The Day of the Lie (23 page)

While dealing with my
life lived in secret, we naturally dealt with his. In time he told me about his
mother’s death when he was a child, of his father’s swift remarriage. How his
family had never even mentioned her name. I refer to it now because this was
his reason for coming to Warsaw Like all of the Friends, he had a personal
story that was tied up with the greater struggle.

2h.41

The ‘Lives Lived in Secret’ series brought
him into contact with a journalist involved in visual media. An article on how
film-makers steered between the truth and the censor duly appeared in the
Observer,
exciting a similarly international reaction.

2h.56

John couldn’t speak of her without blushing
and he’d clam up if I asked any questions. A comical ritual soon fell into
place: he would ask about the Shoemaker, and I would ask about the film-maker.
He shoved me.’ I shoved him.

3h.34

Throughout 1982, those who’d been interned
were being gradually released. And as they came home, I began to wonder if
Freedom
and Independence
had done its job. The debate about the future had been
taken up in numerous other publications and, as Mr Lasky used to say, once you’ve
been heard there’s no point in repeating yourself. The Shoemaker’s contribution
had been made. Every time I saw John he’d ask to meet him and I’d say no. But I
increasingly asked myself, ‘Why not?’ Didn’t our ‘Yes’ involve a move from
secrecy to openness? Pavel had said ‘Yes’ too soon, that’s all. And that act of
trust was part of the meaning of his death … it rang out as a summons, not a
warning.

3h.41

Mateusz didn’t tell me where we were going.
He just picked me up and drove me to the Łazienki Park. After all the
usual checks he brought me to a bench. Five minutes later a man pushing a pram
sat beside me. I looked at the baby and turned to the father … he was grey
and thin and tired, his cheeks hollowed. It was Bernard. They’d let him out.
The boy in the pram was Tomasz.’ born the day I’d gone back to Father Nicodem.

3h.51

Bernard wanted to meet the Shoemaker. He’d
read back copies obtained by his father and he wanted to get involved. He, too,
had ideas that he wanted to share; and he knew others whose thinking on the
crisis deserved a wider audience than a crowded basement. The war on ideas
could never have been more important, he said, because we were winning.

Was I angry with Mateusz
for setting up a meeting without my initiative? I don’t know, I just looked at
the child’s fingers gripping the edge of his blanket.’ the clipped nails.
Something inside me snapped.

4h.05

Father Nicodem opened the door and swore.
Come to think of it.’ he swore each time I’d met him. It was a sort of
surprised greeting.

I told him
Freedom
and Independence
should finish with the next edition, and that the ensuing
silence would serve to amplify and preserve everything that had been said
beforehand. Oddly enough (he said) the Shoemaker had come to the same
conclusion. Our minds had been running along similar lines. I was relieved. A
moment of shared calm opened between myself and Father Nicodem. We’d travelled
a very long journey, without the chance to talk along the way I was the first
to speak. I said that before going home I wanted to meet the Shoemaker. That I
had an idea for the future.

You’d have thought a
train had come through the garden wall. Father Nicodem was on his feet,
jabbering, ‘No, no, no, no, no.

The conversation, far
from calm, went something like this:

‘Our time is over,’ I
said. ‘Something new has to take our place.’

‘Like what?’

‘A new publication run
by new people running things in a different way.’

‘Different?’

‘Yes, relying on trust
rather than fear.’

‘Trust?’

You’d have thought it
was a dirty word. He was standing over me, looking down as if I was insane. But
he was old school, trusting to an absolute minimum. As a system, it had worked
well enough, but we had to move forward, now, and leave all that behind.

‘I’ve learned that
whoever trusts the most is the most free,’ I said. ‘We have to live as normally
as possible: that’s how we fight
them.
We live ordinary lives, giving
fear the smallest room in the house.’

‘That’s how you get
caught,’ he shouted. ‘Fear is your friend, Róża. Give it the double bed
and sleep on the floor.’

‘Not any longer.’

