Lumen (6 page)

“He’s still a good lover, if he doesn’t drink too much.”

Kasia’s eyes met hers. After unscrewing the top of a rather worn stick of lip rouge, she rubbed her forefinger on it and then dabbed her cheekbones with it, sucking in her lips in to mark the blush zone. “It’s easy to laugh, but I almost envy you. German officers make good money.”

“Money has nothing to do with it.”

“Then what does, nostalgia?”

Ewa shrugged, without letting go of her shoulders. “I don’t know. Power.”

“Power?”

“There’s power in it - in getting a man back.”

“Is he married?”

“Yes. No children, but he’s married. His wife’s a sow.”

Kasia laughed again. “Did he tell you that, or did you see a picture of her?”

“Neither. But I’m sure she’s just a sow. Most women are stupid sows.”

“Well, Ewusia! Where does that leave
me
?”

Ewa came up to Kasia’s chair and embraced her. “Not you, darling. But you know that most of them are.”

Father Malecki didn’t say what first came to his mind. He looked at Bora standing at the other end of the convent waiting room, and had to make an effort not to bring up the issue of the torn missals.

Bora was leafing through a loosely bound typescript, but his eyes were on the American priest. There was a stern, challenging look on his face, unless of course it was a form of defensiveness.

“I was assigned to this investigation, Father Malecki. I didn’t ask for it.”

“Oh, I understand that.”

Because the priest’s eyes stayed on the document, Bora made a point of continuing to scan each page quickly. “Some utterances of the holy abbess were politically significant.”

Malecki kept a straight face. Today Poland had been officially incorporated into the Reich, and he had to be prudent. He was especially careful not to stare at the sutured wound on Bora’s head. “Their interpretation was, anything can be made of oracular responses.”

“I’d say that ‘Cross-marked flags from the West’ identifies us rather clearly, Father. What amazes me is that she
referred to ‘The Round City and the Ram’ as leaders of the flags. Our army commanders are in fact von Rundstedt and Bock. It’s remarkable that she said this as far back as a year ago.”

“Well, I see that the good sisters have given you my notes. What do you think of them?”

“Technically, that your typewriter has a defective ‘R’. You have consistently tried to avoid words with ‘R’ whenever possible: ‘Might’ instead of ‘power’, ‘benevolence’ instead of ‘charity’ or ‘mercy’. From the theological viewpoint, I would not hazard comments-I don’t know enough about mysticism. Judging by your scepticism, though, I’d say you attended a Jesuit university. Wasn’t it St Ignatius who said, ‘No novelties’?”

Malecki grinned in spite of himself. Sunken in his broad face, the bright blue eyes revealed the quick labour of his mind. “I did attend Loyola University, and I
am
a Jesuit.”

Bora didn’t smile back. “I had some Jesuit teachers, but you know us Germans - our Catholicism has a monkish bent. And I’m not much for compromises, even though I can relate to the obedience and discipline of a ‘soldier of Christ’.”

“Well, that’s that. What will you do now?”

By a questioning gesture of his head Bora asked for permission to take along the typescripts. Since he was already placing them in his briefcase, Malecki could only nod in acceptance. “I have to go back to work now. If you care to walk me out, Father, I’ll ask you a few questions.”

Doctor Nowotny didn’t expect Bora back so soon. He asked him how the wound was coming along, and lectured him when he heard of the nausea.

“You should have called me at once about that. Don’t you know that vomit can be a very serious sign after a head injury? It could have been the build up of intracranial pressure.”

“Obviously it wasn’t, Colonel. The reason why I’m here has nothing to do with my head.” Bora spoke for perhaps five minutes, during which the physician listened on the edge of his chair, half-intrigued and half-amused. When he could no longer keep the curiosity to himself, he interrupted.

“So, what’s with this sainted nun, other than she’d dead? Do we have the body, at least?”

“No.”

“Well, we’ll need the body.”

Bora had a frustrated look on his face. “It won’t be easy to have it released to us. I tried for the past two days, and got nowhere.”

“How high did you go?”

“I called at the Curia. The archbishop refused even to see me.”

“Well, how high did you go on our side?”

“I’m expecting to hear from General Blaskowitz’s staff this afternoon.”

Nowotny grunted. “Hans Frank is the one you want to go to.”

Bora didn’t answer. He let the issue fall, with a stern setting of lips. Nowotny couldn’t say if the reaction was due to his dispensing with Frank’s title of Governor General, or because Bora didn’t care to follow that avenue; he put a cigarette in his mouth and let it dangle from his lips.

Bora sat with stock-still rigidity. Nowotny smoked Muratti’s. He was now studiously standing the long, flat cigarette box on end at the centre of his desk.

“This is an official investigation, Captain. Without the body…” Nowotny flicked his finger at the box, and the box fell over.

“I know. I’ll try again.”

“It’s been twelve damn days. Unless she’s like Jesus Christ and has got up and walked off, you had better get the dead nun here before too much longer.”

 

An hour later, Father Malecki said he certainly didn’t have the authority to have the body exhumed. Bora had a drumming headache, and grew angry.

“I don’t understand why you have to be so reticent. All courtesy has been extended to the sisters so far, and you’re giving me some lip service about authority! I could get the SS involved and
have
you give me the body.”

Malecki felt it was an empty threat, and tightened his jaw. “Apparently you will have to do just that.”

As it turned out, at the SS command north-west of the Old City,
Hauptsturmführer
Salle-Weber didn’t seem interested at first, but eventually began paying attention to what Bora was telling him.

“Well, that’s a good one! I’d just like to know what the nun did, that someone put a bullet through her.”

“None of us know. That’s why I’ve come.”

“To get the muscle to enter the nunnery, eh?”

“Yes. The sisters have dispensation to bury their own in the vault of the chapel.”

“Now then!” Salle-Weber rocked on the soles of his shiny boots for some time. “Are you sure you don’t have other reasons to want to get in?”

“What other reasons could I possibly have?”

“That’s what I’m asking. What should any of us care about a Polack nun? We’ll end up having to kill a few in
time. Maybe there’s something worthwhile in the nunnery that the Army knows about.”

“I know of no such thing.”

“Precious manuscripts, holy vessels - hidden Jews?” Salle-Weber smirked at Bora’s impatience. “Well, then? The novices, maybe.”

“I’m not interested in those either.”

Fists on his sides, Salle-Weber stepped to the wall map of Cracow. “Only because I’m curious, Bora. We’ll get you the dead nun.”

“What methods will you use to enter?”

“That’s none of your business. We’ll handle things our way. Just wait outside with an army ambulance, and I promise you, you’ll have the carcass before this evening.”

 

Seen from behind on the sidewalk, the girl had a nice round crupper, and very nice calves even in her cotton stockings. Retz pulled in close to the kerb and rolled down his window.

“
Dzien dobry
,” he greeted her gallantly. “May I offer you a ride?”

The girl didn’t answer. She stopped, however, and gave him the impression of debating with herself whether she would accept.

“Thank you,” she said in fairly good German. “You could take me to work, maybe?”

Retz opened the car door for her. “Sure, come right in. Just tell me where, darling.”

She gave him the address. He looked at her legs and started the car. A mischievous hostility lined her smile when he asked, “What sort of place do you work in?”

She moved his hand away from her knee. “A busy one, Major. The city morgue.”

At the convent, Father Malecki rushed out of the main door in a distracted manner. He looked around and saw the German staff car and the ambulance next to it. Bora rolled up his window in the time it took the priest to come striding from the threshold to the car.

Bora let him fret for some time, but when his driver asked if he wanted him to remove the priest, he said, “No, no,” and came out of the car.

Within moments he was arguing with the American. “Well, you could have given us the body the easy way! I told you we needed it.”

“Do you know what the penalty is for those who break church rules by forcing their way into a convent?”

“I doubt very much that the German SS worry about excommunication.”

“I’m talking about you:
you
are Catholic!”

“And if you notice, I haven’t entered the convent. If I were you, Father, I’d go back inside and see how things are coming along.”

It took two hours, and it was Salle-Weber who came out first, followed by two of his men. He had red spots on his face and was short of breath.

“Why the devil did you get me involved in this, Bora? There’s no damn body in there!” He ignored Bora’s attempt to say something. “The coffin’s empty, and so’s the wall hole in the vault. We checked the place from top to bottom - huge, damn place it is, too. Kitchen, refectory, cells, the garden, attic, cellar, church, chapel-Idon’t know what in hell they did with a rotting nun, and I don’t care if they shoved her down the latrine at this point!”

Bora took a sideways look at Father Malecki. He stood a few steps away and might not have understood the exchange, but bore an indefinable expression that seemed to him one of relief.

It seemed impossible, but an idea made its way into Bora’s mind. “Where were the other nuns?” he asked the SS.

“They all flocked to kneel before the altar, the geese. The chapel was packed with them. The coffin was in the vault all right, but the damn body was not.”

“And they were all kneeling?”

“Yes, yes! All kneeling, that’s what I said!”

Bora would not remove his glance from the priest. He told Salle-Weber, slowly, “You should have asked all the nuns to stand up.”

Salle-Weber blasphemed, and was gone again. This time Bora followed him in.

Nowotny laughed when he heard the story. “They pulled the dead nun out of the coffin and got her to kneel among them? What precious hypocrites these holy folks are!”

“I’m really interested in the preliminary results of your examination, Herr
Oberstleutnant.
”

“Sure. Here it is.” Nowotny handed him a form, handwritten in minute Gothic script, resembling chicken scratches on the page. “It was a Polish bullet that did her in. Pierced the left lung from a few feet away, and lodged right in the heart. Death was instantaneous, though by now we can’t pinpoint the time of death.” Nowotny grinned, placing the bullet on his desk. “I’m going to play with it for a while - the body, that is - to see about these stigmata and the
miraculous
phenomenon of its reasonably incorrupted and pliable state after two weeks. If I had the time and the equipment, I’d take a good look at her brain to see what was in it that was so holy.”

Bora stared at the bit of metal, then put it in his pocket along with Nowotny’s form. “We already have an official protest from the archbishop. I’m afraid we have to give the body back at once.”

 

At Headquarters, since Hofer had come to move his things from the commander’s office, Colonel Schenck invited him to hear Bora’s first report. Hofer sat through it with his head in his hands, listlessly following what was being said.

“It’s true that no weapons were retrieved so far, but the convent is a large complex of buildings, and there are more nooks and crannies than one can count. No shell casing has turned up in the cloister or in the upper balconies around it. In any case, I found out that on the morning of the day the abbess was killed, there were outsiders in the convent.”

“What do you mean?”

Bora turned to Schenck, who had asked the question. “It seems that a stray bomb had damaged the roof of the chapel during the invasion, so workers were called in to repair it. I doubt very much that we can trace them now, but I’ll do my best.”

Schenck made a wry face. “Ha. So, there’s a chance that Polish workers killed a
saint.
”

Bora could see the words annoyed Hofer, and was careful to defuse the tension.

“Whom else do we have to suspect, Colonel? ‘Everybody in the convent
loved
the abbess,’ the nuns tell me. Father Malecki doesn’t seem to have been wholly convinced of her mystic powers, but I doubt his Jesuit scepticism would bring him to kill her. Besides, he wasn’t in the convent at the time of her death.”