Salzwedel
1952
Winter
“I am afraid I can’t help you.”
Frau Haber’s expression was bland, but did not quite conceal the nasty smile on her lips. She sat upright behind her desk, prim as a schoolmarm, her sharp tone conveying a cocksure belief that she was the authority here. She was perhaps forty, and wore a chignon that made her raw boned face look even sharper. She might have been an attractive woman if she wasn’t so squared off at every angle. Her mouth wore a subtle officious sneer that made Kat want to throttle her. She could see why Hugo Wechter had discontinued business with her.
“I think you can,” Fisher said, his German cracking like a whip. “In fact, I think you’re going to do everything in your power to help me, because if you don’t, we’re going have a discussion about what you and your friends were up to on the other side of the canal, and then you’ll have to find a new life somewhere else.”
“There’s a problem. I don’t believe you have that power, Mr. Fisher.”
“That would be a mistake,” Kat said softly. Haber stared at her, her coldness melting just a little. Kat thought she understood the reason. Fisher was angry, and his anger revealed that he was not accustomed to holding the power of life and death in his hand. But Kat knew, and Frau Haber knew, even if that power had taken different shapes for both of them.
“Regardless of your assumptions,” the woman said with a hint of a sneer. “We all did what we had to in order to endure. Yes, I assisted in transportation of goods to feed my children, but so did everyone. I offered no extraordinary service. Now, I organize penitent community service by those men who served bad masters, as you see.”
“We know you worked in the womens’ camp,” Fisher interjected. “That’s well documented.”
Her face was smug. “And did you see any crematoria there? Not every camp was a death camp, Mr. Fisher. We were humane, and when the camp was liberated, our prisoners went on to live free lives. You won’t find a single survivor who will contradict me. Would you like a list of names?”
“No,” Fisher said, rising, his lip curling in disgust.
Haber rose with him, her face settling into satisfied smile as she stepped out from behind her desk to usher them out. Fisher stood before her, looked into her face, then did something that completely defied Kat’s knowledge of him. He drew his hand back and cracked his knuckles across the woman’s face.
Haber let out a little cry of shock, holding a hand to her cheek as she stared at him. Kat forced herself not to react, not to speak, to give nothing back to Frau Haber’s aggrieved glance.
“How dare you— “ the woman began, but her voice was shaking and she couldn’t finish her admonition. She cowered, taking a step back as Fisher advanced on her, his face livid.
“You think I don’t know when I’m being lied to. I know what you did to those women. I’ve been to every women’s camp in Europe. Don’t speak to me of humanity.”
Haber looked to Kat again, fearful but defiant, as though demanding to know if she would stand for this.
“What we want is old information, Frau Haber,” she said calmly. “It has very little to do with you, and nothing that proceeds from it will affect you.”
“I will call the police at once,” Haber hissed. “You are spies. Jewish spies. Israelis.”
“If we were, you’d already be in a basement,” Fisher informed her with a sneer. “And I’d be putting cigarettes out on your face.”
Haber went for the telephone, but Kat rose, went over to the set and yanked out the cable. She sighed, already exhausted by this scene. Fisher had blown it, shown his anger, shown his desperation. She should have come alone, but she hadn’t anticipated his state of mind. He was usually so sanguine, so charming even with those he most detested. Kat didn’t blame him, even admired him for his rage, but it wasn’t the moment. She was sure now that Haber did know something, but she was not going to divulge it with Fisher here.
“Wait for me outside,” Kat told him, making it a soft but definite order.
He glared at her, surprised and irritated. She held his gaze, willing him to understand that they needed to reframe the fiction. He turned on his heel and stalked out, taking some of the pressure out of the room with him.
Haber looked to Kat with a martyred expression. “Frau Fisher,” she began, but Kat held up a hand, then rose and went to the desk, picking up the ledger and opening it. Haber stiffened, but did not move to interfere.
“I know my husband is emotional,” Kat said calmly as she leafed through, searching the pages for high numbers. “Particularly when dealing with former camp personnel. But we’re not Mossad. We’re investigating something that happened far from here, in Freiburg, in 1940. I am trying to find destinations. The route itself is not of consequence to me. You are a means, not an end, and after you tell me what I want to know, we’ll forget all of this.”
Haber looked at her in silence for a long moment, her mouth pressing into a flat line. “I will not cooperate. I want you to leave immediately.”
Kat fixed her glacial stare on the woman, saw the fear there, but also respected the woman’s bluff. She had brazened her way out of punishment for over a decade. She knew not to give ground once threatened — not unless that threat was made manifest, something she clearly believed was out of Kat’s power. Kat folded the leather folio and set it back down on the desk.
“Please remember, Frau Haber,” she said as she turned for the door. “That I tried to be reasonable.”
She found Fisher across the road, lingering near the canal, partly concealed by a stand of birches. When she reached him, she saw that his head was bent, his forehead pressed into his hand, his lips parted in a silent, gasping sob. His grief was evident but soundless.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have hit her.”
“You should have hit her harder,” Kat told him, slipping her arms around him. Across the canal, rain began to stain the cement of the great complex. The woman’s camp it had once been was still very much in evidence.
Quietly, Fisher explained the canal, that it had once been filled with chemical byproduct, that instead of using ovens, the kapos and the commander were pleased to dispose of the dead women by allowing them to dissolve in the water.
“A survivor told me they called them “the mermaids”. It was supposed to be a secret, but everyone knew. All of these people, they knew. Not one of them said no, this is hideous, this is a violation of the sheer miracle of being alive. It meant nothing to them, except the inconvenience of having to deny it.” He spat into the canal, tears rolling down his face, then turned to her. “Let’s get out of here. This place is cursed.”
Kat drove the rental to the garage where they’d left the Romeo. Fisher didn’t speak until they were across the border and back in West Germany. He was collected enough by then to drive them back to the hotel, giving the sports car into the care of the valet. Kat was ready to return to their room, but he hesitated at the door to the lobby.
“Kat, I need to… I have to be alone.“
“Alone,” she repeated, frowning. “I don’t think you should be.”
He grimaced. “Not really alone, but… alone in particular company.”
She pursed her lips. “I thought we agreed I wouldn’t be left behind any more.”
He took her hand, pulled it to his chest, placing her palm over where the tattoo lay under his shirt. His eyes were wide, begging her to understand. Then she did understand. He needed solace from people who were marked as he was, who had seen what he had seen. She felt another hairline fracture forming in her heart, but nodded, accepting this.
“It’s not you,” he said softly. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.“
“Promise?” she whispered, wondering what kind of condition he would be in when he returned.
“Of course. Always.” He kissed her fiercely. “Go rest, honey. Do something nice for yourself. Get your hair done. Buy yourself something expensive. Everything will be all right.”
Kat knew, without needing to even guess, that this suggested indulgence was a flimsy way of covering whatever manner of sins he intended to commit. As she made her way back into the hotel, she was temped to call on Hugo Wechter, but she found that she was too fatigued from their day’s failed work to imagine herself up to any kind of recreational activity.
She lay back on the bed, having only just kicked off her shoes, and contemplated the latest development. She wasn’t sure how to take another crack at Haber, not if Fisher was going to be with her. She had no doubt that on any other day he would have been in finer form, but something had splintered in him. Something he was usually good at hiding. Kat turned the problem over in her mind as she drifted off.
It wasn’t until well after midnight that she was woken by the door opening, by the unsteady shuffling of feet. She blinked in the darkness, saw Fisher collapse into one of the chairs, his undershirt stained, his hair lank and his whole aspect exhausted and intoxicated. Kat stared at him, ready to be angry, ready to demand he confess which ways he had allowed himself to be used, but he just looked back at her helplessly. She sighed, choking back her words, her frustration. He didn’t need to be told that he’d behaved badly today. She knew he was angry with himself.
“Did you find what you needed, at least?” she asked, sitting up on the corner of the bed.
He shook his head. “There’s no cure for this. There’s no release from a hope for a better past except forgiveness, and I can’t, Kat. They took the part of me that knows what forgiveness is. The only thing I can do is reject the violence they used to do it. Do you understand?”
“That wasn’t the first time you’d been to Salzwedel. You visited that camp before.”
“I went to every camp I could find,” he said bitterly. “I looked for every record, spoke to every townsperson who would talk to me. So many of them lied to my face, but many of them wanted to help, too.”
“You never found any trace?”
“Worse,” he said, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “Everywhere I went, I put the question to the people there, and everywhere I went, I had word of Anna Fischer. Anna Fischer, yes, I know her – she was shot for trying to escape. Anna Fischer, she died of typhoid. She died of diphtheria, of dysentery, of cholera, of every filthy disease known to man. I learned the fate of a hundred Anna Fischers. My mother died in a hundred camps, in a hundred different ways, her body burnt, buried or left to dissolve in polluted water. Frau Haber probably knew her too.”
Kat wanted so badly to touch him. To put her arms around him, but something about the way held himself in that chair precluded human contact. His shoulders were sharp with tension, his jaw tight. He was normally so very apt to be loved, which made it difficult for her to understand how she could help. Harder to accept that she couldn’t. The best she could do was approach his chair, and kneel down next to it, placing herself within arms’ reach, if he should want to reach for her.
“You know what it says over Auschwitz,” he said dully, finally meeting her eyes.
“Arbeit Macht Frei.”
“Not from the inside, it doesn’t,” he said with a bitter smile. “Once you’re inside, they’re just backwards letters. They mean nothing, and that is the meaning. Nothingness is what it reduced us to. There are days when that absence tortures me, and I abase myself trying to resist it.”
Now he reached for her, fingertips seeking in the dark, finding her cheek, then forming around her face. She rose, ignoring the pain in her foot as she steadied herself on the arm of the chair. Seeing this, he grimaced, pulling her into his lap. His forehead was feverish against hers. She wondered what he’d taken, how much, but she didn’t ask. She stroked his soft curls, felt the steadfast strength of his arms.
“I wish I could help,” she said. “But it’s unfair to say that to you.”
He looked up at her. “Why?”
“How can I ask you to tell me how? How can I ask you to forgive me for my helplessness? It isn’t for you to make me feel better.”
“Kat, just breathing the same air as you helps me,” he said, pressing his face into her neck. “I know I can be— “
“Insufferable.”
“I was going to say incorrigible.”
“Irritating, frustrating… and a brat, also.”
He laughed softly. “Don’t go easy on me, baby.”
“A lush, a slut, an inebriate and you have terrible taste in films.”
He looked at her, lips parted as though he’d been the victim of gross offence. “I do not have terrible taste in films. I do not have terrible taste in anything.”
“Why do you insist on trying to make me enjoy musicals?”
“Because you need to learn to stop hating fun.”
“Never,” she kissed his forehead, slipping out of his grasp. “Come on, you’re exhausted.”
Fisher tried to stand up, but he had to catch himself on the chair’s arm. “God, I’m dizzy.”
She helped him to the bed, then went to draw a glass of water for him. She waited until he was snoring, which didn’t take very long. Then she went to the little desk, took some of the hotel stationary, and penned a brief note.
I’ll be back by afternoon.
Love,
K