I told him that there
was a new generation of activists ready to speak — friends whose strength came
from open, shared risk. All they required was an outlet for their ideas. They
were married. They had children. They didn’t want to fight as if they were on
their own. And they were all children of the Shoemaker. They wanted to meet
him.

‘He is a hugely symbolic
figure,’ I said.

‘A hidden one.’

‘I know, but before
falling silent.’ he has one last task … to hand on the responsibility for
tomorrow To tell them that his day is over.’ and theirs begins … with a new
publication, under a new name.

In effect it would be
the child of
Freedom and Independence
— using the Shoemaker’s press and
distribution system. The transition from one voice to the next would be without
a pause for breath.

Father Nicodem appeared
to waver between more shouting and giving up. I then said something I regret,
because it was heavy with implication. I didn’t mention Pavel, I just said, ‘If
anyone has the right to meet the Shoemaker, it’s me. And I’ve earned a say in
the future of his Friends.’

Father Nicodem slowly
sat down. He pointed towards the door.’ signalling his defeat and consent. I
told him I’d be back in a week.

4h. 13

The Shoemaker had agreed, he said. I named
the day November 1st. The place: the grave of Prus. The time: six in the
evening. I left him and went to the dustbin in the back yard. In it, ready for
collection, was the last edition of
Freedom and Independence.
Its theme
was mercy and justice.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Anselm took the Metro Line 1, south bound.
Clutching his old duffle bag he sat with his head against the window, feeling
the jolt ride down his spine. His thoughts drifted to Róża’s statement.
John’s mother had died. He’d never told him and yet he’d listened to Anselm’s
disclosure, glancing when he could at the drama on a cricket square. He’d come
to Warsaw with a personal story which even now Anselm did not know Anselm let
the matter drop. Apprehension stirred deep in his guts: someone on the train
was probably watching him.

Fifteen minutes later,
after a short walk in the rain, a spectacled manager, hunched and kind, asked
for Anselm’s passport and credit card details.

‘You’re very welcome,
Father,’ he said in English, handing him the key to room 43. ‘Turn right at
Saint John.’

At the top of a gentle
ramp Anselm passed a large statue proper to a cathedral. He slowed, knowing
that this was Frenzel’s joke. He’d picked this place on purpose, knowing the
decor, knowing the manager’s public devotion. His contempt seemed to echo down
the corridor.’ all the way to the locked door.

The room had a single
bed with a deep blue cover. An old television on a wall bracket had been
angled like a spotlight towards two chairs and a table. White gleaming floor
tiles ran from wall to wall. The lights were low and yellow Abstract paintings
hung slightly askew There were no saints on the lookout. He put his duffle bag
in the bathroom.
What on earth am I doing here? Frenzel’s taken a decent man’s
hotel and made it into an expensive brothel for the sale of cheap information.
And here am I, a punter with money in his back pocket.

After five minutes a
knock sounded.

Riding a surge of
agitation, Anselm slowly turned the door handle.

Standing outside like a
janitor on his day off was a podgy man in his late twenties dressed in a
tracksuit. Gloved fingers gripped a shopping trolley filled with bulging refuse
sacks. His face was red and flabby, still wet from the rain. Anselm couldn’t
imagine him doing anything more athletic than opening the fridge door. He waved
him in, thinking this was the first act in some TV prank. Instantly, as if
attached to the man by a thread, a hooded woman appeared, brushing past into
the room. When Anselm turned, the man was squatting on the edge of the bed, his
arm resting on the parked trolley The woman, hood removed.’ was standing
beneath the television, arms tightly folded. She was fifty or so. As if
following his cue, Anselm took a chair.

‘You have the money?’
she said in German.

She’d seen his habit and
it had unsettled her. Why hadn’t Frenzel told her? To keep her on the leash in
case she had misgivings?

‘Yes.’

She seemed unable to ask
for it. A glance begged Anselm to cut short her embarrassment. But he didn’t
move. So, Sebastian thought Anselm didn’t have it in him? He thought a monk was
too self-righteous to take lessons from Frenzel? He’d show him how fast he
could learn. The first lesson was already under his belt: snatch the advantage
from the weak.

‘Show me the file,’ he
ordered.

Her hair was greying and
frizzy, her facial bones fine. Wire glasses flashed as she opened her shapeless
damp coat to reach the brown envelope held to her side. Anselm didn’t move.
Lesson Two: wait for them to come to you. After hesitating, she walked over,
holding out the packet. Her jaw was incongruously strong, without undermining
an essential delicacy Her eyes were blue, the lips dry and full. She wouldn’t
look at him. Lesson Three: show no gratitude.

The envelope contained
four sets of documents, held at the corner by tags of green string. Swinging to
his side, he placed them on the small table and started reading, whipping
through the pages one after the other. He had a few questions to ask. He spoke
while reading.

‘Is there nothing else?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I took them in the
first place.’

Anselm looked up,
unsmiling, clouding his face with judgment and disapproval. He’d done that in
the Old Bailey with the more intractable witnesses. The jury had loved it. Not
caring, Anselm noticed that this was probably Frenzel’s Lesson Four.

‘Tell me how the archive
was structured,’ said Anselm. ‘Why is all the material in German?’

‘That’s how Colonel
Brack worked.” she replied. ‘It meant he could control what the Stasi knew He
decided what got translated and put into the files … and it wasn’t much. He
kept the rest to himself … with
Polana.’
Anyway. The last thing he
wanted was interference from the Stasi so he kept them in the dark.’

Lesson Five: pretend you
haven’t heard and that you’re not that interested anyway.

Lesson Six: let ‘em stew
when you’ve got ‘em hanging in the air.

Anselm slowly examined
the first batch of papers. It was a series of interviews carried out with known
associates of Róża Mojeska (RM). Few had anything worthwhile to say One
said she worked, another said she prayed. A third, while keen to co-operate, was
judged half mad. She’d taught her parrot to scream, ‘I’m free’.

Anselm turned to the
second bundle.

The weekly bulletins
from FELIKS made pitiful reading. He’d grovelled and scraped. He’d scoured
Warsaw looking for RM. He’d followed his wife. He’d finally come up with a good
idea. But they’d have to let his son out first. No, he wasn’t making a threat,
he just thought that RM would do anything for the boy End of the trail. There
were no more reports.

Anselm glanced up. The
squat man was eyeing the television, as if wondering what his mother might say
if he asked to put it on. His designer shaved head was wet from the rain. He
had his mother’s fine nose. One foot tapped the ground. The trainers were
squeaky new and white, like the floor.

‘The reports from FELIKS
aren’t complete.” said Anselm, his voice smooth but accusing.

‘That was Colonel Brack,’
said the woman, wringing her hands. ‘I’ve already told you, he ran the
operation himself, he picked what went to the Stasi. He wanted to keep them in
the dark. We were all in the dark. That’s what he was like, especially with
Polana.’
it was his baby, he—’

Anselm shut her down with
a raised finger, settling his attention on the third set of papers.

Error, Frenzel seemed to
say, with a hitch to his trousers. You went too far. You should have listened
to what she was about to tell you. You’re interested in Brack aren’t you?
Lesson Seven: don’t enjoy yourself too much. Keep your eye on the ball. When
they start blathering, let them hang themselves. That’s fun, too; they do all
the work … Anselm had listened enough. He made a mental dash away from the
tutorial; he raced over the operational detail for a planned arrest of RM on
the 1st November 1982. A well-placed agent had reported that she would be
making an appearance at the monument to Prus. Brack would deal with the matter
personally, assisted by Lieutenant Frenzel … Anselm skipped to the end,
looking for a name, and then.’ finding nothing, threw it aside. He opened the
fourth and final bundle.

In his hands was the
missing correspondence between the Stasi and the SB. Anselm, still running,
went straight to the back page. Brack had originally refused to disclose the
names of any agents, indicating that an accommodation might be found at the
termination of the operation. That accommodation, it seemed, had been found.

A cough sounded. It was
his own, though it seemed to come from someone else.

Staring at the letter
signed by Frenzel.’ he’d come to a standstill. It couldn’t be.’ he thought. His
head was shaking a ‘No’. He couldn’t believe it was possible.