Janusz was anxiously smoking again, sitting in the back of the official limousine while Lieutenant Walicki expertly threaded through the noisy, very chaotic streets. In the short time they had been at the Ministry, the streets had become almost impassable with carts, cars, trucks, horses, people. It didn’t help that the whine of planes overhead and the thud of explosions was growing nearer, ratcheting up the panic.
“You’re taking a strange way back to the hotel,” Janusz said, glancing out the window. “I’m not sure where we are.”
“I’ve got a route and alternates all in mind, sir. Trust me. I will have you back at your hotel and we will be able to continue as planned without any obstacles.”
Janusz shakily lit another cigarette with the ember of the last. He had no sense of direction. Zosia drove or someone else did. When he drove himself, he invariably got lost. He knew a few blocks around the hotel and that was it, even after living in the city for years. Sometimes strangers, who didn’t recognise him but saw a well-dressed, apparently ordinary man on the street, would innocently ask for directions. He obliged, but certainly got them even more lost with his tangled turns and twists. In the mountains or the forests with Lidia, he never got lost, though. He knew his way when he was with her.
“So how will you get us to Switzerland?” Janusz leaned forward.
“By train. Then car. Finally a short walk across the frontier,” answered the Lieutenant simultaneously spinning the wheel so they sinuously and quickly avoided clumps of people hurrying by. “All contingencies have been accounted for, sir.”
“Look, call me Janusz. Please. I don’t want to call you Lieutenant or Lieutenant Walicki with my wife.”
“Jozef,” the young man said. “If I may, it is a great honour to have this assignment. I learned piano with your Two and Three Part Inventions. They are as elegant and complex as Bach, but so expressive.”
“Piano? I wish I’d mastered the harmonica. I could put it in my pocket. Try that with a Bechstein grand piano.”
Silence. “I’m joking, Jozef. I used Three Blind Mice on pennywhistle in the andante of my Second Symphony.” He hummed it briefly. It made him feel a little less like jumping out the door of a moving car.
“I don’t remember noticing it. I’m sorry. I’ll listen more closely to the recording at home.”
“Sure, sure, musical jokes are like mustard. They always brighten things, make them tastier. Now, I’ve worked with serious items, too. Take Beethoven’s 111. You like it?”
“Sonata number 32 is magnificent,” Jozef said fervently over his shoulder.
“I dropped hints of that in the Fourth Violin Trio. Come to that, I dropped a trio in a trio into the middle of a Mass.” Bragging again like some kid or insecure fool. I’m racing to gather up my gossiped-about too young wife, so that we can then race to the Swiss border, so that I can escape being captured, humiliated at least, maybe murdered by barbarians levelling the city around me. And even here, even now, Januzs thudded his head onto the car window in shame, I can’t stop myself. Showing off.
“After this, when we’re snuggled down in a Swiss four-poster, I’ll write a whole rondo for horse, cow, chicken and pig. Maybe, The Animals’ Orchestra.” He slumped back in his seat, the car bouncing over something and shivering, speeding forward.
“If you’ll forgive me, Janusz, that would be very undignified. You’re an artist for all time.”
This one was humour-deficient, like a person who didn’t get enough citrus or red meat and ended up pale, dull and serious. The journey just got worse. What was life without levity? Janusz sighed, ground out the cigarette and lit yet another. Must make sure to have supplies of them at this rate. Never knew what was ahead. He saw the grey and red Gothic bulk of the Castle on the hill go by, and the river beside it gleamed like sabre steel in the sunlight. The whole city was in motion, he thought, the bridges jammed, and the streets pulsing with frightened people fleeing. But somehow, he couldn’t accept yet that this was life or death. Not for him or Zosia or even the sober-sided young officer.
For all of the others, perhaps. The twisted columns of black smoke that were sprouting rapidly over the city testified to that possibility. So what was he so anxious about, heart battering, palms moist? The change? The unexpected? He had lost his direction once again.
