The Day of the Lie

by William Brodrick

  ‘You recall no one else?’ Major Strenk sharpened his pencil, frowning at the shavings and lead powder accumulating on his desk.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Quite sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  With the flat of one hand the Major wiped the debris into a cupped palm and then brushed his fingers clean over a wastebasket. Still frowning, he rummaged for a handkerchief. Between questions, his eyes on Róża, he made a short, dainty blow.

  ‘You knew there would be an uprising?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Soviet radio.’

  ‘You went to the Old Town?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your function?’

  ‘I was a messenger, ammunition carrier, a nurse. I did—’

  ‘—yes, yes, yes: whatever you could.’ Major Strenk finished off the sentence, disliking the answer, mocking the implied nobility as if Róża were trying to clean up her background. He looked inside the handkerchief to make sure he’d got what he was after and then turned a page on to the reasons for her escape.

  ‘I was told it was over, that we had to get out. I went into the sewer system and took a tunnel north to Żoliborz. When I lifted the cover they were waiting for me.’

  ‘They? The power-seeking criminals who wanted to use the Uprising for their own ends? The landowners and capitalists?’ He was looking inside his handkerchief again. ‘The enemies of progress and reform?’

  ‘No. Two Germans.’

  Major Strenk paused, glancing down at his sheaf of names. ‘You escaped on your own?’

  ‘Yes. Others followed … others had gone before, but I went alone.’

  From that moment Róża let her gaze fall. She’d left Otto behind; he’d been with her and waded out of her life through another tunnel; she didn’t need to protect him any more. And Major Strenk’s jaded expression had become unbearable.

  ‘Do go on,’ he said, as if he was no longer that interested.

  Following her arrest Róża had been taken to a transit camp in Pruszków Three weeks later she was one of fifty packed into an open coal wagon. The train went south to Wolbrom, near Kraków, where she was allocated a shared room in a fiat above a fire station. Curiously, Róża yet again kept to herself what mattered most. She said nothing of the singer and the song.

  The journey had lasted almost three days. There was only standing room, the November sun high and bare, the intimacy of massed flesh intense. A single slop bucket in the corner filled within hours. At intervals the waste was tipped over the side planking on to the tracks. Occasionally apples and chunks of bread landed in the wagon, thrown by locals when the train slowed or stopped. Róża thought she might die. But then, on the morning of the second day, a child’s voice climbed higher than the rattling of the train and the stench of the bucket. A little girl had begun to sing.

  ‘Return our Homeland to us, Lord …’

  The hymn had been sung for over two hundred years. But here, in this wagon, no one had the belief or the strength to join in. It was left to the child. Following the girl’s rising voice, Róża seemed to touch the clouds with the fingers of her soul. She’d escaped once through filth, but this was a kind of rescue; a moment of salvation. The journey ended that night. After climbing out of the wagon Róża hobbled between buckled over men and women, crying out for the girl, but no reply came back. It was as though God had come and gone.

  For an instant, Róża almost forgot that she was being questioned by Major Strenk: her mind was juddering from the realisation that Otto Brack and that unknown child shared the same protected space in her memory.

  ‘When did you leave Wolbrom?’

  Róża made a start. ‘After the war … nine months later.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To help rebuild—’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, you tried to save Warsaw, and now you were going to help with the rebuilding. What was your function?’

  Róża had worked alongside an architect retrieving and labelling fragments of ornate stonework in the Old Town. The whole area was to be restored to its original splendour using, whenever possible, original materials. Pavel Mojeska had been engaged in identical work with another specialist. She’d met him during a meeting when the experts had pored over close-up photographs of a painting by Canaletto. It had showed the buildings as they were once were. This was the complete picture and it showed them where the bits might go.

  ‘Mojeska’s date of birth?’

  ‘Nineteen twenty—one.’

  It was another pointless question. Pavel had been arrested three hours before Róża. He was in the same building, in another cell. They must already know But they trawled everywhere so as to compare accounts, looking for any inconsistency He was poring over his own pictures.

  ‘As to his parents?’

  ‘They were killed in Ochota.’

  ‘Any siblings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Names.’

  Róża’s voice cracked. ‘They’re dead. Two girls and a boy all dead. They were in Ochota … Ochota. Do you really need me to tell you what happened?’

  ‘On reflection, no:

  As the Nazis poured troops in to crush the Uprising, special units were deployed to flush out any survivors. In the districts of Ochota and Wola thousands of civilians were executed, heaped and burned, regardless of age or gender. The Major sighed.

  ‘Where was the criminal Mojeska?’

  ‘Fighting in the—’

  ‘—yes, yes, stop.’ Though he’d asked the question he couldn’t endure any more heroics. He started scouring their relationship, leaning forward like one of the architects over those photos.

  ‘You were married in what year?’

  ‘Nineteen forty-eight.’

  ‘Your age?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘His age?’

  ‘Twenty-seven.’

