‘Brack was obsessed with the Shoemaker. You’d have thought he mattered. Christ — oops, sorry — all he had was words. Nothing else. We had the sticks and stones. Who read the thing anyway? Who cared about ideas? Don’t get me wrong, if I’d caught him I’d’ve put him and Mojeska against the wall and pulled the trigger myself, the point is, there were bigger fish in the sea. Big ones with teeth. But Brack wanted him, and he knew Mojeska was the way to his door.
‘So Frenzel went to have a chat with FELIKS. He was worse than useless. More tears and hand wringing. Is there anything more pitiful than a man who pities himself? The country was falling apart. They’d even dragged school kids on to the streets, and here was this selfish, spineless piece of… I won’t say it, Father. He gave us weekly reports on his wife and the daughter-in-law but there was no meat on the bone. We had him over a barrel, of course. The bolshy son was where he should’ve been since the sixties — locked up. He’d just become a father himself and the granddad, well, he was beside himself.
‘But we still got nothing.’ He held his breath and seemed to lose colour round his loose cheeks, but seconds later he let out a low belch and sighed relief. ‘Rien — your mother was French, wasn’t she? — just a last sighting before Mojeska vanished. She walked out of the door after the birth of the child. A couple of weeks later, the rag appeared.’
From a tangent, Anselm noticed that there were no other diners near them; that the waiter didn’t check on his customers; that Frenzel’s power reached right up to Anselm’s feet. Nothing had changed in his world, just the furniture. It was plush, now He was very much at ease. He’d never had it so good. Unable to bear the man’s presence any more, Anselm found his voice. He wanted out.
‘Could you just confirm that Edward Kolba was the only informer? That he brought about Roza Mojeska’s arrest in November nineteen eighty-two?’
Frenzel didn’t seem to have heard. There was no response. He’d turned the champagne bottle upside and down and was pretending to wring its neck, squeezing out the remaining drops. One by one, they fell into his glass.
‘You know, my memory’s beginning to fade,’ he moaned, reading the label, head back to angle his glasses on to the tiny writing. ‘Must be my age. You begin to forget the good times. Fact is, I didn’t only work for Brack. I helped out against you lot.’
Anselm didn’t allow a trace of interest or confusion to flicker on his face. And there was nothing wrong with Frenzel’s memory. Shortly, he’d be asking for more money.
‘I said you lot. Department Four. The Church. We had a file on every one of you. Got a lot of inside help, too, thank you very much. And not always unwilling. But that’s another story.’ His sneer moved like a wave as his tongue slid beneath his upper lip. ‘But if you want my opinion on how things stood before I moved to sunnier climes, I’d have said FELIKS wasn’t your man. I’m sure he’d have told us how to get Mojeska if he knew, but the bitch wasn’t stupid. She kept away from everyone she knew You’ve got to keep things simple. Don’t they teach you that when you’re learning about sin and the sinner? Back then, I’d have put my money on the son. The runt we educated. He hadn’t even seen his child. He was locked up. If anyone could get to Mojeska.’ it would have been Bernard but — ’ he held up splayed fingers, admitting the limitations of his humble view — ‘I was a busy boy with lots of things to do. And you can’t always trust your memory, do you know what I mean?’
Looking over Anselm’s shoulder Frenzel made a nod. Dabbing his lips with his serviette, he became confidential. ‘You know, Brack was never… swoj czlowiek, one of us. I even wondered if he fancied Mojeska. It happens, you know Sleeping with the enemy Nothing like it. Forbidden Fruit. It tastes good. You should know that. And Brack’s banging on about the Shoemaker just didn’t add up. Sure we all believed in socialism, but come on, get a life. He was too… involved.’
He drew out the last word as if he were trying to remember its flavour. Shaking his head, he pointed at Anselm. The waiter had emerged and come to Anselm’s side, one hand behind his back. He placed a large plate on the table.
