Unholy Pictures

By Thomas Maciocha

The owner (Ira Rumkowski) of a small bookstore in St. Petersburg, Florida is murdered. He was in his late sixties, had no known enemies, no wealth to speak of, and was well liked and respected in the community. The murder is professionally done. Why him?
Ira's good friend is a detective with SPPD.
The detective (Rocco) is approached a few days after the murder by an acquaintance of the victim who works at the Holocaust Museum in St. Pete. She tells the detective that Ira was looking into artwork that may have been stolen from his mother in World War II.
During the war, three significant SS officers worked in the Nazi “art confiscation” unit. Their stolen artwork and the murder in Florida become intertwined in a race for justice that moves across Europe and the United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Maciocha
• Release date: Dec 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311625106

Thomas Maciocha

Thomas Maciocha lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife Cecilia and Ozzie The Wonder Dog. He has worked the steel mills of Buffalo NY back when America actually made things, has been a teacher in The Bahamas, Honduras and the US for twenty years, and was lucky enough to discover wooden boatbuilding, which is a most satisfying endeavor. He bikes and kayaks a bit, scribbles poetry, and has a deep interest in 20th century history. Sometimes he misses the rush of playing rugby football, but just for fleeting moments of nostalgic madness. His "perfect day" is sitting in a Hill Town cafe in Italy with a bottle of local Chianti, some bread and cheese, and watching the sun set behind the hills, doing absolutely nothing.

Book preview

Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed, at its aspect everyone may create romance at the will of his imagination, and at a glance have his soul invaded by the most profound memories, no efforts of memory, everything summed up in one moment. Complete art which sums up all the others and completes them.

– Paul Gauguin

As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the [arts]? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.

– Gustav Flaubert

UNHOLY PICTURES

Copyright © 2013 by Thomas Maciocha.

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Brief quotations may be embodied in critical articles or reviews.

UnHOLY PICTURES is a work of fiction. Though some actual towns, cities, and locations may be mentioned, they are used in a fictitious manner and the events and occurrences were invented in the mind and imagination of the author. Any similarities of characters or names used within to any person past, present, or future is coincidental.

Written by: Thomas Maciocha

Cover Design & Text Layout/Formatting by: Eli Blyden | CrunchTimeGraphics.com

Cover painting courtesy of The Book Loft in Fernandina Beach, Florida. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781311625106

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Category: Fiction, Murder Mystery, Historic Novel, Suspense, Romance

Published in the United States of America at Smashwords

eBook Version

To Elizabeth

The Beginning

He had been waiting in the shadows of the back parking lot since the store closed at 10:00. The air was heavy with damp from the evening rain. The stench from the nearby dumpster just added to his annoyance. The temperature remained at 90 degrees despite the earlier downpour. He perspired freely, and the more he did so, the more impatient he became. The man he was waiting for had not come out of the building at his usual time, around 10:15, like he did the past three evenings that the waiting man had spent studying the habits of his intended. He could see the light in the back room glowing from the elevated window. He could faintly hear music coming from inside.

He checked his watch with a penlight. There was still had a long drive across Florida to catch a plane that morning in West Palm. If he was to stay on schedule, he'd have to go inside to finish it, which was not what he wanted to do.

He cursed under his breath. What is keeping this guy? The gun was hidden away in a fast food bag on the top of the dumpster pile, in the odd chance that someone like police happened by. He retrieved it while holding his breath and screwed the silencer onto the weapon's barrel. From a cellophane baggie in his coat pocket he removed latex gloves and snapped them in place. Next he slipped on blue polyethylene shoe covers, which probably weren't necessary, he thought, and lastly, put on a ball cap that he tugged low on his brow. He took out the bump key he had tried the night before and inserted it into the door's slot. The music would muffle the slight sound, he thought. An alarm system was non-existent. With a light tap on the key from his pocket-knife handle the tumblers fell into place and with a sharp twist the lock opened. Out of habit he held his breath and stood frozen in place, listening. The handle to the back door turned and the door opened with just the faintest click. The man entering again waited a few seconds, listened, then slipped inside and closed the door behind him, breathing relief from the cool air. He took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the new light and held the long pistol at his side. He took a tentative step. The floor was wood plank and old. He'd have to be careful.

Inside the bookstore, Ira Rumkowski sat alone in his tiny office. He finished reading over a letter he had just completed in longhand. Satisfied, he put the letter in an envelope and carefully addressed it, sealed it and put it aside. He took a long swallow of neat Irish, draining the glass and savoring the warmth of it in his throat. He glanced up at the clock. Just past midnight.

