A Grain of Truth

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  “In a way, that is a symbol of this dump,” said Wilczur. “First the Reds and the Blacks each had something to prove by turns, and finally they realized they could see eye to eye for the good of business. Not for nothing is the city council in an old Dominican monastery with a view of the synagogue and the Jewish district. So they’d never forget what’s good for gesheft,” he said, dropping in a Yiddish word. “I’m not going to give you a history lecture, but to put it briefly, under the Reds the town was yuk. Tarnobrzeg was fine and dandy with its sulphur deposits, and eventually there was the glassworks across the river, but here it was educated types up to their tricks, dubious intellectuals, and priests, to make matters worse. In Warsaw, Sandomierz wasn’t even mentioned on the road signs, only Tarnobrzeg. This place was nothing but misery, indigence and a bloody open-air museum. The new era came along, people rejoiced, but not for long, because suddenly it turned out this wasn’t a town, just a secular growth on the healthy tissue of the Church. They changed the cinema into a Catholic Centre. They started holding masses in the market square. They set up a statue of John Paul the size of a lighthouse on the common to have an excuse from then on why no event should ever be held there, and now it’s just a place where the dogs shit. And so it became a bloody open-air museum again, more churches than pubs. And then the Reds came back to power, and after a moment’s consternation it turned out that if there’s good gesheft, then oy vey, oy vey, everyone can benefit. If a shop or a petrol station can be put up on recovered church land, everyone gets a cut, everyone will be happy.”

  “Did Budnik take part in that?”

  Wilczur hesitated, and ordered another bottle of mineral water with a gesture worthy of single-malt whisky.

  “In those days I was working in Tarnobrzeg, but people used to talk.”

  “This is Poland, they always talk. I have heard that he was never mixed up in anything.”

  “Not officially. But the Church doesn’t have to be public about these things – it can sell whatever it wants for as much as it wants and to whomever it wants. It was quite strange that first of all the town was happy to hand over plots of land to the Church, as part of the recompense for Communist injustices, and then the Church immediately sold them as sites for a petrol station or a supermarket. No one knows who bought them or for what price. And Budnik was a great advocate of the idea of rendering unto God the things that are God’s, and rendering unto the Jew the things that are the Jew’s.”

  Szacki shrugged. He was bored, he was tired of the fact that all Wilczur’s statements had a negative tone, permeated with Polish poison, as sticky as the tables at the Modena.

  “There are deals like that the length and breadth of the country – what’s the significance of that? Did it earn Budnik enemies? Was there someone he didn’t take care of? Or didn’t take care of the right way? Did he do deals with the Mafia? So far it sounds to me like village scams, a scoop for the local school magazine. But nothing you slash someone’s wife’s throat for.”

  Wilczur raised a skinny, wrinkled finger.

  “Maybe land isn’t worth as much here as in central Warsaw, but no one gives it away for nothing.”

  He stopped talking and became pensive. Szacki waited, watching the policeman. He was trying to think of him as an experienced local cop, but there was something about the inspector that he found repulsive. He looked like a tramp, and this quality was so integral to him that however he dressed and whatever he drank he’d always resemble a vodka-soaked tramp. There were no rational reasons for it, but Szacki’s trust was melting away by the minute. He missed Kuzniecow. He missed him very much.

  “You can see what this town is like,” Wilczur continued. “It may still be sleepy, but it’s a gem of a kind that’s very rare in Poland, with the makings of a new Kazimierz Dolny or even better. They’ll build a marina, set up a couple of spas, the motorway will run past from Warsaw to Rzeszów and on to Ukraine. A stretch of motorway from Warsaw to Krakow in the other direction, and in five years there’ll be a queue of BMWs here every Friday from both directions. What’ll the profit on a plot of land be like then? Tenfold? Twentyfold? A hundredfold? It doesn’t take a genius to see it coming. And now please think. You know Sandomierz, it has lots of money and big plans. Hotels, restaurants, residential areas, tourist attractions. There are absolutely billions in this land. And you know that, but at most you can put up a dog kennel in the garden of your villa, because all the city’s land for investment goes back to the Church in a hail of glory, after which it quietly ends up in the hands of the most trusted types who know the right people. Where do you live?”

  “I’m renting a place on Długosz Street.”

  “And have you checked how much a flat costs here? Or a house? Or a plot of land?”

  “Sure. A sixty-square-metre flat costs about two hundred thousand, and a house is three times as much.”

  “In Kazimierz Dolny a flat that size costs from half a million to a million, and for a house there’s actually no upper limit, but the conversation starts at a million in the case of a hovel on the edge of town.”

  Szacki imagined taking out the biggest possible loan and buying three flats here in order to become a happy rentier in a few years’ time. Nice, very nice.

  “OK,” he said slowly. “Next question: who’s the most pissed-off builder of a dog kennel in the garden of his villa?”

  In response Wilczur tore the filter off a cigarette and lit it.

  “You have to understand one thing,” he said. “No one here likes Budnik.”

  Szacki started to fidget; he had been expecting the shrewd local policeman, but he was dealing with a paranoiac.

  “I’ve only just been painted a picture of Mr and Mrs Budnik in nothing but pastel tones, beloved by all, secular saints. Is it true he brought the Father Mateusz TV series here?”

  “It’s true. They were going to film it in Nidzica, but Budnik knew someone at the TVP channel and persuaded them to choose Sandomierz.”

  “Is it true that thanks to him the scrubland on Piłsudski Boulevard is becoming a park and a marina?”

  “True as true can be.”

  “Is it true he had Piszczele Street refurbished?”

  “Absolutely true. That even impressed me – I was sure there was no hope for that murderer’s and rapist’s alley.”

  It occurred to Szacki that he had never heard of any rapes or murders occurring in Sandomierz, not counting in the local eateries, where flavours were murdered and palates were brutally assaulted. He kept that comment to himself.

  “So what’s it about?” he asked.

  Inspector Wilczur made a vague gesture, designed to imply that he was trying to convey something that couldn’t be conveyed in words.

  “Are you familiar with the noisy social campaigner type of person who can’t bear opposition because he’s always in the middle of some crusade?”

  Szacki said he was.

  “He was that type. Never mind if he was right or not, he was always bloody infuriating. I know people who voted for his ideas just so he’d shut up. So he wouldn’t keep hanging around, pestering them on the phone at night and rushing off to the newspapers.”

  “Small beer,” remarked Szacki. “It’s all small beer. An irritating social campaigner, doing his small-time provincial deals; it’s all small beer. They didn’t slash his tyres, or smash his windows, or kill his dog. They cruelly and deliberately butchered his wife.”

  Sobieraj’s judgment of the victim had been unambiguous. She was wonderful, good, with no faults at all, open-hearted, even if her husband was sometimes over-aggressive in his crusades and annoyed people, in her presence everybody melted. She helped, she advised, she took care of things. She was goodness incarnate, full of all that was best from head to toe. Prosecutor Sobieraj had delivered a totally non-objective paean in her honour, and then burst into tears. It was embarrassing. But nevertheless credible. Meanwhile, Szacki had a problem with Wilczur’s account. Something didn’t match up. He didn’t y
et know what, but something wasn’t right.

  “Mother Elżbieta of the Angels, that’s what they called her,” said Wilczur.

  “After the character in Iwaszkiewicz’s story, ‘Mother Joanna of the Angels’? She was a madwoman.”

  “Mrs Budnik wasn’t,” said Wilczur, shaking his head. “Not in the least. Goodness personified.”

  “The woman in the story was insane.”

  “You know that, and so do I, and she knew it too, and she hated that nickname. But that’s what they called her – they thought it was a compliment. And I’ll be frank with you – she wasn’t my cup of tea, but she deserved every compliment. She really was a good person. I won’t keep repeating myself, but I’m sure everything you’ve heard about her and have yet to hear about her is true.”

  “Perhaps she was irritating too? Too much social conscience? Too Catholic? I don’t know, maybe she bought too little at the local bazaar? This is Poland – they must have hated her for something, bad-mouthed her behind her back, envied her something.”

  Wilczur shrugged.

  “No.”

  “No, and that’s all? End of brilliant analysis?”

  The policeman nodded and tore the filter off a cigarette; Szacki felt an overwhelming sense of resignation. He wanted to leave for Warsaw. Now. This minute. At once.

  “What about the relationship between them?”

  “People usually pair up with partners in the same league, I’m sure you’re aware of that principle. The beautiful with the beautiful, the stupid with the stupid, the prodigal with the prodigal. Whereas Mrs Budnik was from two or three rungs higher than her husband. How should I explain it to you?…” Wilczur fell into thought, which made his face take on a ghostly, corpse-like expression. In the dim light of the pizzeria, behind a veil of cigarette smoke, he looked like an incompetently animated mummy. “People only put up with him because she chose him. They think, too bad, he may have a screw loose but essentially he’s right, and if there’s a woman like that at his side, he can’t possibly be bad. And he knows that. He knows it’s contrary to nature.”

  Sobieraj had said: “I’d like a man to be that much in love with me for all those years. I’d like to see that sort of adoration in someone’s eyes every day of the week. From the outside they may have looked ill-matched, but they were a wonderful couple. I would wish anyone that sort of love, that sort of adoration.”

  “He adored her, but there was something sordid about that adoration,” said Wilczur, exuding his poison, “something possessive, clinging, I’d say. My ex was working at the hospital over ten years ago, when it became clear that Mrs Budnik wouldn’t ever have children. She was in despair, he wasn’t at all. He said at least he wouldn’t have to share her. It was a passion, for sure. But you know what people with passions are like.”

  Szacki did know, but he didn’t want to agree with Wilczur, because he was finding him less and less likeable, and any fraternizing with this individual seemed abhorrent. Nor did he wish to prolong the discussion. Two people had told him about the Budniks today, but he felt as if he still knew bugger all – this emotionally stamped quasi-knowledge was of no use to him at all.

  “Have you questioned Budnik?” he asked at the end.

  “He’s in a terrible state. I asked him a few technical questions, I’m leaving the rest to you. He’s under discreet surveillance.”

  “Where was he yesterday?”

  “At home.”

  “And where was she?”

  “At home too.”

  “Sorry?”

  “So he claims. They watched television, snuggled up and went to sleep. He got up at dawn for a glass of water, and she wasn’t there. Before he’d had time to get really worried, he got the call from Basia Sobieraj.”

  Szacki couldn’t believe his own ears.

  “That’s a load of crap. The silliest bunch of lies I’ve ever heard in my entire career.”

  Wilczur nodded in agreement.

  XI

  Prosecutor Teodor Szacki tossed into the bin the leftover cold meat and cheese that was festering in the fridge, a half-eaten tin of pâté and a piece of tomato; for a moment he hesitated over the contents of the frying pan, but finally the day-before-yesterday’s bolognese sauce ended up in the rubbish too. The greater part of the food he had cooked. He had made far too much, enough for a three-person family and some chance guests. In Sandomierz he had no family, no friends or acquaintances and guests; as it was, he had to force himself to cook at all, because the ritual of standing on his own at the cooker and eating alone was dreadful. He tried to eat with the radio or the television on, but this fake version of someone else’s presence just made matters worse. He couldn’t swallow a bite, the food stuck in his throat, and he was starting to think of eating as such a tough, depressing activity that after every meal it took him a long time to recover. And he was finding it more and more arduous.

  He went shopping as if it were a punishment. He was learning to buy less and less. At first, as with the cooking, he automatically got as much food as ever, accustomed to the fact that however much he bought, it would all disappear from the fridge. Someone would make themselves a sandwich, someone would come home hungry, or have a snack in front of the evening telly. Here there was just him. First he gave up buying anything that was in a packet. The packs of cold meat and cheese were too big for one person, and he was throwing things away on a daily basis. He started buying by the weight, but still bought too much. Two hundred grams of smoked sausage, a hundred and fifty, a hundred. One day he was standing by the till in a shabby co-op on the market square. One bread roll, a pot of cottage cheese, a small carton of orange juice, fifty grams of ham and a tomato. The checkout girl joked that he didn’t have much of an appetite. He left without a word, somehow kept a grip on himself on the way home, but once he got there he cried as he made himself breakfast, and when he sat down at his plate with two sandwiches on it, he sobbed hysterically, and couldn’t stop; there were tears and snot smeared across his face. And he went on howling, rocking backwards and forwards, unable to tear his misted gaze from the ham sandwiches. Because he realized he had lost everything he loved, and would never get it back again.

  Since moving from Warsaw he had lost fifteen kilos. People didn’t know him here – they thought he’d always been a skinny guy. But his suits were hanging off him, his collars had become too loose, and he had had to burn extra holes in his belts with a nail heated on the gas.

  He thought of throwing himself into a whirl of work, but there wasn’t that much work to do here. He thought of going back to Warsaw, but he had nothing to go back to. He thought of finding someone for company who wouldn’t just be there to share the bed, but he hadn’t the strength. He did a lot of lying down, and a lot of brooding. Sometimes he felt that things were better now, that now he was standing on solid ground, but then the ground would give way and he’d have to take a step back again. He couldn’t see what was there behind him, but he took that step. On the other side of the crevasse was his old life, there was Weronika bustling about, Helka, Kuzniecow and his friends. Light, noise, laughter. Where he was, on one side there was darkness, and on the other the crevasse. Another day, another landslip, another step backwards. Finally he was surrounded by darkness on all sides, but even so, each day he took another step backwards. He had come to terms with the idea that that’s how things were going to be from now on.

  He poured a little water into the dirty frying pan and put it down on the cooker. He’d clean it up eventually.

  It can’t be like this, it occurred to him, as he pushed away the conscious thought that this conviction had come to haunt him every day. It can’t be like this. People go on living in harmony after a divorce, they sometimes make friends and bring up children jointly, Demi Moore was at Bruce Willis’s wedding and vice versa, you don’t have to sleep in the same bed or live in the same flat to be a family. After all, he, Weronika and Helka would always be a family, regardless of what had happened and what woul
d happen.

  He reached for the phone – he still had Weronika on speed-dial. Except that now it said “Weronika”, not as it once had, “Kitten”.

  “Yes?”

  “Hello, it’s me.”

  “Hello, I can see that. What do you want?”

  She didn’t have to be friendly. He realized that.

  “I’m just calling to see if everything’s OK. How you are, how’s Helka?”

  There was a short silence.

  “Again?”

  “What do you mean, again? I’m sorry, but is there a time when I can call and find out how my daughter is?”

  He heard a sigh.

  “Your daughter’s fine, I’ve been nagging her to do her homework, she’s got a test tomorrow.” She sounded tired and unenthusiastic, as if she were completing an unpleasant task, and Szacki could feel a lump of aggression rising in his throat.

  “What’s the test on?”

  “Nature. Teo, is there something in particular? Sorry, but I’m quite busy.”

  “In particular I wanted to find out when my daughter is coming here. I get the impression you’re obstructing her contact with me.”

  “Don’t be paranoid. You know she doesn’t like going there.”

  “Why so? Because as soon as she starts to visit me, then her step-father will have competition and your wonderful new relationship won’t be quite so wonderful?”

  “Teo…”

  “Well all right, but she has to understand that I live here now.”

  He hated himself for letting a plaintive tone creep into his voice.

  “Explain it to her yourself.”

  He didn’t know how to answer that. Helka was reluctant to talk to him and reluctant to listen. She liked her new home, and not her father’s bachelor den, which was two hundred kilometres away. At one time she had tried to hide her disgust, but lately she had stopped bothering.