A Grain of Truth (45 page)

“In other words, when the Wajsbrots died she was eleven,” said Szacki, and the remaining pieces of the jigsaw fell into place. “A little girl like that, brought up in a Jewish shtetl where she belonged to the minority and where she used to hear all sorts of stories, a little girl like that could have been extremely frightened when she saw a terrifying barrel in a ruined Jewish house.”

Myszyński didn’t comment; the truth was self-evident. There was just one thing left for Szacki to find out. One single thing. And once again, there was something catching him by the throat, as if it didn’t want to let him pose that final question. It was senseless, the first time he had ever had such a feeling. Tiredness? Neurosis? Age? Were there some vitamins he was missing? It all fitted together so nicely. Three victims from years ago, three corpses today. An eye for an eye, a life for a life. The son of the partisan who informed on the doctor. The son of the secret policeman who wouldn’t let him deliver his wife’s baby but did let him commit suicide. The daughter of the little girl who through her belief in the legend of blood had condemned the doctor’s wife to die in childbirth. But why now? Why so late? Earlier on it would have been possible to get the people who were really responsible – you can’t punish the children for the sins of their parents. Was it a deliberate act? Maybe the killer had only discovered the truth this late on? That was really the last thing he had to find out. The question was taking shape on his tongue, but it was refusing to push its way out of his mouth. Fuck it all, Teodor, he shouted at himself mentally. You must find out who it is, even if you find the solution very unpleasant. You’re an official in the service of the Republic, and you’re just about to know the truth. Nothing else matters.

“So what was the fate of the Wajsbrots’ other child?” he asked coldly.

“Officially, no such person exists. However, there is someone whose age would tally. I came upon the trail rather by accident, because this person had been rummaging in the Institute archives and their name was left in the signing-in book. This individual was brought up in an orphanage in Kielce; before that there’s no trace of the person in the registers, or of any forebears – I did a thorough search. This person
has an extremely Polish surname, a family, a daughter. And works in your profession, i.e. with the forces of law and order.”

II

Everything has been accomplished, there’s nothing left to do now but to start a new life. What sort of a life will it be? How long will it last? What will it bring? Will it be possible to fill the void with love and friendship? Somewhere, some day. I’m laughing. Love and friendship, that’s a good one. Suddenly I feel immense regret for lost youth and lost love. Although I console myself with the thought that there’s no such thing as real youth or true love… After all these black deeds there’s no chance left of filling my soul with light. But it doesn’t matter. Emptiness and darkness are not an unreasonable price to pay for peace, for the fact that finally I don’t feel that stifling hatred. I shudder when there’s a knock at the door. Strange – I’m not expecting guests.

III

“You’re wrong, Prosecutor.”

Teodor Szacki said nothing; in this particular function he didn’t have much to do – it was purely a job for the police. Indeed, the Marshal was stammering and looking apologetic, but he performed all the duties stipulated by the law. He introduced himself, he introduced the legal grounds and the case relating to the arrest, checked the detainee’s identity, searched him, took away his gun, handcuffed him and told him about his right to have a lawyer present and about his right to refuse to make a statement.

Inspector Leon Wilczur submitted quietly to the procedures without saying a word; after all, he knew them from the other end. He didn’t look surprised, he didn’t struggle or argue, or try to escape.

“You’re wrong, Prosecutor,” he repeated with emphasis.

What was Szacki to say? All his muscles ached, so did his ripped-up hand and now his neck too; he really was bloody tired. Reluctantly, he glanced at the old policeman. Without a jacket, just in his scruffy shirt, trousers and thin socks he looked even more pitiful than usual. An old codger, spending his day of sick leave in front of the television in a neglected flat full of dusty antiques. He forced himself to look up and meet Wilczur’s gaze head-on, his dry, slightly yellow eyes. He had always thought there was antipathy towards the world hidden behind them, plain old embitterment and typical Vistula-valley frustration. But hatred? My God, how much emotional effort you would have to put into nursing your hatred for years on end to commit three murders in the name of revenge for things that happened seventy years ago. How much toil not to let that hatred die out or fade, not to lose sight of it for an instant.