A human tooth was in a matchbox in the middle drawer of his desk. He took it out and stared at it for a moment, then put it back in its place.

Ira rocked in his desk chair, the spring squeaking, and he made a mental note to oil it. He inhaled the aroma left in the whiskey glass and resisted the impulse to pour another. Instead he opened a burly art history text that had been sitting on the corner of his desk and turned the pages until they fell on the Velazquez. Then he closed his eyes in a half-sleep.

At that moment the killer entered the room, barely breathing. His covered shoes didn't make a sound. Ira's chair faced away from the doorway. Good, the intruder thought. He moved forward three more steps. Without the slightest hesitation he raised the silenced .22 pistol to six inches from the back of Ira's head and fired twice.

He waited five seconds to make sure that Ira was not breathing.

He then turned on the 15-year-old desktop computer, inserted a disc and typed in eraserd.exe-r*.* and hit the Enter key. While the hard drive was being erased, he searched the desk, finding nothing that mattered. He pocketed the letter that Ira had only recently completed, retrieved the disc from the computer and, with one last look around, left the building, locking the door behind him.

. . .

One year earlier, Ira had visited his adoptive mother in a Brooklyn hospice.

So, you look pretty good Ma. How they treating you here? Everything good?

I look good, eh? I'm in hospice for god's sake. I know what I look like, and it's not good. She motioned with her eyes to the chair next to the bed. Come. Sit.

And the food? You're eating, right?

What's that old joke? Henny Youngman I think. The two Jewish women talking in a Catskill's hotel. 'You know, the food here is awful' one says, and the other says 'I know, I know. And such small portions as well.'

Woody Allen, Ira smiled.

No, no, before that. I forget. Anyway, here I am, boychik. There's good people here. A person could do worse under the circumstances. Believe me.

She had somehow managed to maintain a lightness, a kind of deathbed silliness, even in her final days. Ira combed her wispy white hair, rubbed lotion on her blue-veined childlike hands. She cracked jokes about the staff and then said, I kid, I kid, like some stand-up comic from the sixties.

Listen to me, Ira, she said on the second day of his visit. I want you to go back to Poland for me. Can you do that? If for nothing else than as a last request from me. See? I even leave you with some jobs to do, right up to the very end.

Ma ... come on. Don't talk that way.

She shrugged. Anyways, I always planned to go back with you one day, but one thing leads to another and the years go by and here I am. Now it's too late for me, but you should go. She winced with the pain of the tumor that the medication could not reach. Maybe there's still some people there who remember your mother. Maybe not, but it will do you some good to see where you came from. You know, like the Roots guy. What's his name? God, I forget everything these days. Anyway, you'll go, yes?

He promised her that he would.

After his Brooklyn mother's death and burial, he grieved for months, then he put the St. Pete bookstore in the hands of Patricia and Ruth, his two employees, and left Florida to keep his promise like that Roots guy.

He landed in Warsaw, which struck him as a wearisome place. The city was new for old Europe in the sense that it had been left as a massive pile of bricks by the Nazis after the war, and had been completely rebuilt in the efficient and dreary manner that was prevalent in Soviet Europe back then. He saw that an effort had been made to reconstruct the central section of the city as it once had been, but newer brick and mortar gave off a feel of imitation to Ira, not unlike the theme-park towns in Florida that construct town squares in efforts to make them look old and worn with character, but only wind up looking like expensive marketing efforts, pleasing only to the jaded eye.

Warsaw, he thought, had no aesthetic virtues. The arts seemed lifeless, and the residents went about their daily routines in a tired wilt, devoid of spirit. It didn't help his perception that days were overcast and damp, and he was jet-lagged, constipated and alone. After two days of wandering aimlessly from churches to museums to restaurants and bars he took the train south to Krakow.

There, in the old section of that city, his frame of mind was lifted to a genuine sense of place, as if he had been there once before, which he had, if only as a small child. The city had escaped the worst of wartime shelling. Hitler considered Krakow Germanic and spared her, while Warsaw was seen as Slavic and therefore worthless.

Through a name and address supplied by his deceased mother, he was able to make contact with a friend of his birth mother, a woman by the name of Stacia, and though she was past 90, she still had a vitality, a vigor, about her.

