by Ben Pastor
During the lunch hour, Bora travelled to the SS command, where Salle-Weber gave him a look askance but made no opposition to his confronting Kasia
At the convent, Father Malecki was meanwhile guest of honour at the modest reception celebrating Sister Irenka’s election as the new abbess.
“We’ll have to call you Matka now, Sister Irenka,” he told her jokingly. “You gained instant motherhood ahead of all of us.”
The nun wrinkled her nose. “The reasons for my new office are such as to keep me from unadvisable pride, Father Malecki. I am sure we all would much have rather have kept Matka Kazimierza with us. Now that you leave us, also, we may never find out what happened to the best one among us.”
“Captain Bora will carry on, surely.”
“Not if His Eminence is successful in his request that Church property be made off-limits to military personnel. Considering all we have to gain from keeping the Germans away, even the grief of not solving this sad killing becomes bearable. It will be what the Good Lord wishes.”
Malecki didn’t know what the Good Lord wished, but as for himself, he saw well that he had to try to meet Bora as soon as he could.
Bora was at that moment leaving the SS command to return to his office on the other side of the Old City.
Ewa Kowalska was waiting for him.
Led in by an orderly, she wore black, and the dress was nicely tight on her when she removed her wrap. Bora watched the way the orderly watched her, and moodily dismissed him.
Ewa sat down. If she had cried in days past, she put up a good show of control. Bora offered her a cigarette, which she refused. He put away pack and lighter.
“I was at the play, last night. You were very good.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you see me in the audience?”
“No.” Sharply contrasting with the black of her dress, a bright-blue scarf draped her neck, and she loosened it now. “I’m afraid I wasn’t paying much attention to the public.”
“Your daughter was also very good.”
“She was fine, yes.”
“Especially considering she had a demanding role.”
Ewa removed her gloves. The gestures were deliberate, slow, Bora’s eyes followed each motion of her wrists and fingers. He sat back as on the day they had met at the café, stretching his legs under his desk. At long last the gloves came off.
“May I ask why you sent for me, Captain?”
“Yes.” Sitting up, unwittingly Bora scraped his spur on the floor, with a brief sharp moan of steel. “I would like to know where your ex-husband is.”
“Why?”
“Never mind why. Does he live in Cracow?”
“No. He was in Poznań when I last heard of him. We haven’t been in touch for a long time.”
“Then he might conceivably be in Cracow.”
Ewa took a long look at Bora, whose expression was earnest. More than a little admiring, she thought.
“Well, anything can be. He might, why not. He was jealous for quite some time after we parted ways, and followed me around.”
Bora turned his notebook towards her. He offered her a fountain pen. “Kindly write his full name down, and his last known address.”
After writing, Ewa slipped the bright-blue scarf off her shoulders under Bora’s absorbed attention. Because he said nothing else, she brought to the silence a timely question of her own. “The other night, in my dressing room, why did you leave so hastily?”
Bora capped the pen, without immediately putting it away. “I think you know why. Do you want me to say it?”
“Please.”
“Because women such as yourself make men such as myself develop a blind spot, and I can’t afford not seeing clearly. I have a wife. I am faithful to her.”
“Even though she isn’t here?”
Carelessly Bora tapped the left breast of his tunic. “She’s very much here, Frau Kowalska.”
“But you wanted to be kissed.”
“I suppose so.” When the cracking open of the door was followed by a glimpse of Colonel Schenck’s wiry torso, Bora left his desk and joined him on the threshold. Schenck gave him a file to read. His reproachful look into the office prompted Bora to prevent all comments. “I’ll be mindful of my germ plasma, Colonel.”
10 January
Father Malecki would have lost his patience had there been a better reason to do so.
“We’re so pressed for time and you’re asking me to get involved in something completely irrelevant to the matter at hand?”
