It also had depth — that much had been demonstrated by his first three readings.
But there was another aspect that might be called a deeper depth: a second level that Roza herself had not intended to disclose — its existence evinced by that slip about the cherry tree and the strange craving to remain at the site of an execution. The text, like Roza herself, was not as simple as it appeared.
How then to expose what she would hide or had not seen?
There was a way.
At the Bar, when faced with a knotty witness statement, Anselm had often turned (furtively) to the techniques of German Biblical criticism: Formgeschichte and Redaktionsgeschichte. They were tools of deconstruction; in Anselm’s hands, secret weapons during many a difficult trial. Secret because most of his colleagues would have laughed him out of court; weapons because they’d enabled Anselm to penetrate the most innocuous deposition, the results furnishing him with an unusual and frequently devastating cross-examination. Thinking of Frenzel scratching around his past, he now set to work on Roza’s amended transcript.
It was a painstaking exercise. He classified the types of information presented. He examined the authorial viewpoint. He grouped similar phrases. He looked for recurrent motifs. He made some lists. He did some maths. Gradually certain features began to emerge forming another narrative behind the words, like a palimpsest: a wholly different picture, drawn by the hand of the subconscious. Between readings he went for a walk, trying to resist the suspicion that someone was following him. He looked around, finding ambiguity at every corner. Every now and then he remembered that John had told Roza the truth about his mother and the cut opened wide again.
The job complete, he joined Sebastian for tripe and vodka. After the plates had been cleared, Sebastian produced an envelope containing the ‘search fee’ and the one thousand Euro ‘payout’, funds obtained — after some special pleading — from the IPN investigation budget. Displaying the controlled agitation of the hunter, Sebastian barely spoke. His hands shifted restlessly There was excitement, too, because he knew that Brack was ignorant of their approach. At one p.m. on the third day the phone rang in Anselm’s bedroom.
‘Your guest is in the dining room.” said Krystyna, the cheery girl at reception.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The ambience was plush; the seats an ivory white; the carpet a fractured pattern of different red and black squares. Frenzel had booked a table in a corner. Dressed. in a grey pinstripe with a Burberry check tie, he’d already drunk half a glass of champagne and was busy trying to prise apart an oyster. Scowling contentment, he dragged the knife along the sealed lips, feeling his way towards a weakness.
‘First class, Father,’ he said, as it snapped open. ‘The taste of the sea. Nothing like it. Do you get these at Larkwood? No matter, I’m sure you dine well when you’re not sucking blood, and why not, hey?’
Anselm sat down and Frenzel paused, his eyes rigid and severe, as if some social sin had taken place. Anselm passed over the envelope and Frenzel’s mouth started working again. He slipped the money inside his jacket pocket and began talking.
‘I can’t remember everything,’ he said, pulling the bottle out of its cooler. ‘I had other fish to fry and Brack, well, he kept things to himself. This was his case. Only case he cared about. My view? I thought it was chicken slit.’
He dabbed his lips on the white towel and hung it back over the bottle.
‘He wanted the Shoemaker. He’d been after him since… God knows when. You don’t mind the theological references, do you, Father? Sure you don’t. Well, he’d had an agent in place since fifty-two. A wimp named Kolba. Edward. Date of birth, third of August nineteen twenty-three. Don’t write anything down — ’ he pointed with his oyster knife at Anselm’s hand as it moved towards his pocket; his eyes were unseeing and severe again — ‘that’s not meant to happen in confession, is it? Maybe that’s what you get up to, when you’re all boxed up in the dark. I wouldn’t be surprised. But not here.’ He snatched an oyster off the ice bed. He locked his thumb against the shell and twisted the blade in a crack. ‘He’d come on board to get his wife out of custody Stupid idiot. They’d have let her out if he’d waited. But that’s love for you. Said he’d keep an eye on Mojeska — the slut, not the hubby. Pavel. You don’t want the date of birth. He’d been seen to by the… shall we say. the properly constituted organs of state security Not sure he had one of you lot in his final moments. Gray’s Inn, wasn’t it? Roddy Kemble’s Chambers? Anyway. he could’ve done with a lawyer and a priest. But there you go, times change. We didn’t need ‘em back then. Where was I?’
Anselm didn’t reply He didn’t even touch the stiff white tablecloth for fear of having some kind of connection to this man. Frenzel was sucking the juice from the shell, holding it like a spoon at an English tea party He smiled, happily distracted, ‘The taste of the sea. Nothing like it.’ Anselm flinched. This pantomime of life’s pleasures, held in the palm of one strong hand, wasn’t the only salt that Frenzel savoured. It was power. Even though the Wall had come down, he still licked his fingers, knowing he could point at anyone and have their life delivered on a plate. His mocking eyes flicked over Anselm as if he hadn’t been worth a single phone call — except that it was good fare, afterwards, to show your biceps to the weak. Part of the saltiness was other people’s fear. That, too, had the taste of the sea.
‘FELIKS was next to useless,’ he resumed, pouting at his glass. ‘According to the monthly reports he cried every time he clocked in. Imagine that. A grown man. Ponce.
‘Wanted out. Said Mojeska did nothing but work and pray — she was your sort, you know, diligent and reflective — that she had no dealings with anyone, blah, blah. No mention of the Shoemaker. He produced nothing in over fifteen years.
‘We had to put the screws on him in sixty-eight. The son, Bernard, date of birth second of May forty-six, was running amok. Ungrateful swine. We educated that little runt. But he stood up for Kolakowski. To keep him in at his books Daddy agreed to watch a childhood friend of Mojeska’s, a Zionist, Samovitz.’ Magda, date of birth-’
Anselm closed his ears, mind and eyes. He’d met some seriously bad men in his life — calculated murderers, blackmailers, pimps and thieves — but there was something unique about this boor slurping salt water from a shelclass="underline" he spoke with authority; the confidence and carelessness of someone once backed by a system. Instinctively, Anselm jolted back his chair.
‘You’re not off, are you? I haven’t finished yet.’ He sipped his champagne and, tilting his head, halted naturally, as if he’d touched the wall in his office. ‘After a year or so the Jew cleared off of her own accord… well, to be fair, we’d kicked her out of a hospital job. Surgeon. Ears, nose, throat. Anyway, the kid went too far. Started chucking stones in the street, 1 suppose. I don’t know Don’t care. He didn’t know which side his bread was buttered. He’d hooked up with other Jews and pro-Zionists who hadn’t seen the light — not your Light, Father, ours, the light put on this land after years of toil and sacrifice and dedicated service to raise something permanent out of the darkness, something enduring…’ He half-smiled, mocking his own remembered passion; puzzled perhaps that he’d cared that much. Lost love, he seemed to say, raising his glass, nothing quite like it. The tide comes in, the time goes out. That taste of the sea again. Wonderful.
Frenzel had joined the Shoemaker bandwagon in eighty-two when a special unit was set up with the Stasi to stamp out underground printing. German speakers only need apply, He’d been assigned to Brack, effectively being second in command and taking all the noise from the Germans. He didn’t like Germans. Then or now He’d only learned the language because his stepfather had beaten it into him. He didn’t like the English, or, no offence, the French… anyway, first off.’ Brack told him the Shoemaker had turned up again. Freedom and Independence had appeared, first with lists of names, of terrorists and mob leaders, extremists… and then there’d been articles about tomorrow When — listen to this — there’d be justice, rule of law, fairness. What a bloody joke. Frenzel refilled his glass and held up the bottle to check how much was left.