The experts wouldn’t confirm it, and quite right too, but for him Wilczur was a madman. He had seen various murders and various killers. Plaintive, obstreperous, aggressive, remorseful. But this? This was off his scale. What could be the point of killing the children and grandchildren of people to blame from years ago, even if their crime was awful and painful? No code in the world stipulated that children were responsible for the sins of their parents – that was the basis for civilization, the border between the intelligent human race and animals driven by instinct.

“‘Fathers shall not be put to death for their children’s sins, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers’ sins; a person shall be put to death for his own sin’,” Szacki quoted the Book of Deuteronomy.

Without tearing his eyes from Szacki’s for an instant, Wilczur twittered some incomprehensible words that sounded now sing-song, now husky, pervaded with a bluesy nostalgia – it must have been Yiddish or Hebrew. Szacki raised an eyebrow enquiringly.

“‘For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations.’ The same book, a few chapters earlier. As you very well know, Prosecutor, you can find a Bible quote for anything. But that doesn’t matter.
What matters is that you’re wrong, and this mistake could have terrible consequences.”

“I could tell you how many times I’ve heard that remark from arrestees, Inspector, but why should I? You’ve heard it even more often, and you know even better than I do how much truth there is in it.”

“Sometimes a little.”

“Where the truth is concerned, a little is nothing.”

He nodded to the Marshal to take Wilczur away.

“We’ll meet tomorrow for your interview – have a good think in the meantime about whether you really want to complicate proceedings. Those killings, that stylization, that sick staging, that insane vengeance. At least be sure to answer for all that with style.”

Wilczur was just walking by, his face passed centimetres from Szacki’s and the prosecutor could clearly see the thickened surface of his eyeballs, the pores of his skin carved with deep furrows, the yellow stain of cigarette smoke on his moustache, and the sharp hairs in the nostrils at the base of his prominent nose.

“You’ve never liked me, have you, Prosecutor?” wheezed the policeman with unexpected regret, breathing his sour breath into Szacki’s face. “And I know why.”

Those were the last words uttered by Leon Wilczur in connection with the case in which he had been arrested on a charge of three murders.

IV

Szacki didn’t go back to the prosecution building. He just had two short phone conversations with Miszczyk and Sobieraj; he didn’t want to see them, he didn’t want to explain and elaborate, he didn’t want to react to their fulsome oohs and aahs and OhmyGodhowcanthatbes. The most important thing, in other words the results of Roman Myszyński’s research, was lying on their desks, and that was enough to issue an arrest warrant, which Sobieraj would deal with later. A laconic statement was also to go to the media to say a suspect had been arrested.
The rest of it was really up to Wilczur. If he confessed, in three months an indictment would be ready, but if he dug his heels in, someone had a long and tedious circumstantial trial ahead of him. Most probably not him – there was a healthy custom that cases involving police officers and civil servants were sent to a different prosecution service. Teodor Szacki was hoping that this time, however, it would be possible to keep the case here, or ultimately to persuade the people at the regional prosecution office to give it to him somewhere else. He was eager to be the one who wrote the indictment and defended it before the court. He couldn’t imagine it would be any other way.

Whatever, he didn’t have to deal with that today – today he could rest. He couldn’t remember when he had last been so incredibly, dreadfully tired. To such a degree that just plain walking was an effort; as he stood beneath the Opatowska Gate, opposite the seminary building where many years ago Chaim Wajsbrot had hanged himself, and outside which the little Leon Wilczur may have stood, hoping to see his daddy, he couldn’t keep going, and sat down next to a tramp on a small bench. Just for a moment. The tramp looked familiar; he searched his memory for a while – yes, sure, it was the one who had accosted Wilczur that evening as they were leaving the “Town Hall” bar together; he’d wanted the police to look for his missing pal. Szacki thought of striking up a conversation, but didn’t bother. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun; even if it wasn’t providing any warmth, maybe he could sunbathe a bit; he couldn’t stop worrying about looking so pale on TV, like an emaciated maggot.

