Szarejna was identical. Szacki soon realized it, and she knew that he knew. For this reason they were not particularly fond of each other, hiding their dislike behind courtesy. His was minimalist and cool, hers was exaggeratedly friendly.
Szacki didn’t even take his documents with him when she summoned him to her office; following the conversations with Bierut and Falk, he had the case all neatly sorted in his mind, like jigsaw puzzle pieces arranged by color, ready to be assembled.
Szarejna never received anyone from behind her desk, but at a small conference table where she could sit next to them, smile sympathetically, and create an atmosphere of friendship and trust. Now, too, she was sitting at the little table by the window, next to an unfamiliar man, who looked about thirty, a little pretentious in his casual Warsaw style. Szarejna jumped to her feet as if she’d seen a close relative who’d finally come home after years abroad.
“Mr. Teo!” she cried. “How wonderful you’re here.”
Totally wonderfularious. At the start of their acquaintance she had asked if she could call him Teodor, or maybe he preferred Teo, or Teddy. Szacki, who on principle was never informal with anyone at work, replied that he would prefer to stick to the standard Polish polite form of address, “Mr. or Ms. plus first name.” Szarejna had exploded with such inner rage that her velvet jumpsuit had almost split. And she’d assured him that of course she understood, and then started to call him “Mr. Teo,” uttering it without a pause, as “Misterteo,” which made his name sound like a brand of air freshener.
He said hello to the man, who energetically introduced himself as Igor, but despite Szacki’s inquiring look he didn’t give his last name. Szacki shifted his gaze to Szarejna, in the hope of learning more.
Szarejna sighed and smiled radiantly.
“You’ve got such a great boss,” said Igor.
Szacki waited.
“Mister . . .” Szarejna began, but he didn’t let her finish.
“Igor, no mister, my dear Ewa, we agreed.”
She laughed and stroked his hand.
“Igor . . . ,” she said emphatically, looking the man in the eyes, and he nodded theatrically.
Szacki felt sick.
“Igor, if you could explain to Misterteo . . .”
Igor smoothed his blue jacket. Then he smoothed his hipster tie, which looked as if it had come from his rockabilly granddad’s closet. They must have said in the papers, “It’s worth highlighting your personality by introducing a zany touch into a classic outfit.” Finally, he smoothed his fair hair and adjusted his glasses.
Szacki wanted to fucking kill him. One more neurotic gesture, and he was simply going to kill him, even if he turned out to be the new prosecutor general.
“So how do you think the general public perceives the prosecution service?” asked Igor.
Szacki sighed inwardly, wondering what strategy would work best for a quick getaway.
“They have no idea what we do. People think we’re pencil pushers who waste time hovering between the police and the magistrates, obstructing their work. When in fact we don’t obstruct them, we just cover up various scandals on the private instructions of politicians of all ranks, or else we make comments in front of the cameras, looking like jackasses and trying to camouflage our mistakes with incomprehensible legal jargon. That’s it in a nutshell.”
“And what can be done about it?”
What sort of a lousy academic conversation was this? Szacki did his best not to let his irritation show.
“I think it’s a mistake to inform the public about our inquiries in the current style.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Igor. “Any specific ideas?”
“Of course. We should stop communicating with the media.”
Igor and Szarejna exchanged baffled looks.
“Why’s that?”
“It’s the logical choice.” He found himself quoting Falk. “The public perceives us badly because that’s the image of officialdom it sees in the papers. You can’t subtract the public from this equation because it’s there, whatever. And you can’t subtract the prosecution service, because our activities are essential to the public. You have to cut the cancer out of this healthy organism. In other words, cut out the media, which is doubly harmful. Firstly, they mislead the public, and secondly, they obstruct us in our inquiries. In other words, they act to the public detriment.”
“Misterteo, how are you going to inform the citizens about our actions without the media?”
“Directly. It’s the twenty-first century. Let’s post information about our major inquiries on the regional service website and leave it at that. They don’t have to be terse messages. Have them written by someone who knows the Polish language. Have someone who’s good at choosing the right tie to go with his jacket record his comments and post them on YouTube.” He cast Igor a meaningful glance. “There’s nothing to it. Let’s make ourselves the sheriffs—nobody’s gonna do it for us.”
Igor smiled cryptically.
“Interesting that you should have mentioned sheriffs in particular.”
“Interesting that so far you haven’t given me any explanation for this meeting, just asked a few meaningless questions. On top of which, you didn’t introduce yourself.”
“My name’s Igor.”
In reply Szacki bestowed one of his iciest, most disdainful looks on him.
“Bikoz.”
Szacki waited for him to continue. “Because what?” he finally asked.
“Bikoz. Just Bikoz.”
Szacki hid his face in his hands. He felt very tired.
“Here, look.”
Szacki looked. In front of him lay a business card. Igor Bikoz, CEO, Portfolio Communications Consulting.
He nodded, struggling to stifle his laughter.
“Our company has been commissioned by the national prosecution service to improve its public image. I admit, we quickly realized how disastrous the situation is. Sometimes I think it would be easier to convince people that Adolf Hitler merely conducted a mildly controversial foreign policy. I’ll give a quick rundown of the remedial action to be taken. Number one, an evaluation of the current press spokesmen for the prosecution service at the regional and district levels. Number two, either retraining for the people dealing with communications until now, or appointment of new ones and training for them.”
Szacki had a bad feeling about this. A fuck-awful feeling.
“No way,” he said, just in case.
“Misterteo, that’s exactly why people don’t like us. Coming up with negatives right away, saying no right away, all stiff and starchy right away. Let’s talk about it.”
Igor Bikoz rapped a fingernail on his business card.
“This is my firm. I conceived it, founded it, and got it up and running. I’ve worked my butt off to get it to the stage where I can say that it’s the most effective PR firm in Poland. Thirty of my people are in the process of touring all the prosecution services in the entire country. I should be sitting behind a desk at my head office in Warsaw counting the banknotes. Do you know why I bothered to come all the way to this backwater place?”
“I’m most terribly sorry,” said Szarejna, bristling as if it were a joke, but her jaw had suddenly clenched. “I realize you’re not here for long, Igor, but this is a very special place. Do you know that there are eleven lakes within the city limits? Eleven!”
Bikoz looked at her politely.
“Dear Ewa, do you really think that proves how metropolitan it is? The number of lakes, swamps, and impenetrable forests?”
Szarejna froze as if he had slapped her, while in Szacki’s view it was a first-rate joke. He even felt a shadow of sympathy for this badly dressed man with the weird name and the ridiculous profession.
“This is why I bothered.” Bikoz pulled an iPad in a burgundy cover out of his briefcase. “Because as soon as I realized we must make you the sheriffs”—at this he placed the tablet in front of Szacki—“I started searching t
o see if anyone had ever presented you that way. I tried looking for a movie, a TV series, or maybe a crime novel as a hook to start from. I typed ‘sheriff prosecutor’ into Google and found out I didn’t need a crime novel, because such a person really does exist.”
He switched on the tablet, and there Szacki saw the results of the search.
He knew those headlines. “Sheriff in a Suit Catches the Villain,” “The Columbo of Kielce County,” “The Sheriff and a Grain of Truth.”
He knew those pictures. Of him, at a press conference. Of him, with Sandomierz Cathedral in the background, him in his gown in the Kielce courtroom. And, sadly for him, in women’s magazines too. Once as the sexiest civil servant, and once as the best dressed. Yes, his list of reasons for disliking the media was almost infinite.
“No way,” Szacki repeated.
“Misterteo!” said Szarejna, and it sounded like a prayer, an invocation to God. “We can’t be a bunch of anonymous bureaucrats who turn our backs on people. There are reasons why the sheriff always wore a gold star. Pinned to his chest, visible from afar, announcing to all that in this place they stick to the law. You’re going to be Olsztyn’s gold star.”
He clung to the hope that he was only expected to make a one-off appearance, a speech during Urban Safety Week, or the harvest festival, or whatever they had in this province. But he had to suppress this idea before it had had time to take shape in his mind.
“Officially speaking, from today you’re the press spokesman for the Olsztyn Prosecution Service, in charge of communications and contact with the media.”
“Congratulations,” said Bikoz, smiling.
“I’m sure you’ve been told I hate the media. And I’ve never treated them well, by which I don’t mean just lack of respect, but upfront contempt.”
“Even so, they’ve always loved you. I think your no-nonsense, uncompromising attitude just adds to your charm, Misterteo.”
“The law guarantees me independence,” he lied in desperation.
Szarejna smiled her wonderful smile that everyone took to be an expression of warmth and empathy, but Szacki saw nothing but ice-cold triumph in it. He knew how satisfying it was to catch a lawyer in blatant ignorance of the law.
“Misterteo, of course the law guarantees you independence in conducting legal proceedings, meaning self-reliance in performing legal functions. Nevertheless, the law also says the prosecutor is obliged to carry out the orders, directives, and instructions of his supervisor.”
He said nothing; there was nothing to say. Snapping her alligator teeth with joy above her velvet jumpsuit, Ewa Szarejna couldn’t resist kicking him when he was already down:
“Article eight, paragraph two.”
Igor Bikoz took out a wad of papers bound with red string. On the cover there was a five-pointed yellow star with each point ending in a large dot. In the middle of the page Szacki spotted the words “OPERATION SHERIFF” in a Western-style font.
He didn’t even sigh.
10
Rage, frustration, and irritation had gotten him so worked up that after pacing his office for fifteen minutes, he decided to take off. He was afraid he’d blow a fuse or burst a blood vessel.
His first thought was simply to go for a walk, but the weather was so crappy that he decided to go for a drive instead.
Five hundred yards and fifteen minutes later, the car radio was blaring “Agadoo,” which seemed oddly summery for the present weather conditions, and he was still trembling with rage. There was no traffic on Kościuszko Street, which had sunk into a coma; the time-space continuum was clearly trapped in quantum aspic—this corner of the universe was at a total standstill. Through the drizzle two hundred yards ahead, Szacki saw the lights changing at a regular pace: first they were red forever, then green for a second, followed by a yellow flash, and then red again. If three cars had time to drive into jammed-up Niepodległość Avenue it was a triumph. He gazed at the huddled pedestrians flitting along the sidewalk and imagined one of them was the Olsztyn traffic designer. He imagined inviting him into his car. The guy’s pleasantly surprised, the weather’s awful, he would never have expected such a kind gesture from a driver with Warsaw plates, thank you very much, and so on. No problem, we really ought to help each other, the whole works. He even lets him choose the radio station, unbutton his coat, relax, and admire the classy car. At the same time, Szacki quietly takes a Phillips-head screwdriver out of his side pocket. And once the traffic designer is relaxed, Szacki locks the car doors and sticks the screwdriver into the man’s thigh with all his might, as deep as it’ll go, twisting it relentlessly. Up ahead, he saw that this time, no car had managed to turn on green, and he smiled as he imagined the scream of pain, surprise, and horror. He hadn’t realized his right hand was drilling a hole in the leather upholstery.
Twenty minutes later he was feeling a little better because he’d decided that instead of sitting in a traffic jam all the way to Jaroty, he would drive down to the Statoil station near KFC, stop for a cup of coffee, read the newspaper, and let off steam. He drove a hundred yards along the sidewalk to get to the entrance, and parked outside the gas station with a sigh of relief.
He sat down at a small table in the corner, between the brushes for sweeping off snow and some only partially concealed porn mags. With the Olsztyn Gazette and a large cup of black coffee. For some time he’d been drinking it black because he thought it manlier.
He felt OK at the checkout. He felt great at the espresso machine. He felt awesome as he strode to the table with his cup—he never covered it with a lid, just to let everyone know that tough guys aren’t ashamed of their choice. But once at the table he felt crappy, because he hated the taste of black coffee. After two sips his stomach was churning, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. But what could he do? Go back for creamer? Add sweetener?
He wanted to rest and unwind, but instead he looked through the Olsztyn Gazette, feeling annoyed. The main topic was insultingly low hourly rates of pay—in this region where unemployment was the highest in the country, the employers were mercilessly exploiting human misery and desperation. He skimmed the text; the just cause didn’t concern him, and if they were devoting the front page to such a general issue, it meant there was absolutely no news to report. Of course he was right—it just got worse as it went on. In Szymany, the civil servants had put up a monument to their own megalomania in the form of a redundant airport. In Gołdap, people were afraid of wolves; some archaeological remains had been found under the Old Town. There was a poll for the best teacher, a poll for the best postman, and a poll for the best athlete—yawn, yawn, yawn.
He was just about to put the newspaper aside and take advantage of the fact that the place had emptied out—he could now sneak some milk into his coffee—when a familiar face looked out at him from the educational supplement. At first he couldn’t fit the face to the situation; as he gazed into the pale-blue eyes of a young woman, the cogs in his brain stood still.
Then suddenly—click. Wiktoria Sendrowska, class 2E, “How to Survive in the Family”—he remembered the title of her essay because it had sounded so intriguing.
He pulled out the supplement and read the interview with the girl. She gave extremely smart answers to the pointless questions put to her by a journalist who spoke to her as if she were a child, to which she responded like a mature woman.
The journalist asked what had prompted her to write on such a serious topic.
The girl replied that she had never had personal experience of domestic violence—she came from a happy home, and her parents were in respectable professions. But she had known people who went home to absolute hell, who cowered when they heard footsteps in the hallway, and who were more afraid of going home than going out. She had known people who longed for someone to come and take them away to a children’s home. And she thought she should write about it.
Luckily such extreme cases are very rare, aren’t they, countered the journalist.
Szacki sco
wled as he read the question. Yet another citizen who’s convinced everything happens to other people, and only very occasionally, so really there’s nothing to get upset about. He skimmed the entire interview—the schoolgirl talked about violence within the family and had clearly put in a lot of effort to gather material for her essay.
Families vary, the journalist commented on the examples Wiktoria cited of pathologies among her school friends.
To which Wiktoria replied, “I refuse to use the word ‘family’ to describe a group where any kind of violence is applied, any attack on personal or sexual freedom. We’re insulting the genuine families by giving that name to pathological setups that should be dismantled right away.”
Journalist: “That sounds ominous. I’m starting to imagine children reporting their parents . . .”
Wiktoria: “What’s ominous about that? Any parent who’s an evil, harmful, aggressive psychopath should be reported right away. We should know we’re not defenseless. At school we have numerous lectures warning us about fanciful dangers. We’re told we’re at risk of drug addiction, human trafficking, having our kidneys cut out, or being raped in a dark forest, but what are you supposed to do when a drunken uncle comes at you, your father’s drinking away your pocket money, or your mother screams insults at you every day of the week? I’ve never heard a word about any of that in school. But that would be useful. Bullies should be aware that they can’t get away with it.”
What’s true is true—Szacki, too, had a very low opinion of parents as a social group. He yawned and drank the coffee, which was cold by now. The girl gave the impression of being as belligerent as she was levelheaded. He sincerely hoped nobody would ruin her along the way, that her public-spirited passion wouldn’t wane, and in a few years from now, he’d be able to vote for her.
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