The Day of the Lie (43 page)

‘Do you think I
wanted
to shoot Pavel Mojeska? Do you think I
wanted
to harm his wife? Do
you think I
congratulate
myself for having accepted those
responsibilities?’ Turning back to Anselm and the microphone, he growled his
complaint, sneering at the shallow minds of his carping detractors. ‘I say “No,
no, no.” But was it
necessary?
I say “Yes, and again yes, and once more,
yes.” I did what had to be done.’ He struggled in his loose brown suit, raising
his head to give his shouting some leverage. ‘Because I believed and still
believe that what we were trying to bring into the world was better than what
was here before. I tried to save the child before they could wring it by the
neck.
They
were the murderers. Yes,
they
were the criminals. They
killed an idea that would have transformed the future … and for what great
and noble purpose?’ He dropped his voice, nodding at Anselm as if he were
simple like the majority, as if even he, a monk, might yet understand that the
grass of the here and now was just as important as the heavens above; that it
belonged to him. ‘For what end? To fence off the fields again. To raise another
dung heap out of the ashes.’

Anselm wished the table
had legs: that the red circle in the deep pile would rise up and put something
of substance between him and Otto Brack. He was glad he’d never worked at the
Hague, instructed to defend the executioners — the ordinary people who’d let
something slip in their consciences, who now baffled the courts with the consequences
of whatever it was they’d dropped. How do we comprehend? How then do we judge?
Anselm had wanted to understand Brack, the roots of his relationship with evil,
and now he was appalled. He’d expected a complex, twisted political philosophy
something that just might begin to explain the killing and the torture. But all
Brack had rattled off was a bedtime story: a fable about a garden and a quibble
about fences, a handy catechesis cribbed from Voltaire, to hold on to while he
pulled the trigger, simple propositions of faith that answered all the
questions if you thought about it long enough, only there wasn’t time, because
an urgent moment in history had called upon men to be great first and think
afterwards. He had none of Frenzel’s wily intelligence, who’d learned his
doctrine without caring whether it was true or not. Not Brack. He’d believed
and cared. He’d never buy a slum in Prada. He’d disapprove. It would disgust
him. He had a morality. And this was the man who’d argued with Pavel Mojeska.
No wonder he’d said nothing. No wonder Róża had sat beneath a torrent of
water. There was nothing anyone could say to challenge Brack’s credo. According
to Father Nicodem, this was the man made by Strenk. This is what the Major had
constructed with the ruins of a boy who’d lost his family someone ordinary, the
apprentice who’d once felt love and gratitude. How to judge him?

‘You spoke about a
new-born child,’ said Anselm, thinking it was time to put some uncomfortable
questions.

‘Yes, an innocent life.’

‘That needed protecting?’

‘Yes.’

Anselm would have leaned
on the table if he could, so instead, he stared at the carpet. ‘You’ve told me
why people had to be shot, I was wondering if you might like to explain why
Celina had to be—’

‘Don’t be clever with
me.’

‘I’m not,’ replied
Anselm, mildly ‘It’s just that I follow the steps you took to assuming heavy
responsibilities of historic dimensions, but I don’t grasp the scheme to keep Róża
quiet afterwards.’

The timbre of the negotiations shifted
dramatically.

Brack didn’t change, as
such. But it was as though he lifted the tracing paper over a colour print.
There was a certain tinting to his voice: it became warmer. The lines around his
argument became clearer. The picture, however, remained something out of
Breughel’s unearthly imagination.

‘There was no scheme,’
he said, turning again towards the wings. ‘I thought I could make something of
her. Here was a new life, unspoiled —’ a foreign wistfulness came over him; the
coarse sentimentality of those without the normal palette of feeling — ‘I
thought I could raise her to understand what her parents had tried to destroy
to bring something worthwhile out of the father’s death and the mother’s
refusal to co—operate … her obstinate …’ The face that swung back to Anselm
was a mask of worn out linoleum, the voice hard and dry. ‘But I failed. Celina
wouldn’t listen. She turned everything upside down. At school, she wouldn’t
even colour in between the lines. She was a lost cause:

There were too many
shades of night in Otto Brack. Anselm couldn’t fully distinguish one atrocity
from another. The executioner didn’t see the perversion of the adoption. He’d
turned it into a salvific act: he’d brought something out of Pavel and Róża’s
tragedy; he’d brought the child out of Egypt into the promise of another land.
He was resentful, even now, for the monstrous ingratitude of the child taken
from the nursery — only the attack on Celina itself didn’t sound entirely
convincing. It was too brisk and short; trite, like a snap rejoinder planned
for an unfinished argument.

