While waiting for Roza’s statement to be translated, Anselm sat at his desk humming Bunny Berigan’s trumpet solo from ‘I Can’t Get Started’. His eyes drifted on to the orange file. He’d left it open. Roza’s two faces peered back from the prison photographs. All that lay between each snap of the shutter release was a couple of years, during which time… Anselm’s humming came to an abrupt halt: he’d noticed a tiny scrap of blue paper sticking out towards the bottom of the pile.
Swivelling the block round, he lowered his head to examine the fragment more closely It was held in place by the string fastener that kept the documents together. The relevant sheet had evidently been detached from the bundle, leaving behind the corner section. Puzzled, he closed the cover. He’d only just tied the bow when Sebastian entered with the translation of Roza’s statement.
‘Let me know what you think,’ he said. ‘Our rat is in there somewhere.’
As he reached the door, Anselm heard himself say ‘Can I just ask an idle question?’
‘Absolutely’
Sebastian turned and leaned on the jamb, hands in his pockets.
‘Can’t understand a thing in here, of course,’ said Anselm, tapping the orange file, ‘but why are there two kinds of paper… white and blue.’
‘The white was used by the interrogators, the blue by the nurses.
‘Nurses?’
‘Yes. The colour coding was common to all prisons. In Roza’s case, having any medical notes is laughable. I mean, what did they do? Dish out the aspirin when they’d finished with the rack? That’s probably why it’s blank. They didn’t do anything.’
‘Blank?’
‘Apart from her name at the top. I don’t know why it’s in there at all. I imagine they lumped all her papers together, even when they hadn’t been used.’
Anselm’s mind made a sort of grinding noise. Sebastian was talking as if the blue paper was still in the file. He’d seen it. He knew it was blank. But it wasn’t there now Some primitive caution stopped Anselm from revealing his thoughts. Instead he asked if he could venture some more questions peripheral to their investigation.
‘Is anyone else involved in this case?’
‘No.’
‘Anyone else read the files?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Just wondering if you’d got a second opinion on the Polana material.’ That was completely untrue. Anselm had wanted to know who might have had access to the orange file. His intuition had already leapt at the answer. He quickly pressed on.’ seeking confirmation. ‘I know this is neither here nor there, but what did Roza do when she saw the transcripts? That white and blue paper must have knocked her flat:
‘She didn’t even open the cover.’
‘Really?’
‘The sight of the files winded her. Wanted to be alone. When the door opened her eyes were on the “Way Out” sign.’
‘How did you change her mind?’ The question was entirely superfluous. Anselm had found out what he wanted to know.
‘I said I had a story, too,’ replied Sebastian. ‘She stared at my shirt and shoes and then, for some reason, she just weakened. I pushed some more and she finally gave in. The fact is, she wanted to speak. Everyone who’s been brutalised has to speak, needs to speak. And Roza went as far as she was able… but I very nearly lost her.’
Anselm made a mischievous nod. Sebastian was no different. That reference to an untold story had come from a dropped guard. Already the lawyer was backtracking, heading into the corridor before Anselm’s curiosity could tug at the admission.
‘Don’t ask,’ he intoned. ‘I’ll tell you after Brack’s conviction.’
Until that moment, Anselm had thought that Sebastian was simply a dedicated lawyer born of the generation that dealt with the sins of their fathers. There was clearly another facet to his energy. Anselm recalled the box files and the photograph of the elderly woman standing behind a wheelchair. Who should have been sitting there? Were they linked to Sebastian’s investigation into Brack? Anselm turned as from the ghost to have a quick word with Roza.
‘I said nothing to Sebastian, because you didn’t,’ he said, confiding and quiet. ‘I’m respecting your privacy. You removed the blue paper because you didn’t want anyone to know you’d been in the infirmary. Fair enough. Your choice. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.’
He waited, but no reply came to his imagination.
‘But I’m in some difficulty. You went to John for help and, for all I know, he’d just walk straight through the fire. But you’ve ended up with me. I’m different. I’m easily distracted. And I can only help by stumbling around on the sidelines — it’s my way Comes with monastic life, you know, head half in the clouds. So bear with me, because I now want to know why you vandalised the national archives.’
With that resolution in mind, Anselm picked up Roza’s statement.
