William Brodrick - The Day of the Lie

‘Not everyone wants to hear the truth.” he avowed with a knowing wink to the waiter at the bar. ‘They wouldn’t want to know that Daddy was an informer and they wouldn’t thank Roza for telling them. She’d have known the score immediately: if she wanted to keep popping round for dinner and watch the telly then she’d better keep her mouth shut.’

Anselm nodded, thinking — curiously — of John. Given the choice.’ he’d preferred the lie of a happy family to the truth of his mother’s betrayal. He wasn’t grateful for the enlightenment, even now. He hadn’t wanted the pain. Neither had his father or Melanie. They’d all been playing Misery ever since, trying to get back to the good times. All of which demonstrated the complexity of Roza’s position and the risks involved in persuading someone to step centre-stage.

One arm behind his back, the waiter refilled Sebastian’s tiny glass, aping shock when Anselm declined a top-up.

‘But, of course, FELIKS may not be our man.” said Anselm, wetting his bottom lip.

‘No. I spotted that, too.’

Colonel Brack’s letter to the general, copied to the major, referred to ‘agents’. Plural. There were other ears at Roza’s door. But only one of them really mattered.

‘I’ve got to find the informer that led Brack to the Powazki Cemetery in nineteen eighty-two.” said Anselm. ‘The rest are just bit-players.’

How to proceed, then? Anselm could hardly go through an SB agent registry like one of those telephone-based salesmen, asking if the householder would like to change their heating system. He needed to know for sure that he’d found Brack’s main actor, so he could plan his approach, plan that ‘better story’ mentioned by the Prior that would persuade them to meet Roza.

Sebastian.’ it transpired, had already tried to narrow down the pool of candidates. Cross-referring the IO/SB/XVI/1982 reference with SB employment records, he’d identified Irina Orlosky as Brack’s bilingual personal assistant. The revenue people had traced her address but, like Roza, she’d refused to talk. Unlike Roza she’d been hard and brittle; hysterical when pushed. And while neither of them had a choice but to co-operate with an IPN investigation, Sebastian recognised he couldn’t hope to mount a successful prosecution without willing witnesses.

Anselm stared at his glass and then swallowed fire in one swift movement.

‘Odd, really that the Polana file isn’t completely empty.” he said, after a long burning pause. ‘The letters left behind are more like adverts. A hint of what’s on offer. I was reminded of a mail order catalogue.’

‘Catalogue?’

‘Yes. You know, bargain sales. Basement level.’

Sebastian didn’t follow so Anselm explained.

‘We need the papers that are missing from the Polana file. The one name left on view to anyone who opens the cover is Brack’s deputy.’ Lieutenant Frenzel. I find that an intriguing state of affairs. I think it was deliberate. I think he wouldn’t be surprised if we gave him a call. I think the man is open for business:

Sebastian leaned back slowly viewing Anselm with reluctant admiration. Annoyance, too, that he’d missed the true meaning of the surviving correspondence. For months he’d been poring over those two letters, seeing nothing more alluring than a reference number, and then this monk had turned up.’ this herald expected to shatter the illusions of many and he’d seen the implications in five minutes.

‘I think I might join you after all,’ said Anselm, signalling to the waiter.

Warmed by Sebastian’s silent praise, he thought it right, however, to advertise his ignorance. He’d wanted to know something long before he’d dared to question the eminence of dumplings.

‘So, tell me.’ who was FELIKS?’

IPN/RM/13129/2010

EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF A STATEMENT MADE BY ROZA MOJESKA

Timings refer to the complete recording.

0.15

The guard behind shoved me out… but I didn’t want to leave. I’d forgotten how to live and I didn’t know what to do out there, on an ordinary street. For years I’d been in a cell with a tiny window so high that I had to strain my neck to see the clouds. I turned round and banged on the gate… but they wouldn’t let me back in. Brack just watched me… and, when I finished beating on the gate, his eyes followed me to a junction a few hundred yards up the road. That’s when I thought of Aniela Kolba. We’d shared a cell. She’d told me to come and stay when they set me free.

0.56

Aniela and I were bound by memories of prison while Edward, her husband, became my guide and friend. He knew how to live na lewo, on the left… outside official channels; he’d learned how to zalatwic sprawy… to wangle things. That first night he obtained an old British Army camp bed and set it up in the sitting room.’ between a wardrobe and wall. He called it my apartment. A few days later, he pulled some strings and got me a job sewing ribbons in a hat factory I was part of the family No rent. No payments of any kind. I sat at their table as if I’d always been there. I didn’t leave it until four years later, when — thanks to Edward’s back door wangling — I got a place of my own. But by then there was no leaving. I belonged.

5.37

Work at the factory gave a structure to my life. I sat between two women and we just sewed from morning till night. To my left was Barbara Nowak. Her husband had gone for a long walk and never come back. She had a pram with a doll, bought in the hope of having a child. She had a parrot in a cage that yelled ‘Let me out’. She was unhappy; and that made us friends. We both sat there, lost with our own thoughts, endlessly pulling a needle and thread. Thirty years later, never having attended a strike or demonstration in her life.’ Barbara organised a system of distribution for Freedom and Independence. She used to wear a flowery apron, even in the street. The SB never gave her a second look. But that was all to come. At the time I met her, we were both in a kind of troubled sleep.

8.09

The fifties were a difficult time for everyone. And yet I didn’t really notice the hardship. I remember once seeing blood on my thumb but I had no recollection of having felt the stab of the needle. That sums me up, back then. From day to day I felt nothing. The greater part of me was still in Mokotow… by a large window that looked on to a cherry tree. Events passed me by — great, terrible events, which burned themselves into those around me.’ and I looked on, numbed, as if I’d found someone else’s blood on my fingers.

It was through Barbara that I heard about the riots in 1956. She leaned towards me saying the workers from the Stalin factory in Poznan were on the streets. They had banners. ‘We want Freedom’, ‘We want Bread’.’

‘We are Hungry’. She said the farmers had taken on the Soviet army Bombs were falling out of the sky Folk were being dragged off to Siberia. I listened from afar, only stirring at a detail that turned out to be true. Children had climbed trees to get a better view of the tanks and the soldiers. When the army opened fire, aiming high to warn the rioters, they hit these little sparrows. Children fell dead from the branches.

18.23

Such was my life. Every night I’d go to Saint Klement’s for an hour or so. The silence reminded me of a voice I once heard on a train. This girl sang a song that took me out of myself. In my life, which has seen so many demands for names and dates of birth, here was someone important who’d escaped being nailed down. There was no name. I don’t know who it was, or what she looked like but I found her again in that quiet place.

The cleaner was called Lidia Zelk. A timid woman, we didn’t speak for three years. She’d never married. Like Barbara, she eventually joined the Friends of the Shoemaker.