Lumen (28 page)

 

Nowotny’s phone call arrived two hours later, at half-past ten. Brusque as always, the physician’s voice began by asking, “Are you alone?”

“Why, yes, Colonel.”

“Good. I read the autopsy report, and I’m coming to see you. No, I don’t want to meet at the hospital. I know where you live; I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Bora was waiting on the landing when Nowotny arrived. He heard him call from below. “Why in hell didn’t you get a place with an elevator?” And then the clump of his boots on the steps. Once in the apartment, the physician headed straight for the hall. “A Blüthner piano! Well, I see why you billet here. Will you play some Schumann?”

“As the colonel wishes.”

“Not now. Later.” Nowotny found a portly armchair to sit in and for perhaps a minute looked around. His
eyes were still taking in the sober decor when he began speaking again. “I couldn’t find anything of relevance in the autopsy. It is consistent with the cause of death, the findings are normal for a man of Retz’s age and habits. So I gave a call to the colleague who performed the post mortem and decided to ask him directly about any detail he might have observed but not found relevant enough to include in the report.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Wait to thank me. He told me nothing worthwhile, unless you consider relevant the fact that Retz’s face was only partly shaven.” Bora’s reaction puzzled Nowotny. “Is it?”

“It might. What does it mean, ‘partly shaven’?”

“Just what I said. The right cheek was shaven smooth, while chin, upper lip and left cheek had a twenty-four-hour bristle. My colleague said he didn’t notice it at first, because of the fairness of the facial hair.” Nowotny fished a pack of Muratti’s from his pocket. “What does it tell you, and what is this all about anyway? I thought you were trying to figure out who killed the nun.”

“I’m just curious, Colonel. Major Retz’s death was very sudden.”

“Oh, as for that. I had a schoolmate who breezed through medical school, graduated first in his class, was offered an assistantship on the same day and by the next morning had shot himself. A devout Catholic, too.” Nowotny tapped his cigarette on the arm of the chair. “If you’re so morbid about Retz, why don’t you come to the hospital one of these days before work and ask the medics who brought him in?”

Bora said he would do so.

“It’s generous of you to have come to tell me this in person, Colonel Nowotny.”

“That’s not why I came.” Curtly, Nowotny gestured towards the piano stool for Bora, who’d been standing, to sit down. “How clever are you?”

Bora didn’t expect the question. “I don’t like cleverness much.”

“Well, do you have common sense, then?”

“I hope so.”

“An intelligent man without common sense will never be able to do what you started to do.”

Bora didn’t mistake what Nowotny was saying. With unspoken alarm he understood the words didn’t refer to investigations or military routine. The idea that someone from the outside
knew
of it made him defensive.

“What have I started, Colonel?”

Nowotny reached for an ashtray, which he balanced on his knees. “Don’t practice cleverness with me, it’s unnecessary; I’m an unimpressionable Prussian swine. And don’t worry, I don’t read minds. Like General Blaskowitz, I come from Peterswalde: we keep in touch. Now play me some Schumann.”

Father Malecki had his back to Mr Logan of the American consulate, mostly because he didn’t wish to grow angry at him, and he was close to his threshold of patience.

Logan spoke in a bureaucratic sing-song. “A single American citizen, you will forgive me, has no business becoming involved in the internal matters of a foreign country, no matter how charitable in appearance. When the consul heard you had been detained, he threw a fit. I had to calm him down before being able to make him even consider there might have been a misunderstanding. You and I, Father Malecki, know there was no misunderstanding at all.”

“I did not ‘become involved’ as an American, but as a Roman Catholic priest.”

“You’re splitting hairs, Father. If that weren’t enough, you’ve been seen in public places with a German Intelligence officer by the name of Bora. What is your reason for meeting him?”

“It’s simpler than you think.”

“Explain it to me, then. Simply, so that I can report to the consul without getting my tail chewed.”

When Malecki finished the brief exposition, Logan let out a low moan.

