A Grain of Truth

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  With the gesture of a gunslinger he snapped the phone shut and put it away in his jacket pocket. The girl was gazing at him in admiration.

  “What a thing,” said the taxi driver, looking at him in the rear-view mirror, “for a prosecutor to be calling people at midnight. Normal, my arse. They’re turning us into a proper Soviet Union. And they say they’re liberals. Fuck the lot of them, sir.”

  8

  Wednesday, 22nd April 2009

  The Earth is celebrating Earth Day, Jack Nicholson his seventy-second birthday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk his fifty-second, and car enthusiasts are commemorating the seventh anniversary of the demise of the Polonez. In Poland almost half a million high-school students are doing their final school exam; apart from that, the government announces that there will be a total ban on smoking in public places, a twenty-five-year-old mountaineer climbs up a wall to the top of the Marriott Hotel in Warsaw without any safety gear, and top prize for stand-up comic of the year is won by the Minister of Infrastructure when he declares that the A1, A2 and A4 motorways will be finished before Euro 2012. Poland’s western neighbour opens a major trial of Islamic terrorists, while to the east the ice-hockey trainer who was fired because his players dared to beat President Lukashenko’s team is reinstated. In Sandomierz the police arrest a man who accused a group of fourteen-year-olds of stealing seventy-four bottles of beer and some bottles of vodka at the bazaar and forced money out of them as compensation. Meanwhile, some real thieves purloin a handbag with 180 zlotys in it from an open flat. The owners were sitting on the balcony. And no wonder, because although the temperature does not rise above eighteen degrees, and at night it falls to two, it is a beautiful sunny day.

  I

  Ever since the first high-school outing, when Marcin had ended up on the coach next to Sasha – the only spare seat had been next to the overgrown beanpole with the look of a murderer – the boys had been linked by a friendship – perhaps not very close, but quite specific. They didn’t know much about each other, they didn’t go round to each other’s houses, they didn’t invite each other to parties and they weren’t even in the same class. They were both fairly independent, and they both valued their own independence. Marcin was more of a weakling, small with straw-blond hair and glasses, famous as well as ridiculed for being a violinist who sometimes played, to his despair, at school events. He did a bit of composing, and was turned on by the idea that he might one day write the music for films, but the only people who had heard his compositions were Ola and Sasha.

  The rumours about Sasha were that he dealt in drugs and was involved with the Russian Mafia. The gossip was so widespread that even the teachers treated him with astonishing leniency, probably fearing that if they gave him too low a term grade some Mafioso in a rustling shell suit would kneecap them in the school changing room. Reticent by nature, Sasha kept quiet about this matter in particular, which of course only compounded the gossip, and when someone dared to go up to him and ask for some gear, Sasha first of all said nothing for a long time, then finally leant down and said with a deliberate Russian accent: “Not for you”.

  In reality Sasha didn’t deal in anything – his greatest passion, unknown to anyone, was documentary cinema, whole terabytes of which he kept in his computer. Now and then he passed on the better and more controversial bits of his collection to Marcin. Lately, thanks to Sasha, Marcin had seen an unusual film about an American Jew who went to Poland with his kids to look for the people who had saved his father’s life. What struck him most was the sick old Jewish man, attached to various tubes, who had been living in Israel for sixty years, could no longer communicate, and just kept repeating that he wanted to go home. They told him he was at home, but he kept on saying he wanted to go home. “So Dad, where is your home?” someone finally asked. “What do you mean, where? Seven, Zawichojska Street,” he replied. Marcin couldn’t explain why, but he had found this scene very moving.

  Sasha was standing leaning against the window sill with his arms folded across his chest, staring into space; in loose clothes including a light top he looked even tougher than usual. Marcin came up, nodded to say hello and leant against the window sill next to him.

  “Pawn to e4,” he said.

  Sasha frowned and nodded approvingly.

  “Knight to c4,” he muttered.

  They had actually been playing games of chess non-stop ever since they had met on the bus, when Sasha had been playing chess on his mobile. Now they had it set up so each of them had his own chessboard at home, and each day at school they swapped a single move. Except that Marcin had all day to think over and prepare his move, while Sasha’s responses to moves Marcin had often spent hours working out took no more than a quarter of an hour. Once he had asked for time to think until the next break, and Marcin went about feeling proud for a week. But he never won – thanks to some Russian gene, Sasha was unbeatable.

  “Listen, if I remember rightly, your old man’s a crooked bully and all-round bastard on the take?”

  “That’s right, he is indeed a police officer,” replied Sasha.

  “On Monday I was on a school trip to Sandomierz.”

  “Bad luck.”

  “We went on a tour of these vaults underneath the Old Town – apparently they used to be on several levels, but now there’s just a pathetic corridor left, or maybe that’s all they show people.”

  “And?”

  “And I heard this howling.”

  “In other words Marysia’s finally found her clit. That’s the end, no one’s safe now.”

  “It was like sort of… sort of horrendous howling, from deep underground. As if someone was being tormented in there or tortured.”

  Sasha looked down at his friend. He raised one eyebrow.

  “Yes, I know how it sounds,” Marcin went on. “I know perfectly well. But I can’t get it out of my head. You know what’s been going on there lately – they’ve got a serial murderer on the prowl, they’ve already found two dead bodies and today I read that apparently people have stopped sending their children to school, it’s hysteria. And you see, it’s probably nothing, I mean, it’s sure to be nothing, but what if? It’d be stupid, wouldn’t it?”

  “Howling, you say? All right, I’ll tell my old man, he can tell the pigs there, maybe they’ll find it useful. What else?”

  “Howling, mainly howling, a bit like the wind, a bit like groaning, a bit like screaming. And one other sound, I couldn’t identify it at the time, it was too faint, but this morning I heard a similar noise and I made the connection.”

  “Well?”

  “Barking. Like a dog barking furiously, as if somewhere down in those vaults they were breeding hell hounds or, I dunno, as if were-wolves lived there. Yes, I know how it sounds.”

  II

  The conversation was short and fruitful, and Szacki was pleased he had managed to bring Myszyński here from Warsaw. An intelligent, quick-thinking guy, a little unsuited to the image he had created for himself. He was a good man, the kind that’ll never do harm to anyone and will always be amazed if it’s done to him. But he was trying to play the old stager, the cold, calculating cynic whose only interest in his work is professional, and nothing else. A perfectly decent role in itself, especially in this line of work, but it only makes sense if you can play it without being off key. Szacki could, but this guy could hardly do it at all. Luckily his acting skills were the least relevant thing here.

  He left his office to wash a coffee mug, and did it in such a hurry that he bumped into Basia Sobieraj in the corridor. A small package fell from her hands. He quickly leant down to pick it up – the little cardboard box with a postage label was the size of a fat book, but it was very light, as if there were nothing inside. With a courtly gesture he returned the package.

  “I believe you dropped this, madam.”

  To his surprise he noticed that Sobieraj was blushing like an adolescent girl caught performing an embarrassing and intimate act. Abruptly she tore the package
from his hands.

  “Please be so good as to look where you’re going, sir.”

  He felt like giving a snappy reply, but the door of Miszczyk’s office opened, the boss looked out and beckoned to him decisively, like a headmistress summoning a schoolboy. Off he went, still holding the empty coffee mug bearing the emblem of the Legia Warsaw football team. There was a man sitting in Miszczyk’s office with the puffy face of an alcoholic and the look of a tramp, probably believing his sloppiness could pass for casual chic. He was unappealing. At the sight of Szacki he stood up and greeted him effusively.

  “I’m a Polonia fan,” he said, pointing at the mug.

  “Sorry, a what?”

  “You know… the other Warsaw team…”

  “What do you mean? There’s only one team in Warsaw,” Szacki joked, but the other man didn’t get it.

  “The editor has come from Warsaw – he’s writing a major report on our case,” said Miszczyk, coming to his aid. “I promised he could have fifteen minutes of your time, Prosecutor Szacki, no longer.”

  Szacki bubbled up inside, but he smiled perfunctorily and suggested they deal with the matter at once, which would let him get back to work as quickly as possible.

  To start with, the conversation centred on the investigation, the procedure that applied when the work of a serial killer was suspected, and various nuances of the Penal Code. Szacki answered the questions quickly and precisely; despite the journalist’s efforts, he wasn’t letting the interview change into a nice, non-committal chat, and he also ruthlessly blocked all the man’s attempts to make things less formal. He was waiting for the inevitable, in other words a step in the direction of Jewish themes and Polish anti-Semitism. And sure enough, the inevitable came.

  “I’m wondering about the sinister symbolism of all this – there’s something extremely nasty about this bloodthirsty game with familiar themes. Here, in a city that’s famous for a painting which is in a way an icon of anti-Semitism. Near Kielce, the provincial capital where the biggest pogrom since the Holocaust took place. All that seemed to be just old scar tissue, but meanwhile you only have to scratch the surface and what do you find? Some festering wounds that have never healed.”

  “I’m not interested in symbolism,” quipped Szacki coldly.

  The journalist smiled.

  “That’s so very Polish, don’t you think? I am interested in it. Whenever a touchy topic comes up, at once someone will say ‘why drag that up’, or ‘leave it alone’, or ‘why stir things up unnecessarily’.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what is typically Polish – my degree is in law, not anthropology. Besides, you’re not listening to me. You can drag it up and stir it up to your heart’s desire, I’m not urging you to leave anything out. I’m just informing you that as an official in the service of the Polish Republic I am not interested in symbolism, not even if it’s nasty and bloodthirsty.”

  “Then why did you have those drunken yobs arrested who were holding an anti-Semitic demonstration?”

  “One hundred and ninety-six, two hundred and fifty-six, two hundred and fifty-seven, two hundred and sixty-one and two hundred and sixty-two.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Those are the paragraphs of the Penal Code which are applicable in this case. Above all, desecration of a place of remembrance, desecration of a burial site and incitement to racial hatred. My job is to prosecute persons who have broken the law. I’m not guided by any ideology or any symbolism in my work.”

  “I understand that’s the official attitude. But unofficially what’s your opinion of it?”

  “Unofficially I have no opinion.”

  “Have you come across manifestations of anti-Semitism?”

  “No.”

  “Are stereotypes obstructing you in conducting this investigation?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know that in Sandomierz people aren’t sending their children to school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you reckon this is caused by the return of a belief in the legend of blood?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what they’re saying on the streets of Sandomierz?”

  “No.”

  “Or what the right-wing media are saying?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand why you completely refuse to talk about this – why all the panic? After all, you must be wondering what the source of these events is, their genesis. I don’t know, have you read Jan Gross’s book?”

  “No,” lied Szacki, knowing perfectly well he meant the famous book about the 1941 pogrom in Jedwabne.

  “A pity. He describes the wave of post-war anti-Semitism, the anger of the neighbours at the sight of people who had survived the Holocaust, the hatred. I think that generation of post-war anti-Semites brought up the next generation, and they brought up the next one – to believe that the Jews are to blame for Communism, they have a worldwide conspiracy, and they control international high finance. And at the same time they were deprived of a counterbalance, in the form of an ordinary Jewish neighbour, with whom they would have gone fishing, whom they’d have known, thanks to which, on hearing those dreadful stereotypes, they’d have been able to shrug and say: ‘Ee, that’s bullshit, Szewek isn’t like that’. And somewhere out of that generation your culprit has emerged, a carrier of the most dreadful Polish stereotypes, ignorant, bearing grudges, burning with hatred for everything that’s foreign. And here, on anti-Semitic terrain, this hatred of his has found its terrible manifestation.”

  The clock by the national coat-of-arms showed that Szacki had two more minutes of this torture ahead of him. He planned to get up as soon as fifteen minutes had been spent on this conversation, which was tiring, boring and infuriating him. He was worried that the energy he so badly needed today was now being wasted on not exploding, not arguing with this cretin, who only had one concern: to prove the thesis about Jew-baiting Poles. He was surprised that so far he had come across the greatest empathy, willingness to understand and common sense in the young rabbi born in Israel. Maciejewski was right: nothing but extremities, nothing was ever normal here.

  “But what if it’s the other way around?” he asked the journalist.

  “Meaning?”

  “What if it turns out the culprit is a mad Orthodox Jew, who has come here from Jerusalem with his gang, brought up in a spirit of antipathy towards the Poles, to murder Catholics? What if we find dead children in the cellar of his house, barrels filled with blood and a matzo factory?”

  “That’s… that’s impossible… That would be awful. Here, in this country, which needs to face up to the black pages in its history. Which constantly has to be reminded of its own guilt. You cannot possibly give a scenario like that one serious consideration.”

  “My work involves giving every scenario serious consideration. I’ll go further than that: it wouldn’t stir much emotion in me if the culprit turned out to be a Polish bishop or the chairman of the Yad Vashem shrine. As long as we’d found him.”

  “Is it really all the same to you?”

  Luckily the time was running out.

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t seem to understand your duties as an educated, thinking person. You have to declare yourself on one side or the other. Our side has to bear witness, to instruct and explain. Otherwise the other, the dark side will win over hearts and minds.”

  “What dark side?” bristled Szacki. “Can’t you people simply provide information about what’s going on? Does everyone here have to peddle some sort of twisted propaganda?”

  “It’s not all the same to us!”

  “But it is to me. Your fifteen minutes are up.”

  III

  He liked women, he liked that sensation when he met a new one and felt a shiver running down his spine, a thrill triggered sometimes by beauty, sometimes by sex appeal, a gesture or the sound of her voice, her smile or a sparkling riposte. Sometimes, very rarely, he felt a similar feeling, arising no
t exactly in his spine and not exactly in the pit of his stomach, in encounters with men. Once upon a time he had been afraid of it, but then he had realized it was admiration. A mixture of admiration, slight envy and a little excitement. A sort of boyish “Bloody hell, I’d love to be like that guy one day”.

  Roman Myszyński left Prosecutor Teodor Szacki’s office in exactly this sort of mood. In his career as an archivist for hire, a tracker of family secrets hidden in yellowing pages, whenever he took on a new client and tried to make an impression on him, he did his best to be someone like that. Businesslike, but not taciturn. Professional, but not cold. Reserved, but not rude. Calm, but alert. Maintaining distance, but inspiring confidence. Teodor Szacki was just like that – the proud sheriff, who had seen a lot and knows a lot, but doesn’t need to talk about it. A pale, as if diluted, unsettling glance, narrow lips, classic features. And that thick, milk-white hair, which gave him a unique, slightly demonic look. There was something sheriff-like about the prosecutor, a dash of Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood, but also a touch of the archetypal Polish army officer, defiant indomitability and a rock-solid belief that he was the right man in the right place.

  He also envied Szacki his mission. The evident conviction that he was on the right side, and that all his actions served goodness and justice. But who was he by comparison? Nothing but a pen-pushing historian, who in exchange for a few zlotys concealed their Jewish ancestors from moustachioed Poles and found them aristocratic roots so they could hang a crest above their television sets. In fact, for the first time ever he was finally doing something that had some meaning.

  So he didn’t feel any discomfort in connection with having so quickly returned to the site of his life’s greatest trauma – the State Archive in Sandomierz. Maybe just for a moment there was a short stab of anxiety while he was looking for the relevant documents in the old synagogue’s prayer hall. Once again he had to walk past the spot from which the drawbridge led to the window looking out on the bushes below the synagogue. He walked past it cautiously, feeling as if the zodiac signs painted by a Jewish artist were following his movements. But he soon shook off that impression and carried the mortgage record books to the reading room. Next to them he put down the material Szacki had given him – a short list of the people he was to check on, and print-outs relating to them from the national ID system to start him off, plus authorizations covered in stamps that guaranteed him access to all the data that hadn’t yet ended up in the state archive. And a single sheet of paper on which it said what he was to look for: homicide, the death of a pregnant woman, perjury.