He saw himself in Jozef’s rearview mirror: black hair shot with white, green eyes too large, nose too small, lines and creases expectable when you reach forty-five, but something more. The eyes that stared back, blinking, were focused on something just behind them, almost just out of sight. The gaze was anxious and inquisitive.
Now Lieutenant Jozef seemed very confident and he was always looking straight ahead. Janusz was uneasy about him. He was exactly the kind of young man Zosia would like – tall, clean featured and intelligent, commanding. He reeked of a masculine cologne. Zosia had had a rank of Jozefs in the last two years. In the midst of everything else that had come undone in the last few hours, Januzs didn’t need jealousy, but there it was, another uncontrollable tic and twitch.
“Are you married, Jozef?” Make it sound ordinary, establishing common experiences.
Horn braying, the car imperiously sliced a path through other cars and trucks, the horses pulling carts piled with furniture. “No, not yet. Things have been too unsettled, but I have a girl I’m very close to.”
“Good. Good. Pursue her. Don’t let anybody or anything get in your way.” He flipped the glowing cigarette out the window before he realised a family perched on a horse-pulled cart was beside them. “I’ve been married three times. Zosia is my second wife.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I married my first wife, Lidia, twice. We were married for a few years, then we weren’t and then we got married again. Civil ceremonies,” he said. Just two men chatting amiably in their car as they drive to the hotel. “But Zosia and I are very happy. The perfect couple. I’m not boasting.”
Well, I am, he thought. But that should discourage this gallant young officer if Zosia does more than flirt. She would flirt. That was inarguable. But the line between hand and panty must be inviolate, like the Maginot Line.
The car lurched. He bounced forward. They stopped in front of the enormous pastry-white façade of the grand hotel. Jozef twisted to look at him, abruptly brusque. “I’ll be back in exactly twenty minutes. You and Zosia must be right here. Right here. We can’t afford to come inside to bring you down. Is that clear?”
“I know how to keep time. I’m a composer,” Janusz said, clambering out. He didn’t like the barracks tone. “I’m not an idiot.”
Well, that remained to be seen.
He headed for the hotel’s churning entrance.
Five
He had to force his way up the steps into the revolving door, which was comically revolving and never stopping, spewing people out. Another sign, besides the sirens and the bombs, that this was not a normal day: Egon, the huge doorman in his generalissimo’s uniform was gone. Swept away in the flood.
Januzs pressed onward through the pandemonium of the lobby, men and women besieging the front desk, waving papers, yelling, bellboys futilely trying to haul carts of luggage. No one stopped him, shook his hand, asked for a picture or an autograph. National treasure he might be, but right now people seemed to have other things on their minds.
Riding up an elevator took an age: everyone was coming down. The only one who was unfazed was ancient widowed Mrs Tarnowski, in her pearls and fox stole, carrying her schnauzer, out for their usual morning walk. She nodded cordially at Januzs and headed into the sea of panicky hotel guests as if nothing were different. Bye, bye, Mrs Tarnowksi, he thought, maybe you’ll run into Egon out there.
He got out at the penthouse, potted plants and brocaded chairs outside his door. He reached for his keys. Then he noticed the door was ajar. “Zosia?” he called, going into the spacious penthouse apartment. “We have to talk right now. We have to leave.”
He called out again. Nothi
ng. He hurried into the modern gleaming kitchen, back into the living room, to their bedroom, the spare rooms for guests and the maid. His own panic flamed up. Where was she?
He stood uncertainly in the living room, the skyline through the windows now lowering with smoke against the blue sky, glinting off the black polish of the piano. Zosia had decorated the room and he went along with her choices, a childlike mix of heavy oak and mahogany Biedermeier furniture and steel chairs, paintings of dogs and horses. He walked around as if she might be hiding behind the gold and green floral silk sofas. He glanced at her portrait over the red marble inlaid fireplace. Gierek had done it in his most Klimt homage so that Zosia’s round, doll-like face was rendered exquisitely, blue eyes and small, sensual mouth while her nude body dissolved into impossible angles. He walked up to the portrait. Only Zosia’s roseate and brown nipples were depicted in photographic detail, as if you could reach up, caress them. He went along, again, with her delight at the picture, but he didn’t like it. He blinked. Something was very wrong.
