The National Treasure

by William P Wood

  So we don’t die like animals, Janusz realised with relief and sorrow. I should have known that already. I spent those last hours with Roman, the apothecary, and no one made an exit with more humanity and dignity than him.

  In the fraction of a moment for these impressions to come and go, Lidia had cried out again, and Gabriela stood wide-eyed, silent, a freckled little girl still holding the mare’s halter rope.

  “You see that?” Henselt exulted, flourishing the pistol, “I just brought down three buffalo! The masters of the prairie. I have lived on the prairie since I was a boy, Lidia. You see that shooting? That’s as good as Old Shatterhand. My blood brother Winnetou, he spotted the beasts and I brought them down.” He sighted along the pistol. “This is my famous rifle, Bear Killer. Did you ever read Karl May, Rudzinski?”

  Janusz said carefully, “No, I did not.”

  “Incredible tales! The Wild West! Cowboys and Indians, not fighting each other, but united against their common mortal enemies. Just like today!”

  “Come here, Gabriela,” Janusz said.

  “Please,” Lidia said, shaken. She had her hand out to Gabriela.

  Henselt inspected his kills while he unrolled his profound knowledge of the American West through the visionary storytelling of Karl May. Well, Janusz thought, it must be so much more vivid to experience the American West while you’re addicted to an exhilarating drug.

  Neither Lidia nor Janusz had persuaded Gabriela to come over. Instead, she smiled and went near Henselt, who was still blabbing at a great rate. Gabriela said winningly, like any child who wanted a treat, “Please, sir, may I?”

  She can’t mean the gun, Janusz thought. Impossible.

  “The Major is busy, dear” Lidia reached for her but Henselt brushed Lidia aside with a deep laugh.

  “Do you want to hold Bear Killer, little girl?”

  “Yes, sir. Please.”

  “All right, but you must be very careful. Bear Killer is a great and powerful weapon,” and Henselt did something to the side of the pistol, presumably to make it safer, a great wide smile on his face, his marble eyes glistening with delight at the game. “Look, Lidia, here’s little Annie Oakley!”

  Lidia began saying … well, whatever she began to say was drowned out.

  Gabriela took the pistol from generous, manically jolly Major Henselt. He was telling her it must be so heavy for such a small girl, hold it with both hands, and Janusz saw her duplicate or perhaps undo whatever Henselt had done to the pistol.

  Henselt was still blabbing and chuckling at the notion of this little girl with the terrible weapon when Gabriela pointed it at him, his middle because that was how high she was, and holding the gun in both hands she managed to pull the trigger several times before Major Henselt, still laughing, then looking very puzzled, and finally very disbelieving, doubled over, twisted to his right, and like a grey basalt tower, fell bonelessly to Lidia’s beautiful green lawn, under the purple-filigreed brush of a plum tree.

  Thirty-Five

  Lidia sat on the side of Peszek’s bed. She was dressed in simplicity: unadorned thick skirt and heavy boots, a plain white blouse with a brown tweed coat over it, her thick hair down and pinned back. She was still beautiful but unembellished. Ready for a long journey.

  “We have to leave,” she said again to Peszek, who lay with two thick pillows propping his head up. His grizzled face and disturbing uneven gaze were gentle. Lidia went on, “All of us have to leave. We can’t stay here.”

  From the other side of the room, arms folded, Janusz said, “How long do you think we have, Karol?”

  Pesezk thoughtfully scratched his beard. He was much thinner, if more alert. “Couple of hours maybe. He must have left word where he was going and some time when he’d be back. Nobody goes around in a battle area, even if the fighting’s supposed to be over, without making sure a lot of jokers know where he’s going to be. Usually a guy like that has other jokers with him.”

  “I told him to come alone,” Lidia said.

  “And he did? Congratulations. So it’s certain he made sure everybody would know when he’s coming back.”

  “I checked his car. There’s no radio.”

  “Then you got a couple of hours.”

  Lidia said, “It’s not much of a head start before his soldiers come looking for him. That’s why we have to go now.”

