The National Treasure

by William P Wood

“Not in twos or threes. No, no. I have my own little factory. Make very nice tables and chairs. I want things done, I put ten men on it. You want anything done you have a gang, not just a couple of guys.” He looked forlornly at Janusz, “Two or three at a time, they’re no good for anything.”

  The man moved away to a group huddled together, conveying what little Janusz had told him. Janusz faced the wall so they couldn’t see his face. It was clear to him that Lidia might not get him out in time or that she might not even be able to free him. He felt sickeningly responsible for the awful situation the men here and the women in the other building confronted, but he was powerless to change it. Not for myself, but for Lidia and the girl, Pesezk. For them, I can’t say anything.

  So he was resigned abruptly to the reality that what he had presumed was unlimited time to capture the music running blithely through his mind was in fact very limited. Maybe only a few hours or at best, like the stranger said just now, a few days. Then it would be over. The national treasure Rudzinski would go to a mass grave as a farmer. Like the American writer Bierce who vanished in the Mexican Revolution, Janusz Rudzinski would disappear as if a puff of smoke in the gale of the world war, an enigma, a puzzle for dilettantes to ponder and perhaps others to mourn.

  But I’ll be gone. Vaporised, he thought.

  He turned around again. The long shed had grown hotter as the morning lagged on and the smell of unwashed bodies and the makeshift latrine was bad; then it lost any impact and became background noise.

  Janusz went to the group the stranger had joined.

  “Excuse me, do any of you have some paper and a pencil? Scraps will do. I need to write something down.”

  “Last will? Why bother?” one of the men snorted. They were all smoking stunted cigars or cigarettes. Well, at least that craving seemed gone for good, Janusz thought wryly. Very rough cure, though.

  “No, just a few thoughts. I would appreciate it.”

  “Writing notes to someone outside?” asked one of the men suspiciously.

  “Personal thoughts,” Janusz said. “Honestly. I’ll show them to you.”

  This seemed to stymie them because at least one of the group apparently suspected Janusz was going to pass a message to a friend or perhaps to the enemy in return for better treatment. Why else would anybody want to bother scribbling down thoughts or pleas that would be annihilated shortly? Doing so made the reality of imminent oblivion too obvious.

  One of the men, bald, sad-eyed, fumbled in his vest and found a folded scrap of paper and a stub of pencil. “My laundry list’s on one side,” he said apologetically, handing the precious items to Janusz.

  “Many thanks,” he said gratefully.

  “What’s your name?” the man asked, the others watching for lack of anything better to do.

  Even now, he had to stay unknown and unrecognised. No prize for Henselt, no peril for Lidia and the others. “Rybak,” Janusz said immediately, and he went back to his chosen space by the wall.

  All right, he thought, sitting down very gingerly, commence. He wrote very small dots, not bothering with the music staff, only indicating the key. The music was joyful and defiant, as he tried to do justice to the transcendent spirit that animated the impromptu concert in the forest so long ago it seemed. Basic melody, simple chords, for everybody and anybody.

  It was astonishing how much music could be squeezed onto one side of the piece of paper. He even managed to work in more between the shirts, socks, pants and coat listed on the other side. It was selfish; all right he conceded the charge now, to be transported out of this concrete building, away from the town, the horrors, to the realm of music and creation. He paused. He didn’t want to deny Lidia, but even she became insubstantial as he worked. He felt sweat dripping down his sides as the building’s corrugated iron roof soaked up the day’s heat outside. It didn’t matter. He was timeless and elsewhere.

  Hours passed. He was vaguely aware of men shuffling near him or voices, but not anything especially specific or interesting. His dots grew quite dense, which was unsettling because they might be hard to untangle. Yet he had utter confidence that the music would reveal itself to the player.

  Finally, he had filled the paper and there was no more to add. It was a good piece, what he had promised Lidia and Gabriela. No title. Improvise one? Why not? In tiny letters, like a communication from very a small species, he wrote To the Future. Sign it? No. He was a messenger, not the message. Janusz sat back against the concrete. There was a first. A career chasing accolades and recognition summed up in deliberate anonymity and he didn’t mind at all. Perhaps a national treasure should be without individuality.

