A Grain of Truth

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  “I’ll leave you with the problem of whether this might be a smokescreen or not, and I am indeed off to bed now. I’ll let you know when I’ve changed into something sexier. Kiss kiss.”

  She kissed him on the cheek in a friendly way and left. He waved to her, without tearing his eyes from the computer.

  A few hours later, when he lit his first cigarette of the day at the open kitchen window, and the smoke mixed painfully with the sleep in his eyes, he already knew far more about the KWP. Enough to stick one more theory in the file, an ominous one, which assumed more than any other that the whole case involved bloodthirsty Jewish revenge. And which unfortunately provided for the possibility that it didn’t have to stop at two corpses – quite the opposite.

  Dawn announced its arrival as the first vague shapes appeared in the pitch-black courtyard, dark patches against very dark patches. Szacki was reminded of a few nights ago, when he’d been smoking in this very same spot, and to his vexation Klara’s red fingernails had appeared on his fleece. He thought about that night, he thought about her, and how she had told him to turn around that morning as she clothed her statuesque body. The moisture forced from his eyes by tiredness and smoke was joined by a few tears of sorrow. Once again Prosecutor Teodor Szacki had fucked something up; once again he was all alone, with no one and nothing.

  But maybe that was for the best.

  6

  Monday, 20th April 2009

  Orthodox Christians are celebrating Easter Monday, and Catholics finally have a day off, not counting those of extreme right-wing views who are celebrating Adolf Hitler’s 120th birthday. The remaining People of the Book are not being idle either: the Muslims are celebrating Mohammed’s 1,442nd birthday and the Jews are listening as the President of Iran delivers an anti-Semitic speech at a UN conference on the fight against racism. In Poland forty-eight per cent of Poles claim there is no party in the Sejm – the Polish parliament – that represents their interests, and thirty-one per cent claim that none of the parties expresses their political views. India launches an Israeli-made spy satellite into orbit, Russia warns NATO that military manoeuvres in Georgia are unnecessary provocation, and in Italy Juventus are penalized for the racist chants of their fans, and their next match will be played behind closed doors. In Sandomierz a thirty-seven-year-old man parks his Fiesta in a plumbing supplies shop on Mickiewicz Street, and nearby the diocesan stage of the XIII Bible Knowledge Contest begins. All forty-four finalists have already won a one-day formative holiday stay at a hermitage in Rytwiany. It is a little warmer, but nothing to get excited about – during the day the temperature is only about thirteen degrees, and to add insult to injury it’s fine and sunny.

  I

  Szacki was having some idiotic dreams. Idiotic nightmares. He was back at the Lapidarium club again, but instead of rock music there was a non-stop stream of hits from the 1980s. Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go was still ringing in his ears as he reached for the bottle of water that always stood by his bed. As he gradually gained consciousness, the memory of the dream rapidly faded, but not rapidly enough to wipe the surprise from his sleepy face. Wham! had been playing, and he had been dancing with various women – Judge Tatarska, Klara, Weronika and Basia Sobieraj were definitely all there. Basia was wearing nothing but lacy red underwear, and it would all have been very sexy, if Adolf Hitler hadn’t appeared – right on the words “you put the boom boom into my heart” – the real life Adolf Hitler, with a toothbrush moustache, in a Nazi uniform, a small, funny little man. He may have been small and funny, but he was a shit-hot dancer, copying George Michael’s moves like the god of disco-dancing; the girls made room for him on the dance floor, everyone was clapping in a circle and Hitler was dancing in the middle. Suddenly he grabbed Szacki by the arm and they started dancing together – he could remember how the feeling of the inappropriateness of dancing with Hitler fought with the feeling of pleasure in his dream – Hitler danced superbly, sensually, letting himself be led a bit, and inventively reacting to every move. The final fading image was of a laughing Hitler throwing his arms in turns above his head, giving Szacki a flirtatious look and squealing “come on baby, let’s not fight, we’ll go dancing and everything will be all right”. Or something to that effect. What nonsense – Szacki shook his head in disbelief as he dragged his rumpled, forty-year-old body to the bathroom. As he peed, he finally gave in to the demand rising in his throat and wheezed the words of the chorus into the mirror.

  * * *

  He resolved the eternal dilemma of whether to take a shower or eat breakfast first in a manner worthy of Solomon, by throwing on some clothes and going out shopping, to get a bit of fresh air and gather his thoughts before the meeting with the profiler. Basia had worked with him once before, but Szacki only knew him by repute; the guy came from Krakow, and in southern Poland he was legendary, renowned as much for being a genius as an eccentric. Szacki didn’t like that, he didn’t like stars; he always preferred people who weren’t conspicuous but did their job carefully. A good investigator had to be like a consistent goalkeeper, who might not save a shot that was impossible to save, but didn’t let the rubbish through either. There was no room in the justice system for a Barthez or a Boruc.

  As he stood in the checkout queue at the co-op, his hand kept instinctively tapping out against his thigh the start of the Wham! hit – pa, pa, pa, pam pam – and his eyes went wandering over the charcuterie displayed at the cold counter. How sad it looked. He really had never seen such miserable sausages as in this shop. Most of them didn’t look real – more like plastic imitations made on a broken injection press. And the ones that did look real were by contrast too real, changing colour, dried out or gone moist. On top of that, they had strangely low prices. So although he felt the urge for a bit of pepperoni to have with his breakfast, he went on standing in the queue, clutching a tub of cottage cheese, some pre-packed Jarlsberg, some tomato juice and two rolls, and listening to the conversation two women were having behind him.

  “He’s a good kid, but his favourite reading matter is the Gospel of St John, all those last judgements and horrors – for him it’s as good as fantasy fiction. But the contest doesn’t include John.”

  “Is the contest today?”

  “Yes, at the institute. It’s just starting – I even feel a bit nervous myself. We revised it all again yesterday, and he asked if Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s wife. Where do they get it from?”

  “From Dan Brown. Mary Magdalene’s supposed to have manifested herself in Biłgoraj, isn’t she?”

  “What, at Palikot’s place?”

  The women giggled at the idea of Mary Magdalene appearing before the colourful MP who was from Biłgoraj, and Szacki smiled too. At the same time this conversation set something going in him, and he felt the familiar itch in his head. Dan Brown, yesterday’s riddles, the magic stone, the Kabbalah. Once again something was eluding him; he should either sleep more, or swallow some magnesium.

  “Would you like to try some cold meats?” said the checkout lady, smiling as radiantly as if she’d found her long-lost son. “We’ve got some delicious Żywiecka sausage, but rather than me going on, why don’t you try a bit?” She stood up from her till and cut a hefty slice. “A bloke’s got to have strength, not just eat that light stuff, like a model.”

  Szacki thanked her politely and chewed the sausage, though he hated eating anything before his first sip of coffee. The sausage was vile and unpalatable, despite which he smiled sweetly and took a hundred grams. He looked around discreetly in case there was a television in here by any chance; in forty years no one had ever been so exceedingly polite to him in any shop before. But no, there weren’t any cameras, just him, the beaming checkout lady and the two high-school mums. One of them smiled at him, and the other blinked and nodded approvingly. Totally surreal. When he was dancing with Hitler, at least he’d been sure it was a dream, but now he was afraid he was going barmy. He paid up as fast as he could.

  It was freezing cold again. L
ured by the sun, Szacki had only put on a light top, and now he was shivering, despite which he dropped in at the little bakery too. He had to have a doughnut, though he knew it wouldn’t taste good.

  “Good day,” said an old man as he passed him, tipping his hat courteously and bowing to Szacki.

  Szacki returned the bow automatically, thinking things really were strange, and went into the bakery. At the till stood an old lady, entirely dressed in funereal black, and on seeing Szacki she moved away from the counter.

  “Please, go ahead, I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  He didn’t say anything, chose a large, oddly bloated doughnut and took a handful of change from his pocket.

  “No need,” said the shop girl, smiling. “Special offer today.”

  “What special offer?” he asked, unable to restrain himself. “Buy one, get it free?”

  “A special offer for our prosecutor,” added the old lady from behind him. “And for me, Natasza, that sausage roll, the well cooked one.”

  Szacki left without saying anything; he could feel his throat tightening and the muscles on the back of his neck tensing. He was having a dream about The Truman Show, but he couldn’t tell the difference between dreams and reality, he couldn’t wake up. He was going mad.

  He marched rapidly back to the flat on Długosz Street, passing the shop where he had bought the food earlier, and bumped into a man emerging from it, who looked like a car mechanic in a suit. The man was clearly lost in his own thoughts, but when he saw Szacki, to the prosecutor’s despair, he beamed all over.

  “Congratulations,” he whispered conspiratorially. “In our times it takes courage to say these things straight out. Don’t forget we’re all with you.”

  “We? What we, for God’s sake?”

  “We ordinary, real Poles. Good luck!” The man squeezed his arm in a familiar way and walked off towards the town hall; only now did the right cells start working in Szacki’s brain. Please, he thought, don’t let it be true. He dashed into the shop, pushed past a boy who was saying to his friend: “Hey, get this, they haven’t got any fucking ice tea – what sort of a dump is this?”, and got to the newspaper stand. The mystery was explained in an instant – he wasn’t dreaming, he wasn’t going mad, nor was he the hero of The Truman Show.

  On the cover of a tawdry tabloid called Fakt he saw himself in his favourite graphite-grey suit, standing on the steps of the Sandomierz prosecutor’s office. He had both hands raised in a gesture that yesterday had meant “no more questions”, but in the picture it looked as if he was putting up a wall against some invisible threat, with a resolute non possumus drawn on his gaunt – now he could see that clearly – face. The headline Mystery Jewish Murder? and a short text left no doubt what the prosecutor was putting a stop to.

  Prosecutor Teodor Szacki (40) categorically announced yesterday that he will track down the degenerate who has already murdered two people in Sandomierz. Residents can sleep in peace – in the absence of Father Mateusz he will solve the mystery of the possibly Jewish murder. The sheriff-in-a-suit yesterday gave his personal guarantee to Fakt’s reporter that he will catch the villain, regardless whether it is a Jew or an Arab, even if he has to ‘drag him by the side-locks from the lousiest hole on earth’. Bravo, Mr Prosecutor! On pages 4–5 we present the details of both horrific murders, statements by witnesses and a graphic reconstruction of events.

  Prosecutor Teodor Szacki closed his eyes. The knowledge that he had just become the hero of small-town Poland was horrifying.

  II

  Actually, he wasn’t bothered about the lack of ice tea at the shop – he didn’t really want any, or anything else for that matter – he just wanted to give vent to his disappointment and use the word “fucking”. Right from the start, this excursion hadn’t gone according to plan. At dawn he had found out his mother had put his favourite Abercrombie shirt in the wash yesterday, the one Uncle Wojtek had brought him from Milan, so he’d have to go in the extremely uncool sweatshirt he only wore for skiing, and even then he did his jacket up all the way. Unfortunately, when he got to school it turned out it didn’t matter much anyway, because Ola was off sick and wasn’t coming on the trip. He called her, she cried, so he had to comfort her, and meanwhile everyone had got on the coach, so instead of sitting at the back and drinking the vodka Walter had mixed with Cola, he had ended up in the third row next to Maciek, who had borrowed his PSP and played on it for so long he had to put it away in his pack before Kratos reached the next level. Then he felt ashamed, because what did he care? He could let Maciek have the Playstation for a while; it wouldn’t do him any harm. And when he thought things couldn’t be worse, Mrs Gołąbkowa had hovered over him, loudly praising the story he’d written about loneliness and drooling on about what a sensitive boy he was. Then she went off. Unfortunately, she didn’t take Marysia and Stefa with her, who were sitting behind him groaning, and who spent the rest of the journey giggling into the gap between seats that he was about as sensitive as a toilet seat. No but seriously, if girls really did mature faster than boys, these ones must have had something genetically wrong with them. He gave Maciek the PSP and pretended to be asleep for the rest of the journey.

