A Family Madness

by Thomas Keneally

  She wasn’t any fool, he would later tell himself. The “yet” was a dead giveaway, as good as a promise. It was not quite ecstasy up there on the rock platform. It was not intended by Gina for that purpose. It was the meat, bread, and greens of love, meant to build the boy up after too long a time on an alien and overrich diet. It was a negotiation. It made ordinary life more or less possible again.

  On the way down the headland she said, “I’m sorry for broadcasting the Hawaiian business to my family.”

  The remaining shame of that old misdemeanor crackled across his skin like a failure of warmth. From now on, Mrs. Terracetti would always look at him sideways.

  “I don’t go around bumping everyone I meet, you know,” he told her, squirming through the powder sand, laden with the basket. “I smoked pot. That brought it on.”

  “I’ll buy some straightaway,” said Gina solemnly.

  “Gay Mansfield wanted me to try her on, and Steve wanted a crack at you. And I knocked them back.”

  “Ah,” said Gina, “that’s why she told me.”

  “She told you?”

  “She took me aside after the last Cronulla game and said she figured I ought to know. ‘You can’t forgive what you don’t know,’ she told me.”

  Gina winked across Pittwater, as if at the pilot of a seaplane which was just rising from the green water. “You shouldn’t have knocked Steve back without telling me,” she said. “He isn’t a bad-looking fellow.”

  Delaney reached the car and rid himself of the burden of the basket. “You know I’ll have to see Danielle one more time.

  That made Gina solemn. “I suppose so,” she said in the end.

  39

  FROM THE JOURNALS OF STANISLAW KABBELSKI, CHIEF OF POLICE, STAROVICHE. June 20, 1944

  First session of Belorussian Central Congress, under Czech cut-glass chandeliers of Minsk Opera. As humiliating as I feared. Oberführer Riese on the gavel. They sit on our faces! Parallels the trouble I have had, being permitted by von Gottberg’s people and by lean Kappeler to draft plans to take the countryside back, but being allowed to execute nothing. Am able through my standing as chief of police, Staroviche province, to experiment in my own garden, as it were. Against the tide, terrorist incursions in villages and railway yards in Staroviche province fallen since Easter!

  Know Ostrowsky had to submit his speech to von Gottberg’s office and that Redich and his papally connected crowd go round muttering that he should have refused. Saw Redich at lunchtime. Explained how Ostrowsky can’t win on the matter—has to establish Belorussian Republic before Germans leave Minsk (if, of course, they do). If central government isn’t established before Russians come there can be no official government-in-exile; no government to offer the Americans, British, French; no government to return to Belorussia with these potent Allies as they turn against the genuine enemy.

  “And,” asks Redich, stating the old problem, “are the Americans likely to respect a head of state who in the Minsk Opera House pledges eternal dedication to Hitler?”

  “They’ll know he had to, that that was written for him. They’re realists.”

  A consummate conspirator, Redich stooped in front of me and whispered, “A pincer movement is coming in on Vitebsk. Likewise Zhlobin. We should hear the gunfire by tomorrow. German intelligence says the Russian forces are highly mechanized now with vehicles supplied by dear old Henry Ford and the cripple Roosevelt. You see, that alliance is stronger than some people think.”

  Afternoon session, Ostrowsky showed true political style, got Kappeler and Riese on wrong foot to my considerable delight. He rose and made speech of his own, saying that the Central Council had now finished all it could do within the limits of power permitted it by General von Gottberg. Therefore intended to resign and call on the convention, the thousand patriots sitting in Opera stalls, to elect new president.

  Riese jumped like a shot rabbit, knew that Ostrowsky’s resignation would reduce the convention to factional chaos and von-Gottberg would blame him for letting it get out of hand. He ran to Kappeler and began muttering in his ear like a penitent. Uproar of conversation in body of theater. Ostrowsky went serenely back to his seat beside old Stanek Stankievich in the front row of stalls, only a few meters from where I sat in aisle seat second row. I was placed, because of seat on aisle, to rise and walk solemnly round front of stalls and publicly urge Ostrowsky not to abandon us to the factions, but felt that he might not want me to do that. He looked like a man in good control of things. Saw him nod and smile moderately at something old Stanek said. Saw also Redich leaning over to speak in ear of Abramtchik, head of papal gang. Abramtchik hands clasped, imperceptibly waving an index finger. No, he was saying, no, we don’t have numbers. To my surprise, he rose, climbed the stairs to the stage, whispered briefly to Kappeler and Riese, and while Oberführer Riese punished the table with his gavel, came to the microphone. Had to admire him. He too, like Ostrowsky, acting on political instinct. It was unthinkable, he said, that the father of the Belorussian Central Council should now, as a Belorussian Republic appeared to be a possibility, remove himself from the leadership. He understood what pains and stresses had operated on this great patriot during the past six months, but he urged him to take the burden on his shoulders once more. He called on the delegates to elect Ostrowsky president of the convention by acclamation.

  The acclamation was enormous. Delegates climbed on their chairs and wept and shouted, reached toward Ostrowsky as if they wanted him to cure them of blindness. Part of their ecstasy was their knowledge that Ostrowsky had demonstrated to the Germans how absolutely they needed him if they were to hold or, at the worst, ultimately return to Belorussia.

  Riese tried to get control back by chiding delegates for forgetting to send loyal greetings on occasion of Herr Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday last April. Amid gales of laughter and the singing of birthday songs, greetings were moved and carried. In the afternoon, we began to form committees. At one end ballet rehearsal room, I chaired or more exactly briefed an informed relocation and security committee on draft plans. At four o’clock heard the first thunder from beyond the Beresina, but such was our absorption in our work and such the general noisiness of Minsk that we did not at first recognize it for what it was.

  Tonight late summoned to Ostrowsky’s suite. Since Danielle and children moved up here he has the courtesy not to drop in at an hour which might disturb their sleep. Conditions at the Europa already bad enough. Delegates are three to a room and rowdy. Not content to drink, shout, play cards behind closed doors, they leave the doors open, maybe hoping that the racket and the sight of their tumbled bed linen will attract other roisterers in. Worse still, if they want to sing they come into corridors to do it. No riot from Ostrowsky’s suite though, and door closed. Knocked, and admitted by one of Ostrowsky’s secretaries, wearing the new uniform of Defense Force, very like the SS uniform but the red double-barred cross on the collar. That another cause for complaint: that SS will when it suits them try to subsume the Bela Rus Defense Force straight into their ranks.

  Two of my fellow cabinet ministers asleep on camp cots in one corner of large reception room. Wall bracket lights on above them. Their faces have a yellow stain of exhaustion. Across the room Ostrowsky at large desk with doughty Franz Kushel, chief of our forces, a man who’s impressed me in past months with his moral strength. A number of maps wide as carpets on the desk, uppermost a map of the city. The aide went to Ostrowsky and told him I was there. Ostrowsky signaled me over without taking his eyes off the map. “Thank you for coming, Kabbelski,” he said when I reached the table. “Grievous business. Russians threatening the Minsk-Moscow highway. General Tippelskirch’s Fourth Army in danger of encirclement. Franz here tells me Wehrmacht wants to blow everything—the cathedrals and the Bernardine monastery, the Town Hall and the Belorussian Library, the Natural History Museum, the Opera House, the lot.”

  Kushel smiled. “They want to deny the Soviets culture as well as installations.”

/>   Ostrowsky covered his eyes with a hand, said to Kushel, “Want you to make it clear to General Busch’s office” (Busch has just taken over Army Group Center) “Belorussian Central Council will not let its troops be used for destroying cultural treasures.” He handed Kushel a sheet of paper. “That’s what I’ll tolerate—the armory, the Svichloch bridges, the radio station, the airport control towers, the power stations, the fuel storage depots, and the railway yards. We will not declare war on our past.”

