by Ben Pastor
Bora went to the bar and ordered a cognac. Through the mirror behind the counter, he could see that Colonel Schenck had not moved from the entrance. He drank, paid and walked back.
Schenck saw him outside to his car. In the frigid rain he gave him a lecture on the benefits of a regulated life and the necessity to maintain peak levels of energy at a time when German manhood was tested at the front and at home.
“Especially with an eye to reproduction, Captain, it is imperative that easy but temporary and unhealthy habits and liaisons be avoided by the responsible German male. The step between an innocent drink at the officers’ club and wasteful profligacy - even race defilement - is often too brief. I speak for your own good, as a commander and a political comrade, out of concern for your unborn sons and our great country.”
Bora gave up wondering what the officers’ club had to do with his unborn sons. He thanked Colonel Schenck, assured him that he would remember the advice and drove off towards the south-west of town.
Street repairs were being carried on at the corner of Święty Sebastiana, where a powerful bomb had exploded three days earlier. Army trucks idled with headlights on, and carbide lamps were also being used. The glare formed an eerie hole in the dark, where wraiths of fog drifted in front of the lights, and men working in the fog seemed infernal denizens doing their eternal penance. Men were carrying stones - kerb stones, the darkish basalt from Janowa Dolina - to an upheaved section of sidewalk.
Bora stopped the car, and for a few moments just sat behind the wheel. The interior of the car was cold. Trickles of rain mixed with ice crystals blurred his vision through the windshield. Ahead, the glare drew ghostly yellow streaks that seemed to rain and melt down the window. Bora stretched his legs. He couldn’t help thinking about Retz. How Retz at this time was sipping wine, or talking in his loud voice to Ewa Kowalska, or already fingering the fly of his breeches on the sofa. Blood came up his face, a neat little surge of envy dressed in righteousness. His head ached. He felt uncomfortable and tense. Gooseflesh travelled up his thighs, making him bristle.
Impulsively he left the car and stood by it as if it interested him to watch forced labour at one in the morning.
The shadows wore armbands.
He neared the edge of the upheaved earth, where the concentration of light flooded the small area, and moisture condensed before the lamps in a cold vapour. The closest soldier saluted him.
“Has to be patched up by tomorrow morning, Herr Hauptmann.”
Observing one of the workers shuffle by, a slope-shouldered old man in a ridiculously unsuitable tweed jacket, Bora felt the cold in his greatcoat and upturned collar.
“Are these Polish Jews or German Jews?”
“German Jews, Herr Hauptmann.”
“All right. Carry on.”
The stooping old man followed back and forth the path from the upheaved sidewalk to a heap of basalt blocks, pacing more and then less quickly as the weight came to lodge between his hands. He brought the block to someone at the edge of the hole, who passed it to a third man. Younger workers carried their stones against their stomachs without bending their backs. Each time the old man received his block, he hunched to a greater stoop.
Bora waited for him to halt outside the circle of light, in the shadow where the basalt blocks lay, and approached him.
“Herr Weiss.”
Not so much that a German officer had addressed him, but that he’d used a form of respect intimidated the old man, whose first reaction was to step back and aside with head low, as required.
“Herr Weiss, it’s Martin Bora.”
Other workers were coming for their blocks and jostled Weiss, casting furtive glances at Bora. Weiss regained his balance, staring up at the officer. Brusquely Bora took his hands, turning them palms up. He examined them in the way of a teacher checking if a pupil has washed properly.
“How long has this been going on?”
Weiss spoke to him for the next few minutes. His breath could be seen as short, fleeting clouds when they reached the circle of light. “I only wish I could be employed to work during the daytime, you see. At times I feel I shall go down like Goethe, crying out for more light. But they move us to a camp tomorrow, a much better place, I’m told. As things are there’s no complaint, really. You see? And a good street worker is as honourable as a good piano teacher. Things pass, Captain Bora, things do pass. The good times, the peaceful times come back eventually. One should see these things like intervals, shouldn’t one?”