  Peszek smiled at her. “Holy Mother of God, you are a beautiful woman.”

  “Sergeant, I haven’t known you very long,” Lidia said, “but Janusz told me what you’ve done. I won’t leave you here.”

  “How are you planning on going, professor?”

  Janusz sighed. He knew how this would end. “We have to walk. Lidia’s car is too well known. Henselt’s car, well, that’s impossible. We can’t use the cart now.”

  Peszek nodded. “The kid really shot him?” It was the third time he had asked and he never wanted a different answer.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Goddamn kid,” he spoke quietly. Then he said to Lidia, “Look, I can’t walk anywhere. I can barely get out of bed to—” He stopped in embarrassment. “Well, you know, take care of myself. What are you going to do? Lug me around?”

  “We’ll manage,” Lidia said, looking for confirmation to Janusz who gave none.

  “No, you can’t. I wouldn’t do it if the things were switched around. Right, professor? You know me.”

  “I’ve told you before, I certainly do,” Janusz said thickly.

  “Listen,” Peszek spoke directly to Lidia and he touched her leg lightly, “you haven’t known me long. I haven’t known you long. That’s how it works. Sometimes you’ve got an hour and that’s a lifetime. Or sometimes you never know what’s going on. Guys who came late the last time, you never bothered to find out their names or anything. They were gone, one way or another, the same day. Maybe the same afternoon …” he grinned at Janusz, “… you understand now, don’t you, professor? Time’s different these days. So, I’ll call you Lidia this once …” he was shy as a boy asking his first girl to dance at the church social, “… we’re as good as we’ll ever be. Trust me. My woman, I didn’t know her, I guess, and we were together for years.” He thought this was funny and he laughed.

  “Well, what are you going to do?” Lidia finally said, getting up.

  “Wait around. See who shows up.”

  Janusz lowered his arms. “We can help you downstairs. You might be more comfortable.”

  “No, up here’s better. I can see the whole place from up here. Better shooting from up here.”

  They had already determined that the rifles would stay. If they were caught with rifles, it was the end. Now Peszek could use them.

  Lidia recognised the futility of arguing anymore. She went by Janusz. “I’ll see how Gabriela’s doing.”

  Janusz nodded. Lidia was still rocky, stunned by the strange new world and its capricious, deadly ways. It had taken him most of the week to start to get his bearings. It would take her time and he would be with her to help.

  Janusz brought out the rifles from the bedroom closet and laid them on the floor beside Peszek. “There’s the ammunition, too. I’ll leave Lieutenant Walicki’s passports and the maps. Whoever comes looking for Henselt will have to figure out who was here and what it all means and that should take a while.”

  “Leave him outside, professor. Just like he is. Looks like he was ambushed.” and Peszek snorted. “By a little girl!”

  He laughed and Janusz joined in, but it wasn’t exactly mirthful laughter. It was the laugh of people facing ultimate destinations and ultimate reconciliations. Only human beings could laugh when that was happening. Janusz still couldn’t believe as most others did, but what he had seen and done in the last week and what Peszek was about to do, left him less dogmatic than he was as a young man, and certainly less confident that a featureless void was the only reality or truth. His laughter slowly died. Well, it made perfect sense to be less dogmatic now. Where did the music come from if no
t somewhere ordered, beautiful, and accessible? Janusz no longer held the self-satisfied notion that his mind was any of those things. Logically, as his father would have thumped at him, the initial hypothesis must be in error or incomplete.

  “I better get moving,” he said to Peszek.

  “I’ll keep whoever stops by busy for as long as I can, professor.”

  Janusz nodded because he didn’t feel able to say anything. This was another unpleasant revelation, the paralysis of language itself when confronted by the ineluctable.

  Peszek said merrily, “I’m master of this big house! Six of us in one room growing up, the whole fucking family in two rooms, and I’ve got a whole mansion to myself!”

  Going downstairs, Janusz couldn’t look back.

