Zaddik, page 31
He continued to go to his meetings. He listened to other drunks tell their stories, and when he got home he triple-locked his door. And when he went out, he carried his gun.
Sarah Kalman was his only visitor. At first he had tried to discourage her, but she had ignored him. Uninvited, she’d showed up at his door with Tupperware containers of chicken soup, roasted chicken, carrot tsimmes, sweet noodle pudding, boiled potatoes, and dense chocolate layer cake for dessert. The sheer quantity of food made him laugh. She heated it all up in the microwave and watched him while he ate. She, of course, would eat nothing. Nothing in his kitchen—his plates, his silverware, even the microwave—was kosher.
He loved to watch her putter around his apartment, picking things up, putting them down. It wasn’t boredom or nervousness, he knew, that kept her on the move. It was curiosity. His life was as much a mystery to her as hers was to him. But neither of them had the vocabulary to penetrate the other’s secrets.
So Sarah touched the things he had touched, trying to read their message. And Taylor watched.
Her size fascinated him. It seemed to be constantly changing. When she sat at the table with him, her hands touching her hair or resting in her lap, she seemed big, like the type of women he usually found sexually attractive. But when she would pick up a glass of water, or a book, the size of the object in her hand would remind him of how tiny she truly was.
Looking at her across his living room as she straightened the magazines on the coffee table or opened the blinds on the window, she seemed statuesque: muscular calves atop clunky high-heeled shoes, the tresses of a queen. But as she walked toward him she grew smaller, defying the laws of perspective.
He had decided, finally, that she was a little woman who took up a lot of space in his mind.
“Why do you look at me like that?” she had asked him.
“Look at you like what?”
“I don’t know. Like you’re studying me.”
“You remind me of someone, I don’t know who.”
“I know who,” she had said. “You told me. When you described Hirsh Leib’s wife, it was like you were describing me.”
“But I never saw her. His wife.”
“Of course you did.”
Taylor grunted.
“You’re not comfortable with what has happened to you,” Sarah had told him. “It doesn’t fit into the way you know the world. It’s not like you want the world to be. That’s all right. It takes getting used to.”
“I’m not getting used to it,” Taylor had said.
“Yes, you are. Your eyes are getting clearer. Not so far away. You’re getting stronger. I can see it.”
“It’s all the food you’re bringing me.”
“You eat like a bird,” Sarah had said, laughing.
Just like Rebecca, Taylor had thought. That’s what my grandmother always said when I ate in her kitchen. Dov, like a bird you eat.
***
On the screen in Eastern Parkway, Rebbe Seligson droned on in Yiddish, his voice guttural and monotonous. The picture occasionally cut to the crowd in the temple, showing bearded men in dark fedoras rocking back and forth as if praying. For them, Taylor understood, everything their zaddik said was a prayer. Pale little boys in payes sat next to their fathers, their eyes wide, their mouths hanging open, trying to pay attention to the zaddik’s stream of Torah. Other boys had given up and, restless, poked and teased each other. Taylor, who despite what the Satmarer rebbe believed could understand nothing of what Reb Seligson was saying, decided to go home.
Just as well, he told himself. I’ve been spending too much time with Sarah as is.
She had been coming to his apartment more often, bringing her books and papers along with her home-cooked meals. As he ate she studied, lifting her head from time to time to tell him about something new she had discovered about Hirsh Leib, or the Seer, or about the Czartoryskis, Prince Adam and Count Josep.
It seemed that the Seer had died slowly, lingering on for six months after Hirsh Leib’s murder, not speaking to anyone. Prince Adam had passed away shortly after the Seer. It was rumored that either Tsar Alexander or his own brother had poisoned him. Certainly Count Josep had become lord of Castle Czartoryski, as Adam’s son had been too young to assume the responsibility. In fact, the young princeling died of consumption a few years later, and Grushinka, Adam’s wife, left the castle to enter a convent. After that Josep began gambling heavily, and he began raising taxes in Lublin to cover his enormous debts.
Taylor didn’t really want to hear any of it—he wanted to put Lublin behind him—but he loved listening to Sarah’s low, serious, musical voice. Sometimes, in order to distract her from the history he found so disturbing, he would ask her to teach him a little Yiddish. He found her a wonderfully patient teacher.
