Rage

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  “Good luck,” he muttered, and tossed the paper in the trash can.

  By now the traffic was minimal, and Szacki figured he could get to Jaroty without risking an apoplectic fit. Fifteen minutes later he turned into Wilczyński Street, one of the main roads through this residential suburb, passed a church so hideous that it could only have been built by the Society of Friends of Lucifer to put people off religion, then started looking around for the address. He parked outside a five-story block constructed in the 1990s, a sad decade when things were built quickly and without imagination, not to mention any sense of design. The building was horrid, bitter evidence that you only had to move away from the old German center to start wanting to avert your gaze from the omnipresent eyesores. In fact, Olsztyn was no different in this regard from any other city, and Szacki thought it a cruel fact—even if everything were to change in Poland, people were to start being nice to one another and the politicians become sensitive to human injustice, even if the freeways were finally completed and the trains were clean, even so, these people would still have to live in 120,000 square miles of urban-planning hell, littered with the ugliest architecture in all of Europe.

  On the ground floor he found a row of stores and agencies. Najman’s business, the Tauris Travel Bureau, was a tiny place, squeezed in between a veterinary clinic and a store selling mirrors. Contrary to his fears, the lights were on, and inside a female employee was near the back wall, shelving catalogs: palm trees on top, snowy peaks below. On the wall there were posters of azure seas and white sands. He had only once been on that sort of vacation; on one side he’d had a view of a power plant and on the other a freeway. There had been waves of pale cellulite pouring across the brown gravel beach, and he’d promised himself never to have that experience again.

  He examined the ads in the front window. The Alps by plane. Slovakia by car. Exotic destinations. Italy, a tour of Rome including the Pope’s tomb, already taking bookings for the canonization. No notice announcing a break, a vacation, or a temporary closure.

  He stepped inside into an aroma of coffee, glossy paper, and musky incense. Quite a pleasant mixture. The woman turned around and smiled at him. He quickly introduced himself to stop her from trying to seduce him with palm trees and snowcapped mountains. She said yes, as if she’d been expecting this visit, and introduced herself as Joanna Parulska.

  “Would you like coffee?”

  He felt like breaking down and asking for milk and sugar but realized he was here on duty.

  “Why not? Black.”

  If it did make an impression on her, she didn’t let it show.

  “The police have been to see me today!” she called from the back room.

  “I know,” he said. “I wanted to see the victim’s workplace.”

  She didn’t answer. She came back with two mugs of instant coffee, with milk for herself. The coffee smelled of rubber—there are few things as revolting as instant black coffee.

  “I only have a few questions.”

  She nodded, folded her legs, and sipped her coffee. She had the energy of a woman who owns a small firm. A woman who has a successful married life, who likes to work, likes to cook and share a glass of wine with the same friends she’s had for the past twenty years. Who dances well, exuberantly, and when she and her husband go away to a hotel for the weekend she packs lace stockings. Though she’s coming up to fifty, they’ve probably always said of her that she has that “something.” Despite her visible efforts, that “something” had grown older and disappeared, but probably when she closed the office on a November afternoon, the men still looked at her. Knee boots, shapely legs below her skirt, feminine curves, long black hair, makeup, cool glasses the turquoise color of the Caribbean. You might think she was a woman who was at peace with her age and her destiny, feeling good in her own skin. But Szacki was ready to bet that if she had a glass of wine on a Friday night, on Saturday morning, if it was a sunny day, she stood in front of the mirror, looked at that skin, and didn’t feel remotely comfortable in it. He had felt that for himself all too often.

  He had questioned too many people to be unaware that there were only about a dozen types, and that apart from some minor differences, within these categories, their characters and fortunes were usually very similar. He didn’t have to ask to know that she had had no other connection with Najman apart from a professional one—even if he had tried to schmooze her, he’d soon have had a slap on the wrist. That while he was downing martinis in Tunisia, she was here, sorting out the invoices—even so, the clients preferred to do their business with her, not with the boss, who had seen in person the brightly colored fish darting around the coral reef.

