Lumen

by Ben Pastor

  He found out after Hannes had driven halfway down the street, by the shop signs and shop fronts, that he’d instructed him to go the wrong way, past the Cracow Botanical Garden, nowhere near Headquarters.

  At Headquarters, Colonel Schenck was not interested. He was not unamiable, but showed no interest in intervening. He said he understood.

  “If you start feeling sorry so early on, Bora, you’re screwed. What should you care? We have our orders and the SD have theirs. It was only an accident that you didn’t happen to have similar orders. And these Polack farmers - they aren’t even people, they’re not even worth reproducing. I can see you’re perturbed, but believe me, don’t start caring.” Bora said something, and Schenck interrupted. “We’re all in it. If it’s guilt, we’re all guilty. This is the way it is.”

  “I cannot accept this is the way it is, Colonel. We also have laws.”

  “So early on, and you’re already talking about laws? You yourself have come tearing down through Polish villages like a cyclone in your first days here. What laws? Leave things very well alone. First you report to me about the hanged Ukrainians, and now it’s Polack farmers. Harden your heart, as the advice was given to us at the beginning of this campaign. It’ll do you good in life. You’re just a young captain with scruples, not a relevant or even useful position at all.” Schenck patted his shoulder. “Go to your office and get ready for the staff meeting.”

  Bora felt as though he’d been dropped from a stunning height. For the next few minutes he fingered through papers on his desk, without even seeing them.

  Schenck checked on him from the doorway. “By the by, Bora, I’m expecting a phone call from Germany. My wife is in labour. Should the telephone ring while I’m chairing the meeting, I want you to answer and pass it to me at once if it is from the hospital. And another thing-I got word from Salle-Weber that your American priest is in the slammer for obstructing search operations. You have my permission to get him out after you’re done here.”

  Without questions, Father Malecki followed Bora out. They had hardly exchanged any words at all since Bora had shown up in the cramped detention room with an SD guard in tow. They now sat side by side in Bora’s car under a dim evening sky.

  “Should I take you home? I know where you live.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I see. To the American consulate, then?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Bora didn’t feel like playing guessing games. “Where do you want to go, Father Malecki?”

  “Let’s go have a drink.”

  The back room of the Pod Latarnie was a cosy tavern.

  Malecki’s American clerical garb, with trousers instead of a cassock, didn’t make him immediately identifiable as a priest. Bora chose a private table to the side, but could tell by the way Malecki slipped the scarf off his neck that he didn’t mind showing his Roman collar.

  “I’ll have a Żubrówka,” Malecki told the waiter.

  “Yes, Ojciec.”

  “What’ll you have, Captain Bora?”

  “I’ll have the same.”

  Malecki hadn’t been a priest for thirty years without having gained a good insight into men. He observed Bora distractedly play with the car keys, rigid in excess of his profession. It was the kind of rigidity that counters the need to slump.

  “Do you know what you ordered?” he asked him.

  “No.”

  “It’s the best flavoured vodka, with forest herbs from Białowieża.”

  Bora lifted his eyes to the priest. Whatever troubled him - Malecki doubted it had anything to do with his being arrested - he wouldn’t voluntarily speak of it. He decided by the sullen bent of Bora’s lips that it was best not asking him at this time.

  The waiter brought the drinks.

  “Here you go, Ojciec.”

  Bora felt a little better after the drink. He pulled back on the padded leather seat. “I’m sorry you were detained, Father Malecki.”

  “It wasn’t so bad after I convinced them that I wasn’t Polish.”

  “I would have thought the American consulate would obtain your release.”

  “They don’t even know I was arrested, I think.”

  “Didn’t you tell the SS?”

  “I told them I was a British subject.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did, and it wasn’t a very bad sin. It wouldn’t have been so easy after tonight, since the answer from the British Embassy in Warsaw was expected in the morning. But thanks to you I don’t have to worry about that.”

  Bora shook his head. “You’re very unorthodox, for a man of God.”

  “There are times when one must defy orthodoxy.”

  Bora was struck by the words. He knew they were not aimed at him, yet they sank in with the ease of a blade.

  “What times are those, Father Malecki?”

  It was the first evening since Retz’s death that Ewa had returned to rehearsal. The play opened the following day.

  Kasia caught up with her in the dark outside the theatre, and together they walked to catch the last streetcar until morning. At the corners the wind was so chilly, they had to wrap their coats about themselves and bury their faces in the collars.

  “Don’t ask anything, Kasia.”

  “Who’s asking anything? I’m just walking.”

  As soon as she arrived home, Ewa Kowalska removed her stockings, careful to handle them with wet fingertips, so that cuticles would not cause runs or snags. After putting on a pair of worn slippers, she stepped to the telephone at her bedside and dialled a number she knew by heart. Smoking, she waited to lower the receiver until it was clear that Bora was not home.

  Her head ached. She had smoked too much in the past few days and now her throat felt dry; she worried her voice might give way tomorrow. She kept vinegar-and-water on her bedtable, and having poured a tablespoon of vinegar in a half-glass of water, she gargled until tears ran down her face.

