Nienawidzę was, ojciec
Daniel could not remember how many drinks he had before he fell off his couch, face down on the laminated floor. Nor did he know what time it was. He barely was able to look outside, hardly enough to figure out that it was late at night and high time to go to bed. He tried two of three times to stand up but it was only to fall more heavily after each failed attempt. The crawling from the low-lit living room towards the bedroom felt as hard and painful as running the New York marathon. In Daniel’s eyes, his whole narrow apartment seemed to be spinning like a small sailboat tossed by some monstrous waves one can only find at the outermost parts of the oceans. The heavy rain outside was tapping on the windows and the tree branches were casting ghostly shadows on the walls.
It was the same cold rain that was pouring earlier that day, when several black silhouettes had gathered around Daniel to pay a last tribute to his father. For years before that, Daniel had been thinking of what he would say when that day had finally come and he would be asked to say a few words about his old man. That very person with whom he had spoken so little in fifty five years of a banal life, yet satisfying enough for that modest man who hated nothing more than being put in the light with dozens of anonymous eyes pointing at him. He didn’t know if, in the bottom of his heart, he really loved or hated his father. What could he say in front of all those people hypocritically called “friends” and “family”? Daniel knew his father had never really had close friends as he never let anyone, not even his wife and his only son, enter his intimacy. God only knew what he was hiding in the abyss of his heart. As for his family, apart from Daniel and his mother Melinda, no one could ever uncover the carefully concealed secrets about his family. If someone dared to ask the littlest question about Matthew Lieuz, he would enter one of this tremendous angers his wife jokingly nicknamed ira divina, the wrath of the gods. So nobody knew the slightest thing about Daniel’s father past and background before the day he met Melinda, a sunny Saturday afternoon on the green lawn of Central Park, in the summer of 1949. Mr. Lieuz claimed he was born in 1922 in a small town in Missouri from Polish immigrants, but who could tell if this was true or of pure invention? Only his accent could denote the fact he was or Eastern European descent.
After the short but dignified ceremony, Daniel and mother would have dinner in a fancy place and share memories of their husband and father. Melinda, who saw her son only once or twice a year, used every occasion to ask him about his life and the fact he was living like a hermit in the middle of the most restless city in the world. If Daniel tried to subtly tell his mother he started to feel uncomfortable about this inquiry, she would answer in the very direct manner he had always known.
- You know, I almost never see you, I want to know what is new in your life. And after all, I’m your mother, so I’m concerned and you can never change that. I shared my spouse life with a man carrying more secrets than anyone should be allowed to. Please don’t act with me like your father did…
Daniel would whisper for an answer and an awkward silence would ensue until the waiter broke it, asking what they would order for dessert.
It was not until he came home, closed carefully the locks of the main door, threw his keys on the floor with a gesture of anger mixed with intense sadness, and sat on the couch that he allowed himself to cry. It was like all the tears he had carefully kept behind his eyes for so long had decided to flow at the same moment. Then he lifted up his eye and saw the bottle of whisky standing on the coffee table. He decided to pour himself one drink, then another one, and finally automatically filled the glass every time he found it empty…
When Daniel woke up the next day, though the weather was better than the night before and tiny rays of sun entered the room through the closed curtains, everything was dull and foggy in his head. It felt like the whole New York Philharmonic was playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony within. He finally managed to get up from his bed, stumbled on his slippers and headed to the kitchen to get a cup of very black coffee. When he passed next to the entrance door, he noticed a small piece of paper lying on the floor. He picked it up and examined it. On the front was displayed an old portrait in black in white. Though the man on the picture looked in his early twenties and was impeccably dressed in a grey suit with a black tie, his black hair plastered backward, Daniel immediately recognized his father. On the back of the photo was written, in a smart old-fashioned writing, only a series of figures: 3443522415132432. Daniel wondered for a while what this could mean but put the picture on the coffee table and did not pay attention to it any longer.
Like any other ordinary day, Daniel would put his anonymous suit, drown in the crowd of the subway and accomplish his everyday tasks as an accountant in a big firm in lower Manhattan. While looking at endless statistic tables, his mind got lost in countless thoughts that had no logical link between them. This was the way he remembered the picture he had found a few hours earlier. His thoughts were clear now and he started to wonder how this picture had landed in his lobby or where it had come from. Though he had been able to recognize his father, he realized it was the very first time he was contemplating such an ancient picture of his dad. Actually, he had never seen any picture of his father during his youth and had always known him as a middle-aged man first, later as an old man carrying the weight of years with difficulty yet an inextinguishable pride at the same time. And those numbers on the back, what could they mean?
