The Day of the Lie

by William Brodrick

  Anselm berated himself for not having recognised Róża’s guiding hint, now seen as glaring and underlined in red pen. Only once in her entire statement did she explicitly refer to the activity of informers: she’d identified those men of God who’d become men of Brack. And if that wasn’t enough, Anselm’s own deconstruction of Róża’s text had drawn a bright yellow highlighter over the priest’s name. He’d topped the poll of references, in a document crafted to lead its reader to one specific individual.

  ‘He’s the last person she’d have suspected,’ said Anselm, talking to himself. ‘Why? Because she and her husband had entrusted him with their lives. He’s the last person she’d want to see exposed. Why? Because a bombshell would hit the arches of Saint Klement’s and every other church in the country; because the Shoemaker would find out that his closest confidant had betrayed him from the outset; because Róża was worried that Kaminsky might choose to drown himself rather than face the jeering in the street.’

  Sebastian turned a page. One finger moved slowly down a margin.

  ‘I can imagine Kaminsky squaring historical materialism with his belief in God.” continued Anselm, as if delivering judgment in the Court of Appeal, ‘and I can accept that he dreamed a costly dream, but the sand in the gears is capital. He got paid —’ at the back of an expenses file Sebastian had found an account of monthly instalments, running, without interruption, between 1949 and 1982 — ‘so what was his motive? The money or the dream? And who could dream dreams after Stalin?.’

  Sebastian looked up. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Oh nothing, just the idle thoughts of the disenchanted: Anselm dropped Róża’s statement on the floor by his side and knitted his fingers on his chest. ‘Tell me what you’ve learned about my confrere. Since I’m going to wrestle with his conscience I’ll need to know what he’s done, and why.’

  Sebastian closed a file, pushing it away as though he’d tasted foreign food. He hadn’t enjoyed himself.

  ‘Brack became his handler in nineteen fifty,’ said Sebastian, drawing a hand through his tangled hair. He swung round, crossing his feet on the edge of his desk. ‘They met every month for three decades. He informed on friends, associates, priests, bishops, two cardinals and a shooting gallery of dissident thinkers. He moved around, did Kaminsky In high places and low And he told Brack everything he heard. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  The overall effect, laughed Sebastian, mordantly, was a kind of multi-volume encyclopaedia on opposition thinking. Quite apart from entries revealing the informed reflections of ‘ordinary’ citizens.’ the views of almost every major dissident intellectual in Warsaw were represented in the files. Their arguments, neatly laid out and persuasively presented, were frequently penned in Father Kaminsky’s elegant script. Sometimes he’d obtained a Samizdat draft from the author’s own hand, with key passages underlined in red. It’s a howling irony: the SB preserved for posterity the very ideas that had been banned by the Party They’d built up an archive of the books the censor would never have printed. Come on, you’ve got to laugh.

  Anselm tried and failed. ‘I’m troubled.’

  ‘By?’

  ‘Two questions. First, Kaminsky knows the Shoemaker. He was the Threshold. But he never told Brack. He kept quiet, leaving his handler to look under all the beds in Warsaw. Meanwhile Róża is being tortured. Her husband is taken out and shot. So is Stefan Binkowski. How does all that fit into the price worth paying? Why didn’t Kaminsky lead Brack to the Shoemaker in nineteen fifty-one?’

  Sebastian had been nodding while Anselm spoke. The point had struck him, too. He’d arrived at an answer while examining the files.

  ‘My guess is this. When Kaminsky presented himself after the war, he was planning on a long and lucrative arrangement. Long, because he genuinely believed in Stalinist socialism; lucrative because, as he said, tongue in cheek, he’d counted the cost of losing and wanted to be paid for his trouble … up front, right now’ Sebastian loosened his tie, one finger pulling at the knot. ‘He retained the one piece of information that his controller wanted because that kept their relationship vital … and it kept the payments coming. He gave his controller a few gems close to the target, like Róża and Pavel, but the main prize, the Shoemaker, is left out of reach, keeping Brack on the move. And along the way, rebel voices, drawn to the Shoemaker like bees to jam, are systematically betrayed.’