These things. Bora blushed so violently, it was merciful that he stood in the dark. What did Weiss mean - the war? The racial laws, deportation? Hauling kerb stones?
A soldier had noticed the interruption in the work chain and came cursing, rifle held butt first at an angle. Bora stepped into the light to shout him off. The soldier stiffened in mid-stride, recognized the rank and pulled back.
The truth was that Bora didn’t want to be kind to Weiss, didn’t want to feel sorry for him. Right then he didn’t want to feel anything. Anger and shame made him egotistical. Two blocks away there was a dead nun whose murder he was expected to solve, and this little man, his old piano teacher, asked for more light. What about the light he needed?
“I can’t stay,” he said, even though he could have stayed because he had nothing to do for the next two hours. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t. He didn’t want to stay.
Back in his flat on Karmelicka Street, Malecki couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned with an ear to the sputtering and hissing of the radiator. He had an appointment with the archbishop in the morning, and knew already what he’d be told. All papers concerning his study of Mother Kazimierza should be turned in to the Curia for safekeeping before the Germans asked for them. He’d have to confess that he’d already given them to Bora, and all that remained was Sister Irenka’s log of the abbess’s utterances after her mystic crises.
It was a matter of time before Bora would ask for those too, and what would he answer then? He’d remind the archbishop that the convent had already been violated once, a proof that refusal wouldn’t insure safety from the Germans.
The archbishop would ask how did he, Malecki, think the abbess had died. He’d honestly say, “She was last seen alive at the midday meal and then was shot by someone, I don’t know whom.” How can a nun be gunned down in the inner garden of as secluded a spot as Cracow offered? Why - well, why, Bora was perhaps closer to unravelling that: because of her prophecies, most of which the Germans hadn’t yet seen.
He was tempted to get up and risk a walk through the night streets to retrieve the log from the nuns and hand carry it to the Curia even now.
12 November
No one answered when Bora called out to Retz. The house was silent, although the shutters in the living room were open and the drapes had been drawn to the sides of the window. Bora took off his tunic and shirt, and went to draw water in the bathtub. With his hand he felt whether the water was hot, and tossed a bar of soap in it.
He smelled fresh coffee. If Retz had made a pot of it, there might be some left in the kitchen. He went there, poured himself a cup and, sipping from it, returned to the living room. While he waited for the tub to fill, he moodily started looking through the records in the gramophone cabinet.
Having chosen one, he put it on the turntable and stood listening to the music, cup held up to his lips.
“Good choice.” The voice from behind startled him. He turned around, and with the motion coffee spilled from the cup, burning his hand.
Ewa Kowalska stood on the threshold of the living room in a low-necked blue dressing gown. Bora had the frantic impulse to button his shirt, at which point he realized that he wasn’t even wearing one.
“I’m sorry.” He groped for a magazine on the coffee table on which to rest his cup. “I didn’t know, I apologize…” With a sweep of his eyes he caught sight of his shirt on the back of the armchair, and stretched his hand to retrieve it.
Ewa laughed.
“Please don’t apologize. I should apologize for keeping you out at night. You must be Captain Bora.”
Clumsily Bora put on his shirt. Her eyes on him were wise and amused; he didn’t know what to make of them except that she wasn’t offended by his indiscretion.
“The Magic Flute, isn’t it?”
Perhaps because he needed to sleep, Bora had a kind of awkward slowness about him, very unlike him. He nodded, staring at her rather more wide-eyed and unprepared than he usually would.
His fingers had as little nimbleness around the buttons as he had wits in relating to her. Her face, colour of eyes, hair were not as immediate to him as the opening in the raw blue of her dressing gown in the morning light. The satiny blue somehow made him stare. He was passing the right suspender back over his shoulder when Retz came in with hot cakes in a paper bag.
