Kai-Uwe Frigge was annoyed when he surveyed the list. Once again Madeleine had forgotten what he had told her so many times now: on trips to hot countries he didn’t need airy and thin clothes, on the contrary; in warm countries especially he needed warm items. They could be light, absolutely, but they had to be warm, for example fine cashmere cardigans, and definitely some vests. The thing was, in meetings and at mealtimes you sat continuously in air-conditioned rooms where the temperature was turned down brutally low. Nowhere did you freeze as miserably as when you were with these desert sheikhs, where the cold was viewed as a luxury and luxury as a raison d’être. Unless you were walking the streets in Doha – but who does that, and why would you need to? – it was colder there than on a park bench in northern Finland.
He called Madeleine in and instructed her to redo the list. Forget all these linen and silk things, they’re fine for Strasbourg in summer, but never for Doha. Wool, cashmere, O.K.? Cardigans and vests. Cravat and scarf. And under miscellaneous please put charging lead for mobile and tablet, as well as shoe polish. So that Dubra remembers to pack them.
Madeleine nodded and went to the door.
Madeleine!
Yes, Monsieur?
Just one more thing. Please put the blue turban on the list too.
No.
Yes. You never know. At some point we just might have to – he coughed – step outside.
Kai-Uwe Frigge checked the time. Now he had to deal with the “pig’s ear”, as he called it.
Mateusz Oświecki wanted to pray before his flight. He had to compose himself. It tortured him that he had executed the wrong man.
In front of security he saw protesters handing out leaflets, a good dozen young men and women all wearing the same yellow T-shirt with a slogan on the chest he could not read. Three police officers stood uncertainly to one side, while a fourth policeman talked to one of the activists. Another was speaking into a radio.
Mateusz slackened his pace to work out what was going on, then speeded up, a passenger in a hurry, not wishing to miss his flight. With a show of impatience he tried to worm his way through, and was almost at the barrier when a protester stood in his way. Excuse me, Sir, may I . . . he didn’t respond and attempted to get past her. Do you speak English, Sir? Sir? He ignored her and steered his trolley past. Parlez-vous français? Volez-vous vers la Pologne? Are you going to Poland? Sir? It is important, een vraag, mijnheer . . . He bowed his head, noticed out of the corner of his eye that a policeman was looking over at him, and felt safe. This was almost comical – he was going to escape with the help of a policeman who would have to intervene if a passenger was being harassed. But Mateusz didn’t want it come to that, he had no desire to become embroiled in anything that would involve the police. The woman held out a flyer that showed the picture of a man; it looked like a mugshot. Was this a wanted poster? Mateusz placed his ticket on the reader of the gate, a red light came on, what was wrong? Sir, please, are you flying with Polish Airlines? Flight LO 236? We have some important information. He knew that it was pointless, that it would make everything more difficult to now say, Sorry, I’m in a hurry! For that would be a conversation opener, she would say she’d only take up a minute of his time, he would have to respond again . . . no, he put his ticket on the reader a second time and once more it lit up red. He rubbed it back and forth a few times – why the hell wasn’t it working? Finally the green light came on, the glass doors slid open and he was through. Mateusz joined the queue edging its way forwards to the baggage scanners. He saw a few people reading the flyer. Once through the scanner he looked for signs to the prayer room. He still had more than an hour until boarding. He pushed his trolley past the shops, moving ever quicker, and then he was already at the gates. Where was the airport chapel? He retraced his steps but couldn’t see any sign of one. He wanted to pray. After reading the last set of instructions he had received, Mateusz realised that he must have shot the wrong man. Finally he spotted a pictogram of a person kneeling in prayer, beside it an arrow pointing to a side corridor. There he saw the praying figure with the arrow again, pointing to some steps.
