by Len Deighton
‘Art is long,’ proclaimed Dicky encouragingly. ‘Life is short, opportunity…’
Before Dicky could continue with this provocative display of classical learning, Uncle Nico interjected: ‘The Premier? The communists? These are the people who suppressed Dostoevsky!’
As if heading off a diatribe, Aunt Mary picked up a small porcelain bell and jingled it loudly as a signal for the soup dishes to be cleared. From upstairs there came the sudden sound of the piano. The technique was the same as the afternoon performance: Chopin played with precision. But again it was given a slow deliberate tempo that marred its graceful melodies.
The main course was stewed cabbage with flecks of bacon hiding in it. Even the privileged, with all the countryside to forage, did not eat meat on a regular basis.
‘It’s getting better,’ said Dicky, investigating the cabbage suspiciously with his fork. ‘The generals are becoming more tolerant towards Solidarity aren’t they?’
Uncle Nico snorted. ‘Because in some parts of the country Solidarnosc branch leaders advertise their meetings and hold them, and no one gets arrested? Is that what you’ve been told? Don’t believe the newspapers. Only the ineffective groups are tolerated. Hardnosed Solidarnosc activists remain in prison. Anyone talking of strikes or demonstrations is likely to disappear forever.’
Karol the secretary asked for the salt to be passed to him. He did it in such a manner that Uncle Nico began eating and said no more. The plates were soon emptied and the maidservant brought the next course: crepes with stewed apple.
‘The generals and the Party leaders are paralysed by indecision,’ said Karol, adding to the conversation for the first time. ‘But the army has a tricky course to steer between Moscow’s tanks and the Solidarity hotheads.’ His voice was moderate, as if hoping to calm Uncle Nico’s temper. ‘Do you know how much cash Poland owes to the Western banks? It’s alarming. And rising higher and higher every minute. Who will lend us more?’
‘We’ll manage,’ said Uncle Nico defensively.
‘No one,’ said the secretary in answer to his own question. ‘Finally we shall invite the Russians to occupy us. We will need their oil and grain. It will be our only way out of this economic mess. That, or we will starve to death.’
‘I say we’ll manage,’ repeated Uncle Nico.
‘You don’t buy the food and run the house,’ said the secretary earnestly. ‘This week again the dairy men from the village went to Warsaw, selling their soft cheeses from the back of a truck. They won’t sell to local people any more; in Warsaw people will pay in American dollars or pounds or German marks. All the hard cheeses disappeared months ago. Our pickled vegetables are already almost eaten. Our apples have all been stolen. These are almost the last of them.’ He mashed the stewed apple with his fork as if angry with it.
‘You shouldn’t have traded those apples,’ said Uncle Nico.
‘For paraffin oil? What would we do without light?’
‘When they saw the apples, they knew where to come and help themselves,’ said Uncle Nico.
The secretary would not be distracted from his woe. ‘This winter will see starvation and ruin right across the land. Disease will follow. It could destroy the whole of Europe, and perhaps the world.’
We all looked at him. The candlelight flickered across his face. The Poles have a style of melancholy that is entirely their own. Russian melancholy breathes vodka fumes; Scandinavian melancholy is masochistic. Austrian melancholy is entirely operatic, while German melancholy is disguised self-pity. But Polish melancholy is a world-embracing philosophy impervious to cheer.
Beyond him, and through the window, I could see the dark forest. Now flickering lights amongst the trees revealed the approach of men with a handcart. They were carrying flashlights. Karol turned his head to see what had caught my attention. By this time the two callers had approached close enough to the windows to be lit by the lamps in the drawing-room.
‘Men from the village. They are delivering meat,’ explained the secretary, as if this was the normal time for meat deliveries in this part of the world. I nodded.
