Michael Dibdin - Dead Lagoon

He sighed.

‘They didn’t make it, of course. The other two died. Angelo was taken in by a peasant woman whose menfolk had all been killed. He stayed there, lying low, helping to work the farm, until the war was over. By that time the woman was pregnant. Later on they moved to the city. The Communists were in control and the borders had been sealed. That’s when Angelo learned that he was in Poland. And there he had to stay.’

Zen smiled in a superior way.

‘Even supposing this preposterous story were true, as a foreign national he’d only have needed to show his documents and they would have had to let him out.’

‘He’d destroyed his Italian papers when he was on the run, for fear of being shot as a deserter. He was passing as one of the woman’s dead brothers.’

Zen slapped his palm on the surface of the table.

‘He could have gone to the Italian embassy in Warsaw! He was a displaced person, for God’s sake, a refugee. He could have come home any time he wanted to!’

Daniele Trevisan looked at Zen for the first time.

‘Perhaps he didn’t want to.’

Their eyes clashed briefly.

‘I don’t believe any of this,’ Zen muttered in an undertone. ‘You’re making it up.’

‘It’s true, Aurelio. I swear it.’

‘So where is this person now?’

The old man shrugged.

‘Back in Poland, I suppose. The tour group was leaving that afternoon. I asked if he’d be coming back, but he said no. “It’s been too long,” he said. “It’s another life.” Then I asked him if he was going to…’

He broke off, fiddling with the stem of the glass.

‘Going to what?’ demanded Zen.

Trevisan gestured awkwardly.

‘If he was going to get in touch with you and your mother. But he said he wouldn’t. “They think I’m dead,” he told me. “It would only cause trouble.” I tried to argue with him, but he wouldn’t listen. He made me swear on my mother’s grave never to tell you or Giustiniana anything about this. And I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen you…’

He looked at Zen and nodded.

‘You’re right. You shouldn’t have come.’

Zen held the old man’s eyes for a long time. Then he picked up his suitcase and walked out. The street was packed with people heading to and from the station. Zen was immediately caught up in a large group calling animatedly to each other in some language which was opaque to him. A counter-current flowed back along the other side of the street. Where the two met there was an area of turbulence and confusion, while the drag caused by the shops and houses to either side created a further set of whorls and eddies. Several times a blockage momentarily slowed the progress of the human current, with a consequent backing-up and an increase in pressure which made everything move faster when the obstruction was finally swept aside.

At length the walls fell back. The crowd lost its cohesion and impetus, spreading out across the courtyard in front of the station. People wandered about, seemingly at random, looking bewildered and lost. Somewhere in the distance a massive, muffled voice read out a succession of unintelligible announcements. A gypsy beggar hunched over an accordion played a snatch of a military march over and over and over again. An excess of sunlight had blinded the clock. A child cried.

‘Excuse me!’

A middle-aged couple, oddly but neatly dressed, stood beaming at Zen. The man said something incomprehensible. Zen shrugged and shook his head. The man repeated the phrase more slowly, pointing to a map in the guidebook he was holding. Zen understood only that he was asking directions to somewhere in English. He closed his eyes and tried to summon up a few words in that language.

‘I’m sorry,’ he replied with an apologetic smile. ‘I’m a stranger here myself.’