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 Roza 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 Roza 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 Roza’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 Roza 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 Roza… 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 Roza 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 Roza 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 Roza through a journal entry (written by John, read by Celina and reported to Brack) had, as its chief purpose, the need to warn Roza that she could never seek justice without harming her daughter — which is what he’d told her in Mokotow And it remained true that Brack still hoped to capture the Shoemaker. But there was more to be seen.
Brack had tried to bring Roza 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 Roza 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 Roza 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 Roza’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,