  The snapshot appalled Anselm: Kaminsky had been using Brack in a counter-subversion operation of his own invention; by leaving the Shoemaker free, he’d caught more insects. In that light, the money appeared more as a salary for having managed his handler than a top-up for his stipend. Anselm stared at the night sky behind his own reflection. ‘And Brack thought he was running the show when, in fact, he was being led by the hand …’

  ‘Yes, led to do the rough stuff required by an “uncompromising engagement with the times’.’.” added Sebastian, swinging his feet off the table. He walked to the shelving units that covered the wall and pulled out a box file. Back at his desk he flipped open the cover and took out a flimsy publication.

  ‘This is a copy of Freedom and Independence,’ he said, bringing it to Anselm, ‘the last edition before printing ceased in October nineteen fifty-one.’

  Anselm held the paper in his hands with an instinctive reverence. His eyes ran across the imposing letters and words, his finger traced the soft indentations made by the stamp of the press. Not being able to understand anything, a blasphemy instantly suggested itself: why would anyone die for these impressions on paper? How on earth could they matter so much? They were just shapes; they made an arresting pattern. But then again, what was an idea if not flotsam in the mind? How could anything so insubstantial turn out to be so strong; so insignificant, and yet so important?

  ‘The publication was silent until thirty years later,’ said Sebastian, leaning against the front of his desk, arms folded. ‘He only spoke because Róża insisted. Prior to that moment he’d been silenced by Kaminsky Even the Shoemaker was being led by the hand.’

  Anselm looked up, ‘How?’

  ‘It all comes back to those executions,’ replied Sebastian. ‘As the Threshold, Kaminsky knew how the organisation was structured. He knew that the Shoemaker was the indispensable figure who had to stay out of reach, for the sake of Freedom and Independence. Others could die, but not him, never him; he was the living breath behind the living word. He had to be protected. But that was all in theory. No one had been killed. But then Pavel and Stefan were shot in Mokotów What did Kaminsky say to the Shoemaker afterwards? I reckon he told him enough is enough. He told him the cost of his words was a touch too high. He roused the guilt that came with the privileged position of the protected. Who’d argue with that? Who’d want to write about freedom after Róża had been tortured and widowed?’ Sebastian drew breath, arching his eyebrows. ‘Kaminsky ran a brilliant operation: he hid the Shoemaker from the SB because he was a lure; manipulating that lure, he snagged the capitalists who were out for a fight with Marx; and, almost by default, he secured what he and Brack wanted above all, the suppression of the most powerful and respected dissident voice in the country. The real professional was Kaminsky Brack, with his obsession for one man in hiding showed himself to be what he was … an amateur. The butcher used by the State to work in its secret abattoir.’

  Anselm couldn’t argue with the harsh lines drawn by Sebastian. The former Gilbertine was the still point in a world of whispering and death. He was, ironically a man who’d skilfully effected a ‘withdrawal from the crisis’, leaving Brack to think he was leading the charge, using the likes of Edward Kolba to watch Róża the widow and Magda the Zionist. Far away in his parish, with his eye on the greater picture, and without attracting the slightest suspicion, he’d no doubt consoled the Shoemaker. Assured him that he’d done his bit. Cried with him over the untold fate of the unsung martyrs. And as soon as Róża turned up, he sucked in a few more flies and then told Brack where to catch them.

&nb
sp; ‘You have a second question?’

  Sebastian was looking upon Anselm with the camaraderie of shared disappointment. While it was illogical, he understood only too well that Kaminsky’s standing as a religious figure affected him personally.

  ‘How am I going to speak to such a man?’ murmured Anselm, trying to envisage the encounter. The former monk was alive and well, his address listed at the back of Róża’s statement, along with all the others. ‘What can I appeal to in his past that might have some bearing on the present? Why would he agree to co-operate with Róża’s quest for justice?’

  Sebastian’s humph showed he had no answers this time. As if to leave him completely empty-handed he took back Freedom and Independence and filed it away.