Aunt Mary got to her feet and rang her bell and ordered that coffee should be taken to the drawing-room. The young people who had joined us for the meal slipped away without a word. In the drawing-room I tried to secure a seat near the stove but I was too late, Aunt Mary got it. A servant set the coffee tray before her and she poured it from a huge silver pot. The maidservant took the cups, one by one, to each of us and offered us canned milk and sugar. Uncle Nico put two level teaspoons of sugar into his tiny cup of black coffee, measuring them with the exaggerated care a pharmacist might devote to mixing a dangerous sleeping draught for a valued customer. Then he stirred furiously and watched the whirlpool slow before sipping some and burning his lip.
‘It is made with boiling water, you old fool,’ said Aunt Mary in low and rapid Polish, an admonition clearly not intended for our ears.
He nodded without looking at her and turning to me said: ‘They’ve found a body.’ Absent-mindedly he spoke in Polish.
‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.
‘The body. Didn’t they tell you?’ He tutted as if at some inexcusable lapse of good manners. ‘Didn’t they tell you they are digging up a corpse? It’s why they are out there.’
I looked at Karol the secretary. He had declined coffee and had moved his chair closer to the stove. With one arm resting on the back of the sofa he could actually walk his fingertips along the warm white porcelain, and this he did. As if totally occupied with warming his fingers he made no reaction to the old man’s startling revelation.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t know.’ I drank some coffee. Speaking Polish is difficult for me; understanding it brings on a headache.
‘What did he say?’ Dicky asked me.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you in a moment.’
‘A body,’ said Karol to Dicky in English. ‘They are talking about a dead body. A copse…’ he corrected himself: ‘A corpse.’ Then he covered his mouth with his hand and burped.
‘Oh,’ said Dicky and smiled to hide his confusion.
‘He might have stayed there for years,’ said Uncle Nico. ‘But the dog found him. About twenty metres off the forest path… buried. But the dog found it. An arm. It’s fresh.’
‘That’s Bazyliszek,’ said Aunt Mary. ‘That’s the dog they take when they are looking for truffles.’ She reached for my empty cup and poured me a second cup of coffee. It was very good coffee; very strong.
‘A body?’ I said without putting too much emotion into it.
‘The ground is hard,’ said Uncle Nico. ‘Didn’t you see the men at work when you arrived? When you asked the way.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘They are always finding bodies,’ said Aunt Mary calmly. She discovered a ball of wool on the floor. She picked it up and looked at it as if suspecting that it might belong to someone else, but eventually she put it in her work-basket. Everyone was watching her and waiting upon her words: ‘Those woods are full of secrets,’ she said. ‘The Germans buried people there during the war. Mass graves. Jews, soldiers, villagers, gypsies…’
‘You silly old woman. This is nothing to do with the war,’ said Uncle Nico.
Undeterred Aunt Mary continued: ‘The partisans fought here. Thousands died. The remains of the old wartime encampments and bunkers and hideaways run right through our land.’
‘I say it’s not the war,’ said Uncle Nico, puffing angrily at his cigarette.
‘No,’ agreed Aunt Mary, suddenly changing tack. ‘It will be that girl Anna from the pig farm. She was pregnant. I could see it when she was in church the Sunday before she disappeared.’
‘Be quiet, you foolish woman,’ said Uncle Nico. ‘She went to her cousin in Gdynia to have the baby. She writes letters home.’
‘Letters! Rubbish! I say it’s her. She’s dead. Her father went to the next village and said prayers for her.’
‘It’s not
the pig girl; it’s a man,’ said Uncle Nico. He looked at the secretary but Karol was staring at the floor.
‘We will see tonight when they dig it up. They’ll put it in the barn and the police will come,’ Aunt Mary said. She opened her needlework basket, looked down to be sure everything was inside, and closed it again.
‘Not tonight. The ground is as hard as rock,’ said Uncle Nico. ‘It will take a lot of digging.’ He got to his feet and Aunt Mary got up too. They wished us goodnight and departed.
‘Vodka?’ the secretary asked.
‘Not for me,’ said Dicky. I shook my head. I was shivering with the cold. All I wanted was to get into bed and pull the blankets over me.
