Rage

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  “Who has that sort of knowledge?” asked Falk.

  “A priest. A therapist. A policeman. A prosecutor—you don’t have to look far. A doctor.”

  Szacki cast a watchful glance at Falk. But he was looking the other way, gazing out of the window.

  “I can see that a doctor fits the bill for you.” Klejnocki couldn’t hide his satisfaction.

  Before he could carry on, Falk’s cell phone rang.

  “Speaking of doctors,” muttered Falk, looking at his phone, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to take this.”

  He left the room, closing the door behind him, but Szacki and Klejnocki hadn’t had time to exchange a word before he was back. Szacki glanced at Falk and understood the meeting was over.

  8

  Dr. Angela Zemsta radiated calm. In a world of people who are agitated, hypersensitive, stressed out, and tense, she was like an oasis of natural serenity. Szacki felt very good in her company and was wondering if she owed her tranquility to therapy or meditation, or perhaps she had simply seen so much by now in her life as a clinical psychiatrist that even if she’d seen the Hindenburg bursting into flames outside the window, she’d have smiled sweetly and tossed a packet of popcorn into the microwave.

  “I don’t entirely understand,” he said, after listening to her brief report. “So he can’t speak, or he refuses to?”

  “I’ll put it another way. He doesn’t want to communicate with you. If he did, he’d certainly find a way. He could use paper or tap something out on a cell phone. I can also provisionally say that his lack of communication is the result of a conscious decision, not a pathological state. But even if he did want to communicate with you he couldn’t do it verbally, because his vocal organs have not just been removed, they’ve been devastated.”

  “Which parts in particular?” asked Falk.

  “All of them. We need to do an ultrasound and an MRI to get a proper appraisal of the extent of the damage, but I’ve never seen anything like it. His teeth have been knocked out, his tongue has literally been torn out, and his vocal cords are in tatters.”

  “Severed?”

  “I expect that as prosecutors you have some knowledge of anatomy. The vocal folds are not actually cords that can be severed, but delicate pieces of muscle fixed within the larynx, looking a bit like labia. They’re very easily destroyed, which is why nature has hidden them.”

  Szacki glanced at Falk. He had questions, but he realized he was acting as supervisor, and Falk should be asking the questions in his own investigation.

  “Do you have a theory about how these injuries were inflicted?”

  “I do a lot of cycling,” she said—it occurred to Szacki that maybe physical exercise was the source of her calm—“and I often stop at a crosswalk. You know what Olsztyn’s like, the lights are always red. And to avoid having to get off my bike, I grab hold of the red-and-white post that stands in front of the crosswalk. And that was my first thought when I looked down that man’s throat. That someone had taken one of those metal posts and used it to, forgive the expression, orally rape him.”

  They were silent. Outside the window, dusk was already falling, and beyond the dark patch of the park, Szacki could see the lights of the radio building where that very morning he had given an interview. He recognized it by the unusual windows, very tall and narrow.

  “Could he have done it himself?” asked Falk. “Mutilated himself as a punishment for what he did to his wife? I’ve seen various things people were driven to by pangs of conscience.”

  “I’ve said this a hundred times to all sorts of people, and I’ll say it to you: Wife-beaters don’t have pangs of conscience, because in their world they don’t do any wrong. They just take advantage of their sacred right to discipline others, to educate, to punish, and call to order. They manage their two-legged property in a way they regard as correct. They’re usually proud of it, and pangs of conscience simply don’t enter into it, nor does shame. Of course some of them acknowledge that the world has gone to shit, and these days they might get into trouble for beating their wives. But that doesn’t change anything, they simply do the beating without leaving any marks, or else they replace physical violence with psychological, and instead of beating their wives, they find ways to humiliate them. Got it?”

  They said yes.

  “There’s a specific dehumanization process at work here. I don’t like to draw comparisons with Nazism, because it’s always the ultimate argument, but discriminating against ethnic minorities and the sexism that’s at the root of domestic abuse both carry the hallmarks of systematic violence, permitted as the result of ideological indoctrination. In killing the Jews, the Germans weren’t committing murder, because the Jews weren’t people, just Jews—so they were taught. And that freed them from responsibility. Perpetrators of domestic violence have also been taught that women aren’t human, but a subspecies whose representatives are their property. That’s why as a psychiatrist I can guarantee that self-mutilation is out of the question. But even if we accepted the fantastical assumption that he did it himself, it’s doubtful he’d have dressed his own wounds.”

  “Dressed his own wounds? You said he’s still hemorrhaging.”

  “Yes, he’s bleeding, and there’s blood collecting in his lungs, too, but compared with the scale of the injuries it’s nothing, just a cut. Your client hasn’t bled to death because the major blood vessels have been sewn up. Maybe not professionally enough for the person who did the stitches to find work as a plastic surgeon, but well enough for them to scrape through a college exam.”

  9

  Six p.m.

  Szacki went inside and hung up his coat, but, sadly, there was no delicious aroma of a hot meal to greet him. He went into the kitchen and dug out a carton of tomato juice from the fridge. He shook it. Full, or almost full. Damn, he couldn’t remember if he’d opened it or not.

