The Day of the Lie (38 page)

‘I think I’ve been
naive.’

‘Never accuse yourself
on that score.’

‘No. I’ve been naive
about evil, as if it wasn’t there. I’ve always tried to excuse it away you
know, defeat it by pretending it’s not what it is. When I was at the Bar, I
told myself the only reason one man brutalised another without any regret is
because deep down he hadn’t made a free choice … he’d been beaten and starved
as a child, he’d gone to the wrong school, made the wrong friends, and in the
end, there’d been a screw loose in his free will. Or maybe he believed —
sincerely but wrongly — that unrestrained violence was just one of the more unusual
ways of doing something good. I still want to hold on to these … difficult
routes to mercy.

‘And?’

‘Well, a part of me
wants to find the path to Brack’s actions, precisely because what he has done
is unconscionable. What happened to him, that he could do such things? Was he
abused and deprived or does he just think wrongly? Alternatively is he that
which scares me most, and which I’ve dared not consider — a simply evil man,
with all the screws intact, none too loose, none too tight, a man who can’t blame
his circumstances.’ Anselm hesitated, ashamed. ‘He killed men as if they were
animals. He treated women as if they were rags to clean the mess off the floor.
And now he turns the pages of a stamp album lamenting the gaps in his
collection. And yet I still want to know if there remains in the darkness a
narrow route to mercy.

The Prior reached down
and picked up some wood shavings and splinters. He began sifting them through
his fingers as if he were looking for something. Finally he let them drop and dusted
dry his hands.

‘I’m no Father Zossima,
Anselm,’ he said. ‘I’m no wiser than you, no more foolish, but I’m sure of
this: evil, simply present? You’ll never understand it and neither will I.
Ultimately that’s what evil is … it’s something bad without an explanation.
Which is why it’s terrifying. And as for mercy in the dark — well, what is
salvation if not a light greater than all the shadows, something good which
cannot be explained? It, too, can be terrifying. I doubt if men like Otto Brack
would dare to look in its direction.’

The Prior’s words stayed
with Anselm for the remainder of the day He saw the wood chips falling from his
hand, back on to the floor. And he saw Róża in a completely different
light. For the naming of Brack as Brack, without any understanding or
indulgence, revealed who she’d been up against, and the scale of her
accomplishment in stepping through and beyond the suffering he’d prepared for
her. She’d trusted again, in the full knowledge that things can end badly She
brought the truth to light knowing that Celina would be harmed and that she
might reject her. She’d trusted in something stronger than his hate. She was
simply a good woman.

Over the following months, Anselm waited
apprehensively to learn of outcomes. As ever, he was encouraged to learn that
evil, named and exposed, always loses some of its power.

The disclosure to Celina
of her background had obviously been a shattering experience. She was being
helped to cope with the implications by a skilled counsellor called Myriam,
said John — he didn’t know the surname and Anselm wondered if counsellors even
had them — and one of her remarks (‘you are always more than your past’) had
worked its way into Anselm’s mouth as if it was a gem from his life of silence.
When the time was right he planned to let it drop, lightly But there was, if
anything, a sharp irony to the failure of Brack’s plan. Coping with the
knowledge that one’s parent had been murdered was dramatically offset by the
relief of learning that the ideologue who’d ranted at you from infancy was not
your father; that the woman who’d chosen puzzles over the enigma of life was
not, in fact, your mother; that Celina’s relatives were, in truth, the
dissident activists of her imagination. She had the whole package, from torture
to martyrdom. She was exactly who John had thought her to be. There was a hint,
too, that she had found a deep bond with him — something more prized than any
collection of reinstated memories: in very different ways and for very
different reasons, they’d both been abandoned; they each had to grapple with
the consequences of failure — their own and other people’s; Anselm sensed the
unique and warming softness of people who no longer judge that easily.

Chapter Forty-Four

Brack’s arrest caused a sensation in Warsaw
and beyond. Sebastian had been right in saying the case had a unique quality.
The revelation of crimes by the secret police during the Terror linked to
secret police operations under martial law evoked the entire period of
communist rule, presenting it as a seamless garment, dirtier in some places
than others, but one thing. A straitjacket stitched and darned by the dedicated
service of certain individuals. Memory and moment came together in the media. Róża’s
vindication, for so long a personal concern, had become a matter of national
remembrance.

Anselm followed events
at a distance, thanks to faxes or calls from Sebastian and John (Larkwood had
yet to obtain a computer. The idea of explaining an email to Sylvester had left
the Prior speechless). He’d seen copies of press coverage, and mused over the
smudged photograph of the accused, barely able to discern his features.
Flinching, he’d read a transcript of Róża’s evidence. But, curiously
nothing came from Brack himself There’d been no transcripts of interviews
conducted in the presence of his legal representative. And then one morning in
April, the Watchman beckoned Anselm as he floated through reception on his way
to the hives. The old fellow was cross.

‘It never works.’

‘What doesn’t?’

‘That.’ He hit the
console with his stick. ‘Why can’t we just have one phone? Why the wires like
springs? Why the buttons and lights, blasted thing? You know, other calls come
in while you’re trying to— ‘Who rang?’

‘A chap from a place
with memories or something. Flags, too, I think. He was nice enough, I suppose.
Said he’d been here once.

Anselm immediately rang
Sebastian from an extension near the cloister.

‘I’m worried about this
trial,’ came the voice without preamble. It was as though Anselm was in the
room on the other side of his desk. He pictured Sebastian, feet up, clothing
acceptably disarrayed, his bloodshot eyes on the wall of box files surrounding
the photograph of an old woman standing behind the wheelchair.

‘He refuses to answer a
single question. Won’t say “Yes”, won’t say “No”. Affirms nothing, denies
nothing. But he’s not playing the system. He’s pleased. He
wants
the
trial:

‘Wants?’

‘He
wants
Róża
to take the stand and say out loud what he did. He’s impatient for the
prosecutor’s opening speech. Doesn’t even want a lawyer. Says someone can be
appointed for any legal stuff. It’s as though this were his day and not hers.
He wants Róża to say whatever she likes. He is supremely unconcerned.’

Slowly, Anselm sank to a
stone seat built into an arch. What had Brack done? What further step had Brack
prepared? This was not a man who entered a brawl. He was a cold planner. A man
who worked out his preferences. And he was obviously confident. What was the
final trick? Róża wouldn’t find out until she stood up in public … and
then it would be too late. Anselm’s mind careered into a manner of darkness:
who else was left for Brack to use? Had he trapped someone else vital to Róża’s
life and story?

‘I’ve lost the first round
already’ said Sebastian. He was rapidly clicking and unclicking a biro.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The murderer of Stefan
Binkowski won’t be on the indictment.’

‘Why?’

‘Róża insists. Have
you any idea who he might be?’

‘None.’

Which was untrue.
Because Anselm had thought of the empty wheelchair. And he’d recalled that
Sebastian, too, had a personal story linked to the struggle. He’d promised to
tell Anselm after Brack’s conviction.

‘He’s the brother of
Aniela Kolba.’

Anselm, caught by
surprise, thought for a moment. His mind whirred back to the grovelling reports
of FELIKS.

‘Think about it,’ said
Sebastian. ‘It sheds a different light on Edward.’

It certainly did. It
took time for the picture to develop in Anselm’s mind, but when the print was
done, he stared at it with a mixture of revulsion and pity. Stefan had been one
of the Friends. They’d arrested his sister, presumably to exert pressure on
him. Maybe, unknown to Róża, Aniela had been a Friend, too. It didn’t
matter. The point is they had her brother and they’d been beating him for
months. Getting nowhere. Same with Pavel and Róża. To break Róża’s
will — and possibly Aniela’s — they’d shot Pavel and Stefan. But it hadn’t
worked. That left the two women in the cell, either of whom could still lead
them to the Shoemaker.

‘I don’t think Edward
went to them,’ said Sebastian. ‘I reckon they came to him.’

‘Saying if you don’t
watch your wife and Róża, we shoot them both.’ Anselm felt the strange
sick feeling that comes with recognising something deep and wicked. ‘So Edward
agreed — hell, what’s so bad about watching someone? Just give Brack some
peanuts every once in a while.’

‘Exactly,’ replied
Sebastian. ‘They let Aniela go first, but not before she’d urged Róża to
come and stay. The invite must have been Edward’s. Róża took the bait: she
moved in.

And Edward, who’d saved
the lives of two women, who’d banked on feeding the monkeys, found himself in
the cage. He’d told them what he’d seen and heard. In time, he’d secured his
son’s education with information on Magda the troublesome Jew He’d become the
real thing — a Comrade who played the system for what it was worth.

‘Does Róża know
that Edward informed on her?’ asked Anselm.

‘I didn’t want to tell
her, but once we started talking about Stefan and Aniela he became the elephant
in the room.

‘How did she react?’

‘Silence. But not your
kind of silence. Or mine. It was something dark and awesome. She’s meant to
fall down with shock — that’s what ordinary people do — but she didn’t even
waver. She just took the blow You know, going over the case, it’s always
silence, every time anything leaks out of her past. A sort of agonised soaking
up. She even looked heavier afterwards.’ A reflective pause came down the line.
‘She’s ageing before my eyes, Anselm. She’s not the woman I chased round Warsaw’

‘So it’s a variation on
the same old story’ said Anselm, peremptorily ‘If the trial goes ahead for the
murder of Aniela’s brother, then Brack will reveal Edward’s history of
collaboration.’

‘He hasn’t made the
threat, it’s just built into the facts. He doesn’t have to say anything. He’s
planned his way forward. And there’s an added feature.’

‘Which is?’

‘Aniela doesn’t know her
brother is dead. Or that they had him in Mokotów at the same time as herself.
For her, he’s missing. For ever missing. So, getting back to Róża, she can
only move forward on Stefan by telling Aniela that her brother was shot and
that her husband was an informer. To say nothing of Bernard, his wife, their
son …

Such were the
implications of disturbing the past. Was it
really
a good idea? Wasn’t
there a lot to be said for drawing a thick long line and living as best as
possible on the other side? Even if people like Brack were the winners? Isn’t
it part of their crime that the suffering they’ve caused others, collectively
outweighs the impact of any punishment? He blurted out his thoughts, surprised
to hear his own quarrel with conventional justice.

‘That’s why Róża’s
trial is so important,’ replied Sebastian, clicking his pen. ‘It’s not just
hers. She represents all the people who never got a chance to tell their story,
all the cases that can never be brought. She’s the epoch: its victim: its
accuser.

At the conclusion of
that phrase, Anselm seemed to glimpse some of the scrawl upon Brack’s mind, for
he, too, was the epoch, though his role was so utterly different. And he would
defend it.

‘I know how he intends
to stop Róża,’ said Anselm, in a hushed voice. The door to the cloister
had been left open. He looked at the Garth, just visible between two pillars —
a rich, moist and violent green, bathed in spring sunshine. ‘Everything returns
to the same principle of destruction. He uses families. He sets father against
son, mother against daughter.’

Sebastian followed
Anselm’s lead. ‘He’s got something on Aniela. I never thought of her. She
cracked in fifty-one, she …’

Anselm didn’t listen. He
was thinking the matter through.

… so if Róża
pursues Brack —’ concluded Sebastian — ‘there’ll be no more warnings. This time
it’s mutual, public destruction. If he goes down, Aniela—’

‘It’s not her,’ said
Anselm evenly cold and certain. ‘Brack saved his best trick till last.’

Spring is a special interlude for a
beekeeper. New colonies begin and the old ones come back to life. There’s a lot
to do. And Anselm normally found himself oddly fulfilled pottering about the
hives with his list of jobs. But not this time. He was still haunted by the
reunion of Róża with Celina, haunted by Brack’s intentions, haunted by the
long shadow of Klara’s handlers. The Terror wasn’t over.

By late September the
harvest was over and then, as if there was some kind of connection between the
bitter and the sweet, a letter came, written in a wavering hand he did not
recognise. It was from Róża. A trial date had been fixed for the spring.
Father Nicodem was too old and, frankly not altogether well. Would Anselm take
his place, even if he understood nothing? The Prior didn’t hesitate to grant
his permission. He, like Anselm, understood only too clearly that Róża’s
suffering was by no means over; that it was about to reach its conclusion.