Lumen

by Ben Pastor

  “You’re making a big deal out of nothing, Ewa. No one noticed but yourself. The director, maybe. People clapped all the same.”

  “I made a mistake!” Hairpins and costume jewellery rained on the dressing table. “I have a fucking small part and managed to miss a whole line in it!”

  Kasia shrugged. She was still in her costume, complete with dishevelled grey wig and bloody tears. “What difference does it make? It was just a matinée. The theatre was half-empty.”

  “You didn’t make a mistake!” Ewa dropped in her chair and covered her face so as not to look at herself in the mirror. Her shoulders trembled.

  “Ewa—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Ewa, darling, it’s not your fault. You just miss Richard - that’s what it is.”

  Ewa began to sob into her cupped hands.

  “We are ever so pleased to see that you are once more free to pursue your interests in Cracow, Father Malecki.”

  The archbishop might or might not be as pleased as he said. Malecki had no interest in ascertaining if he were pleased or not. Prudence suggested that he keep everything about the investigation to himself, and he did so. Bora had promised he would stay in touch regarding the contractor, which was as much as he could hope for now.

  “Your Eminence, I heard that posters were circulated concerning Mother Kazimierza’s violent death. What has been the outcome of that?”

  The archbishop waved a fine hand. “Luckily nothing of major proportions. We ensured the removal of most of them. Some students staged a protest, but we managed to make them disperse before the Germans intervened. It is vital that the Church avoid taking a position for or against the posters’ contents at this hour. From the pulpit, Father Malecki, make sure that you do not suggest any encouragement of seditious behaviour: you’re walking proof of what can happen to those who oppose authority.”

  “Still, Your Eminence, where would the Church be today if the martyrs had been so lukewarm?”

  The archbishop’s frown cleared when he smiled. “Between you and me, Father, and with due respect to Tertullian, the seed of the Church has probably sprouted from the Christians who kept their mouths shut and stayed alive more than from the blood of those who went to their deaths. There are enough Jesuit martyrs not to wish for more, don’t you think?”

  Later that evening, after Ember Friday vespers, Father Malecki had given up hope of meeting Bora and was about to leave the church when he caught sight of the uniform in the twilight of the back row.

  It was Bora, bareheaded at the side of the baptismal font.

  “How long have you been there, Captain?”

  “Only a few minutes. I have to talk to you.”

  “I’ll be out in a moment.”

  Bora walked up the aisle and approached the priest. “I would like to talk here.” Because Malecki was about to say something about closing the church for the night, he added quickly, “May I be assured of your confidentiality?”

  “As a priest or as a non-German?”

  “Both.”

  “You have my word on both counts.”

  Bora dropped his head in the army way of respectful acknowledgement. “Thank you. I’d like for you to listen to my confession.”

  Snow fell heavily during the night.

  For the first time since learning of his death, Bora missed Retz’s presence in the apartment. It was true that he had disliked him, that they’d been as different as two people who belong to the opposite ends of the social scale could be, but the house was poorer because of his death.

  Bora went to the library and sat there. It seemed to him that at any time Retz’s crude vitality would make itself heard or visible. The silence was so complete in the snowfall, the ticking of his watch became faintly noticeable to his ears.

  Neither Schenck nor Salle-Weber cared to explore the reasons for a suicide at Army Headquarters. It was bad form, and as long as political orthodoxy was not at stake, an officer’s suicide was forgotten as quickly as it was denied. Retz’s colleagues hadn’t even asked about him. He had obviously related better to women than to men, which meant Bora was as close as Retz had come to anyone in the army.

  Strange how the insects in the glass case, beetles and dragonflies, caught every variance of light on their shells and brittle wings if he moved his head. Fictitious life seemed to derive from the flickers in their long-dead, dried-up forms.

  Bora had spent some time sorting out his feelings about the suicide after Ewa’s revelation, not so much because the idea of incest revolted him - he was naive enough to find it obscure, even curious - but because Retz’s reaction to it made him wonder. Admittedly, he didn’t know much about him, other than he had betrayed his wife and even the women he slept with. If Retz had had depth of spirit, he hadn’t displayed it. But in the end, he must have despaired of life in order to do what he’d done. The despair Father Malecki had spoken of seemed as alien from Retz as Bora could think.

  In a skinny symmetry of death, the insects flickered under glass when Bora’s arm reached out to the lamp to turn it off.

  There’d be ice on the roads tomorrow.

  23 December

  “Do you see the dark-haired German officer sitting with the priest? That’s Richard’s room-mate.” Ewa had stopped to adjust her hat in the reflection of the Pod Latarnie’s front window, and now Kasia crowded her.

  “Where?”

  “They’re sitting in the middle of the room, looking at papers. There. Don’t be obvious.”

  Kasia peered inside. The men in question were busy scanning what seemed to be notebooks and loose sheets of paper; the German wrote on a small pad what the priest was reading to him.

  “He is so good-looking! How old is he; what does he do?”

  Ewa pulled her away. “He’s married and works in Intelligence.”

  “So - he’s not interested, or it’s me who shouldn’t be interested?”