  Sandomierz itself didn’t have much appeal for him – he’d already been there in the autumn, when it was still warm. His father had taken him – since splitting up with his mother, his paternal role had alternated between periods of absence and periods of over-the-top toadying. Marcin wished that just for once his old man would stop trying so hard, but he didn’t know how to tell him. He wanted to come over to his place and not find a slap-up meal waiting for him, not see a rented film and a new book in his room. He wanted to come over and see him in his underwear, with a five o’clock shadow, drinking a can of beer and saying, “sorry, mate, it’s been a crap day, go and order yourself a pizza, and watch TV or something.” At last it would have been a normal situation – he’d have found out he had a father, and not some plastic dummy following the instructions from a textbook on parenting after divorce. Of course he knew others had it worse, some people’s fathers dematerialized completely, or just sent a text message once a fortnight. But so what. Even so, the whole thing was bloody awful – not them breaking up, because that hadn’t surprised him, but the way they tried so hard now. His mother was just the same – he only had to frown and she’d be reaching for her purse to comfort her poor child from a broken home, even if she didn’t have the money to pay the bills. He was ashamed that they were so feeble, that it was so easy to manipulate them, so easy that it didn’t bring any satisfaction, like getting through a game that was too simple. It was lucky he had his violin – the violin was honest, it never cheated, it never made promises or greased up to him. It could reward him, but it could also be merciless, it was entirely up to him – yes, his relationship with the violin was the most honest deal in Marcin Ładoń’s fairly short life to date.

  Lost in cheerless thoughts and deprived of the ice tea he hadn’t really wanted, he stood aside from the group, waiting to go into the Sandomierz underground vaults. Mrs Gołąbkowa was looking at him with tears in her eyes; she must have thought he was alienating himself again, sinking into solitude, poor boy, too sensitive for the modern world. In fact he liked her, but sometimes she was such an unrealistic cretin she evoked pity. What happens to them all? They’re soft and indolent, they fall apart before your eyes like tissue paper in the rain, and then it’s a big surprise their children don’t respect them. Children – all right, he could count the virgins among his female schoolmates on a single hand. Including Ryśka, too stupid to spread her legs, and Faustyna from the Catholic family, sure to have been sewn shut with consecrated thread – that girl had definitely met with misfortune. And Ola too, but Ola was different, of course.

  “Want a drop, Marcin?” Walter’s eyes were already rather glazed, and Marcin reckoned there might still be a fuss about that. He drank a little “Cola”, strong and reeking of vodka, then quickly put a fresh piece of chewin
g gum in his mouth.

  “That’s the second bottle. We had the first one on the way to Radom.”

  “Fan-fucking-tastic,” he said, just to say anything.

  Walter slugged at the bottle like an out-and-out alcoholic, so obviously that only a blind man could have failed to notice what he was using to lubricate his fifteen-year-old body. Marcin found his showing off embarrassing, and felt ashamed of taking part in this shabby performance, so he quickly moved nearer the centre of the group, which was now going down into the Sandomierz cellars. Despite their best efforts, some of his schoolmates had failed to hide their excitement at the adventure. Only the girls were impervious to such attractions; Marysia was holding onto Stefa with one hand to avoid falling over, while writing something on her phone with the other. God knows who to – they were all here.

  “…in those days Sandomierz was a rich city, one of the richest in Poland, and the so-called staple right was in force, which meant that every travelling merchant had to display his goods for sale here, and as a result Sandomierz was a gigantic, permanently open shopping centre where you could buy anything.” At the sound of the words “shopping centre” Marysia tore her jaded gaze from her phone, but soon went back to it. “The burghers of Sandomierz grew wealthy, and out of concern for their possessions and merchandise, and also for the sake of security, over several centuries they dug cellars under the city, which as the years went by developed into an enormous labyrinth. The connected rooms reached eight storeys deep inside the loess rock, with corridors running under the Vistula all the way to the castle at Baranów, and to other neighbouring villages. To this day no one knows how many of them there actually are.”