William Brodrick: The Day of the Lie

‘Do they know your story?’ came the voice.

Roza turned wearily to her side. Leaning on the wall, legs crossed, hands in his tatty jean pockets, was the lawyer. He’d kept his good shoes on — Roza always noticed shoes and clothing; it had come with life in an orphanage, that never-forgotten world of shapeless hand-me-downs and patched elbows — and they still hadn’t been polished.

‘They need to hear what you have to say.

‘Will you ever leave me alone?’ asked Roza, quietly.

‘I doubt it.’ The lawyer didn’t smile but his mouth made the shape in sympathy ‘All the others have passed away You’re the last, Roza. You’re the only one who knows what happened in that prison. You’re the only one who can bring justice to that most unjust time.’

Roza closed her eyes. She listened to the whip of the rope as it struck the ground. She frowned as the girls counted triumphantly against the boy’s jaded mockery A small part of her surrendered.

Sebastian Voight, thirty-something, unshaved, and endowed with a charm as exasperating as it was unconscious, worked for the Institute of National Remembrance, a body formed, inter alia, to preserve the memory of patriotic resistance against tyranny and — coming to MrVoight’s neck of the woods — to prosecute crimes committed by officials of the former Communist state. There was no statute of limitation: the guilty could not escape judgement; all that was required were witnesses; then the law could take its course.

Roza didn’t know why Sebastian rehearsed all the technical stuff. She’d already read it in the letters, heard it from a car window and listened to the endless messages. Perhaps spelling out the government’s intentions was meant to insinuate an obligation to co-operate. Roza watched the slim, young man, vexed by his natural confidence, drawn to his easy unrushed manner, almost amused by his ill-concealed watchfulness: he’d finally got Roza sitting down, and he was wondering if the old fish had enough strength to wriggle off the hook.

They’d come back to Roza’s small flat. Tea had been made. Cherries had been washed and piled in a bowl. They sat facing each other across the dining table, Roza like a patient, somewhat stiff, Sebastian like a doctor on a house call, hands knitted, and arms resting on the table. His white shirt hadn’t been ironed below the collar; the blue linen jacket was loose and creased. He spoke with a low, reassuring tone.

‘Six months ago we came into possession of some lost documents. They were compiled by the secret police back in the eighties, ours and the East Germans’. It’s a joint archive covering joint operations against certain high profile dissidents. One of the files deals with the Shoemaker.’

Sebastian waited a moment to see if Roza would react. Everyone had heard of the Shoemaker. He was one of the giants of dissident thought, an intellectual of the velvet revolution, a writer who’d helped craft the ideas and tactics that would bring down authoritarian communism. While his collected essays were required reading in every university, they’d remained in demand where they’d first appeared, on the street. Unlike other philosopher kings of East-Central Europe, however, the Shoemaker had never been crowned with political office. His identity remained unknown. Sebastian’s expectant pause dried out. Roza wasn’t going to take the bait and reveal his name; instead, she reached for a cherry.

‘The Shoemaker was the voice behind Freedom and Independence,’ resumed Sebastian, as if Roza didn’t know already ‘The paper published his essays every two weeks, beginning in nineteen thirty-eight. For no apparent reason, he fell silent after twelve years… in nineteen fifty-one, during the Stalinist Terror.’

Roza nodded, feeling her throat go dry.

‘Most people think he’d said all he had to say but then, out of the blue, he spoke again… thirty-one years later, just after martial law had been declared. Freedom and Independence suddenly appeared on the streets as if there’d been no hush. This time he dried up after eight months.’

‘That’s right,’ said Roza, finding her voice, thinking the best line of defence would be a passive contribution. She ate the cherry to do what normal people do when they’re not worried.

‘Again, the view of historians and critics is that there was nothing else to be said — he’d been a writer with a sense of economy… no wasted words, no repetition. Why go on? He’d sent out his ideas and he was content to wait for the harvest.’

‘Exactly,’ said Roza.

‘No one seriously considered that he might have been betrayed. Twice. In fifty-one and eighty-two.’

‘No.’ Her throat was drying again.

Sebastian paused for a while, waiting for the received version of history to fall apart without any help from him. He sipped his tea, as if leaving Roza’s arms to weaken; waiting for her to drop what she was carrying.

‘The Shoemaker didn’t operate alone,’ he said, casually ‘The entire operation depended on a group around him called the Friends. No one knows how they were structured or how they’d organised the printing and distribution of the paper. In fact no one knows how many of them were involved and who they might have been. Like the Shoemaker, they appeared with the paper and they vanished with the paper. Which brings me back to the archive found in Dresden… and a file on the Shoemaker.’

Roza nodded, her resistance beginning to flag, the very sound of the words seeming to press down upon her.

‘The file contains documents compiled during an operation to catch him in nineteen eighty-two after the breaking of his long silence.’

‘Yes.’ Again, the act of speaking gave Roza something to lean on, something to hide behind.

‘The operation was run by Otto Brack.’

‘Yes.’

‘It was called Polana.’

Roza, already reeling, frowned at the name; she felt a kind of tug on the line, but the hook was snagged deep in the past. Something stirred but slipped away.

‘It failed,’ said Sebastian.

‘It did.’

‘He only caught you… the only known Friend. The papers call you “the pre-eminent Friend”. You were betrayed.’

Roza waited, her gaze falling on to Sebastian’s lips. He’d fished out the slice of lemon and was eating the fruit, wincing at the bitter taste. After placing the rind on the saucer, he said, ‘But you see Roza, I’m not here to talk about what happened in eighty-two. What interests me is fifty-one. The really dark year that no one knows about, except you and Otto Brack.’

Roza froze. She hadn’t expected this. The letters, calls and messages had all been vaguely about justice, forgotten wrongs and the strength of the law Cleaning up the past. She imagined he’d come across some slip of paper that mentioned her name; that he’d wanted her to fill in the gaps… but not this. He’d found his way into the cellar of Mokotow prison.

‘Roza, we have a vast archive at the IPN,’ said Sebastian, like a man laying his cards upon the table. ‘It’s the paperwork of the old secret police machinery. But it was cleaned up. Officials like Brack took the opportunity to get rid of incriminating material before going home from the office for the last time. They went away with smiles on their faces. But these lost documents, now found, change all that. Or to be precise, they change everything in relation to you. The file opened on the Shoemaker in nineteen eighty-two has an enclosure: the file opened on you in nineteen fifty-one. In it are the transcripts of your interrogations carried out in Mokotow, when they asked you about the Shoemaker. I’ve read them, Roza. I’ve read between the lines. I know that off the page the gravest offences took place.’

Roza didn’t dare to lift her cup of tea for fear her hand might shake. All at once she felt terribly old, too old for this. And Sebastian didn’t understand that no lawyer could penetrate that lost time; no one could cross the divide constructed by Otto Brack. Sebastian was leaning forward, unaware of the abyss yawning in front of him.