Quantum Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

idea.”
    “Fine, fine. But it’s
near
Sobibor, isn’t it? Only a few minutes by car, no?”
    “I really don’t know.”
    “Or by train?” She let that sink in for a beat, then: “What did your grandfather do during World War II?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Don’t you?”
    I felt my eyebrows going up. “No.”
    “That surprises me, sir. It surprises me a great deal.”
    “Why?”
    “You actually don’t get to ask questions, sir; that’s not the way this works. Now, is it really your testimony here, under oath, that you don’t know what your mother’s father did during World War II?”
    “That’s right,” I said, utterly perplexed. “I don’t know.”
    Dickerson turned to the jury and lifted her hands in an “I gave him a chance” sort of way. She then walked to her desk, and her young female assistant passed her a sheet of paper. “Your Honor, I’d like to introduce this notarized scan of an article from the
Winnipeg Free Press
of March twenty-third, 2001.”
    Kawasaki gestured for Dickerson to come forward, and she handed him the piece of paper. He gave it a perfunctory glance, then passed it to the clerk. “So ordered,” he said. “Mark as People’s one-four-six.”
    “Thank you, Your Honor,” she said, retrieving the sheet. “Now, Mr. Marchuk, would you be so kind as to read us the first indicated passage?”
    She handed me the page, which had two separate paragraphs highlighted in blue. I couldn’t make out what they said without my reading glasses, and so I reached into my suit jacket—and saw the guard at the far end of the room move to draw his revolver. I slowly removed my cheaters, perched them on my nose, and began reading aloud: “‘More startling revelations were made this week as papers from the former Soviet Union continued to be made public. The newly disclosed documents have a Canadian connection. Ernst Kulyk . . .’” I faltered, and my throat went dry as I skimmed ahead.
    “Continue, please, sir,” said Dickerson.
    I swallowed, then: “‘Ernst Kulyk, the father of Patricia Marchuk, a prominent Calgary attorney, has been revealed to have been a guardat the Nazi Sobibor death camp, implicated in the deaths of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Polish Jews.’”
    I looked up. The paper fluttered in my hands.
    “Thank you, sir. Now, who is Patricia Marchuk?”
    “My mother.”
    “And, just to be clear, she’s your biological mother—and Ernst Kulyk was her biological father, correct? Neither you nor your mother were adopted?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Is your maternal grandfather still alive?”
    “No. He died sometime in the 1970s.”
    “And you were born in 1982, correct? So you never met him, right?”
    “Never.”
    “And your mother, is she still alive?”
    “No. She passed fifteen years ago.”
    “In 2005?”
    “Yes.”
    “Were you estranged from her?”
    “No.”
    “And yet it’s your testimony before this court that you didn’t know what her father—your grandfather—did during World War II?”
    My heart was pounding. “I—honestly, I had no idea.”
    “Where did you live in March 2001, when this article was published?”
    “In Winnipeg. I was in second-year university then.”
    “A sophomore?”
    “We don’t use that term in Canada, but yes.”
    “And the
Winnipeg Free Press,
correct me if I’m wrong, is now and was then the largest-circulation daily newspaper in that city, right?”
    “I believe so, yes.”
    “So surely someone must have mentioned this article to you, no?”
    “Never.”
    “Seriously? Didn’t your mother say anything to you about this revelation?”
    Acid was splashing at the back of my throat. “Not that I recall.”
    “Not that you recall,” she repeated. “There’s a second highlighted passage on that page. Would you read it, please?”
    I looked down and did so. “‘Ernst Kulyk was a local, living near Sobibor. Historian Howard Green at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles says