A Grain of Truth (13 page)

Furious, he got up from his chair. He wanted to sleep, his head ached and so did his member, he had a bad taste in his mouth from the wine, and a bad moral taste in his mind from the sexual exploits, on top of which the weather was the sort that makes you feel like either going to bed or to the pub. The clouds hung low and it was drizzling non-stop with miserable, bloody annoying rain; the water was collecting on the window pane and dribbling down it in single trickles. He thought of Elżbieta Budnik, suspended upside down in a warehouse somewhere, and of the murderer watching as the blood leaked ever more slowly from her neck. Had he placed a bucket underneath her? Or a bowl? Or had he let it flow into the drain? The more detailed a scene he tried to imagine, the more a chord of desire quivered inside him for plain old human, not at all legalistic, justice. There was something charming about Elżbieta Budnik on the recording from the urban camera. A pretty woman, but with a hint of girlishness, a woman who hadn’t forgotten what it meant to skip up to someone, to laugh out loud at the
cinema and to eat waffles and whipped cream in the summer, letting a white spot get left on her nose. A woman who wanted to do things for children, workshops, shows, parties, most of them probably for free or for peanuts. Who must have already had the holidays planned, knew who was coming on what day, when there’d be an outing, when a concert, when a trip to the castle at Ujazd. Who was pleased when the mothers told her it was a pity for the children to go away for the summer when there was so much going on here.

She had been alive when he hung her upside down, and when he slashed her throat. First the bright arterial blood had gushed out in a mighty stream; it had frothed and then begun to flow down her face to the rhythm of the final beats of her heart.

For the first time Szacki felt how very much he wanted to see the culprit in court. Even if that meant examining, with a hangover, every bloody symbol humanity had ever created throughout its entire history.

He went back to the computer, wrote down what he had found about the rune
eihwaz
, and got on with the nationalist symbols. Perhaps rather than the Jewish trail it would make more sense to try the anti-Semitic one? Reading the nationalist websites was quite astonishing – he was expecting to find messages saying “Fuck the Jews with axes” or “Queers to the gas” spiced up with drawings in the style of pre-war anti-Semitic lampoons, but instead he found some smart, well-edited sites. Unfortunately the rune with the tail was nowhere to be seen. There was the notched-sword symbol of the Falanga Polish nationalist group, the skinheads’ Celtic cross, and of course the homophobic “No Camping” sign. He was just about to give up, when out of a sense of duty he clicked on a site called
lesserpoland-patriots.pl
and gave a loud sigh of relief. There in the heading, as well as the emblem of the Polish Republic, was the rune with the tail, whatever it might be.

“Hallelujah!” he cried out loud, and just at that moment Sobieraj stuck her ginger head round the door.

“And praise be to the Lord!” she added. “This morning I described that mysterious symbol to my husband and he says it’s called a ‘
rodło
’,
the symbol of the Union of Poles in Germany. And that we should probably go back to school if we didn’t recognize it immediately. I dug around a bit and… have you got a moment?”

Szacki quickly minimized all the windows on his desktop.

“Sure, I was just sorting out the papers. And of course it’s a ‘
rodło
’, I must have been pretty dead-beat yesterday not to think of that.”

Sobieraj gave him a meaningful look, but didn’t pass comment. She sat down next to him, bringing a cloud of scent with her, rather a fruity cloud, a bit too fruity for early spring, and spread some sheets of paper on the desk. On one of them the symbol, the “
rodło
”, was placed on top of a map of Poland.

“Look, Teodor.” He couldn’t think when someone had last addressed him as Teodor – probably a teacher at school. “The mysterious half-swastika with the thingumajig symbolizes the shape of the river Vistula on the map of Poland. It goes right, then straight at an angle to the mountains, then to the right. And the thingamajig is the spot where the Vistula flows through Krakow. The symbol came into being in 1933, after Hitler had taken power. The Nazis introduced the swastika, and banned the use of any other symbols except ones approved by them, and the Polish white eagle was totally out of the question – the ban on using it had been in force since Prussian times. And now look what our smart compatriots in Germany do. They create a symbol like this, and they tell the Germans it’s a half-swastika. The Germans make clever faces, nod their heads and say: yes, quite, that makes sense. The real Germans have their complete, wonderful swastika, and the Poles in Germany only have half,
gut, gut, sicher, wery polite Polnischer schweine, verstehen
?”

