The National Treasure

by William P Wood

  “We’ll keep an eye on him,” Lidia said, cutting carrots and bringing plates of cold meat from the icebox. “He’s got to keep treating your friend.”

  The rest of the morning, Janusz only saw in bright shards, like an animate mosaic. He was all reaction and twitch response, without stimulus of his own. He ate whatever was given to him, participated in setting up shifts for them to watch over Peszek during his medical crisis. They concocted a tale about the farmer Rybak and his daughter, forced to flee, coming to rest here and being taken on to help with the large property since Mrs Rogalski’s husband was unaccounted for in the fighting and her servants had taken leave without warning. This was for Henselt’s benefit when he came by again, as Lidia was sure he would continue to do.

  What to do about Peszek was more difficult. The source of his injury would be patently clear to Henselt and probably so would his occupation without much investigation. They decided to hide Peszek in the attic, if there was enough time before Henselt showed up. “He’ll call first,” Lidia insisted, as Janusz and Gabriela ate sloppily and drank even more sloppily, beer for him, a pitcher of water for her. When Gabriela unexpectedly belched, she blushed beneath her freckles and shook her head in mortification. Lidia tried to belch too, lessening her embarrassment, but only made choking sounds that caused Gabriela to giggle and Janusz to snort a mouthful of smoked fish. They all laughed. Then back to the dangerous business ahead.

  “Why’s Henselt going to call instead of pounding on your door with a rifle butt?” Janusz asked. “He’s in charge here.”

  “Trust me. He imagines it would be bad manners to barge in now. The first time he was conquering the country. From now on, he’s trying to seduce me.”

  “He can have the country,” Janusz managed to declare, waving a chicken bone like a baton, “but he can’t have you.”

  “In any case, he isn’t going to come here like I’m the enemy. He’s not going to search my house. That would be bad manners, too. It’s a risk, but I think your friend is safe where he is. We don’t have to move him around, just make sure he stays quiet.”

  “What do you think?” Janusz blearily thought he asked Gabriela.

  Her face was drawn but alert. She started gathering up the dishes and silverware without any instruction, carrying them to the wash basin-sized sink. “I’ll sit at the door inside his room with my rifle.”

  “You’re going to shoot Major Henselt?”

  “Yes, I will,” she said, sudsing the dishes, her back to Lidia and Janusz, and neither of them doubted she would do exactly that.

  The last chore before Lidia half-carried him upstairs to a bedroom next to the master bedroom, was to remind him that there was another potential trap to navigate in the morning. Farmer Rybak, newcomer in the town, had to register with the occupation authority. There was no way to avoid it. “Don’t shave, Janusz. You’re someone else with that scruffy rug on your face. I’ll see if there’s anything else we can do to make you look different.”

  “I am different now,” he said, sparking with restless but definitely limited energy. I have been crushed and poured from the crucible, he thought, remade into someone new.

  “You have to look different. One of these sophisticated officers may have seen you at a concert or party. Daniel recognised you.”

  Too much to think about, Janusz concluded, falling back into the embrace of a soft, comfortable bed and its irresistible thick silken covers. He made a fumbling reach for Lidia, but she easily avoided him, and he lay inert as she took off his shoes, opened his shirt and the farmer’s unwashed corduroy trousers. He tried to say he wanted to hold her, but words and actions were beyond his abilities at that moment and Lidia finished putting him to bed by closing the yellow pastel curtains at the windows.

  He slept heavily, dreamlessly, for hours and when he opened his eyes, the bedroom was still and very dark, chairs and tables only outlined in a faint radiance that seemed to Janusz to come from a long-distant dying star.

  Sounds, though, were starting and reverberating in his mind as if already being played. He had to get them down on paper, but didn’t feel any urgency that the sounds would vanish if he didn’t do it right away. He was tranquil, untroubled. The music had returned and would be there whenever he chose to capture it.

  Right now, though, he got out of bed, stretching extravagantly like he could reach the moon. Then he stripped off his shirt and trousers and the much-abused crusty socks, and left them in the middle of the floor. He had a purpose that did need to be quieted immediately.

