The Day of the Lie (32 page)

Again Anselm couldn’t
speak. He was looking at Klara’s inscription, her life reduced to two dates.
No wonder Mr Fielding had been lost for words.

‘We think he came clean
to Róża because it gave him the best kind of cover, continued Bernard, in
a changed voice; less compassionate, more logical. ‘The remorse of a child
salvaging the mistake of his mother — it’s a good story and credible. The
mapped failings of communism from East Berlin to Bucharest? Part of a long and
detailed preparation. I think it’s called a legend. When your friend came to
Warsaw, it was a homecoming. He’d arrived to finish off what his mother had
started:

Sebastian didn’t argue as much as Anselm
had expected. Perhaps it was Anselm’s crisp retorts, the impatient authority of
a judge in control of his court. Holding the phone some distance from his ear
and mouth, he spoke to the Warsaw skyline. No, it wasn’t Father Kaminsky who’d
led Brack to Róża and it wasn’t Bernard Kolba. Their innocence had
sparkled. Anselm cut short the remonstrations, asking him to check the SB
archive for material on Klara Fielding and her son, John. Perhaps they might
discuss the outcome the following evening. It had been a long day he’d said,
and tomorrow he fancied a spot of aimless sight-seeing.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Cooking when you’re blind isn’t as
difficult as one might think, but it takes years of practice — at least when it
comes to the more demanding recipes, and those heartbreakers, like Yorkshire
pudding, which rise, or don’t rise according to a caprice of their own. John
had been down the roast dinner road many times and, after almost thirty years,
it held no terrors for him. Except for that pudding. It wouldn’t fall into
line.

John’s hands were
shaking, too, and that didn’t help. The risk of accident hovered in his
darkness. Róża had said she’d come round.
You’re a fool,
thought
John.
You should have left well alone.
Only all was not well.

John felt his way across
the kitchen, tapping the edge of the worktop. His hands wandered towards the
knife stand and he picked out the second from the left. Mechanically he chopped
some garlic, moving fast towards his thumb and finger.

Róża wanted
justice.

He’d nearly fallen over
when he’d answered the phone and heard that voice. He’d gripped the door frame,
leaning his head against the wall. He’d listened, trying to hear the traces of
accusation in her rushed explanation — the blind are good at that; they can
hear things above the frequency of ordinary sighted folk; but Róża was too
good; she was too smart; she was wasn’t giving anything away She just stayed
within the conventional waveband, leaving him to pick up the signal. She wanted
to know who’d betrayed her. She’d said whoever betrayed her in eighty-two could
help her bring Otto Brack to court by facing their past. All they had to do was
agree to meet her.

Dear God, what had
the Dentist said to her? How much did she know?

John had listened with
his eyes squeezed shut, trying to locate the slightest crackle of accusation.
He couldn’t hear it. She just sounded resolved, her need for help almost
tearing at his clothes. It was as though Róża were on her knees, forehead
touching his shoes, her hands knotted into the hem of his trousers. It had been
awful.

And — out of genuine
affection, but a colossal lack of prudence, in the face of everything the
Dentist had ever taught him — he’d said, ‘Róża, come round, will you? I’ll
give you the taste of an English heaven.’

When he’d finished off
the clove, he trussed up the meat with string.

For the first time since the bandages were
taken off his eyes, John wished, with a suppressed screaming desperation, that
he could see. Róża was there, four steps in front of him, seated at the
end of the dining table. She smelled of 4711 cologne. Her hand had been cool
and soft, the wrinkles like the striations in some living stone. Her cheek had
been warm, those fine hairs touching his skin when he kissed her.

‘Do you remember the
grave of Prus?’ she said, her knife clinking. She’d put it down. Which meant
she was watching.

‘How could I forget?’
John kept his hand against the table to control the shake. For the moment, he’d
have to leave the wine. He didn’t want any spilling. ‘I never asked, why did
you pick that spot?’

‘The caretaker at Saint
Justyn’s once brought us … he was a wonderful man, always dressed in patched
overalls. Mr Lasky His eyebrows were huge, like woollen hats for his eyes. He
played the banjo.’

