Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Thursday Evening

KRZYSZTOF’S KNEES SHOOK as he sat in his uncle’s study under the framed chart showing the Polish royal lineage. Next to it was the Linski escutcheon. Beneath it his uncle’s Légion d’Honneur medal was displayed.

“I need your help, Uncle.”

“No more places to hide, Krzysztof?” his uncle asked. “And now, as I hope you realize, not even from yourself?”

Krzysztof winced internally. It had been even harder than he had imagined to put himself at the old man’s mercy.

“We can still stop the oil agreement—”

“Not that again!” his uncle interrupted. “After the bomb incident, police everywhere, the registrar from the Sorbonne and reporters besieging me all day!” he said, shaking his head. “Have you gone mad?”

“I’m wanted by the police. Won’t you just listen—”

“To what? You can’t escape your heritage, Krzysztof. Yet you persist in trying to throw everything away.”

“But there’s nothing to throw away!”

His uncle buttoned his sweater vest and straightened his tie. His position as chargé d’affaires was in reality a sop thrown to a decorated war veteran with connections and aristocratic blood.

“That’s your heritage.” His uncle pointed above his head to the 1791 article in the constitution declaring Princess and Infanta Maria Augusta Nepomucena Antonia Franziska Xaveria Aloysia of Poland and her successors in direct line for the throne: Frederick Augustus, present-day elector of Saxony, to whose male successors de lumbis [from the loins] we reserve the throne of Poland. Should the present-day elector of Saxony have no male issue, then the consort, with the consent of the assembled estates, selected by the elector for his daughter shall begin the male line of succession to the throne of Poland. Therefore we declare Maria Augusta Nepomucena, daughter of the elector, to be Infanta of Poland, reserving to the people the right, which shall be subject to no proscription, to elect another house to the throne after the expiration of the first.

Krzysztof wanted to tear it up. A faded piece of paper couldn’t create legitimacy.

“You refuse to remember that the Polish Parliament ended the monarchy in 1945. I’m not holding my breath until it returns. And neither should you.”

He stood and began to pace back and forth on the creaking wood floor.

“Why can’t you listen for once?” he said, his voice rising. “Forget this prewar romantic nostalgia. Everyone hid their titles during the Communist regime. Or they’d risk being imprisoned as ‘poster relics of decadent Western royalism.’ We were anathema to Stalin, Khrushchev, all of them, and most of all to the puppet Polish government. A five-zloty bribe, not a title, got one a larger bowl of soup in prison. Ask Papa. A name like mine in Russian class didn’t endear me to the teachers. Papa took a stand but he fought for freedom. Not a forgotten title.”

“You don’t have to shout, Krzysztof.”

“I’m sorry.”

Krzysztof watched his uncle. For the first time he noticed that his uncle looked unwell. The gauntness of his long face exaggerated the size of his eyes.

His uncle sighed. “You think I didn’t know privation in the war? It was worse than anyone imagines.”

Krzysztof stared. His uncle never spoke about his experiences in the war.

“It was worse than any Stalin-built concrete housing block, worse than standing on long lines for food.”

Krzysztof looked out the window, at the cones of yellow light shining on the quai.

“You glorify this country, Uncle,” he said. “But here people look down on us . . . call us dirty, lazy Poles, behind our backs. Only good enough to work as plumbers. I’ve heard it. You have, too, but you look the other way.”

“You forget, I joined the Polish government in exile,” his uncle said. “In London, I fought with the Free French forces and thanked the stars every night that de Gaulle let me.” He stood and leaned on his cane. “Colonel Lorrain let me out of his jeep at the Libération. Right here.” His uncle pointed to the quai. “I walked into this shell of a building. Paintings were tossed on the floor, and there was rubble left by the Gestapo everywhere. Like garbage.” He shook his head. “Only the French helped us. Never forget that. The other Allies let the Germans defeat the Warsaw uprising, starve the fighters, and flatten Warsaw. They let the Vistula run red with Polish blood.”

War stories. But that was past. The world faced new problems; he had to make his uncle understand. His uncle was his last hope.

“The Vistula runs with pollution now,” Krzysztof said. “In your day it was the Nazis. Now it’s globalization and the destruction of the ozone. Poland is democratic. They’re dealing with today’s issues, like everywhere else. But the North Sea and the Baltic are being ruined by toxic runoff. That’s why we must expose oil companies like Alstrom. Can you say it’s so different, Uncle?”

His uncle’s shoulders drooped.

Useless trying to talk to him. The cordovan leather chairs, the carved bas-relief in the ceiling, the crackled mirror—nothing ever changed here, least of all his uncle.

“You think I don’t understand?” his uncle asked. “You’re passionate. Good, I was, too. Yet tradition and beauty, they have a place. For me, that’s all there is left.” His chin sagged. “I want to clutch them, grasp at the ephemeral while I still can. A fragile thing of beauty—a painting, a strain of music—outlasts destruction. I want to celebrate that. And this country gave them back to me. I’m grateful.”

Krzysztof took his uncle’s arm. “How is it so different? Beauty exists in clean oceans, pristine mountains. And if we don’t stop the polluters, it will be gone. Forever. But you can change that.”

His uncle sat again. “A masterful plea, worthy of a young monarch. Not unlike Frederick Augustus, who mounted the campaign against the invaders.”

What did that mean? “Uncle, you’ll help me?”

His uncle leaned back in his chair. “You tell me I’m lost in the past, can’t move with the times. Krzysztof, I fought my war. I’m old. Too old to do anything.”

Krzysztof shook his head and pointed to a framed photo of his uncle receiving the Légion d’Honneur. “But your old comrade, Colonel Lorrain, is still in the Ministry.”

His uncle nodded. “So? He’s about to retire, at least that’s what he told me at dinner last week. Wants to bow out of all those committees he’s on. His wife serves a Boeuf Bourgogne cooked to perfection.”

“I want you to talk to him, to explain Alstrom’s cover-up and why the agreement must not be signed.”

“What do I know about that?”

“There’s nothing for me here,” Krzysztof said, shaking his head. “I’m wanted. I can’t finish my studies. If you won’t help me, I’m leaving.”

“It’s not like you to give up. You’re stubborn, like your father. It runs in the family.”

From somewhere on the quai, leaves rustled. The moon, half obscured by threads of clouds, shone outside the window.

“You’re the son I never had, Krzysztof.” His uncle’s jaw trembled. “Don’t leave.”

Krzysztof took his uncle’s age-spotted hand and held it. He felt its slight tremor. He reached over and hugged the old man, his strong arm clasping the thin shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Uncle.”

Krzysztof imagined taking the night train to Amsterdam, the crowded second-class compartment, anxiously waiting for a tap on the shoulder, then dawn breaking over the narrow canals and his search for a squat. He’d find another ecological group and try to make a difference. He’d start all over again. With nothing.

His uncle gripped Krzysztof’s hand as it rested on his shoulder. “Now what should I say to Colonel Lorrain—that is, if he’s there?”

Krzysztof stared at his uncle. Then he bent and kissed the withered cheeks.

“I suggest you invite him for an early dinner.” He pulled up a chair, took some paper and his uncle’s old nib pen, and dipped it in the black inkwell. “And here’s what you’ll tell him. We’ll craft it in your language, an appeal to an old comrade-in-arms. Get him to use the old boy network.”

A small smile played over his uncle’s lips.

“I have a feeling you’re dragging me into the new world, Krzysztof.”

“Into the new Poland, Uncle. Built on tradition, but embracing the present.” Krzysztof grinned and handed him his cell phone. “Together.”