Anselm read the document three times with increasing attentiveness — a monastic practice vaguely similar to deep sea diving without the benefit of lead boots, each appraisal an attempt to break beneath the surface tension of the page. The objective: to descend into the dark and find the strange light not always visible from the side of the boat. He lingered here and there on individual phrases, letting his mind sink and swim where it willed.
His first reaction on drying himself down, so to speak, was completely irrelevant to the matter in hand. He was hurt. And confused. At first he’d found the references to John touching. They’d given bright glimpses on to the young man who’d left East Berlin for Warsaw.’ the gifted journalist driven to document the struggle of an oppressed people. But then, like a sudden power-cut, came that reference to John’s mother. He’d told Roza what he’d never told him. Suppressing his disappointment, Anselm focused instead on Roza’s staggering misfortune. She’d walked out of Mokotow into the house of an informer.
Anselm’s second reaction, then, was pity Immense pity for Roza, but also for the husband and father who’d become FELIKS. Presumably there’d been pressure or the allure of reward, but Edward Kolba had evidently come to an arrangement with Otto Brack. With or without his wife’s connivance, he’d kept an eye on their guest. For sure, Roza had been welcomed with open arms. But she’d also been placed at the centre of an ongoing surveillance operation. If FELIKS did betray Roza in 1982 then that would certainly explain Roza’s silence afterwards: her loyalty to him, but perhaps more so to his wife.’ Aniela, who’d shared the unforgettable experience of Mokotow. She too got Anselm’s pity.
His third reaction was more clinical.
Roza had amended and amplified the transcript, making it a carefully polished document. Each section dealt neatly with people and places and their significance in her life. Every word had its place. Which made Roza’s mistake all the more illuminating.
She’d slipped up.
The tiny window in her cell was so high she had to strain her neck ‘to see the clouds’. Eight minutes later she confessed that the greater part of her remained in Mokotow ‘by a large window that looking on to a cherry tree.’.
Where was that big window? It had to be located in the prison infirmary. Roza wouldn’t have had the run of the place. There was no gym, television room or sauna. Where else could she have been if it wasn’t her cell? The textual inconsistency was of no small importance. It explained Roza’s startling opening remark that she wanted to remain incarcerated. Fine, she’d forgotten how to boil an egg, but think again (Anselm said to himself): she was effectively saying that she longed to remain at the scene of a double execution. Dogs do things like that, not human beings. Not wives. But this is what Roza said she wanted to do. And it was not credible. In an otherwise crafted testimonial where nothing had been given away without a specific reason, Roza had made an accidental admission. She’d kicked and screamed and beaten the prison door not because she wanted her cell back but because she longed to be near that larger window; an infirmary window Where else if not there? It haunted her. And all because it looked on to a tree?
‘Well, what do you think?’
Anselm made a start. He hadn’t heard Sebastian enter. The lawyer pulled over a chair and straddled the seat, his chin lodged on his folded arms as if he were looking into that eye testing machine at the opticians. He worked too hard, that was Anselm’s verdict. The whites were yellowed and bloodshot.
‘Something isn’t quite right.” said Anselm.
‘In what way?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He made a sigh of self-deprecation. ‘Can’t read a damn thing without brooding on it for months. At Larkwood we tend to chew words slowly. swallow them even more slowly and then wait for this sudden kick of understanding, right here — ’ he pointed at his stomach — ‘it’s a bit annoying, really I read stuff ten years ago and I’ve still got indigestion. The only cure’s watching and waiting.’
‘Well, you’ve got till nine-thirty tomorrow morning.’ Sebastian reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out a scrap of paper. He held it up to Anselm so he could read the address scrawled across the middle. ‘You have an appointment with Marek Frenzel.’
Locating the former secret policeman had been no more difficult than tracing Irina Orlosky According to the tax people, Brack’s assistant, now aged sixty-two, had left the SB to join the peace of mind industry and was now a branch manager in central Warsaw He’d shown a flare for insurance. He was still looking after the People: house and contents; the whole caboodle.
‘Does he know what we want?’ asked Anselm, taking the paper. ‘I told his secretary that an old policy had finally matured.’
So the stage was set. If Anselm’s hunch was correct, he’d shortly buy back the missing contents of the Polana file. And that would confirm if Edward Kolba had gone the distance. But in truth Anselm’s curiosity, lambent with expectation, lay just as much elsewhere: on the sidelines.’ far from the fire.