He’d told them stories
when she was a child. His job was fixing doors and windows and pipes but he
found an excuse whenever he could to drop his tools and be with the children.
He’d loved children. That’s why he’d taken the job in the first place. They’d
shot him in the ruins of the Ghetto while the stones were still hot.

‘Hot?’ John’s breathing
scraped out the word; his chest was tightening.

‘There was an Uprising
before ours. After they’d crushed the remaining Jewish community, they blew the
Ghetto to pieces. I’m told the Shoemaker was in there.’

Her knife clinked. She’d
picked it up … but she wasn’t eating … she was looking away John snatched
at his glass and gulped some wine.

‘The grave of Prus,’ he
said, playing dangerous, going back to the place of Róża’s arrest. ‘I
loved the carving of that child.’

‘Me, too.’ Her knife
clinked; so did the fork. ‘Do you remember that article you did on me for that
series on lives lived in secret for the truth?’

‘I do-o-o-o.’ John drew
out the last word as if he’d just been brought to something fondly packed away
in the attic.

‘The title embarrassed
me
hugely:

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes. It made me
sound like a hero.’ Her gruff voice showed smiling and affection. ‘That was the
beginning, wasn’t it?’

‘Of what?’

‘Our friendship.’

‘God, of course, sorry,
yes.

‘Don’t worry.

‘No really I’m half out
of it. Getting the old Yorkshire to rise did me in.

‘It meant a lot, what
you told me, John … about your mother:

‘It was just …
natural.’

‘I could tell.’ She
picked up her cutlery. ‘I followed you, you know’

‘What?’ John coughed and
dabbed his mouth. ‘Sorry, it’s the string on the beef, ha. Don’t know why we do
that. The thing’s dead. Why tie it up?’

‘I said I followed you.

‘That’s right. Sorry
again. Where to? The ends of the BBC?’

‘No.’ Her tone was
smiling and warm again. ‘To her grave. If you hadn’t gone there, you know, I
might never have met you. I ,might have changed my mind at the last minute:

‘Really’

‘Oh yes, agreeing to see
you was the breaking of a golden rule.’

‘Rule?’

‘Mmmmm. Never meet a
stranger. But having seen her stone, I thought you had roots. Deep roots in my
soil.’

‘I’m glad, because I
have; because …’John coughed again. ‘Blasted stuff. It’s part of an
Englishman’s understanding of paradise. You can’t get in without a ball of
string and penknife. Dear God —’ he banged his chest, thinking what to say — ‘roots.
You never leave them behind.’

‘No, you don’t.’

They ate in silence,
John composing himself, trying to classify the signals from the other end of
the table. There was no doubting the use of code — the lives lived in secret,
that tilt towards the Shoemaker, and the tailing to a grave and the beginning
of it all — the problem was cracking it; being
sure.
What had the
Dentist said to her? If only John knew, he could play out this meal and make it
to the shore. And with that thought, he hated himself deeply and angrily Róża
wanted justice. She’d waited the length of the Cold War and more. The Big Game
was over, and John was still ducking and weaving over a Yorkshire pudding. It
was ignoble.

‘Do you remember the
film-maker?’ asked Róża.

‘Blimey I haven’t
thought of her in thirty years.’

‘You would ask about the
Shoemaker so I would ask about her. It was the only way to shut you up.

‘Ha, yes, that’s right.
Dear oh dear, I was pushy in those days.’

‘I think you’d have
given your back teeth for that interview I’m sorry it wasn’t possible:

‘No matter. I got you
instead.’

‘Yes, John, you did.’

Back teeth?
Was
that a reference to the Dentist? Was she slowly eating him up? Was she getting
ready to spit out the gristle of what she knew? John made a kind of dash for
the door.

‘She came to London,
too, you know?’

‘Really?’

‘Yes:

‘Brought a film with
her. She’d lined up a string of clips … the forces of order at work, from
fifty-six to eighty-one. Not that subtle, I have to say but hard-hitting. It
was shown on BBC2. Unfortunately —’ one finger strayed near his dark glasses — ‘I
never got to see it.’

She was drinking some
wine. There was no soft thud: the glass didn’t return to the table … she was
watching again, cautiously She was thinking, appraising, making a decision. Oh
God, what was she going to say now? Or was that last, pointed reference to his
blindness going to save him? Had he silenced her with a bid for pity?

‘What happened?’ she
asked, very quietly.

‘I went off the rails
… well, off the road actually Hit a tree.’

‘I’m sorry.

‘Don’t be. As a kid I
always tried to see in the dark. That’s why I’d eaten the carrots.’

The smell of bread and
butter pudding was almost loud, the promised tang of raisins taking the top
note.

‘I’d better be going.’

John didn’t argue. He’d
won match point with a blow below the belt. Or had he? He just didn’t know But
he wasn’t going to stay in the ring to find out. He said how pleased he’d been
to hear her voice and natter about the old days. And she was silent, feeding
her arms into her coat, settling her hat, working her fingers into the gloves.
At the door a cold blast of air swept off Hampstead Heath, bringing back the
recollection of snow in Warsaw, and tanks and soldiers. Suddenly her hands
grabbed his arms and squeezed them hard. Her fingers were on him, as his had
once been upon her in that dreary flat, when he’d seen the bullet beneath the
mirror; when he realised how close to suicide she’d sailed. He could feel the
desolation breathing mist in the darkness.

‘Goodbye, John,’ she
said, ‘and thank you.

Thank you? What for? Throughout a seemingly
endless night John gnawed at his thumb bone to keep his teeth from tearing off
his nails. He curled up, writhing with anxiety.
What for? A Yorkshire
pudding that rose to the occasion? Or that punch to the kidneys? The
wind
moved listlessly across the common. A car crawled to a halt and then pulled
away rapidly … it had to be a taxi. Feet stumbled on the pavement. Another
gust of wind, stronger this time, rattled the bay window downstairs. At times,
he didn’t like the wind. It carried too many sounds, too many signals. It made
him feel confused.

When morning came John
made a pot of strong coffee, chilled by a certainty that had grown as the heath
fell silent. She hadn’t taken back her request for help. Surprised by his
blindness, Róża hadn’t mumbled, ‘Forget what I said on the phone.’ She
still wanted justice. She was still looking to him with that bullet in the background,
despair misting her eyes.

After four large cups of
Fair Trade Arabica from Peru, John picked up the phone and dialled one of the
few numbers he knew by heart. All his life he couldn’t commit them to memory.
Finally the Old Duffer put him through.

‘Anselm?’

‘Yep.’ The goat had
managed it. ‘What’s up?’

‘I need a lawyer.’

Chapter Thirty-Nine

A special kind of quiet reigned over the
empty corridors of the IPN. Most of the staff had gone home. The outcome of
Sebastian’s research lay on a long mahogany table in a large conference room.
There were two sections of material, but each had their own piles with
individual sheets laid out for ease of reference. The matching chairs on one
side had been pulled back to the wall, allowing Sebastian and Anselm to move
freely as if they were choosing what to eat at a self—service counter. Heavy gold
curtains had been drawn. Ornate wall lights cast a pleasant, soft light.
Sebastian had made coffee and the woman in white had found some Austrian
biscuits. There was an unmistakable atmosphere of finality, embarrassment and
secrecy which was odd because the substance of everything on the table would
soon be on the TV and plastered over the front pages of the national press.

‘I’ll start with Klara,’
said Sebastian, moving to the far end of the table. He’d taken off his jacket
and thrown it on the back of a chair. ‘Her file is missing. Maybe it went into
one of the shredders. Its absence is unfortunate but not fatal to our purpose.
There are lots of clues left behind and they give us a fairly clear picture of
her value as an agent and the kind of work she carried out.’

He pointed at an open
ledger, very much like a school attendance register. His finger tapped ‘Klara
Fielding’ in a left-hand column. Alongside, to the right, was the agent name:
JULITA.

‘While we have
confirmation of her recruitment,’ he said, loosening his tie, ‘we don’t know
whether she was a volunteer or whether she agreed to co-operate following an
approach. The timing is significant. She goes into the book within a month of
her marriage. That suggests a friendly tap on the shoulder after the exchange
of rings:

Confirmed by her
friends, thought Anselm. They’d found her changed by close proximity to English
phlegm. She’d lost her sense of fun.