As he followed the arrows he was reminded of Saint Sebastian, whose chest was shot through with arrows. Only a few days previously, on January 20, the feast day of Sebastian – patron saint of soldiers and those who fought the enemies of the Church – he had beseeched him for protection and success in his Brussels mission. But something had gone wrong and he couldn’t work out what. The arrows led into a corridor monitored by video cameras. He continued on his way, head bowed, and wiped his brow with a handkerchief as if mopping away sweat, to prevent the cameras from capturing his face. He knew that he was being excessively cautious; these C.C.T.V. cameras were outdated. Was it snowing in here? Of course not. But the images from the cameras, which would be stored for the next forty-eight hours, were of such a low resolution that all they would show was a shadowy man apparently trudging through a blizzard. Pot plants on either side. Literally – they were hemp. But plastic. These were plastic hemp plants, no question. Who had dreamed up the idea of placing plastic hemp plants in the corridor to the chapels? And what could they have been thinking? Now he had arrived at the prayer rooms, one for every major religious community: Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic and Orthodox. All were empty, but more than that: they looked as if nobody had ever stepped into them before.
Mateusz felt a sharp pain when he entered the Catholic prayer room, an unbelievably ugly space. Unbelievable – more grotesqueness in a place of worship. Feeling an intense burning beneath his navel, he took a few steps forward, pushed away the trolley, removed the handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped away the sweat while the other hand pressed against his stomach. The trolley tipped over and made a crashing sound as Mateusz stood before Jesus Christ, the sweat-soaked cloth in his hand. The far end of the room was panelled with a few wooden slats on which the Crucified hung, but without a cross. As if the Son of God had been nailed to a fence rather than a crucifix. A spotlight on the ceiling shone a harsh white beam onto Jesus Christ, as if he were being forced to undergo a final interrogation after being nailed to the fence. In front of him was a small wooden altar, but it looked more like one of those radiograms that many Poles had brought back from visits to the West in the late 1970s, and which until the fall of Communism had pride of place in Polish living rooms as a permanent memento of much-longed-for modernity. On the side wall hung a triptych, oil on canvas, a piece that dithered strangely between the abstract and the figurative. In the left-hand picture he could make out a setting sun, or at least a red ball dropping onto a crowd of people or hovering above them. The people could be cardinals in purple robes, but then again they might not be cardinals at all, just reflections of the red setting sun, or flames, or plants. The centre panel depicted something that looked like a skewered U.F.O., but it might just as easily be a waste incineration plant. The picture on the right was the clearest: a pool of blood beneath a blazing white light and a white cross standing out against it. Beside the cross were the words: “UBI LUX IBI BLUT ”. He knew Latin, he had learned it in the seminary, of course, but he couldn’t understand this. What did “BLUT ” mean? What sort of a word was it? “Where there is light, there is . . .” He went closer to see whether he had misread it, then tried to decipher this mysterious word: “BLUT ”. Only now did he see that it was probably, no, definitely “DEUS”, painted so feebly and unclearly as if it were trying to retreat into the background shadows of the image. Beside the triptych stood two large carved wooden figures that reminded him of shepherd boys from a nativity scene, and even more of seminary pupils in nightshirts.
Mateusz had stood there in his nightshirt, bare-footed on the cold stone floor. This was called “composure”, when after evening prayers a pupil was ordered to stand to attention in the cloister, beside the statue of the saint assigned to him, looking down into the inner courtyard and up at the starry sky, to think about the “three questions”. Then they would be summoned
by the Pater Prior to give their answers, sometimes after two or three hours, sometimes not until the following day, before morning prayers. How great is the doubt in the strength of your belief? How certain are you that you can overcome this doubt? By which deeds will you prove the strength of your belief?
When he felt the cold smoothness of the stone beneath the soles of his feet, Mateusz had been struck by a peculiar tingling, not just general excitement or fear, but arousal, a sexual or erotic energy, as he felt the cold rising up from his feet, stiffening his muscles, his tissues, while at the same time the smooth surface of the stone felt like the skin of a body, a skin on marble, a saint’s skin, a mother-of-God’s skin, which he was caressing, snuggling up to, with which he was fusing. He had been forced to stand next to the figure of Saint Sebastian, not knowing whether it was coincidence or a carefully considered decision by the Pater Prior to make him undertake his composure here.
Mateusz had sought the conversation with the Pater, not because he doubted his belief, but because he harboured doubts as to how he was going to live out his belief. He was ready for the struggle, but he wished to bring a son into the world like his father and grandfather before they had embarked on the struggle.
