Entanglement (8 page)

Rudzki really did seem unwell, and his age added to the impression. A sixty-year-old man can look great, but only when he takes the trouble. At Łazienkowska Street on Sunday, Rudzki had looked excellent, like a cross between Ernest Hemingway and Sean Connery. Today, with straggly greasy hair and dark rings around his eyes, and tightly wrapped in a dressing gown, he was a sickly old man.

The apartment must have been quite large, about three hundred square feet, but Szacki could only make a guess about that, and about the layout of the rooms in the private part. Rudzki showed him into the lounge, and this time Szacki simply couldn’t hold back his emotions. The rectangular room, with an adjoining kitchen, was about one hundred and twenty square feet in size (his whole flat was only 170), and the walls facing north and west were entirely made of glass, consisting of nothing but windows. The view knocked him for six. To the west there wasn’t all that much to see - the roofs of Ochota, the hideous dome of the Blue City shopping centre and Szczęśliwicka Hill. But to the north lay Warsaw’s version of Manhattan flaunting itself. From this spot all the skyscrapers in the City Centre appeared to be standing next to each other, both the old ones - the Forum Hotel, the Marriott and Intraco II, and the new ones - the Intercontinental, Golden Terraces, Rondo 1, the Daewoo
building and of course the Palace of Culture, which even provided an interesting contrast to the sea of glass surrounding it. The view was so totally of Warsaw that it even surpassed the panorama of the left bank from Gdański Bridge. Szacki decided he’d have to find an excuse to come and see Rudzki after dark. A search, perhaps?

“Impressive, isn’t it?” croaked Rudzki as he handed Szacki a mug of coffee. “You must come round after dark one day. Some nights I spend a whole hour at the window without getting at all tired of it.”

Szacki called himself to order.

“Yes indeed, it could be nice,” he commented indifferently.

 

Cautioned
re
criminal responsibility under Article 233 of the Penal Code, his statement is as follows:

“I did not tape-record the sessions, I just made notes. Mr Telak was silent a lot of the time, and often wept. He had had a difficult life. He had run away from home at the age of sixteen, and not long after his parents had been killed in a car crash. He had never had the chance to say goodbye to them and hadn’t even known about the funeral. As a result, he felt very guilty, and this sense of guilt had placed a heavy burden on his later life. His marriage to Jadwiga Telak - whom in my view he loved very much, and his children too - was not a success, something he talked about with sadness and shame. During his therapy we focused on his family background, to help him to come out of the shadow of his deceased parents. I judged that to be the basis for healing the relationships within his current family. I believed it was producing results, and the Family Constellation Therapy this weekend was supposed to dot the
i
’s and cross the
t
’s. In this constellation Henryk Telak was actually my main concern. The other people, whom I selected from among my patients, are in a much better psychological state. They are suffering from relatively mild neuroses.”

 

As he wrote it all down, Szacki watched Rudzki closely. The therapist spoke quietly, calmly and confidently. His voice inspired trust, and he must surely have known how to use it to put a patient into a hypnotic trance without much trouble. Szacki
wondered if he could possibly have confided in Rudzki: told him how his stomach ached every time he got home; how he had to drink two beers before bed to get to sleep easily; how the chilly atmosphere between himself and Weronika was doing him in; how the air hung heavy with rancour and disappointment over the Ikea furniture in their flat in a block on Burdziński Street; how sometimes he wondered what they had in common, apart from their child and their bank account; and how sometimes he would stand outside a flower shop - he’d have liked to buy her flowers, and he knew she’d be pleased, but he never did, he always found an excuse instead. Either it was already late, and the flowers weren’t very pretty by now, or he thought it a shame to give his wife flowers from the Praga district florists’ - they always looked like leftovers that hadn’t sold in the City Centre two days earlier. Or else he didn’t want to part with his change, because he still had to go and buy food. But only fifty yards further on there was an ATM. And a rose only cost five zlotys. Sometimes he also thought: Why should I buy flowers? When was the last time I got anything from her? A CD or a book, or even a text message other than “sliced loaf and cigarettes”? So he’d walk away from the flower shop, angry at himself and ashamed, and stop at the shop for the fucking sliced loaf, which he’d bought every other day for the past eight years in the same shop from the same saleswoman. Funny how he could see that she was getting older, while feeling as if he were exactly the same person as when he’d done the shopping there for the very first time. That had been in July. Szacki had been wearing a tracksuit, covered in dust from moving house. He was happy with the flat, happy to know that soon he’d be eating rolls and drinking kefir with the most beautiful woman in the world. He was happy the saleswoman was so nice. In those days he had long dark hair tied in a short plait, not the milk-white crew cut that made him look like the infantry sergeant out of an American war film.

