Lumen (20 page)

Basia wasn’t Retz’s kind. He didn’t like redheads and didn’t like women who shaved their legs and armpits. He also didn’t like prostitutes, because they didn’t make him feel as though he’d gained something challenging. Basia filled the void, that was all. She was available and pleasant and didn’t ask questions.

When he’d got an unexpected, agitated call from Ewa early this morning, Basia had shown no interest as to who it might be; she’d gone to wash up leaving him a chance to chat. Although she’d heard him agree to a meeting “tonight or tomorrow”, she’d quietly pocketed her money from the bedstand and put her galoshes on.

 

At eleven o’clock Bora was met at the border by the staff car and escort truck. Taking advantage of the fact that Colonel Schenck was not in sight, the commissar accompanied him all the way and saw him into the car.

“Have a good trip, Captain.”

“Have a good stay.”

The commissar’s long teeth were bared in a short smile. “You don’t mean that.”

“You probably don’t mean for me to have a good trip, either.”

As he prepared to close Bora’s door, the commissar made a face of ironic puzzlement. “Germans and Russians - can it work?”

“Poland’s map is the living proof of it, Commissar.”

“Not so much a
living
proof, but you’re right.”

Schenck had been using a telephone inside the improvised checkpoint hut. He’d seen the commissar from the window and chose to remain indoors until he was gone.

“He’s a despicable man,” he said as he joined Bora in the staff car. “What did he have to say?”

“He reminded me that they trust us and like us in the measure we trust and like them.”

“I never associated trust and liking with the Reds.” The book of Scriptures emerged from Schenck’s briefcase. “Thanks for this. Not my idea of stirring literature, but I did fall asleep reading it. Ah, look here.” The colonel took out of his blouse and unfolded a large map, printed in sepia on pale yellow paper. Bora read
ХАРЬКОВ
, and, below,
Voyenno-topograficheskaya Karta Yevropeyskoy Rossii
1:126000.

“What is it, Colonel?”

Schenck had a singularly ugly grin, which briefly made him look like the Phantom of the Opera. “He, he. Swiped it from the Reds while they weren’t looking. The map of Kharkov. Ukraine, Ukraine, of course. What do you think? We might as well get familiar with the next theatre of operations. What does it say here?”

“Train Station Osnova.”

“Isn’t it the railroad that goes straight through Russia, all the way to Rostov?”

Bora was calculating the scale of the map, translating to himself the Russian measures into metres. “It is,” he said. Every centimetre indicated a kilometre, and the car in which they presently sat was one thousand five hundred kilometres away from Kharkov.

“Keep it, Bora, one of these days it’ll come in handy for you.”

The weather stayed clear but grew increasingly cold. When they reached the hill country, it quickly clouded over, with high masses of pearly clouds racing north from the Carpathians. Through the haze covering that part of the sky not yet overrun by clouds, the sun was a round and splendourless disk, like a communion wafer.

Bora thought of that dimmed glare as
Lumen
, although he’d concluded last night that in a late sense the word
also meant cleverness and insight. No matter how much he tried to disregard the vague lead, he found himself returning to it by instinct. Soon a speckled multitude of flakes infinitesimally small and bright like fireflies began to drift from the south against the paling circle of the sun.

Schenck said, “Your stepfather will stay in Cracow only two days. Do you think you can make something of two days if your wife comes along with him?”

“I’d be most grateful to see my wife even for an hour, Colonel. I realize it is a privilege.”

Schenck only half-smiled. “I’m not doing you a favour. I’m just thinking practically. Be sure you keep yourself perfectly sober and clean and at peak performance level in these three weeks. I suggest you give up any hard liquor and smoke, if you smoke.”

“I don’t smoke or drink much.”

“Good meals, hard work and lengthy walks is what you need. Your wife must sleep long hours and not exhaust herself in any way. Both of you must absolutely refrain from alcohol in the week previous to conception. I will give you a copy of a scientific pamphlet on how to ensure production of male offspring. The mistake I made the first time around with my wife was having sherry after dinner. That’s how she bore a daughter. You’ve seen me accept vodka from the Reds: I never would have accepted it had I been planning for conception. Of course your wife has never been pregnant, so it is impossible to say whether there might be some impediment on her part. Are her menstruations regular?”

“I believe so.”

“Don’t be embarrassed, Captain. These are perfectly natural subjects for responsible men to discuss. Try rather to remember when her last period was. Hopefully it will not happen to recur at the time of her coming. It’d be a waste of intercourse.”

Bora wondered with an aching worry what he’d do with himself at the end of these two weeks if Dikta wasn’t allowed to travel to Poland after all.

The presence of German vehicles by the convent gate made Father Malecki’s thinning hair stand on end. They were not Wehrmacht trucks, and the staff car wasn’t Bora’s. He threw a glance down the street, where the Jesuit church also was flanked by SS vehicles.

He stopped a passer-by in the street. “What’s happening, do you know?”

The man hurried off without answering. The few other civilians were also scattering at a rapid pace, seeking side streets and doorways.

Malecki stood alone. He knew there was a telephone at the corner and his first impulse was to try to reach the Curia to inform the archbishop. At that moment a truck pulled out from an alley and parked sideways across the street, barring his way to the corner.

So Malecki remained on the sidewalk, hands nervously fingering keys and coins in his pockets. More trucks seemed to be moving in to the right, beyond the Jesuit church, towards Stradom and in the direction of the ghetto.

Mister Logan’s words of prudence floated past him as he stepped off the sidewalk, across the street and up to the grim, gun-toting guards by the convent’s gate.

“Was this necessary?”

Bora found that he wasn’t outraged or even angry: only irritated by the stupidity of the action. One of his goals
for the week had been to investigate this small Ukrainian settlement at the eastern end of the Cracow province. Since leaving Schenck at Tarnów, he’d been rejoined by Hannes and they had driven down towards the mountains. Finding the SD in the village ahead of himself was vexing enough, and seeing an army unit in tow caused him to stalk to the officer and ask about the combined operation.

The SD man looked him up and down. “Yes, it was necessary. What’s that to you, have you never seen people hanged?”

In fact, Bora hadn’t. He removed his eyes from the limp, barefoot bodies dangling from a tree in slow circles.

“We had precedence in this sector. Why wasn’t Intelligence informed, and who is responsible for providing army troops to you?”

The SD turned his back on Bora, bound for his car. “You’re just sore because you’ve got here late. We can question these animals as well as you can, and our methods go a long way in convincing the wives to talk.”

“You haven’t answered me.”

“Look, Captain. Why don’t you go home and inform your commander? Have him submit a request for the information you want, and proceed through routine channels.”

“I think I’ll just ask your NCOs.” Rashly, Bora started towards the group of soldiers, only to be checked by a rude pull on his sleeve.

“I wouldn’t do it if I were you,” the SD officer was saying.

Coldly, Bora pried the fingers off his arm. “Do me the favour.”

Within minutes, parked within sight of the hangings, he wrote his incident report in the car. “
The two Polish nationals were executed without trial in a farm community three kilometres north of Ciężkowice in the Tarnów area. They were not
‘hanged’, as the SD major on location reported, since there were no facilities for carrying out a regular hanging. Inasmuch as there was no apparent breakage of the neck vertebrae, pending a medical report the method for the execution seems rather to have been strangulation. No information of value was extracted either from the men before their death or from their wives, who have since my arrival been removed by the SD for further interrogation. The non-commissioned officer leading the Wehrmacht platoon was unable to provide me with clear information as to how the combined operation originated.
”

 

Helenka expected Retz’s visit after rehearsal, but he didn’t come. She was again disappointed when she called from the theatre and didn’t find him home. While the telephone rang uselessly, Kasia waited behind her, with one of her scribbled numbers in hand. She said, “Good job today, Helenka. You’ll pull through it fine.”