  He gently opened the bedroom door and went the short distance down the hallway to the master bedroom, hand on the doorknob with a sliver of apprehension that it might be locked, but it turned easily and soundlessly and he stepped inside. Lidia lay on the pale covers of the large bed, the canary silken pillows behind her glowing in that same spectral radiance. She was naked.

  “I was about to come and get you,” she said, half-sitting up.

  Janusz went to her and sometime later the frightening, lunatic day ended in stillness.

  The Fifth Day

  Twenty-Four

  “Name?”

  “Rybak.”

  “First name?”

  “Oh, Ignace.”

  “Like Paderewski? You play the piano too, Rybak?”

  Janusz froze. What in the world had prompted him to pick the name of the most famous pianist in the country? Gabriela hadn’t told him Rybak’s first name, ever. In the midst of everything else that was going on, he had never thought about it, but of course everyone had a first and last name. The young officer sitting at the table with a rank of rubber stamps, typewriter, file cards, pen poised over the form he was filling out, grinned at the implausibility of the suggestion. After all, Rybak was haggard, unshaven, correctly deferential, eyes down on his worn shoes, his clothes hanging on him like they were meant for another man. Which they were, Janusz thought.

  The officer’s grin snapped off. There was a shuffling, malodorous line of men and women behind this Rybak to deal with. No time for joking around. “Never mind. You don’t even look like a piano mover. Age?”

  “Forty-two.”

  Occupation?”

  “Farmer, sir.”

  Lidia stood at his side, fashionable in a belted, pencil-thin, pearl grey outfit, light fur jacket and gold brooch. She was cool and even slightly impatient, glancing at her watch, sighing, the indisputable image of a woman who had someone very important interested in her and who therefore didn’t have to suffer delays, harassment, threats that the rest of the herd in line which stretched out of the municipal building into the street had to endure. Telephones clamoured, efficient young officers bustled with papers, typewriters clacked away as the newly installed machinery of military occupation came to terrible, vibrant life. Janusz was petrified in the middle of this malevolent activity, like he was trying to hold himself together while venomous snakes rattled and writhed at his feet. How did Lidia manage such a poised performance? Especially when she had confessed when they drove into town that she was terrified.

  Janusz didn’t hear a hint of terror in her impatient question to the fresh-faced officer. “He’s working for me. A handyman and groundskeeper. He and his little daughter are staying in my garage. I’ve told Major Henselt.”

  “I understand,” the officer said politely. She had brusquely thrust the buff-coloured magic document in front of him earlier, which propelled them to the front of the line. “But he has to register. The minor child does not.”

  “Could you hurry, please? We have a lot to do and I’m seeing Major Henselt. I don’t want to keep him waiting.”

  None of the invocations of his superior’s name intimidated the young officer, who after all, was also conqueror if only a clerk. He finished scratching on the form, stamped another one with machinelike precision and said, “Here’s a temporary identification paper, Rybak. You’ll have to check in here every fortnight. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir, of course,”
Janusz said with genuine relief, although he felt the need to polish his performance with a bit of business he had seen done by a singer playing one of the villagers in Cavalleria Rusticana. He casually tapped his finger along the edge of his nose, which was supposed to connote rustic wisdom or cunning or maybe simply an itch. The young officer didn’t notice.

  Lidia allowed the young officer a brief nod, the eyes of the rest of the waiting people enviously on her and Janusz. Was it something other than envy, he wondered? Fear? Hatred? After a career pursuing approval and favour, Janusz felt discomfited, even under these circumstances, at the idea people would loathe him, much less loathe Lidia. He couldn’t very well announce who he was, and walking a few discreet servile steps behind her, he couldn’t say anything to her either. He had spent so much of his life seeking to be recognised, it was disorienting trying to avoid it. Staying in character was harder than he imagined and he would have to revise his dismissive appraisal of most opera singers.

  As if on cue, another young officer loped up them. “I’ll escort you to Major Henselt,” he said, coming to attention.

  Lidia fumbled for the merest flash, then said coolly. “Thank you. I’ll follow you.” She said to Janusz peremptorily, “Wait for me over there,” pointing to a worn wooden bench beside the front entrance. Several morose people were crowded onto it. Lidia and the officer disappeared into the depths of the lair.

  Janusz watched them go, irrational panic flaring. Relax. This was expected. She had arranged to see Henselt, stay in his good graces; the pretext was to get fodder for the mare and cows. Even so, Janusz wanted to call out or protest. Yet, all he could do was scrunch to the far end of the bench, alongside a slatternly woman with a huge nose, her head thickly bound in layers of cloth for warmth or protection. She grunted in annoyance as he felt his leg pressed against her bony knee. “Don’t intrude!” she hissed at him.

  Janusz affected an empty expression, hands clasped in his lap while around them the whirring bureaucratic machine spun faster, the line inched ahead, and every so often a man or woman was grabbed from it and pushed to a separate pile of people growing near the back of the room, an armed soldier guarding them. That doesn’t look good, he thought. He tried not to glance at the enormous ornately carved old clock on the wall, which had probably once in the not-distant past tolled for town celebrations and weddings in this room. He pictured jolly beribboned mayors taking their oaths of office before applauding townspeople. Perhaps the old clock was broken because when he did inadvertently glance at it, time seemed to be moving with impossible slowness.

  He would not think anxious thoughts about Lidia and where she was. He would and did think about last night and this morning and how having a simple breakfast with her was the summit of happiness.

  Every so often the bony woman squirmed and hissed at him, her sharp knees and hip jabbing. He stared ahead with a vacant smile. What was Lidia doing? What was Henselt doing? His imagination was rancid with fears and visions.

  He noticed small changes. The young officer who had registered him was relieved by another officer, the line inched ahead. The clock did not move. Then, the bony woman got up and hissed at him a final time, and a pomaded older man squeezed into the momentarily empty space. He too stared ahead like Janusz.

  Janusz wondered if he could somehow get up and with cringing docility inquire from the officer at the table where the elegant lady seeing Major Henselt was? No. Can’t draw any attention. Just sit. Listen to the melody suddenly unspooling in his head, without prompting, taking him someplace else.

  He was preoccupied with his inner orchestra’s playing when two soldiers with rifles, one holding a wrinkled paper, shambled in and snapped hoarse imperatives and the herd of men and women who had been gathered in the corner of the large room, were formed up and pressed toward the entrance. Janusz came back to where he was when he felt a gloved hand pushing him, and then he realised with a sickening start, that the two soldiers were adding him and half of the people on the bench to the herd they had assembled. He was on his feet, shoved roughly and the herd reluctantly, with a slight moan, headed out of the building.

  Janusz said, “Excuse me, I’m waiting for someone with Major Henselt”, to the soldier walking a little ahead of him. The soldier barely turned, using his rifle butt as a ram and hit Janusz in the side, not hard enough to make him double up or stop, but painful enough for him to feel the shock and threat.

  Well, so much for civil protest. So much for any resistance. The herd of men and women moved with bovine simplicity as the two soldiers directed, across the town square, where people in the street or the sidewalks stopped and stared for a second, then averted their eyes, past an open lot to two long concrete and corrugated iron-roofed buildings, the men split off from the women into one building.

  At the metal door, Janusz said, “Please, I’m waiting for someone with Major Henselt. They’ll be worried,” and then the soldier coughed, and put a hand on his chest and pushed very hard so Janusz staggered comically back into the building and sprawled onto the cold concrete floor. The metal door clanged and was bolted shut.

  He awkwardly got to his feet, furious and ashamed. He couldn’t remember when he had been physically assaulted. As a boy? Mickhal laughing and good-naturedly pushing him around? At school, one of the unpleasant tangles of bodies where he ended up near the bottom? Whenever, it had been a lifetime before.

  He dusted himself off. Lidia would be frantic, coldly angry. She would get him out. Meanwhile he couldn’t say anything because he was merely a handyman, a stranger, a loose fragment of humanity in the onrush of the tide sweeping over everything. All right, he could do that. It wouldn’t be long until the mistake was discovered, corrected, and the soldier reprimanded.

  Find a place and just wait patiently. Think about the music. Do not think about Gabriela alone or Peszek helpless in bed, also alone. Lidia would come. The mistake would be fixed.

  He walked into the concrete warehouse. The building looked like it was used for town agricultural shows or storing town equipment because metal drums were scattered around. But the building had been cleaned out to ready it for another use. Five buckets were placed as latrines, and messily filled so the windowless air stank. About twenty men of various ages sat on the drums or the floor or gathered into little clots, talking low. They had glanced at him and the others who wearily, fearfully peered around seeking something familiar, safe, reassuring. One or two of the new men spotted a face they knew and sought out a friend.

  Janusz found a space beside the concrete wall and went to it. He was not so much frightened or panicking at that instant, more impatient that an obvious error be rectified and the discourteous soldiers dealt with. A part of his mind, though, knew that this was not a slight like an arrogant servant or imperious government official or even an ill-behaved thug. He didn’t want to face the fact that the terrible new world he had come to know in the last days had gathered him to itself and could do whatever it wanted to with him and there was no power on earth that could hinder it, much less stop it. Good Lord, he thought, trying to focus again on the new music, what idiot wouldn’t try to avoid facing that hideous reality?

  His tic and the grimace smile, banished recently, reasserted themselves as he stood at the wall, arms folded, gently rocking. Apprehensively, he watched a short, older man in a shiny black suit with a wrinkled collarless white shirt, come over to him. The man had a soggy bit of cigarette in his mouth. He kept running his hands compulsively through his tousled thin hair.

  “You just came in,” the man said with a phlegmy voice. “What’s going on outside?”

  “I don’t know. There are a lot of soldiers. I was registering. I got here yesterday.”

  “Soldiers? More of them? You wouldn’t know. Just got here? See anybody else getting picked up?”

  “No, only the people I was with at the town hall,” and Janusz grasped that he should not say more, about Lidia or Henselt. He had no idea who he was talking to or why this man approac
hed him.

  “I been here three days now,” the man said, hand going through his hair back and forth like he was digging for something. “Guys come and go. They come in and take out two, maybe three. They don’t come back. You hear any shots outside?” He stared uneasily at Janusz.

  “No. It’s quiet. The loudspeakers, that’s all.”

  The man nodded to himself. “We can hear them. Haven’t said anything for a while about the partisans Henselt’s looking for. That’s why you’re here. That’s why I’m here,” he nodded again.

  “What partisans?”

  “They found a couple of dead partisans outside of town two, three days ago. Shot. Henselt’s said he’s going to bring in all of the partisans, dead. That’s why we’re here.”

  “I don’t understand.” But he was beginning to understand.

  “They’re taking guys away, right? No one comes back? It’s not good. Henselt doesn’t find the partisans, it’s not good for us.” He sucked hard on the soggy cigarette which came apart and he angrily tossed it away.

  Janusz lowered his head. It could be something else, but he suspected the dead partisans were actually the bandits who had tried to hold them up as he, Gabriela and Peszek came close to town. Dead bodies lying around must madden Henselt if he wasn’t responsible for them. Anybody else with the power to kill was a threat. Janusz calculated raggedly. He couldn’t say anything about the so-called partisans without implicating Lidia now and Peszek and Gabriela. Henselt would have to continue his relentless but futile hunt for other partisans.

  “You mean we’re prisoners?” Janusz asked nervously.

  “Hostages, my friend. We come and we go. Every day no partisans, a few of us are taken out. You just got here, so some of us will be taken out,” his hand stopped its scratching and dropped to his side. “I’ve got a wife and kids. I want to see them again.”

  “Maybe the ones who’ve been taken out are sent to work nearby.”