Entanglement

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  “Ask your question,” he urged, turning to face Szacki.

  “Why did you stop it at that moment?”

  “First the foreplay, then the climax,” said the therapist, shaking his head.

  Szacki almost said automatically: “You talk just like my wife”, but he stopped himself at the last moment. He was at work.

  “First of all, I’d like to know if this therapy was conducted according to the rules of the art.”

  Wróbel leaned back in his chair and locked his fingers behind his head.

  “You see, the ars therapeutica is a bit like the ars amandi. There’s no single perfect way to bring any woman to orgasm in three minutes, nor is there any one position that would suit everyone.”

  “Without wishing to adopt your poetic form of expression,” said Szacki, starting to feel annoyed, “nevertheless I will ask: was it sex or was it rape?”

  “Definitely not rape,” replied Wróbel. “Bold sex, but the kind without any leather costumes or police caps. You see, theoretically in Family Constellation Therapy there should be more people taking part. I can lend you a DVD with a recording of constellations conducted by Hellinger himself. There’s a full room, a large audience as well as the patients. There’s never a shortage of people to arrange as some distant relative or wife’s lover. But what Mr Rudzki did - substituting chairs for the patient’s parents at a moment when they no longer had a role to play - is acceptable. Sometimes you do in fact do that when there’s a lack of representatives.”

  “Here there were only four people from the start,” noted Szacki. “Isn’t that too few? Obviously everyone has parents, their own family, grandparents. Isn’t it hard to work in such a small group?”

  “It could be, but I can see where Rudzki’s coming from. I’m not keen on those orgies either - sometimes all that’s missing is animals. I like to have my fun in groups of ten best of all. Rudzki has gone even further. OK, you could even call it an interesting experiment. And from what I can see the field is working, and that’s not bad at all. You can’t deny it.”

  Szacki didn’t.

  “Apart from that you must realize that Dr Cezary Rudzki is no novice. He may not be as widely known as Eichelberger or He-Whose-Name-Is-No-Longer-To-Be-Uttered” - Szacki knew he must mean the therapist Andrzej Samson, exposed as a paedophile amid a great public scandal - “but in our field Rudzki’s a major figure. More than once he has experimented with therapies that seemed as stable as a sixteen-year-old’s sex drive, and often brought off amazing results.”

  “So in your view he didn’t make any mistakes?”

  Jeremiasz Wróbel smacked his lips, frowned and scratched behind his ear. Szacki thought that if he were to take his photo now and send it to the organizers of a cat show, he’d be sure to qualify.

  “In my view he made one important error,” he said at last. “That is, you see, I’d have done it differently. But it may be that friend Rudzki had some other plans. He knew he’d do it all at the end.”

  “More specifically?”

  “Yes, sorry. When the issue with the patient’s parents was explained, before bringing his current family into the constellation, in my view he should have introduced some resolving sentences. As that was left in a state of suspension, the continuation must have been incredibly hard for the patient. If order had been brought in the family of origin, if the patient had felt immediate relief thanks to reconciliation with his parents, if from then on he had ceased to feel guilty towards them, he’d have entered the next stage of the therapy feeling stronger. What’s more, I’m sure the rest of the participants would have felt better, and those terrible scenes would not have taken place.”

  Szacki suddenly felt a complete mental blank. He sat and stared at Wróbel, and could only think about one thing: there was nothing, once again nothing, no progress. It all works, it’s all in order, it all makes sense. Just the corpse with a skewer in his eye doesn’t quite fit in somehow.

  “Do the emotions go on working after the constellation is over?” he asked at last.

  “Meaning?” Wróbel didn’t understand the question.

  “If during the constellation Mrs X represents Mr Y’s passionate lover, and then runs into him after the session in the hotel lobby, does she go to bed with him?”

  The doctor thought for a long while.

  “Interesting question. I think that even if those weren’t her emotions, she would experience them as if they were. The memory of being fascinated, attracted to Mr Y. Yes, of course she wouldn’t start writhing at his feet moaning ‘fuck me’, but if they’d started flirting, it wouldn’t be so hard for them to decide on sex. That’s what I think.”

  Szacki told him about the voice of the “daughter” recorded on Telak’s Dictaphone.

  “And are you sure it was the woman representing his daughter?”

  “Ninety per cent. We’re doing sound tests to be sure.”

  “Interesting. Does Rudzki know about this?”

  “No, he doesn’t. And I wouldn’t like him to find out from you.”

  “Yes, of course. You see, it could be significant that the constellation was so brutally interrupted. We usually try to bring it to an end ourselves; interruptions are very rare, sometimes there are breaks lasting several days for the patient to be able to gather information about his family. But it always happens gently, whereas here, at the moment when the field was working strongest, the participants suddenly parted ways. Could it be that they went back to their rooms ‘possessed’ by the people they were representing? I don’t know. I’ve never come across such a case before, but, well…”

  “It sounds logical?” suggested Szacki.

  “Yes. I’d compare it with the situation of a patient under hypnosis. I can bring him out of it, but I can also leave him in it. Eventually the state of hypnosis passes into sleep, and after that the patient wakes up as if nothing has happened. Perhaps it was similar here. The constellation was brutally interrupted, and before they’d recovered, for some time yet, the patients were not just themselves, but also the people they represented. Perhaps.”

  Wróbel stared into space, exactly like Telak, frozen in the frame on the television screen.

  “Are you able to say how long someone could remain in such a state of ‘hypnosis’?” asked the prosecutor.

  “No, I have no idea. But I can sense where you’re heading, and I think it’s a blind alley. Like a transvestite’s sexual organs. On the surface the prospect might look promising, but take off a few layers and it’s disappointing.”

  “Why?”

  “Medical limitations, which are sure to be overcome sooner or later. It’s not easy to shape a vagina and implant it inside the body. That’s why transvestites limit themselves to clothing that…”

  Szacki wasn’t listening. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths in an effort to calm down.

  “Why is my reasoning a blind alley?”

  “Oh, sorry.” Wróbel didn’t look at all embarrassed. He moved his chair closer to the television. “Take a look at the way they’re standing,” he said, pointing at “the Telak family”. “Opposite each other. And that always means disorder. Conflict, longing, unsettled issues. The outcome of a constellation is always a semicircle: the people stand next to each other, they can observe each other, but they have a space in front of them, they don’t have to fight anyone for their place. Please note that here the patient’s children are standing next to each other, which means they are in harmony. So too are the patient’s parents, represented by the chairs. But apart from that they’re all scattered about, and chaos is the dominant feature of the constellation. If the session had lasted longer, we’d have seen on the recording how more people would have been reconciled, and then they’d have taken their places next to each other in a semicircle. This whole therapy works because each of them wants to feel better, not worse. And committing a crime overloads the system in a dreadful way - the most dreadful, the worst of all possible ways. And so I doubt if repre
senting a member of the patient’s family was the motive for the murder.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “We’re talking about the human psyche, Prosecutor. I’m not sure of anything.”

  “What about this story that Telak’s daughter committed suicide and his son fell ill in order to give him relief? To me that sounds improbable.”

  Wróbel stood up and started pacing the room. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his doctor’s coat. His movements were catlike too. He gave the impression of being about to do something completely unexpected - to start miaowing, for example - which made Szacki feel tense. He turned his head to relax the muscles in his neck. As usual it didn’t help at all - he should finally treat himself to a massage. It probably wasn’t all that expensive.

  “In constellations we set ourselves two basic questions. Firstly: who is missing, and who should join the constellation? It’s often like an inquiry, digging about in the dirty laundry of family history. Secondly: who should depart? Who should be allowed to do that? The mechanism is always the same. If we don’t allow someone to depart - in the sense of ‘die’ as well as ‘go away’ - instead of that person, the children leave. It’s usually the adults who are guilty, and the children want to help them, so they take the guilt on themselves, and leave instead of the person who ought to leave. That is the order of love. That’s why the therapist allies himself with the children rather than the adults.”

  “But suicide straight away?” Szacki was getting the same feeling he’d had during his conversation with Rudzki. He understood, but he didn’t want to believe it.

  “Often the cause of suicide is a wish to relieve the pain of a parent who has lost his former partner in tragic circumstances. I think Rudzki’s theory concerning the unexpiated guilt about leaving home that was felt by… What was his name?”

  “Telak.”

  “…felt by Telak holds water. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if his lover or former partner had been killed in a car crash, and he never came to terms with it, maybe in some way felt guilty. To such an extent that his daughter decided to atone for that guilt for him. You should know that if they’re allowed to depart, former partners are usually represented by the children.”

  Jeremiasz Wróbel stopped talking, and Szacki was unable to think of any reasonable question to ask. His mind was a blank. Every day he got new information about this case and every day he failed to move forwards. It made no sense.

  “And now perhaps you can tell me why you stopped the tape at that point?” he finally asked.

  “Absolutely,” replied the psychiatrist, smiling in a way that Szacki found quite obscene. “What do you think - why didn’t Telak look at his wife or children once during the constellation, although there was so much going on between them?”

  Szacki felt as if he’d been called up to the blackboard.

  “I don’t know, I hadn’t thought about it. Is he afraid to? Does he feel guilty towards them? Is he ashamed?”

  “None of those things,” said Wróbel, shaking his head. “He simply can’t take his eyes off the person who’s standing right opposite him and who is probably the most important of all in this constellation. I don’t know who it is, but that tie is terribly strong. Please note that he doesn’t even blink - he’s looking at that person the whole time.”

  “But there’s no one there!” Szacki suddenly felt furious. He’d frittered away so many hours with this lunatic. He got up. Wróbel rose to his feet too.

  “Of course there is,” he replied calmly, moving his nose in a feline way. “There stands the person who’s missing from the constellation. Do you want to make progress in your inquiry? Then go and find that missing person. Just find out who Telak is staring at with such panic and fear in his eyes.”

  Prosecutor Teodor Szacki nodded his head in silence, gazing at the fuzzy image of Telak’s pained face, quivering slightly on the television screen. That look had worried him earlier on, but he had ignored his instinct, knowing Telak was drained by the therapy. Now he understood that his face wasn’t pained. It had worried him, because he’d seen that look before, in the eyes of people he’d interrogated - a mixture of fear and hatred.

  He switched off the machine and removed the tape.

  “Wouldn’t you like to take part in a constellation?” the therapist asked Szacki as they walked towards the main exit together. “See what it’s like from the inside?”

  Szacki opened his mouth to answer that he’d be very willing, but in the short while it took for the air to get from his lungs to his vocal cords, the mental image arose of himself arranging his parents, Weronika and Helka, and the therapist asking how they were feeling.

  “No, thank you. That’s probably not necessary.”

  Wróbel smiled in a feline way, but didn’t pass comment. Only at the door, when he’d already said goodbye to Szacki, did he say:

  “If someone in the constellation seems to be good and someone else bad, it’s almost always the other way around. Please remember that.”

  II

  Not many bits of this metropolis look like a genuine city, rather than a large area cluttered with streets and buildings. However, even in this dump there are some beautiful bits, thought Szacki, as he drove down Belwederska Street towards the city centre. This section of the Royal Way, from Gagarin Street to Triple Cross Square was one of the few that bore witness to what this city had once been and what it could be. First the modern mass of the Hyatt hotel, then the Russian embassy, the Belweder Palace, Łazienki Park, the government buildings, then Ujazdowski Park and the embassies on Ujazdowskie Avenue (with the exception of the breeze block the Americans had built themselves), and finally the big-city Triple Cross Square. Szacki didn’t like Nowy Świat, and couldn’t understand all the fuss about that street where the buildings looked as if they’d been transferred from Kielce. Ugly, low little tenements, one not at all suited to another. Szacki couldn’t believe Nowy Świat and the squalid Chmielna Street fancied themselves as the prettiest part of town. Maybe only so visitors from the provinces could feel at home here.

  But now Nowy Świat made him think of the Cava café and Miss Grzelka - that is, Monika - and it was hard for him to foster any ill feeling for the place. He wished she was waiting there, and that instead of going to work on Krucza Street he could have a cup of coffee with her, sit and chat like friends. Or like potential lovers. Was that really his intention? An affair? How could he possibly do it? To have a lover, you had to have a bachelor flat or the money for a hotel, or at least work non-standard hours that could justify your absence from home. He, meanwhile, was a poor civil servant who came home from work every day at eight at the latest.

  What am I actually doing, he thought, as he went round the Prosecution Service building for the second time looking for a parking place - the only official one was taken. And what do I really imagine? Am I truly so starved of sex and love that it’s enough for me to meet with a woman a couple of times and no longer be capable of thinking about anything else?

  Finally he found a place on Żurawia Street, not far the Szpilka café. It was one o’clock. In five hours he’d be sitting there with Monika, having supper, stretching his budget. He wondered how she’d be dressed. He locked the car when finally it dawned on him.

  Monika, Szpilka, six p.m.

  Nawrocki, police headquarters, six p.m.

  Fuck.

  Pinned to the door of his room he found a message to come and see the boss IMMEDIATELY. Of course it was about Nidziecka. He ignored it, went inside and called Nawrocki, but the policeman had already summoned Boniczka’s father to police HQ, and it was impossible to cancel. Szacki thought he could persuade Nawrocki to apply a sort of harassment - summon him, keep him in the corridor, then let him go and invite him to come back the next day (the secret police had done it to his grandfather in the 1950s) - but he dropped the idea. He preferred to get it over and done with. He called Monika.

  “Hi, has something come up?” she asked before he’d had
time to speak.

  “I have to be at police HQ at six - I’ve no idea how long it’ll take. Sorry.”

  “So maybe call me if it doesn’t take long. And don’t say sorry for no reason. What’ll you say when you do something really naughty?”

  Szacki gulped. He was sure she heard him do it. Should he tell the truth, that after the interrogation he’d have to go home? And did he really have to? Was he the father of a family, or a little kid who has to ask his mummy’s permission to come home late from the playground? And in fact why couldn’t he say that? After all, if she wanted to flirt with a married man, she must know what she was choosing to do. But what if she was some sort of madwoman who’d start calling Weronika and screaming “He’s mine, all mine”? He panicked.

  “I don’t want to promise anything, because I really don’t think I’ll make it today,” he said, trying to buy time. Why the fuck hadn’t he made a plan before calling her?

  “Hmm, that’s a pity.”

  “Maybe tomorrow during the day - I’ll be hanging about in town, could we make a lunch?” he stammered ungrammatically, when he finally remembered that tomorrow he’d have to be at Telak’s funeral. He could always tell Weronika he had to drop in at work after the funeral. Should he take a change of clothes? Maybe he should - he couldn’t go to the pub in a suit that was good for family ceremonies like weddings and funerals. Bugger it.

  They agreed that he’d send a text once he knew at what time they could meet, and she’d just have a light breakfast (mango, coffee, maybe a small sandwich) and wait to hear from him. Instantly he imagined her lying in bed in the morning, with tousled hair, reading the paper and licking mango juice off her fingers. Would he ever see that for real?

  Oleg Kuzniecow was not happy about having to question the people from Telak’s circle again, this time about his lovers, former partners and girlfriends at school.