Upon meeting him again after all those 70-plus years, Stacia hugged Ira fervently. Her head came only to his chest, but she wept and rocked him in her arms for, what seemed to Ira, a long time, but was actually only half a minute or so. Stacia told him in broken English that she had held him before, only you were much smaller back then. She took him by the hand and led him inside her cottage.

You will stay here, of course, she said. When Ira protested in the few words of Polish he had retained from childhood, that he already had booked a room in a hotel, Stacia would not hear of it. That was that. He retrieved his luggage from the hotel and moved into the room that she had made up for him.

When he was settled in and fed enough for three people, Stacia talked for hours about Ira's mother. She told him how pretty she was and how everyone loved her and how kind she was to everyone she met. From a table filled with photos, she picked one up and showed Ira a faded black-and-white framed in brown leather of two young women: Stacia as a teen with Ira as a baby in her arms, and Ira's mother, somewhat older, both beaming, faces filled with the youthful promises of life.

In the days that followed, Stacia showed Ira the city as best she could, and introduced him to a series of friends, relatives and a few other ancients who also recalled knowing his mother, or at least knowing of her. These Poles, none Jewish, since there weren't many left in Poland, seemed to compete for him as guest of honor at dinners and small parties. Ira's timing could not have been better in visiting the city. A music festival was taking place. Harmonies filled the air everywhere he went, and just when a street violinist's Chopin thinned on the air, on the next corner an accordion let fly an uplifting mazurka. The competition of performers, poets, musicians, dancers and puppeteers seemed to play on nearly every corner and in every bar and basement.

Once, he stood for a long time across from the building where his mother's art gallery once stood. It was now a souvenir shop. No matter, he thought. He was transfixed by the place.

On the third day, he and Stacia visited what is still known as the Jewish quarter of the city and walked on streets that the Nazis made from the crushed remains of tombstones taken from the old Jewish cemetery. A handful of hadarim and synagogues still stood where once they were as willy-nilly, thick as bees on wildflowers, but these buildings were nearly empty. Still, as Ira walked the district, his heart had a lightness to it.

They encountered a rabbi on the street. Erev tov, Ira said, using the small amount of Hebrew that he retained to impress the antique man.

The rabbi looked up in surprise at the words and smiled. He rocked slightly to and fro. And who is this that we have here? he said in Polish.

Stacia answered. He is American. From Florida. She held Ira's arm and looked up at him adoringly. He was born here before the war and has returned for a visit. She introduced them.

Ah, Floreeda, the rabbi said in strained English, outstretching his arms as if some revelation had just taken place. I have brother in MeeHaami. Perhaps you know him? He is Jacob Meir. He retired there from a place ... Newark I think. He vas teacher. You know this man maybe? It went like that for a few minutes, switching from English to Polish, back and forth.

Tell me Ira, the rabbi asked, why you have come here, to this place?

Ira just shrugged and told him he had come to see where his mother was from.

And who vas your mother?

Ira told him, and Stacia added some details in Polish.

I see. I think I know of this woman. It's been many years, but people remember. She is said to have been a fine person by all who speak of her, and, I might add, a real beauty. He smiled, showing crooked teeth.

The old rabbi held his gaze. I trust what you came for vill find you. How could you not? Here is the place where you first knew love. Perhaps it remains for you still, this love. Yes?

He bowed and turned to go, but turned back to address Ira once again. Embrace this light ven you find it Mr. Ira from America. I vish you vell. With his heavy black coat flopping time to his awkward gait, the old rabbi walked away.

Two days before he was to return to Florida, Ira booked a trip with a local tourist shop to visit Auschwitz. Stacia would not accompany him. The visit would, she said, require more walking than she could manage and she didn't want to hold Ira back. The true reason was that Stacia could not bear the sight of the place.

It seemed to Ira that that singular day, the day of his visit to the camp, dawned as reluctantly as he himself did, not quite sure whether it wanted to leave the night behind, and so held on to a part of it. He had awakened a half-hour before dawn, and the sky seemed to have a scruffiness about it. After dressing, he had coffee and a breakfast with Stacia and walked the few blocks to the tour's pick-up spot.

While he walked, the lead dampness in the air that morning wrapped itself around him. He pulled his collar up and weighed the idea of going back to his room for his sweater, or even back to bed, but decided against it. A mist floated down, not quite rain.

The early morning road traffic was light as he walked, a few trucks on the way to market and a handful of early commuters in older, Russian-style cars. The music that had filled the city the day before was gone. It was far too early for the performers, most of whom had only gone to bed a few hours before. A rubber-wheeled cart loaded with wooden crates of chickens passed Ira from the opposite direction. It was pulled by a heavy-hoofed horse that looked like he had given up on life. The driver was a full-bearded man of indeterminate age, dressed in black, who seemed to relate in mood to his beast. Seated beside him was a young girl of six or seven. She wore rubber farm boots and a flowered babushka that let her brown braids hang to her shoulders. She talked animatedly to the driver, bouncing as if some song played in her head that gave her no option but to go along with its rhythms.

Going by, the clip-clop of the horse gave a sense to Ira that time passed slowly for these two people, that the scene could as well be 60 years earlier and not change much. Everything seemed worn with years that morning, the buildings, roads, and people themselves, all of which charmed him only the day before.

Waiting at the pick-up place when he arrived was a group of tourists from England. They chatted among themselves, happy with the familiarity of bleak rain, like English winters, and grateful for having fellow Brits close at hand to lessen any travel anxiety. An elderly couple, Canadians from Montreal, waited inside the sheltered entrance to a toy-store that had not yet opened for business. Two lively New Zealand girls, in their late teens, early 20s perhaps, both sporting sundry piercings and tattoos, made up the remainder of the group.

It was with the two girls that Ira exchanged morning small talk. The two each had an aura that resonated from them, as if they knew who they were and what truth was. Ira envied their optimism and felt the sense of heaviness that the morning carried begin to lift somewhat through them.

Why here? What brings you here? Ira asked, but before either could answer a Mercedes bus, a large van really, came around the corner and hissed to a stop. The girls hoisted their backpacks to one shoulder.

This is us, one of the Brits, a leader, officially or otherwise, announced to his group. Mind the steps. All boarded, with Ira squeezing on last.

The trip from Krakow to Auschwitz was 60 kilometers. A few people read guidebooks en route, some slept and others talked quietly among themselves. Ira sat alone behind the dozing Canadian couple and stared through the van's unwashed windows at a handful of run-down factories, long since closed, and spruce farms that hadn't changed in half a century. He looked out without really seeing anything. He was lost again in a kind of stupor, a wistfulness that seemed to grow stronger with each passing kilometer, that coincided with the grizzly weather outside.

. . .

A road sign announced the small town of Zarole after an hour. He recalled the place being mentioned at home in New York when he was a child. Funny, he thought, how little details like that can remain with you. A short time later, the bus arrived at Auschwitz and pulled into a parking area. There was one other bus, a large touring model, already parked, and half a dozen cars and a few taxis sat near the entrance. The driver pulled into a space next to the bus. He turned and said in accented English that the bus would return to the city at precisely 3:00.

Please not be late. Follow me for ticket.

The driver escorted the group around puddles to a red brick institutional building. He sidled up next to Ira. You are American, yes? Do you need a guide? I know this place very well. I was teacher before.

Ira declined and the driver moved to the elderly Canadians, who seemed to strike a deal with the driver-guide. When the group reached the entrance, Ira was immediately put off by what he saw. On the right side of the corridor was a row of concessions and offices. On the left, a few camp-life photographs hung on the freshly painted walls. This only seemed to add to Ira's dread that the camp had been sanitized into a tourist-stop in the way that places like Gettysburg had been. He hoped not. He paid his zlotys at the ticket booth, passed up a film being shown in a theater, a theater for God's sake, he thought, and stepped out the rear door and into the camp itself. He was ahead of the others in his group who lingered in a gift shop or waited to see the film. He could see smatterings of others ahead, moving in and out of buildings.

The building he just stepped out of had been the laundry and reception of the original camp. He had been inside the reception area only a few minutes at the most. Oddly, as his foot came down on the gray walkway at the reception exit, the sky cleared, opened up as if on cue, and shards of sunlight broke through the dun, and a kind of luminescence washed over him. I'm in, he thought. Now what?

Ahead was the notorious Nazi gateway above which the words Arbeit Macht Frei beckoned. He walked through it.

Ira passed a long line of creosote wood buildings, once used as SS garages and workshops. There was a gravel walkway that passed some grass-covered concrete hillocks on his left that, according to a signpost, once served as bomb shelters for camp guards and administrators. Just to his right, further down the pathway, were double rows of high concrete fenceposts with the wire still in place. This fence ran on and on to what seemed like the curvature of the earth, the wire reflecting the sun. White insulators ran up and down the front and back of the posts. Just ahead were the blocks of Auschwitz, laid out in neat, orderly rows. Ira had his guidebook in hand as he moved along, with his finger keeping the place of the camp map.

