Strangers in Venice Page 2

  She jumped, landing hard on the gravel and running pell-mell toward him. No amount of head shaking could’ve stopped her. Stella Bled Lawrence wasn’t accustomed to the word no, but she was accustomed to love, loyalty, and getting her way. God help him. He gave her the book. If anyone could save it, it would be her.

  It was done and couldn’t be undone. Abel spent hours thinking of what he should’ve chosen. Lettie, not Albert. Left, not right. He tortured himself as much as the cold tortured him. The other men were the same. There was talk of emigrating, of opportunities not taken. Most thought this madness was temporary. It couldn’t continue. How could it? The world would see what Hitler was doing and take a stand. Surely they would. Hope was still there. And if didn’t die in that boxcar, it wasn’t going to.

  But not everyone felt the same way. One man panicked after the doors were bolted. He began screaming and ramming his head into the wall. They held him down, trying in vain to reassure him. When the train made the first of many stops, the man began screaming again, a high-pitched, wild shriek, and the guards pulled him out. Before they could plead for the bloody man who lay slumped next to Abel, the guards slammed the door shut. A shot rang out and the shrieking stopped. The men were silent as the train started again.

  “Never ask for help,” said a gentle voice somewhere in the dark. “Be nothing. No one. If you want to survive.”

  “How do you know?” asked another man. “Who are you?”

  “I am nobody. Nothing. No one. But I will survive.”

  Abel didn’t know how to be nothing. What was nothing? What did that look like?

  Hours later, he still didn’t know. He was a man. He couldn’t let them think he was less than human, although it seemed they already believed that or they couldn’t have done what they had done.

  “Are we slowing down?” someone asked.

  “I hope not,” said someone else.

  “How can you say that?”

  One man cried softly, “We’re going to die.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “They’re going to kill us,” said another.

  “No, they’re not. They’d have to explain what happened.”

  “Do they? Who do they have to explain it to?”

  “We have families.”

  “As if they care,” said Nobody.

  “Do you smell something?” said someone close to Abel.

  “I smell shit.”

  They all laughed, breaking the incredible tension.

  “No, there’s something else,” said someone else after a minute. “What is that?”

  No one answered, but Abel knew what it was. He’d gotten a whiff an hour before, not long after he’d heard a gulp and the man next to him shuddered for the last time. The body’s bowels had released, but that smell had only joined the rest of the stench for men had been urinating and defecating in the corners of the box car since their journey began. Abel was the only one close enough to sense the sticky pool spreading out across the rough wooden floor. No one else had wanted to sit next to what amounted to a corpse, so Abel volunteered. It seemed a good punishment for his folly.

  “I smell it,” said another.

  “Who farted?”

  They all laughed again, but this time it was nervous laughter. The smell of death had begun to pervade the boxcar and they all knew it on instinct.

  Quietly, the voice of Nobody asked, “Does anyone know his name?”

  No one did. There were tears and prayers for the dead. Abel didn’t pray. His prayer was already answered. In the pitch black, he felt over the dead man’s chest and found in his pockets a couple of bills, a photo, and the all-important identity card.

  I’m sorry, my friend. But your name can save me. I will use it well.

  Abel put his own identity card, passport, and photos in the man’s pocket, kissing the photos before he tucked them away.

  “We are slowing down,” said someone and they were. Up ahead the train’s whistle blew and the car jerked.

  “Maybe it’s just another stop.”

  “We have to get there sometime,” said Nobody.

  “What will happen?”

  “God knows.”

  The train ground to a halt and, a few minutes later, an armed guard slid the door open. He squinted into the boxcar and made a face. “Mein Gott!”

  Several guards gathered and Abel shielded his face from the beams of light from their Taschenlampen. They discussed the body in irritated Bavarian accents and then started yelling for the men to come out.

  The prisoners stumbled into the darkness with rifles pointed at them. Any thoughts of making a run for it vanished as Abel stood at the door, grasping the wood to support himself, legs weak and stiff. He felt like a man of eighty-seven, not twenty-seven.

  A guard screamed at him and he climbed down and then turned to help the old man. He probably wasn’t far off eighty-seven. Together they squinted at the small station with a sign that had “Dachau” painted in block letters on it.

  “It really is Dachau,” someone behind them whispered. A murmur went through the group, spreading as the cars emptied their sad cargo. Abel realized some had held out hope that they weren’t really going to the infamous camp where Jakob Ehrlich died and where Alfred Haag the communist had been imprisoned for years. He, himself, had no such illusions. Dachau was where you went if you didn’t fit the Reich’s vision and, as Jews, they certainly didn’t.

  “Get going. We don’t have all night,” yelled a guard and they began walking along an eight-foot-high masonry wall topped by barbed wire. Abel walked, supporting the old man, feeling as if he wasn’t really there. He wasn’t going into a prison when only twenty-four hours ago he’d been sitting on tufted cushions in first class with Stella and Nicky. Where were they now? Had they gotten away? His last glimpse had been of Stella’s agonized face as Nicky carried her off. The young American’s level head would get them away and they’d take care of poor Albert. He must’ve had some sort of accident. The Nazis wouldn’t dare attack him. That just wasn’t possible.

  The old man’s legs buckled and Abel managed to keep him from going down, but a wave of dizziness came over him, blurring his vision. He hadn’t eaten in well over twenty-four hours, but he wasn’t really hungry. Fear sat in his stomach solid as a brick and taking up all the space.

  “Thank you,” said the old man, his hazel eyes soft and dreamy with fatigue.

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Yes, but where is there?”

  “Dachau,” said Abel. Perhaps he had lost his wits like the mad man on the train.

  He squeezed Abel’s arm, nodding and becoming taller and stronger. “It was meant to be.”

  The men stopped and clumped up as it was time to turn a corner. Being taller than everyone else, Abel could see that they were going around a curve, probably to a gate. The area wasn’t very large and obviously not designed to handle such a large influx of prisoners. He dared to look at the guards and found them looking but not seeing the men in front of them. Many were bloody or hobbling on frozen feet. A few were weeping. The guards took no notice, simply doing their jobs as they had been ordered to do. A conscience was not issued with the boots and uniform.

  “What do you see?” asked the old man.

  They came around the curve and Abel’s chest tightened. “A gate.”

  “What is it? Why do you sound like that?”

  “Arbeit macht frei,” said Abel, his voice growing hard with the words.

  “What is this nonsense?”

  “That’s what it says on the gate.”

  The men around them read the sign and a collective shiver went through them.

  “Work will set us free, eh?” asked one man. “I wonder when.”

  “Who says the Nazis don’t have a sense of humor?”

  “What kind of work? I’m a cobbler.”

  “I’m a banker.”

  “Painter.”

  “Baker.”

  “You’ll hamm
er nails into boards and like it,” said Nobody behind Abel.

  “You are joking with us.”

  “Damned if I am.”

  “Why?” asked the banker.

  “What’s the point?” asked the baker.

  “Misery,” said Nobody.

  None had an answer to that.

  Abel squeezed through the narrow gate under the mocking words into a huge courtyard where men were lined up to go into a white-washed building to the right. On the left were rows of squat, narrow buildings.

  “When do you think we can sit down?” asked the old man.

  “A while yet. Don’t worry. I’ll help you. You won’t fall,” said Abel.

  The old man leaned heavily on his arm and took Abel’s hand between his gnarled ones. “Your hands are very soft and elegant for a bricklayer, Adam.”

  “What?” asked Abel.

  The old man leaned farther into him. “Your name is Adam Stolowicki and you are from Warsaw. You were visiting your sister, Helena, in Vienna. I am Jakob Zack, her neighbor.”

  Abel said nothing. He couldn’t think, only touch his chest where the identity card was concealed.

  “You understand me, Adam?”

  “Yes, Jakob.”

  “Good. And do not forget you are a communist.”

  “That’s not ideal.”

  “It could be worse,” said Jakob.

  “Really? How?”

  “Let me think about that. First,” Jakob scratched vigorously at the back of his neck, “touch my neck.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Do as you are told, Adam.”

  Abel slid his hand under Jakob’s heavy collar and felt the warmth of fresh blood. “You’re hurt.”

  “Blood can conceal many things, can it not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fine soft hands of a teacher or doctor, for instance.”

  Their eyes met again and Abel understood. Jacob would help him with his very blood.

  “Let me see,” said Abel, looking at a broad gash and multiple cuts on the back of the old man’s head, pretending to tend them with a handkerchief that Jakob gave him. He got crusted and fresh blood on his pale, patrician hands and had to swallow down the agony that it cost him to do it.

  “What happened?” asked a man behind them. “That is nasty.”

  “I fell,” said Jakob.

  “Backward?”

  “And through a window.”

  “I’d like to kill them,” said the man through gritted teeth.

  “Maybe you’ll get your chance,” said Abel.

  “You and I together,” he said, extending his hand. “Michael.”

  “Adam.”

  The men were separated from Michael into another line and Abel leaned over to Jakob. “It’s a big chance you’re taking. Why help me?”

  “My son died here. I could do nothing for him. I can help you and you will live for him.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Leopold.”

  “For Leopold then,” said Abel.

  And Stella.

  Chapter One

  THE RAIN STARTED the moment the train crossed into Italy as if the country expected them and wasn’t thrilled about a repeat visit. Stella wasn’t thrilled either, but there was a job that must be done and nothing could stop her from doing it.

  “Where’s everyone going?” she whispered, her breath steaming up the wide window of her compartment and obscuring her already dim view of the rain-soaked platform outside.

  She squinted and the tip of her nose touched the cold glass. Vicenza? Padua? She couldn’t make out the sign, but it definitely didn’t say Venice. The station was too small and there wasn’t supposed to be another stop after Verona anyway.

  Nevertheless, people were scurrying through the torrents of rain with their luggage, disappearing into the darkness. Was this some sort of tourist destination that she was unaware of? No. It couldn’t be. If there was something to see, Abel would’ve shown it to them.

  Stella dug her fingernails into the edge of the window’s shiny brass trim. Abel. Where was he? In Dachau? Had the Nazis discovered his identity? It hurt to think about him and what might have happened in the last two weeks or could be happening right at that moment. She did know that whatever they did to Abel, it would get them nowhere. He couldn’t give them what they wanted. He couldn’t even say where Gutenberg’s diary was, only that Stella had it, which they already knew or thought they did. The book was gone, packed up in a crate and headed to the States with the Boulards, Amelie and Paul. The trick was letting the Nazis know that it was gone without telling them where it was. Uncle Josiah was the one to ask about that and she hoped that she would see him soon, within a week or two.

  Josiah was on his way to Munich to help Abel, but she wasn’t fool enough to think that the Nazis would release him just because Josiah Bled asked them to. He would have to come up with a good incentive, something they couldn’t resist. The Nazis had been trying for some time to get in contact with the Bled family in hopes of getting some sort of boost from the famous brewing family. Apparently, they thought their name valuable, and Uncle Josiah could use that. He could talk about a possible deal, tantalize, cajole and coax. He excelled at that. Talking was her beloved uncle’s forte and talking was how they met Abel in the first place.

  Uncle Josiah just happened to be in Rome when a group of importers were being sallied around the city in an effort to get them to sign with a Belgian brewing conglomerate. He accidentally ran into them and their tour guide, Abel, in a bar. By midnight, they’d signed an agreement with Bled brewing and by dawn, Uncle Josiah and Abel were drunk as skunks, bathing nude in the Trevi fountain, and being arrested by the carabinieri for public lewdness. A first for Abel, but not for Uncle Josiah, unfortunately.

  Stella’s mother, Francesqua, declared that they had to make it up to Abel because no one doubted for a moment that it was all Josiah’s fault. He was a bad influence, the worst influence. People did things with him that they would never remotely consider otherwise. In the face of the family’s recriminations about drinking, Uncle Josiah just grinned. Being drunk wasn’t necessary for having fun, he said. It just sped things up.

  Maybe he could work his magic in Munich. They had beer and schnapps. He had money and clout. That was a good combination for making a beneficial deal in the normal world. But who knew about the Nazis? Their motivations made no sense. Why attack their own population? There had to be a point, but it eluded her. Nicky said it was hatred. What kind of a person hated someone they’d never met and had no knowledge of? Stella couldn’t understand it. She did understand that they had to get Abel out of Dachau. It was their fault he was there, hers and Uncle Josiah.

  If he hadn’t gotten Abel arrested, she and Nicky wouldn’t have hired him as their guide for their honeymoon. They wouldn’t have known his name. If Stella and Uncle Josiah hadn’t wanted to help people smuggle their art out of Vienna before the Nazis got their greedy claws on it, he wouldn’t have been in Vienna to be arrested. Their fault, so it must be their solution whatever the cost.

  The train whistle blew even as more people exited the train. Then the O’Sullivans went by her window. She and Nicky had had dinner with them and they were definitely going to Venice. The old couple crept along the platform with no less than five porters and four carts piled high with luggage. They were Irish gentry and didn’t go anywhere without a valet and a maid. Mr. Marchand and Mrs. Fawcett were holding enormous umbrellas over the couple’s heads and they couldn’t see Stella as she waved and tried to yank down the stiff window.

  “Stupid thing.” Stella hammered on the window, hoping Marchand would look up. He was French and had taught her a few essential phrases in his many languages. They had intended to continue lessons in Venice and she needed those lessons. “Nicky, help me. The window’s stuck.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Nicky, the O’Sullivans are leaving. Something’s going on.” Stella turned around and f
ound, not to her surprise, Nicky was sleeping with his long legs stretched out and his new fedora perched over his face. Her husband had shown an amazing capacity to sleep. Once the train was out of Paris, he’d assumed the position and slept steadily for going on twelve hours, waking only to eat and ask if there were any new newspapers available. He hadn’t even woken up when she’d left the train with Marchand in Milan to buy dictionaries or when she accidentally spilled tea on his legs when she awkwardly climbed over them.

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” She glanced back at the O’Sullivans’ retreating umbrellas and then climbed over Nicky’s legs, ramming open their door as loudly as possible. Nicky’s emaciated body in his baggy suit didn’t twitch. She slammed it closed and stalked down the corridor, glancing through windows at all the empty compartments. Their car had been nearly full of wealthy tourists, excited to see the sites they’d only read about. Now they were gone.

  She exited the car and got hit with a blast of painful rain so powerful she didn’t consider running after Marchand. Instead, she darted into the second-class car. The double rows of red-upholstered seats were empty. Not a single passenger remained. Stella didn’t know if it had been full, but there should’ve been someone there.

  The train whistled again and she saw porters and conductors rushing by. She looked back through the door and saw no one coming aboard so she marched through second-class and into the next car. Third-class and it was occupied. Barely. A family of five huddled at the back looked up and then quickly down, avoiding Stella’s enquiring eyes. All except the youngest, a boy of four leaned into the aisle to get a good look only to be yanked out of sight.