‘I did everything I
could,’ he murmured, gruffly ‘I tried my best.’

Anselm had tried his
best, too, and he’d heard enough. Otto Brack had no comprehension whatsoever of
the scale and nature of his wrongdoing. He stood on his own dung heap claiming
a kind of purity. He’d killed because someone had to do it; and, it being done,
like any decent man, he’d pulled out the stops to make up for the consequences.
Thank God Róża had managed to silence him. Anselm was about to rise and go
when Brack himself stepped back from the microphone. He walked away diffidently
one hand rubbing an aching hip; but when he reached the chair he came to a
halt, as though recognising that he hadn’t quite finished. Trapped between the
chair and the rostrum he started limping to and fro, his head bent. Anselm
slowly sank back down, listening to the lowered, murmuring voice.

‘They almost met.’

‘Who?’ asked Anselm,
this time strangely afraid.

‘Celina … and her
mother.’ Brack, thin and angular, seemed lost. All he’d said till now had been
for the court, prepared and crafted, but now he was wandering. He didn’t know
what he was saying, or how to say it.

‘What did you do?’ Anselm
was almost whispering.

‘I found a journalist
… first, 1 linked him up with Róża … then I linked him up with Celina
—’ he’d paused, standing still, his wavering hands moving objects slowly in the
air from one place to another — ‘through him, they would have come together. I’d
got them passports … all I had to do was throw them out … but Róża
wouldn’t go … she thought I was trying to escape the law … that I’d adopted
Celina to protect myself … there was no
scheme
… she couldn’t see
that it was better if Celina never knew what had happened.’

‘Why did you get them
passports?’ said Anselm very quietly; but the question broke the spell.

The two dark brown holes
in Brack’s head were levelled against him once more, as when he’d first entered
the hall. He returned to his seat, croaking and angry. ‘Because they were both
lost causes:

But Anselm didn’t
entirely believe him. He screwed up his eyes: behind the manifest wrongdoing
that
Polana
represented he’d discerned a contradictory image … or at
least he thought he had: there were lines drawn in Brack’s behaviour that he
didn’t appear to know about. The decision to expel Róża and Celina had
another inner logic: a kind of unconscious rebellion against himself and the
voices in his head.

Recalling Celina’s
feverish account of meeting Brack in John’s apartment, Anselm heard again Brack’s
first avowed explanation of his conduct: that he’d been helping John as he’d
once helped Celina. From one perspective, that remained true. It also remained
true that Brack’s plan to find Róża through a journal entry (written by
John, read by Celina and reported to Brack) had, as its chief purpose, the need
to warn Róża that she could never seek justice without harming her
daughter — which is what he’d told her in Mokotów And it remained true that
Brack still hoped to capture the Shoemaker. But there was more to be seen.

Brack had tried to bring
Róża and Celina
together.

He’d got them passports.
He’d planned to expel them, not just because they were ‘lost causes’, but
because he knew that if they didn’t get to the West pretty damn fast, long
prison sentences would await them both, for they’d never stop resisting the
system to which he’d given his life.

He’d planned to expel
them
together.

And not because eyes
other than his own had seen John’s journal — evidence of the offences that
would place John and Róża in prison. That had been a lie. Brack had come
to John’s flat alone, in his capacity as the Dentist, an identity unknown to
Frenzel and the other SB footmen. He’d lied to twist Celina’s arm … to make
her betray John … so that he could bring Róża and Celina back to one
another, an outcome that now revealed itself as the inner logic of
Polana.
Irina
Orlosky had said it was the only case that Brack had cared about. He’d even
dressed up to make the culminating arrest that would trigger Róża’s
departure from Warsaw Only — for all that — Brack didn’t seem to know what he’d
been doing. He hadn’t seen the parallel mechanics of his own stratagem. Anselm
was now convinced of what he’d discerned behind Brack’s argument and actions:
he’d tried to return a stolen daughter to her mother. There’d been a remnant of
humanity in Otto Brack: he hadn’t quite managed to stamp out the fire. He’d
made a confused bid for reparation.