  He pushed himself upright. What to do with the paper and the anthem? Put it in his pocket or hide in his shoe? If the worst was coming, that would mean surrendering the music to oblivion, too. Unacceptable.

  Janusz began a slow, meticulous circuit of the large building, observed by the men he passed. He was hunting for a crack or crevice in the concrete, some inconspicuous hiding place for this single piece of paper. He had a conviction that the anthem would be found sooner or later; it was destined to be found, once the building had been cleansed of human life by Henselt. It might take weeks or months, even years, but it would be found. He was sending it to the future.

  He spotted a crack in the concrete, just a little above eye level. He folded the paper carefully into eight and figured it would slip in easily. As he was about to do so, the stranger and several more of the men surrounded him.

  “Hiding it, Rybak? Something for your friends outside?” demanded the stranger, his tousled hair standing up like the fur of an enraged cat.

  “I apologise. I forgot to show it to you,” he said, and it was plain that the stranger and the men with him, perhaps all of the other men in the building, needed an enemy they could reach and vent their frustrated fear and anger on. Unhappily, Janusz perceived they were homing in on him.

  He handed the paper to the stranger, unnerved that it was so vulnerable. “It’s music,” he said because the stranger grew perplexed and visibly angry as he turned the paper over and over again trying to make sense of it. Janusz silently formed what must have been a prayer. Not for himself, but for this frail, helpless vessel of the future so cavalierly being handed around to the other men.

  “Music? What kind of music?”

  “An anthem, a tune.”

  One of the other men said sharply. “It’s not music. It’s code.”

  “No, it’s a tune, you can sing it. I’ll show you.” He tried to sound calm, but as he reached for the paper, the stranger held it away, voice rising.

  “You bastard. You’re turning us in to Henselt. It’s a message for him.”

  “I swear to you, all of you, I just wrote a tune.”

  The stranger glared at him and tore the paper into confetti and stamped on it. “You lousy bastard!” he said, fists raised. “You goddamn traitor!”

  Janusz saw the other men tensing, set to spring on him. His outrage at the destruction of the barely born To the Future mutated into bewilderment that his own countrymen, the very people he had inspired and was trying to inspire again, were about to beat him, perhaps to death. These men had been simmering in fear and fantasy for days and finally they had someone to punish. And it had to be me, he thought. A week ago he would have violently objected to the sheer unfairness, the monumental injustice of his music being destroyed and him along with it, all for the wrong reasons and by the wrong people.

  But this was after a week in the new world and he no longer saw life or events in terms of fairness or reasonableness. Only chance reigned.

  Janusz automatically tensed himself, making fists, although he had never won a brawl in his life. He pictured the anarcho-syndicalist librettist of The Termite King who had tried to connive him into working on another production, a pantomime allegory about capitalism called Le Délire des Négations – The Delirium of Negation. It was to be a one-character production, a bloated banker who suffers fr
om Cotard’s Syndrome, the pathological belief he was dead or parts of his body were dying, hence the connection to putrefying capitalism.

  Standing in the elongated moment before blows fell on him, along with the kicks and whatever else his infuriated fellow prisoners had in mind, Janusz sadly understood that he was about to suffer real negation and death, not allegorical ones.

  Then a slender old man roughly pushed into the narrowing circle of wolves around Janusz. He put himself between the others and Janusz as he said, with a loud voice, “There you are, Rybak. I thought I heard you.”

  Twenty-Five

  Against the angry shouts and shoving of the others who nonetheless deferred to the older man, Janusz and his new acquaintance made their way to the far end of the building.

  “That was my music he tore up. Good, too. I’m no traitor,” Janusz said heatedly. “So you say,” the other man nodded, keeping his eye on the men who still milled around, muttering and ineffectually smouldering because they had been deprived of their prey. “You’re not Rybak either.”

  “No. I can’t tell you who I am. There are other people involved.”

  The man held up a bony hand. He had a prominent Adam’s apple and deep pouches under his eyes. He was, it became clear, a respected man in the town, the local apothecary. “I don’t want to know who you are. Everybody’s in danger. Just tell me if Rybak’s all right.”

  “As far as I know he is. I never met him.” Janusz relaxed a little. “Thank you for getting me out of that.”

  “I’ll be damned if I’ll let our people do the bastards’ work for them. It’s bad enough they’ve penned us here like dogs. We don’t have to act like dogs.”

  Janusz and the apothecary sat down and talked. It must have been late afternoon because the building was cooling slightly. The apothecary had been rounded up two days earlier when the dead partisans were first discovered, which caused a flurry of activity by the newly installed commander, Major Henselt, to find out if there were more in the vicinity. The first men and women brought to the town hall were crudely interrogated until, said the apothecary, it was obvious even to the dullard officers questioning them that no one knew anything. Yet the round-up did not stop, but actually speeded up.

  “Henselt’s softening us,” the apothecary said in his slow, deep voice. “Demonstrating their power over us. They’re the masters now and we have to bow down.”

  Janusz wanted desperately to tell the apothecary about the so-called partisans after he heard what was going on. But, nothing had changed even knowing the scope of the effort to break the town’s spirit. Lidia would be compromised if he said anything and so would Gabriela and Peszek. Henselt would not stop what he was doing, of course. The apothecary was right about that. Power was being displayed just like on the main road, relentlessly following its own dictates.

  “We’ll fight,” Janusz said. “I know that.” He thought of Lidia, Gabriela, and Peszek. Each had vowed to fight the enemy. So will I, he thought, in my way.

  If I have a chance.

  The apothecary sighed, eyes closing. “I would like to be there, but I don’t think I will be.” His father and grandfather had served the town as apothecaries and he had an extended family through the district and four children of his own. “They will fight back, some of them anyway.”

  “My name is Janusz,” he said. A first name wasn’t risky and the apothecary was owed that much at least.

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Roman.”

  Janusz abruptly felt calm. He was unable to help Lidia now and from all appearances, she was unable to help him. He had tried his best to create a musical banner for the nation, as Henryk and his colleagues hoped. But the music was lost and he was a brief spark of consciousness about to be extinguished. He was powerless to change any of it.

  “You were writing music?” the apothecary asked, cracking his knuckles as if at the end of a long journey. “That’s interesting. Most men would write to their wives or sweethearts, maybe their last thoughts about life and whatever.”

  “Are you interested in music?” Janusz sat up against the wall as the building definitely grew cooler, signalling the end of the day and the start of the night.

  “I like dancing with my wife. She’s a very lively dancer. I enjoy the local songs. I’m afraid that is about all the music I know. Wait, wait. There was a woman who taught violin, she came in for stomach problems. She used to talk about Schubert a great deal.”

  “Schubert didn’t live to finish his music,” Janusz said. “I’m not comparing myself to Schubert.”

  “Do you teach violin or music somewhere?”

  “I don’t have the patience to teach. I’m a little too full of myself, I suppose.”

  “What do you do? No, let me guess.” The apothecary fixed his pouched eyes on Janusz. Two new acquaintances passing the time at the edge of the abyss. “You are an educated man, you have recently lived well, and you’re wearing someone else’s clothes.”

  “You’re quite a detective.” Janusz said with a grin. “How did you make those deductions?”

  The apothecary cracked his knuckles again, apparently a habit. “Well, Janusz, you have all of the appearance of a man who has lost some weight quickly. The skin hangs in a certain way when that happens. In my profession, you have to watch your customers very carefully and you see a great deal about them. For example, you have long fingers and broken fingernails, which mean you don’t normally do manual labour. And the clothes are easy since we both know you aren’t Rybak. Since we’re having this pleasant conversation, I can honestly say you’re an educated man. You write music.”

  “Bravo. I’m an open book.”

  The apothecary shook his head. “You haven’t told me who you are or what you do.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.” Janusz felt guilty and melancholy that even at this juncture he had to hide who he was.

  “No, no, I do understand. Where is your wife? Your children? Safe?”

  “I hope so,” he replied. The small band he had gathered over the last few days was as good as a family. Janusz touched his eyes, his newfound calm and resolve weakening. “I miss them very much.”

  “I think I’ve learned more about my customers and myself in the last two days than I knew in twenty years,” the apothecary said, slow deep voice. “Some of it is noble, some of it is not at all. But I wish I could tell my family what I’ve learned. It seems such a waste if I can’t.”

  The apothecary talked about his wife who taught primaryschool until their second child was born. She loved jokes and made sure that the clothes for their children lasted being handed from one child to the next. She sewed altar pieces for the church and on Sundays she always made a pear tart for their dessert. “When she gets mad, we all hide for our lives,” he chuckled, “but she’s back to joking in a flash. I have a very exciting home.”

  Janusz told him about Lidia, her laughter, intelligence, and how they met hiking, why he loved her over the years. He couldn’t recall ever telling anyone, even close friends, the ways he loved her. But he told Roman the apothecary.

  They both stopped. A muffled announcement came from the loudspeakers out in the town centre, but it was impossible to make out what was said. Janusz thought of Lidia and how much he wanted to talk to her, touch her once more. He saw that most of the men had also stopped talking and moving in the building and many had bowed their heads, a few held others by the shoulder and one or two were crying.

  “They come right after the announcement,” said the apothecary quietly before Janusz could ask. He and Janusz got up and stood by the wall.

  Janusz put out his hand. “I’ve enjoyed our discussion very much,” he said as carefully as he could because he did not trust himself to remain collected. Formality would rescue him. “Thank you, Roman.”

  “I enjoyed it too, Janusz. We’ll do it again.”

  The door to the building was unbolted and opened. Three soldiers, two with rifles, came through the doorway. The soldier without a rifle sw
ept his eyes around the room, like a gourmet selecting an entrée. He did it very quickly and expertly. He aimed his finger at a man to his right and at the apothecary, and he slowly crooked the finger, beckoning them. “You two,” he said crisply.

  Janusz couldn’t breathe. A cataract of absurd notions passed through his mind: only three of them, two with weapons. Twenty of us, rush them, get outside, make a run for it.

  Even as the cataract deafened him, the apothecary walked out the door with the other man, as mechanically and obstinately as if he was controlled by radio. The soldiers left and the door was bolted closed again.

  Janusz couldn’t take his eyes from the door and what must be happening somewhere outside. He shuddered uncontrollably and folded his arms tightly to make it stop. For the next interminable and indeterminate time, he stayed pressed against the concrete wall like he was on a vertical slab and he vainly tried to suppress the time he had just spent, the life just shared, the memories exchanged. He succeeded only when he thought of Lidia again, if she was all right, and the happy first months of their first marriage.

  Three small lights overhead snapped on, brownish tinged. It must be after dark, Janusz thought. His throat was sticky and ached because he had had no water since that morning and he had a very civilised conversation with someone who probably no longer existed.

  Gabriela’s house appeared in his mind with its crucifixes and Madonna and Janusz decided that while he couldn’t pray for Roman and the others, it would be natural for farmer Rybak. So a silent prayer went out because it was right and necessary.

  He didn’t move when the door unbolted and opened. That was fast, he thought emptily. But he hadn’t heard the loudspeakers.

  “Rybak!” an officer shouted in the doorway. “Ignace Rybak!”

  The Sixth Day

  Twenty-Six

  News of the nation’s surrender came before noon, brought by Major Henselt himself with a bottle of celebratory champagne and a load of hay, straw and oats for the cows and horse. Janusz mechanically raked and fumbled at pruning the fruit trees as two soldiers unloaded the gifts into the garage with Gabriela cheerily chatting with them, and making them laugh. Janusz leaned against a gnarled cherry tree. Since Lidia had brought him back to the house the night before, he had said very little. Right then all he could do was picture what might be happening inside. The champagne. The young major and his lust. The feverish, wounded man upstairs. Gabriela should be with Peszek, keeping him quiet.