‘Pierogi,’ said Frenzel, waving away the young man. ‘Dumplings. A speciality of the chef. I was going to eat them myself but, frankly, I’m bored.’ He eyed Anselm from afar, perhaps with a few of those files in mind. ‘You’re not good company. You don’t say anything. You sit there thinking you’re better than me…’ He held himself in check, his bottom jaw moving lazily He stood up and dropped his napkin on his plate. With big hands, he tucked his shirt back into his trousers and hitched his groin. Anselm hadn’t noticed, but he was a thick-set man, with heavy, lumbering movements. ‘To find out who pulled in Mojeska, you’d have to look at the file on Polana. I understand the payout on that baby is two and a half grand. Used notes. Worth every centime to a man like you, I’d say Think about it and keep a pen and paper by the phone.’ He nodded assurance and competence. ‘Thanks for the lunch, priest.’
Anselm slowly worked his way through the pierogi,’ drinking lots of water, unable to forget the creamed hair, the imposing glasses, the delicate lips. Having signed for the bill, he went to his room and was violently sick.
Chapter Twenty-Four
IPN/RM/13129/2010
EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF A STATEMENT MADE BY ROZA MOJESKA
1h. 22
Although I’d only met him once — and even then only for a few minutes — I had enormous respect for Father Nicodem. If I include my next few meetings, I’ve only known him — to this day — for about two hours. And yet he remains immensely important to me. It explains something about the nature of friendship and loyalty.
This was the man my husband had trusted implicitly And I did, too. He was our link to a voice we’d only heard, someone we’d never seen — the Shoemaker. All we had were his words. Whoever he might have been — and I still don’t know, and don’t want to know — what he said was more important than who he was. His identity, if revealed, would have been a distraction, for in the great struggle for truth, personalities don’t matter. It was his words that kept hope alive, spoke honestly at a time of lies, said what you thought but couldn’t or dare not say, reduced the big ideas to phrases you could easily understand. He educated, cajoled, amused… revealed. His words were free. They flew round Warsaw They gave you a taste of freedom that was within reach… beginning inside yourself.
We were pebbles on the path to his door, whereas Father Nicodem… he was the Threshold. So he bore a terrible responsibility. It was etched into his face. On those two occasions when we met — in 1951 and 1982 — his cheeks and neck were covered in cuts from a razor. I’m sure it was from the strain, from a shaking hand. Some of them were quite large and I often wondered why he didn’t give up trying to keep still and grow a beard.
1h. 32
When Father Nicodem opened the door it was as though he’d seen Brack. I had a fright of my own. He’d changed… almost beyond recognition. His eyes were heavy, pulling his head between his shoulder blades. He was in his late sixties by then, his hair a shocking white, as if he’d seen unmentionable things. A small detail comes to mind, in contrast to his face. His nails. They were beautifully clean and filed. They gave away his delicacy and sensitivity. They told you that he’d handle your soul with care.
1h. 36
I asked him if the Shoemaker was still alive. He said, ‘Yes’. I asked why he’d said nothing since 1951. Father Nicodem said, ‘He’d been broken.’ By what? ‘The death of two Friends.’ He didn’t have to say any more. We understood one another. But he wasn’t ready for what followed. I told him the Shoemaker had to speak again and that I would spread his words. ‘Remember, I’m the sleeper. I’ve come back to wake the dead.’ He waved his arms around as if trying to warn a train that there were children on the line, but I told him he had no choice. He had to go back to the Shoemaker. He was to tell him that I, the widow, demanded it. Not just for the sake of those two Friends but for a child who’d just been born and left without a name. Father Nicodem was pacing up and down the room, saying, ‘No’, and that’s when I recognised an appalling truth about myself. I’d done what he was doing for thirty years. My life since fifty-two had been one long walk, head down, murmuring ‘No’. But there comes a time when you have to say, ‘Yes’. When life becomes a ‘Yes’, whatever the cost might be. When we have to take the word back from those who control what will and what will not happen. This was my choice, my decision. Not Pavel’s. But I needed Father Nicodem’s, and the Shoemaker’s. We all had to stand together once more and say, ‘Stop, enough.’ We had to say ‘Yes’ to a future of our choosing, and to put words out there to wake the dead… to shatter the illusions that make oppression acceptable.