“Thank you.”

“Your mother did a good job too. Don’t you think?”

Helenka forced herself to continue facing Kasia, because she knew how close she was to her mother, how much she confided in her. “Ewa is an old hand at it,” she replied when the gall in her throat mellowed enough to say the words with a smile. “Of course she did a good job.”

“She’s also looking good. I mean, like she’s happy. In love, or something. Are you going out tonight?”

“I don’t know.” Because she was annoyed, Helenka assumed a petulant, young woman’s voice. “Are you?”

Kasia shrugged. “Me? It depends. If I can get this phone call through and find enough warm water to wash my hair, I guess so.”

 

In the springlike temperature of the Curia, the perennial frown on the archbishop’s face was smoothed out by an
expression of blank surprise. “Arrested? Is that what you said?”

Unwilling to repeat the word, the secretary nodded his head.

“Well, then: has the American consulate been contacted? Have the appropriate steps been taken?”

“We only heard about his arrest because one of the sisters came ten minutes ago to report it. Does Your Eminence wish to see her?”

“No, no. You take care of it. There’s nothing she can say to me that can’t be explained to you.”

“Of course, arrest and detention are not the same thing. I have at once placed a telephone call to Father Malecki’s residence. Since he isn’t expected home until later this evening, we cannot simply assume that he is indeed being detained by the Germans. I will attempt to reach him again after seven p.m.”

“Still, the American consul ought to be made aware.”

The secretary’s long, skirted figure swayed a little. “I’m not sure it is what Father Malecki would want. Premature intervention by the American authorities might complicate his chances of remaining in Poland. Your Eminence recalls how the Holy See specifically instructed him to stay through the investigation.”

“But might the Germans not expel him from Poland when they find out he’s an American?”

“In that case, Your Eminence, it will be out of Your Eminence’s purview to keep him here. Father Malecki’s departure, I believe, was one of Your Eminence’s priorities.”

The archbishop settled himself more comfortably in his chair. He passed a ring-laden finger over his furrowed brow. “What was the cause for German trespassing on Church property today?
That
, I will respond to at once.”

“They were searching for Jews, Your Eminence. It was rumoured that some of the inhabitants of the Kazimierz ghetto found refuge in religious institutions after last night’s SD raid on Jewish businesses.”

“Is it true?”

“We’re trying to ascertain that. True or false, the Germans took it upon themselves to enter a number of convents and other Church property. Here is a preliminary list of those that have come to our attention. Fortunately, no refugees were found. Those who interfered with the operation, however, were arrested. Father Malecki is one of seven such clergymen. I have their names here.”

The archbishop’s finger rubbed his worried forehead. “If there is any more bad news, I’d like to hear it all at once.”

A cheaply printed leaflet appeared in the secretary’s hand.

“Several of these were found pasted on walls overnight. As you see, news that Mother Kazimierza’s death was not due to natural causes has reached enough ears to justify this response.”

“For the love of God, it accuses the Germans directly!”

“I took the liberty of organizing an effort to remove as many as we can before a reprisal.”

The archbishop agreed it was a necessary first step. “Now get in touch with the Intelligence officer who is conducting the murder investigation, and state our position in reference to the leaflets.”

“We disclaim them, Your Eminence?”

“We disclaim them.”

Within minutes the secretary was back in the archbishop’s office to say that Captain Bora was not available, and not expected back until the morning. By nine o’clock in the evening, the secretary also reported that Father Malecki’s landlady had confirmed his absence.

“He hasn’t gone home for dinner, and she’s worried. I deemed it best not to inform her. What we have to confront now is this, Your Eminence.”

A terse communiqué from Governor General Hans Frank threatened measures against the Church in Cracow, unless the identity of the person or persons who had leaked information on the murder case was promptly made available to German authorities.

The archbishop groaned. “How am I expected to sleep at night with these blows constantly directed at us?”

 

Bora spent the night in a small village at the foothill of the mountains, where a reconnaissance detachment had also halted.