‘I shall have one,’ said Karol the secretary, getting to his feet very slowly. I suddenly realized he was very drunk. Some of the glasses at the dining-table had not contained water. He poured himself a large vodka. Standing propped against the sideboard, with the drink in hand, he said: ‘Uncle Nicolaus is a fine old fellow: a fighter. Each year, on the anniversary of the uprising, he goes, together with a few old comrades, to stand in front of the Palace of the Republic at the place where he, and the rest of the patriots, descended into the sewers for the final act of the battle against the German beasts.’ He sipped his drink. ‘The police don’t like that sort of celebration. One year they arrested all the survivors; they said they were a threat to public order.’ From upstairs the piano started again. This time it seemed to be a nocturne. ‘Let me pour you a vodka? Perhaps you don’t like the potato vodka. Pertsovka with the red and black pepper makes a good nightcap.’
‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I have to keep a clear head for dreaming.’ Karol shrugged and topped up his own drink. He had downed two more of them by the time I was half-way up the stairs. As I got to the door of my room I heard him trip over the walking-stick rack in the hall and get up cursing.
That night I took a long time getting off to sleep. Drinking strong black coffee keeps me awake at night nowadays. It’s a sign of getting old, at least that’s what Dicky says. He’s two years younger than I am. He drinks a great deal of coffee and sleeps even during the daytime. As I was nursing my headache, and thinking about the family conversation, I heard soft deliberate footsteps along the corridor outside my room. It was someone in padded shoes, walking in a fashion that would minimize the sound. The steps halted outside my bedroom door. I reached for the flashlight, switched it on and looked at my wrist-watch. It was ten past two in the morning. Instinctively I looked for something to use as a weapon but I had nothing except the metal flashlight. The footsteps went away, but in no more than three minutes they were back again. I visualized someone standing in the corridor and not moving, and tried to guess what they might be doing. Next there came a rumbling noise very close to my head. I sat up in bed and put my feet on the floor. There was a muted clang of metal and I jumped up in alarm only to hear the padded footsteps slowly moving off along the corridor again. I realized it was one of the servants putting a log into my stove. All the stoves were built so as to be fuelled from outside the rooms.
I remained awake for a long time after that. From the forest there were the cries of animals: foxes or wild dogs perhaps. Once I fancied I heard the barking of wolves. Dogs locked in their kennels in the courtyard joined in the howling. Perhaps tomorrow George would come. Unless it was George they were digging up in the forest in the dark.
4
The Kosinski Mansion, Masuria, Poland.
The following day brought no further news of either George or Stefan Kosinski. I got up early and, having abandoned the effort of making a palatable pot of tea with the warm water delivered to my room, I went to the kitchen and ate porridge and drank coffee with the servants. Dicky didn’t like porridge. He slept late and then went out to examine the vehicles in the coach-house. There were six of them. They included a sleigh – with hand-painted edelweiss and functioning jingle bells – a coach, a carriage and a pony trap, the last two in good condition and evidently in regular use. Apart from the car in which we had arrived, there were no motor vehicles to be seen except for the remains of a tractor which had been stripped bare for tyres and spare parts.
Dicky had heard a story about a young Dutch banker finding two vintage Bugattis in a barn not far from where we were. This Dutchman was said to have persuaded the farmer to exchange the priceless old cars for two modern Opels. I didn’t believe the story but Dicky insisted that it was true, and the thought of it was never far from his mind. Several times on our journey from Warsaw I’d had to dissuade him from going to search likely-looking farm buildings for such treasures.
‘Do you think the Russians will come?’ Dicky asked me as I found him opening the door of a carriage and looking inside to see the amazing muddle of cobwebs.
‘Invade? I don’t know.’
Dicky closed the door, but the lock didn’t engage until he tried three times, finally slamming the door of the carriage with enough force to shake the dust out of the springs. ‘I don’t want to find myself explaining my presence to some damned Russian army intelligence officer,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want you here explaining yourself either.’
There was little I could say to that. It established Dicky’s superiority in a way that required no elaboration. I reasoned that the danger was not imminent. My own guess was that the Soviets would order the Polish security forces to stage a mass round-up of every possible Polish odd-ball, opponent and dissident, before risking their infantry in the Warsaw streets, or even the open countryside. But it was better to let Dicky worry; he was a worrier by nature, and it kept him occupied and off my back.
I followed him as he walked to the far end of the coach-house where a trestle bench had been cleared. It was covered with clean newspaper, and there were three shiny black rubbish bags, empty, folded and ready, at one end.
‘A body,’ mused Dicky, picking up one of the plastic bags and putting it down again. ‘That’s all we needed.’ He sneezed. ‘I’ve picked up some sort of virus,’ he said after wiping his nose on a large handkerchief.
‘It’s the dust,’ I said.
‘How I wish it was dust,’ said Dicky with a brave smile. ‘You’re lucky; you don’t get these damned allergies and suffer the way I do.’
‘Yes,’ I said. I could recognize the symptoms; Dicky had had enough of Polish austerity – hard beds, potato soup and chilly bedrooms – and now he was preparing to make his excuses and depart.
Dicky looked at his watch. ‘Shall we go down to look at the digging? Everyone seems to have disappeared. Except that secretary fellow, he left the house at six-thirty this morning. It was scarcely light.’ Dicky went out into the courtyard and stamped around on the cobbles. The sky had cleared in the night, and the temperature had dropped enough for the cold to sting my face and give Dicky a glittering pink complexion.
‘You saw the secretary leaving?’
‘On a horse. A beautiful hunter. Dressed up to the nines in riding breeches, polished boots and a hacking jacket, like some English country squire. He’s a shifty sod, we must watch him.’
‘And he hasn’t returned yet?’
‘I was checking the stables. The horse is not here. I wonder where the bastard’s gone. He was very quiet last night, wasn’t he? He was watching you like a hawk, did you notice that?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘All the time. You should be more observant, Bernard. These people are not to be trusted. They tell us only what they want us to hear.’
‘You’re right, Dicky.’
‘You probably didn’t notice that there is no telephone in that house.’
‘That’s probably why the secretary went off somewhere on his horse.’
‘Damned odd, isn’t it? No phone?’
‘Maybe. Stefan’s a writer; perhaps he doesn’t want a telephone in his house.’
‘Writer, huh. I’m going to see what those people are digging up in the forest, just in case it is a body. I’ll jog there, it’s not far. Better we
both go.’
Today Dicky had delved into his wardrobe for a three-quarter-length military jacket. It was an olive-green waterproof garment with huge pockets, a long-sleeve version of the sort of garment General Westmoreland modelled in Nam. The name-patch had been carefully unpicked from it, leaving the impression that it was an item of kit retained after Dicky’s military service. This was an interpretation that he liked to encourage, but Daphne once confided that all Dicky’s military wardrobe came from a charity shop in Hampstead.
It did not matter that Dicky had brought his oddments of demode military uniform; half the population of Poland seemed to be outfitted by the US army. But other men wore stained and patched ones, and wore them in a sloppy and informal way. Dicky’s well-fitting jacket was clean and pressed. With the jacket fully buttoned, and a red para-troop beret worn pulled down tight on his skull, Dicky was conspicuous in this country governed by soldiers. Only his trendy blue-and-white running shoes saved him from looking like a general about to inspect an honour guard of the riot police.
‘It’s a long hike,’ I warned.
‘Come along, Bernard. A brisk canter would do you good. Ye gods, I jog across Hampstead Heath every morning before breakfast.’
‘Daphne said you’d given up the daily jogging,’ I said.
My remark had the calculated effect. ‘Daphne!’ Dicky exploded. ‘What the hell does Daphne know about what I do? She’s in bed when I get home, and in bed when I get up in the morning.’
‘I must have got it wrong,’ I said. ‘I noticed you’d put on weight, and thought it must be because you’d cut out the jogging.’
‘You’re a bloody shit-stirrer,’ said Dicky. ‘Do you enjoy making mischief? Is that it?’
‘There’s no need to get upset, Dicky,’ I said, trying to look pained.
‘I’ll show you who is out of condition. I’ll show you who is puffing and collapsing. Come on, Bernard, it’s no more than three miles.’