  ‘Funny, really, that he never cleared off altogether,’ said Anselm, recalling Róża’s cited dictum: no church, no solidarity, no revolution. ‘He stayed on as part of the institution. An institution that had helped put a nail in the coffin of his beliefs … his political beliefs.’

  The mirroring of that word gave Anselm a fresh angle on to Father Kaminsky’s complex character. ‘He still believes,’ said Anselm, obviously.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Roughly what I believe and what Róża believes about the silence in Saint Klement’s. It’s got a shape, a pattern, like those strange marks on the page.’ even if you can’t understand them half the time … and to him who listens, to him who believes, it’s important. It’s worth a fight with a lion, knowing you’re going to lose. And whatever else, Kaminsky cares enough about his church to forgive her role in the demise of his utopia:

  ‘You’ve lost me.’ Sebastian had returned to his desk and was bending a paperclip to occupy his hands.

  ‘Kaminsky has two faiths,’ explained Anselm, tentatively ‘One for this world and another for the next. How they impinge on each other is anyone’s guess, but a meeting point might be murder. Maybe the executions were a step too far, a price he didn’t want to see paid by anyone — least of all on the back of his informing.’

  A picture of Father Kaminsky radically different to that described by Sebastian began to filter into Anselm’s imagination: a tormented man, perhaps, limping through the years, powerless to go back and erase his footprints, not daring to turn around and see once more where they’d been. Leaving the monthly payments aside — a feature difficult to excuse from any angle — Kaminsky could have been horrified by Brack’s brutality, finding himself implicated in actions he would never have sanctioned.

  ‘He handed over information, reflected Anselm. ‘He gave them essays, lectures, illegal books … the ideas he didn’t like … it’s a long way from endorsing summary justice.’

  ‘Where are you going with this?’ asked Sebastian.

  ‘I have one chance,’ said Anselm, increasingly sure of his ground. ‘If Kaminsky feels any compassion for what happened to Róża, then he might be prepared to help her — especially when I tell him that the only reason she chose silence over justice was out of respect for their shared beliefs.’

  Sebastian leaned back, agreeably surprised. From a height he dropped the paperclip into a wastebasket, and said, ‘Looks like I was wrong. The way folk tick matters.’

  ‘You were right, though,’ replied Anselm, with reciprocal charm. ‘Kaminsky did use Brack — in relation to the procurement of information; but Brack also used Kaminsky — to suppress evidence of gutter killings, State murder beyond the law. It’s all there on the last page of Róża’s statement: he placed Kaminsky’s name and his faith right at the heart of his scheme to silence Róża, and I don’t think Kaminsky would swallow that … not even for the sake of a better tomorrow He didn’t sign up in forty-eight to finish his days as Brack’s spattered shield. I’m hoping it’s the one price he won’t pay.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When a journey ends one looks back. Certain features that were obscure en route stand out with ruthless clarity And the one that most troubled Anselm, now that he’d arrived at the guilt of SABINA, was his treatment of Irina Orlosky He’d trampled over a weak, already defeated woman. He’d stomped around in the mud of her failings, showing off that Old Bailey footwork. It had been ugly, unnecessary and almost certainly harmful. Again he found that the Hilton’s showers weren’t up to the task. And this time the situation was worse than before: the inner dirt that wouldn’t shift was of his own making and he couldn’t blame Frenzel.

  The recognition sent Anselm first to a florist and then to a rundown corner of Praga, a central district on the east bank of the river. This was where Stalin’s army had watched the Nazis crush the Uprising of 1944. It was where the Tsar’s troops had massacred 20,000 civilians following the Uprising of 1794. It was where Brack’s personal assistant now lived, a survivor without her name.

  Anselm walked into a narrow courtyard of tall cramped buildings. Paint blistered off the crooked window frames. Red and black graffiti marked the cracked walls as if they were stitching to hold the place together. Higher up, the stucco had fallen away, the remnant oval sections like flaking scabs on the facade of orange brick. It was early evening and the light was slipping away with something like relief. Having stepped gingerly through an open, communal door.’ Anselm mounted a creaking staircase and halted on a second floor landing. Rapid gunfire sounded from behind Flat 8. It ceased abruptly on Anselm’s firm knock. A long, sliver of light appeared like a drawn blade.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Anselm to the dark, spectacled face. ‘I was rude, superior and insulting. You were right. I have no idea what it was like. Can I have some tea? My name is Anselm.’

