Rage

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

“I doubt it,” said Szacki. “It’s small children that are adopted, right?”

  “You’d be surprised. As far as I know, of course people would like to adopt children an hour after they’re extracted from the womb, but it’s rarely possible. Children are taken away from their parents at all sorts of ages, and it’s usually a few years before the parental rights are removed and the decision becomes legally binding. People who want to adopt have a choice: either take a child that’s a few years old, or go on being childless. Besides, you’d be surprised how many people adopt children that are virtually grown up, teenagers. They’re often mature couples who’ve raised their own children and want not so much to raise them as help them enter adult life. My manager once made out a new birth certificate for a young woman a week before her eighteenth birthday.”

  Szacki thought. The Najmans had been married since 1988. Supposing the first Mrs. Najman had given birth at roughly the same time, the child would have been a teenager when it went through the death of its mother and brother. Today that person would be twentysomething at most. Meaning what? Was his pool of suspects suddenly limited to people under the age of thirty? Was he banging his head against a brick wall again?

  “Who can see the original birth certificate?”

  “Almost no one. A court can demand access, but only in exceptional, justified circumstances—if it can prove in its application that it’s essential to the case. Of course neither the biological nor the adoptive parents can get anywhere near the certificate. In fact the only person who can see it is the child concerned, who gains that right on reaching the age of eighteen.”

  Suddenly it all snapped into place.

  There was just one thing he needed.

  He leaned toward Myślimir and smiled. He didn’t realize how awful he looked and that the ghastly grimace sent shivers down the official’s spine.

  “Only the manager has access to those files?”

  “Of course. For all sorts of reasons, that personal data is bound to be the most highly confidential.”

  “I understand. But let’s face it. I’m a public servant, and so are you. We both know exactly what it means when only the manager has access to something. Right?”

  “When only the manager has access to something?”

  “In theory. Under the law. But in practice there’s no little golden key to the secret safe handcuffed to the manager’s wrist. The manager’s role is to delegate. He hangs the key in a closet somewhere, and when it turns out he can’t get the job done because the law insists that he’s ‘the only one allowed,’ he recognizes that a trusted employee is just as good as he is.”

  Myślimir didn’t comment.

  “I think you’re just that kind of trusted employee. And that you have access to the classified files.”

  Myślimir sighed. Szacki couldn’t understand why the hesitation in his eyes was mixed with pride.

  Finally Myślimir stood up.

  “A matter of life and death, huh?”

  16

  For two hours Hela hadn’t marked the passage of time above the baseboard, because she’d been fast asleep. She didn’t look like a kidnap victim terrified to the point of brutalization. She wasn’t sleeping with one eye open, or sitting bolt upright now and then, she wasn’t tossing and turning, and she wasn’t curled into a ball, sniveling in her sleep.

  She was just a sleeping teenager—lying on her stomach with one arm trapped beneath her body, and the other hanging over the side of the bed. She was snoring gently, as if she’d crashed after a long day of strenuous activity. This good, solid sleep was entirely false, induced by the drugs that had been hidden in the shake. The kidnappers had rightly guessed that in no situation will a sixteen-year-old fail to consume a chocolate dessert.

  The dose had been adjusted to her weight and calculated to make her regain consciousness a few hours later.

  This gave them enough time to make careful preparations, to be sure that at the right moment, Prosecutor Teodor Szacki would be able to watch his daughter die.

  17

  It was fifteen after five, and by now Dr. Angela Zemsta should have been on her way home to Jonkowo, where, after she’d fed the cat, she’d wait for her husband to make her a yellow curry with spinach, which she’d been looking forward to since Monday. Unlike her, Mr. Zemsta, a notary by profession, was a superb cook, and whenever possible she encouraged him to practice his favorite hobby. What worked best was flattery, or appealing to his better nature, especially after ward duty. Although she never let him know it, on these occasions she always removed her makeup before leaving the hospital so she’d look like a zombie when she got home. Then he’d immediately ask if she fancied something good to eat. And what do you know, she always did. She felt a little guilty, but she told herself that manipulating people was in fact an art that a good psychiatrist ought to practice.

  She sent her husband a text to say she’d be late. She switched off the phone, shut her office door, returned to her desk, and gazed into her visitor’s steel-gray eyes. The picture of misery and despair, the man was so wasted and exhausted that her husband would have made him a three-course dinner with zabaglione for dessert.

  “Most adults don’t even know there’s such a thing as a children’s ward at a psychiatric hospital,” she said. “Quite naturally, there are various disorders that we associate with adults alone. A woman who can’t get out of bed. A man who walks around the house because he’s afraid to go inside and die alone. Someone who’s in a manic state and pays the deposit to buy a different property every day. Someone who thinks he’s Christ, or who spends day after day counting the tiles in the bathroom. We all know they’re crazy. Sometimes when I ask people, they think a children’s psychiatric clinic is just a sort of repository for teenagers who are disappointed in love and have slashed their wrists in the bathtub or started making themselves throw up after meals.”

  The prosecutor looked as if he didn’t have the strength for conversation.

  “But in fact, children’s brains are not free of ailments. Depression, neuroses, bipolar disorders, psychoses—it happens to people at any age. Can you imagine a four-year-old who has to be put in a straitjacket and tied to the bed because he’s found creative ways to harm himself?”

  The man didn’t react.

  “I’ve seen that. That and other things. When I took up my specialty, I thought I’d be helping children with their problems, or some such optimistic crap. But I became a warder in hell. I was less than thirty when I found out a five-year-old girl can put the fear of God into you. I had to go into her room with two male nurses so she wouldn’t hurt me. Have you seen The Exorcist? There were days when I dreamed of having a nice quiet job like Father Merrin’s.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the prosecutor at last, purely in order to say something. “How do you treat those children?”

  “I should say that we apply a combination of modern techniques depending on the case, but in fact we stuff them with antipsychotics like fattened geese to stop them from harming themselves. And we hope they’ll grow out of it in time.”

  “Do they?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes not.”

  “Was that what happened to the Najman boy?”

  She gave a deep sigh. And was happy to find that her drugs were still working. She’d run to the john to take a double dose of Xanax as soon as she heard what the prosecutor had come to see her about.

  “Paweł Najman’s case destroyed me. I dropped psychiatry and became a family doctor for several years. I was in charge of his case, I felt responsible.”

  The man really did look as if speaking required an effort way beyond his present state. He just looked at her searchingly.

  “I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was my twenty-second hour on call, it was almost four in the morning, the worst shift of all. A policeman called to say he was bringing in a five-year-old who’d been through a tragedy—a house fire somewhere in the province, the mother had been killed, the father was injured, and
the boy was in a stupor. Ten minutes later they were on my ward. The boy smelled of burning, not smoke, but a choking stink, just like when people burn trash in a furnace. He was in his pajamas, wrapped in a dun-colored blanket, with muddy little feet. Such a lovely boy—there are some children all the moms look at in the street, wishing they were theirs. Very nice-looking, fine, delicate features. Black hair in a pageboy cut and highly intelligent eyes. The eyes of a good and clever person. The kind who’ll have the power to change the world. You may laugh, but I could see it at once.”

  The prosecutor didn’t laugh. He didn’t even blink. He just listened.

  “Once in a while an exceptional child is born, and I regard it as an exceptionally nasty twist of fate that they’re born at random to just any old family. I mean I know in theory people inherit genes. But science doesn’t touch on anything to do with the soul. I never touch on it myself, I’m an atheist. But I’ve had a ringside view of people who deviate from the norm. And sometimes I can’t help thinking that once the parents’ genes have blended together, something magical happens, and each of us gets something extra. It could be something ordinary, or ugly, or it could be very beautiful. This boy had received something very beautiful, something unique. He was five years old, but if he’d suddenly started to gather disciples around him, I’m sure he’d have found plenty. I saw that quality in him and realized I had to help him. After all, it was for that sort of moment that I chose this specialty—to help innocent creatures with beautiful souls. In those days I was still in the optimistic crap stage. It’s ancient history now.”

  “I understand it didn’t work,” said the prosecutor. Not coldly, not spitefully.

  “No, it didn’t. Though I did everything in my power. For two weeks I never left the hospital. Literally—that’s not a metaphor. I ate here, showered here, and slept here. My husband brought me a regular change of clothes. I wanted to be right there for Paweł all the time, or at least nearby, to seize the moment when I’d be able to get through to him, when he’d suddenly show me a small crack I could get a toe through before it slammed shut again. Or, I’d notice something that would let me find the key to him, the way to open him up.”

  “What was the official diagnosis?”

  “Reactive psychosis. But you know, in psychiatry the names don’t mean much. A kidney stone is a kidney stone, a throat infection is a throat infection—physical conditions are all very much alike. But when it comes to mental problems, there’s usually a set of identifying features that allows us to give each one a particular name, but it can be very symbolic—there are really as many different forms of schizophrenia as there are sufferers.”

  “And what would you call what happened to Paweł? I don’t mean the medical term. How would you describe it in your own words?”

  She thought for a while. She’d thought about it so often, lived through it over and over, analyzing it from new angles, and adding perspectives every time. But the prosecutor’s question threw her off-balance. Could she simply put a name to it? Was it Camus who said the toughest challenge in life is to call things by their proper name?

  “He switched off,” she said at last.

  “In what sense? Did he commit suicide?”

  “No, he just stopped living.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The human being is a complicated piece of machinery. More like a factory working on three shifts, without a moment’s respite. There are chemical, physical, and electrical processes going on in it. At the level of systems, organs, and individual cells there’s something happening the whole time. That’s why we wear out so quickly. Even so, it’s a miracle that we’re capable of getting to eighty. Can you imagine any kind of machine that functions for several decades without a single break? We understand the workings of the individual subassemblies quite well by now, but the unit in charge”—she tapped her head—“is still a mystery. And don’t you believe the charlatans who tell you otherwise. All we know is that it’s in charge, and where the physiology of the rest of the body is concerned, it has unlimited power. Paweł Najman pressed the right buttons on his control panel, made use of that unlimited power, and switched off his body. He just stopped living.”

  “You mean he starved himself?”

  “You’re not listening. He did nothing that fits the definition of suicide. He simply stopped living. He switched off each subassembly in turn. We were helpless. Of course we gave him psychotropic drugs, intravenous substances to assist his failing organism, and finally we revived him. But all for naught—none of our knowledge was a match for his determined five-year-old brain. We felt ashamed of what we were doing. I could see in his eyes that we were causing him distress. He wasn’t angry, but it distressed him.”

  The Xanax was good, but not that good. Her hands were moist, her throat was dry, and she had to use the restroom. She could tell she was starting to fall apart. A few seconds more and she’d start to tremble—she knew the stages of her own neurosis all too well. She wanted to end this and go home.

  “Did you get through to him at all?”

  “Verbally? No. Right at the end I was coming apart. We were alone, I began to weep in front of him. Very unprofessionally I begged him not to do it, but to wait a little longer. I told him he could still have a wonderful life, his father would recover, and why miss out on the world? And then he said one sentence. I thought at the time, and I still think he did it for me—he felt sorry for me being in such a state, and he wanted to help me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, and I quote: ‘I know, but I don’t want to live without Monna.’ A five-year-old’s a bit like a foreigner learning the language, don’t you think? At least once every day I can hear him making that funny mistake, ‘Monna’ instead of ‘Momma.’”

  Her body couldn’t cope with the emotional overload. She badly needed to go.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to go to the restroom. Will you wait?”

  He shook his head.

  “I have an appointment just across the park. I must run. Thank you for telling me about it. I must admit I understand your pain, but . . .” He paused. It worried her that the look on his face suggested he was wondering whether to spare her grief or not.

  “But?” she asked, in spite of herself.

  “But for all my sympathy for you, you’ve managed to prove to me yet again that psychology and psychiatry are nothing but pseudosciences divorced from reality. You think you’ve got all the solutions here, in these sterile spaces, between the couch and the medicine cabinet. But actually the answers as well as the solutions are right there outside, in the real world.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Paweł wasn’t talking about his momma. When he said he couldn’t live without ‘Monna’ he wasn’t garbling the word—what he said was Monia, short for Monika, his older sister.”

  She had just been talking about the brain as the omnipotent unit in charge. Her own brain was evidently the exception to the rule because it took a long time to process the information the prosecutor had provided. As soon as Dr. Zemsta had absorbed its meaning, black and white spots began to dance before her eyes. Alarm bells began to ring, and a voice was calling through a loudspeaker: Faint, faint, lose consciousness, don’t try to think about it!

  “You don’t mean to say . . .”

  “That’s just what I mean to say. That if you’d gone into the real world and found his sister, you’d have saved not just that beautiful boy, but lots of other creatures, too, including my daughter.”

  He stood up, put on his black overcoat, and buttoned it neatly.

  “I hope you’ll think about it every day for the rest of your life,” he said in a weary tone, and was gone.

  18

  At moments like this, eminent Olsztyn neurosurgeon Agnieszka Sendrowska was grateful to her late mother for endlessly repeating that every decent home should be ready to receive an unexpected guest.

  So here she was, putting the coffee cups
on a tray, the sliced sponge cake, some squares of Wedel’s new nut-flavored chocolate, and some of their plain variety, too. She glanced at herself in the kitchen window to make sure she looked all right for the unexpected visit. Not bad. Once again, her middle-class upbringing helped by never allowing her to parade around in pajamas in the middle of the day, messy, and without makeup. Even when she didn’t have to go to work and had nothing to do.

  She smoothed her long black hair, pulled down her simple navy-blue dress so it didn’t pucker between her bust and thin waist, and went into the living room.

  After their encounter at the hospital, when she had bumped into Prosecutor Teodor Szacki by accident, she hadn’t been able to forgive herself for not inviting him over for tea, and for not even introducing herself. She’d been worried he’d take her for some wacko who accosts strangers. But it was just that she’d heard and read so much about him that she felt as if she already knew him. She’d even seen videos of him on YouTube, speaking at various press conferences.

  And all because her child had a thing about law and justice.

  She put the tray on a low table next to the corner couch, where the teapot and coffeepot were already standing.

  She smiled at the prosecutor, thinking he didn’t look too well. If that was the price of fighting crime and misdemeanors, she’d rather Wiktoria didn’t opt for that sort of career.

  “Thank you very much for calling, and for accepting my invitation to tea,” she said. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but it meant a great deal to Wiktoria to receive her diploma from you, of all people.”

  “Really?” Szacki politely expressed surprise as he put a square of bitter chocolate into his mouth.

  “Oh God, I hope I don’t come across as a psychofan,” said Wiktoria, blushing and laughing nervously. Her mother felt parental pride. What girlish charm she had! Such charisma! “It’s just that I’m really interested in law—I’d like to study it, so I check out various things. Oh dear, I’m getting all mixed up. In a way I knew you long before you started to work here. I read about the National School of Judiciary and Public Prosecution, and about the prosecutor’s training program, then out of sheer naïveté I entered the term ‘prosecutor’ on YouTube, and you popped up.”