As he had done so many times since they’d known each other, Bora paced the floor of the convent’s waiting room. “I only need you to listen. I’m confused, I have to clear up something. As I told you, the play was The Eumenides by Aeschylus, the third work in his Oresteia trilogy. I studied only the first of the three in school, so I had to look the tragedy up.”
Malecki had a fleeting smile. “So did I. The gist of the story is whether it is more grievous to commit a crime against one’s mother or one’s husband.”
“Yes. More precisely, whether killing one’s mother because she murdered her unfaithful husband deserves eternal punishment. Now, there are six female roles of some consequence in the play. The three Furies, who turn into benignant spirits at the end; the Prophetess of Apollo, who speaks the opening monologue; Athena, who is the lead female part; and the Ghost of Clytaemestra - that is, the uxoricide murdered in revenge by her son.”
“Which roles did the Kowalski women play?”
Bora nodded at the priest’s ready understanding. “Helenka was given Athena’s part - her first noteworthy classical role - and Ewa, who’d played Clytaemestra in the two previous plays, had to settle for the small role of her Ghost.”
“Did you go to the performance?”
“It wouldn’t have been necessary after I read the text, but I did. Since it was in Polish, I understood virtually nothing, but the Ghost appears at the beginning to rouse the Furies against her son, and needn’t be on stage again until the end of the tragedy, a full hour and a half in this production.”
“So you think that someone—”
“Not someone, Father Malecki. The Ghost of Clytaemestra. You see, the only one who could have noticed her absence was the woman who plays the Prophetess, but she also doubles as one of the Furies. She has very little time between saying her last line and rushing to wear a mask and lie down with her two sisters as the temple doors are opened. The Furies don’t leave the stage until the end. Even on foot it takes no more than fifteen minutes from the theatre to our flat.”
Malecki acted unconvinced. “Still-Idon’t know how big a man the major was - it wouldn’t be easy to talk him into putting his head in the stove.”
“I know.”
“And you’re positive there were no marks of violence on his body?”
“None. That’s where things become garbled.” For a moment Bora leaned against the wall by the crucifix, then resumed his pacing. “Could Major Retz be forced? I asked myself a hundred times Clytaemestra’s question, ‘How could one then bring death to dreadful men / who pretend love?’”
“You didn’t make your suspicions obvious, of course.”
“To her? No. I only hinted that I wondered about her ex-husband. But he happens to have been a prisoner of war since the first week in September, so he doesn’t even appear in the picture.”
“Then the victim had to be already unconscious.”
Bora stopped in mid-stride. Malecki seemed to look through him with his clear blue eyes.
“Why not, Captain? During the autopsy they were probably only looking for signs of asphyxia.”
“I’m sure they checked for traces of drugs in his system.”
“Then it seems to me you ought to look for whatever wouldn’t leave traces.”
It was late in the evening when Bora arrived at the hospital.
Doctor Nowotny was on his way out of the office, so Bora spoke to him as they walked down the phenol-smel
ling hallway.
Nowotny was gruff. “What are you up to, anyway? Aren’t you in enough trouble, that you should ask about poisons?” Still he turned back, let Bora into his office, and made a gesture towards a metal chair opposite the desk. “Seat your damn self down.”
“Colonel, please correct me if I’m wrong. When someone is killed by carbon monoxide, the findings include bright colouring of the mucous membranes, as well as a red sediment from a blood solution in the autopsy.”
Nowotny placed his crossed arms on the desk. “Well, at least it’s nothing political. Yes, there’s a slow clouding of the solution, which then gains a pink tinge and eventually produces a reddish precipitate.”
“And what else?”
“What else? Laboratory-wise, you mean? It depends. There can be a rise in the number of white cells in the blood and of albumin in the urine.” Nowotny studied him. “Are you still brooding about the way your room-mate went?”
“I’m brooding because he went, period. Had anyone wished to make him unconscious without being detected, could they have used - say - aconite?”
“I wouldn’t. Aconite causes small welts on the lips.”
“Antimonium, then?”
“No. It’s like arsenic, too obvious.”