  The door chain slid from its groove.

  ‘Yes, of course, come in … I’m … I’m Irina.’

  Taking the flowers, she smiled uneasily, one hand nervously brushing back her grey hair. Set against the dull wallpaper, the bunched yellows and greens turned bright. She held them out like an Olympic torch, beckoning Anselm to follow, but he paused by an open door just inside the entrance. Stretched out on the faded carpet lay the podgy son dressed in a Man United top and camouflage trousers.’ his legs splayed, his hands gripping a plastic Kalashnikov. Secure behind a cushion for a sandbag, he was shooting Afghan insurgents on a large computer screen, his kill rate mounting against the clock.

  ‘Please, this way,’ she called from the kitchen at the end of the short corridor, her voice embarrassed, already pleading for more understanding, already fearing another kind of condemnation.

  The room was small and clean, the white enamel on the cooker chipped but shining. A small, polished window looked on to the courtyard and a fragment of sky Anselm drew back a chair by a small Formica table and said.’

  ‘Irina, it’s important you know something: Frenzel doesn’t have your name. Certain things always remain in our possession.’

  Her back was against him. She was arranging the flowers in a vase, jiggling the stems to get the arrangement right. Without turning around, she said, ‘He didn’t take it, Father. No one did.’

  Still not facing Anselm, and without prompting, she began to speak of August 1989 as if she’d forgotten to mention it first time round and was now making up for the lapse. She’d been called into work early Mr Frenzel had rung to say there was housework to be done. The place needed cleaning from top to bottom. For the next three months all the staff had worked like mad to tidy up the files.

  ‘It was non-stop shredding.” she said, turning on the electric kettle. ‘In every room on every floor the machines were whining and whirring. There were rows and rows of garden sacks filled with all the sliced up paper. After a week others were brought in, more people, more machines, more sacks. Department and Section Heads sat at their desks, picking the files to be destroyed. It was one long office party … with laughter and joking and larking around. Some of the senior officers were maudlin, leafing through old folders. “Do you remember that one?” “I wonder what became of him.” Others were frantic, knowing they couldn’t pull all the weeds out of the garden.’

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nbsp; Irina broke her recollection to pour the boiled water into two cups. She sliced lemon and placed cubes of sugar on the saucers. Three harsh shots came from down the corridor, followed by the crump of grenades and the cries of the Afghan dying. The son had ambition. He was going to succeed where the Russians had failed.

  ‘That’s when Mr Frenzel selected which documents to keep,’ sighed Irina, wiping some spillage with a cloth. ‘He took them home every evening in his car. Told me to keep my mouth shut if I ever wanted to work again. If my son was ever to get a job.’

  At last she turned round and travelled the great divide between them — just two short steps — her eyes lowered, not wanting to meet Anselm’s gaze. She was wearing a McDonald’s T—shirt and neat green trousers. Her expression was hard behind the frail wire glasses.

  ‘The only person missing was Colonel Brack,’ she said, sitting down. ‘He made his appearance on the last day, after everyone else had gone. He came late at night … I only found him because I’d left my keys behind.’

  Anselm stirred his tea, flipping over the slice of lemon. ‘He’d kept away from the party?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Didn’t he have any files for the shredder?’

  ‘No. He wasn’t like the others … he was a believer. He was proud of his work … proud of the ministry; he wanted whoever came next to see what he’d done. His junior officers saw things differently —they cleaned his cupboards to protect themselves.’ She dropped a cube of sugar into her tea and began to break it down with the teaspoon. ‘For him, there was nothing to celebrate. Quite the opposite.

  He wanted a funeral. When I opened the door to his office, he was there, sitting bolt upright holding a gun to his mouth: