war?”
He squinted his eyes, squeezed his face into a grimace. “I didn’t want the States. I wanted adventure. I went to Argentina.”
Rebecca recalled an autobiography by a camp survivor she had once read. It seemed everyone was trying to get into the United States after the war but only those with relatives were allowed in. She began to wonder.
“Cream and sugar?” he asked.
Once he was sipping from his china teacup, she said, “You met your wife in Argentina?”
“Argentina? No, no! We met in a labour camp in Poland. She was so beautiful, you wouldn’t know, looking at her now. How she suffered there! She was never a strong woman. She survived because of me. You know why she lived? Because I got her a good job in the camp. I was there before her and I had friends. Friends were the most important thing — more important even than food. Food you could get with friends. So I pulled some strings and she didn’t have to go to the factory. She went every day to clean the officers’ quarters. Away from the camp, maybe five minutes walk. No danger of the quotas in the factories, or being shot by an SS out for some fun. Just cleaning up their rooms.”
Mrs. Kochinsky had mentioned Chana’s trauma in the camps but failed to cite Feldberg as her saviour. So he hadn’t chosen Argentina for adventure but because Chana could be sponsored by her sister. Water under the bridge.
“You were lucky to leave Argentina before the reign of terror there. You moved to Canada quite a while before your sister-in-law. Did that upset your wife?”
He straightened up in the chair, affronted, his eyes darting faster. “I had no choice. I had to start somewhere new. You probably heard the story about Goldie’s husband, my late brother-in-law. He didn’t like me. He was a hard man, a hard man. We were partners in a printing shop. I worked like a slave and one day he just kicked me out of the business. So unfair. I had to start from scratch in a new country with nothing, supporting a wife...”
He continued talking while Rebecca’s mind jogged back to a memory he had let loose with his story about the printing business. It was the beginning of her relationship with Mrs. Kochinsky, the only time the older woman had mentioned her brother-in-law. Apparently her husband had taken Feldberg into the business for Chana’s sake. But Feldberg had expensive tastes and proceeded to rob the business flagrantly until her husband could no longer ignore it. Mr. Kochinsky was forced to buy out the brother-in-law to save the business. He had given Feldberg enough cash to leave Argentina, where no one who knew him would deal with him, and establish himself in Canada. Rebecca vaguely remembered the bitterness in Mrs. Kochinsky’s story. Could he really have thought this was the experience in Argentina Rebecca had referred to?
“You know, they were too close,” she heard him say, finally. “It was unnatural. Even when we moved, it didn’t make a difference. They wrote each other so many letters. Chana was always writing letters. Everything that happened, Chana had to write down. But this, this is such a shock. I’m glad Chana isn’t here anymore. Ach, I’m talking too much.”
She shook her head in a non-committal way. His cologne was beginning to sicken her. “What do you think happened tonight? Your sister-in-law thought people from Argentina were still after her. You think that’s possible?”
“Ahh!” He waved his hand dismissing it. “Everyone was tired of hearing what happened to her. Lots of people were tortured. You know, Chana suffered more than her when she was in the camp. How Goldie told it, she was the only one. She wouldn’t forget. She always thought someone was after her. You were her doctor. Didn’t you know she was crazy that way?”
“But someone did kill her.”
“I’m sure it was very simple. A thief in the night. It was her bad luck he came when she was home. If he came in the day, she would be in the bakery. She wouldn’t be dead. Such things happen.”
“Have you told your wife yet?”
He grimaced, waving his hand with dismissal. “Ach! She’s a vegetable. She wouldn’t understand. I can talk to her, talk to her — she watches with those eyes. Nothing. I don’t go much anymore. It’s very hard for me. This is the woman I lived with for thirty-five years. I can’t force myself to see her like this.”
“The police will notify her, as next of kin,” Rebecca said.
He shrugged. “She won’t understand. They’ll be wasting their time.”
Rebecca looked away, recoiling with contempt. This man was still alive while David was dead.
“Mrs. Kochinsky often spoke about visiting your wife at the nursing home. Is she still at Baycrest?” Rebecca knew she wasn’t.
“Baycrest!” he spat. “Who could afford Baycrest? They want you to turn over all your property to them and then they want to see your income tax return. They know how to squeeze money out of their Jews. No, I found a smaller place for Chana. Very nice, on Bathurst too, but further north. Just as nice as Baycrest. She wouldn’t know the difference anyway.” He sat back, smiling, in the leather and steel armchair and sipped his coffee.
Then came fire and burned the stick That beat the dog that bit the cat That ate the goat That Father bought for two zuzim. One little goat, one little goat.
chapter fourteen
Thursday, April 5, 1979
By half past midnight Rebecca was hurtling home along a deserted Eglinton Avenue at breakneck speed. All the traffic lights were green. All the storefronts burned their flashy neon signs into the void, turning ghostly sidewalks blue. She was going so fast she nearly missed turning off into her street.
For the past hour she had sat across from a Detective Dunhill at Thirteen Division. The station was empty except for the desk sergeant. Fluorescent lights hummed above the grey pockmarked block walls. She repeated the story of what had happened that night in a fatigued monotone, disturbed by the indifference of the man filling out the forms, the indifference of the universe.
She could have sleepwalked through the story by this time. She had not only told it to the constable and to Wanless, but had gone over and over it in her own mind, searching for answers. All the pertinent points — her concern, the violation of the apartment, Mrs. Kochinsky like a crushed bird — were beginning to sound hollow even to her. After an hour, the detective had leaned forward and sent her on her way.
She had just gotten undressed and crawled into bed when the phone rang on her nightstand. Now what? She turned on her lamp and picked up the receiver.
“Rebecca!” her mother’s warm voice crooned all the way from California. “We were a bit worried. We called earlier and you weren’t there. Did you have a nice evening, dear?”
“Uh.... yes, Mom. I’m fine.” There was no point in worrying them further.
“Hi, doll!” her father piped in on the extension. “You forgot to call your mother for permission to go out.”
“Big shot,” said Flo Temple. “Your father insisted we call till you answered. Did you go somewhere with friends?”
“Nobody you know.”
“I told him it was better than you moping around at home by yourself. Are you feeling any better lately, dear?”