  Some irritating radio tune, sung by a shrill female voice, came floating from the kitchen through her bedroom door. Nur du, nur du, nur du-u-u. Ewa went to turn the radio off. She turned the light off. Seated on the bed, she closed her eyes. She couldn’t sleep. She was tired and couldn’t sleep. It ached in and out, this anger and loneliness.

  She needed to talk to a man, and found that she was angry at Bora for not being home.

  At the Pod Latarnie, Malecki said, “How did you come to the conclusion that by ‘her name’ the abbess might have meant Lumen?”

  Bora closely observed his small empty glass as if it were anything but a plain small glass. “I’m not at liberty to say. It’s not a conclusion, Father, only a viable possibility. If the abbess meant that she would die ‘through her name’, and the name is Lumen, by understanding what is meant by it I might discover who killed her. The Latin dictionary was helpful, but I can’t connect any of the meanings given with a cause of death. I remembered that in philosophy we refer to lumen naturale as the cognitive powers of the human mind, unaided by the grace of God.”

  Malecki nodded. “The lumen gratiae.”

  “Yes. On the other hand, lumen might represent a physical entity. The word also means ‘window’ and ‘opening’. Should we think she was shot through a window?” Bora glanced at the waiter and shook his head when asked whether he wanted another drink. Father Malecki did the same. “Now, admitting that the abbess was right in her prophecy and that I’m right in pursuing this lead, does it mean that lumen is the cause or the agent of her death?”

  Malecki dabbed his nose with the handkerchief. “Do we even have a firm motive for her death?”

  “So far, only the political overtone of her utterances.”

  “She was more apocalyptic than political, Captain.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, do we have suspects?”

  “Only faceless and nameless ones.” Bora moved the glass away. “I did consider the possibility of someone - even from my army - finding his way into the convent some
time before the colonel and I got there. Someone who could have killed the abbess, and with the confusion of the times, could be far from here by now.”

  Malecki appreciated Bora’s discomfort at the supposition. “But how would a stranger enter the convent without being seen?”

  “I don’t know. Whoever placed the bag of guns on the roof managed to enter.” With his forefinger, slowly, Bora followed the edge of the table. Malecki thought this might be a good time to say that he knew where at least one of the workmen could be found. But Bora was already thinking of something else. “Father,” he asked, “what percentage of the abbess’s prophecies have come true?”

  “It’s difficult to judge. Most of them haven’t yet come to pass. Of those referring to the events in the recent past, perhaps six out of ten.”

  “Would you call it a remarkable percentage?”

  “I would call it indicative. The theological view of prophecy is bound to the instances we encounter in the Old and New Testament. St John of the Cross said that God makes use of different means to transmit supernatural knowledge: at times words, at other images and symbols, or any combination of those. Mother Kazimierza was highly literate, so words and puns constellate her prophecies. I would expect Lumen to imply some sort of double entendre - if that’s the right expression. To return to her quota of successes, in some cases she was patently wrong. When I first arrived, she informed me that an older woman close to me would die within six months. Young or old, the only woman in my life happens to be my mother, and by the grace of God she’s alive and well to this day.”

  “Unless the abbess meant a contingent closeness, and considered herself the woman in question. After all, the word nun originally meant ‘old lady’.”

  Malecki shrugged. “You know, I spoke to Mother Kazimierza two or three times a week for six months. Still, I can’t say that I knew her. My impression was of a well-schooled, opinionated, conservative, controlled and controlling woman.”

  “The last kind of person you’d identify as a mystic.”

  “Precisely. The archbishop asked the Holy See to begin an investigation because of the unofficial cult beginning to accrue around her in her own lifetime. She very much resented my presence at first. It was only after a direct order from the archbishop that I was allowed to visit regularly. No doubt she was an intense believer. Her relationship to God was exclusive, jealous, deeply felt. You read some of her meditations.”

  Bora offered a cigarette to the priest. “I did. I found them sometimes banal, sometimes unintelligible. Her descriptions of the ‘penetration of God’s light into the cleft of the soul’ I found frankly erotic.” With deceptive nonchalance, Bora busied looking for his lighter. “Father Malecki,” he said then, “was she involved with the underground?”

  Malecki took the blow like a boxer. He’d expected the question would come at some point, but not now. It was too soon, and he was unprepared. He put his cigarette near to the flame, nervously sensing Bora’s alertness to an untruth, how he would perhaps understand the reason for his lying but take measures nonetheless.

  Across the table from him, Bora put away the lighter with a weary gesture. In truth, he was beginning to feel the weight of the day upon him. Like a load of stones being suddenly tied to his neck and shoulders, he physically ached with the strain of the day. Colonel Schenck had made things worse by saying, “You administered the coup de grace; technically it was you who killed them.”

  Father Malecki said, “Whatever I answer, Captain Bora, you will either disbelieve or follow up on it.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then my answer is not really relevant.”

  “But your silence is.”

  “Only by default.”

  Bora tightened his lips. He tried not to show it, but was vexed in excess of disappointment. “I though we had agreed to collaborate.”

  “Not politically.”

  “No? I could have left you in jail, Father Malecki.”

  “You have me in jail right now, just by asking me questions I can’t answer.”