Stop it, he told himself, turning up his collar against the rain. You’re getting moony over a woman who makes sure to keep a good three feet between you at all times. Once, as she was leaving, he had tried to help her put on her coat, and she had just stood there waiting for him to hand it to her. He had felt ridiculous.
She’s not interested in you, he told himself. She just feels sorry for you.
But not as sorry as you feel for yourself.
“Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink,” he whispered to himself. You’d understand, Great-Great-Grandpa, he thought. You were a drunk like me.
Taylor turned onto Kingston Street. Four men were standing at the top steps of the subway entrance. Three very dark young blacks with dreadlocks spilling out from beneath huge red-and-green knitted hats (probably Jamaicans, possibly posse members, dreads, they called themselves—Taylor’s cop-mind ticked off the relevant data) were shouting at a short, stocky Hasid.
Taylor slowed his steps, feeling for the revolver in his pocket. He smelled violence in the air, and he didn’t want to walk between the men. The dreads were probably armed. At least knives. Taylor glanced behind him. The street was empty. There’s never a cop around when you need one, he thought.
He saw the Hasid reach into his coat and pull out what must have been a gun. Shit, he thought. Fucking Simkhas Torah night. Right.
“I shove dat ting up your ass, mon,” one of the blacks yelled in a thick West Indian accent.
“Fuckin’ Jew bahstad,” said another.
“Get away from me,” the Hasid shouted, waving the pistol at them.
Taylor, his heart racing, found himself walking toward them, his hand on the gun in his pocket. He forced himself to be calm, to breathe. An AA saying came to him: “Right action, right attitude.”
You’ve done this before, he told himself. You know how to do this. Cool them down.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” Taylor asked, taking his hand out of his pocket and trying to keep his voice calm and steady, keeping the four men in front of him.
“Who the fuck are you, mon?” asked one of the blacks, taking a sliding step to Taylor’s left.
“Take it easy, man,” said Taylor, taking a step backward. Don’t let anyone get behind you, he reminded himself. Just wait. The more time passes, the better the chance that nothing will happen.
He turned to the Hasid, who was now pointing his gun at him. It was an automatic, maybe a Walther. Taylor felt his stomach knot as if expecting a bullet. Sure, he thought. Simkhas Torah. Time to die.
Again.
Taylor summoned up some of the Yiddish he had picked up from Sarah. “Vos tutstu, Yid?” What are you doing? He pointed to the Hasid’s gun. “Dos iz gornit helfn.” That’s not helping.
The Hasid began screaming at Taylor, who couldn’t understand anything except the word shvartzers, blacks, which the Hasid kept repeating over and over.
“You tink I don’t know what you sayin’, mon?” shouted one of the blacks. “You call me dat again, motherfucker, I fuck you up bad.”
“Put the gun away,” Taylor told the Hasid, pitching his voice so that it remained soft yet could still be heard. “Come on, it’s not worth it. Put it away.”
The Hasid scrunched up his face as if smelling something bad. Suddenly he spat at Taylor. Taking advantage of the distraction, one of the blacks grabbed the Hasid’s gun hand and pulled it up. There was an explosion. Two quick shots, the noise blurring the space between them. Then another.
Out of the corner of his eye, Taylor saw one of the dreads rush toward him. Taylor stepped into him, catching the man’s right wrist with his left hand even before he actually saw the gravity knife that he knew would be there. Using the man’s momentum, he spun him around, pulling the man’s right arm across his chest, driving his left shoulder into the back of the man’s elbow. He heard it crack. The man screamed. The knife fell to the pavement. Taylor let go, and the man dropped to his knees, his right arm bent grotesquely, his hat falling off his head, his dreadlocks spilling out over his face and shoulders.
The second black took a step toward the knife lying on the street. Taylor pulled out his revolver. “Don’t,” he said, at the same time kicking the knife down the street. He whirled on the man and the Hasid still wrestling over the gun. “Drop it!” he shouted.
The Hasid and the black looked at Taylor, saw the gun, and froze. “Drop it,” Taylor shouted again. The Hasid let go of his gun. It clattered to the sidewalk.
“Step back,” Taylor ordered, and the black man let go of the Hasid. The Hasid bent to retrieve his pistol. “Touch it and you’re dead,” Taylor said.
“Let me get my gun, Officer. You can arrest these men.”
“We not doin’ nothin’. Him the mon with the gun,” protested the man who had been struggling with the Hasid.
“Help your friend,” Taylor told the man. “Take him to a hospital. I think his elbow’s broken.”
“You let them walk away, these murderers? Sure, why not? This is the New York police. All you care about is the shvartzers. Some Jew you are.”
Taylor kept his gun pointed at the Hasid as the men helped their friend up off the sidewalk.
“You gonna bust him, mon? I see everyt’ing now.”
“Get going,” said Taylor. “Beat it.”
The dreadlocks walked away down Kingston Street, supporting their injured friend between them.
“I’ll call your captain,” said the Hasid. “I’ll tell him what you’re doing. You, give me your name.”
“Fuck you,” said Taylor, picking up the Hasid’s gun and slipping it into his pocket. It was a Walther.
“You’re taking my gun?” the Hasid asked.
“Evidence.” Two-gun Taylor, he thought. He felt elated. “It’s Simkhas Torah,” he said. “Why aren’t you in shul? It’s time for the hakkafot.” It’s ten o’clock, thought Taylor, do you know where your Hasidim are? He laughed. “By the way,” he said, “what was this all about, anyway?”
The Hasid just glared at Taylor.
“Okay. Be that way. Now get lost.”
The Hasid stuck his hands in his pockets and spat on the pavement. He looked at Taylor defiantly.
“All right, you little shit,” said Taylor. “Stand there. Catch pneumonia. I’m going.”
As the train crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, Taylor leaned against the door and stared at the lights of Manhattan below. He could see the FDR Drive, backed up as usual, and that made him feel good. He was exhausted, but for the first time since he had awakened a month ago in the Satmarer rebbe’s study, he felt as if he had come home.
In a couple of hours, he thought, Simkhas Torah will be over, and I’ll still be alive.
I’m not going to die.
Now, thought Taylor, I can start to live again. Tomorrow I can go to work, looking for the diamond and Hirsh Leib’s killer.
Look out, Czartoryski, Dov Taylor told a man he knew to be nothing more than rotting bones in a Polish tomb, I’m coming after your ass.
Chapter 49 The Savoy Hotel
The Strand, London
Monday, October 21
WHEN HE FIRST landed in London, Ladislaw Czartoryski sent Maria Radziwell ahead to check in at the Savoy. Then he took a taxi to the train, and the train to an Odessa safe house in Ashwell, Hertfordshire, about ten miles north of London. There he waited for Phil Horowitz, who was expecting Czartoryski to hand over the stone in exchange for a quarter of a million dollars American that Horowitz was carrying in his rented Chevrolet.
When Horowitz arrived, Czartoryski shot the chunky, balding Hasid once in the neck, once in the eye, and once in the roof of the mouth, dragged the body down into the basement for the Odessa janitors to dispose of, quickly found the money in the boot of the car, and thereby concluded his arrangement with the Israelis to his satisfaction, if not to theirs.
Now he sat in his hotel room, watching Maria. She stood facing the window overlooking the Thames, her broad back to the room. Rain puckered the surface of the river, and fat drops of water hurried down the window. She was putting on her raincoat, pulling her thick blond hair out from underneath the collar.
“So, where are you going today?” asked Czartoryski, sitting in a silk maroon dressing gown on an overstuffed lime-green chair. He sipped his morning coffee from the Savoy’s gold-rimmed china, the Times spread out on his bed.
“Brompton Road,” said Maria.
“You went shopping there yesterday.”
“Yes, and I am going back today. Unless, of course,” she said, turning to face him, “you would like to take me someplace.”
“No,” said Czartoryski. “Unfortunately, I cannot. I have a business appointment.”
“How unusual,” Maria said dryly, putting her hand on her hip.
Like a fishwife, thought Czartoryski, disgust filling his chest. Or rather, like a Polish whore.
“Do you need some more money, my dear?” asked Czartoryski, turning his contempt into sarcasm. “There may be some items you have not yet bought.”
“No,” said Radziwell, turning back to the window to study the bleak London sky and the gray, sluggish river. “Not at the moment.”
“Feel free to ask,” Czartoryski said. “I wouldn’t want you to feel deprived, my dear.”
“I will be back sometime this afternoon, Ladislaw,” she said, drawing on her fawn-colored gloves.
“As you will,” said Czartoryski, watching Radziwell sweep out the door.
He was losing her, he knew. Well, there was nothing he could do about it. She had grown used to the money—he couldn’t dazzle her with it; even the Savoy, with its beautiful view of the river, had become…what did the English say? Old hat. Not being able to make love to her was gradually but surely dissolving their connection. They were becoming strangers. Polite strangers, usually, but nothing more than that.
Which would make it easier, he thought, to draw the curtain on what had become a tiresome charade.
In a way, his impotence, finally settling into a permanence, had come as a relief. He no longer had to worry about whether or not it would be there. It just was. And, to his surprise, it did not make him feel any less a man. Indeed, in certain ways, he felt more forceful than ever. Perhaps the cooling of the blood had liberated his mind. He felt he was thinking more clearly than ever.
He picked out a gray suit with the faintest red pinstripe; matched it with a dark blue Hilditch & Key white-collared shirt with white French cuffs, and a rich, red Charvet tie. He looked at himself in the huge bathroom mirror and adjusted his pocket square to his satisfaction. Then, on impulse, he walked through the bedroom into the small sitting room of his suite and opened a mahogany cabinet in which sat a small television set and a smaller safe. After spinning the tumbler and opening the safe, he removed a blue velvet bag, much like the one General Gehlen had tossed over to him forty-five years ago. But now, instead of containing a dozen diamonds, the bag held only one.
As Czartoryski held the Seer’s stone up to the light, marveling once again at its size and beauty, at the fires burning inside it and the rainbows it threw off so prodigally, his resolve hardened. He had never intended to hand it over to the Israelis. As far as he was concerned, it had never belonged to them. But now, he realized, he could not allow it to be cut. There was a power contained in this stone that was worth more to him than the money that could be realized by dismembering it and selling it off piecemeal.
So that meant putting off the Odessa. And that meant betraying his old comrades.
He detected a yellowish glint in the stone, and he thought, Daffodils, his lips forming the word silently. And that brought it all back to him. It was his age, he knew, but there was no resisting these memories when they came flooding through him, bathing his mind in the radiance of the past.
It had been May 1945. May 18, to be precise. He remembered standing amid the daffodils on the lawn at Misery Meadow, his back turned to the sprawling chalet nestled in a lea of the Bavarian Alps above the resort town of Fischhausen. Below him he could see several white sails tacking across sparkling Lake Schilersee. The mountain breezes were sweet, and Czartoryski remembered wondering if he had, perhaps, died somewhere on the road and this was, indeed, heaven.
At the time, that seemed as likely as anything else. Less than three weeks before, he had been staggering away from the burning ruins of the Belzec work camp as Allied planes strafed and bombed. With a blood sausage stuffed into his shirt and some hard, crumbling black bread crammed into his trouser pockets, he had made for the woods, the map that Hermann Baun had showed him and told him to memorize fixed in his head.
Baun had arrived unannounced at Belzec a few nights before the bombing had begun and, one by one, had interviewed the guards. His dusty black uniform carried no sign of rank, but the glittering silver death’s head on his cap had told Czartoryski all he needed to know. This dark, slender, pockmarked man was SS, one of the elite. He was a man to be respected, a man to be feared. And, Czartoryski remembered thinking, he could be his savior.
For months everyone at Belzec had known that the war was lost, that the German army was disintegrating as it fell back across the Rhine. Even the Jews knew. They had become defiant as their already meager rations were cut to nothing. For Czartoryski, they had ceased to be amusing. He wanted their voices out of his ears, their stink out of his nostrils. At any moment he expected the order to come to shoot them all and bury them in lye-filled pits. (It would have been better to burn them, but the camp was out of petrol.) They could not afford to have them roaming around when the Russians arrived, and the Russians were expected momentarily.
