…’
Anselm had watched uneasily from on high. As the court had emptied Irina had simply stood there, like someone in the cheap seats who hadn’t understood the play The allusions had gone over her head. People had to push past her while she stared at the empty stage and the vacant chair that Brack had occupied; from which he’d walked a free man. She’d been forcibly escorted from the building.
‘She was a victim,’ said Anselm with a snap.
The memory of Irina’s ejection haunted him: she was the only person left behind in Breughel’s hell. She’d fallen outside of Mad Meg’s raid on the underworld. Anselm had tried to talk to her in the street, but her disappointment had imploded; she’d drifted away unseeing, just like that young woman outside Mokotow He was still thinking of her, dishevelled and disorientated, when the phone rang in his bedroom later that evening. He’d been wondering whether to call round, unannounced, bringing more flowers and a pizza, with something fizzy and sweet for the son.
‘Father, there’s someone here,’ began Krystyna, tentatively For once she wasn’t cheery. ‘They want to know if you’ll hear their confession.’
Chapter Fifty
There were no appropriate quiet corners. There were no small rooms available. Every conference facility was booked, even the Warsaw Hall, a 15,000-square-foot auditorium large enough for two thousand delegates. But the place wasn’t occupied for the moment. The management had authorised its use, for an hour or so, with apologies for the lack of intimacy Amused and perplexed at the same time, Anselm followed a suited porter to the lift, up to the second floor of the hotel and through a half open door.
On stepping inside, Anselm froze.
Light fittings like coronets cast a phosphorous glow upon a red carpet patterned on loops like rows of tabletops without their legs. Rank upon rank of seats faced a small wooden podium with a microphone. Just beyond, to one side, sat Otto Brack, waiting to address the plenum. Unmoved and unmoving he watched Anselm’s slow approach to the front row.
‘You were responsible for that fiasco, weren’t you?’ His German was low and hoarse as if he’d been shouting. The glasses, dark in reaction to the light, made his eyes look like deep brown holes in his head. ‘I’m told there’s been a meddling priest who wanted to understand why I shot men and tortured women.
He pointed to a facing seat and Anselm sat down. They were six feet apart, sitting on either side of a circle in the carpet.
‘I never had Frenzel’s loathing for you lot,’ continued Brack. A thin arm moved woodenly in the loose brown suit, shoving aside his colleague’s aversions. ‘I just thought you were too concerned about the next life and interfered too much with this one. There was work to be done. Great work.’
‘What do you want?’ asked Anselm. To his own surprise, he wasn’t afraid. People who link their fate to greatness always appear small.
‘The truth.’
‘You’ve had it.’
‘No, I haven’t; and neither has Roza. She thinks I had some scheme to escape laws written by the victors. There was no scheme. ‘He appraised Anselm through those strange openings in his head.
‘You and I hold two parts of one story. Together they make the truth that the court didn’t hear. Because of your interfering, they didn’t come together. This is what I propose: I’ll explain the crime, if you explain the mercy The result will be the trial I never had. Is it a deal?’
Anselm didn’t have the opportunity to walk away from the negotiating table, because Brack opened up — his pitch low and grating, the phrases cold and prepared — implementing his side of the bargain. Frenzel had evidently said nothing of the file. He’d given his boss a tip-off, a taster, knowing it would send him to the priest; knowing it would flush out an old mistake.
‘Have you ever seen a city reduced to a heap of stones? Have you seen the dead bodies of children floating in a sewer? Have you seen the world you know stamped on and beaten flat?’ Brack rasped his authority. He knew about desolation. He’d seen things that set him apart. When he saw that Damascus wasn’t there any more, he’d heard an unearthly voice. ‘Of course you haven’t. Few have. But I did. I’ve seen it and I’ve felt the ash in my hands afterwards.’ The indignation and self-aggrandisement poured out like the complaint of a servant who’d never been properly thanked. ‘That’s what I faced in forty-five,’ he said, stabbing his leg with a bony finger. ‘I looked around and all I could see was a bare horizon.’
Brack came to his feet, head held high, as if waiting for the absent applause to stop. When he heard the hushed silence, he moved instinctively to the podium, as if drawn by a magnet. On arriving, he listened surprised but attentive as his breathing grated through the loudspeakers… by some awful act of forgetfulness the microphone had been left on.
‘What’s private property?’ His voice, amplified, soared over the empty seats of the auditorium. He was getting back to basics. ‘I’ll tell you what my father told me. It’s a fence that someone’s put round a field and everyone else is simple enough to think that the grass on the other side was never theirs. What’s history? It’s the misery of the majority brought in afterwards to do the ploughing for a pittance. Well my father didn’t live to see the day but all the fences had gone. It was time to think again, from scratch. The reconstruction? It wasn’t about where the fences used to be; it was about how we shared the fields. Those of us who survived the war… we had a chance to build something new Something different. Something noble and good. Except, good things are never that simple.’
He scanned the room as if Anselm wasn’t there, drinking in the absent nods and shared indignation. The crowd knew where the speaker was going.
‘Because those old landowners, the old szlachta, would never accept change. They just want to turn up with their maps and title deeds and start rebuilding their interests, putting up the old boundaries — Brack leaned forward, urgent and raucous, stabbing the air, now — ’well someone has to stop them.’
He leaned back, listening to the echo of his realpolitik, nodding significantly.
‘Someone has to have the courage to do difficult things.’
He paused again, his voice resounding.
‘Someone must step forward to meet the demands of the moment.’
Brack turned towards Anselm as if appraising a snake in the grass. He seemed to be wondering if a man concerned about the next world had the slightest idea about how to handle this one, especially when it was in the throes of regeneration. Tentative and guttural, he tried to explain.
‘There’s a time in a child’s life when it’s most vulnerable. Those responsible for its growth must protect it at all costs. They act according to high instinct. Moralities are written afterwards.’ A shaking hand briefly tugged at a lapel, implying a kind of modesty. ‘It is no different with the renewal of society. There is a moment in its growth, just after its birth, when it is weak and defenceless. When those vested interests can creep into the nursery and suffocate the child, the child that will grow to overthrow their kingdom.’
Anselm tried to peer inside the two brown discs that seemed to hover over Brack’s face. His repugnance at the imagery of child protection was slightly overtaken by an almost technical observation: he’d heard two voices, that of Brack’s father talking to a boy about the field and fences; and someone else’s, making a speech about men born for the moment. Anselm thought it was Strenk’s.
‘There are men called to act in defence of tomorrow They must forget themselves.’ Brack’s teeth chafed his bottom lip. ‘They must do what others dare not do, for their sake. They must shoulder the burden. And they do it by terror. A brief wave of terror, to frighten off the agitators and hooligans.’ He looked aside, as if he’d heard a noise offstage — some whispering from the wings. Replying, huskily he became petulant, his voice barely sounding in the loudspeakers:
‘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