‘Lost causes, I say’
snapped Brack, coiled in his chair, arms folded tight. ‘The pair of them.’

He seemed to be
retracing his steps, wanting to clear up any confusion. He looked worried,
vulnerable, knowing he could only repeat himself; that away from the microphone
he’d said strange things off the record. He couldn’t retract them; he’d let
slip things he didn’t fully grasp himself.

‘Well?’ challenged
Brack.

Anselm didn’t reply He
let Brack squirm in the made-to-measure suit of a killer, sensing the cloth had
always chafed his skin. Anselm stared across the divide, intrigued at that
lingering scrap of decency.

It was Celina who’d
fanned a heap of dust into flame, bringing sensation back to his life. With her
colour and craziness and cheek. After she’d walked out on him, he’d tracked her
troubled steps, protecting her from the many dangers of the brave new world,
torn between the two, though not acknowledging the tear into his own universe.
He’d almost been rescued from moral extinction … by garish nail varnish worn
by a girl who wouldn’t stay between the lines. The chance of salvation had
risen out of his crimes, but he hadn’t seen it. Then, and now, he had to keep
face. He’d once been the man of a moment, the responsibility handed to him by
his father. He couldn’t surrender that, not even for the sake of Celina.

‘Well? Speak. Now it’s
your turn,’ he barked, ill-tempered and defensive, no longer quite so
convincing. ‘I’ve told you about the crimes, now tell me about the mercy.’

Chapter Fifty-One

Anselm had made no deal. But he couldn’t
walk away from the table. There’d been a partial exchange of information.
Anselm had listened. It was his duty to complete the picture: to complete the
trial. However, he had a few preliminary matters that required a brisk adjudication.

‘What happened to JULITA’s
file?’

‘It was destroyed.’

‘By whom?’

‘I don’t know’

That was a lie,
concluded Anselm, but it didn’t matter, for now; at least the point had been
dealt with.

‘Did you let it be known
to interested parties that John Fielding had been involved in intelligence
gathering — an allegation which, by the way could only damage his reputation?’

‘No.’

‘Who did?’

‘Frenzel. I found out
shortly afterwards:

And that was true.
Anselm nodded, intrigued again by the hint of another double image. For if
Brack had known — he’d implied — he’d have stopped his subordinate from having
fun. But why? John was an enemy.

‘I’m not making an
exchange,’ said Anselm, moving on to the trial proper. ‘I’ll explain why Róża
chose mercy if you insist, but this is your chance to escape. You can walk out
of this hall, just like Róża and Celina could have left Warsaw, sheltered
by ignorance. Or, like them, you can try and shape how you understand your life
by taking account of things you never knew about. Things that were kept from
you. As you kept them from Celina. It’s a big choice. Think about it. The
protection you offered them is still available to you. I’m offering you a
passport.’

Anselm found it almost
impossible to make contact with Brack now Behind his glasses Brack was almost
absent, in a chosen darkness. Anselm was talking into an abyss. Brack said, ‘In
eighty-nine I tried to find my file. It had gone. I wanted to see what others
made of me. You see, I’m not scared of what others think. I’m more troubled by
what they do. I don’t understand Róża’s mercy and I don’t want Róża’s
mercy But if I have to live with it, I need to know why’

Anselm wondered if irony
would ever leave this man alone. The one thing he needed to fear was that file.
And chance had taken it from him. But he wanted it back.

‘Your parents were
deported to Mauthausen ,’ said Anselm. He’d decided to lay out the facts,
simply and without padding, as he’d done with Celina in the Old Mill. ‘Your
mother died there but, against what you have always believed, your father did
not.’

Brack made all the
physical motions preparatory to speech — that sudden, light rising with the
body — but then said nothing. The cracks in the linoleum round his mouth became
hard again. Anselm continued.