by Ben Pastor
“Even when they’re unable to separate the practice of virtue from arrogance? Father, people without moral scruples seem always nicely shorn of pride, while being good costs me so much effort, I’m not even pleasant about it.” Sorrow wanted out of him and Bora still tried to give some other shape to it, so that the priest wouldn’t suspect. “What’s the point, Father Malecki? God doesn’t give a damn about any of us.”
There was no motive for Malecki to feel so sure of himself, but he came around Bora to shut the door of the room behind him.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“If you’re in the mood to blame God, blame Him in my face. I may not know Him better, but I’ve known Him longer than you have.”
29 December
At seven in the morning, Doctor Nowotny used his foot to close the door, since his hands were busy with cigarette and lighter.
“It’s the second time you’ve trundled into this office so early, Captain. What’s Schenck put into your head now?” When Bora handed him a sealed envelope, he stared at it. “And what’s this?”
“It’s the report of the autopsy performed on Major Retz, Colonel. I wonder if you’d read it for me.”
“Retz, Retz - the fellow that cooked his head in the stove? Well, what does it have to do with you? Oh, I see. I didn’t realize you quartered together.” Nowotny ripped the side of the envelope. “There was no need for my colleague to seal this, it isn’t a state secret. What do you want to know?”
“Anything you might find unusual.”
Nowotny scanned the report. “It looks pretty straightforward, but give me some time to read it. I’ll call you when I have something to say. Is anything wrong?”
“I’m just curious to hear a professional opinion, Colonel.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean you: what’s happened to you?”
Bora evaded Nowotny’s scrutiny with a blank army stare. “Nothing has happened to me.”
After he left the hospital, the sleepless night threatened to catch up with him, and he spent the first minutes at work with his head under the bathroom faucet. What the cold water didn’t do, plenty of black coffee did, so that he looked his usual prim self when Schenck called him in to report.
The events at Święty Bór did not appear in his notes, and although he felt guilty about it he made no mention of them to the colonel. Blaskowitz’s words prevented him. “Now that your career is in this envelope, give me something I can use,” the general had told him on dismissing him. “Bring me proof.”
While Schenck read through the notes, Bora thought of how he could “bring proof” directly to the general’s headquarters at Spala. With his schedule, it seemed only dimly possible.
Schenck lifted his live and dead eye from the notes.
“Much improved, Bora. You’re developing selective vision.”
Bora thanked him. Selective vision? He felt as if the last twenty-four hours had scooped out of him a careless enthusiastic life principle. The zeal that replaced it was severe and exacting and made him new to himself. All actions seemed untried as he took them.
“Colonel,” he said. “I wonder if I might be given two days to concentrate on some research.” He didn’t say which, in order not to lie brazenly. “The report on the abbess’s death is due sooner than I can possibly put it together by working after hours.”
Schenck gave back the notes. “I expect so. We owe it to old Hofer, don’t we? Two days is more than I want to spare you, but I’ll give you thirty-six hours starting in the morning.”
“I don’t think you believe I was in love with him.”
Helenka wore her hair pinned tightly at the nape of the neck, and her face seemed bare now that she had no make-up on it. The dressing room was very narrow and poorly lit except for the over-illuminated mirror, in front of which she sat. Like a dead black bird, a wig rested in a cardboard box. Paunchy jars and rouge sticks, hairpins, curls of hair pulled from the comb after disentangling the wig - there was a variety of feminine objects strewn on the dressing table.
Bora recognized Retz’s phone number pencilled on the wall by the mirror.
“You see, Captain, it wasn’t like it was for Ewa and him. Ours was different. I can’t explain it to you.”
Bora stood behind her chair with hands in his pockets, following her motions as she opened one jar, then another, and with two fingers began smoothing the mixture on her face.
“I know what being in love is, you don’t need to explain it.”
She glimpsed at him through the mirror. “But you’re married. It’s not the same. I know it becomes stale when you’re married.”
“My marriage isn’t quite stale yet.”
A new pallor was created on Helenka’s face by the salve she daubed on. When she spoke, the inside of her mouth looked bright pink by contrast. “What I meant to tell you last night is I don’t believe Richard had any reason to kill himself.”
“Perhaps none you knew of.”
She ran rouge over her lips, first on the lower lip then on the upper. Small hooked gestures, still controlled. Against the white of the skin, her mouth was turned into a moist red wound across her face. “You don’t understand. He loved me too much. Men in love don’t kill themselves.”
“It depends on whom they’re in love with.”
“You still don’t understand! Even if he had a thousand reasons to commit suicide, Richard would have told me about it. He called me that morning, you know. He was getting ready to come see me after the rehearsal.” Her hand trembled too much now for her to apply mascara on her eyelashes, so she waited with the soot-black little brush suspended, quivering. “He looked forward to it, he said. He had bought me a gift. Is that the sort of conversation a man has while he’s turning on the gas to suffocate himself?”
“We hardly know what goes through a suicide’s mind.”
“But I didn’t phone him, he called me! Wouldn’t he have something better to say to me if he was about to die?”
Bora stared at the limp blackness of the wig, which Helenka now lifted and primped in her hands. The gift she mentioned must be the boxed engagement ring he’d found in Retz’s bedtable. He’d decided to ship it to the widow, all the more since Retz had given away his wedding band. Helenka tucked the blond fleece on her neck under the wig.
“I need to ask you a few questions,” Bora said.
“So, that’s why you came after work. What kind of questions?”
“Some of them are personal, but I don’t ask them for personal reasons.”
Now Helenka seemed another creature, born out of the mirror. Dark and white, with that crimson slash across her face, her clear eyes like glass splinters set in the blackness of painted lashes and brows. She was newly alien, nearly frightening to him.
“Very well. Ask.”
Half an hour later, Ewa ran into him in the uncomfortably cold, narrow semi-darkness of the backstage corridor as he came out of Helenka’s dressing room. Bora brought his hand to his visor in a salute.
Whatever was in Ewa’s mind, she said, “How nice to see you, Captain. Are you staying for the play?”
“I’m sorry, I have no time.”
“Pity.”
They stopped face to face. Ewa, too, was transformed. Like swatches of night sky, a black dress gathered and fell around her body, making the whiteness of bare shoulders and the deep line of breasts glare from the twilight. Her lead-white face seemed to Bora bloodless like those of dead women he’d seen sprawled on threshing floors and barn floors, a reminder that made him physically cringe. He thought, with sudden shame, of the bloody and torn cotton briefs around the farm girl’s knees; her belly was no less white, and like mashed snow with blond grass on it. A queasy need to get out of here overtook him.
The corridor was narrow, and when he moved, their bodies nearly touched.
“I must go.”
“Good night, Captain Bora.”
Nowotny’s phone call arrived two hours later, at half
-past ten. Brusque as always, the physician’s voice began by asking, “Are you alone?”
“Why, yes, Colonel.”
“Good. I read the autopsy report, and I’m coming to see you. No, I don’t want to meet at the hospital. I know where you live; I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Bora was waiting on the landing when Nowotny arrived. He heard him call from below. “Why in hell didn’t you get a place with an elevator?” And then the clump of his boots on the steps. Once in the apartment, the physician headed straight for the hall. “A Blüthner piano! Well, I see why you billet here. Will you play some Schumann?”
“As the colonel wishes.”
“Not now. Later.” Nowotny found a portly armchair to sit in and for perhaps a minute looked around. His eyes were still taking in the sober decor when he began speaking again. “I couldn’t find anything of relevance in the autopsy. It is consistent with the cause of death, the findings are normal for a man of Retz’s age and habits. So I gave a call to the colleague who performed the post mortem and decided to ask him directly about any detail he might have observed but not found relevant enough to include in the report.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Wait to thank me. He told me nothing worthwhile, unless you consider relevant the fact that Retz’s face was only partly shaven.” Bora’s reaction puzzled Nowotny. “Is it?”
“It might. What does it mean, ‘partly shaven’?”
“Just what I said. The right cheek was shaven smooth, while chin, upper lip and left cheek had a twenty-four-hour bristle. My colleague said he didn’t notice it at first, because of the fairness of the facial hair.” Nowotny fished a pack of Muratti’s from his pocket. “What does it tell you, and what is this all about anyway? I thought you were trying to figure out who killed the nun.”
“I’m just curious, Colonel. Major Retz’s death was very sudden.”
“Oh, as for that. I had a schoolmate who breezed through medical school, graduated first in his class, was offered an assistantship on the same day and by the next morning had shot himself. A devout Catholic, too.” Nowotny tapped his cigarette on the arm of the chair. “If you’re so morbid about Retz, why don’t you come to the hospital one of these days before work and ask the medics who brought him in?”
Bora said he would do so.
“It’s generous of you to have come to tell me this in person, Colonel Nowotny.”
“That’s not why I came.” Curtly, Nowotny gestured towards the piano stool for Bora, who’d been standing, to sit down. “How clever are you?”
Bora didn’t expect the question. “I don’t like cleverness much.”
“Well, do you have common sense, then?”
“I hope so.”
“An intelligent man without common sense will never be able to do what you started to do.”
Bora didn’t mistake what Nowotny was saying. With unspoken alarm he understood the words didn’t refer to investigations or military routine. The idea that someone from the outside knew of it made him defensive.
“What have I started, Colonel?”
Nowotny reached for an ashtray, which he balanced on his knees. “Don’t practice cleverness with me, it’s unnecessary; I’m an unimpressionable Prussian swine. And don’t worry, I don’t read minds. Like General Blaskowitz, I come from Peterswalde: we keep in touch. Now play me some Schumann.”
30 December
Father Malecki had his back to Mr Logan of the American consulate, mostly because he didn’t wish to grow angry at him, and he was close to his threshold of patience.
Logan spoke in a bureaucratic sing-song. “A single American citizen, you will forgive me, has no business becoming involved in the internal matters of a foreign country, no matter how charitable in appearance. When the consul heard you had been detained, he threw a fit. I had to calm him down before being able to make him even consider there might have been a misunderstanding. You and I, Father Malecki, know there was no misunderstanding at all.”
“I did not ‘become involved’ as an American, but as a Roman Catholic priest.”
“You’re splitting hairs, Father. If that weren’t enough, you’ve been seen in public places with a German Intelligence officer by the name of Bora. What is your reason for meeting him?”
“It’s simpler than you think.”
“Explain it to me, then. Simply, so that I can report to the consul without getting my tail chewed.”
When Malecki finished the brief exposition, Logan let out a low moan.
“You take much upon yourself, Father. We are anxious that no more incidents should happen to embarrass the United States government, and with all due respect for your habit and connected allegiances, we must ask you to refrain from these extra-clerical activities.”
“Now it’s the consul talking,” Malecki said with scorn.
“No, the consul wanted to repatriate you immediately. This is Logan from Chicago talking, the one who attended Sunday school at Holy Name’s. Father, will you at least look at me?”
“I can hear you just fine without looking at you. And, see? Hopefully I’ll be done in less than two weeks. Give me until then and I promise I’ll settle down and say my beads.”
“Much can happen in two weeks.”
“A bomb could fall on our heads this very minute, too. Come, Logan. We’re not at war with Germany and we’re not at war with Poland. Until we decide which side we’re going to take, if any, give me a chance to do some good.”
“No more exploits, Father.”
“I promise.”
“Be discreet in your meetings. Avoid contacts with the occupying forces if possible: people talk and are resentful. Keep from political discussions and say nothing to Bora that could be used by German propaganda. Reveal nothing to him that might be interpreted as personal leanings for or against the Third Reich. Refrain from praise, criticism or comments.”
Malecki turned around at long last, with a grin on his face.
“May I at least save his soul?”
When Malecki met with the nuns later that morning, the good cheer he had shown Logan was gone. The nuns listened in complete silence, and then began to weep noiselessly when he told them that his attempt to get help for Sister Barbara had failed.
“I don’t know why I even bothered to approach any of the Germans.”
Being disappointed in Bora embittered him because it forced him to admit how much he had counted on his help, as if Bora had ever given him reason to depend on him.
Bora was then stopping his car at the edge of Święty Bór, where tracks left in the mud had hardened, and a new snowfall would soon fill them. A light cloud of steam rose from the hood as he walked around the car, camera in hand. He passed the scrubby threshold of the woods and entered a rapidly thickening world of tangled branches and trees growing in clumps.
The bluish pines that gave name to the woods shot up above the underwood, surrounded by a carpet of needles and short cones bristling open. Bora went past them and straight through this time, soon reaching the slippery incline where larches spread rough branches heavy with years and snowfalls. The ground cover of leaves and needles was disturbed on the incline. Some of the branches were broken or bent. A church-like odour of resin came from them when he brushed past.
Beyond the incline the land opened up again, unknown, wider than a clearing and more like a prairie meadow that would bloom wet in the spring. Combed yellow trails in the dead grass revealed the natural network of drainage into and from it, and although it hadn’t rained or snowed in days, the soil felt elastic under Bora’s steps. He pushed the advance lever of his camera and took the first picture.
The trench was thirty paces long, four paces wide, running across the field in a roughly east-west direction. The fresh dirt covering it had sunk in places and was so soft that when he stepped on it, it collapsed under his foot close to the edge. His boot went down nearly to his calf, and Bora struggled to extricate himself; when he did, he saw that brownish long stran
ds had become tangled on his spur. With his gloved hand, slowly, he cleared the blackish sod in the hole to look in. He adjusted the distance scale to the minimum, and shot two more photographs. He had to walk nearly to the southern rim of the clearing to be able to photograph the entire trench.
Back on the edge of upheaved dirt where he’d seen the SD open fire, he met with handfuls of rifle casings and pistol casings, some of which he gathered into his breeches’ pockets. More pictures followed.
Standing on the spot and staring ahead towards a lacy barrier of leafless trees, meagre against the cinder sky, he knew he was looking at the last image seen by those who had been shot along the trench. Bora instinctively looked down, all too vividly imagining the explosion at the base of each victim’s skull, followed no doubt by some convulsed jerking motion when one fell over. The sensation went through him with physical clarity, bearing for the first time in this war an unmistakable warning of grief to come.
He continued to take photographs until the film in his camera was exhausted, and then walked back into the woods.
There was a half-track parked by his car at the edge of the road.
Bora discerned it through the screen of rarefying brushwood, and for a crazy instant felt that by taking one more step he might fall headlong into panic. He looked back into the tangle of trees, thinking, checking the speed of his breathing. Hastily, he removed the leather strap from around his neck, and lay the camera behind an exposed root.
It was a small group of men, composed of a redheaded officer and three SD guards armed with rifles. The doors of his car had been yanked wide. Two of the guards were going through the interior even now.
As he stepped out in the open, Bora saw they had found the empty box of camera film on the front seat.
“What were you doing in the woods, Captain?”
Bora critically looked inside his car before slamming the doors shut. “I’m not aware that I have to explain what I’m doing anywhere. This is open country.”
