‘What happened to my father?’
Anselm sighed. He wanted to ease out the disclosure, but Brack didn’t want forgiveness or compassion or understanding. He wanted the reason for Roza’s mercy Anselm said, ‘He escaped from Vorkuta. According to the NKVD he’d walked a thousand miles before they found him. He’d said he was coming home to Warsaw He wanted to see his son.
‘What did they do?’
‘They shot him.’
Brack’s mouth went into a slight paroxysm; his legs started shaking like thin sticks in his trousers.
‘What year?’
‘Nineteen fifty-one.’
The hands began to tremble, too. His head fell back slightly and the change in angle allowed Anselm a glimpse into the abyss… at the eyes behind their glass walls… they were closed and horribly creased. Brack was staring at the truth of his past: in the very year that he tortured Roza and shot her husband, his renegade father — the inspiration of his life — was executed by agents of the wider security system he’d served; the system that had knowingly taken him under its wing while dragging his father to the Gulag.
He’d locked the cage and pulled the trigger for a system his father didn’t believe in.
They’d given him the key and the gun.
With confounding speed, the tremors to Brack’s limbs and face ceased. It was as though the plug to his nerves had been kicked out of its socket. A hand came up and settled the glasses more firmly on the nose. Once more his skin settled into a cracked, hard surface, the stains like weights on his head.
‘I must leave this place,’ he said, stumbling away his voice hoarse and dry ‘I have to get out, I can’t… think. I’m…’
Brack couldn’t articulate his despair and confusion because it was too deep. There was too much to think about, too many events to reconsider, decisions to review A vast crack had opened at his feet and he was falling into the darkness. The new world worth killing for had come to an end: it wasn’t just a failed dream beaten flat by the old vested interests; it had never existed. But the look on Brack’s faced seemed to admit that this was something he’d always known… ever since Celina walked out of the door. She’d taken all the colour with her, leaving behind the grey.
‘Mr Brack,’ called Anselm, instinctively rising. ‘Stop, just a moment. ‘The murderer and torturer who’d escaped punishment was staggering down a long aisle, row upon row of empty seats on either side. The delegates were on their feet laughing at the idiot who’d done the dirty work; the fool who’d thought shooting people in a cellar was an act of significance; the clown who’d abandoned those he’d loved. He reached the Hall doors and pushed his way out, escaping the silent applause.
Anselm hadn’t moved. He’d been rooted to the spot like one of the audience, only he hadn’t been clapping. As if the conference was over, he left his seat and chased after the principal speaker, but he’d gone.
One of the lifts was descending, the numbers counting down.
He ran towards the stairs, hoping to catch Brack before he left the building. He’d thought of something to say even if he wasn’t sure it was true. Rounding a corner, he saw him limping ahead. He caught up and tugged his sleeve, but Brack was the one who spoke.
‘I knew someone, once, and he used to say to everyone, “Harm the boy you harm the man”, but to me, he said, “Save the boy you save the man”. He meant you saved him to do something decent, worthwhile and good.’ He swayed as if he might fall, and moved on, as if to catch his balance. ‘You know, I was the one with the matches. I knew where I was going.’
Brack reeled away quickly One shoulder had fallen lower than the other, the sleeve of his brown jacket almost covering the hand. He began to drag one foot. Anselm followed, half stammering, not able to call out, wanting to reach the person who’d once loved Roza and been grateful to Mr Lasky.
‘Mr Brack,’ he managed, again, as if the name was all he had to say.
But Brack was in the foyer now, passing the reception desk, bright lights and glass everywhere, the well- heeled from the four corners of the earth looking idly on at an old man running away from a priest. Krystyna smiled and made a little wave. Abruptly Anselm stopped and gasped.
Standing at the entrance was Irina Orlosky She was holding out a gun, Brack’s gun, as if it were a Happy Meal. Her arms were wavering under the strain.
‘No, Irina, don’t…’ called Anselm. But she made no response: her eyes were wide and levelled; and Brack was heading towards her as if to welcome his old assistant. Screams broke out and people stumbled for safety while Brack came to a slow halt, expectant and resigned, the centre of a fast-widening circle. All at once — for Anselm — the glittering foyer became a kind of dripping cellar. Brack had returned to the place where the big decisions are made and where big people must swallow hard and seize the moment.
‘Don’t be frightened, Irina,’ he said. ‘Have courage.
Anselm tried to shout but time had seized up, and with it his reactions. His lips gradually parted, but then, suddenly came an immense bang… and Brack retreated three or four juddering steps, like a buffoon at the circus after being hit on the head with a frying pan. He paused, as if to think about it, and then fell on one knee. Seconds later — with striking gentleness, and slowly — he sank to the floor, rolling on to his back.
When Anselm reached him, he instinctively removed the glasses. Clouds had gathered over green flames — they’d come to life and were burning, but they were fast turning hard, becoming cold glass, the light seeming to vanish inwards. He let Myriam’s words fall out, still undecided if they were true or not: ‘You’re always more than your past.’
And then, all at once, Anselm noticed that he was surrounded by a hushed crowd. That Brack was dead, and that he was on his knees.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Roza was told of Brack’s death the same evening. She walked the length of her sitting room and slowly sat down, no longer quite present. Examining her face, Anselm wondered if he caught the slightest lift of that wave he’d noticed when she’d been told the contents of Brack’s file. Sadness, pity or compassion, he’d never know, but it had led to mercy And now with him dead, there was an edge to her quiet. It was almost as if she and Brack were linked by a remaining thread of understanding, that with the onslaught of terror, good and bad are swept into the one fire.
Celina seemed the most confused, battling — Anselm suspected — against the upsurge of relief which, once spent, made one feel vaguely unclean. Death did that. It demanded a moment’s thought, requiring all those remotely affected to look with honesty at the empty chair and check if the life extinguished had left anything worthwhile behind: and Brack’s hadn’t. John was indifferent, though he drew emotions vicariously from Roza and Celina, by turns reflective and furtively jubilant. Speaking to Sebastian on the phone, Anselm found him angry He’d wanted a trial. He’d wanted to see the law at work, its hands reaching back in time to reclaim lost ground, making it holy again. But it remained out of reach, unsanctified. Brack had died on a deep pile red carpet. It didn’t seem quite right. In truth, Sebastian hadn’t understood Roza’s justice: that in eschewing naked retaliation for the past she’d looked creatively forwards, where even a murderer without a defence had an open future.
Coverage by the media the next morning was spontaneously inter-connected, different commentators and presenters effectively speaking to each other in public. Brack’s death, fast upon his acquittal — peculiarly condemned and pitied by Roza Mojeska at one and the same time — ignited a debate that moved from paper to screen to radio: about the relationship between retribution and compassion. The argument became heated, even in the hotel’s corridors. The final words of the Shoemaker were discussed like never before. Roza, to the end, had been his loyal messenger.
Anselm’s reaction? The sight of the shooting itself profoundly disturbed him: the thud and the staggering backwards kept recurring before his eyes and ears… followed by the slow, comic drop to the ground. Even the death of a man like Brack stirred something in the stomach. The sense of sickness wouldn’t go away.
He also felt peculiarly responsible, asking himself if he should ever have entered the Warsaw Hall; if he should ever have taken that oyster to Frenzel; if he should ever have brought Irina Orlosky from Praga into the