What struck him as oddly out of place were the freshly mowed grass, golf course green, and trimmed hedges of the grounds to his left and right as he moved along the pathway. Surely that was not the case all those years ago, he thought. Or was it?

He passed what used to be the camp kitchens. Nobody else seemed to be about. He peeked in the windows briefly, couldn't see anything, and moved on. Then he came back and looked again. He thought he could smell something cooking. It was like a soup he had smelled before but couldn't remember where or when. He ducked in and out of buildings that once served as barracks where prisoners slept six to a bed. Ira continued walking along routes taken by guards and prisoners alike, still not finding what he was searching for, or even knowing what that something was. He picked up his pace without realizing it.

Ira recollected being astonished to see that some of the buildings in the camp were still in use. As offices? Storage facilities? He could see people inside, sitting at desks, as if they were in a workaday office. He bypassed these places quickly and wandered through an opening in the fence, since there didn't seem to be any guards or restrictions to keep out visitors. He was, he knew at the time, just outside the official boundaries of the camp.

Moving along the fence, he remembered stopping dead in his tracks. Ahead and to his left, a woman in a house dress and apron was hanging wet clothes on a drying line. Behind her, in the doorway to the building she had come from, sat a small child playing with a doll. There are people living here, he thought, not quite believing what he had just seen. He checked his map. The building had been once used as the living quarters for SS. The woman glanced up briefly and then ignored him. How could she live there, he recalled thinking. What desperation, or indifference, would induce someone to live in a place with such a past?

There was no mistaking it when he arrived five minutes later at the crematorium. Guards, the guidebook said, were not able to destroy it before the Russian Army liberated the camp, leaving the building largely intact. It had once been used to store artillery during the First World War, the book reported, when the camp had originally been built. The flat-roofed bunker-like building sat just outside the fence perimeter, giving Ira easy access. He still could not reconcile the parklike setting, the greenery, that led the way toward the macabre chimney that jutted up behind the structure. He could feel a wave of desolation begin to wash over him with each step as he approached it. Ira walked around the building, taking it all in. Due to its low height, he could see the roof and the drop-hole covers where the Zyklon B gas canisters had been dropped down. The ventilation stacks were still there. Ira felt his jaws tighten, his breathing restrict.

He moved to the entrance, to a downward concrete corridor, and came to a heavy door with a hole at eye level, no doubt used by guards to peer in to see if the gassing was completed. He opened the door and entered a concrete room about the size of half of a football field. The concrete was fresh. The room had been sanitized, doctored, or possibly repaired recently, he thought. Ira was alone in the room. He looked up but could not see the drop-holes that were visible outside. They had been covered over. He breathed deeply and could smell people even through the fresh cement. He could hear in his mind the terror screams of the thousands who stood where he stood. He could still see the tracks used by the iron carts that hauled off the bodies to be burned. He followed the tracks to the banks of furnaces and the doors beneath that were used to carry off the ashes and bits of bone that remained. Ira left the building stunned, barely able to keep his feet.

He came out into the air, and again moved deliberately in a direction parallel to the fence, paying no attention to the walking-tour markers. In another five minutes he came to an open area in a field and was surprised to see a train, a freight, with its engine running, parked for some unknown reason in the middle of nothing. Ira knew from his reading that he was in the exact place where the other trains stopped to let out their doomed passengers destined for Birkenau, which was just ahead.

The tracks he was looking at were the same as had been used before the new tracks were built to carry their cargo directly into the sister camp, Birkenau.

Where Ira stood, with dilapidated storage buildings behind, was the exact location where selections for work or instant death were made, before the tracks were extended directly into the camp. The rotted platform wood was still visible here and there.

He moved on, following the direction of the rails. A scraggly near-trail of weeds eventually thinned to nothing at all. After 10 minutes he had reached Birkenau itself. His breathing was rapid, like he had run a race. Although the morning was still cool, he was sweating freely. He quickened his pace yet more and passed the camp's administration building. It had been turned into a church.

He passed a gallows. He put a hand on the Death Wall where numberless thousands were shot until that method was deemed too inefficient. He bypassed a row of barracks, until he came to a partially hidden hole in the camp fence, as if he somehow knew that it was there. He fit through easily. Then he slowed his pace to a deliberate stride.

Ira was, he knew, where he had somehow been heading since he departed the bus. He was in the Women's Camp of Birkenau.

Set apart from other buildings, located in an area toward the front of the camp entrance, was an unpretentious, one-story wooden structure that seemed to be in a state of disrepair. Ira approached it with some trepidation and peered through a window off to the left side of the front door. It was empty inside, dust and cobwebs. There were no furnishings or fixtures of any kind that he could see. A padlock on the door hung open. He removed the lock and went in.

Upon entry, his body began to stiffen with dread. His feet felt heavy, like he was wearing lead shoes. Still, he forced himself to move. To his left was a large room. Ira stood in the doorway and looked inside. What had been empty seconds before when he peered through the window from the outside, now held two hard wooden benches filled with 10 women, some holding each other, some weeping, others slumped in weakened resignation. Two female guards paced amongst them, occasionally speaking softly to some individuals, as if to encourage them to bear up. No one acknowledged his presence.

A smaller room adjoined the larger. From there, Ira could smell blood, formaldehyde, alcohol. He forced himself to that doorway. A surgical table stood in the center. A thin, hairless man hovering over the table was dressed in white and had a large black rubber apron covering his front. He held a scalpel. To his immediate left and right were assistants in similar attire. One held a clipboard and was writing furiously, taking down the words the surgeon dictated. The other held a metal surgical instrument that appeared to be a pair of pliers. They ignored Ira.

A dark-haired woman was strapped down. Her hair was cropped short, close to her skull. She was rake-thin, emaciated, but still had a beauty about her that overshadowed everything else in that room. Her eyes, dark, near bulging from the loss of flesh, fluttered open as Ira approached. She looked at him directly and somehow, through everything, managed to smile slightly at him. She seemed to want to speak but was unable, so Ira moved closer and bent his ear close to her lips. The three men paid no attention to him.

Moy dzieckcko, was all she said. My child.

He tried to touch her but the room seemed to tilt one way, then the other. He couldn't reach her. Then he lost consciousness.

When he awakened, the room was empty. The sand from the floor clung to his hair. The cobwebs were back. In the larger waiting room, the women and benches had vanished. He stepped to the window and saw that the sun was high in the sky. How long had he been there? He looked at his watch. An hour.

He stumbled out of the building. He was still dazed but his legs no longer felt heavy. Nobody was about. He walked north, following no path or trail, until he came to a pond that was a murky gray. He knew somehow that the sediment at the bottom of that pond was deep with human ashes. No one had told him. He didn't read it in his guidebook, but he knew.

He tripped as he walked toward the pond when his foot became tangled in a large weed. He fell to his hands and knees and felt something sharp pinch his left palm. When he got back up on his feet, Ira saw that his knees were covered in ash. So were his hands. What had pinched his hand was a tooth. He moved his foot across the surface of the ground. More ash.

He pocketed the tooth, turned and went back in the direction from where he had come.

CHAPTER 1

Krakow, Poland, 1939

Stacia raced across Tomasza Street and past St. Mary's Church. Her long strides caused her thick piled auburn hair to bounce with the rhythm of her pace. The trumpet fanfare from the church's left tower, the sound that filled the Old Town section of the city every hour, let her know that she was late for her meeting. The trumpeting was a historic signal that once warned the city of impending attacks. She, like everyone else, could set their clocks by the ancient ritual.

Her pace increased effortlessly, skirt flying and the bouquet of wildflowers she carried from her mother's garden seemed to be hanging on for dear life as it bounced along with her movement. To her right, along the old city wall that had stood there since the 14th century, she passed an artist at his easel. He waved and enthusiastically greeted her with his brush hand and called her by name. Stacia in turn slowed, crossed her eyes playfully and lolled her tongue to the side of her lips to feign tiredness. The artist laughed and urged her on.

Two hundred yards down she stopped in front of number 45, a Bohemian cafe called Jama Michalikowa, where she straightened her dress and checked her hair in the Viennese-styled window. From inside she could hear loud conversation. An accordion played an upbeat tune she recognized as a French import.

Leon is here, she thought, and she smiled to herself. Leon was old now, near 80 she guessed. He carried his squeeze-box, as he called it, with him nearly everywhere he went, and could always be counted on to liven up a dour mood. The running joke between Stacia and the old man was that Leon would implore her to sleep with him while you have the chance. Stacia would always laugh and have some little comeback that kept the game going. I couldn't deal with an animal like you. I'm just a naïve girl, or You'll just make me fall in love with you, then leave me in ruins like all your other women.