She kept four baccarat crystal cats on the mantelpiece below her portrait. He bought her one in each city – Milan, Vienna, Paris and London – when he played there in the last two years. The crystal cats were gone. Zosia gazed teasingly down at him.
He called out to her again, more urgently. Then he noticed the envelope on the piano’s music stand, his name written in her curlicues. With deep dread, he tore open the envelope and slowly read the terrible letter.
He sat down on the piano bench. The thudding outside was closer. His head lowered, then raised.
‘Leaving you. You don’t love me. Too hard to live with. Too remote. Too demanding. Too old. Gone to Nice. Probably. Goodbye. Goodbye.’
He felt like Mrs Tarnowksi in her idiotic dream of normalcy. He stood up and walked to the bedroom, the unmade great bed just as he had left Zosia when she retreated back to it before he left. He looked in the expanse of the closet, flipping on the lights. Her gowns, green, gold, red, sparkling and perfect, were all still hanging, waiting. He counted the leather inscribed luggage in the corner. Only a small bag missing. Zosia was travelling light.
He went into their bedroom again, opening the drawers on the bureaus. The letter must be a wretched joke. Her perfumed silks were all neatly arrayed. He reached over to her vanity table. The jade and leather jewel box was light in his hand. He opened each of its thin drawers slowly. She had taken all of her jewellery, the rings and necklaces, the gold and diamonds he gave her. He carefully set the box down again.
He walked out to the living room. The faint sounds of riotous car horns and machinery on the street below drifted in, along with the explosions and rumblings nearby. He went to the liquor stand and poured a half glass of aged scotch, leaned against the stand and drank quickly. Zosia must have bolted as soon as he was out the door. She must have been ready to do this at a moment’s notice and this morning provided the opportunity. And even more, she had to have someone ready to help her.
He drained the glass and sat down at the piano, staring sightlessly at the white and black keys. Who was against him, who had helped her run away? He knew each of her affairs lately, and none of them seemed resolute or organized enough. Did it matter? She was gone, she had help, and he was alone. He had lost his way where she was concerned and never realised it until it was too late.
Janusz picked up a copy of his Fifth Quartet from the bookcase, set it up on the piano stand and began playing. Nice, smoothly melodic and balanced yet not trite. Very often lately he didn’t remember writing his own music, and playing it like this was like hearing the work of someone divorced from himself. It was as if he had written the music in a trance or simply taken dictation. If that was so, who was the dictator?
He was a national treasure. The nation and its people flowed through him. No God whispered to him. He spun counterpoint out of thin air. Yet he was somehow inspired. A mystery.
His mind was a jumble now. Henryk accused him of selfishness. But he gave Zosia anything and he sent money every month to her covetous, greedy parents in the country. He gave freely to friends, to strangers even who met him on the street. He left little gifts for members of the state radio orchestra when they played together. He gave himself to the nation. Didn’t they all say that just a little while ago? Wasn’t that the point of this frenzied gyration and flight abroad? He was selfless, not selfish.
He stopped playing and went to the window. What a view from up here, a city in flames and smoke. At that instant, from this false Olympus, he had a blinding, undeniable revelation: he was lost; he had lost Zosia, been foolish with her and about her.
He strode to the telephone, impatiently stabbed at the telephone dial, doing it three times before he got the number right. But he had not always been so confused and lost. He had been able to think and be inspired, and he had loved and been loved in turn.
He knew with clarity and certainty where his inspiration had come from and why he had been barren for the last two years.
Something exploded below and the room shook, even Zosia’s portrait vibrated with false life. Ringing, ringing, his hand tight on the telephone. It was preposterous to think there would be answer, today of all days. Yet he had to know.
“Hello? Yes?” breathless, familiar.
“It’s me, Lidia. It’s me.”
“Janusz, what’s wrong? Are you all right?” His bleakness faded at her immediate worried response to hearing his voice. She still cared.
“I’m fine. Listen, are you at the farm? I’m leaving the city in a few minutes, I’ll come and get you. I’m going to Switzerland. I’ll take you there with me.”
“Yes, I’m at the farm. Januzs, my God—” and the line went dead.
He frantically called her name again and again, dialled again, felt the hotel tremble under him. He moved quickly, resolutely, back to the bedroom, stripping off his hastily thrown on clothes, noticing he had misbuttoned his shirt when Lieutenant Walicki came with the urgent summons. Now he dressed carefully and swiftly in his best suit, clean lines and expensive tailoring, gold cufflinks, burgundy silk tie, brightly shined English-made shoes. Lidia had picked it out, as she had with most of his wardrobe after they were together, dressing him like he was one of her architectural projects. When he saw her next, he would present himself to her as she wished him to look to the world.
Yes, he thought, glancing at himself for the last time in the mirror, I’m going to find Lidia and together find myself again. He had to go to her. She could be in danger.
He practically ran out of the penthouse.
Six
There were four of them now as Jozef expertly bounced the car over cobblestones and potholes into the industrial section of the city, through roadways of indistinguishable tin sheds and warehouses, and parked the much smaller brown sedan. It was a major comedown from the shiny official limousine and entirely inconspicuous. The district smelled of oil and chemicals, mingled with smoke. It was deserted.
Janusz didn’t budge from the back seat. He was sweating in his suit, arms folded across his chest. He was adamant and furious. The introductions back at the hotel twenty minutes ago had been curt, rude, especially when Janusz announced that Zosia was not coming and they must make a detour outside the city to the farm where Lidia lived. There had been harsh words and shouting.
The young man in the back seat with him got out quickly and joined Jozef and his burly companion. The young man was Corporal Pawel Dunin, snub-nosed, blond, boyish, although he did surprisingly bring out a pipe at one point, a prop to look older and sophisticated, until Jozef snapped at him and he hastily put it back in his overcoat. The other man was Sergeant Karol Peszek. He had oily black hair, black furry caterpillar moustache, square shoulders and small eyes and he laughed a lot and Janusz noted he was missing several upper teeth. He wore a tight grey cheap business suit and a badly knotted green tie.
“Is he just going to sit there?” Peszek demanded to Jozef, jerking a finger back at Janusz fuming in the car.
Jozef unlocked and opened the sliding steel door of a small battered metal warehouse with filthy windows.
“Don’t worry about him. We’re out of uniform, but military discipline will be maintained, sergeant,” Jozef snapped.
“Sir,” Peszek said instantly without sincerity.
“Yes, sir,” young Dunin chimed in, attempting a salute and then stopping.
“Get the weapons loaded into the trunk. Look, boys, the faster we deliver Mr Rudzinksi to the Swiss, the faster we can get back here into the fight.” He slapped one black gloved hand into the other.
“Sir!” Dunin grinned.
“Sir.” Peszek definitely was not bowled over by the imminence of battle, Janusz thought sourly.
As Peszek and Dunin disappeared into the blackness of the warehouse and returned quickly, carrying rifles and boxes of ammunition, Jozef leaned into the car’s back window.
“It’s impossible, as I told you, Janusz. We have a train to catch and the rest of my plan relies on being at very specific places to meet very specific individuals at very specific times. We cannot afford a detour. She may not even be where you think she is.”
“She is. I spoke to her.”
“It can’t be done.”
“It can be done. Or else I’m not going anywhere. I’ll contact Henryk and you’ll get different orders.”
“As I’ve explained,” Jozef said with a trace of irritation, “the Deputy Minister, anybody outside of the three of us, will have no further contact with us. It’s for your security. Any attempt to contact him or anyone else in the government will be treated as a ruse by the enemy and ignored. Communications are chaotic now anyway.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“We’re loaded,” Pezek called out. “Sir.”
Jozef spoke low, “Listen, you’re my responsibility. You. Not your wife, even if she had come along. Not your former wife. We’re going through several countries controlled by the enemy and it won’t be easy. I know you don’t want to make it any harder for these men.” He gestured at Peszek and Dunin.
The National Treasure Page 2