“What about atropine?”
“Detectable in the urine.” Nowotny undid the fold of his arms, amicably leaning forwards. “Wait, wait. Before you recite the entire alphabet of poisons, let’s stop at barbiturates. Like carbon monoxide, they bring a slight myosis. A contraction of the pupils, yes. There can be also leucocytosis and albuminuria.” He could see Bora’s attention turn to excitement, and laughed. “Don’t be so righteous. It’s difficult to detect barbiturates in blood and urine. If anyone did what you suggest, he was as smart as you are.”
“Are they available over the counter?”
“Drugs are always available to those who know where to ask for them, over or under the counter. Veronal is commonly used. Keep in mind that if the subject is drinking at the time, alcohol increases both effect and toxicity. There are all kinds of strong products around. Luminal is another.”
“Luminal?”
“Yes. What about it? Do you think Retz gobbled some before doing himself in?”
“I don’t know yet. The name just reminded me of something else I meant to ask you: does the word lumen have a specific medical meaning?”
Nowotny tapped a tobacco-stained finger on his greying temple. “I’m beginning to think the rock did more damage to your head than I suspected. Generally, we refer to lumen as the cavity of a body organ, or the narrow channel of a blood vessel. Why?”
“Just checking on a theory I have. Nothing to do with Retz, it’s about the abbess’s death. I think I know who killed her.”
“Wait, wait - one thing at a time, Bora. Back to your room-mate’s untimely end, didn’t I prescribe you Veronal when you broke your skull?”
Bora suddenly remembered Nowotny had done so.
The medicine bottle was still on the lower shelf of his bedtable. Bora looked at it against the electric light, but couldn’t tell whether the level of the liquid was appreciably different from when he had used it last. He’d only taken it the first three nights, when pain had been severe, and once he’d inadvertently spilled some. He couldn’t tell, but Veronal was here, labelled and available.
Oh, good God.
Bora sat on the bed. Closing his eyes, he could see fragmentary images of the mind pass like shreds through him, disconnected images that meant nothing. Women’s faces seemed to have more substance, the little gestures of their hands and lips were set in his memory with a kind of timeless perfection. The way Dikta closed her eyes before kissing him, and the light caught the sparkle of her lashes. Ewa’s gloves slipping off and off, baring her hands. The transformation Helenka had wrought before the mirror, from fair and youthful into a female god.
He felt dull and inexperienced before all of them. Almost afraid of the things women knew, and understood. Easily awed, easily undone. Helenka had said, “Men aren’t clever enough, or deep enough.”
It was true.
11 January
“I, too, have been reassigned, Father, and will be leaving Poland soon.”
“To better things, I hope?”
“To different things.”
The snow was almost knee-high in the cloister. Shrubs and flowerpots and the ring of the well bore a tall trim of white, lacy at the edges, perfectly gleaming in the sunlight. Bora cut a straight diagonal through the snow as he walked to the well, with Malecki following in the mashed trail. Looking upwards, Bora took in a blue dazzle of winter sky, pure and deep as if the true well were upwards, burrowing to immeasurable distances.
“I think the abbess was shot there.” He pointed to the deep shade of the cloister. “By the door, likely, or at a little distance from it. After the bullet struck her, she stumbled all the way here, where I saw her lie. At first I assumed she’d been shot out here because a prisoner told me he’d seen her lie in this spot earlier that day. But no, she was shot point-blank as she faced her murderer. Because of her bulky habit, blood was absorbed by the cloth at first, and did not leave traces as she staggered towards the well. Not that it makes much difference where in the cloister she was shot. Still, had the Cracow Police been allowed to investigate, we might have had all the details we needed to solve this long ago. But with the abbess’s body off-limits even to our army surgeon, and only my amateurish observations to guide us, we couldn’t even pinpoint the time of death.”
Malecki had joined Bora at the centre of the cloister, where the snow entrapping his legs soon made him envy the German’s boots. “Well, then, since we’re here, please give me the chain of events.”
