Half an hour later Anselm passed beneath an eagle on the elaborate entrance to Warsaw University. Neoclassical grandeur — rebuilt of course — was home to the one suspect likely to speak a language known to Anselm. Roza had watched him grow from boy to man; she’d never want him exposed for what he was. Having found a reception desk, Anselm passed over a name written on a scrap of paper. Moments later, the telephonist handed him the receiver. Anselm skipped any introduction and went straight to the point, opting for French, the idiom of intellectuals across nineteenth century Europe.
‘I’m in Warsaw to find out who betrayed Roza Mojeska in nineteen eighty-two.’
There was a very long pause, followed by ‘You are?’
‘I am. You could say I’m Roza’s representative. I thought we might talk through the circumstances of your sudden release from internment.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes, because the word convenient springs to mind.’
Anselm placed Bernard Kolba at sixty or so. He wore loose jeans, a black roll-neck sweater and scuffed suede shoes. His hair, chestnut brown and rimed with age, was short and smart. The felt hat in his hand evoked an artist rather than an academic philosopher. Without speaking he led Anselm to a car park and a yellow Fiat with a dinted passenger door. He seemed neither insulted nor troubled. In fact, he had the air of a man ready to talk.
‘I thought we’d go the Powazki Cemetery,’ he said, struggling with the ignition. ‘Lots of national heroes are buried in quiet out-of-the-way corners — heroes, of course, according to your convictions. It’s a good place to talk about the past.’
In that spirit of openness, he invited Anselm to say a little more of his mission. Anticipating reciprocity Anselm hid nothing of substance, recounting all that had taken place between John’s coming to Larkwood and Anselm’s departure from the church by the railway line, leaving out, of course, the distraction of the blue paper whose private character commanded Anselm’s continued confidence. He’d just about finished when Bernard parked and yanked the handbrake. Walking in step, they passed through another ornate gate to enter the graveyard where Roza had been arrested by Otto Brack.
‘I’m here to make an appeal to conscience,’ said Anselm, in conclusion. ‘Roza seeks an admission, freely made, without any preliminary accusation. Your thoughts on the matter would, I imagine, be instructive.’
Bernard nodded with appreciation, as if a professor in the law department had come up with a novel scheme to deal with plagiarism. He turned right, his hand guiding Anselm down a long lane flanked by carved angels, bare trees and a scattering of lit candles.
‘I used to think that it was my teachers who’d shaped my mind,’ he said, as if taking up the proposal raised by his learned colleague. ‘But it was Roza. As a child she told me the story of the Shoemaker and how he’d destroyed the red dragon with a homemade bomb.
Later she told me that words were more powerful than any explosion and that set me reading.’
The fairytale had led him to academic philosophy non-violent resistance, factory work, Union activism and, finally a return to the formal pursuit of wisdom. After the collapse of communism in 1989 he’d gone back to university and finished the studies which the government of another day had suppressed. Six years later he’d begun his career as a junior lecturer.
‘By and large my doctoral thesis set out the ideas I’d have published already if Roza hadn’t been arrested by the SB. They’d have appeared in Freedom and Independence. That’s why I wanted to meet the Shoemaker. To talk things out and get his guidance. In those days ideas weren’t kept in the academy they were running wild on the street. He was the giant on the block and I was the pygmy wanting to climb on his back and see that little bit further.’
Anselm had a rather depressing sense of deja-vu. The tenor of these winsome disclosures carried no hint of an impending declaration of guilt. Bernard’s conscience was evidently clear; but he was talking and moving with purpose.
‘I’ve always wondered why Roza just threw her hand in,’ he said, turning left. ‘She’s never spoken of that day to me or, as far as I’m aware, to anyone else. We’ve all been wondering why We’ve all been trying to figure out who tipped off the SB. Obviously it had to be someone close to her, someone she wouldn’t suspect: His hand directed Anselm to the right. ‘Someone like me, you might think.’
Shortly Bernard came to a halt. He looked around, gathering in a memory. ‘This is where it happened; this is where Roza was betrayed… at the grave of Prus.’
Bernard pointed to a large distinctive monument. A small girl, carved in relief, was reaching up against the stone. Her arms were spread out and her head was thrown back. At her feet were yellow and red flowers. A candle burned in a green glass jar. The surrounding trees seemed to reach out to the atmosphere of sadness.
‘Roza chose this place for a specific reason,’ said Bernard. His hands were in his pockets as if he were extemporising in a lecture hall. ‘She picked it because of the girl. She saw herself in those shoes.’
Like Prus, Roza had been a child soldier. They’d both joined an uprising; they’d both been imprisoned and never quite recovered. Prus
… he’d fought in eighteen sixty-three against imperial Russia. The succeeding experience of prison gave him lifelong problems with panic attacks and agoraphobia. He’d turned to writing, but couldn’t decide if resistance was best through ideas or guns.
‘Roza was scarred by Mokotow,’ said Bernard. ‘But she was always sure of the ground where the fight would eventually be won; in the mind and heart. Which is all the more significant now that I know of her husband’s execution:
He began walking away with that steady purpose, so Anselm followed, his intuition tingling with anticipation, undecided as to whether it was agreeable or not.
‘We’d all seen the two rings, we’d all wondered what they meant,’ said Bernard. ‘We’d all been stunned when she turned out to be linked to the Shoemaker. We’d all been baffled when she went silent in eighty-two — realising, with retrospect, that she’d done the same thing in fifty-three… and that the wedding rings were part of her silence.’ He slowed down and took a narrow pebbled lane to the left. ‘Roza is the most mysterious person I’ve ever known. Without speaking she was always crying out for help and I couldn’t do anything… I didn’t know how to reach her. So I’m glad you called. I’m glad, at last, for the chance to do something significant. I’ve waited thirty years for this.’
Bernard took off his brown felt hat and scratched the back of his head. He turned his face sideways to find Anselm.
‘You’ve heard of Mateusz Robak?’
‘Yes.’
‘He got close to Roza, too. He’s another man with a doubtful profile.’
There was a sliver of irony or sarcasm in those strong, hazel eyes, but the surrounding light carried a heavier regret.
‘We fell out, once, over a play by Mickiewicz,’ resumed Bernard. ‘And we nearly fell out again over Roza’s arrest. But he was a very careful man. And he had to be careful for Roza. So he followed her sometimes, even when she thought she was alone, just in case of trouble. So when I accused him of collaboration, like you accused me — though I failed to choose my words as finely as you did — he had a reply He brought me here:
Once more Bernard pointed towards a grave. The headstone was a fraction too tall, making Anselm think the incumbent had been given a straitjacket for eternity. He stepped closer to read the inscription. There was only a name and some dates: the barest elements of identification. No loving words had come to the husband’s mind. It read: