A Grain of Truth (29 page)

“Give ’em the pig!” someone screamed. “Give ’em the fucking pig!”

Szacki turned round. One of the lads, the “
Lebensborn
” type, had pulled a pig’s head from a black bin liner and thrown it straight at the monument. The head got stuck grotesquely among the broken
gravestones, a pink ear swaying steadily. Right after the pig, a jar flew over the graveyard wall and smashed against the pyramid. Red liquid poured onto the gravestones, slowly filling the carved Hebrew letters.

“Blood for blood! Blood for blood! Blood for blood!”

“Please, Mr Prosecutor, I beg you!” wailed the Marshal.

“I start work at eight, Captain. Those arrest sheets had better be waiting for me.”

The Tarnobrzeg crime prevention officers unemotionally handcuffed the defiant demonstrators and loaded them into the Black Marias. Szyller was driven away, the Marshal was in tears and the local residents watched the entire incident without emotion.

Prosecutor Teodor Szacki turned away indifferently and walked to his car. It was high time to call it a day and consider who from the outside could help him to unknot this provincial tangle of crime. He already had an idea.

Behind him, true to the best traditions of patriotic choirs, the arrestees were performing an encore to the tune of
The Internationale
.

“Let’s bring Poland its rebirth, stamp on baseness, lies and muck. We’re the mighty of this earth, we’re the future, the nation’s rock…”

What a country, thought Szacki. No original songs – nothing but covers and adaptations. How can things possibly be normal here?

VI

You can’t have the old things in your life, you can only have new ones. The idea of any kind of return is impossible – even if we dreamt up a way to return and wrote it down on paper, we’d end up disappointed, because a return on paper is just a choice of bits and pieces, separate words, separate shades and separate scraps of emotion. The whole tide of that time is over, never to return. And so, as I wait for my next victim, I feel calm. I’m not yearning, not brooding, not feeling regret. I have to get on with practical matters, consider what’s next. After all, you can only have new things in your life.

VII

The clock on the town-hall tower chimed four times to mark the full hour, and then struck eleven, without leaving out a single sound – at this time of night its thoroughness seemed like unnecessary cruelty. It was quite another matter that apart from the children and the policemen outside Jerzy Szyller’s house, not many people were asleep in Sandomierz. Everyone was chattering. Mostly in the kitchen – that’s the best place to have a natter, but they were also chatting in bedrooms, on sofas, and in front of turned-down televisions. They were all talking about the same thing. About the dead bodies they knew, about the suspects they knew, about the people-they-knew-who-must-have-done-it, about the people-they-knew-who-can’t-possibly-have-done-it, about the motives and lack of a motive, about secrets, rumours, improbable explanations, conspiracies, mafias, policemen, prosecutors, and once again about the dead bodies. But also about old superstitions, about legends that never die, myths passed down from generation to generation, their one-time neighbours, and finally – about a grain of truth.

Ariadna and Mariusz were chattering in front of the information channel, which broadcasted nothing but bad news; in fact, he was doing more of the chattering, while she listened and rather sparingly disagreed. She didn’t want to make a fuss that would wake up their small son, asleep in the next room, and besides, she couldn’t be bothered to argue with her husband, ever since she had officially recognized him as the biggest mistake in her life.

“I don’t get it. The painting’s been hanging in the church for three hundred years, in the cathedral even. There were trials, they were condemned, before the war the procedure was still widely known. And now they’re pretending to be so surprised the truth has come to light.”

“What truth? Are you nuts? No one’s ever proved it.”

“No one can prove it’s not true.”

“Mariusz, for God’s sake, it doesn’t work like that. You don’t have to prove innocence, just guilt. You don’t have to study law to know that, it’s… I don’t know, it’s the ABC of being human.”

“It was a normal custom among the Jews. Get it? And not just here – apparently it was the same in France and other countries. And besides, who do you think drove those black Volga limos?”

“Let me guess: the Jews?”

“So where do we get the legends about children being kidnapped by people in black Volgas for their blood? Eh? Maybe something does fit here after all?”

“Yes, one lie fits another, it’s all the same sort of nonsense. Every time a child got lost because the parents were drunk or couldn’t be bothered to keep an eye on it, out came the vampires, Jews, Gypsies, black Volgas, whatever was the latest fashion. Can’t you see it’s just old wives’ tales?”