“You take much upon yourself, Father. We are anxious that no more incidents should happen to embarrass the United States government, and with all due respect for your habit and connected allegiances, we must ask you to refrain from these extra-clerical activities.”

“Now it’s the consul talking,” Malecki said with scorn.

“No, the consul wanted to repatriate you immediately. This is Logan from Chicago talking, the one who attended Sunday school at Holy Name’s. Father, will you at least look at me?”

“I can hear you just fine without looking at you. And, see? Hopefully I’ll be done in less than two weeks. Give me until then and I promise I’ll settle down and say my beads.”

“Much can happen in two weeks.”

“A bomb could fall on our heads this very minute, too. Come, Logan. We’re not at war with Germany and we’re not at war with Poland. Until we decide which side we’re going to take, if any, give me a chance to do some good.”

“No more exploits, Father.”

“I promise.”

“Be discreet in your meetings. Avoid contacts with the occupying forces if possible: people talk and are resentful.
Keep from political discussions and say nothing to Bora that could be used by German propaganda. Reveal nothing to him that might be interpreted as personal leanings for or against the Third Reich. Refrain from praise, criticism or comments.”

Malecki turned around at long last, with a grin on his face.

“May I at least save his soul?”

When Malecki met with the nuns later that morning, the good cheer he had shown Logan was gone. The nuns listened in complete silence, and then began to weep noiselessly when he told them that his attempt to get help for Sister Barbara had failed.

“I don’t know why I even bothered to approach any of the Germans.”

Being disappointed in Bora embittered him because it forced him to admit how much he had counted on his help, as if Bora had ever given him reason to depend on him.

 

Bora was then stopping his car at the edge of Święty Bór, where tracks left in the mud had hardened, and a new snowfall would soon fill them. A light cloud of steam rose from the hood as he walked around the car, camera in hand. He passed the scrubby threshold of the woods and entered a rapidly thickening world of tangled branches and trees growing in clumps.

The bluish pines that gave name to the woods shot up above the underwood, surrounded by a carpet of needles and short cones bristling open. Bora went past them and straight through this time, soon reaching the slippery incline where larches spread rough branches heavy with years and snowfalls. The ground cover of leaves and needles was disturbed on the incline. Some of the branches were
broken or bent. A church-like odour of resin came from them when he brushed past.

Beyond the incline the land opened up again, unknown, wider than a clearing and more like a prairie meadow that would bloom wet in the spring. Combed yellow trails in the dead grass revealed the natural network of drainage into and from it, and although it hadn’t rained or snowed in days, the soil felt elastic under Bora’s steps. He pushed the advance lever of his camera and took the first picture.

The trench was thirty paces long, four paces wide, running across the field in a roughly east-west direction. The fresh dirt covering it had sunk in places and was so soft that when he stepped on it, it collapsed under his foot close to the edge. His boot went down nearly to his calf, and Bora struggled to extricate himself; when he did, he saw that brownish long strands had become tangled on his spur. With his gloved hand, slowly, he cleared the blackish sod in the hole to look in. He adjusted the distance scale to the minimum, and shot two more photographs. He had to walk nearly to the southern rim of the clearing to be able to photograph the entire trench.

Back on the edge of upheaved dirt where he’d seen the SD open fire, he met with handfuls of rifle casings and pistol casings, some of which he gathered into his breeches’ pockets. More pictures followed.

Standing on the spot and staring ahead towards a lacy barrier of leafless trees, meagre against the cinder sky, he knew he was looking at the last image seen by those who had been shot along the trench. Bora instinctively looked down, all too vividly imagining the explosion at the base of each victim’s skull, followed no doubt by some convulsed jerking motion when one fell over. The sensation went through him with physical clarity, bearing for the first time in this war an unmistakable warning of grief to come.

He continued to take photographs until the film in his camera was exhausted, and then walked back into the woods.

There was a half-track parked by his car at the edge of the road.

Bora discerned it through the screen of rarefying brushwood, and for a crazy instant felt that by taking one more step he might fall headlong into panic. He looked back into the tangle of trees, thinking, checking the speed of his breathing. Hastily, he removed the leather strap from around his neck, and lay the camera behind an exposed root.

It was a small group of men, composed of a redheaded officer and three SD guards armed with rifles. The doors of his car had been yanked wide. Two of the guards were going through the interior even now.

As he stepped out in the open, Bora saw they had found the empty box of camera film on the front seat.

“What were you doing in the woods, Captain?”

Bora critically looked inside his car before slamming the doors shut. “I’m not aware that I have to explain what I’m doing anywhere. This is open country.”

“That’s not an answer. I asked you what you were doing in the woods.”

“I was heeding a physiological call. What else?”

The officer had been holding the empty film box, and now crushed it in his freckled fist.

“I have no difficulty forcing you to drop your breeches and checking if what you say is true. I’d rather not have to do that.”

Bora stared down the armed men. “Then you’ll have to trust me on my word. Why shouldn’t I be here any more than you are?”

At a nod from the officer, those who had searched the car stepped into the brushwood and began rummaging
around with their rifles. The third man took his place behind Bora.

“Where’s your camera?”

Bora decided not to answer. He was starting to feel an impotent anger at being caught. “Look here…” He took one step forwards.

The crash of the metal-clad rifle stock between his shoulders burst the air out of his lungs. Bora lost his balance and was knocked on his knees by a second swinging blow. His cap flew off and rolled two paces away, where the officer picked it up and read the name on the diamond-shaped tag inside.

“I thought I recognized you. You serve under Colonel Schenck in Cracow.”

Bora tried to stand, with an entirely foolish gesture making for the holster on his side. Rifle stock and hob-nailed boot struck together this time. He landed with his face in the cold dirt. Musty-tasting loam crackled under his teeth when the guard’s knee weighed him down to take his gun.

“Here’s the camera!” The men called from the woods’ edge and walked back.

Bora strained to raise his neck and met the cold pressure of the butt plate. He could do nothing but squirm while the officer exposed the film to light.

“Do you take pictures of yourself when you take a shit?”

Bora dug his elbows in the ground in a back-breaking effort to lift himself. He threw the guard off for a moment, and at once it was the muzzle of the rifle that knocked hard against the base of his skull. The soldier was standing on his back, rifle poking until it lodged cold in the shaven hollow of his neck. Bora cringed at the contact. Muscles and bones locked stiff, but he had suddenly no control over his breathing. The officer could see him lose that control.

“Shoot him,” he said.

Bora felt a blaze of fear race up his spine at the cocking of the bolt, instantaneous agony and shutting of eyes and absurd, scary hardening in arousal all at once. The bolt locked in place for firing. His teeth clenched to crush the dirt in his mouth.

The rifle clicked empty.

His heart pumped in a seemingly immense gulp of blood, dizzying him so that his eyes were once more open but he could see nothing other than a red pulsating mist.

A lesson, he thought disconnectedly. He was being taught a lesson. Like the weary lifting of a world, weight and pressure were gone from his back The muzzle was pulled back.

Bora drew himself up on his knees.

Amused, the soldiers were walking away from him, with rifles slung on their shoulders. The officer tossed the camera into the half-track.

“Remember that I know who you are,
Freiherr
Hauptmann von Bora
.
”

It was several minutes before Bora even noticed that his tires had been slashed.

He sat in the car, mortified by having to wait for the unwanted, painful reaction of his body to abate.

Now he thought that anger was as misplaced as the other response. Resignedly, he picked up the map from the floor of the car and put it in his coat pocket. He locked the car, as if it would make a difference, and started walking west.

 

As for Malecki, he expected to meet Bora at the convent in the afternoon.

He remained there until nearly five o’clock, when it became apparent that Bora would not show up. He’d grown as used to Bora’s punctuality as he had nearly
started to believe that help might come from him. Bora was probably having dinner somewhere in Cracow this very moment, forgetful that only thirteen days were left to conclude the investigation.