William Brodrick: The Day of the Lie

‘After the liberation of the camp he was hospitalised in a part of Austria that fell under Soviet post-war administration. Agents of Stalin’s security service found him. They found him because they had a list of names, names of Communist Party members of the wrong kind. The kind Stalin no longer trusted because he was mad with suspicion and fear and dread.’

Brack’s mouth moved. A lip twitched.

‘I’ve guessed that your father never told you,’ said Anselm, ‘but he’d lost faith in Stalin as early as nineteen thirty-eight, when the Party was dissolved by the Comintern, before the Terror got underway I imagine he didn’t want to disillusion you with grown-up talk about in-politics, divisions and back-stabbing. Maybe he just wanted to keep the story about the field nice and simple, because it was worth believing in; because he, himself; believed in it so much that he didn’t want the grass, for you, to be polluted with stories of blood spilled over… what? How not to build a fence? Your father saw further than Stalin, Mr Brack. He understood that the death of innocent people kills off a good idea.’

Brack’s top teeth nipped his lip.

‘The Terror reached your father,’ said Anselm. ‘He was deported to a work camp in the Arctic Circle.’

‘When?’

‘Nineteen forty-six.’

‘Where?’

‘Vorkuta.’

The interrogator’s voice came and went like air from a slow puncture. Brack’s face became eerily mobile, the lines appearing at once as contortions rather than marks on a damaged floor. The loose collar somehow constricted his windpipe.

‘He was still alive in nineteen forty-eight when you applied to join the secret police in Warsaw’ Anselm’s flesh began to prickle, his back aggravated by sweat. He didn’t like this bargain, this bringing together of crime with mercy. But he was a part of unfolding circumstances. The Prior had said that you have to go along with them, sometimes, as an act of obedience; you had to let the head of the axe do all the work. ‘Your prospective employers were concerned about your background. They’d received a memo from the NKVD disclosing your father’s whereabouts and his resistance to current Party ideology. Major Strenk, however, spoke up in your favour.’

‘How?’

Anselm swallowed hard. ‘He thought you were ideologically uncomplicated, hungry to subordinate yourself to an institution and, if offered the paternity of the service, were likely to offer back the devotion of a son. His demand that you abandon Roza was a test of loyalty… proof to his superiors that he’d been right to support your application.’

There was a long pause. Both Anselm and Brack seemed to hear Strenk’s speech about men chosen by history for the difficult tasks of the moment: the voice that had replaced that of his father. Strenk had spoken for the institution that was dedicated to the nitty-gritty of protecting what his father had believed in. This had been the moment in Brack’s life when, in discarding Roza and everything she meant to him, he’d sacrificed his own inner life: for he’d loved her, hadn’t he? Isn’t that why he’d taken Celina? Something had stirred when he saw the child and he’d tried to grasp what he’d thrown away for the sake of tomorrow Wasn’t that the other image behind the failed indoctrination of the girl who wouldn’t listen?

‘Tymon Strenk knew that my father was in Vorkuta?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even as I sat in the interview room?’

‘Yes.’

Anselm drew a line in his mind. He wasn’t going to say any more about Strenk’s relationship with Brack. Sebastian was right: the file contained copious evidence that Strenk effectively adopted Brack, moulding him and directing him in the ways of the service, its ideals and its goals. That didn’t need saying: B rack already knew; his mind was probably burning at the recollection. Brack was grimacing again, though he’d said nothing, the discs on his eyes moving with each brief spasm. Suddenly he spoke, his voice, like a soft gust of air.

‘What happened to my father?’

Anselm sighed. He wanted to ease out the disclosure, but Brack didn’t want forgiveness or compassion or understanding. He wanted the reason for Roza’s mercy Anselm said, ‘He escaped from Vorkuta. According to the NKVD he’d walked a thousand miles before they found him. He’d said he was coming home to Warsaw He wanted to see his son.

‘What did they do?’

‘They shot him.’

Brack’s mouth went into a slight paroxysm; his legs started shaking like thin sticks in his trousers.

‘What year?’

‘Nineteen fifty-one.’

The hands began to tremble, too. His head fell back slightly and the change in angle allowed Anselm a glimpse into the abyss… at the eyes behind their glass walls… they were closed and horribly creased. Brack was staring at the truth of his past: in the very year that he tortured Roza and shot her husband, his renegade father — the inspiration of his life — was executed by agents of the wider security system he’d served; the system that had knowingly taken him under its wing while dragging his father to the Gulag.

He’d locked the cage and pulled the trigger for a system his father didn’t believe in.

They’d given him the key and the gun.

With confounding speed, the tremors to Brack’s limbs and face ceased. It was as though the plug to his nerves had been kicked out of its socket. A hand came up and settled the glasses more firmly on the nose. Once more his skin settled into a cracked, hard surface, the stains like weights on his head.

‘I must leave this place,’ he said, stumbling away his voice hoarse and dry ‘I have to get out, I can’t… think. I’m…’

Brack couldn’t articulate his despair and confusion because it was too deep. There was too much to think about, too many events to reconsider, decisions to review A vast crack had opened at his feet and he was falling into the darkness. The new world worth killing for had come to an end: it wasn’t just a failed dream beaten flat by the old vested interests; it had never existed. But the look on Brack’s faced seemed to admit that this was something he’d always known… ever since Celina walked out of the door. She’d taken all the colour with her, leaving behind the grey.

‘Mr Brack,’ called Anselm, instinctively rising. ‘Stop, just a moment. ‘The murderer and torturer who’d escaped punishment was staggering down a long aisle, row upon row of empty seats on either side. The delegates were on their feet laughing at the idiot who’d done the dirty work; the fool who’d thought shooting people in a cellar was an act of significance; the clown who’d abandoned those he’d loved. He reached the Hall doors and pushed his way out, escaping the silent applause.

Anselm hadn’t moved. He’d been rooted to the spot like one of the audience, only he hadn’t been clapping. As if the conference was over, he left his seat and chased after the principal speaker, but he’d gone.

One of the lifts was descending, the numbers counting down.

He ran towards the stairs, hoping to catch Brack before he left the building. He’d thought of something to say even if he wasn’t sure it was true. Rounding a corner, he saw him limping ahead. He caught up and tugged his sleeve, but Brack was the one who spoke.

‘I knew someone, once, and he used to say to everyone, “Harm the boy you harm the man”, but to me, he said, “Save the boy you save the man”. He meant you saved him to do something decent, worthwhile and good.’ He swayed as if he might fall, and moved on, as if to catch his balance. ‘You know, I was the one with the matches. I knew where I was going.’

Brack reeled away quickly One shoulder had fallen lower than the other, the sleeve of his brown jacket almost covering the hand. He began to drag one foot. Anselm followed, half stammering, not able to call out, wanting to reach the person who’d once loved Roza and been grateful to Mr Lasky.