  He put a glass on the kitchen counter and unscrewed the cap, only to find white, fluffy mold blossoming underneath. So he had opened it.

  He poured the juice down the drain, poured himself some water, and sat down at the kitchen table.

  Szacki felt hungry. As he’d learned from the lesson of the past week, he didn’t start to shake with rage but checked to see if there were any text messages from his daughter about why there was nothing on the stove. Then he called Żenia. He found out the little brat had not checked in with her, hadn’t made any excuses, or apologized. She’d done nothing.

  Maybe that was for the best, he thought; this time she wouldn’t escape the punitive hand of justice.

  He started calling her, unable to get over the fact that in spite of it all, she had treated yesterday evening as an excuse to get out of her one and only chore. She’d asked directly, and he’d said no directly, but even so she’d made light of it. What was this about? Was she messed up in some way? Maybe she’d done something he didn’t know about and was subconsciously doing everything she could to receive punishment and cause a fight? Or maybe her hormones were making her lose control of herself?

  Of course she didn’t answer. Incredible. He sent her a nasty text message and decided to make pasta with pesto, the fallback of everyone who isn’t fond of cooking but doesn’t like the idea of starving to death.

  Seven p.m.

  Żenia got home just before the news came on, which was a relief to him, because he was finding it hard to cope with his rising anxiety. Until then, he’d done some cleaning and cooking. He’d found a bunch of asparagus in the freezer, so he had steamed it, cut it up, and added it to the pasta. He’d also added some grated pecorino, which he rated higher than parmesan, extracted an emergency bottle of wine from the back of the pantry, and hey, presto! There was a first-rate supper.

  “Call her, she can eat with us,” said Żenia, sitting at table.

  “There’s only enough for two.”

  “Drop it, give her a call.”

  “No.”

  “Then at least find out if everything’s OK.”

&
nbsp; “I tried calling, but she didn’t pick up.”

  Of course her eyebrow shot up.

  “Aha. And what do you think—why’s that?”

  He thought for a while, as he mixed the pasta. It wasn’t exactly refined, but he liked it when a big spoonful of cheese melted into the noodles.

  “Just a second, I’ll try to remember some of the most typical lies. In Warsaw the usual reason she couldn’t answer was that she just happened to be in the subway when I called—to a point where she was almost always in the subway, walking down the tunnels, no doubt! Here there isn’t even a tramway, so that excuse is gone. Or else she says her battery ran out, or she switched her phone to silent like a good student and forgot to switch it on again, or she put it deep in her bag so thieves wouldn’t attack her and steal her precious gizmo. There are frequent accidents, too. A popular excuse is to ‘blame the drizzle.’ If she calls from outside, something happens to make her lose the connection. Every time I hear that, it just makes me wonder.”

  “Well?”

  “Doesn’t she know what I do for a living? I’ve spent the past twenty years listening to all sorts of cutthroats and villains, so she should at least have enough respect for me to think up a more sophisticated lie. I think that’s what hurts the most—the fact that she tries to deceive me with any old crap. It makes me feel she doesn’t respect me as a prosecutor.”

  His cell phone rang. It was lying on the table next to him, and he glanced at the display. Not Hela, no one from his list of contacts, just an unfamiliar number.

  “Well, here we go,” he said, reaching for the phone. “I’ll put it on speaker so you can hear her lying about how her battery ran down, she tried looking for the charger, but she couldn’t find it, so now she’s calling from a friend’s phone, but she couldn’t do that before because her friend only had a few minutes left. You’ll see.”

  He answered.

  “Yes?”

  “Is this Prosecutor Szacki?” asked a woman’s voice. Young, but not very young.

  He gulped. The dreadful thought struck him that it was somebody from the police or the emergency room.

  “Speaking.”

  “My name is Natasza Kwietniewska, I’m calling from Debate magazine. Please allow me to introduce myself because we’re sure to be working together often—”

  “I’m not working now.”

  “Sorry?”

  “It’s after seven. I’m at home having supper. I’m not at work,” he said, and hung up.

  Żenia was tapping her head.

  Eight p.m.

  The calories, alcohol, and Żenia’s company, though perhaps not in that order, had lessened his anxiety. But he couldn’t get back to his usual level of impatience, or as his daughter had put it so well yesterday, rage. He knew he was going to wait up for her to come home, just to chew her out, and then he’d go to bed.

  “Do you think I should punish her?” he shouted to Żenia from the living room while she was soaking in the tub.

  She couldn’t hear him, so he picked up his wineglass and went into the bathroom.

  “May I?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? I want to look at you naked.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you know, I’m not in the habit of smothering my tits in foam and waiting for my lusty young lover to appear every single time I get into the tub.”

  “What on earth can you be doing in there that’s so private? The toilet’s in a separate room.”

  “Can I help it if I like to shit in the tub now and then? Don’t be dumb, I don’t look very good right now. I’m in the middle of some cosmetic operations. No man can see me until I’m done.”

  He sat on the floor by the door.

  “Do you think I should punish her?”

  “Don’t drag me into it.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Don’t drag me into it—seriously.”

  He sighed. Punishment had never been his strong suit. He knew how that sounded, and that as a prosecutor it wasn’t exactly the right cross-stitched motto to hang above his desk. Four times as a prosecutor he had demanded a life sentence without batting an eyelid. But he had no idea how to punish a sixteen-year-old girl. Should he ground her? She’d make fun of him, sitting in her room, spending all her time socializing via her computer and her phone. Take away her money? She’d pull a fast one and her mother would wire her money, or Żenia would give it to her.

  “Think of something, you’re the wicked stepmother, after all.”

  “Marry me and I’ll be the wicked stepmother. For now I’m just the wicked live-in lover. Jesus, how awful that sounds, like something out of a police report.”

  “I’ll try to get through to her again,” he muttered, to avoid the subject.

  Nine p.m.

  By now they both knew it wasn’t funny anymore. Despite the late hour, Szacki dug out the phone number for Hela’s teacher, called him, and got the numbers for the parents of the children she hung out with. The teacher, who had made a fairly bland impression on Szacki at the parents’ meetings, turned out to be very efficient, and, above all, helpful. He also asked to be sent a text message once Hela was found, however late it was. As a result, Szacki decided to change his mind about the teacher.

  Ten p.m.

  They divided up Hela’s friends and called all of them, talking first to the parents, then the kids. Żenia was worried that, thanks to this hysterical action, her classmates would make fun of the poor girl later on. How her prosecutor dad was stalking her, interrogating her friends at night. Szacki got mean satisfaction out of it—causing her embarrassment would be a fine punishment. All teenage girls are hypersensitive when it comes to their ego and status within the group.

  Oh, yes, he thought, as he waited on the next call, there’ll be another punishment too. Every day I’m going to wait for her outside the school. In white socks, sandals, a nerdy sweater, and a beret. And as soon as she appeared in the doorway he’d shout, “Hela! Hela! Over here!” Three days of this, and she’d superglue her phone to her cheek rather than ever miss a call from her beloved father again.

  The conversations with her friends were fruitless. Some of them could only confirm that she had been at school. Two claimed that after classes the three of them had gone for frozen yogurt (according to one) or coffee (according to the other). Which probably meant they’d sat somewhere smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, or taking whichever drugs were in vogue. He pressed them, but both girls were adamant that they’d parted ways at around five p.m. outside the Town Hall, and that Hela had walked off in the direction of the post office, in other words, toward home.

  He didn’t like this piece of information. It meant that instead of taking the ever-so-slightly longer but populated and well-lit road around the Alfa shopping mall, she had chosen the shorter half-empty street between the back of the mall and the black-and-green hole. Suddenly he remembered all his old cases that had started with a pretty young girl walking past a deserted park at night. He quickly warded off those thoughts because they stopped him from thinking clearly. But at this point he suddenly felt real fear for Hela. For several seconds he couldn’t catch his breath.

  He also questioned the girls about Hela’s boyfriend situation, and both of them denied she had one. Despite appearances, it wasn’t good news. Going off somewhere with an admirer, a classmate, or a student from Kortowo would mean that his daughter hadn’t come home and wasn’t answering her phone because she was high on hormones, busy losing her virginity (assuming she still had it) in some dorm. In this optimistic scenario, poorer for the loss of her virginity but richer in life experience, she would then board the bus and come home, or else take a cab, or call her father.

  It was harder to talk to the boys because they all had slow, slightly absent voices, as if they had just finished jacking off and the blood had not returned to their brains yet. They knew who Hela was, but that day they’d only seen her at school. They knew nothing about any boyfriends. But one boy named Marcin had si
ghed heavily. He must have fallen for Hela.

  They’d ticked off the entire list and found out absolutely nothing.

  Eleven p.m.

  The hour between ten and eleven was extremely tense. As soon as they’d finished with Hela’s friends, they checked to see if anything had happened in the city that Hela could have been caught up in. Szacki called Bierut and told him to use all the police channels, especially the traffic cops. Żenia used her old medical contacts and found a friend on call at the provincial hospital who promised to check the ER and all the other admissions and emergency wards.

  Teodor Szacki the father was feeling bad. He was forcing himself to think rationally and precisely, but he couldn’t stop his thoughts from racing, or curtail the images that his overheated brain was producing. The rush of adrenaline made everything seem extremely vivid—he wasn’t so much thinking about events as seeing them. Cursed be the profession that had caused him to spend a large part of his life looking at the sort of images he was now associating with his daughter.

  Helena Szacka, run down by a drunken driver. Lying in the bushes, her shoes cast aside, her legs broken, bent at impossible angles in places where there aren’t any joints. Her skull crushed, her mandible exposed, her mouth foaming with a mixture of blood and saliva.

  Helena Szacka in the emergency room, the doctors exchanging helpless glances; thanks to the collision with a tree there’s no breastbone to press down on to revive her.

  Helena Szacka in intensive care, intubated, entwined in cables and tubes. He, her father, sitting beside her, staring at an organ-donation consent form, unable to believe he’s got to make the decision to switch off the machines. Hela is still alive, maybe she can hear him telling her over and over that she’s the greatest daughter in the world. Just one signature, and he’ll be saying the same words at her graveside.