A Grain of Truth

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  “That’s what they say in the borderlands for, well, you know what for. But that’s not all. ‘Write, I’ll be sure to write back, and maybe I’ll even send a text, lags welcome’. Of course, you know what lags are?”

  “I’m a prosecutor.”

  “Well, quite. Then for two days solid, every fifteen minutes I get a message that’s a vulgar summary of a porn flick, and what’s more it’s all so boring – I can’t think why every other con has to write about sticking it through the bars. Have they got some sort of standard version? Is that the fashion? And don’t tell me to change the number – I’ve spent a fortune doing that, and not a week goes by before the same thing happens again. But I’m in trade, I can’t do without a phone, I’ve got customers, wholesalers. As it is, it’s getting worse and worse, people keep complaining that they can’t get in touch, but how can they if I’ve got a new number every week? I thought it would pass, but it hasn’t. So I’d like officially to report a crime, I mean a suspected crime, and I hope that slag who goes with other people’s husbands ends up serving time.”

  Prosecutor Teodor Szacki had a soft spot for ladies of the Communist-era queen-of-the-bazaar type who spoke too fast and were too expressive, maybe because they reminded him of his mother, and he knew that behind all those words, curls, rings and fluffy suits – always adorned with an amber brooch – there usually lay a heart of gold and an innate inability to do anyone harm. He felt all the more sorry that he had no good news for Mrs Zgorzelska, sitting on the other side of his desk.

  “Firstly, you have to take this matter to the police – it comes under the Code of Misdemeanours, and even if I take down your report the police will deal with it anyway, so there’s no point increasing the paperwork.”

  “Misdemeanour! That’s a good one. And what about the fact that my sons’ schoolmates always find out about it by some strange chance? And that my customers smile strangely, too? I’ve already reached the point where I’d rather they hit me, attacked me or something, and it was off my plate. But it’s impossible to live like this. What’s the maximum she could get for it?”

  “If it’s possible to prove she did it, one and a half.”

  “Years?”

  “Thousand zlotys fine.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. There’s been some talk about changing the rules to include stalking under the Penal Code and introduce a sensible deterrent, probably two or three years. But for now there’s just paragraph 107 of the Code of Misdemeanours, which mentions malicious harassment.”

  Mrs Zgorzelska was shattered.

  “But she’s loaded with money. One and a half thousand? She’ll pay up and send me a fax confirming the transfer. And what if it doesn’t stop? Another one and a half thousand?”

  Szacki gave a confirming nod. It wasn’t the first time, when talking to injured parties, that he’d had to feel ashamed of the Polish legal solutions. Out-of-date, convoluted regulations that couldn’t keep up with the times and were either curiously mild, de facto removing criminal liability from the culprit, or – the result of two decades of populist governments – absurdly punitive, causing the prisons in Poland to be full of people who shouldn’t be in there, after taking part in drunken brawls where nothing had happened to anyone, simply because a penknife with a beer-bottle opener qualified as a dangerous instrument.

  “But if she’s punished for the same thing a second time, the judge can slap a sentence on her. From five to thirty days. It doesn’t seem much, but I don’t think your…” – he bit his tongue, he’d very nearly said “competitor” – “persecutor would be quite so desperate. Besides, after the first sentence you can sue her for the losses, but that means going to a lawyer.”

  “Sue someone in Poland,” snorted Mrs Zgorzelska. “I’m almost fifty, I might not live to see the first hearing.”

  What could he say? That the most sensible thing to do was to hire someone to put the frighteners on the woman? He smiled apologetically and gave her a meaningful look. In actual fact this conversation shouldn’t have been happening at all. As chance would have it, when he got to the office before seven, hoping to be early enough to avoid the journalists and use the time to review the case documents again, Zofia Zgorzelska was waiting on the steps. She was so frazzled and frozen that he didn’t have the heart to send her away – he was clearly getting soft in his old age.