Bombarded with so many questions that he could not focus on his work anymore, Daniel told his manager he had just got an urgent phone call from his mother as a pretext to run back home. Once back in his apartment, he slammed the door and grabbed the picture. He read again and again the sixteen-digit number, tried several combinations to maybe decode it, if ever it was a coded message, but remained unsuccessful. Outside, the sun was already setting when Daniel angrily threw another piece of paper full of useless notes. He was about to help himself to a glass of whisky to contain his irritation when someone knocked at the door. He put down the bottle, went to the door, and opened it. In the door frame was standing Greg, his neighbor from the third-floor, a strange 25-year-old so-called student who spent his days playing video games and browsing the Internet rather than actually go to college. As usual, he was dressed in a black tee-shirt and a pair of jeans, his hair was messy and he obviously had not shaved for several days. They had hardly ever spoken since Greg moved in the condominium, three years ago, and every conversation was filled with the banalities two people exchange when they want to get away from each other as soon as possible without upsetting their collocutor. Daniel was surprised Greg had quit his virtual world to come down to his apartment. He saw Greg’s fingers were twitching and his face showed nervousness.
- Hi. I hope I'm not bothering you but I learnt about your father from the caretaker and I just wanted to say… Well, sorry for your loss…
- Ah… Thanks.
The two remained silent for a while when Daniel suddenly thought that maybe Greg knew something about encryption techniques. He invited him into the apartment and showed him the back of the picture. Greg looked carefully at him for not even ten seconds when he exclaimed:
- Polybius!
- What?
- You mean “who”! Polybius was an ancient Greek historian. He invented an encryption technique known as the Polybius square. It’s one of the ancestors of cryptography, even if, for the anecdote, he didn’t conceive it for that purpose. I know it because I love playing puzzle games on the Web and this is a classic in enigmas.
- Ok, ok… I got it… Can you read it?
- Sure! Actually, it’s pretty easy to decode. You just have to draw a five on five table and write the 26 letters of the alphabet from left to right, top to bottom.
- Um… A five on five grid? There are only twenty five squares in that.
- I know! It was basically designed to use the twenty-four letter Greek alphabet, not our Latin alphabet. So to get round the difficulty, we place the “i” and the “j” in the same square. Then to assign letters to digits, you simply write down the coordinates of your letter: its row number first and its column number then.
Greg took a piece of paper and drew the grid and started to decode the message. After two minutes, he came to Daniel with the paper. On it was simply written one word: Oswiecim.
- Oswiecim? Daniel exclaimed. What the hell is that? Is that German or I don’t know what language?
- Polish exactly, Greg replied, a slight expression of superiority enlightening his face. What do you know about the Holocaust?
- I’ve seen Schindler List…
- Ok, you should know enough. Oswiecim is a small Polish town in south Poland, about thirty miles west of Krakow.
- So…?
- Well, it’s better known under its German name…
Greg’s tiny smile suddenly faded. He took a deep breath and ended his sentence in a low voice, like he was about to uncover some evil truth.
- Auschwitz…
- What? The concentration camp? What does it have to do with my father or even me?
- Well… I guess it’s your job to find it… I have to go. But if you need information, just knock on my door.
- Ok, thanks anyway.
Greg left the apartment, letting Daniel fixed in an attitude showing the shock of this revelation and the thousand questions it implied. Daniel could not find sleep that night until he took an exaggerated amount of sleeping pills. When he finally woke up the next day, the sun was already high in the sky. To his terror, he found another picture on the floor. This time, the photograph, of bad quality, showed a bunch of people dressed in prisoner uniforms. A red circle surrounded his father, also dressed as a prisoner, wearing a small red triangle on his chest. On the back was written another coded word: 25113534. Daniel ran up the stairs towards Greg apartment, and knocked loudly on the door. A half-sleeping Greg opened the door. Daniel said, panting between words:
- Sorry to wake you up. I need your help. And your knowledge!
Greg instantly understood what this was about when Daniel held out the picture to him. They both came into Greg’s bedroom, an incredible mess of computer devices, various books from superheroes comics to encyclopedia volumes, and clothes laid out through the entire room. Greg sat on his computer chair and examined the photograph with a magnifier.
- Do you see the green triangle on your father’s chest? The Nazis had a system of symbols to identify the various categories of prisoners. Let me check what category it is…
Greg switched on his computer and after a short Internet search he could give an answer to Daniel.
- Green triangle… “Common law criminals”. Well, that doesn’t give us much information. Let’s see the code on the back… Um… K… A… P… O… Kapo.
- What is that?
- Bad news, if that means your father was one of them. You see, the kapos were prisoners usually recruited among the common criminals, the green triangles then, and the political prisoners, red triangles. There were assigned the low tasks such as leading the prisoners to the gas chambers. Most of them were particularly sadistic and violent towards other prisoners and several of them were sentenced to death when the camps were liberated.
Hearing that, Daniel felt like the whole sky was falling upon his head. Was his father a former kapo? He had been a criminal for sure, as shown by the green triangle, but did he abuse prisoners and participate in sending hundreds, thousands of people to a horrible death? Greg saw the expression of despair on his neighbor’s face but could not find any word to comfort him. Finally Daniel left Greg’s apartment silently, walking slowly and bent like he was carrying all the misery of the world on his shoulders. Once back in his living room, sat on the couch, a glass of whisky next to him, he watched the two pictures over and over again. Now he started to understand a little of his father’s so well hidden secrets. But he was feeling like he was walking all alone in a frozen desert, surrounded by a dark mist that grew thicker as he was moving forward. He feared to be swallowed in this boundless gloomy ocean. After the bottle of whisky went empty, he calmed down as the alcohol started to take possession of his brain. In a flash, he thought the mysterious mailman would maybe come a third time that night. He decided then to stay awake all night long until he could catch him or her in the act.
The clock hanging on the wall was displaying 3 o’clock AM when Daniel heard the almost silent noise of a piece of paper slipping on the floor. While he was on the edge of sleep, this tiny sound had the same effect on him as the loudest alarm clock in the world. He jumped of the couch, ran to the door and opened it in a sharp movement. In the low-lit hallway, he saw an aged woman heading to the elevator. He ran after her and caught her arm. The lady turned back and revealed an elegant face yet showing tired trait and an unfathomable sadness in her eyes. She was dressed in a simple but classy black ensemble and a bunch of grey hair was falling smartly on her shoulders. Daniel, who had imagined dozens of possible facial composite of his stalker during his wait, stayed dumfounded for a few seconds before finally stammering:
- Who… Who are you?
The lady severely stared at him for a while, and in a calm voice said:
- You caught me and I guess you solved the puzzles. It’s high time you knew the truth…
She moved her head pointing at Daniel’s apartment still opened door. They would be more comfortable for the long conversation they were about to have. They both went into the living room and the lady sat on the couch while Daniel stayed up, almost incapable to even bend his knees. Daniel asked again:
- Who are you? What do you want? How… How do you know me and my father?
- My name is Julia Ohbendorf. I suppose I’m your sister, or your half-sister to be accurate.
- My sister? Do you mean my father had been married before he met my mother?
- Your father… Well, our father, Matthew Lieuz, or Helmut Waitze as he was called back then, was a German robber who lived in Poland in the late 1930s when the country was invaded by the Nazis. He was well known for several bloody bank robberies, so when the SS caught him in late 1943, he was directly sent to Auschwitz.
- If I understand your messages, he became a kapo there, didn’t he?
- Yes, he did. The SS appreciated his selfishness and sense of sadism towards other prisoners, especially the Jews and the homosexual. He was responsible for several cold hand murders, as my mother told me on her death bed…
Daniel stayed silent, completely overwhelmed by what Ms. Ohbendorf had just told him. At first, he was unable to utter the question stuck on his very lips, but finally managed to ask, in a hesitating voice:
- You said your mother was aware of what your father… I mean our father did as a kapo. So I guess, given your name, that she probably was a prisoner and you…
- That’s right. My mother was a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz and one night of December 1944, he raped her. One month later, the camp was liberated by the Red army. My mother was pregnant but it was too early to be seen, and Waitze managed to hide among the survivors, hiding the fact he was a kapo. Later he fled Europe to the United States and became the respectable Matthew Lieuz, an anagram of Helmut Waitze. I think you know how the story goes on from that point.
- Why… Why are you telling me all that? And why now?
Julia lowered her head. The sadness in her eyes became more intense. She gasped with difficulty and went on.
- I had to wait until my mother passed away fifteen years ago to know the truth about my father and my birth. Since then, I was restless about finding him. I moved to Los Angeles and spent hours and hours reading the archives at the Simon Wiesenthal center. It was almost a miracle I could find the trace of Waitze and understand he had changed his name to Matthew Lieuz. I was able to find him in New York but unfortunately, I arrived just too late to confront him. I had discovered he was married and had a son. So I decided to reveal the whole truth to you. But I knew how painful it was so I wanted to make sure you were ready to hear it.
- Hence the code, I presume.
- Exactly. You had the courage to find the key to decrypt it though you didn’t know where it would lead you...
- There’s something I don’t get… Why did you want so bad to tell me the truth while it looks so painful to you?
- Well, I thought you had the right to know. And to be honest, I wanted to know what the son of the monster could look like.
- So you got your answer…
- Yes… I did.
- So, what does the son of the monster look like?
- Just like the monster: like any other man. Like the ordinary man you can see in the street, neither smarter nor uglier than any other person; like the man you can easily picture cuddling his wife and playing with his kids, like a man who does not have his hands stained with the blood of so many innocents…
At these words, Daniel felt a chill of terror running down his spine. Julia stood up silently and without saying a word or even looking at him left the apartment. For a while, Daniel stayed completely immobile, unable to move. Finally, in a desperate effort, he headed to the liquor dresser, grabbed a bottle of Pinot noir and poured himself a glass of wine. Tears started to flow down his cheeks as he stared at the carmine liquor pouring into the glass.
(c)2008