5.37
Work at the factory gave a structure to my life. I sat between two women and we just sewed from morning till night. To my left was Barbara Nowak. Her husband had gone for a long walk and never come back. She had a pram with a doll, bought in the hope of having a child. She had a parrot in a cage that yelled ‘Let me out’. She was unhappy; and that made us friends. We both sat there, lost with our own thoughts, endlessly pulling a needle and thread. Thirty years later, never having attended a strike or demonstration in her life.’ Barbara organised a system of distribution for Freedom and Independence. She used to wear a flowery apron, even in the street. The SB never gave her a second look. But that was all to come. At the time I met her, we were both in a kind of troubled sleep.
8.09
The fifties were a difficult time for everyone. And yet I didn’t really notice the hardship. I remember once seeing blood on my thumb but I had no recollection of having felt the stab of the needle. That sums me up, back then. From day to day I felt nothing. The greater part of me was still in Mokotow… by a large window that looked on to a cherry tree. Events passed me by — great, terrible events, which burned themselves into those around me.’ and I looked on, numbed, as if I’d found someone else’s blood on my fingers.
It was through Barbara that I heard about the riots in 1956. She leaned towards me saying the workers from the Stalin factory in Poznan were on the streets. They had banners. ‘We want Freedom’, ‘We want Bread’.’
‘We are Hungry’. She said the farmers had taken on the Soviet army Bombs were falling out of the sky Folk were being dragged off to Siberia. I listened from afar, only stirring at a detail that turned out to be true. Children had climbed trees to get a better view of the tanks and the soldiers. When the army opened fire, aiming high to warn the rioters, they hit these little sparrows. Children fell dead from the branches.
18.23
Such was my life. Every night I’d go to Saint Klement’s for an hour or so. The silence reminded me of a voice I once heard on a train. This girl sang a song that took me out of myself. In my life, which has seen so many demands for names and dates of birth, here was someone important who’d escaped being nailed down. There was no name. I don’t know who it was, or what she looked like but I found her again in that quiet place.
The cleaner was called Lidia Zelk. A timid woman, we didn’t speak for three years. She’d never married. Like Barbara, she eventually joined the Friends of the Shoemaker.
Chapter Twenty
While waiting for Roza’s statement to be translated, Anselm sat at his desk humming Bunny Berigan’s trumpet solo from ‘I Can’t Get Started’. His eyes drifted on to the orange file. He’d left it open. Roza’s two faces peered back from the prison photographs. All that lay between each snap of the shutter release was a couple of years, during which time… Anselm’s humming came to an abrupt halt: he’d noticed a tiny scrap of blue paper sticking out towards the bottom of the pile.
Swivelling the block round, he lowered his head to examine the fragment more closely It was held in place by the string fastener that kept the documents together. The relevant sheet had evidently been detached from the bundle, leaving behind the corner section. Puzzled, he closed the cover. He’d only just tied the bow when Sebastian entered with the translation of Roza’s statement.
‘Let me know what you think,’ he said. ‘Our rat is in there somewhere.’
As he reached the door, Anselm heard himself say ‘Can I just ask an idle question?’
‘Absolutely’
Sebastian turned and leaned on the jamb, hands in his pockets.
‘Can’t understand a thing in here, of course,’ said Anselm, tapping the orange file, ‘but why are there two kinds of paper… white and blue.’
‘The white was used by the interrogators, the blue by the nurses.
‘Nurses?’
‘Yes. The colour coding was common to all prisons. In Roza’s case, having any medical notes is laughable. I mean, what did they do? Dish out the aspirin when they’d finished with the rack? That’s probably why it’s blank. They didn’t do anything.’
‘Blank?’
‘Apart from her name at the top. I don’t know why it’s in there at all. I imagine they lumped all her papers together, even when they hadn’t been used.’
Anselm’s mind made a sort of grinding noise. Sebastian was talking as if the blue paper was still in the file. He’d seen it. He knew it was blank. But it wasn’t there now Some primitive caution stopped Anselm from revealing his thoughts. Instead he asked if he could venture some more questions peripheral to their investigation.
‘Is anyone else involved in this case?’
‘No.’
‘Anyone else read the files?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Just wondering if you’d got a second opinion on the Polana material.’ That was completely untrue. Anselm had wanted to know who might have had access to the orange file. His intuition had already leapt at the answer. He quickly pressed on.’ seeking confirmation. ‘I know this is neither here nor there, but what did Roza do when she saw the transcripts? That white and blue paper must have knocked her flat:
‘She didn’t even open the cover.’
‘Really?’
‘The sight of the files winded her. Wanted to be alone. When the door opened her eyes were on the “Way Out” sign.’
‘How did you change her mind?’ The question was entirely superfluous. Anselm had found out what he wanted to know.
‘I said I had a story, too,’ replied Sebastian. ‘She stared at my shirt and shoes and then, for some reason, she just weakened. I pushed some more and she finally gave in. The fact is, she wanted to speak. Everyone who’s been brutalised has to speak, needs to speak. And Roza went as far as she was able… but I very nearly lost her.’
Anselm made a mischievous nod. Sebastian was no different. That reference to an untold story had come from a dropped guard. Already the lawyer was backtracking, heading into the corridor before Anselm’s curiosity could tug at the admission.
‘Don’t ask,’ he intoned. ‘I’ll tell you after Brack’s conviction.’
Until that moment, Anselm had thought that Sebastian was simply a dedicated lawyer born of the generation that dealt with the sins of their fathers. There was clearly another facet to his energy. Anselm recalled the box files and the photograph of the elderly woman standing behind a wheelchair. Who should have been sitting there? Were they linked to Sebastian’s investigation into Brack? Anselm turned as from the ghost to have a quick word with Roza.
‘I said nothing to Sebastian, because you didn’t,’ he said, confiding and quiet. ‘I’m respecting your privacy. You removed the blue paper because you didn’t want anyone to know you’d been in the infirmary. Fair enough. Your choice. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.’
He waited, but no reply came to his imagination.
‘But I’m in some difficulty. You went to John for help and, for all I know, he’d just walk straight through the fire. But you’ve ended up with me. I’m different. I’m easily distracted. And I can only help by stumbling around on the sidelines — it’s my way Comes with monastic life, you know, head half in the clouds. So bear with me, because I now want to know why you vandalised the national archives.’
With that resolution in mind, Anselm picked up Roza’s statement.
Anselm read the document three times with increasing attentiveness — a monastic practice vaguely similar to deep sea diving without the benefit of lead boots, each appraisal an attempt to break beneath the surface tension of the page. The objective: to descend into the dark and find the strange light not always visible from the side of the boat. He lingered here and there on individual phrases, letting his mind sink and swim where it willed.