  She gave the bare facts. She wasn’t going to tell Major Strenk how they’d rebuilt each other: how Róża, who belonged to no one, had given herself to Pavel who’d lost everyone; how each had complementary wounds with a complementary power to heal. She wasn’t going to tell Major Strenk how it was possible to remain injured at heart and yet laugh as if for the first time. No, the major got what he could understand: facts; dates, places and times. For two days he dutifully wrote the answers down with his pencil. On the third day he changed subject and tone.

  ‘You are aware the criminal Pavel Mojeska is a provocateur?’

  ‘A what? I’m sorry, I don’t—’

  ‘That he is planning to restore the rule of landowners and capitalists?’

  ‘No.’

  And she had no idea that he was implicated in the publication of subversive material against the people. Major Strenk paused. He became eerily still, like a man watching a lake for the skip of life below the surface.

  ‘Who is the Shoemaker?’ he said, unblinking.

  ‘I don’t know’

  ‘Who are the Friends of the Shoemaker?’

  ‘I don’t know’

  ‘Where is the printing press?’

  ‘I don’t know’

  The one reply uttered with every difference of inflection imaginable, all of them variations of begging. Major Strenk pulled open a drawer and took out a small vice and a metal tray Róża watched him in complete horror. First he took a fish hook from a compartment of the tray; next, he locked it between the clamps of the vice, leaving the shank free; and then, finally he looked up, his eyes remote and dull.

  ‘Think again. Who is the Shoemaker?’

  Róża couldn’t speak.

  ‘Who are the Friends of the Shoemaker?’

  This minute, transferred attention to the making of a fly was exactly what had happened three days earlier, before she was kicked off the stool and taken to the pit. The threat was heavy between them, his unblinking, timeless gaze upon her. She opened her mouth but no sound came from her throat. Major Strenk peered into the metal tray and selected a bobbin
of bright green thread. He tied a knot on the hook and reached for some tweezers.

  ‘Where is the printing press?’

  Róża began to shiver. She heard the dripping in her mind. Her voice was quiet and beseeching, ‘I’ve told you, Comrade, I don’t know’

  Major Strenk put the tweezers between his teeth and picked up his pencil. While writing down the answer, he nodded vaguely towards Brack. The guard behind Róża kicked the footstool away.

  Róża woke up soaking wet and freezing. She’d been strapped to a chair with a belt. She did not know if it was night or day The guard stamped on the butt of his cigarette and brought her back to the interrogation room.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Róża Mojeska.’ Her voice was so faint she hardly heard her own reply.

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  Major Strenk picked up a magnifying glass and examined the tied fly He didn’t seem especially pleased. Something had gone wrong. He suppressed a belch and said, ‘Date of birth?’

  On the third day, while testing the mechanism of a fishing reel, he asked about the Shoemaker. It whirred efficiently like a drill, eventually slowing to a series of dry clicks. Róża watched and listened unable to speak. The major opened a drawer and nodded at Brack. Without resisting, without remembering the hauling down the corridor of waxen light, Róża fell into the darkness and the deluge. A last conscious thought, like fingernails hooked on the ledge of sanity, was about life: the irresistible, inexorable power of life. It was as though her mind was lit for a moment by a spark of divinity. She knew she was pregnant. She carried a life that Major Strenk would never catch.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After the third visit to the cage Róża was dragged back to her cell. There were nine other women sitting on the floor. A tenth with straggling ashen hair walked around aimlessly, moaning to herself. She wagged a dirty finger at Róża, admonishing the air long after Róża had slumped in a corner. The walls were damp and gouged with hatch-patterned desperation: the days crossed out in blocks of seven becoming weeks, months and years. All the prisoners were a strange grey-green, melding them to the plaster. One of them with cropped blonde hair watched Róża guardedly over knees held tight against her chest. Róża pressed her face into the wall. She was the bearer of life. She had to survive so that this child might one day sing. Her mind turned to Otto Brack who, given time, without a war and without conflicting ideologies, just might have been the father.

  A boy turned up in February 1943. He was first seen with Mr Lasky, the caretaker, helping to shave a door that had never jammed. He had to be about fifteen. A few questions to one of the more indiscreet nuns produced the unlikely disclosure that Mr Lasky wasn’t getting any younger and the building was only getting older, so his nephew had come to help out with the chores. Everyone knew it was another secret: he was being hidden from the Nazis, like Magda, the girl in Róża’s dormitory. They had the same tragic look that comes with enforced separation.

  Róża met the boy by accident one Sunday afternoon.

  The top floor of the orphanage was reached by a set of warped stairs by a broom cupboard, understood by tradition to be haunted by seven orphans who’d fallen off the roof and a nun who’d killed herself with a candlestick, though no one knew how Few used the stairs, either from fear, or because the attic held nothing of interest save bedsteads, worn mattresses and broken furniture. But Róża discovered something else: a window, the highest in the building. It looked out over Warsaw, and this was where she came on Sunday afternoons to escape the institutional existence she led down below — it couldn’t be any other way, but she was tired of the discipline and the very public life of a locker without a key She would daydream, gazing over the rooftops, imagining an existence with some colour: brothers and sisters round a table, a mother in the kitchen, and a father playing the banjo. One Sunday Róża climbed the stairs and found the door ajar. On entering she saw the boy by the window It was wide open and he was smoking.

  ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He’d made them out of old newspaper that had lined a drawer and threads from a doormat. His hair was rust brown, his eyes a deeper brown, flecked with green. His skin was naturally dark, as if he’d just come back from a holiday in the sun. Like Róża, he was thin, lacking muscle on his arms and legs. His shoes and jacket were too big. The boots had come from Mr Lasky.

  ‘This is my room,’ said Róża, curtly taking the cigarette.

  The boy ignored her and lit the rolled matting, his lips held tight when he exhaled. While Róża coughed and spluttered, he stared enquiringly over the bombed, sunlit capital.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Róża, after she’d picked some fibres off her tongue.

  The boy breathed in the black fumes and said, ‘I’m thinking of my father and my mother.’

  Róża met the boy in that room frequently thereafter. They made no arrangement, but over the next few weeks Sunday afternoons became the time they smoked by the window He never again revealed anything about himself or what he cared about, what he’d lost and what he hoped for. He told her his name, and no more. He was Otto. That single flash of sincerity and vulnerability was replaced by a mature frown and long simmering silences. With his top teeth he’d scrape his bottom lip and Róża wondered if he might open up the skin. Once, for something to say, Róża told him her daydream: of a red dress and red shoes, and a deep green jacket, and a father who played the banjo. He listened, drinking in her hope for something better.

  These two moments of brief sharing — of his loss and her dreams — created a bond between Róża and Otto. Something that could turn into love was slowly catching fire, like the dried matting wrapped in yesterdays news. By choice or chance they’d both been walked on and thrown aside; but they’d found each other among so much bric-a-brac; they’d opened a window on to something different. Which was why Róża instinctively risked her life for him the following April when the German secret police arrived with their whistles and dogs.

  The community and all the children were ordered into the rear yard, but Róża and Otto made for the top floor.

  ‘I wouldn’t go up there if I were you,’ said Róża to the squat interpreter, shaking uncontrollably.

  ‘Why not?’

  She was barring his way at the foot of the stairs, arms outstretched. Behind him stood two men in long leather coats. Otto was in the cupboard, two feet away.

  ‘There’s a dead nun waiting with a candlestick.’

  They laughed and one of them tousled her hair — not affectionately, but as if she were a dog that had learned a trick. It took them half an hour to search the attic, during which time Otto hid in a room that had already been ransacked. When they’d gone, Róża learned that the Prioress and Mr Lasky had been taken away at gunpoint and that Magda had been found in the infirmary: she’d had no papers and no temperature.

  Róża was completely distraught. At night she lay awake, staring at Magda’s empty bed. During the day she kept looking out for Mr Lasky, expecting to find him mending a perfectly serviceable sash window A couple of weeks later the explosions started. The rumour was that those in the Ghetto were fighting back. Standing beside Otto in the attic she watched part of the Warsaw horizon gradually collapse in clouds of smoke and dust. When the noise came to an end there was a ringing in her ears that wouldn’t go away — not from the bombs but the lost voices.

  Otto heard the same sounds. The arrest of Mr Lasky had a deep effect upon him. He was adrift for the second time in the space of two months — first from his parents and now the man who’d played a part in his rescue. Róża sensed him leaning upon her more heavily though he never deliberately touched her. It was in his eyes and the glance that followed a brush of shoulders.

  ‘Where’ve they taken him?’ he asked, sucking in the smoke.

  ‘Pawiak Prison,’ replied Róża, quoting the indiscreet nun.

  ‘He’s dead.’ Otto’s voice was angry and correct
ing.

  ‘But we aren’t.’

  Róża’s reply didn’t so much show up the base instinct of survival as reveal the peculiar duty that settles upon survivors, upon those who have been saved: to live and make the living worthwhile. ‘We have to make it count,’ she said, pulling at Otto’s sleeve as if they might go somewhere. ‘For their sake.’

  A year and a bit later, they did. Soviet Radio had called for an Uprising. The Red Army was approaching from the east. The Nazis were finished. All that was needed was a quick shove.

  ‘I’m going to the Old Town.’ He lit two cigarettes, wincing, and passed one to Róża. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘Fight.’

  His eyes were unable to rest for long upon her but, having strayed, they kept coming back, hungrily; and Róża saw once more the sudden flare of vulnerability, the not wanting to be left alone again to face another crisis without the support of those he … relied upon? Loved? It was a mortified admission of affection, made immense by where she stood in Otto’s life. Róża hadn’t dared believe that she might be so important. They left that night, scurrying like rats along walls until they linked up with a Home Army unit on Podwale Street.

  The quick shove was soon ended by a deafening assault from tanks and planes and hammering rifle fire. The buildings seemed to spit out their broken teeth. Their bones were cracked and splintered. Róża had never seen so much death: on street corners, by heaps of rubble — the bodies sometimes splayed in the most awful shapes, so strange they seemed not to be human. She felt utterly abandoned. Where was the Red Army? Why had the Soviets urged them to rise up if they were not going to come?