“It’s soon done. On the afternoon of the 23rd of October, I drove Colonel Hofer to the convent. Whether or not he’d already met the abbess in the morning, he asked for an interview and was let inside shortly after four thirty. I needn’t remind you of the terrible state the colonel was in those days. A terrible state, anything could have made him snap. His sanity hung on what hope the abbess would give him regarding his son, and my suspicion is that she plainly told him he would die soon.”
“Which came to pass.”
“Yes. The colonel - I’m sure of it, working as closely with him as I did - could not accept such total severance of hope. Surely he would never intentionally kill her. He was in awe of the abbess, and probably afraid of her as well.” Shielding his eyes with his gloved hand, Bora looked across the square of dazzling snow. “When he heard her words, he became unhinged. He took his gun out, and either put it to his temple, or in his mouth, clearly about to fire.”
“And Mother Kazimierza intervened.”
“I don’t know. Somehow she doesn’t strike me as someone who would leap to wrest a weapon from a suicide. She certainly gestured towards him, imperiously, perhaps, and the gun went off. All I can think, Father Malecki, is that Hofer must have been petrified at the sight of what he’d done.” Bora kept his eyes on the steep eaves around the cloister, where icicles caught the sunlight and gave out diamond-like reflections. On the side facing south, entire layers of snow slid down the incline and hung suspended from the edge. Others had fallen off, and the roof steamed gently.
Malecki blew on his cold hands. “So it all happened in a matter of minutes. Seconds, maybe. And of course the tanks were rumbling down the street.”
“Yes. The lead tank had trouble turning the corner, so it backed up and revved its engine, while the others ran in idle. I wouldn’t have heard a bomb exploding behind me, and the same goes for the porter nun. My ears were still ringing after the road cleared and the colonel ran out of the convent in a panic.”
“Why didn’t you immediately suspect him, then?”
Bora shook his head. “Because until I stumbled upon the subject with Hannes, I assumed Colonel Hofer carried no weapon. As I’m sure you noticed, we all go about ostensibly armed. He didn’t. I believed he’d chosen t
o show a token of ‘respect’ towards an occupied country, or great self-assurance.”
“I see.” Malecki’s eyes ran down to Bora’s holster. “But what about the bullet? You yourself told me the murder bullet belongs to a Polish gun.”
“It’s true. It’s made for the Vis-35 Radom semi-automatic pistol. Like those that were hidden in this convent, which is why I was so furious when I first saw them. Except that those were still packed with grease, and obviously had never been fired.”
“Do you mean to tell me your commander carried an enemy gun?”
“No. I mean to tell you he used enemy cartridges.” Quickly, Bora unlatched his holster, showing to Malecki on the gloved palm the burnished bulk of his Walther. “This is not a fussy pistol like the Luger we had until last year, but it still won’t take just any cartridge.” He extracted the magazine, lined with slender brass-tipped cylinders. “I would not use Radom bullets in it: they’re longer, thicker, clunkier than these.”
“What, then?”
“Colonel Hofer - like Colonel Schenck, like myself - served in Spain as a volunteer a few years past. On the Church’s side, which should be a consolation to you. On the evening you and I dined together in the square, on the way to the restaurant my driver and I were chatting about the Spanish days when he mentioned that Hofer was still using the pistol he’d been issued in Cadiz. I couldn’t believe my ears. Right away, I asked whether he knew what make the gun was, and he said, ‘Astra,’ adding that Hofer carried it in an underarm holster because of its non-standard appearance.”
“And the Astra takes Radom cartridges.”
“Not only. The Astra 400 is an ugly blow-back pistol, but I fired it with all kinds of 9mm cartridges, from Parabellum to Steyr to Browning and Colt. It was through Hannes that I realized how at the very least, Hofer’s gun could have fired the fatal shot. Astra, I needn’t remind you, is Latin for ‘stars’ and ‘starlight’, so Lumen fits the bill after all.”