  Ewa took her firmly by the arm. “You can’t trust Germans.”

  “Germans? You can’t trust men in general! Who’s talking about trust? So, he’s the man whose bed I slept in after Richard’s party.” Kasia laughed, holding on to her cap in the wind. “I’d have fantasized better things had I known what he looked like. If I’m a good girl, will you introduce me some time?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t lend me the key to his place, either.”

  They had come to the streetcar stop, and Ewa was signalling to the approaching car.

  “No.”

  Kasia pouted. “I guess you and Helenka want to hog all the fun.”

  Under the stares of the crowd in the streetcar, Ewa’s woollen glove was the only buffer between the hard landing of her palm and Kasia’s astonished face.

  Inside the restaurant, Malecki shook his head. “It’ll take you for ever. There are seventy-five instances of her use of the word Lumen in the meditations the abbess wrote in the past two years. She obviously had an excellent knowledge of Latin.”

  Bora agreed. He reread his notes. “Most of the time the word merely translates as ‘light’ or ‘splendour’, but she uses it twice in the plural for ‘eyes’, in seven instances as ‘intellect’ and a handful of times as ‘opening, cleft’. One of these meanings must hint at the way she died.”

  “But if your hunch is wrong, we’re wasting a lot of time chasing a word game.” Malecki noticed how Bora checked his wristwatch and swept up his briefcase from under the table. Bora was always in a hurry. Whether they met in or outside the convent, he was always rushing from somewhere to somewhere else. “Aren’t you going to have lunch?”

  “There’s no time, Father, I have to be back at work. I’ll call you if something develops.”

  Bora meant he expected to hear more details from Colonel Hofer, whom he’d traced back to Regimental Headquarters in Germany. His son had apparently died, and Hofer had been on medical leave for the past two weeks.

  Malecki came to his feet. “I’ll walk you out to the car. Waite
r, hold my place.”

  Mirrored by the snow, the sun was blinding outside. Today was the first time that Malecki had met Bora since he’d come to see him in church after vespers two nights ago. He felt in the German a new wall of reserve, unspoken, and perhaps fear of having divested himself of authority. Bora no longer engaged personally.

  After the staff car left the kerb, a puddle of melted snow remained, where the reflection of the sun struggled like a captive fish. Malecki stood blinking in the sun for a minute more. He savoured the privilege and the responsibility of knowing men’s hearts, which often kept men from being friends to him.

  24 December

  The commander-in-chief of the occupation army, General Blaskowitz, would have been a handsome man had he had a stronger chin. Openness and nobility of forehead and the upper part of his face lost energy in the lower half. His eyes were clear and striking, however, and they looked at Bora somewhat disdainfully.

  “Should you be here, Captain, when your immediate superior found your concerns irrelevant?”

  The words had an immediate effect on the officer facing him. Not nervous but tense to the extreme, he seemed to be like one about to take an extended leap whose outcome is all but certain. The tendons on his neck were hard. There was a small mirror on the wall behind him, and the rigidity of his neck was reflected in it.

  “I must be here, General. There’s no one else in the Generalgouvernement I may speak to and hope to be heard.”

  Blaskowitz didn’t sit back in his chair. He continued to stand behind his desk with that judgemental look in his eyes.

  Bora found enough moisture under his tongue to swallow. It seemed that all the general was really debating at this point was whether to dismiss him altogether or allow him to stay and be reproached.

  “What have you there?”

  Bora took one step forwards. His arm stretched out to give a manilla envelope to Blaskowitz, who indicated to him to place it on the desk. He didn’t lower his attention to it, but continued to look at Bora inquisitively.

  “Sir, it is a report of police and army actions I have witnessed in Galicia during the past two months.”

  “Who instructed you to write a report?”

  “No one, General.”

  “What authority have you then to take it upon yourself to write a report?”

  Bora was struggling to keep his eyes on Blaskowitz, while he wanted to look down, or elsewhere. “I have no authority, General. But I feel I have the duty.”

  Blaskowitz reached with his right hand to the manilla envelope, and tossed it to one side of his massive desk.

  “Where did you attend military school?”

  “At the Infantry School in Dresden, and then the Cavalry School in Hannover. I was attending a course for regimental close-support gun-platoon commanders in Doeberitz when the war began.”

  “And how long have you held your present position?”

  “Two months.”

  Blaskowitz sat down. His eyes were now on the manilla envelope, as if Bora’s presence were somehow accessory to it.

  For a good minute he said nothing at all. A hum came to Bora’s ears from the right, from an electric clock on the desk. Bora realized how his head still ached on that side. It throbbed and sent stabs of pain down his neck.

  Blaskowitz held the envelope up to him. “Your career is in this envelope. I give you the option of taking it back and leaving my office.”

  “Sir, my career isn’t worth what is in this envelope.”

  Blaskowitz nailed him with a hard, reproving stare. “Your career ought to be worth everything to you. Didn’t they teach you that in military school?”

  Bora spoke against his own despair, dourly. “If the general doesn’t wish to accept my report, I must let the general know that I will take it higher.”

  “Higher?”

