Lumen

by Ben Pastor

  Bora’s face stayed still. He knew she wanted to know if Retz and Helenka had made love, and decided not to volunteer the information.

  “So, you went to tell him?”

  “What else could I do?” She rummaged in her purse and took out some papers that she handed to Bora. “I showed him her birth certificate, to prove to him that at the time he left I was already pregnant. I was frantic. I told him he couldn’t - that he couldn’t do this or plan to do this with his own daughter.”

  Bora swallowed. “And how did he respond?”

  “How did he respond?” Ewa shook her head. “He fell apart, Captain. He didn’t grow angry, or excited, nothing. He collapsed within himself, that’s all. I even felt sorry for him. I asked him before leaving if he’d be all right. He told me to leave him alone.”

  Bora was not brazenly taking notes, but Ewa had the strongest feeling that he was carefully storing the information inside. The sullen boyish face remained downcast, though he looked her way.

  “This is the fabric lurid myths are made of, Captain. How would you feel, if you were told that your lover is also your mother?”

  “I wouldn’t have a lover so much older than myself.”

  The words came out of him before he could stop them, and Bora was embarrassed by the empty arrogance of them.

  Ewa looked away, and then at him again. “But I wager you’ve slept with women quite a bit older than yourself,” she said mildly.

  “It’s true, I have.”

  “Richard was your age when I met him. I was your age. It’s a wonderful time of life if one is wise. If one gives oneself wisely.”

  Bora sat up, at once undoing the relaxation of his body.

  “So, were you surprised to hear that he had taken his own life?”

  “No. I was sad. I was sad and distressed, but not surprised.”

  Even through the metal grid of the confessional, Father Malecki could tell that the nun on the other side of it was Sister Jadwiga.

  She whispered some excuse about her worry after the bag of guns had been turned over to the Germans.

  “I should have spoken up earlier, Father, but who was to know how the Germans would take it? On the morning Matka Kazimierza died, the colonel was here alone.”

  Not since his cold had Malecki felt such a clammy sweat bead up on his forehead. Bora’s suspicions came back to him and he fought not to pressure the nun with the questions screaming inside him. “Yes?…” was all he said.

  “I happened to be watching the door that day, because I knew the workers would be coming any minute to fix the roof. Instead, at ten or so, here comes the German colonel. He wanted to come in and see the abbess. I told him she’d be meditating until the afternoon, that no one was allowed to interrupt her meditations. He said he’d got a call from his family and that it was most urgent. He almost had tears in his eyes, you know. Still, I couldn’t help him. Then all of a sudden he asked me if I would at least go and fetch him one of the abbess’s books we have for sale.”

  Malecki held his breath. “Yes, Sister. Yes. What else?”

  “I didn’t see anything wrong in his request, so I left him in the doorway and went in the next room where I keep the extra copies and the cash box. When I came back, he took ten marks out of his wallet - that’s twenty times the price of the book, you know - paid and left.”

  The irrelevance of the narrative came close to infuriating Father Malecki.

  “Is that all?”

  Sister Jadwiga lowered her voice to a hiss which the priest could barely make out, straining his ear against the grid. “No. The key to the door that separates the convent from the church hangs from a nail in the vestibule. When the workers showed up an hour later and I went to get the key to the inner chapel, I realized that the other key was gone. It was there before the colonel came, Father, and no one entered the vestibule between his visit and the workers’. What I think is—”

  “Speak up a little, Sister.”

  “What I think is, that he took the key, went into the church from the street, climbed up to the organ balcony and let himself into the convent from there.”

  “Where’s the key now?”

  “Back in its place. On the evening of the abbess’s death, one of the sisters found it in the hallway. You see, Father, I didn’t say anything because I thought maybe our mother superior was working with the Germans, which was a terrible thing for me to think. Now she’s dead and the colonel’s gone, and I don’t know what good it’ll do to anyone to let this be known.”