  Thirty-Six

  The forest enveloped them as soon as they entered it, the trees tall and ancient, all sound muffled in the green and brown cathedral. Each of them carried a rucksack; Janusz had two, one slung around his front so he appeared to be a two-humped beast. For a while Gabriela walked either ahead of him and Lidia or behind them, always quiet, and for hours, never answering when Lidia quietly, gently talked to her or when he did. Gabriela walked deliberately, head lowered slightly, intent on the leaf- and pine needle-strewn path they were on.

  He and Lidia walked together. They could be anywhere. It could be any time. It was critical not to get too lost in that fantasy, but the forest was protective and deep. They were resigned to being stopped sooner or later, questioned lightly or harshly. They had no documents. He was back in farmer Rybak’s much-used tailoring. Their sole shield and armour was that they were a most common and unremarkable thing, a dispossessed family on foot, going from somewhere to anywhere. Just getting away.

  “I can’t imagine what she’s going through. I’m going to have nightmares,” Lidia said as they watched Gabriela trudging ahead, the sunlight managing to get through the trees dancing on her like fireflies. “I feel like we’re in a dream now. I’ll wake up. Or maybe you’ll wake up.”

  “That would be nice,” he agreed. They had food and water in the rucksacks. They could walk and walk. “I must be the one dreaming. I can smell that mosquito stuff on you,” he took a deep breath like a vintage wine had been uncorked for his approval, “you had it everywhere.”

  “Someone else did. A thousand years ago.” She squinted up into the unreadable and unpierceable canopy. “What time is it?”

  “Who knows? No watch. Nothing up my sleeve. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  Lidia nodded and put her hand in his. “No, it doesn’t. I was thinking about poor Bolek.”

  “Oh.”

  “If he comes to find me, he won’t. We couldn’t stay there, but he won’t know where I’ve gone.”

  “Do you feel badly about it?” He wanted one and only that one answer.

  “I don’t,” Lidia said. “I should, though, shouldn’t I? If I had any decency, I would, wouldn’t I?”

  “Decency has nothing to do with anything now. Survival does.”

  “I want us all to survive, Janusz.”

  “If we can. If it’s possible.”

  They walked further. He stopped listening for the sounds of motors or trucks or shouts or even gunfire. There was nothing he could do about any of them. One more if, he thought. If we’re pursued, we might be caught. Until then …

  “I’m going to talk to her again,” he said to Lidia.

  “All right. Can we stop for a little while soon? I haven’t kept in condition. My feet feel like cinder blocks.”

  He nodded and walked a little faster until he was alongside Gabriela. She briefly noted his presence and then resumed her silent inspection of the forest path. Her flute was stuck in the back of her rucksack.

  “We’ll stop soon,” he said casually. “Rest for a little.”

  The closed entity beside him stayed closed.

  Janusz went on, “Did I tell you what we are? We’re troubadours now. We’ll go from town to town, maybe from house to house, and we’ll offer songs and music in return for food. Maybe someplace to sleep for the night. We’ll always be gone in the morning. We have a lot of places to be.”

  Gabriela slowly looked at him. Her young face was inscrutable, but she was listening.

  “We’ll have to be very good at what we sing or play, Gabriela. The tradition of the troubadour is very long and noble. Lidia and I will try the singing,” he grimaced, a joking face to get a reaction from her. Something did shift behind her eyes.

  “Practise, practise, practise is our task now. We can’t disgrace ourselves or the noble breed of troubadours.”

  Gabriela nodded.

  “You have your flute,” he pointed. “Play something for us as we walk until our rest?”

  He hoped she would take the bait. The moment was exquisitely attenuated.

  Then Gabriela slowed and reached for the flute and he helped her take it into her hands. “What shall I play, Papa?” she asked.

  “Anything you like,” he said with great relief and pleasure. Then he said, “No. Try this. I’ll hold it for you,” and he reached into the rucksack over his heart and gently pulled out the single sheet of graph paper on which To the Risen was memorialised.

  They would play this and sing it wherever they stopped, in each village or town, in any house.

  He motioned to Lidia and she fell into step with him.

  Gabriela took a breath, studied the notes, and began to play as he held the music before her.

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