  It seemed to Bora that Blaskowitz had a passing flicker of amusement in his eyes, something which he judged quite impossible. However, Blaskowitz unsealed the envelope, and for the next several minutes read the contents of it.

  Two entire nights Bora had spent piecing together from memory and a few scraps of notes the information from the destroyed files. Now Blaskowitz read, and no change came on his face. He read with care, thinking as he read. Halfway through the reading, he asked, “What other schooling did you receive?”

  “The University of Leipzig, Herr General.”

  “Yes.” Blaskowitz continued to read. “You don’t write like a soldier. You write too well for a soldier.” He pointed to a high-backed chair. “Sit down.”

  Sister Irenka was not one to show her emotions. Her anguish could be perceived only by the way her lips tightened in a peristaltic pucker. Father Malecki was alerted at once, and even before entering the convent he prepared himself for bad news.

  “Father, they’ve taken Sister Barbara.”

  Malecki pushed the heavy door closed behind him. “Who was it, when? Has the archbishop been informed?”

  “We were hoping you’d go to His Eminence for us. We’re afraid of sending any of the sisters out after this morning. It was the same group that came searching last week, only this time they went straight for the kitchen. They didn’t even give her time to take off her apron. I tried to talk to them, but it did no good. I ran outside after them and asked where they’d take her, and they wouldn’t answer, they wouldn’t look back. They put her in the truck and left. And on Christmas Eve, Father Malecki!”

  Malecki had to breathe short fast breaths to control his passions. He didn’t know why he’d mentioned the archbishop: he expected no support from that side, not if it concerned a converted Jewess. Bora came to mind, of course, but Bora might not be at the office or might decide not to receive him.

  “How long ago did it happen, Sister?”

  “An hour ago, maybe. We were so much hoping you’d stop this way! Please try to see what can be done.”

  Malecki sighed a furious sigh. “They’ve already arrested me once, Sister Irenka. This time they’ll kick me out of the country if I don’t think of a better way than going to the Germans myself.”

  He left without plans, having agreed to a vague promise that he’d act as quickly as possible. He didn’t have Bora’s telephone number on him, so it was impossible to get in touch with him without physically going to headquarters. He started heading that way with the premonition that neither the archbishop nor the American consulate would approve.

  Captain Bora was out, and not expected back soon. Malecki began to leave, trailed by the searching stare of orderly and armed guards, when rapid footsteps down the stairs caused him to turn. A non-commissioned officer strode to him across the carpeted floor of the lobby.

  “You are Father Malecki, yes?” he enquired in thickly accented English.

  “I am.”

  “Captain Bora’s commander wishes to see you. Please follow.”

  Colonel Schenck’s second-floor office had the spareness of a monk’s cell. Nothing personal cluttered his desk - no family photos, no name plaque, no paperweights or cigarettes. The walls were completely bare.

  Schenck barged in with his usual energy after Malecki had been waiting for five minutes or so alongside the starchy non-commissioned officer. “So.” He came to his desk and half-sat on the corner of it. “You’re Captain Bora’s priest!”

  Malecki would have answered something witty had he not come to ask for consideration. He nodded, and that was all.

  “I understand English better than I speak it,” Schenck asserted. “Do you understand German, yes?”

  Malecki said he’d studied it in school and all but forgotten it. He was trying to decide whether Schenck was approachable, whether he could bring up Sister Barbara’s plight and not make things worse. Bora never spoke of his fellow officers, so he had no clues.

  Hands clasped on his knee, Schenck observed him with detached humour. “Has Captain Bora told you to come see him?”

  “No, I came on my own.”

  “Ach so.
You found the nun’s killer?”

  “Unfortunately not.”

  “Why are you here, then?”

  Malecki plunged in. “I thought the captain could help the convent resolve an urgent question. One of the sisters has been arrested by the SS.”

  Schenck’s leathery face betrayed no hostile reaction to the news.

  “Why come to us? Are you afraid of the SS?”

  “Not for myself.”

  With a mischievous simper Schenck walked around his desk and reached for the telephone. He spoke to someone for perhaps a minute, keeping his eyes on Malecki the entire time. Malecki understood he was being referred to as der Amerikaner, but the rest of the conversation eluded him. At the end of it, Schenck resumed his place on the corner of the desk.

  “It seems that you were mistaken.” He chose the past tense carefully. “It was not a nun they took, but a Jewess.”

  “She used to be Jewish, Colonel. Now she is a convert and a Roman Catholic nun!”

  Schenck started laughing. “If a Negro puts my uniform on, is he less of a Negro? Of course not. He stays a Negro. And I know how you treat Negroes in America, Father Malecki.” A gruff command brought the non-commissioned officer back into the office. “The sergeant will show you out. And please leave Captain Bora be, these are not things for Captain Bora’s interest.”

  The cleaning woman wore a white kerchief, tightly bound around her forehead. She was raw-boned and red-cheeked, like many a farm woman Bora had met in the countryside. When Bora reached the landing in front of his door, she bowed to him, hands clasped, elbows at an angle, as if praying. He irritably thought at first she meant to thank him for the Christmas bonus, but her face was too pained for that.