Stacia stepped into the cafe. At a far table she saw Jaelle, as usual surrounded by several men, each vying for her attention, and the attention of the laughing toddler on her knee. There was an energy that overtook the table where the little group gathered, partly from the skylight above that let in the afternoon air and sun, and partly because of the woman herself. She was easily the handsomest woman there. She was tall, 5 feet 10 inches, and dusky. Her body was all legs and arms, tight and coltish. She had high cheekbones that accentuated deep dark eyes that showed the beginnings of laugh lines on the edges. Her nose was long and narrow. It led down to a generous mouth and gleaming large teeth that smiled easily. Jaelle's voluminous hair, ebony, curled round her narrow face and was loosely held from behind with a black ribbon. The overall effect had men both worshiping and being intimidated by her. That reaction was not lost on Stacia either.

Stacia acknowledged a group of university students she knew seated at a table near the door, books piled high in the center of the table, cups and saucers and sundry papers encircling them. When she looked back toward the table on the far side of the room, Jaelle was already standing with the child balanced on her hip and gesturing in her direction. The child too was waving a greeting, with the help of his mother who moved his arm up and down. The three men at the table half turned their chairs in Stacia's direction and looked her over.

Leon kept up his music and met Stacia halfway across the room. You've finally come to your senses, yes? Where shall we go to make love my little flower? he teased.

The young girl played along yet again, having been through the charade many times. I told you last time that I'd let you know when the time was right. I'm only a schoolgirl, not nearly ripe enough for the likes of such a beast like you.

Leon feigned downheartedness. His accordion went along by giving over to a slow funeral march briefly. Stacia kissed him on the cheek and the accordion perked up into a lively oberek as he strolled away to other tables.

The two women exchanged cheek kisses. Stacia, a good six inches shorter and five years younger, passed the flowers to Jaelle, from the garden.

Ah, you are a good heart my dear. Lovely blooms. She held the flowers in front of the child. See the pretty flowers your auntie brought for us?

The boy gave them only a cursory glance and was reaching out to be held by his mother's closest friend. He was passed from the woman to the girl.

So my little man. Look how big you are. Stacia held him above her head to the child's squealing delight.

I won't be long. An hour or two at the most. You have the keys, yes?

Stacia nodded without taking her eyes off the boy.

Good. I'll see you back at the studio then.

One of the men at the table pleaded. At least finish your coffee. The others agreed with him and encouraged the two women to sit.

Love to my darlings, but I have to go. You boys show some manners with my Stacia here, or you'll be regretting it for a long long time. She laughed and went around the table and kissed each one perfunctorily and made her way to the front door. Almost every eye in the room followed her fluid movements approvingly as she made her way out.

Jaelle walked southeast on Stradomska Street until she crossed Jozepha. There Stradomska became Krakowska Street. She was in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of the city. On Szeroka Street she passed the old bath house and turned left into the synagogue. She felt out of place, since she hadn't been in the building in years, but headed to the side door office that she remembered from her childhood. The young rabbi at the desk looked up from his newspaper.

Jaelle. He gestured for her to take a seat opposite him, obviously pleased to see her. Have you seen the papers? What is happening in Germany is beyond belief. Jewish stores smashed. People beaten. Citizens stripped of rights. There is insanity there.

The insanity will be here too I'm afraid. That Hitler is a madman. You can bet he's got his eye on Poland. Which is why I've come to see you. It's about little Ira. I have a sister in New York. I want to get my baby there. I'm told that you can help me.

I remember your sister and brother-in-law. Just the child you say? Not you?

Yes. I'll join him as soon as I can, but there's the gallery and other arrangements just now. The hope is that he can come back here when all of this ...what do we call it? ... is finished. Either way I want him away from here as soon as possible. I have a bad feeling. Can you help me?

I can't blame you, he said. I would do the same if I was in your place. Perhaps I can help. I know a family that is sailing to New York next week. They might be willing to take him. He mentioned the name. She didn't know them. Good people, he said.

Next week? So soon? She looked at the man across from her. He shrugged. Her dark eyes glistened wetness and a tear made its way down her cheek. Ask them. I'll do whatever they want.

The agreement was reached. The rabbi would speak with the family that evening. Costs were estimated and Jaelle would meet with the rabbi the following day to confirm any arrangement he could make.

She left the way she came, but walked slowly now. Her head spun with conflict. Was she doing the right thing? Perhaps nothing would happen. Maybe there was no reason to worry? How could she bear to have him go? She passed a news stand on Jozefa. A photo taken in Berlin was on the front page that showed a bearded old man wearing a David Star on his coat. He was being taunted, had been knocked to the ground, by a group of young uniformed boys with swastika armbands. But by the time she reached the corner of her street in the old town district, Jaelle had firmed up her mind. Ira would go to New York. She would join him there as soon as she could, she thought.