  The forthright Kushel waved the sheet of paper Ostrowsky had signed. “It’s important for me to have this,” he said simply. Ostrowsky smiled thinly at him. “Remind them that even if we go we’re all coming back,” he advised.

  “Some of them don’t believe it,” said Kushel. He rose, looked at me, smiling absently, then switched the smile off and looked away. If all this meant some sort of embarrassment it is first time I ever saw him show any. “I’ll use the telephone in the bedroom and make an appointment for early morning.” He left without saying anything further.

  Aware, since we had worked together in adjoining offices in Town Hall for past two months, of his unusual constraint tonight. Told myself however that with exhaustion, the Soviets, the partisans, the Germans, and the carousers in the corridors, there were plentiful reasons to explain it.

  Ostrowsky looked at me. A bleak face, but it always has been. Lincolnesque. The mask for a soul who has never known a moment’s rest.

  “Stanek, I have something very grave to ask you to do. You are the most junior of my ministers. This afternoon’s election by acclamation was not merely a vote for me, but a vote for Belorussian unity. It means that the Western faction—what I’ve heard called the papal gang—have accepted my leadership in a manner which they cannot in the future deny or revoke. But as you can understand, Abramtchik and his aides did not support me for no price at all. They want their faction represented at all levels of the cabinet. This has forced on me the sad necessity to adjust the cabinet I would have wanted. I have to ask you, Kabbelski, to resign as Minister for Relocation.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him that this was a portfolio to which I was dedicated not merely as some opportunist politican might be but with my Belorussian fiber and with all my desire to make Belorussia safe for the Genias and the Radeks to walk abroad. But shock had slowed me and he spoke first.

  “Stanek, the Soviets are about to retake Belorussia. Busch had these plans for making Minsk a fortress but it was never realistic. The panzers are finished. It was in the front of the Third Panzer Army, the champions in 1940 and 1941, that the hole was knocked, the salient which jeopardizes Tippelskirch. It could be a year or even two before we return in the wake of the twentieth century’s final cataclysm. Your title has no meaning until we do return. For that reason I ask you to surrender it to one of Abramtchik’s faction and to take the relatively minor post of Minister Assistant to myself and Deputy Minister of Justice.”

  I knew there was no one else for this task of mine. Only way I could hold out hope to Danielle of a return to Belorussia—a return in which she could take her easel wherever it suited her—was in my capacity as Minister for Relocation. She would trust a Belorussia in which I held such an authority. She could trust no other. From childhood she had dreaded the status of refugee. Now she was faced with it again and without any guarantees. All I could provide her with was Minister assisting the President. And that was not enough. While I hold present post, can guarantee her the villages and the forests. Now Ostrowsky wants to pass them over, for reasons of factional convenience, to someone else. But did not have the gift to express all this to someone as austere—a genuine political monk—as Ostrowsky.

  “President Ostrowsky, I have drafted the relocation plans and drawn up a scheme of administration. Am I to see them brutalized by someone else? Or someone else claiming them as his own?”

  Ostrowsky sighed. “Stanek, vanity at a time like this!”

  “Not vanity, Mr. President. I belong to this project body and soul.”

  “We could call it the Kabbelski plan if that would make the pill easier to swallow. It is normal in cabinet government, Stanek, for a new minister to inherit his predecessor’s plans and to go on with them or not. Besides that, as I said, we will be very lucky indeed to implement any policy in the near future; we will be very fortunate indeed if Minsk is held and our cabinet positions become more than mere names.”

  I buried my face in my hands. Ostrowsky is very perceptive and could sense what the gesture meant. “You and your family will be evacuated in good time. I have von Gottberg’s word.”

  I smiled so that he would know I was not being self-indulgent. “If it weren’t for Danielle, I’d just as soon join one of the better Defense Force battalions and make a stand.”

  “I’m not going to throw Defense Force battalions away on romantic stands. Kushel’s division, made up of all our 20,000 policemen, will retreat with the SS and the Wehrmacht. And you—do you think we can afford to lose you?”

  “Only from a specific job,” I said. “Is it the case, Mr. President Ostrowsky, that Abramtchik approached you before your election today and offered support in return for senior places for his hacks?” Because my impression was Abramtchik was taken by total surprise!

  “He approached me afterwards.”

  Thought about that. “What could he offer? He’d already been maneuvered into supporting you. Sir, it seems to me bad business to pay afterwards for a favor which has already been freely done.”

  Ostrowsky smiled wanly down on the vast map of Minsk, the various colors of cathedrals and sewers, squares and generating stations. “He offered me continued support. You don’t have to be told. Abramtchik built up a powerful Belorussian support in Paris between the wars but does not have the influence with the SS that we enjoy. As well there is the fact that his brother is a NKVD official and that Mikolai himself was a Communist in his boyhood. Some delegates here will tell you that Abramtchik himself is a Soviet plant. All these questions have the power to tear us apart when we need a show of unity to present to the Allies. What if we reach the West and are negotiating with the Americans, being taken seriously by them, when unresolved factionalism causes the papal gang to found an alternative Belorussian government. It will be recognized by French intelligence and by the Vatican, and the Americans and British will become confused in their attitude and fail to recognize us. It is prodigiously important, Stanek, that that should not happen. To prevent it, I am willing to make a substantial gesture. The substantial gesture is your position in the cabinet. They know you’re like a brother—that this is therefore no easy accommodation for me to make.”

  “They tried to lobby me, but I was loyal.”

  “For that I thank you. But in cabinet matters, Stanek, loyalty must be its own reward. By appointing you Deputy Minister of Justice under myself, I shall make you unofficially my cabinet aide, a position from which I can credibly promote you in future.”

  “Which of his faction is to inherit my plan?”

  “We should know by tomorrow. Resign please, Stanek, so that they can never say you were dismissed.”

  Found myself wishing I could yield, but the plan too intimate to me—as I’d warned him. Also felt that I needed to resist, not to go voluntarily—otherwise could not work out pattern of future alliances or bear the diminished luster Ostrowsky now held for me.

  Gasping for air, told him, “I regret you will have to dismiss me, President Ostrowsky.”

  Which he regretfully but immediately did.

  Found out before morning session Redich to take over the Relocation Ministry. Feel that in my political landscape all the signposts have been reversed.

  40

  Delaney called Uncle after nine at night, an hour when Danielle should have been there alone reading a novel, the yellow codes of all the clients glowing on the computer screen by her elbow. Warwick answered however.

  “You’re not making an offer for the business, Terry?”

&nbs
p; “Not unless it comes with a stock of explosives,” said Delaney.

  “You’re what they call a droll bugger,” Warwick told him. Warwick seemed to be laughing.

  Delaney asked to speak to Danielle.

  “No,” said Warwick. “She wouldn’t want you to. What can you do, Delaney? Meet in a parking lot for a last embrace? She’s got too much dignity.”

  “Put her on, Warwick. If that’s what she says, then—”

  But Warwick refused. In the living room Gina pretended to watch an American comedy about a boutique whose owner, a bright-eyed anorexic girl, was in love with a weight-lifting fruiterer. At least it was meant to be a comedy, but when love was threatened everyone grew earnest in that awesome American way, and earnestness prevailed and, because everyone on the screen expected it to, healed all. Gina expected nothing from earnestness, but for the sake of her pride she needed to pretend an interest in the comic-strip love affair. Delaney wondered what women did in these circumstances before the television age. Read the classified ads, pretended a deadly serious interest in Births and Deaths, Furniture for Sale, Houses and Land/North Shore Line, Machinists Wanted.

  “Put her on,” Delaney insisted, knowing that a sort of decency demanded that, yet already pleased at the idea of Warwick and Danielle graciously saving him the pain of hearing the voice of his sole desire.