The beaming secretary in the tight skirt opened the door for Anselm on to a cramped office with half-closed blinds. The furnishings were modern and shiny: wood veneers and chrome; stripped pine flooring, convincing to look at, but manufactured by the sheet, soft underfoot where the fitters had skimped on glue. Sound-proof panelling seemed to soak up the dry rasp of Anselm’s breathing. He was instantly scared.
Marek Frenzel sat with his paunch pressed against his glass-top desk, squashed from behind by his red filing cabinet. A computer screen threw an unkind bluish light on to his features. Mouse grey hair, parted and creamed back, topped a surprisingly smooth forehead. Heavy, dark-framed glasses, a throwback to the seventies, momentarily distracted Anselm from the small eyes that appraised his habit with disgust. His cheeks sagged off the bone. His lips were delicate, almost feminine. He reminded Anselm of a strip club singer who’d fallen on good times. He went straight to the point, speaking so quickly that Frenzel’s jolt at hearing German was overcome by the substance of the words.
‘I represent someone who wants to make a claim on a policy opened in nineteen eighty-two. The papers are lost. The name is Polana.’
Frenzel became remarkably still, like a man on a rope finding his balance. Only he wasn’t afraid of the fall; he was just weighing which way to tilt his stick. He clicked his mouse and the light dropped a shade darker.
‘Can’t say the name rings a bell.’ He smirked, leaning back a fraction till his head touched the wall. To one side, a print of Monet’s water lilies made a desperate bid for recognisable culture and homeliness. He was the man who could protect your house and garden. ‘I can do a search if the payout reaches a neat grand.’
‘Sorry?’
‘A thousand Euros. Used notes.’
Anselm was still standing. There’d been no invitation to sit. He wavered in confusion, not knowing what to say He’d been right about the catalogue but he’d given no thought to the prices.
‘Tell you what,’ said Frenzel.’ using his helpful voice, his face sunny with reassurance and competence. ‘I’ll see what I can find out. First, I’ll need a copy of your passport.’
He called out and the secretary nipped in and nipped out, her legs moving quickly her stride reduced.
‘That’ll be three hundred.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Euros. Three hundred. To do the search. There’s a cash point round the corner. Where are you staying?’
Anselm told him and Frenzel’s lips paled with a snigger. ‘The Hilton.’ He leaned back again. ‘Well, well, Father. Give me three days in the tomb and maybe we can have lunch together.’
Anselm returned to the Hilton unnerved by Frenzel’s swagger; the sneering confidence that he could still take someone’s background to pieces. He was a fearless man. He knew how to protect himself. And his representatives were even now picking over Anselm’s past, his associates, his movements. The activity alarmed him all the more because Anselm, seated at the large table in his bedroom, was about to do something very similar to Roza’s narrative. Both he and Frenzel were aiming to flush out a private figure and strip it down. Uneasy but holding on to the sheer difference in their motivations, Anselm turned once more to Roza’s statement.
The document had been crafted to raise the dead and shatter the illusions of many.
It also had depth — that much had been demonstrated by his first three readings.
But there was another aspect that might be called a deeper depth: a second level that Roza herself had not intended to disclose — its existence evinced by that slip about the cherry tree and the strange craving to remain at the site of an execution. The text, like Roza herself, was not as simple as it appeared.
How then to expose what she would hide or had not seen?
There was a way.
At the Bar, when faced with a knotty witness statement, Anselm had often turned (furtively) to the techniques of German Biblical criticism: Formgeschichte and Redaktionsgeschichte. They were tools of deconstruction; in Anselm’s hands, secret weapons during many a difficult trial. Secret because most of his colleagues would have laughed him out of court; weapons because they’d enabled Anselm to penetrate the most innocuous deposition, the results furnishing him with an unusual and frequently devastating cross-examination. Thinking of Frenzel scratching around his past, he now set to work on Roza’s amended transcript.
It was a painstaking exercise. He classified the types of information presented. He examined the authorial viewpoint. He grouped similar phrases. He looked for recurrent motifs. He made some lists. He did some maths. Gradually certain features began to emerge forming another narrative behind the words, like a palimpsest: a wholly different picture, drawn by the hand of the subconscious. Between readings he went for a walk, trying to resist the suspicion that someone was following him. He looked around, finding ambiguity at every corner. Every now and then he remembered that John had told Roza the truth about his mother and the cut opened wide again.
The job complete, he joined Sebastian for tripe and vodka. After the plates had been cleared, Sebastian produced an envelope containing the ‘search fee’ and the one thousand Euro ‘payout’, funds obtained — after some special pleading — from the IPN investigation budget. Displaying the controlled agitation of the hunter, Sebastian barely spoke. His hands shifted restlessly There was excitement, too, because he knew that Brack was ignorant of their approach. At one p.m. on the third day the phone rang in Anselm’s bedroom.
‘Your guest is in the dining room.” said Krystyna, the cheery girl at reception.