  Malecki slouched back on the uncomfortable seat of the confessional, trying to check his anxiety. He was grateful to see, by the blurring of the silhouette past the grid, that Sister Jadwiga was leaving. He closed the little window then, and in the semi-darkness fumbled in the pocket of his cassock for Bora’s phone number at work.

  Helenka did not expect to find Bora waiting in the square outside the theatre. She acted as though she knew she could not ignore him, but she gave him a quick nod and then began walking down the sidewalk.

  From a few steps away, Bora said, “It’s better if you enter my car and we drive somewhere than if I walk with you on the public street.”

  She stopped, without turning, shoulders squared in her flimsy coat. “I don’t feel like speaking to anyone right now, Captain Bora.”

  “I think you should. I met with your mother this afternoon.”

  Helenka was wearing the yellow pumps Retz had bought for her. When she turned, the soles of her new heels squeaked on the icy sidewalk. Her face was exceedingly pale, so that the rouge on her lips stood out like a gash on a chalky mask.

  Bora let her in first, and then sat behind the wheel.

  They’d driven out of the city to the mound of the Kościuszko Memorial before Helenka even opened her mouth.

  “There’s nothing to say. I don’t know why he killed himself, and I’ve nothing to say. I don’t want to talk about him. There’s nothing more I can tell you. Why do you want to know?”

  “Because I was his colleague.”

  “Well, what did my mother tell you? I’m sure it was rich, whatever it was.”

  “She thinks you were just seeing the major.”

  Helenka had been crying, and now laughed bitterly, with a trembling lip. “It goes to prove you can still fool your parents.” Her profile against the waning light of evening was hard.

  She reminded him of Retz in her mannerisms, and Bora wondered how such things are determined, that she would act like the father she had never known as a child. “What gets me is that she and I were rehearsing all morning, from nine to half-past one, and while we were spouting absolutely useless theatrical diatribe to each other, Richard was killing himself. Why? I don’t know why. I don’t think I’d tell you if I knew.”

  Bora spoke the next words without looking at her. “He was very fond of you. More than of anyone else.”

  He felt Helenka’s eyes on him. The day was getting dark rapidly, and he’d have to find an excuse for driving a Polish national in his car when they returned to Cracow. The hump of the mound stood before them like a big breast of dirt, less and less visible against the sky.

  “He told me I reminded him of her.” Her voice came to him through the small space of the car. “But I didn’t weary him the way she did. I found it exciting to take my mother’s lover, for a change. You probably understand none of this. Men aren’t clever enough, or deep enough.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  By the way her voice sounded, she might be smiling, but not out of friendliness. “Richard told me he fully expected you to show up and join in sooner or later, and he even left the bedroom door unlocked once.”

  “It’s not my idea of entertainment.”

  “I’m sure you have your own.”

  “Was he happy with you?”

  Helenka reached for Bora’s hand, and met with his startled resistance.

  “I just want you to feel the ring around my finger. It’s too dark to show it to you. It’
s his wife’s wedding band. He used to wear it around his neck with his identification disk. He gave it to me Friday night, and told me he might give me one of my own next. He was very happy with me.”

  The touch rankled him. Bora could feel the sensation of it all through his limbs, unpleasantly or uncomfortably, he didn’t know which. It felt like a spot of fire travelling from his hand to the rest of his body. He resented being touched as an intrusion in the mesh of his self-control. Touch opened him up, and he didn’t want to be opened.

  Helenka’s nearness had a scent of violets. Bora could smell it in the dark, faint and grateful to his nostrils. “Let’s go,” he said, unkindly, and started the car.

  9

  22 December

  The sound of footsteps echoed in the church as if the vaulted space were being slapped, brief sharp sounds as Bora and Malecki climbed the steps to the organ. The organ was set on a balcony of the left nave. A door beside it offered the only communication between the church - and the street on which the church opened - and the interior of the convent.

  “See, Captain, the sisters insist that the door is always closed. For a time the lock was only workable from within, but after a small fire two years ago it was modified so that you can enter from here.” Malecki placed the key in the lock and turned it twice.

  The well-lit fugue of a narrow corridor appeared behind the door, with the prescribed plaster-of-Paris saint guarding the corner ahead. Bora checked a sketch he had drawn from the original plan of the convent.

  “So, this leads eventually to the upper balcony of the cloister, in a roundabout way that avoids the inhabited sections of the convent. How would Colonel Hofer know about it?”

  Malecki stepped over the threshold, and invited Bora to do the same. Once they were in the corridor, he locked the door again. There were latches that he pulled shut. “It was not a secret. What is more interesting, if in fact he entered this way, is that he found the door unlatched. I believe you were told by Sister Irenka that this door is never left unlatched.”

  “Which is why I didn’t pursue the possibility of someone coming this way.”

  Malecki preceded Bora down the corridor. “That day the door was unlatched because the repairmen were also expected to do some work on the stucco frame behind the organ, which had come loose. I showed you where. This brings me to another thing. Please do not ask how I know, but the worker who absented himself from the chapel didn’t go to kill the abbess.”

  “Really.” Bora’s off-handedness caused the priest to turn around. “You believe he had a mind to recover the guns, I’m sure. In that he did not succeed, so I will ask no more about it. Still, the contractor whose address you gave me suspected him from the start: he knew nothing about tools, and even less about roof repair. The crew thought him at first a German plant.” Bora stood motionless in the corridor, as Malecki also was. “Imagine that.”

  “It doesn’t mean—”

  “On the contrary. Your white-livered contractor, whether he just wanted to keep me happy or not, seems to think the interloper did in fact kill the abbess. It means a great deal.”

  Malecki avoided Bora’s stare.

  “I heard - actually, I did hear he fled to the country.”

  “No, Father Malecki. No, no. Your sources have been shamelessly misleading you. He fled, all right, but not out of Cracow. He’s in town, somewhere. And you know that we’ll find him.” Coolly Bora gestured for the priest to resume walking. “No need to be embarrassed, Father. The truth is, whether Colonel Hofer came to visit in the morning or not, it really doesn’t make any difference. The abbess had been recently killed when he and I saw her in the afternoon. I will find the man who did it, and that’s all there is to it. Tell me this, rather. Do you think my commander actually hoped she would miraculously cure his son?”

  Malecki swallowed hard, but did not answer.

  “I am in earnest, Father.”

  “Well, Captain Bora, so was Colonel Hofer. He swore that if faith is what it takes for miracles to happen, his son would be well as soon as the abbess’s prayers reached God.”

  Bora recalled the first time Hofer had spoken about mysticism, staring into the street from the window of his office. “And did you support his opinion?”

  “He didn’t ask for my opinion. I doubt he wanted to hear anything that might crack his belief in the abbess or in supernatural aid.”

  They had come to a stairway that led to the ground floor, and by a series of crooked corridors found themselves eventually in the waiting room. Malecki nodded his head to the crucifix as if it were an acquaintance.

  “The hallway behind that door, Captain, is where the key was eventually found.”

  Bora ignored the comment. Hands driven into his breeches’ pockets, he paced the length of the waiting room. “You know I was raised Catholic and all that. Still, I can’t help seeing Hofer’s trust in the abbess as a weakness. I’m not ready to jeer at it as Colonel Schenck does, but it bothers me nonetheless.”

  “Does it bother you from a theological standpoint or because you just don’t believe it?” Malecki sought the lion-footed bench near the crucifix, and sat down. “Perhaps you have never been desperate.”

  “I was taught by the Church that despair is a mortal sin.”

  “Yes, and so is pride, but men are prone to both when their circumstances are extreme, for the worst or the best. It seems that when the colonel came that morning, he was distraught about a call he’d received from his family.”

  “He’d learned that his son’s condition had worsened.” Bora kept walking, restlessly. “Which explains why he came to see the abbess twice in the same day.”

