Adam Lapid 08 In That Sleep of Death by Jonathan Dunsky

Author:Jonathan Dunsky [Dunsky, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

23

The next morning, a little after eight o'clock, I was at the police station on Yehuda Halevi Street. I was sitting in Reuben's office, the file of Menashe Volkoff's disappearance open on the desk before me.

"It's not much, is it?" Reuben said.

That was an understatement. The file was flimsy. And what little there was did not amount to much.

"So, is he the Menashe Volkoff you're looking for?"

"It's him," I said, though the contents of the file did not make that certain.

What they did show was that Menashe Volkoff had arrived at the port of Haifa on Friday, July 21, 1939, disembarking a ship that had sailed from Athens. He had come alone. He reported having no family in Israel, and presumably no one was awaiting his arrival. He had come from Poland, but the file did not say from what town or city. I was sure it was Mastarnia, the hometown of Emmanuel Feldbaum. That was why Feldbaum told Ami Rapoport that Menashe was here. He meant here in Israel. He had remembered that Volkoff had left Mastarnia with an immigration certificate in his pocket. But the memory had become jumbled in his broken mind. All that remained were fragments and slivers, nothing that could be articulated. But what had remained whole was the need to find Volkoff. Because Volkoff had information that Feldbaum was desperate to have. As Feldbaum had told Ami Rapoport, Volkoff knew where it was. Whatever it might be.

On July 26, five days after Volkoff's arrival in Haifa, a woman by the name of Dita Steinberg reported to the local police that one of her tenants, Menashe Volkoff, was missing. He had rented a room in her boardinghouse the day he arrived in Haifa and had slept there for two nights. But then three more nights had come and gone without him showing his face. This despite him paying for a week in advance, including meals. This made alarm bells ring in Mrs. Steinberg's head. New immigrants of modest means tended to be cautious with their money.

In addition, Volkoff's single suitcase was still in his room, as were his toiletries and most of his clothes. "The only clothes missing are those that he had on when he went out the morning he vanished," Mrs. Steinberg told the officer who took down her statement.

She had no idea where Volkoff had been going that day. The other three boarders she had at the time all said the same thing when they were later interviewed by police.

There was a list of Volkoff's belongings in the report. The aforementioned clothes and toiletries. A novel in Yiddish. Another in Hebrew. A map of Mandatory Palestine. An unopened pack of cigarettes. A slim album with photographs showing Volkoff in the company of people the police assumed were his family.

All dead now. As, in all likelihood, was Menashe Volkoff himself. Thirteen years is a long time to be missing without a trace if you're still breathing.

I chose a single photograph, the one showing Volkoff's face most clearly, and slipped it into my pocket.

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