William Brodrick: The Day of the Lie

‘The flowers. I just loved the flowers.’

The following morning, assisted by Sebastian, two police officers formally interviewed Anselm in a central Warsaw police station. They were compiling eye witness testimony to the shooting, of course, but they wanted to know about the conversation that had taken place with Otto Brack moments before the shooting and Anselm’s previous dealings with the killer, Irina Orlosky It took a while for him to realise that the absence of smiles meant they were investigating — if only to exclude it — the possibility of conspiracy: that Anselm had some shared responsibility for Irina’s actions. The matter was dealt with courteously but not before Anselm had suggested the two gentlemen might want to raid any and all premises belonging to one Marek Frenzel. A portion of the national archives would be recovered, furnishing them with enough evidence to instigate any number of prosecutions, not to mention one against Mr Frenzel himself.

‘I used to be a lawyer myself;’ said Anselm, after shaking hands with the senior officer. He used a forced, jocular tone to hide his festering aggression. ‘Trust me: Mr Frenzel’s worth a very close look indeed. Turn all the drawers out. Take up the carpet. Full body search with gardening gloves. Same with his business dealings. Check his VAT returns and his annual accounts. Call in the forensic people and pull him apart column by column. You’ll find a string of stolen pearls.’ And then the anger burst out. ‘Lock him up and give the key to Irina Orlosky’

Sebastian had translated every phrase, he and Anselm drinking in the slow nods of the two investigators. Afterwards, glad to have consigned Marek Frenzel to a great deal of personal and professional inconvenience, Anselm made a discreet afternoon visit to what would for ever remain — should an inventory be made of his actions — an undisclosed location. On returning to his bedroom, still melancholy and resigned, he waited for Sebastian’s call. They’d agreed to drown their mutual but different sorrows. When the phone rang Anselm picked up the receiver and said, with inscrutable calm:

“‘If a lion could talk, we could not understand him”.’

He was quoting Wittgenstein, hoping to establish a light hearted mood for the evening. But it wasn’t Sebastian. It was Roza.

‘It’s not a lion that wants to talk,’ she replied, as if mystical declarations were an ordinary form of discourse. ‘It’s the Shoemaker. He wants to meet his Friends.’

The silver Fiat and the blue Citroen moved gingerly along the narrow, pot-holed track. To the left a forest tinged sea green rose gently to a cloudy cobalt sky The empty fields to the right sloped smoothly to a winding silver stream at the base of the valley On the far bank another wood climbed to a ragged May horizon. It was late afternoon.

After a mile or so the track turned a sharp bend. Ahead, clinging to the pitch of the land, stood a walled cluster of ancient buildings, the bell tower rising high as if to reach the kestrel hovering above the enclosure. A row of small windows faced the vast natural silence of the trees. Roza had been given the address. She was with John in the lead car that had been borrowed from Edward, Celina taking instructions at the wheel. Behind trundled Sebastian, with Anselm. These were the Friends, a symbolic group, it seemed, comprising Brack’s victims, his confessor and his prosecutor. As both vehicles passed slowly through the entrance, Anselm had a fleeting premonition.

A premonition that took immediate depth when Anselm saw the Gilbertine monk shambling from beneath an arch. The pectoral cross identified him as the Prior, though — oddly, given the Order’s penchant for rule-breaking — not an especially talkative one. He led the guests in silence down a low-vaulted corridor to a cell backing on to a small garden without borders, an enthusiastic if contradictory blend of indiscriminate planting and fondness for the remnant of an uncut lawn. The room was empty save for five chairs arranged around a bed.

‘He’s dead, I know, and I am dying,’ said Father Nicodem, propped by pillows on either side, his thin arms flat upon the crisp white sheets. ‘Someone has to say something for him, if only to illuminate his responsibility… and my own.

Anselm thought of the kestrel. It was out there, floating and watchful, its wings outstretched above a crazy garden. He listened to the husky voice of the monk who’d returned home to die, keeping his eyes firmly on the pallid, hollow features of the Shoemaker.

Father Nicodem went back to nineteen thirty-nine. It was the only way to situate everything that was to unfold. There were some wishful-thinkers who felt that Hitler wouldn’t dare cross the border and that Stalin’s interest went no further west than the Ukraine. But that was not the lesson of history. The Nazis had already taken Czechoslovakia and the West had done nothing. War was coming and that always meant a carving up of the homeland. With his Prior’s permission the young Father Nicodem, just ordained, left the monastery for Warsaw His garrulousness, his trenchant ideas, his gift for language — increasingly irreconcilable with a life devoted to silence — were to be put to the service of an underground printing operation of Father Nicodem’s invention: for, anticipating defeat, he believed ideas were the one thing that couldn’t be conquered; that words were the sole means to keep alive an autonomous culture.

Single-handedly and by stealth, he obtained all the requisite materials, the most imposing of which was a treadle-operated printing machine. It was hidden behind a false wall in the cellar of a presbytery occupied exclusively by Father Nicodem, a knowing Cardinal (and his successor) ensuring that the young man remained alone in his management of the parish. Old friends stored paper. Others spare parts. Others ink. None were aware of their confreres. One night, out for a walk, he heard by an open window a mother telling her children the story of the shoemaker who destroyed a dragon. He came home and prepared the first edition of Freedom and Independence. This was May 1939, just four months before the Germans and Russians invaded.

‘I had contacts,’ he said, testily sensing the atmosphere of admiration and not wanting it. ‘And one of them — a disaffected Communist — gave me the names of prominent thinkers and activists based in Warsaw In those early days they were very secretive, the membership not widely known… and I decided to print their names, to unmask them, to warn the people that these individuals had a vision and programme that was harmful to our national identity, that they’d bow to Stalin’s will given half the chance. And why shouldn’t I? I believed in free speech, openness, transparency accountability. I still do. Nonetheless, I didn’t know that many of the names on that list had broken with Stalin. I’ve often wondered if that first edition was one of the greater mistakes of my life.’

Father Nicodem didn’t find out why until four years later in 1943. He was sitting in the confessional, dozing. Sinning was on a half-day week during the Occupation. A voice woke him at the grille.

‘My name is Leon Brack.’

Father Kaminsky had never heard of him and, stifling a yawn, he said so — adding, with a wink in his voice, that his concern lay with actions not names.

‘Good:

‘Why?’

‘Because you printed mine. Now I’m a hunted man. A man with a wife and child.’

The German secret police had obtained a copy of Freedom and Independence and had been using it to track down their political enemies. Leon had found refuge with someone who was now part of the paper’s distribution chain; they’d made enquiries and eventually directed him to Father Nicodem.