“Why not
verstehen
? I everything
verstehen
!” said Szacki.

“Of course, for our lot this was the total opposite of the swastika, I mean the opposite of what it represented. The ‘
rodło
’ was and is a symbol of the German Poles’ connection with the Polish Republic.”

Szacki nodded. “And what else? Does that union still exist?”

“Absolutely – from what I’ve managed to find out, it’s pretty active, with a headquarters in Bochum. It’s an organization that supports Poles living abroad, represents them officially, helps them when they’re in
trouble, like a sort of non-governmental consulate. They also have a strong national mythology, they were set up in the 1920s, they must have been operating in the era when the Nazis were on the rise, and you can guess what that means.”

“Confiscation of property, delegalization, arrests, executions, death camps.”

“Spot on. That’s why nowadays the ‘
rodło
’ is also a symbol of courage, the Polish spirit and indomitability in nationalist organizations, for example several scout packs use this sign.”

“Nationalist meaning the sort who shout slogans like ‘man and wife, family life’?”

“No, more like the reasonable nationalists, the patriotic types.”

“Reasonable nationalists?” snorted Szacki. “Are we playing at oxymorons now?”

Sobieraj shrugged.

“Maybe it’s unfashionable in Warsaw, but in the provinces some people like to feel proud of the fact that they’re Polish.”

“Yesterday you were telling me that being a genuine Pole could have very dark undertones in Sandomierz.”

“Maybe I forgot to add that between rejecting the nation and burning down synagogues in its name, there’s a pretty large area for reasonable people to claim.”

Szacki didn’t want to polemicize. He didn’t like people who had hobbies; more than that, he was afraid of them. To him, the nation was a hobby – a passion which is totally unnecessary and doesn’t help in any way, but which gets people so deeply involved that in unfavourable circumstances it can lead to terrible things. A prosecutor, to his mind, should not identify with the nation; he shouldn’t believe in anything, and he shouldn’t have a passion that envelops his mind in a fog. The legal code is very precise, it doesn’t make divisions into better and worse, it doesn’t look at faith and national pride. And the prosecutor is meant to be a servant of the code, a guardian of law and order.

Sobieraj stood up and leant against the window sill.

“Apropos burning down synagogues,” she said, nodding at something outside.

Szacki looked out; on the other side of the street stood a Polsat TV van, and there were some technicians unfolding a satellite dish on its roof. Whatever – not his circus, not his monkeys. He considered further moves to take. Elżbieta Budnik had been holding the symbol of the Union of Poles in Germany, also used by some patriotic and nationalist organizations. They’d have to talk to the local nationalists, if there were any, check out the scouts and the right-wing activists.

“Jerzy Szyller is an honorary member of the Union of Poles in Germany,” said Sobieraj quietly, as if to herself. “This case is getting odder and odder.”

“And who is Jerzy Szyller?”

Prosecutor Barbara Sobieraj’s ginger head turned slowly to face him. There were moments when Szacki found her pretty, in a nice, feminine way, not at all vulgar or blatant. There was amazement and disbelief painted on her pretty face, as if he had asked who was the last pope.

“You’re joking, aren’t you?”

No, he wasn’t joking.

II

He listened to what Basia Sobieraj had to say about Jerzy Szyller, and as soon as she had left his office he called Wilczur and told him to come at once. He needed the antidote to yet another panegyric delivered by his freckled colleague. From her account emerged a handsome patriot, an honest businessman, a citizen who paid high taxes on time, a connoisseur of art, an erudite, sophisticated man. In short, yet another flawless person in Sandomierz, the city of flawless people, law-abiding, honest and noble, who only once in a while speared a Jew or two on pitchforks or slashed someone’s throat and left them in the bushes.

Wilczur buried himself in an armchair without taking off his coat; he had brought the damp and the cold in with him, and his nose had gone red in the middle of his sallow face. The room at once became darker, so Szacki switched on the lamp and explained what it was about.