“There’s sure to be some truth in every old wives’ tale, a grain of it, even just a tiny one.”

“Don’t give me that crap – blood isn’t even kosher, no Jew would have touched a matzo with blood in it! Flipping heck, you’re supposed to be educated, aren’t you? You ought to know such things.”

“It’s because I’m educated that I know there’s nothing black and white in history. And that you can tell everyone you’re kosher and you keep the Sabbath, but do something quite different. Do you think that when Israel was fighting the war against Lebanon they stopped on Saturdays? Well, quite.”

“But weren’t you taught that historically it was the Poles who killed the Jews, not the other way around? It was the Poles who organized pogroms and random arson attacks, and during the occupation they liked informing on children who were hiding in the woods, or sticking a pitchfork in anyone who had miraculously managed to escape?”

“That’s just one version of history.”

“And in the other one they go about at night wrapped in their gaberdines, preying on children? God, it’s incredible.”

“But you can’t deny that nowadays they do their hunting in a different way. Money’s what reigns now, instead of those barrels full of nails. Which of the banks are in non-Jewish hands these days? Is there one in Poland that’s Polish? That’s a far better way to draw blood than using nails.”

“Right. You’d better go and put a second lock on the door to make sure they don’t abduct your son. A fat Catholic baby like him would make matzos for the entire town.”

“Watch it, woman. I’m giving you good advice: watch it. Watch what you say about my son.”

“Or it could be worse than that, they might open a bank account for him, that’d be a real tragedy – with every transfer the scabs would be getting rich at Kubuś’s expense. By Christ the Lord, the King of Poland and the Universe, we won’t let it come to that! Our Kubuś is always going to keep his money in a sock!”

Father Marek and his parishioner Aniela Lewa were chattering at the table in her kitchen. To be fair to them, as the good Lord had gifted Aniela with the grace of great faith and an even greater talent for cooking, energetic slurping was more often to be heard coming from her kitchen than essentially theological discussions.

“It’s a sin, I know it’s a sin, besides, it’s late and I must go. But if you insist, then maybe just a very small piece, that bit on the edge, with the well-done crust, that’s how I like it best. If Saint Thomas himself had had a piece of your cheesecake, he’d instantly have had another proof of the Lord God’s existence.”

“Oh, Father, what a joke!”

“It’s thanks to this sort of joke I’ll have to take my cassock to the tailor’s again. But I really ought to be slimming down, the tourists are coming, they want to see Father Mateusz, not a big fatty.”

“Don’t say that, Father, you look very well.”

“Too well.”

“And what do you think, Father, is there a new fuss about those daubs in the cathedral?”

“Yes, there is. And I’ve been thinking about that lately, Mrs Lewa, I was thinking we ought to learn from those de Prévôt paintings that every murder, every form of hatred, every false suspicion, all of it is evil and we should guard against it. No fanaticism is good, no exaggeration, even if someone exaggerates in good faith.”

“You put it so nicely, Father.”

“But of course there are lots of interpretations where that painting is concerned. I was also thinking it has something to say about the issue of abortion which is so important these days – after all, the same problem existed in the past too, and it was said that they knew how to perform abortions.”

“The Jews?”

“It’s not clear if it was the Jews or someone else, and the infants were just left with them after abortion.”

Stanisław Prawy, a qualified guide for twenty-three years who conducted tours of Sandomierz, was finishing his supper at the restaurant in the Hotel Basztowy. He had been invited there by the accountants from a building firm, whom he had just spent the entire day showing round his beloved city.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I may be getting old, but I was not alive before the war, so I haven’t a clue what it may really have been like. But let us consider the logic of it. There are various religious sects in Poland and worldwide, are there not?”

“There are.”

“And within those sects, as we see, unfortunately, on television, suicides occur, and murders occur too, don’t they?”

“Yes, they do.”

“The Satanists, for example, and others. And so is it logical to say there might also have been various Jewish sects in history?”

“Yes, there might.”

“And might those sects have done some terrible things?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And perhaps herein lies the truth. That unfortunately such things did occur, and the memory of those terrible incidents has been preserved in the painting.”

Like all the town’s ancient residents, who had once known real Jews, not just the wooden figurines in the souvenir shop, for one day Helena Kołyszko ceased to be a burden and became an authority on what life had been like in the past. And like most of those who had lived
in the pre-war Polish-Jewish city, she couldn’t remember any barrels, just sunbathing together in the meadows on warm days. As she was thinking about those warm days, downstairs her granddaughter was having a discussion with her husband.

“Sylwia says she’s not sending him, why take the risk? Let the kid stay at home – no harm will come to him. After all, you know the local legend.”

“Legend, my foot. Perhaps we should ask Granny – she remembers what life with the Jew-boys was like before the war.”

“All right, let’s go up and see her. But don’t say ‘Jew-boys’, Rafał, that’s offensive.”

“So what am I supposed to say? Hebrews?”

“Just say it without the ‘boys’… Watch out for that top stair… Granny, are you asleep?”

“I’ve had a good sleep already.”

“I see you’re blooming, Granny.”

“Withering, more like. Give me a kiss, Rafał, my favourite grandson-in-law.”

“Stop spoiling him, Granny. You can remember what it was like here before the war, can’t you?”

“It was better than now. The boys used to look at me.”

“What about the Jews?”

“Ah, the Jews were the best – Mojsiek Epsztajn, oh, how suave he was.”

“And do you know, Granny, what sort of stories did they tell then? Because now they’re saying things too, stuff about blood, and apparently they kidnapped children?”

“That’s just idle chatter, but they used to tell stupid stories in those days too. I remember I had a friend, she wasn’t terribly bright, and one Sunday she went to a shop a Jewish woman had on our street; her mother must have sent her for something. Because in those days the Poles were open on Saturdays and the Jews on Sundays, so everyone was happy.”

“And your friend…”

“And my friend went to the shop on a Sunday, and as the church procession was passing by the Jewish woman closed the door to avoid
causing offence, you see. And when that friend, I can’t even remember what her name was – Krysia, I think – when she saw that she started to tremble, thinking they wanted to have her for matzos. There was a hullabaloo, and my mother just happened to be in the shop, so she saved the situation, spanked Krysia on the backside and escorted her home. But there was such a dreadful uproar that actually half the town must have believed it. The idea that matzos were made like that, and that Jews went round catching people was absolute stuff and nonsense – it’s a shame to say it.”

“But it’s hanging in the church. If it wasn’t true, they’d take it down, wouldn’t they?”

“Because everything in church has to be the truth and nothing but, I suppose. Do use your head, Rafał.”

“Well, yes, but the Catholic Poles didn’t get on very well with the Jews before the war, did they?”

“And did the Poles get on well with the Poles? Have you young people just arrived yesterday from another planet? Do the Poles get on well with anyone? But I can tell you, I lived on one side of the market square, and there was a Jewish family on the other side, and they had a daughter the same age as me, whose name was Mala. And I often used to suffer from tonsillitis, so I had to stay at home on my own. Most of my friends didn’t want to waste the day stopping indoors with me, but Mala always came by. And I always used to say: ‘Daddy, go and fetch Mala, I’m going to play with her.’ Mala used to stay all day and play with me. So I have very fond memories of her.”

“And what became of her?”

“I don’t know, she went away somewhere. Off you go now. And do think a bit, I say, because it’s pitiful how stupid all that nonsense is. Blood to make matzos, I ask you…”

“Don’t upset yourself, Granny…”

“Off you go, I say. I’m tired, it’s late.”

As soon as the young people had left, with a well-rehearsed gesture Granny Kołyszko removed a folded piece of newspaper that served as a lock for a small drawer in the sideboard, fetched out “Granma’s Liqueur”, half-filled a glass in a plastic holder and
took a healthy swig, with the proficiency of someone who had knocked back her first drink at her cousin Jagódka’s wedding in 1936, at the age of sixteen. Jagódka’s mother had a shop and got on well with the Jews; she joked at the wedding that there weren’t many Catholic Poles in the cathedral, “just a whole church-full of Jews came along”. And when the procession went through the town, a whole group of wedding guests, all the Jewish girls came out: “Jagódka! May your life shine brightly!” She and Mala had walked along, holding hands and laughing out loud, and there were so many flowers – every tree in Sandomierz must have been blossoming that day.