The Day of the Lie

by William Brodrick

  ‘First, we were never to meet. I could only call him on a secure number, five-five-eight-seven-six. Second, names were dangerous, that’s why he was the Dentist, so I had to pick one. I went for Conrad. It was a joke. The Secret Agent … Heart of Darkness. But he didn’t get it. Third, I was to keep a journal recording all the leads he’d send my way each of which would focus on the fight for freedom of speech, accountability, democratic blah, blah —’ John smoothed the table once more, moving quickly — ‘Fourth, I was to take this journal with me to the minister he’d later name as evidence of the Dentist’s values and commitment to political reform. This was the deal: if I prepared his passage to the West, he’d help me understand my mother’s story. He’d bring her file.’

  John couldn’t see any problem: he wasn’t giving anything to the Dentist. All the traffic would be coming the other way His only role was to be a messenger operating outside the system, his task to bring a request to someone at the heart of government.

  The Dentist was true to his word. He gave John all manner of information, placing him one step ahead of every other Western journalist in Warsaw He placed John’s ear at the door of the Junta. Only John didn’t notice that all the ‘stuff sent his way’ would have made it into the public domain eventually; that he only received advanced notice; that he was only given two scoops of substance. The first was on underground printing.

  ‘He told me the publication most feared by the government was Freedom and Independence.’ He looked towards Róża, as if their eyes might meet. ‘It’s run by someone called the Shoemaker, he said; only turns up when times get really bad, and he’s turned up now This is the voice you should hear. It had last been heard during the Terror. Get his words into the Times, the Guardian, the Telegraph —’ he threw imagined copies on the table — ‘get his message out of Warsaw’

  The only known point of contact was a woman called Róża Mojeska, and he was trying to find her.

  ‘I got there first, Róża,’ he said, heavily He faltered, like a man stepping suddenly off the pavement. ‘In all that we spoke of, Róża, I never once lied. I just didn’t tell the truth of how I came to find you.

  Róża nodded but didn’t speak. Her eyes were boring into him out of those mauve shadows. John seemed to fall, knowing there was no hand that could reach him. ‘He called again, said he’d loved the “Lives Lived in Secret” piece, it was wonderful, marvellous, this was our win, our first strike back, he was halfway to London, and now he had someone else. A documentary film-maker. She’d spent her life winding up the authorities. She was a wild cat. Wouldn’t stop and wouldn’t go. They’d been offering her a passport for years and she wouldn’t take it. They put people like her in prison and threw away the key Not six months, ten years, so get on to her, she’s another life lived in secret.’

  ‘And you put all this down in your journal?’ asked Celina, her voice transparent like India paper. Anselm couldn’t quite see through it; something was on the other side; he wasn’t sure she’d even asked a question. Her lips moved slowly beautifully.

  ‘I kept the rules,’ said John. ‘My journal was the contemporaneous account of his bona fides. It was the means to get him out. It was the way to open my mother’s file … I wanted to see with my own eyes what she’d done to my father.’ He turned to Róża, reaching out again with blind eyes. ‘I didn’t tell him about the plan to meet the Shoemaker. I turned up and saw you walk to a man that I’d never seen before. Then I got my head kicked in. I didn’t know the Dentist was the guy in the graveyard until he walked into the cell. I was thrown out of Warsaw before the end of the week. He’d used me to find you, Róża. He’d used my pride and self-importance. He’d used my mother’s mistake. He’d used my longing to change what she’d done.’

  Róża showed no emotion. A hand moved to the brooch, a silver triangle, a complex of tiny sculpted flowers. The dusk round her eyes had grown dark. A kind of night settled on her face. Silence pounded from her closed mouth. The fire snapped, a log rolled into flame.

