I told Father Nicodem that the first edition of Freedom and Independence would need to be ready within two weeks. He thought for a long, tortured time and then gave me the key to his back yard.
1h. 44
Pavel had told me how to set up the Friends — how to keep them separate in order to keep them together. He’d told me who to contact for paper and ink. I didn’t even know if these old Friends were still alive or if they were still willing or in a position to help. But that’s what happens with a ‘Yes’. You have to work everything out afterwards. It’s only with a ‘No’ that all the problems have been lined up beforehand.
1h. 52
As the hub of the wheel, my job was to hold the spokes, keeping them apart. I went first to Barbara and Lidia, women the SB would never notice; women who’d never thought they could fight back. I went to Mateusz, Bernard’s friend, who’d had his chance but fluffed it. The system was simple. We used prams. I collected the print run wrapped in parcels from a dustbin in Father Nicodem’s back yard. Over two or three days, trip after trip, I brought them to Barbara and Lidia who then trundled round Warsaw posting, dropping and giving. In time, as the circulation grew, and unknown to each other.’ they organised distribution teams. How they did it, I don’t know — any more than I knew who printed the paper. Sometimes I’d pick up my parcels and find an envelope with a shopping list and money. With the funds I’d go back to those old Friends who still had their ways and means, not to mention their children with minds of their own. The materials — paper and ink — would be delivered to me at a playground, a hotel, a station — it varied — and I’d drop them in Father Nicodem’s dustbin. It was magnificent. We were beating the tanks and armoured personnel carriers with a convoy of prams.
1 h. 59
Mateusz found safe-house lodgings and I moved every two weeks, borrowing clothes and shoes along the way Glasses, too, and hats. I never looked the same; I was never in the same place long enough for Brack to catch me. I paid my way by housework and cooking. I became, for the first time since leaving Mokotow, content.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After a long, scalding shower Anselm placed a pen and paper by the phone (as instructed) and then rang Sebastian to outline the contours of Marek Frenzel’s monologue. He left out those remarks demonstrating limited affection for the Church because they were broadly conventional — he’d read far worse in the English press — but he recited the rest, summoning again the man’s devouring presence. They agreed to meet that evening in the lobby bar, where, given the demand for more money, they might consider their options. With the remainder of the afternoon free, Anselm decided to make a ‘site-visit’ to the crime scene central to what had become a second, unofficial enquiry: the reason behind a mysterious attack on the national archives.
Outside it was sunny with a fresh breeze. The hint of a cold evening was in the air. It tugged at Anselm’s hair and cleared his mind. And the first insight to crash home was that the luxurious showers of the Warsaw Hilton didn’t work. There’d been lots of levers, high pressure and free, heavily scented shampoo, but their combined force had failed to shift the dirt beneath Anselm’s skin. The Prior had seen this coming. He’d warned him about Brack’s world. He’d said it was a dangerous place. Anselm was reminded of those big mistakes in life where all you can do is accept what’s happened, hoping the years to come will remove the dreadful sense of failure. Anselm’s meeting with Frenzel belonged in the same camp, even though he’d had no choice but to sit near him and feel the cold, lap-lapping of xenophobia.’ anti-Semitism, and racism, that hint of homophobia showing what else he’d discover if he stayed in the mud much longer. The man was a swamp and Anselm had only just about managed to crawl to the bank. But he’d still failed. Before leaving he should have tipped the bucket of shells over Frenzel’s head.
The second insight to crash home — with the force of a motorway pile-up — was that Frenzel had confirmed an important element in Anselm’s deconstruction of Roza’s statement. They’d agreed about something. It was like a pact in hell. They were, in a limited sense, companions in thought. Crossing the road as if to escape the consuming fire, Anselm let his mind run over the remaining, untarnished conclusions.
The single most important characteristic in Roza’s narrative — the pattern behind the words — was the primacy of children. They determined her engagement with events (nonexistent, save and except for the fall of ‘sparrows’ and ‘The Blood of Children’). They established her viewpoint (exclusively focused on the growth of Bernard from boy to man). They coloured her phraseology (‘children on the line’). They ordered her priorities and interests, sometimes to an absurd degree (Helena’s pregnancy over a potential Russian invasion). They determined her moment of action (a traumatic home birth), who acted (initially the childless) as well as the manner of their acting (the use of prams). There were other instances, all springing from this fundamental authorial orientation. In terms of Roza’s vocabulary ‘child’ or ‘children’ occurred 16 times, ‘boy’ 7 times, ‘girl’ twice, and ‘son’ once.
Children. They kept turning up like boils on Job’s back. Why?
Anselm was cautious in his judgement. The text beneath the text, the deeper depth, evidently disclosed a primitive yearning; an obsession. For an instant, Anselm was transported to a smoky basement near Finsbury Park.
He’d fallen silent once again, leaving John to twiddle his thumbs. The guest singer had just finished a soul tearing rendition of a Billie Holiday number, a lament about unrestrained murder in the south. To hear it more than once, Anselm followed her from club to club. After each performance he couldn’t speak. John presumed it was on account of the singer and not the song.
‘You’re obsessed,’ he declared.
‘I’m not.’
‘Trust me. All obsessions stem from unfulfilled longing.’
‘Do they?’
‘Yep. Without treatment, you turn really boring and fat and sad.’
‘Is this the voice of experience?’
‘It is. And you, my friend, have turned. You’ve curdled.’
Anselm woke to the sounds and sights around him. The singer had gone, leaving behind the echo of ‘Strange Fruit’, that Marseillaise of the oppressed. Disorientated, he looked to his left. He’d reached a vast building, an improbable hybrid of the Empire State Building and the Vatican. A glance at John’s guidebook told him this was the Palace of Culture and Science, a 40-million brick monument to ‘the inventive spirit and social progress’ donated by the one-time Soviet overlord. Statues with stern expressions gazed down from the entrance facade. Like Billie they didn’t look too pleased with how things had turned out.