted to leave as badly as she wanted me to go.

I crossed the street and made my way down to the deserted beach. With each step, my shoes sank deeper into the soft sand until I got to the firmer, wetter soil at the water's edge. Waves frothed white as they broke by my feet. The undulating water reflected the moon a million times over. I gazed upward. A billion sparkling stars speckled the clear night sky. I recalled nights at Auschwitz, where the only way I could see freedom was to look up into the heavens. In every other direction lay barracks, guard towers, barbed-wire fences, mud and frost and misery. And death.

Would the Adam Lapid that had lived before Auschwitz have broken Yuri's fingers? Maybe not. But that Adam would have been wrong. Just as Rachel was wrong. Because what I had done was necessary.

I wasn't cruel. I had my boundaries. Another man would not have thought twice before killing Yuri and Max. I'd taken a risk and nearly paid dearly for refusing to do so. Because I did not kill those who did not deserve it. I reserved death for the truly evil.

I lowered my eyes and stared seaward, at the shimmering expanse of shifting water, all the way to the black horizon. Beyond that horizon was Hungary, where I was born, where I had been a policeman, where I'd married and had children, where my father was buried. God, how I missed him. How I missed Deborah. How I missed them all.

But Hungary was not my home. Looking back at all that had happened, I knew it never had been.

A faraway sparkle caught my eye. A light was glinting in the far distance. Not a reflection of starlight on the water, but a man-made light. A boat.

Or a ship.

In an instant, my mind cleared of Rachel Weiss and her accusations, of Hungary and my dead family. Suddenly I knew with utter certainty the first step I would take in the Henrietta Ackerland case.

I smiled, feeling strangely buoyed. My eyes followed the glinting light till it vanished in the darkness. Then I turned and headed home.

Back at my apartment, I found the cup of tea I had made for myself earlier that evening. I hadn't touched it before I left. I took a sip. Cold, but sweet. Like revenge.

I got into bed and pulled the thin blanket over me. The room was warm but pleasant. I left all the windows open. Tonight there would be no nightmares, no screams. Tonight I would sleep like an innocent child.

Violent days were like that. They always ended with peaceful nights. I did not know why. And in those twilight moments between wakefulness and blissful sleep, I did not care either.

6

Shmuel Birnbaum did not look happy to see me.

I found him the next morning in Café Tamar on Sheinkin Street, a few blocks from the offices of Davar, the newspaper where he worked, the same newspaper where Henrietta Ackerland had posted an ad in the hopes that Esther Grunewald would see it. Davar was the party newspaper of Mapai, the left-wing ruling party of Israel, and the most widely read paper in the country. Shmuel Birnbaum was one of its most prominent reporters.

Seeing me approach, Birnbaum set down the paper he'd been reading and began rubbing his jaw. I made an effort to hide my smile. He made none to hide his scowl.

"Good morning, Shmuel. Can I sit with you?"

"If I say no, will you leave?"

I shook my head.

Birnbaum sighed. "Then pull up a chair, by all means. Make yourself at home."