“Not a week goes by when we don’t get some sort of complaint about Szyller,” Wilczur began, tearing the filter off a cigarette. “He parked badly by the Opatowska Gate. The trees outside his office are blocking out the light. His dog shat right outside someone’s door. He parked on the pavement without leaving the statutory one-and-a-half metres for pedestrians. He walked across Mickiewicz Street on a red light, causing a hazard for road traffic. He breaks the silence at night. He blew his nose by the monument to John Paul II, offending the religious sensitivities of the Catholic citizens of Sandomierz, and by the same token breaking Article 196 of the Penal Code.”

“That last one is a joke, right?”

“No. Nor is it an exception. I wish I had a zloty a month from every citizen of Sandomierz who hates him like poison.” Wreathed in a cloud of smoke, Wilczur became pensive, probably imagining what he would have spent such a fortune on.

“Do they hate him for any particular reason?”

Wilczur laughed hoarsely.

“You really have never lived in a small town before, Prosecutor. They hate him because he’s rich and good-looking, and because he’s got a big house and a shiny car. In the Catholic world that can only mean one thing – that he’s a crook, an oppressor of the poor who has made a packet at the expense of others.”

“And what’s the truth?”

“The truth is that Jerzy Szyller is a businessman who’s clever with property, deals in it here and in Germany, and specializes in sites that attract tourists. I’ve heard that in his time he used to buy plots of land from the peasants in Kazimierz Dolny. He also invests in infrastructure from time to time – for example that new hotel on Zawichojska Road is his. I know the tax people and various agencies have vetted him several times, he’s clean. Quite an idiosyncratic type, but you’ll discover that for yourself.”

“What sort of relationship did he have with the Budniks?”

“There was certainly no love lost between him and Budnik – thanks to Budnik’s scams and his efforts to hand land back to the Church
several nice plots slipped past Szyller’s nose. As for Mrs Budnik, I have no idea, but the guy’s a bit of a philanthropist, and I’m sure he financed some of her enterprises for children. On the whole they were from different worlds. The Budniks belonged to the left-wing intelligentsia, and Szyller was more the type who has a red-and-white flag on a pole outside his house. To him they were a bit Communist, and to them he was a bit of a fascist – I’m sure they never had a barbecue together.”

Wilczur suffered from the typical Polish tendency to make everything sound like invective, even if he was talking about someone positively or neutrally. That weary tone, that slight grimace, the single raised eyebrow, that way of dragging on his cigarette to mark each comma, then taking another drag and tapping off the ash to mark each full stop. His disdain for the world in general sullied everyone the old policeman spoke about.

“Szyller. Is he a Jew?”

A spiteful smirk flashed across the policeman’s lips.

“Since the last political changes we no longer keep records of denomination or descent. But if you believe the informers, yes, one hundred per cent. As well as a pederast, zoophile and Devil-worshipper.”

For effect Wilczur raised a hand with the little and index fingers held straight, and now he looked like Keith Richards’s uglier, even more wrecked brother.

Szacki didn’t laugh.

III

On the phone, Jerzy Szyller’s low, refined voice announced in Polish and German that its owner cannot take your call at the moment, but would you please leave a message. Rather half-heartedly Szacki left one, but less than fifteen minutes later Szyller called back, apologizing for having been unable to answer earlier. As Szacki began to explain what he was calling about, he politely but firmly interrupted him.

“Of course I understand, in a way I was expecting this call, like myself, Mr and Mrs Budnik are public figures in Sandomierz, and we did,” – here he paused, almost imperceptibly – “like it or not, maintain contact. I admit that I deliberately cancelled a trip to Germany because I foresaw that I might be necessary to the legal authorities.”

“In that case please come to the prosecutor’s office on Koseły Street.”

“Well, unfortunately I’m not quite such an ideal citizen. I cancelled my trip to Germany, but I took the opportunity to see to some business in Warsaw. I’m still in the capital,” – Szacki liked the fact that he used that word – “but the Friday rush hour will start before I leave… Would it be a major problem if we were to meet tomorrow? Do forgive my impertinence – of course I could hop in the car at once, but I’m afraid even if I do that I won’t be with you before about eight.”