Lumen (15 page)

So he sat in his room with the note staring at him, tempted to burn it one moment and to keep it as evidence the next. If by any chance the strange meeting last night had been a trap set by the Germans - well, he hadn’t fallen for it. But then, he could see no reason for a trap. There was no reason.

Except, of course, being accused of collaborating with anti-German forces and being expelled from Poland. Bora would have free rein in his investigation then.

Malecki rested his forehead on the window pane, careful not to touch his sore nose. Most of the snow had melted and the street below was bare and lonely except for two bundled, helmeted German guards, patrolling with equal pace on the sidewalk.

 

The torn, bloody cotton briefs were draped around the younger woman’s knees. Her bruised belly looked like mashed snow with blond, red-streaked grass on it. Bora’s lips contracted as he forced himself to look.

“I’m sorry to show you this, Captain, but it’s relevant to the facts. She also has bruises and chunks of hair missing from her head. I believe this was done by two men at least.” The physician waved for the medics to come and remove the bodies, and followed Bora, who had started for his car. “What you reconstructed is a sound analysis of the sequence of events: the men came to the house to ask for a drink, and whether or not they got it, they began to take liberties. The women resisted, so two of the men carried the girl out and raped her; the other two men tried the same indoors, and one of them got himself impaled in the back room. However it went, there was confusion, and by the time the women were corralled back together, everyone had forgotten about the soldier who dragged himself to die in the barn. As you pointed out, there’s no mud around the women’s shoes. They weren’t the ones who threw the body in the slop. Where I disagree with you is concerning the guilt. I think the killing was quite more cold-blooded than you envision. The women were made to lie side by side and were executed that way. Not an angry spur-of-the-moment reaction. And the wilful removal of the dead soldier from the barn hints to an attempt to manipulate our emotions by facing us with a German soldier murdered in the dung.”

Bora tossed his clipboard in the back of the car. “I will have my report by tonight. When may I expect yours?”

The medical examiner watched Bora’s interpreter milk the cow by the barnyard fence. There was no pail, and the milk simply sprayed out onto the ground. “If you are willing to wait one hour, you may have it today.”

“‘
If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness!
’ That is the quotation from Matthew, Captain.
It was a self-deprecating reminder the abbess used in her daily prayers. The image of light, as you probably noticed, is recurrent in her utterances.”

They sat in the convent church, and Bora was only half-listening. He had his mind on the drive back from the country, with reports that were couched in the impersonal language of the military so that horror became statistics. Colonel Schenck was not one to be moved, but was a pragmatic commander. He had recommended that the army patrol be indicted and the one soldier among them who hadn’t earned medals or citations during the invasion be executed.

“Have the sentence with his name and crime posted around the village near the farm where it happened, Bora. That’ll be lip-service enough.”

Bora’s eyes now wandered up from the altar to the baroque accretions of stucco reliefs in the apse, something resembling gilded barnacles in the overturned hull of a boat. He was glad Malecki was talking to him. He needed to hear the unexcited tone of a human voice, whatever the words were.

At his return from the field, Retz had laughed off his irritation at finding that his bedroom had been slept in.

“It isn’t like it’s
your
room, Bora! You use it when you’re in Cracow, that’s all. Ewa and I had a little get-together with friends, and there was need for some extra sleeping space. You wouldn’t even have noticed hadn’t the stupid cleaning woman decided to air out the mattress.”

So he had argued with Retz. It had been long in coming, and, all considered, he’d brought up everything with less anger than might have weakened his arguments. Retz had actually listened at first.

“Therefore,” Malecki was saying in his steady voice, “the image of Christ as bringer of illumination would be
particularly significant to one whose spiritual convictions revolved around divine grace.” The priest had been speaking with his eyes on the devotional booklet by the abbess, and only now realized that Bora was distracted. “You disagree?” He sampled his interest in what was being said.

Bora looked at him. “Do I disagree on what?”

 

The theatre dressing room was cold. Whatever heat radiated from the coal stove only warmed a small area around it, and the two women sat close to it. Ewa Kowalska had got her feet wet in the slush outside the theatre. Her stockings were hung to dry over the mirror. Bare-footed, she stretched her toes towards the stove while rehearsing her part.

She was not happy with it, Kasia knew. It was a little part and Ewa had hoped against all sense to get the lead. Kasia said, “But darling, you played the Queen in the
Libation Bearers
and in
Agamemnon
before that. It makes sense that you should play her now.” Kasia wound her reddish hair around her forefinger, legs tucked under her body on the threadbare rug. “Just think of me, who only get to play the slavewoman or a member of the chorus most of the times.”

“You don’t have my experience.”

“I’m also common-looking. But I have been around the company long enough to deserve better. How did it go the other night after I left?”

“It went fine. Richard argued with his room-mate in the morning.”

“Oh? About you?”

“About Richard sending him out when I visit.”

Kasia laughed. Her teeth were the only beautiful thing about her, and she’d taught herself to laugh well. “The
poor thing. Maybe Richard ought to find him a girlfriend. Maybe that’s what the argument was really all about.”

“I don’t know. Richard hasn’t spoken to him in two days. It’s funny how callous he can be about people’s feelings. He said he’ll try to get his room-mate transferred to other lodgings.”

“Well! You still have pull, Ewusia. Not every woman in Cracow can get a German officer evicted on her account.”

Ewa put away the sheets she’d been reading. She rested her head on the back of the overstuffed, worn armchair. With her extended bare foot she prodded Kasia’s back. Eyes closed, she began reciting her part.

“
Asleep? What good are you, when you’re asleep?
”

Kasia laughed with a shiver. “Your feet are cold! Next time you see Richard, why don’t you find out if his room-mate is looking for company?”

6

The young Pole had bruises on his face. The left cheek was swollen. A blood vessel in his eye had ruptured, and the pale-blue iris stood out strangely against the red.

Bora gave him a cigarette, lit it for him and watched the prisoner puff from it with relish.

As one of the partisans flushed out by the SS from a tenement building across the street from the convent, his life wasn’t worth much at the moment. According to Salle-Weber, two of his companions had been shot while trying to escape. He’d sprained his ankle jumping out of a low window and the SS had nabbed him on the spot.

What they were getting out of him now was beyond Bora’s concern, although he, too, had questions. He began by waving the armed guard out of the room.

Past the barred window panes, the hour of day was imperceptible in the twilight of a dismal inner court. Bora kept his attention on the outside, feeling with his hand how draughts of cold air knifed their way in from around the window frame. He wasn’t himself sure whether by turning his back on a prisoner he meant to convey careless self-confidence, or that he was just unafraid. But he did look out into the sad day as he spoke.

“I’m told that you understand German, so this is going to be easy enough. You were on the top floor of the tenement on the morning of 23 October, the day before
you were arrested. There were binoculars and weapons in the room you occupied, and right now the weapons interest me less than the binoculars.”

No word came from the prisoner. When Bora looked, he was smoking greedily. His battered face conveyed no readable emotions. He had heard, but no questions had been asked, so he stayed quiet.

Bora said, “Did you look into the complex of the convent below on that day, and if so, did you see something out of the ordinary?”

Pinching the stub with his bruised fingers, the prisoner sucked a last drag out of the cigarette. “Can I have another one?”

Bora tossed the pack at him.

“You want to know if I saw the dead nun?”

“Precisely.”

“We had nothing to do with it.”

“I know. Did you see her?”

Leaning forwards to get his cigarette near to Bora’s lighter, the prisoner nodded. “She’d been out there awhile, near the well.”

“Was she walking, sitting - was she alone?”

“At one point she was standing. Then she lay down, face down. Praying or something, I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see anyone else, but there could have been. I didn’t look out again for a couple of hours, and when I did she was still lying there. Except that now I knew she was dead. I could see blood around her through the field glasses. That’s all I know. I figured one of you had killed her.”

Bora replaced the lighter into his breast pocket, and buttoned it. “One of
us
?”

“Who else would kill a nun?”

The point didn’t merit arguing over, but Bora was intrigued. “What time was it when you saw her dead?”

“I don’t carry a watch. Maybe four thirty, maybe five. Within moments there was a hell of a confusion in the cloister - nuns and two German officers rushing around. One of them crouched down to touch the body, and that’s all I know because I didn’t want to push my luck and be seen. I went back inside.”

Bora, of course, had been the one who had touched the body. So, the abbess was still alive two, two and a half hours before his arrival with Colonel Hofer. “Did you hear a shot?” he asked.

The prisoner spoke with the cigarette in his mouth. “No. All afternoon, we were trying to listen to a radio broadcast inside. The channel was jammed, so we had to pay close attention to make any sense out of it. That was the day tanks came rolling down the street, too.” Spewing smoke, he gently massaged his distended left cheek. “We knew the SD could bust us any time, so we kept mostly out of sight.”

Bora stared at the wall behind the prisoner, a grimy unpainted wall with pockmarks of nails and scuffs from the backs of chairs. He tried to think back, to reconstruct his own schedule for 23 October.

He and Hofer had worked through the noon hour. From the midday meal until her death,
Matka
Kazimierza had been in the cloister, joined at one time or another by her murderer. At a quarter after sixteen hundred hours, he’d left with Hofer for the convent.

Thinking of the repairmen in the chapel, Bora asked, “Did you see anybody leave the convent?”

“After the killing? No. I told you I went inside.”

Jealously, the prisoner stuffed the cigarettes in his pocket when Bora walked to the door, and knocked to be let out.

Who else would kill a nun?
Back at Headquarters, the prisoner’s question prompted Bora to list Polish personnel
who might have had access to Radom guns: police officers, security guards - the military, of course. Collective, anonymous groups. Double-checking on his own schedule for the 23rd, he found that, except for one hour in the morning when Colonel Hofer had excused himself and asked him to man his phone, he’d been as bound to his desk as a dog to its chain. Would that everyone’s alibi were so easy to verify.

Standing by the window, Bora found himself staring at the pigeons crowning the church across the street. Unless the killer was an inmate of the convent (it could be, it
could
be), someone, somehow, had entered it undetected, worked his way to the cloister and left unseen after killing the abbess. Sombrely Bora recalled that in this very office Colonel Hofer had stood by him, holding back ill-concealed tears. Visit after visit, what had Mother Kazimierza prophesied to him that would cause him to weep? Poor man.
Poor all of us
, Bora thought,
if we’re curious about the future. Better not ask
,
especially if you’re a soldier.

“Remember, we set off early in the morning!” Colonel Schenck stalked into the office, tossing a handful of forms on Bora’s desk and stalking out again.

That evening, when Bora found Helenka sitting with Retz in the living room, he scarcely paid any attention to them.

Father Malecki woke up with a sore throat. He wasn’t one to get ill often or nurse himself once he did, but this morning he had to force himself to get up. The room was extremely cold. He touched the radiator and felt cold metal. On the dry sink, the blue-and-white wash basin he’d filled last night had a thin layer of ice on the surface.

When he went downstairs for breakfast,
Pana
Klara told him the furnace had gone off during the night.

“Can it be repaired?”

“I’m afraid we ran out of coal, Father, and there’s none to be had just now. You don’t look well. Why don’t you at least stay in bed? I’ll get you another quilt.”

“On Sunday? You know I’m due for early mass at the convent.”

After waiting for more than fifteen minutes at the streetcar stop, Malecki had to conclude that there’d be no transportation today. So he walked the windy streets at daybreak in growing discomfort, and had a full-blown cold by the time he reached the convent’s sacristy.

 

It was still dark outside and Helenka couldn’t tell whether Bora was awake, but a strip of light filtered from under his door when she left Retz snoring in bed. Lovemaking had been good once Retz slept off his drinks - not long, just good. Now she felt a warm, pleasurable laziness that no longer called for lying down.