A Family Madness (28 page)

Two of my fellow cabinet ministers asleep on camp cots in one corner of large reception room. Wall bracket lights on above them. Their faces have a yellow stain of exhaustion. Across the room Ostrowsky at large desk with doughty Franz Kushel, chief of our forces, a man who's impressed me in past months with his moral strength. A number of maps wide as carpets on the desk, uppermost a map of the city. The aide went to Ostrowsky and told him I was there. Ostrowsky signaled me over without taking his eyes off the map. “Thank you for coming, Kabbelski,” he said when I reached the table. “Grievous business. Russians threatening the Minsk-Moscow highway. General Tippelskirch's Fourth Army in danger of encirclement. Franz here tells me Wehrmacht wants to blow everything—the cathedrals and the Bernardine monastery, the Town Hall and the Belorussian Library, the Natural History Museum, the Opera House, the lot.”

Kushel smiled. “They want to deny the Soviets culture as well as installations.”

Ostrowsky covered his eyes with a hand, said to Kushel, “Want you to make it clear to General Busch's office” (Busch has just taken over Army Group Center) “Belorussian Central Council will not let its troops be used for destroying cultural treasures.” He handed Kushel a sheet of paper. “That's what I'll tolerate—the armory, the Svichloch bridges, the radio station, the airport control towers, the power stations, the fuel storage depots, and the railway yards. We will not declare war on our past.”

The forthright Kushel waved the sheet of paper Ostrowsky had signed. “It's important for me to have this,” he said simply. Ostrowsky smiled thinly at him. “Remind them that even if we go we're all coming back,” he advised.

“Some of them don't believe it,” said Kushel. He rose, looked at me, smiling absently, then switched the smile off and looked away. If all this meant some sort of embarrassment it is first time I ever saw him show any. “I'll use the telephone in the bedroom and make an appointment for early morning.” He left without saying anything further.

Aware, since we had worked together in adjoining offices in Town Hall for past two months, of his unusual constraint tonight. Told myself however that with exhaustion, the Soviets, the partisans, the Germans, and the carousers in the corridors, there were plentiful reasons to explain it.

Ostrowsky looked at me. A bleak face, but it always has been. Lincolnesque. The mask for a soul who has never known a moment's rest.

“Stanek, I have something very grave to ask you to do. You are the most junior of my ministers. This afternoon's election by acclamation was not merely a vote for me, but a vote for Belorussian unity. It means that the Western faction—what I've heard called the papal gang—have accepted my leadership in a manner which they cannot in the future deny or revoke. But as you can understand, Abramtchik and his aides did not support me for no price at all. They want their faction represented at all levels of the cabinet. This has forced on me the sad necessity to adjust the cabinet I would have wanted. I have to ask you, Kabbelski, to resign as Minister for Relocation.”

I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him that this was a portfolio to which I was dedicated not merely as some opportunist politican might be but with my Belorussian fiber and with all my desire to make Belorussia safe for the Genias and the Radeks to walk abroad. But shock had slowed me and he spoke first.

“Stanek, the Soviets are about to retake Belorussia. Busch had these plans for making Minsk a fortress but it was never realistic. The panzers are finished. It was in the front of the Third Panzer Army, the champions in 1940 and 1941, that the hole was knocked, the salient which jeopardizes Tippelskirch. It could be a year or even two before we return in the wake of the twentieth century's final cataclysm. Your title has no meaning until we do return. For that reason I ask you to surrender it to one of Abramtchik's faction and to take the relatively minor post of Minister Assistant to myself and Deputy Minister of Justice.”

I knew there was no one else for this task of mine. Only way I could hold out hope to Danielle of a return to Belorussia—a return in which she could take her easel wherever it suited her—was in my capacity as Minister for Relocation. She would trust a Belorussia in which I held such an authority. She could trust no other. From childhood she had dreaded the status of refugee. Now she was faced with it again and without any guarantees. All I could provide her with was Minister assisting the President. And that was not enough. While I hold present post, can guarantee her the villages and the forests. Now Ostrowsky wants to pass them over, for reasons of factional convenience, to someone else. But did not have the gift to express all this to someone as austere—a genuine political monk—as Ostrowsky.

“President Ostrowsky, I have drafted the relocation plans and drawn up a scheme of administration. Am I to see them brutalized by someone else? Or someone else claiming them as his own?”

Ostrowsky sighed. “Stanek, vanity at a time like this!”

“Not vanity, Mr. President. I belong to this project body and soul.”

“We could call it the Kabbelski plan if that would make the pill easier to swallow. It is normal in cabinet government, Stanek, for a new minister to inherit his predecessor's plans and to go on with them or not. Besides that, as I said, we will be very lucky indeed to implement
any
policy in the near future; we will be very fortunate indeed if Minsk is held and our cabinet positions become more than mere names.”

I buried my face in my hands. Ostrowsky is very perceptive and could sense what the gesture meant. “You and your family will be evacuated in good time. I have von Gottberg's word.”

I smiled so that he would know I was not being self-indulgent. “If it weren't for Danielle, I'd just as soon join one of the better Defense Force battalions and make a stand.”

“I'm not going to throw Defense Force battalions away on romantic stands. Kushel's division, made up of all our 20,000 policemen, will retreat with the SS and the Wehrmacht. And you—do you think we can afford to lose you?”

“Only from a specific job,” I said. “Is it the case, Mr. President Ostrowsky, that Abramtchik approached you before your election today and offered support in return for senior places for his hacks?” Because my impression was Abramtchik was taken by total surprise!

“He approached me afterwards.”

Thought about that. “What could he offer? He'd already been maneuvered into supporting you. Sir, it seems to me bad business to pay afterwards for a favor which has already been freely done.”

Ostrowsky smiled wanly down on the vast map of Minsk, the various colors of cathedrals and sewers, squares and generating stations. “He offered me continued support. You don't have to be told. Abramtchik built up a powerful Belorussian support in Paris between the wars but does not have the influence with the SS that we enjoy. As well there is the fact that his brother is a NKVD official and that Mikolai himself was a Communist in his boyhood. Some delegates here will tell you that Abramtchik himself is a Soviet plant. All these questions have the power to tear us apart when we need a show of unity to present to the Allies. What if we reach the West and are negotiating with the Americans, being taken seriously by them, when unresolved factionalism causes the papal gang to found an alternative Belorussian government. It will be recognized by French intelligence and by the Vatican, and the Americans and British will become confused in their attitude and fail to recognize us. It is prodigiously important, Stanek, that that should not happen. To prevent it, I am willing to make a substantial gesture. The substantial gesture is your position in the cabinet.
They
know you're like a brother—that this is therefore no easy accommodation for me to make.”

“They tried to lobby me, but I was loyal.”

“For that I thank you. But in cabinet matters, Stanek, loyalty must be its own reward. By appointing you Deputy Minister of Justice under myself, I shall make you unofficially my cabinet aide, a position from which I can credibly promote you in future.”

“Which of his faction is to inherit my plan?”

“We should know by tomorrow. Resign please, Stanek, so that they can never say you were dismissed.”

Found myself wishing I could yield, but the plan too intimate to me—as I'd warned him. Also felt that I needed to resist, not to go voluntarily—otherwise could not work out pattern of future alliances or bear the diminished luster Ostrowsky now held for me.

Gasping for air, told him, “I regret you will have to dismiss me, President Ostrowsky.”

Which he regretfully but immediately did.

Found out before morning session Redich to take over the Relocation Ministry. Feel that in my political landscape all the signposts have been reversed.

40

Delaney called Uncle after nine at night, an hour when Danielle should have been there alone reading a novel, the yellow codes of all the clients glowing on the computer screen by her elbow. Warwick answered however.

“You're not making an offer for the business, Terry?”

“Not unless it comes with a stock of explosives,” said Delaney.

“You're what they call a droll bugger,” Warwick told him. Warwick seemed to be laughing.

Delaney asked to speak to Danielle.

“No,” said Warwick. “She wouldn't want you to. What can you do, Delaney? Meet in a parking lot for a last embrace? She's got too much dignity.”

“Put her on, Warwick. If that's what
she
says, then—”

But Warwick refused. In the living room Gina pretended to watch an American comedy about a boutique whose owner, a bright-eyed anorexic girl, was in love with a weight-lifting fruiterer. At least it was meant to be a comedy, but when love was threatened everyone grew earnest in that awesome American way, and earnestness prevailed and, because everyone on the screen expected it to, healed all. Gina expected nothing from earnestness, but for the sake of her pride she needed to pretend an interest in the comic-strip love affair. Delaney wondered what women did in these circumstances before the television age. Read the classified ads, pretended a deadly serious interest in
Births and Deaths, Furniture for Sale, Houses and Land/North Shore Line, Machinists Wanted
.

“Put her on,” Delaney insisted, knowing that a sort of decency demanded that, yet already pleased at the idea of Warwick and Danielle graciously saving him the pain of hearing the voice of his sole desire.

“No, I won't,” said Warwick. “Do you know what my father thinks of you?”

“No,” said Delaney, half hoping again that distracting insults would fly.

“He thinks you're an honest man. And you know I'm one too. So you'll know I'm not lying when I say she has a severe respiratory infection and wouldn't be able to come to the phone if she wanted to.”

He began to ask frantic questions about her health.

“Of course she'll get better. We Kabbels weren't made to succumb to flu. Good night, Terry.” He hung up.

Delaney felt at the same time deliverance and the sense he was committing treachery. He dialed the number again but it would not answer. He dialed it again. Gina rose in the living room, came out past the wedding pictures on the dresser, past the Pontiff's benediction, and looked at him once in a way which seemed to convey certain questions.
What are you doing? Are you tempting Destiny? Don't you understand the unanswered telephone is a gift!
He didn't. He dialed once more and there was nothing. Gina had returned to the living room and he went and sat beside her.

“I wasn't even interested in her,” said the musclebound actor to his beloved, whose legs were as thin as those of Central Australian Aboriginal women.

“Well,” said Delaney, as the live audience on the television sighed at the last sentiments of fidelity uttered by the weight lifter. “That's settled.” He knew it was true enough to say, yet it was harder to believe than any of those doctrines Doig took apart each Sunday. He suffered that awful sense of seeing himself from the outside, seeing exactly the volume of air he took up—a slight, lithe fool, hollowed out from the chest down, no-hoper, sillybugger, deadshit. This self-claustrophobia mercifully lifted after a few seconds. Taking a breath, he saw ahead of him the marital landscape like a plain far from featureless, an earth adequate to live off but at this stage both hard to discern and, of course, empty of surprise, every corner of it covered in the deeds. A decent habitation and, as his parents might say, his lot in life.

“I hope you'll forgive all the grief and messing around,” he said.

“You don't have to worry,” said Gina. She didn't want him to go on. A commercial began and she buried her eyes in the non-news of the evening paper. There was, thank Jesus, no great surge of reconciliation and mad joy.

F
ROM THE
M
ATCH
D
IARY OF
T
ERRY
D
ELANEY

Penrith v. Norths at Kalahari Desert, as they call North Sydney Oval. McPhail out with hamstring so played full game in reserves. Really good center, Paul Borissow (some sort of Slav but not much like Rudi). Beautiful working with him—intelligent player and good at busts up the middle. Like all the good ones doesn't need opening wide as the Harbor Bridge and a printed invitation, just needs a chink of light and good night, nurse! Other player I combined with was second-rower, bloke from the bush, Gilgandra or somewhere, name of Greg Gorrie. Worked wide a lot and fast as a winger, big powerful thighs. Borissow and Gorrie two tries each in first half. Regathered a grubber myself thirty meters out in second half and scooted over for one of my own. Reserves: Penrith 32–Norths 8. Beaten in Firsts again. Bloody club secretary faces the Channel 10 cameras with straight face and tells them how all we have to do to make semifinals is win six on the trot. Deecock his old leaden self. Everyone muttering round the dressing rooms saying, “Selectors have to do something.” Some chance of promotion for one Delaney
.