  When Bora stood, obviously about to leave, Malecki made a mild gesture to detain him, no more than a raising of his open hand. “You’ll find the contractor who worked in the convent at this address, Captain.” And his hand lowered again, to extract a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket.

  The telephone rang shortly after Bora had returned from driving Malecki home.

  He recognized Ewa’s voice even before she identified herself. His first reaction was to put down the receiver.

  She said, preventing him, “I’m not going to take much of your time, Captain. I realize how late it is.”

  21 December

  There were no signs of concern in Schenck’s countenance the following morning, when he mentioned, “Man the phone for me, Bora: my wife is still in the delivery room. It seems to be a breech birth this time around.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Bora said for the sake of saying something.

  “Why? That’s the function of woman, Captain. A man risks his life in war, a woman in childbirth. I have an interview with the Governor General, but you can call me at this number if any news comes through. Did you get the priest out? Good.” Schenck took the Iron Cross from his pocket and hung it by the ribbon around his neck. “I see you recovered in a hurry from your mercy tangent. It was most unbecoming.”

  At midday, when Bora finally phoned Schenck with the news of his latest paternity, Father Malecki was speaking to the nuns gathered in the refectory. He told them there was suspicion among the Germans that the abbess might have had contacts with the underground, and watched their reactions. Most of them seemed surprised by the possibility. Sister Irenka and Sister Barbara denied the allegation because “it couldn’t be”. Sister Jadwiga brooded and kept silent.

  Eyes planted on her, Malecki addressed the group. “If any one of you has knowledge of such contacts or any other political issues, I’ll be listening to confessions this afternoon. The safety of this entire community might depend on the information.”

  Schenck’s satisfaction at having fathered a fourth son resulted in an afternoon off for Bora, the first since the invasion.

  Now Ewa looked at Bora sitting across from her, with a blade of cold sunshine falling on him through the café’s window. Under the light, his jaw was smooth and as if scraped clean: it had the texture of a boy’s skin. Stern, unblemished. It was an impression of great tidiness, attractive yet intimidating to her. She recognized in him the pitiless prejudice of youth.

  “I’m glad you asked that we meet,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She had a narrow smile. Twirling the spoon in her cup, she said, “Don’t look at me that way, Captain. Mondays aren’t my best time of the week, and I’ve been through a lot lately. ‘Why,’ you ask? I’m glad you think I might have something more to say about Richard. Something to explain things.”

  “What is there to explain?”

  “The fact that he killed himself. I heard it, like everyone else, from the cleaning woman.”

  Salle-Weber was right, Bora thought. The news had travelled. He sat back on the metal chair, stretching the lean uniformed length of his body. “Well, Frau Kowalska, what can you tell me that you didn’t tell the SS?”

  “It depends on your reasons for asking.”

  “They’re eminently private. I didn’t like Major Retz, frankly, but a brother officer is a brother officer. I was his room-mate, I want to understand.”

  With the crook of her finger in the handle, Ewa turned the cup on the saucer so that the handle was at her right. “I went to see him Saturday evening. He’d told me you wouldn’t be there, so I went. I had to talk to him.” She sipped from the cup, leaving the mark of her lipstick on the rim. “You might or might not know that Richard and I had been acquainted a long time. Since the last war, in fact.”

  Bora said he knew.

  “We’d have got married then, had there been more time. Maybe. It’s not important any
more. What’s important is that I found myself pregnant and with an acting career just beginning to show promise. Luckily there was someone else in the company who’d always ‘cared’, and I fell back on his offer. It’s a fairly trite story so far, and it would have remained a trite wartime romance for ever if Richard hadn’t been what he was. Unable to keep to one woman.”

  “Did you know that he had a wife in Germany this time around?”

  “Oh, yes. That wouldn’t have changed things. And then, how can I put it-Istill felt I had some precedence over any other woman.” When she looked over the cup, Ewa saw that Bora’s face was averted and slightly hostile. “There is a young actress in my company, Helenka is her name.”

  “Helenka Sokora?”

  Ewa’s mouth hardened at the edges, though she was quick to relax again. “I see you know her.”

  “I know of her. She’s your daughter.”

  Ewa put more milk in her tea, and for the next minute seemed absorbed in stirring it. Only when the rustle came of Bora crossing his legs, with the faint tinkle of his spurs, did she speak again. “It wasn’t that I resented Richard seeing other women. That’s the way he was. But Helenka - I couldn’t let him carry on with her.”

  The instability of her hand was at once obvious to Bora, by the way the cup knocked against the saucer when she tried to lift it. Though his body stayed relaxed, he became very intent.

  “Helenka was his, Captain.” Again she tried to lift the cup, and failed. “Richard didn’t know. My ex-husband suspected it, but didn’t actually know. Helenka has no idea of it and must never find out. It’s true that she and I don’t see eye to eye. We don’t like each other, we’re very similar yet very different. We live apart, we avoid each other everywhere except on stage. We dance very complicated dances to stay away from each other. When I heard through the theatre grapevine that she was going out with him, I was frantic, because Richard wasn’t a man to stop at polite niceties. I had no way of knowing if the irreparable had happened, but I hoped not.”