  ‘I didn’t tell you about her because I didn’t know what to say’ John had turned to Anselm. ‘There’s nothing worse, you know Shame without knowing why My father never spoke about her when I was a child. At ten I’d seen her name on my birth certificate. But he wouldn’t tell me anything about her life, except that she’d ended it. He’d razed her life to the ground. He’d built a golf course on top and a club house with bourbon on tap. I only learned about her past when they picked me up in Bucharest. They made a call to the SB in Warsaw and the next thing I know a sort of Eton Old Boy walks in, the real thing, genteel English with the vaguest Russian accent. “A cigarette? A cup of Earl Grey? No scones, I’m afraid.” What did I think of Reagan? And what about Thatcher? Then I was free, a favour to the memory of my mother, he said. Because of the price she’d paid for socialist values. That’s why I took the job with the BBC. I wanted to learn about her values. Her country, her history, her roots. My country, my history, my roots. I wanted to find her. And then the Dentist called. If only I’d known of his place in your life, Róża; if only I’d known that he’d picked me with you in mind.’

  John threw his head back. He was almost done. Coming forward, he planted his face in his hands, slipping his fingers behind his glasses. He appeared at once the tragic buffoon: hands covering his eyes, with spectacles on top; hiding behind lenses that wouldn’t let him see even if someone pulled his arms away.

  ‘I didn’t use you, Celina.’ His voice was muffled into his palms. ‘I loved you. I was completely devastated by who you were. Your crazy shoes and rings and torn trousers. Your hair always in a mess. Your beads and bangles. But I couldn’t see straight. I didn’t know if I wanted you for who you were, or because you were everything my mother should have been, a rebel, someone who’d fought back. I didn’t know if I loved you because you cleaned up the weird guilt shovelled on to me by my father, by not talking, by not explaining —’ his breath ran out in a sigh of fatigue and surrender — ‘God, in those days I thought too much. It was all so much simpler than I realised.’ He came to an exhausted halt and dropped his hands. In an act of total surrender he took off his glasses. Anselm had never seen him without them — not since he’d agreed with John (post op) that he had a faraway look … no, not Martian, just far off. The glasses had become a heat shield easing his entry into a new, dark world. And he’d taken it down. Tiny scars ran over his lids, above and below. The eyes were the palest brown, with tiny clouds and frail red streamers flying over the whites, the pupils awfully still, not reacting to the firelight. ‘I thought too much. I did love you, simply and innocently I knew that after you’d gone.

  Notwithstanding John’s immolation before Celina, Anselm’s mind — naturally withdrawing from any display of strong emotion — lay with Róża’s unmoving face: the haunted lilac shadows and the coming of night. She barely moved and she didn’t take her eyes off John. It had turned into a conversation between two broken friends, with Róża watching and waiting. She was like a silent guide, always one step ahead, always observant, always waiting. A deep comprehension flickered and died in Anselm’s mind. He’d barely noticed its outline before it was gone.

  Stirring, suddenly he remembered a little trick from his days at the Bar. Not so much a trick as a technique that reflected the depths of the human person; the workings of the conscience. Put the question to the person who has already framed the enquiry: ask them what they asked of someone else. The answer was often surprising. He coughed, lightly.

  ‘Celina, of all the film-makers in all the studios in Warsaw, why did Brack pick you?’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Celina asked for some water. Anselm went to get some, wondering if they’d ever get on to the wine. He thought of Belloc; All, all must face their Passion at the last. The fetching didn’t break the tension. There was no escape, now It just grew tighter. Anselm roused the fire in a vast hearth with wood that was hard and dry. There was little smoke, the perfume faint but deep. Róża still
said nothing. She watched. Her eyes wouldn’t shift from John.

  ‘I’m not what you think, John,’ said Celina, looking into the glass as if it were a goldfish bowl. ‘I never was. Though it’s what I wanted … wanted with every ounce of longing that dragged me down. You can’t weigh longing, of course. It’s a just a wisp of air. Smoke from a fire. The scales don’t change. You remain what you are.

  It was true; Celina had been kicked out of four schools. But there were no aunts and uncles chalked up dead by the Tsar’s secret police. Her mother had dumped her father, but not because of any high-minded principles. She hadn’t got any; and he’d been no dissident. There’d been no contributions to the Club of the Crooked Circle; he’d been no Vagabond, at least, not of the noble kind. The nearest he’d got to a secret society was the SB.