“Bora! What the damn hell?…”
The Curia sat in the heart of the Old City, but no noise filtered through its heavy walls. Malecki said, “He’s a young doctor of philosophy from Leipzig. A professional soldier, he says, but by far more accessible than the rest. He won’t give in on matters of security, still I believe I can at least speak with him.”
The archbishop listened to the report, stiff-backed on his chair. An unconvinced gathering of brows marked his expression.
“You Americans - let it be said with all respect, and taking into account that you are the son of Polish parents - are too ready to trust. This entire country is an open wound due to the Germans. You may be very improvident in according even a modicum of confidence to a German officer, educated or not, Catholic or not.”
Malecki saw well it wasn’t the time to mention that Bora was the same man who’d torn patriotic hymns from the church books. In his informal Midwestern way he crossed his legs, only to be at once reminded by an insistent stare at the sole of his shoe that he’d contravened the laws of etiquette. He sat up straight, feet joined like a schoolboy.
“It is true that we are by and large a trusting society, Your Eminence, but it has made us successful enough.”
“Only because you’re far from Europe.”
“What I mean is, I may mistrust Captain Bora in the measure Your Eminence desires. I still have to associate with him to try to get to the bottom of this unhappy case.”
The archbishop stood up, striding to his ornate desk. “Have you seen this, Father Malecki? This is a list of priests and nuns and monks the Germans have killed since the invasion. A list many times longer is needed for the names of those who are being detained, or whose fate we no longer have any hope of finding out. Your status as a foreigner keeps you from the real dangers that your Polish brothers and sisters face every day. You think - you will forgive me for saying this - you think like one whom the Germans can’t hurt.”
Malecki began to sigh, and halfway through decided to keep his breath in. “I submit that my special status makes me the perfect intermediary.”
“The captain is in Intelligence. Do you know what his job is? He’s probably writing a report on you every time he meets you.”
“I did the same in regard to the abbess for the past six months.”
“Not with the same aims!”
The archbishop was right. Malecki let air out of his lungs in a conciliatory sigh. “I promise I will not befriend Captain Bora, Your Eminence. With God’s help I’ll only do what is good for the Church and the memory of the abbess.”
Bora laughed, because he was embarrassed. He had no doubt that Retz meant what he’d said, but still a part of him wanted to disbelieve it. “I’m a married man, Major,” he heard himself answer.
“So, what does that have to do with anything?”
“It has to do with the fact that I’m not interested in Frau Kowalska. Not as the major seems to imply.”
“I don’t need to imply anything. I saw you.”
“It isn’t at all what the major thinks. Frau Kowalska told you I had no idea—”
“Leave her out of this! I want to hear from you, what you were doing half-naked in front of her.”
Bora didn’t want to repeat the story of the bath one more time. “I do quarter here, Major Retz. I was told to stay out until three hundred hours, and I assumed that by seven thirty…”
Retz stared him up and down, with a spiteful, critical cast on his flushed face. Irritation was just beneath the surface, unconcealed and lacking in arguments, which might be angering him more.
“There’s nothing more to be said. Next time you get the itch, Captain, go find a place to jack off instead of exhibiting yourself here.”
14 November
The farms were all beginning to resemble one another. Whitewashed log houses among rye fields, deeply rutted paths leading from one to the next, red cows, cabbages. Occasionally shooting still echoed in the distance. SD staff cars would honk and pass his VW jeep, signalling him to pull over and let half-tracks and personnel carriers go through. In the distance buildings burned slowly, nearly without flames, raising tall pencil lines of smoke. Through his binoculars Bora made out the huddled villages, a house smouldering here and there. And still SD and SS vehicles speeded ahead of him.
This place was no different. The woman wept, and it seemed to Bora he’d seen nothing but weeping farm women since he’d come to Poland. She led him to a trampled cabbage patch and showed him an area where the plants had been crushed.
“Look at the blood,” she whimpered. “Look at the blood.”
Bora looked at the blood. “Did they take your husband from the house?”
