His first reaction on drying himself down, so to speak, was completely irrelevant to the matter in hand. He was hurt. And confused. At first he’d found the references to John touching. They’d given bright glimpses on to the young man who’d left East Berlin for Warsaw.’ the gifted journalist driven to document the struggle of an oppressed people. But then, like a sudden power-cut, came that reference to John’s mother. He’d told Roza what he’d never told him. Suppressing his disappointment, Anselm focused instead on Roza’s staggering misfortune. She’d walked out of Mokotow into the house of an informer.
Anselm’s second reaction, then, was pity Immense pity for Roza, but also for the husband and father who’d become FELIKS. Presumably there’d been pressure or the allure of reward, but Edward Kolba had evidently come to an arrangement with Otto Brack. With or without his wife’s connivance, he’d kept an eye on their guest. For sure, Roza had been welcomed with open arms. But she’d also been placed at the centre of an ongoing surveillance operation. If FELIKS did betray Roza in 1982 then that would certainly explain Roza’s silence afterwards: her loyalty to him, but perhaps more so to his wife.’ Aniela, who’d shared the unforgettable experience of Mokotow. She too got Anselm’s pity.
His third reaction was more clinical.
Roza had amended and amplified the transcript, making it a carefully polished document. Each section dealt neatly with people and places and their significance in her life. Every word had its place. Which made Roza’s mistake all the more illuminating.
She’d slipped up.
The tiny window in her cell was so high she had to strain her neck ‘to see the clouds’. Eight minutes later she confessed that the greater part of her remained in Mokotow ‘by a large window that looking on to a cherry tree.’.
Where was that big window? It had to be located in the prison infirmary. Roza wouldn’t have had the run of the place. There was no gym, television room or sauna. Where else could she have been if it wasn’t her cell? The textual inconsistency was of no small importance. It explained Roza’s startling opening remark that she wanted to remain incarcerated. Fine, she’d forgotten how to boil an egg, but think again (Anselm said to himself): she was effectively saying that she longed to remain at the scene of a double execution. Dogs do things like that, not human beings. Not wives. But this is what Roza said she wanted to do. And it was not credible. In an otherwise crafted testimonial where nothing had been given away without a specific reason, Roza had made an accidental admission. She’d kicked and screamed and beaten the prison door not because she wanted her cell back but because she longed to be near that larger window; an infirmary window Where else if not there? It haunted her. And all because it looked on to a tree?
‘Well, what do you think?’
Anselm made a start. He hadn’t heard Sebastian enter. The lawyer pulled over a chair and straddled the seat, his chin lodged on his folded arms as if he were looking into that eye testing machine at the opticians. He worked too hard, that was Anselm’s verdict. The whites were yellowed and bloodshot.
‘Something isn’t quite right.” said Anselm.
‘In what way?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He made a sigh of self-deprecation. ‘Can’t read a damn thing without brooding on it for months. At Larkwood we tend to chew words slowly. swallow them even more slowly and then wait for this sudden kick of understanding, right here — ’ he pointed at his stomach — ‘it’s a bit annoying, really I read stuff ten years ago and I’ve still got indigestion. The only cure’s watching and waiting.’
‘Well, you’ve got till nine-thirty tomorrow morning.’ Sebastian reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out a scrap of paper. He held it up to Anselm so he could read the address scrawled across the middle. ‘You have an appointment with Marek Frenzel.’
Locating the former secret policeman had been no more difficult than tracing Irina Orlosky According to the tax people, Brack’s assistant, now aged sixty-two, had left the SB to join the peace of mind industry and was now a branch manager in central Warsaw He’d shown a flare for insurance. He was still looking after the People: house and contents; the whole caboodle.
‘Does he know what we want?’ asked Anselm, taking the paper. ‘I told his secretary that an old policy had finally matured.’
So the stage was set. If Anselm’s hunch was correct, he’d shortly buy back the missing contents of the Polana file. And that would confirm if Edward Kolba had gone the distance. But in truth Anselm’s curiosity, lambent with expectation, lay just as much elsewhere: on the sidelines.’ far from the fire.
Chapter Twenty-One
IPN/RM/13129/2010
EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF A STATEMENT MADE BY ROZA MOJESKA
33.41
If it wasn’t for Bernard, I might never have gone back to the Shoemaker. When he was a child, I told him the story of the dragon and I like to think that his first steps towards resistance came from hearing that tale of intellect against brute force. Later, without prompting, he began to ask the ‘wrong’ sorts of question, like, ‘Why do we have a special relationship with the Soviet Union?’. Edward used to pull his hair out, begging him to stick to algebra. Clean problems that could be solved cleanly He just wanted his boy to do well at school.
36.22
At university Bernard started talking about all kinds of freedom… freedom to read books banned by the censor; freedom to watch any film he wanted; to say what he liked; to meet whom he liked; freedom from the restraint that kept everyone in line, an ideological line drawn more for Moscow’s approval than theirs; freedom to pick his own leaders; freedom of information; freedom protected by the law Freedom, pure and simple. Edward would shake his head, stabbing one finger upwards, warning Bernard that they might be bugged, while Aniela would dust the flour from her hands, round on him and shout back, ‘What are you on about? You’re getting a free education!’
38.54
Bernard belonged to that group of intellectuals whose strong belief in socialism — its vision of fairness and equality — had turned restive. Their problem was that, in practice, it wasn’t working properly. They demanded reform not revolution — a reform that had been promised year on year by the Party leadership. All they wanted was for the apparatchiks to stand back so that he and his educated pals could lift the bonnet on the government’s engine. With a bit of major tinkering they were sure they could fix those grinding noises that everyone was complaining about. But eventually he lost his faith. One of his professors was expelled from the Party for condemning the lack of political, social and economic development. That was when he — and many others — realised that without a revolution of ideas there was little hope for change. He wrote a letter saying so to both the rector and the Party leadership — actions for which he could have been kicked out of the university Happily he only received a disciplinary warning. Bernard got his degree later that year and I still remember Edward when the results came out. He sat with his mouth open, tears of joy pouring on to his thick moustache. There was a scholar in the family.
41.52
They got Bernard after he’d started post-graduate studies. One domino hit another: in 1968 the censor banned Forefather’s Eve after the audience had a field day jeering the czarist agent as if he were a latter-day soviet stooge. The students took to the streets in protest so the rector shut down a string of Departments. Thousands of young people — Bernard, among them — had their schooling cut short. They all got ‘wolf tickets’, blacklisting them when it came to finding a job. Edward’s face set into a mask. This was one affair he couldn’t resolve by wangling. He had to watch his boy scratch around for bit work.
42.58
Bernard didn’t only lose his future; he lost a childhood friend, Mateusz Robak. They’d gone in different directions, Bernard to books on philosophy and Mateusz to an electrician’s manual. When the demonstration had erupted Bernard the Student had wanted Mateusz the Worker by his side. But Mateusz had laughed him down: ‘I’m not risking my job so you can watch a play written two hundred years ago.’ They never spoke again, not until 1982. By then Mateusz was in charge of my security.