  ‘He didn’t tell me outright, but you find out, eventually’ Celina sniffed quietly finding a tissue from inside a sleeve. It was inconspicuous, petite, wholly unfit for purpose. ‘It’s their way of talking, the habitual evasions, the sense that they’re important and nobody knows it, that no one appreciates them, that they understand things that no one would ever …’ Her delicate voice trailed off. She wiped her eyes. Folding it neatly, square upon tiny square, she made the tissue into a pellet, something insignificant to hang on to. ‘My mother walked out when I was nine.’

  She’d been a go-alonger, the sort of woman who didn’t mind what she ate, where she went or what they did. To this day Celina ground her teeth if someone said, ‘I don’t mind’. Her mother had sat in the corner doing puzzles, her shiny dyed hair in curlers. All she’d wanted to know was six down or whatever. And no matter what you said, it clashed with four across. Celina had no other memory of her. She wondered now if doing crosswords had been inevitable: she’d avoided every big question, leaving all the big answers to her husband. What more could she do? She’d gone off with another SB officer. Someone with a higher rank — someone who knew more answers to more questions. And what of the daughter she’d left behind? Well, perhaps she didn’t mind.

  ‘Despite her failings, she mattered. A mother always matters. I hit back at school until they kicked me out.’

  Anselm frowned as if he’d just heard gunfire echoing down a corridor in Praga. Irina’s son was sorting out the Afghans. In the kitchen, Irina was explaining …

  ‘My father showed no emotion,’ said Celina, as if cutting Anselm short. ‘He just focused on me. I was all that counted. But, you see, these people whose importance isn’t widely known, all they’ve got is what they think of themselves. Nothing else matters. So he tried to make me into another version of him.’

  When Celina began to mock one or two teachers, he’d stood over the desk in her bedroom, legs apart, hands behind his back. He’d dished out all the official lines he’d ever learned. He’d ranted in the kitchen about duty and responsibility and choices and sacrifice and ashes. After her third expulsion he’d said she was becoming an embarrassment — the understatement had shocked her; he wasn’t a man for delicate wordplay Following the fourth, what was left of their relationship broke down. She didn’t wait to be thrown out, she just walked on to the street. Homeless, she’d eventually found herself among like minds, people who gave her a floor, people who thought like she did, whose flats were sometimes turned over by the boys in jeans and leather jackets. She went to a kind of university with lectures in boiler rooms and attics, staffed by professors who worked in factories or washed the windows.

  ‘I next saw him after I’d been arrested in sixty—eight,’ said Celina. She sipped water, her lips needing moisture. ‘He got me out. There were no charges brought and I was furious and sick with shame. Other people’s kids were finished off, but not his. I told him to keep far, far away from my life. But he stayed there, I understand that now Why else did they leave me alone? How else did I get a job in film? How else did I get my work past the censors?’

  Celina laid one hand upon the other. Carelessly showing the depth of her distress, she played with her ring, the big daisy. Her voice came again like the tearing of flimsy paper. ‘I wanted those relatives, John. More than anything, I wanted parents in prison and ancestors scattered round Siberia. But that’s not what I got. I got a mother who didn’t have a clue and a father who was Otto Brack.’

  At least Anselm had seen it coming, so he had an excuse for not reacting. John made a start as if the Dentist had forgotten to use anaesthetic. But Róża simply stared ahead, mute, remote, frightening Anselm with her silence. She seemed all-knowing, expectant, resigned. Her thumb strayed to the finger with two wedding rings. Celina played with the daisy John put on his glasses as if to avoid a coming explosion of light. The fire collapsed. Shadows fled across the vaulted roof A sort of fuse spontaneously ignited in Anselm’s mind.

  ‘I thought I’d never see him again,’ said Celina. ‘He completely vanished from my life. I made something of myself. Good things happened to me. We met in May do you remember, John? I moved in towards the end of the August. It was a sunny time, wasn’t it? We were free and easy and the army was out there bothering other people. But then, in the October, I came home and found my father in the sitting room, legs crossed. In his hands was a journal. He didn’t say a thing, he just sat there, turning the pages.’

  Celina’s evocation of that encounter was so vivid — not by her words but the expression on her face, the shock lived again — that Anselm found himself in that Warsaw flat, a frightened intruder watching a mystery unfold, a mystery half understood because that journal was Brack’s creation. Anselm couldn’t move. The fuse was sputtering. He looked out of his own darkness at the father and his terrified daughter …

  ‘He’s been very stupid,’ he said closing the journal. ‘And that annoys me.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here? What are—’

  ‘Keep your voice down. I’m here to help. Again. Tidying up after you. Sweeping up your endless mistakes.’

  He hadn’t shouted, but he sounded loud and piercing. Celina stayed with her back to the front door, the keys jingling in one hand. He was dressed in one of those shapeless suits without apparent colour, the cloth blending into any and all surroundings. His drab overcoat was slung over the back of a chair.

  ‘I’ve been trying to help him,’ he said, tossing the book on to a coffee table. ‘But he’s broken the rules and now he’s in trouble. Serious trouble. Like you, he should have listened. Like you, he thinks he knows best.’

  ‘What do you mean, help him?’

  Her father pointed towards a chair. Out of some remembered fear, Celina obeyed. His eyes tracked her with the old, hungry disapproval. He’d greyed but the hardness was still there around the mouth. She’d always thought his face looked scarred, only there were no old cuts on the beaten skin. ‘I’ve been giving his career a push. Looking after him like I’ve looked after you.

  Nausea turned Celina’s insides. He was at it again. He wouldn’t let go of her; and now his contamination had reached John. All she could manage was, ‘He’s in trouble?’

  ‘Of course he is.’ Her father nodded towards the journal. ‘He’s written down where he got it all from — I’m not worried, I’m a careful man. We’ve never met. He doesn’t know my face or name — but what he’s written down is proof, proof of serious crimes.’

  ‘Take it … burn it.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s been seen by eyes other than mine. I’ve sent them away for now, but I’ll have to act on it. Eventually’

  ‘I’ll tell them what you’ve said and what you’ve done for me, over the years.

  He looked at her with a father’s contempt. ‘No one but me would believe you.’

  ‘Crimes?’ She was lurching with anxiety and guilt: this was her fault. He was her father, and now he’d compromised John, as he’d always compromised her. ‘What crimes?’

  ‘The sort that land you in prison for ten years. Espionage doesn’t attract a short sentence, not when it upse
ts Moscow Which is why he’s upset me. I was only giving his career a shove in the right direction.’

  Why won’t you leave me alone? The question rose from Celina’s depths but she couldn’t give it voice. She couldn’t bear to have any exchange with this … there wasn’t a single word to describe him, or what he meant to her. The remembered fear was eating at her guts. Why had he sent off his subordinates? Why was he still here?

  ‘He’s named you and someone else,’ he said, as if in reply ‘You’re all in danger now He really should have stuck to the rules. Write nothing down was number one.’

  ‘You’ll help him?’

  ‘Are you asking?’ Again the father’s contempt.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right. But there isn’t much time. He mentions a woman called Róża Mojeska. I’ll need to see her, which isn’t prudent for a man in my position. But it’s the only way I can organise a passport. I’ll have to get one for you, too. I can get you all out before it’s too late. I’ll make it so that your boyfriend’s asked quietly to leave —among journalists, that’s a kind of medal for bravery. Shows he got close to the nerves of power. Best career boost in the bag. Is that good enough for you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen gratitude put light on your face.’

  ‘I’m not grateful,’ snapped Celina. ‘It’s your meddling around with my life that’s caused all this … all you’ve ever done is bring me— ‘Privileges,’ supplied her father. ‘Well, take this one with both hands. It won’t be happening again.’ He stood up to go. ‘Obviously you can’t tell your boyfriend what I’m doing or that we’ve met.’