He was feeling odd. The end of an inquiry and catching the culprit always brought with it a certain emptiness, post-investigation depression, withdrawal syndrome. But this time it was something else; at a rapid pace the void was being filled by anxiety, the familiar anxiety in his brain cells, signalling a mistake, an oversight, an omission.

He had no idea what it was about, and he didn’t want to brood on it. Not now. Now he pulled himself off the bench and walked up Sokolnicki Street to the market square. He passed a bar selling pierogi, he passed the Chinese which he had never dared to peep inside, and stopped briefly at the Mała Café, wondering whether a frothy coffee with a
sprinkling of icing sugar might not be what he needed. But no, he didn’t want coffee, he didn’t want waking up – he wanted a shower and bed.

He reached the market square just as the clock on the town-hall tower began its antics to mark two o’clock in the afternoon. He stopped for a moment and observed how the city was changing, gearing up for the tourist season, which would start, like everywhere else, on the long May weekend. He hadn’t seen Sandomierz in this guise yet; he had come to live here towards the end of the year, when everything was shut, there wasn’t a trace of the Polish golden autumn left, and the cobblestones in the Old Town were either wet, snowed over, or coated in ice. Now the town looked like a sick person waking from a coma, who isn’t able to get up and run at once, but is gently testing to see what he can and can’t do. The terrace of the Kordegarda restaurant was already up and running, outside the Mała the owner had set two small tables in the open air and outside the Kasztelanka two waiters were setting up a garden fence. In the distance, maybe outside the Cocktail Bar, someone was cleaning a large parasol with a Żywiec beer logo on it, and outside the Ciżemka Hotel a green ice-cream booth, which had been tightly boarded up until now, was opening its doors. It was still cold, but high in the sky the sun clearly had no intention of giving up and Szacki sensed that this weekend would be the first of the real spring.

But he wasn’t tempted by any of the bars or cafés; he turned towards the Vistula, and a few moments later he was at his flat, for the first time since Wednesday morning. He wasn’t bothered by the clothes lying about the place or the empty fridge; he took off his suit and buried himself in the bedding, which still smelt of Klara’s sweet, youthful scent.

I can’t understand why I’m not feeling relief, dammit, he thought.

And fell asleep.

V

A few hours later he was woken by a phone call from Basia Sobieraj. She had to see him right away. “OK,” he said, and went to take a shower,
forgetting that where Sandomierz distances were concerned, “right away” meant “instantaneously”. When he emerged from the bathroom, with water dripping from his hair onto the collar of his dark-blue dressing gown, Basia was standing at the door with a shapeless package in her hand and a strange expression on her face.

She gave him the package.

“This is for you.”

He undid the brown parcel paper, and inside there was a prosecutor’s gown, the blackness of which had long since ceased to be black; the redness of the trim had faded too.

“My father asked me to give it to you. He said he doesn’t want to look at it any more, he wants to die looking at me, not that piece of rag, which was his costume his whole life. And he says I’m to give it to you, because only you will know how to make use of it. Because apparently you understand something that I don’t – I don’t know what it means.”

That everyone tells lies, thought Szacki.

He didn’t say anything, just put aside the gown and used his dressing-gown collar to wipe away a trickle of water running from his hair down his cheek. He gestured to invite Sobieraj inside, wondering why she had really come to see him. Did she want to talk about the case? About the murders? Dead bodies, sins and hatred? He thought bitterly that he was a good partner for that sort of conversation – it’d be hard to find a better one in Sandomierz.

He didn’t feel like talking. He sat down on the sofa and poured generous helpings of Jack Daniels into some thin antique shot glasses. Sobieraj sat down next to him and downed her bourbon in one draught. He looked at her in amazement and refilled her glass. Once again she drank it in one go and blinked funnily; she was behaving like a child who’s afraid to say he’s broken a vase, even though he’s about to give himself away. She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear and looked at him with a nervous, slightly apologetic smile.

Please, not today, he thought. He really was bloody tired.