In the studio Stacia and Ira sat on the black oak floor with the August sun streaming through the cast-iron lattice window. The baroque-styled building dated back to the early 18th century, arches and vault, with the original stone and heavy timbers exposed. Paintings covered the walls and display casings. Through a passageway in the rear was a room with more artwork piled against the walls. Chairs and tables in disarray showed the result of the meeting/party from the night before. The back room was frequently used for community gatherings of one kind or another. There was a cot in a corner that was often used by down-on-their-luck artists who needed a place to sleep.

Jaelle went immediately to the boy and lifted him up. He showed displeasure at having his story, what little of it he could understand, interrupted. She held him close, ignoring his protests. It's done. I'll know for sure tomorrow, she said. Maybe next week if all goes well.

Oh Jaelle. Are you sure this is the right thing? Absolutely sure?

No, I'm not sure, but it's done nonetheless. He's going, at least I think so. The rabbi is going to arrange it.

The three of them, the two friends and the child, came together and Stacia could feel the wetness on her friend's cheek, the convulsing of her body, as she let her emotions finally go free.

. . .

Four weeks later the first hint of autumn air blew down from the mountains. In the early morning the might of the German military fell on Poland. Warplanes dropped their bombs on sleeping populations. Tanks rumbled across the countryside shattering everything in their path. Within days the surrender was secured. France and England, to Hitler's surprise, followed through on their pact with Poland and declared a state of war with Germany.

In the art studio, Jaelle and Stacia were, like most Poles, frozen in fear and confusion. It had all happened so quickly. A week after the initial invasion came a harsh knock on the studio door and the door swung open without waiting for a reply to the knock. The heavy door banged on the stone wall from the force. A young German officer with legs spread at a parade rest, and two armed soldiers at attention behind him stood there under the arched entryway. The two women instinctively reached for each other.

Ladies. Permit me. I am Untersturmfuhrer Bach, the officer said. He bowed slightly, formally, and walked in. His black uniform had perfect tailoring. The buttons and leather glistened with a high polish. His high boots clumped loudly on the floorboards. The death-head insignia on his cap and lapels, indeed his entire mannerism, marked him as SS. He strolled around the studio, stopping and commenting here and there on the works on display. Jaelle could tell that he knew a good deal about the artists and their work from his comments.

The officer stopped in front of one painting longer than the others. This is Leger, yes? I'm a great admirer of his. He moved on. And this? Klimt? I'm not familiar with this particular piece. He moved closer to inspect the painting, then stepped back to view it from a distance of about 10 feet. Still this is a fine painting ... wonderful work. You know him by any chance? The artist I mean.

We've met, Jaelle responded. Her initial fear was turning to defiance. Bach picked up on her tone and turned away from the painting toward the two women.

He approached them slowly, deliberately, ignored Stacia initially and faced Jaelle so closely that she could smell the tobacco on his breath. She was as tall as he was and she met his searing gaze directly, forcing herself to keep her eyes directly on his. He put his gloved hand to her face and held it there firmly on her chin, as if to prevent her from turning away. He moved closer still. He was six inches from her face. You are a Jew, yes?

She tried to look away then, but he firmly brought her face back to his. Listen carefully Jew. I am not your worst fear. There are others who would just as soon shoot you where you stand and never think twice about it. My hope is that all of that can be avoided. You will do exactly what I or any of my men speaking for me tell you from now on. You seem like a reasonably bright woman. If you cooperate, perhaps all will be well. If not, you can expect problems. Perhaps the problems will come in any case. We'll see. Am I clear? Do you understand?

He held her face until she answered. Her mind raced with possibilities of a response. Spit in his eye. Kick him in the balls. But in the end all she could muster was to answer a feeble Yes, and a lowering of her eyes.

Good. He let go of her chin and smiled, as if the confrontation had not taken place. Now, show me around your charming gallery. I'm a bit of a collector myself you know. He finally turned to Stacia, almost as an afterthought. And you? Name please?

She told him. He circled her, leering at her body and face. Charming. Perhaps we can be friends as well. Do you think such a thing is possible?

Stacia was frozen in fear and could not answer.

. . .

Helmut Bach, the officer who initially came to the gallery, while SS, had not fully internalized the mythologies