  He got up, wanting to say goodbye, and just at that moment, the door opened abruptly without a knock, and there stood Basia Sobieraj, out of breath, still in her hat and scarf, her face flushed. She looked charming. It occurred to Szacki that with her heart problems she shouldn’t run. And that he very much didn’t want to hear whatever she had to tell him. It couldn’t be good news.

  II

  The worst thing was the antlers. During his previous visit they had just seemed tacky, a typical small-town ornament – he’d seen them all over the place here. Now every wild boar’s head and every deer’s skull seemed to be laughing at him. Cool as a cucumber on the outside, inwardly he was seething with the desire to destroy, to seize the poker and smash it all to smithereens. So badly that his fingers were itching.

  “She’s seventy years old, why on earth should we have any doubts, Mr Prosecutor? This isn’t Warsaw, people are friendly here, they help each other,” repeated the policeman.

  Small and slight, with a big nose, he looked like a comic-book kike. Szacki half-closed his eyes, to avoid seeing him. He was afraid that if he took just one more look at that red snout and those apologetic eyes he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from attacking the man. The whole thing was like a bad dream. Two police officers had driven Jerzy Szyller home last night, parked outside his gate and got ready for all-night guard duty. Just after that, at about eleven, Szyller’s neighbour, a lady with the strange Greek name of Potelos, had brought the policemen a thermos of coffee. She did that every day, because she had a kind heart and knew it was a thankless job – her son was a policeman in Rzeszów. She had given them the coffee, chatted for a while, droned on about her ailments and left, wishing them goodnight. Those words were prophetic – just one mug of coffee and the policemen had fallen into a very deep sleep, from which they had only woken up at seven a.m., so frozen to the marrow that the doctor said they had frostbitten ears, noses and fingers – which incidentally said a lot about the nature of the spring in the Year of Our Lord 2009.

  “Is it possible that Szyller met up with her? That he went to her house and drugged the coffee?”

  “No way. We had him under observation the whole time, we took it in turns to walk around the property. We only dragged him out to go to over to Sucha Street, where we met up with you, Mr Prosecutor. And then she came by, a short time after the door had closed behind him.”

  Something creaked behind Szacki. It was Wilczur.

  “She didn’t see anything, she doesn’t know anything, she’s in a panic. There are no signs of a break-in, but she isn’t sure if all the doors and windows were locked either. We’ve sent the thermos and the coffee tin for analysis. I’d bet on the thermos – the lady says she wondered why it was standing on the tabletop, not on the draining board. But at that age, as you know, a person only wonders for a moment.”

  Szacki nodded to say he’d taken that on board. What pissed him off the most was that there wasn’t even anyone to yell at. They had never had enough on Szyller to press charges and lock him up, and actually it was a courtesy on his part that he had agreed to stay indoors – any court would have overturned the decision to place him under house arrest in five minutes flat. And the fact that the cops had accepted coffee from the old lady next door, whom they knew well? So what if they had – he’d have accepted it too. The worst thing was not knowing what happened next. Had he run off? Had someone abducted him? He realized that in actual fact he was furious with himself. Maybe if he had thought quicker, put two and two together better, if he’d been able to notice something that he must already have seen, but the significance of which he had f
ailed to understand – maybe, maybe, maybe.

  “There’s no sign of a fight,” he said.

  “None,” muttered Wilczur. “Either he walked out, or he was carried out.”

  “I thought of that. Send the bottles from the minibar and the glass that was on the piano to be checked. Maybe they put something in his drink too. And left prints as well. That would make a nice change.”

  “Arrest warrant?”

  “Out of the question, I’ve had enough humiliations for one case already. I don’t want to find out in a while that the next main suspect is hanging on a hook somewhere. Send an announcement to the media to say we’re looking for an important witness in the case, and we’ll stick to that version. A witness, an important witness.”

  Basia emerged from Szyller’s kitchen and stood next to them.

  “Well?” she asked. “Do you think this is the next in a series? In theory it’s the same style. The victims disappear from home without a trace, and a couple of days later they turn up drained of their blood.”

  “Take that back, this one hasn’t turned up yet. Keep your fingers crossed for Szyller to be found alive, confess all, and for us to have it off our plates.”

  Click. Once again something clicked into place in his mind. Was it something he had said, or Sobieraj?

  “But you’re right, I thought of that. Only how can it be that Budnik evaporated in the Old Town area right under the policemen’s noses, but here someone had to go to the trouble of knocking them out? Even though theoretically it’s easier to vanish from here, through the courtyard, and on across the park.”

  “Someone didn’t want to risk it.”

  “But earlier on he did? Why should abducting Budnik be less risky than abducting Szyller? Something’s wrong here.”

  Sobieraj shrugged and sat down on the sofa. She looked pale.

  “I feel a bit faint, but I should go and see my father in hospital,” she said quietly.

  “Here in Sandomierz?” he said in surprise.

  “Yes, I feel awful – lately I’ve been there to see dead bodies more often than to visit him. But it’s all because of him I ended up here,” she sighed, and reached for a bowl of crispy snacks standing on the table. Szacki’s gaze automatically followed her hand; her nail polish was a funny colour, very dark pink.

  “Stop!” he bellowed.

  She withdrew her hand and looked at him in horror. Without a word, Szacki pointed at the bowl, from which seconds before she had been about to help herself. There weren’t any crisps in it, or salt sticks, poppy-seed pretzels, crackers, or corn puffs. There were – what else could there be? – some broken pieces of matzo, perforated and browned on the bumps in the usual way.

  “Bloody joker,” he muttered. “Strange he didn’t pour ketchup over it – he must have been in a hurry.”

  They all leant over the wooden snack bowl as if were a sort of ritual vessel.

  “What’s the origin of the matzo, anyway?” asked one of the policemen.

  “When they fled from Egypt, they had no time to wait for the dough to rise,” explained Wilczur in his sepulchral voice, “so they had to bake some provisions quickly, and the result was matzos.”

  Something clicked in Szacki’s head, and this time it was loud enough for him to understand what he should do.

  “Put off your visit to your father,” he said quickly to Sobieraj, “and do a thorough search here – this time it’s not a mouldy old ruin, have them collect trace evidence, and get the matzos to the lab as fast as possible of course. I’ve got to fly.”

  “What? Where? Where are you going?” Sobieraj stood up, alarmed by his haste.

  “To the church!” shouted Szacki and ran out.

  Basia Sobieraj and Inspector Leon Wilczur exchanged surprised looks. Moments later she sat down, and he shrugged and tore the filter from a cigarette. He looked round for a while, trying to find a waste bin or an ashtray, and finally put the filter in his pocket.

  III

  These days the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Sandomierz was like a besieged fortress. There were journalists hanging around the railings, and access to the building was guarded by members of the clergy, trusted laymen and some hastily prepared signs saying “No photography”, “No recording”, “Do not disturb the peace of God’s House” and “No entrance outside the hours of mass”. Szacki went inside, taking advantage of the fact that a pensioners’ excursion group was just emerging. He was ready to explain, and had even taken his ID card from his jacket pocket, but he wasn’t bothered by anyone. Maybe they’ve recognized me as one of them, the fearless sheriff who doesn’t kowtow to Jews, he thought grumpily as he walked through the portal. He stopped in the side nave, waiting for his eyes to get used to the gloom.

  He was alone. Well, almost alone. A monotonous shuffling noise told him his old friends from his last visit were still there. Indeed, from behind a column separating him from the central nave the sad man emerged, and started to wash the floor; soon a wet trail separated him from the west wall of the church, where the vestibule, the organ gallery and the fine organ were located, and underneath it the none-too-lovely paintings by that eighteenth-century dauber and horror fan, Charles de Prévôt. Including the one shamefully shielded by a dark red drape. Szacki strode decisively in that direction. The sad man stopped shuffling and stared at him with an empty gaze.

  “Not on the wet,” he warned, the only effect of which was that Szacki waved a hand and stepped onto the wet floor without slowing down at all. He kept going, as defiant as the sheriff in a Western, except that he slipped, staggered, and had a hard time keeping his balance by desperately waving his arms about. He was only saved by grabbing the feet of a cherub on a column.

  “I said not on the wet,” the man repeated wearily, as if he had witnessed this scene hundreds of times before.

  Szacki didn’t answer, walked up to the drape, detached the portrait of John Paul II and set it against the wall.

  “Hello, what are you doing? That’s not allowed!” the man yelled. “Go and fetch the canon, Żasmina, there are hooligans in here again.”

  “Teodor Szacki, Sandomierz district prosecution service, I’m acting in the name of the law,” cried Szacki, showing his ID to the man running towards him. And at the same time thinking that if he’d had a thousand guesses what the mournful woman washing the cathedral floor was called, he still wouldn’t have got it right.

  The man stopped, unsure how to treat the intruder. But also noticeably curious to see what would happen. Meanwhile Szacki had got a grip on the plush curtain, and yanked at it with all his might. Most of the curtain hooks gave way, the curtain breathed its last gasp in the form of a cloud of dust, and fell. Sunlight breaking through a high window landed on the storm cloud and changed it into a dazzling swirl of shining particles, through which nothing could be seen. Szacki blinked and took two steps backwards to get a better view of the enormous painting.

  After all the stories, he had been expecting an impact– naturalistic slaughter, strong colours and definite shapes; sub-consciously he was waiting for the old superstition to come alive before his eyes, as if instead of an old canvas he was going to see a cinema screen, and on the screen a film, not so much about ritual murder, as about modern events. As if something would twitch, something would happen, and the solution to the whole conundrum would appear. Meanwhile there was an old canvas – well, it just looked like an old canvas, gone black, with cracked varnish, which the sunlight was bouncing off, so it was hard to make out the individual shapes.

  The mournful floor cleaner must have been standing at a better angle.

  “God Almighty,” he whispered, and crossed himself vigorously.

  Szacki moved in his direction, and instead of crossing himself reached for his phone and called Sobieraj.

  “I’m in the cathedral. Tell Wilczur I need two officers here right away for security, the technicians as soon as they’re done at Szyller’s, and you and that wrinkled old dog as s
oon as possible… Never mind, it’s a waste of time talking – just get over here.”

  He rang off and took a photograph of the painting with his mobile. Now that his eyes had learnt to pick the less black shapes out of the sea of darkness, he could compare the original with the reproductions. In this particular instance the size was significant. He had looked at reproductions in books or on a small laptop screen, but here the representation of ritual murder was about ten square metres, as big as a small room in a flat. At first glance it looked as if this painting had come out best for de Prévôt in terms of artistry and composition, though in narrative terms it was still true to the cartoon style of the tales about martyrdom. Szacki recognized the individual stages of the legend about the blood ritual. On the right, two Jews were busy getting supplies. One, clearly the richer, in a hat and coat, was offering to buy an infant from its mother. The other was enticing a little boy with something that might have been a sweet, or maybe a toy, while at the same time grabbing hold of him by the jaw with the gesture of a buyer at a slave market. On the other side, the Jews were busy putting to death or torturing (or both at once) a child laid on a sheet. And the central area of the composition was occupied by a barrel of course – two Jews were holding a barrel bristling with nails like teeth, resembling the open maw of a fantastical sea creature, with an infant’s chubby legs sticking out of it. The dripping blood was being collected in a bowl by the ecstatic owner of a huge beak of a nose. De Prévôt wouldn’t have been himself if in presenting this macabre scene he had not gone a step too far. There were some babies’ corpses lying about on the ground, and the horrendous image of a small body being torn apart by a dog. There was a ripped-off leg protruding from the animal’s mouth, and a second leg, some arms and a head were lying there for afters – all in separate pieces.

  But Szacki hadn’t taken the photo in order to have this moving work of art about his person forever. He took it because scrawled in red paint across the painting there was a Hebrew inscription: