53.21
I lost a friend, too. Magda Samovitz. We’d met in Saint Justyn’s, where she’d been hidden during the war. The German secret police had taken her away with Mr Lasky in 1944 but she’d survived Treblinka and come back. Well, the government now blamed the student unrest on Zionists, and Magda lost her job simply because she was Jewish. I couldn’t believe that those who’d survived and returned, like her, would one day leave again with the little they could carry in their bags. Thousands lost their jobs and left the country. Magda went to England.
54.39
Bernard became heavily involved in unofficial union activity which was how he met his wife, Helena. A close friend of theirs was shot dead in 1970 at Gdynia, one of a crowd chanting ‘We want bread! We want truth!’ at the machine guns. They carried his body on planks behind a banner saying ‘The Blood of Children’. Others were killed in the Radom riots of 1976 when food prices doubled. Demonstrators unfurled the white eagle and set the Party building on fire. I listened to the news, still not feeling the stab of a needle. According to the presenter, ‘drunken hooligans and hysterical women led the crowds’.
1h. 02
Bernard always said that Solidarity grew from that banner and those martyrs, because afterwards the students and workers came together. But I would add something else, a remark I heard on the bus last week: no Church, no Solidarity, no revolution. And it’s true. Behind this coalition of minds and hands was the presence of those strong arches, arches that had refused to bend or break despite the weight of Soviet Occupation. Even if there were men of God who’d become men of Brack, that changes nothing, and it never can: the story has been told; the arches didn’t sway I, and millions like me, stood beneath them.
Anyway the students and workers, united to this spirit of resistance.’ overwhelmed the Party. Our special friends had to swallow it. Solidarity became official.
What followed, however, was chaos. Strike after strike. I ended up brushing my teeth with imported Bulgarian toothpaste. Frankly though.’ I was more interested in Helena’s pregnancy. I watched her slowly grow large. I didn’t quite notice the hunger marches or the trucks jamming the central roundabout or the rumours that the Russians were mobilising. I just saw Helena’s radiant face. Aniela watched her, scared there’d be a knock on the door; that they might come back in their leather jackets and jeans.
1h. 08
They came on the night martial law was declared, barging in, guns everywhere, masked men dressed like warriors from the Middle Ages, with helmets and big sticks and whatnot. And shouting, terrible shouting. Aniela screaming, Edward pulling at his son. This time they’d really got him.
That’s when it happened. Moments later, sometime after midnight. Just as they dragged Bernard away. Helena fell to her knees. Aniela dropped beside her. I was frozen to the spot, overwhelmed with… fear
… no, awe, I suppose. The child was born there, in the flat, before my eyes, with Aniela stroking the mother’s hair.
1h. 15
I went on to the street next morning. Soldiers were warming themselves by makeshift fires. Tanks rolled over the snow By a lamppost I found a sheet of paper. There were others, lying around like litter. On it was a list of names… the names of people who’d been picked up the night before. The ink was running in the melt water. I think it had been made from tea or carrot skins, I don’t know, but someone had printed off this bulletin before morning, even before the soldiers had gone home to bed.
That’s when I decided to go back to the Shoemaker — not because of martial law or Solidarity or because I was worried about the cost of meat or the Russians. I went back because a little boy had been born. His father had been taken to prison before the child had even got his name.
1h. 19
I packed some clothes into a shopping bag, knowing I’d have to vanish, for as soon as Freedom and Independence appeared again, Brack would come for me. Half an hour later I knocked on the door of Father Nicodem Kaminsky He was the Threshold to the Shoemaker. I’d last seen him with my husband in November 1951.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The beaming secretary in the tight skirt opened the door for Anselm on to a cramped office with half-closed blinds. The furnishings were modern and shiny: wood veneers and chrome; stripped pine flooring, convincing to look at, but manufactured by the sheet, soft underfoot where the fitters had skimped on glue. Sound-proof panelling seemed to soak up the dry rasp of Anselm’s breathing. He was instantly scared.
Marek Frenzel sat with his paunch pressed against his glass-top desk, squashed from behind by his red filing cabinet. A computer screen threw an unkind bluish light on to his features. Mouse grey hair, parted and creamed back, topped a surprisingly smooth forehead. Heavy, dark-framed glasses, a throwback to the seventies, momentarily distracted Anselm from the small eyes that appraised his habit with disgust. His cheeks sagged off the bone. His lips were delicate, almost feminine. He reminded Anselm of a strip club singer who’d fallen on good times. He went straight to the point, speaking so quickly that Frenzel’s jolt at hearing German was overcome by the substance of the words.
‘I represent someone who wants to make a claim on a policy opened in nineteen eighty-two. The papers are lost. The name is Polana.’
Frenzel became remarkably still, like a man on a rope finding his balance. Only he wasn’t afraid of the fall; he was just weighing which way to tilt his stick. He clicked his mouse and the light dropped a shade darker.
‘Can’t say the name rings a bell.’ He smirked, leaning back a fraction till his head touched the wall. To one side, a print of Monet’s water lilies made a desperate bid for recognisable culture and homeliness. He was the man who could protect your house and garden. ‘I can do a search if the payout reaches a neat grand.’
‘Sorry?’
‘A thousand Euros. Used notes.’
Anselm was still standing. There’d been no invitation to sit. He wavered in confusion, not knowing what to say He’d been right about the catalogue but he’d given no thought to the prices.
‘Tell you what,’ said Frenzel.’ using his helpful voice, his face sunny with reassurance and competence. ‘I’ll see what I can find out. First, I’ll need a copy of your passport.’
He called out and the secretary nipped in and nipped out, her legs moving quickly her stride reduced.
‘That’ll be three hundred.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Euros. Three hundred. To do the search. There’s a cash point round the corner. Where are you staying?’
Anselm told him and Frenzel’s lips paled with a snigger. ‘The Hilton.’ He leaned back again. ‘Well, well, Father. Give me three days in the tomb and maybe we can have lunch together.’
Anselm returned to the Hilton unnerved by Frenzel’s swagger; the sneering confidence that he could still take someone’s background to pieces. He was a fearless man. He knew how to protect himself. And his representatives were even now picking over Anselm’s past, his associates, his movements. The activity alarmed him all the more because Anselm, seated at the large table in his bedroom, was about to do something very similar to Roza’s narrative. Both he and Frenzel were aiming to flush out a private figure and strip it down. Uneasy but holding on to the sheer difference in their motivations, Anselm turned once more to Roza’s statement.
The document had been crafted to raise the dead and shatter the illusions of many.