“No, he was hiding out here in the patch, because he knew they were coming to look for us ethnic Germans.”
“And he left you alone in the house with Polish Army stragglers coming through? Didn’t he think they might kill you instead?”
But they hadn’t killed her, she wept. They had searched the house, gone out, found and killed him.
“Did they do anything to you?”
“No, but they took Frau Scholz down the way. I heard her screaming.”
Bora made a note of the name. He’d go to the Scholz farm next. “They ‘took’ her: what do you mean, they ‘took’ her? Did they force themselves on her, did they carry her off?”
The woman started sobbing again. All Bora could make out from her broken sentences was that the stragglers had killed the Scholz men and carried the wife off for themselves.
“…But I prayed to God and to Mother Kazimierza of Cracow. So they killed my man and the Scholzes and they carried off Frau Scholz, but they didn’t do anything to me.”
16 November
Nowotny sneered when he heard the question. He rubbed his finger over the healing scar on Bora’s head, rather more brutally than was required, so that Bora would admit it hurt.
“Of course I’m an atheist, Captain, therefore don’t expect any pious statements from me. I believe none of this foolishness. Miracles! There are explanations for most so-called spiritual phenomena, including the preservation of cadavers and this mystic bleeding. For instance, have you ever heard of micrococcus prodigiosus?”
“No. It’s a bacterium, I suppose.”
“It’s the bacterium that forms little red spots in bread crumbs, if you’ve ever noticed. It’s also believed by some to play a part in the hysterical condition called hematohydrosis.”
“‘Bloody sweat’?”
“Precisely. Hematohydrosis is, technically, a ‘quasi-sweat’, or parahydrosis. There seems to be a spill-over of serum containing red corpuscles and the parasitic bacterium into the sweat glands. That’s not to say that your nun wasn’t a nice woman, or even a saintly one - whatever saintly is - but the ‘blood’ can be scientifically explained. In the case of that girl in Austria, the Neumann girl, even less edifying tricks have been suggested, related to much more readily available monthly blood emissions.” Nowotny spoke with the unlit cigarette dangling from his lip, toying with the stethoscope on his desk. “That takes care of question number one. What was question number two -
ecstasy, right? You wish to know what a physician thinks about the state of so-called ‘ecstasy’.”
“For my own information, yes.”
“Well, I haven’t witnessed any instance of it myself, but my father started his practice as intern at La Salpêtrière in Paris, where he studied hysteria and hypnotism with Charcot. I would say that in the case of your abbess we’re dealing with hysterical ecstasy, a ‘grand attack’ which culminates in so-called passional postures. Such attacks may be followed or accompanied by lack of response to painful stimuli - technically, self-induced anaesthesia - bodily rigidity, interruption of normal breathing rhythm, et cetera. I imagine your nun underwent this routine before the prophecy stage.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Haven’t you found out?”
“No one has actually seen Mother Kazimierza in ecstasy.”
“So, how does anyone know that she went through one?”
“By the time the bloody sweat began to appear on her hands and forehead or she started growing rigid, she ordered everyone out of the room.”
“And?”
“And by the time she called her secretary in-a certain Sister Irenka - the crisis had passed. Blood supposedly streamed down her fingers and face from wounds that would close within hours, including a wound on her chest, and of course those on her feet. I did ask for gauze or bandages used to absorb the emissions, but I was flatly refused. Hopefully Father Malecki has managed to get a sample for his Vatican inquiry. Whether or not he’s willing to share it with us, we’ll see. Since it isn’t relevant to the investigation, I expect him to refuse.”
“And are you telling me that none of the nuns ever snitched a look through the keyhole?”
“Well, Father Malecki admits to have lingered behind the door at the time of one of her attacks. According to him, she let out a choked cry, and then he heard the thud of a body that falls flat on the floor. When he was let into the room again, the pattern of bloodstains on the tiles made him think she’d fallen face down, arms outstretched in the posture of a cross.”