  One thing didn’t fit. He’d often seen this type of woman before, and they weren’t typically employees.

  “How did you come to work for Najman?”

  “I never worked for him. We’re . . . we were partners. We opened travel agencies almost simultaneously on opposite sides of the same street. His was new, mine had moved out here from the center. Two years later we realized it was pointless staring at each other as if we were rivals, so we joined forces. One site, one set of accounts, and each of us brought our own clients. I do school trips and summer camps, he does families seeking the sun.”

  “Najman’s wife referred to you as an employee.”

  She shrugged.

  “I know he presented me as an employee—he even tried treating me that way for a while. A short while. He was a bit of a lord and master, but on the whole we got along well.”

  She glanced at the wall. Szacki followed her line of vision. Among the paradise beaches hung a comical picture of Najman and Parulska, taken in winter, at a Christmas fair in the Olsztyn marketplace, with ice sculptures of animals around them. Among the sculptures they had set up a thatched beach umbrella and two summer recliners on the snow, and were lying on them in winter jackets and sunglasses, drinking lurid-looking cocktails. Between them stood a sign with the travel agency’s logo and website. They were smiling radiantly into the camera, looking happy.

  “We thought it was a great idea for an ad. To show we could take people from the middle of the Polish winter to somewhere with palm trees.”

  “Is business all right?”

  “It’s in pretty good shape. Of course the market’s unpredictable; one time they want to go on pilgrimages, another time it’s sports. We had a year when about half the neighborhood went to top-class exotic destinations, the Caribbean or Mauritius. But it was generally doing better and better—we were actually thinking of opening another branch.”

  “What about the financial crisis?”

  “It’s baloney. It’s a rumor put out by the big corporations so they wouldn’t have to give any raises for ten years.”

  A prosperous business with plans for the future, money. He wondered if that was sufficient motive for murder. Not really—unless there were private debts, gambling, blackmail. Partner lends to partner, the trouble begins. One of them dies, and not only are the debts forgotten, the business is left behind too. He made a mental note of this hypothesis.

  “How did you divide the work?”

  “It varied. We did a lot of traveling, both business and personal, so sometimes there was only one of us at the office. But during peak periods we both stayed put. After years of practice, as soon as anyone came in, we both knew at once who should serve them. If it was a vigorous man in an overcoat, Piotr did it, with direct talk that says, ‘I’m not going to mislead you, sir, I’ve seen some unusual things in Arab countries, but it’s a really great place’ and a joke about how a trip with your wife is really a business trip. I would take care of the young couples, showing that I understood they wanted as much sun-drenched happiness as possible for the lowest price. If it was two female friends over fifty, Piotr served them, of course. He had something of the life and soul of the party about him, and it worked.”

  “And who would have served me?”

  “I would, definitely.”

&n
bsp; “Why definitely?”

  Joanna Parulska smiled the smile of an experienced saleswoman.

  “Because you don’t like interacting with men, all that patting each other on the shoulder. I figure a trip to the DIY store or a car repair shop must be worse for you than a dental appointment.”

  “What do you stand to gain by Najman’s death?” He refused to admit how accurately she’d analyzed him.

  “Nothing. For the time being I’ll have to run the business on my own and hope I don’t lose Piotr’s clients. His wife inherits his shares. At this point she says she’s going to meet me halfway, but we’ll see what happens once the estate is settled.”

  “Halfway, meaning?”

  “She’ll sell me her shares at a reasonable price.”

  “You two have already discussed it?”

  “An hour ago. She was very nice. We even wondered about running the business jointly.”

  “Would you go for that?”

  “Yes, I would. It won’t give me anyone to charm old ladies into taking trips to Morocco, but generally it’s good working with women.”

  Szacki wondered what this remark might mean—that it was bad working with a man, perhaps. He made a mental note of it.

  “Last Monday he left home for work and never came back. Did you see him that day?”

  “Yes. We saw each other that morning. He came in with a suitcase, checked his email, left me a few ongoing issues to deal with, above all a large ski camp in Slovakia, and took a cab at about noon to Kortowo, where he was catching the bus to Warsaw. Then he was going to fly with Balkan Tourist to Macedonia and Albania. Albania is being heavily promoted these days as a new destination. The country’s getting back on its feet, the prices are low, and the Adriatic’s lovely. The trip was supposed to be for ten days, and Piotr was going to call on his return to say if he was staying on in Warsaw for a briefing on some new destinations.”

  Szacki was sure he had heard the exact same words from Mrs. Najman. Both women were equally cool, equally devoid of emotion, and both only said what was necessary. And not a word more.

  “Did you communicate?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s the middle of the low season, everyone’s already bought their New Year’s vacation in Egypt and their skiing holidays; the whole country’s getting set for Christmas. I could close the business for two weeks and nobody would notice. It actually suited me that he was away because I could work in peace on the deals for the summer. We want to sell Ukraine well—after all, the agency’s name obligates us. I hope the trouble there will be over soon.”

  Szacki stood up without a word and took his mug with him. Piotr Najman had been permanently involved with two people—his wife and his business partner. Neither of them was surprised by his disappearance, neither seemed bothered by his death. The only thing they had to say about it were the same three sentences, devoid of emotion, as if they’d learned them by heart.

  He looked around the room, and only now did he notice a reproduction hanging by the door, on a smaller scale, of the classical genre painting he’d seen in the hall at Mickiewicz High School. He went up to the picture, in which a sad woman in a white dress was gazing at the sea as it crashed against the rocks. It blended in remarkably well with the glossy photos of beaches, seas, and blue skies.

  “Is it possible to go there?” he asked, half joking, pointing his mug at the painting.

  “Absolutely. That’s Tauryda, in Latin it was called Tauris, hence the name of our agency.”

  “And where is it?”

  “In Ukraine. Tauryda is the ancient name for Crimea.”

  He had no idea.

  “And do these characters mean anything?”

  “That’s Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. And behind her that’s Orestes, her brother, and his friend Pylades.”

  It meant nothing to him. But he didn’t want to compromise himself, so he just nodded.

  “I’ve spent years staring at that picture, but I only read up on it fairly recently. Agamemnon was ready to sacrifice Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis in exchange for favorable winds for the Greek ships sailing to Troy. The goddess took pity and spared the girl by whisking her away to Tauris, but Agamemnon’s wife didn’t know their daughter had been saved.”

  “Electra?” offered Szacki, as something dimly returned to him from years ago.

  “Clytemnestra. As a result, she murdered him when he came home. For which in turn she was murdered by her children, Iphigenia’s siblings. Which was all part of a greater curse that caused each successive generation to murder members of their own family.”

  “The inheritance of violence,” he said, more to himself than to her.

  “Absolutely. Curiously, it stopped at Żenia.”

  He gave a start.

  “Why Żenia?”

  “Because Iphigenia is like the name Eugenia, which shortens to Żenia, so we started calling her that as a pet name—clients often ask, and we tell them the story.”

  “Not a very encouraging tale,” he said. “It’s a Greek tragedy—by the end they’re all lying on the stage in a pool of blood.”

  “Actually, no. I mean, it looks as if that’s what’s going to happen, but Żenia persuades the others that they have to remove the curse to break away from evil. And she succeeds. Nobody dies.”

  “Not much of a tragedy.”

  “Maybe not, but you know what? I’ve always believed in happy endings.”

  He didn’t believe in happy endings, or in happy middles or beginnings either, but he kept that to himself. An awkward silence fell, and he gestured to ask if he could go into the back room. She nodded and followed after him.