You want your name to live on? Your blood? Something of you? When you die you will live for ever, but you want to go on living here on earth?
Mateusz had now become Ryszard again and was unable to give an answer.
Composure. He had been found before morning prayers sprawled in the passageway, as if he’d been trying to make as much skin contact with the stone as possible. He was seriously hypothermic and ran a high temperature for days. Afterwards he answered the three questions. Most convincingly and to the prior’s satisfaction. But he couldn’t stay at the seminary.
The burning pain. Mateusz turned away from the nativity figures and looked around. He had intended to pray, but he couldn’t do it here. He put a hand on his diaphragm, groaned and wiped the sweat from his brow. There wasn’t much time left. He breathed in deeply, then out, left the chapel and went to the gate.
The original plan was to fly back to Warsaw after completing his mission. But overnight an envelope had arrived for him at the hotel, which he was handed by reception in the morning. Inside he found a plane ticket to Istanbul as well as the confirmation of a reservation at an Istanbul hotel. Mateusz knew this wasn’t a new assignment, it couldn’t be. Each new mission opened with a dossier about the target, and was planned and prepared down to the minutest detail. And no soldier had ever been given a new assignment only a day after completing another. The return to base afterwards was just as crucial for the security of any operation as the meticulous planning beforehand. The only explanation he could muster was that the target had slipped away to Istanbul, but this also meant that he had shot the wrong man. Or it was a trap. If they wanted to get rid of him, then this was the simplest way: he had sworn unconditional obedience. An animal needed to be lured into a trap. A soldier just had to be given his marching orders to walk into one.
Something about it wasn’t right. They had specialists for operations outside the Schengen Zone. Although Mateusz had confidence in his passport, which he was certain had been forged to perfection, controls at the Schengen border were stricter and he didn’t want to have to rely on his passport passing this test too.
When he arrived at the airport he had tried to check in with his original ticket to Warsaw, but the woman at the counter told him that the booking had been cancelled.
No.
Yes. You’re no longer on the passenger list, Monsieur. You cancelled yesterday evening.
It must be a misunderstanding! I want that flight.
I’m sorry, but I cannot issue you with a boarding card. You no longer have a ticket for this flight.
But I paid!
The woman typed something into her computer, looked, typed, looked and said, The price of the ticket minus the cancellation fee has been recredited to your credit card.
My credit card? I don’t have credit . . . fine! I want new ticket. I buy new ticket.
I’m terribly sorry, Monsieur, but the flight is fully booked.
But I must go back to Poland. Today.
Are you Polish, Monsieur? We can speak Polish too, drogi Panie. My father’s Polish. He came to Brussels as a plumber. Met my mother here. We’ll find a solution. Gdy zaleje woda, trzeba wymienić rurę.
There was one seat on the flight to Kraków in two hours’ time. Or there was a flight to Frankfurt an hour later with a connection to Warsaw. He took the Kraków flight; he wanted to get back to Poland as quickly as possible.
And thus it was that he found himself on the same plane as Martin Susman. But what significance do interrelationships, entanglements and connections have if those concerned know nothing of them?
Martin Susman was kicking himself for his crackpot idea of putting on his warm underwear for the journey so he wouldn’t freeze when he got to Kraków. He was already sweating like a pig on the taxi journey to the airport. Unsurprisingly the taxi was heated, overheated probably, and in his rabbit fur he felt feverish. Why did people say “sweat like a pig”? As the son of a pig farmer he knew, of course, that pigs didn’t sweat, they couldn’t perspire through their skin. As a child he had come out with this phrase once. Why? Because it was what people said. His father had put him right. Pigs don’t sweat. And you don’t have to do everything other people do; if other people talk nonsense you don’t have to talk nonsense too!
But why do people say it?
Because a lot of people have a problem with blood. In the past, when pigs used to be slaughtered at home and they saw how profusely the creatures bled, they called the blood sweat. It’s a euphemism, do you see? It doesn’t sound so bad. In the German-speaking world hunters still refer to animal blood as sweat, and the dog that seeks and captures a shot and bleeding creature is called a “sweat-dog”, whereas in English they say bloodhound.
But we say blood sausage, not “sweat sausage”.
That’s enough, his father had said. Go inside and help your mother!
Susman hadn’t used this cliché since that day, but now all of a sudden, in the taxi to the airport, it was back in his head, alongside the memory that it actually referred to blood, bloodshed, streams of blood, a bloodbath.
By the time he arrived at the airport Martin Susman had used an entire packet of tissues to soak up the sweat, and when he got out of the taxi he had a clump of them in his hand. With no tissues left he wiped his face with his sleeve, but it was hopeless: he sweated and sweated. Blood. He went to look for more tissues, he wandered back and forth, which just made him sweat more. In the end he decided to go straight to the gate, as slowly as possible, and take a seat there. Maybe if he wasn’t moving he’d stop sweating. He was furious with himself; he ought to have realised that it was completely absurd to wear the underwear unless it was freezing cold. He would be picked up from the airport at Kraków, taken in a heated taxi to a heated hotel, where he’d be able to change. He could have put on the underwear there, before the drive to the camp, but now it was doubtful whether the sweat-drenched items would dry in time. They would probably be drying in his room while he was at the mercy of the vicious cold in the camp, underwear-less.
His blood was boiling. He was thirty-eight years of age and still incapable of dressing himself appropriately for a given situation and its demands. The term “life skills” came to mind – how often had he heard this! That child lacks life skills! No life skills! Thank goodness we have Florian too!
From “life skills” it wasn’t a huge leap to “will to live”. He knew, or thought he did, how they were related. They are inseparable. They spur each other on or bring each other down. In individuals, in families and social groups, in entire societies. He was lucky. His lack of life skills didn’t result in a rapid end to his life; his will to live might break, but he was able to go through life broken for lengthy periods. Martin did, however, feel anxious when those life coaches kept p
opping up in the media, bandying about their platitudes: “You need to be able to let go”, “You have to learn to unwind”. . . They didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. You could see this from the four archaeological layers in excavations – it was always possible to put a precise date on when it had begun, the letting go, the unwinding, the death preached by life coaches. The third layer.
Right by the entrance to the queue for security he was presented with a bizarre and baffling scene. Amongst the stream of passengers there appeared to be two teams facing each other, one wearing yellow, the other in blue. Was this a game, a competition? Not a game, but definitely a competition of some sort. A young woman in yellow spoke to him: Excuse me, Sir, are you flying to Poland?
Yes, he said. As she looked at him he felt embarrassed. What must she think as she noticed his wet face and red eyes? She smiled and went on talking quickly. She was an activist from the human rights organisation Stop Deportation and . . .
I’m sorry?
Stop Deportation, she said, pointing to the slogan on her T-shirt.
NO BORDER
NO NATION
STOP DEPORTATION
We’re here because there’s a man about to be deported, he . . .
Now someone from the blue team came over, a policeman, and said, “Is this woman harassing you, Sir? Just for your information, this protest has been officially registered and approved, but we can terminate it if passengers feel harassed.
No, no, Martin Susman said, it’s O.K., it’s O.K. I’m not being harassed.
He wiped the sweat from his brow into his hair several times.
The policeman nodded, moved away and spoke to another passenger who’d been drawn into conversation by an activist.
Susman learned that the man due to be deported was a Chechen who had been persecuted and tortured in his own country. He’d arrived in the E.U. via Poland. Now he was due to be sent back to Poland, from where they would extradite him to Russia. The authorities considered Russia to be a safe country for Chechens. That was pure cynicism. There was plenty of evidence to suggest that Chechens deported to Russia had disappeared into torture chambers. The woman gave him a flyer. That’s the man, she said, Aslan Akhmatov. He’s traumatised and faces further torture and death. This is a human rights scandal, Monsieur, don’t you agree? Here it says what you can do as a passenger to prevent the deportation if you see this man on the plane. Demand to speak to the pilot and ask him to abort the deportation for humanitarian reasons and for reasons of aviation security. He has authority on board, he can refuse to transport passengers who are flying against their will.
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