William Brodrick: The Day of the Lie

Sebastian slipped his hands into his pockets. The appeal was over. He was waiting for Roza to reconsider her decision.

‘Sebastian,’ said Roza, not wanting to disappoint him, ‘you have to understand…’

Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t help noticing the two perpendicular creases to the front of his shirt. She was right: he’d put it straight on, probably leaving a few pins in the shoulder or cuff. Had he bought it for her or was shopping a desperate measure to avoid the ironing board? Either way Roza was moved. If he’d been her grandson, she’d have told him what she could about her life, within the limits that remained available; she would not have allowed the shadow of Otto Brack to fall so heavily between them. She’d have told of small glories and some vanquished pain. Roza took off her coat and hooked it on the nearby stand.

‘You have to understand,’ she repeated. ‘I only drink on Sundays.’

A ventilator purred in the corner. House plants rose from mulch in plastic pots. There were various pictures on the walls — grainy shots from the forties and fifties, images of party leaders proclaiming change from a balcony, and then colour photographs of mass demonstrations, portraits of jubilant unionists: the whole a symbolic litany of the last sixty years. The snaps and clips took the place of the windows. It was as though Roza had an elevated view on to history. Wherever she looked she saw landmarks from her own passage to this basement deep beneath the city.

‘Speak as and when you like,’ said Sebastian, standing behind the facing chair. ‘The machine’s running.’

Where do I begin? thought Roza.

One of the pictures on the wall showed Warsaw in ruins: gable walls teetering over bent and twisted iron, smoke rising from open pits. But Roza recalled the elements that no image could capture: the terrible grunt of a building just before it collapsed; the moaning from heaps of rubble; the smell of burning flesh. Explosions thundered in her memory, shaking the ground and her teeth. Dead horses on the pavement had been stripped of their meat. Five years later she’d joined an Uprising with Otto. He’d been angry then, too. And unquiet; remote with his grievances. She’d finally held his hand and he’d wept: they were child soldiers facing annihilation. But they’d escaped through the sewers, each taking a different tunnel, each finding, eventually a sudden peace and the Communists. No, Roza couldn’t speak of her childhood or the war. They’d been incinerated. And Brack was there, as a friend. Oddly she thought it something worth keeping. He’d been Otto back then.

But neither could she speak of Pavel and the brief time they’d spent together rebuilding their shattered city. Anything she might say led inexorably to the Shoemaker: for while her war had ended, Pavel had begun another. She hadn’t known at first, but then he’d told her a secret, the keeping of which had eventually brought her to Mokotow.

All that remained was what Sebastian had called a desert: the thirty years that joined two shattering periods of imprisonment. And, in truth, it had indeed been a wilderness — a period of wandering and dryness in exile, striking rocks for water and begging for bread. But the barren ground had flowered, suddenly and unexpectedly Even Roza had been stunned. She’d gone back to the Shoemaker immediately Yes, Sebastian was right: Otto Brack hadn’t followed her into the wasteland on the other side of prison. It was hers alone…

Sebastian hadn’t followed her either. The blue sheet of paper had been the one clue to the meaning of her exile — and that was now in her pocket, its significance having escaped Sebastian’s attention. Throughout his pleading, he’d shown no inkling of the true scope of Roza’s journey.

‘In May nineteen fifty-three a guard opened the cell door,’ she said, knowing she was in control. ‘He called my name. I followed him out of the building with another guard walking behind. The sun was full and the sky that deep blue you find on old plates and teapots. It was a glorious moment… a moment of exhilaration and joy I thought, “At last they’re going to shoot me.” My heart raced with anticipation and a sort of bubbling gratitude but he led me across the yard towards the gate that fronted Rakowiecka Street. The next thing I knew the thing swung open and there was Otto Brack, standing on the pavement — he’d come to say goodbye. 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, I kicked it and screamed but they wouldn’t let me back in. Brack just watched me and, when I finished beating on the gate, he watched me wander to a junction a few hundred yards up the road. That’s when I thought of a friend… I can’t use names, you appreciate that, don’t you?’

Nearly five hours later Roza’s testament drew to its close. Her story was ending where it had begun, in Mokotow prison.

She’d described her meandering journey but now she rehearsed that last encounter with Otto Brack following her second arrest: when he’d told her the price of any future justice.

‘Roza… are you all right?’

She could still see Brack’s death mask face.

‘Do you want a glass of water?’ Sebastian’s hand was reaching for the jug.

‘Yes.’

Brack was in a posh grey suit and a business man’s camel-coloured overcoat. The cut was too big, like the trousers, their hems slumped on his brown leather shoes. When they’d last met he’d been writhing in a drab uniform. His head had been shaved.

‘Roza, drink this.’ Sebastian was at her side, holding out the glass.

‘Thank you.’

She sipped the water, waiting for Brack’s presence to fade. He was sauntering towards the prison door, confident they’d never meet again.

‘I’m sorry, Roza. I should have known… I did know’

‘Forget it. You may have lured me here but I chose to speak.’

The ventilator purred in the corner; the plants seemed to watch from their pots. After a while Sebastian coughed and laid a hand on each of the two files. ‘Do you want to read them?’

Roza didn’t even look at the covers.

‘No thanks,’ she said, putting on her coat, ‘I was there.’

They walked down the alley of files, closely followed by the man from the Internal Security Agency The lift had been fixed so they rose to ground level, John discreetly checking his pockets for his electronic card, the Special Forces officer standing at ease. When the doors opened, Roza walked straight towards a chrome waste bin situated at the main entrance, into which she ponderously divested her coat pockets of two bus tickets, some sweet wrappers, a ball of crumpled blue paper and a used tissue. Sebastian watched patiently, touched by the strange rituals of the old.

Outside on the pavement they huddled awkwardly as if wondering where to go next. It was evening now and an autumn chill made them both shiver.

‘My grandmother was arrested during the Terror,’ said Sebastian, blowing mist at the cold. He seemed to be confiding to the passing cars on Towarowa Avenue. ‘She never spoke about it. All she’d say was that the cell was damp. I tried to find out more but she wouldn’t be drawn. So I turned to my parents — and even they knew nothing. We all knew nothing — and yet whatever happened remained part of the family structure, like a locked room in the house. I grew up trying the handle, never putting a direct question. Now I make a living picking the locks to rooms a lot of people would rather leave closed.’