Cezary Rudzki politely but very firmly refused to answer any questions about Kwiatkowska’s, Jarczyk’s and Kaim’s therapy. Szacki did not insist. He would have to charge one of them before he could get a court order forcing Rudzki to hand over the paperwork. As Rudzki described the day when the body had been found, Szacki noted with regret that none of the people interviewed so far appeared to be the murderer. Their statements were logical and seemed to be sincere; there was a clearly audible note of sadness at the death of Henryk Telak and a large dose of empathy for him. Besides, he couldn’t imagine what motive any of them could have had for killing Telak.

So thought Prosecutor Teodor Szacki on Tuesday 7th of June at 10.30 a.m. Two hours later he was already convinced that one of Rudzki’s three patients had to be the murderer.

“I’m quite surprised it’s you that’s talking to me and not the police,” said the therapist suddenly.

“You mustn’t believe what you see on TV. In this country it’s the prosecutor who conducts the serious inquiries. The police help as much as they’re told to, but all they do on their own is chase car thieves and burglars.”

“Surely you’re exaggerating.”

“A little,” smiled Szacki.

“You must feel under-appreciated.”

“I’d prefer to talk about facts, not feelings.”

“Yes, it’s always easier. What else would you like to know?”

“I’d like to know what happened on Saturday evening. And what Family Constellation Therapy is. And why your patients’ voices quiver whenever they talk about it.”

“In that case we will have to talk about feelings.”

“I’ll manage to put up with it.”

The therapist stood up, went over to the bookshelf and started rummaging in a black briefcase.

“I’m unable to explain it to you,” he said. “Unfortunately it’s not possible. Totally unfeasible.”

Szacki gnashed his teeth. What an old fool. Now they’d got to the point, things should be moving forwards, not coming to a standstill.

“Please try. Maybe it’ll work.”

“No way. I won’t try telling you,” he said, turning round and smiling apologetically at Szacki, who was shaking with fury inside. “But I can show you,” he said, holding up a small video camera.

 

Telak stands up, smiling nervously.
Szacki felt a shiver down his spine.
Telak is wearing the same clothes as when he was found dead.
Szacki couldn’t help thinking that any minute now he’d lie down on the floor and one of the others would get up and stick a skewer in his eye. Then a mark the shape of a racing car would appear on his cheek.

 

The therapist stopped the tape. The image of Telak standing behind his “parents” froze on the screen. Szacki looked at him in amazement.

“Is it a sort of theatre?” he asked. “Have they been given a script in advance telling them how to behave?”

Rudzki shook his head.

“No, and what’s more they hardly know a thing about Mr Telak. They don’t know that he ran away from home, they don’t know that his parents died in a tragic accident and that
he never got the chance to say goodbye to them. Nothing. You see, essentially this form of therapy is extremely simple, if we compare it for example with psychoanalysis, which to my mind is usually totally ineffective in any case.”

Szacki gestured to interrupt him.

“Please, one thing at a time,” he said.

“All right. You apply for Family Constellation Therapy because you’re having a tough time, things are really bad and difficult, but you don’t know why. You tell a few facts about yourself - your parents, siblings, wife, children, first wife, father’s first wife, etc. All the people in your family are important, alive or dead. And then you arrange them spatially. You take each of them by the hand, lead them to the right spot and show them which way to face. You’ll be surprised to hear it, but people often see what’s wrong right at that very moment, and why they feel so bad. For example, because their wife is standing where their mother ought to be. Or because their child is keeping them apart from their wife. In short, because the right order has been disturbed. You only have to arrange them correctly and the patient comes out of the therapy a different person. In just five minutes.”