  Beyond the area for receiving clients was a small hallway, off which there was a toilet and a small storeroom with a little window onto the courtyard. There was a cupboard in there with a kettle and a large jar of instant coffee, a small fridge, and a desk piled with papers and a computer. One corkboard had invoices, emergency phone numbers to insurance firms, and the addresses of Polish consulates pinned to it. On a second one, there were lots of photos of Najman’s and Parulska’s trips abroad, prints the size of postcards overlapping one another. Standard tourist scenes, such as portraits taken in front of the Eiffel Tower or the Egyptian pyramids, were mixed with photos from trade banquets featuring lots of alcohol-flushed cheeks and flash-induced red eyes. Parulska appeared in more winter scenes, and Najman turned up in some African or Australian wilderness. His Kojak features looked pretty good in the tropics—not a tourist, but a seasoned traveler, a veteran of the outback.

  “He liked exotic places,” said Szacki.

  “He sure did. And he knew his stuff so well that the more honest people from other agencies often sent their clients to us. He knew how to advise whether Africa or South America was the right choice, which tour operators were suspect, and which were safe to travel with. His star turn was when he’d show his hand and say, ‘You don’t want to make the same mistake I did and choose a bad guide.’ The client would go pale and ask what happened, and depending on how he was feeling, Piotr would say he’d had an encounter with a lion, a puma, or an infection caused by a scorpion sting. Jeez, I’m gonna miss him,” she said, but as if ashamed of her words, she immediately added, “in my way.”

  “Did something really bite him?” asked Szacki, sensing that he was wasting time here.

  “No way—he lost his fingers in a fire, but he liked to put on a show for the clients.”

  Szacki froze.

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know the details, I only asked him once, he said something about a fire, an electric shock perhaps. I realized it must be something embarrassing. He’d fallen asleep drunk by the fireside, or—”

  “That’s not what I meant. Did he have some sort of deformity, or were his fingers actually missing?”

  She looked at him in surprise, as if all Olsztyn knew about it. Plus eleven lakes and minus a finger or two, welcome to Warmia.


  “They were missing.” She raised her right hand, and with the other she bent back two fingers so that they couldn’t be seen. “He had no pinky and no ring finger on his right hand. He wore his wedding ring on the middle one.”

  She stared at him, clueless as to why this information had made such a strong impression on him. She couldn’t know that as an apparent side effect of being dissolved in lye, Piotr Najman had regained his lost fingers. Because if Frankenstein was to be believed, the skeleton didn’t have a single missing bone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thursday, November 28, 2013

  Albania, Mauretania, and Panama are celebrating their Independence Days. Agnieszka Holland and Ed Harris are celebrating their birthdays. It is the ninety-fifth anniversary of women being granted the right to vote in Poland. In Vilnius a summit meeting of the Eastern Partnership opens, pitiful and pointless because the Ukrainian dictator has declared that he won’t sign the EU association agreement. Protests continue in Ukraine. In Egypt the military junta has twenty-one young girls sentenced to eleven years in jail for taking part in a peace demonstration. And in France the outgoing head of Peugeot resigns after a major uproar over his company pension of 310,000 euros a year. On the day of the premiere of the Russian war movie Stalingrad, the Polish deputy minister of defense resigns, suspected of favoritism toward one of the firms aiming to sell unmanned planes to Poland. In all the confusion nobody stops to ask why the hell Poland needs unmanned planes anyway. In Olsztyn the provincial administration announces a tender for the “Copernicus” bell for the cathedral; the authorities believe it will be an excellent Copernican advertisement for the city and a valuable heirloom for future generations. The names of the Pope, the archbishop, and the head of the provincial administration will be engraved on the bell. Apart from that, a new restaurant opens that’s styled to look like Communist Poland, and a road hog gives himself up to the police after causing some officers to ram a councilman’s car during a nighttime chase two weeks ago. The daytime temperature is about 45 degrees, it’s totally overcast, with fog and rain, and in the evening, freezing drizzle.