  Malecki could tell what was on Bora’s mind. It made him queasy, but as there was nothing he could do to restore his credibility, he simply sat, watching the boots measure the floor.

  In the end, from the far side of the waiting room, Bora said, “I’m not angry. It’s likely to get me into trouble later, Father Malecki, but for now you’re the last person who seems to rankle me.”

  Colonel Schenck had been complimented by Hans Frank on the performance of Intelligence units in the region. His wiry body exuded more confidence than ever. During the lunch hour, when few people were around at headquarters, he came to Bora’s office and took a look at the maps covering the walls. Each map was marked and colour-coded to indicate the range of interrogations, interviews, sightings of stragglers, weapons caches and incidents.

  Landing a handful of files on Bora’s desk, he said, “Well done. Now you can dispose of them.”

  Bora looked at the files. “Dispose of them? Colonel, we just opened them!”

  “It was your duty to open them. Their maintenance isn’t your concern. See that they’re burned.”

  There was scarcely any need for Bora to leaf through the files. He knew they included his reports on SD and Army brutality. “But I already sent copies of these to other offices—”

  “I’m sure they’ll find their resting places there as well.”

  Suddenly Bora had the same certainty, and there wasn’t enough saliva in his mouth for him to gulp it down. “It’s a most irregular order, Colonel Schenck.”

  “You’re not paid to insure the regularity of the commands issued to you.” Schenck pointed at the fat stove in the corner. “Let’s see you stoke the fire.”

  Bora’s unwillingness was so transparent, Schenck stepped towards him in a rage. “Damn you, go to the stove and burn these files in my presence!” He watched Bora open the fiery belly of the stove and morosely put in the reports, one by one. “Their folders, also.”

  An odour of singed cardboard rose from the stove, soon smothered by the closing of the metal door. Schenck walked to the closest map on the wall and began pulling markers from some locations. “I want these maps cleaned up before thirteen hundred hours, and the originals of your notes. Where’s your log?”

  Bora surrendered all things in silence. Under his eyes, Schenck ripped pages from the log, crumpled them an
d tossed them in the wastebasket. When he finished, the wastebasket was handed to him. “Empty it into the stove.”

  Bora did so.

  “You see that stoves serve purposes other than cutting short the lives of womanizers,” Schenck said with a smirk. “Come, come, it’s done. Don’t be so scrupulous. Let’s go to lunch, my treat. We’re in for a unit citation! You’re the first officer to whom I say this.”

  At the restaurant, few tables were occupied, and the waiters vied to attend to the officers as soon as they entered. Schenck ordered for the two of them, and engagingly poured mineral water into Bora’s glass.

  “Take your colleague, Bora, a man who had no children. His legacy is nothing. He squandered his germ plasma on the idle pursuit of racially doubtful women. It’s a good and rightful thing that an individual should eliminate himself when he has such little respect for the preciousness of life.”

  Bora ate slowly. He found Schenck’s friendliness repugnant at this time. He had to force himself to keep down the food he chewed. Curling eddies of bright-red blood lined the sauce on his plate each time he cut through the meat.

  “What instructions does the colonel have for me as regards tomorrow?”

  “Oh, tomorrow is easy. You’re due to gather complaints about the Biała Jews: do just that.”

  “There are no Jews left in Biała.”

  “But the damage is there. I want accurate details of their money-lending and usury, of course any reports of political intrigue and racial defilement, keeping in mind that dating and work association between Jews and non-Jews are also to be entered as racial defilement. Eat, Bora. Liver is good for you, especially when it’s rare. Make sure you eat the sauce. In your eating practices like in everything else, follow my example and you’ll be happy you did.”

  “It didn’t go well at all!” In the humid chill of her dressing room, Ewa undid her towering hairdo before the mirror, with a furious jerk removing the postiche braid of blond hair from the top of her head. “I wish you wouldn’t open your mouth and give it wind when you know I messed it up and the public noticed!”