The Day of the Lie

Chapter Thirty-One

When a journey ends one looks back. Certain features that were obscure en route stand out with ruthless clarity And the one that most troubled Anselm, now that he’d arrived at the guilt of SABINA, was his treatment of Irina Orlosky He’d trampled over a weak, already defeated woman. He’d stomped around in the mud of her failings, showing off that Old Bailey footwork. It had been ugly, unnecessary and almost certainly harmful. Again he found that the Hilton’s showers weren’t up to the task. And this time the situation was worse than before: the inner dirt that wouldn’t shift was of his own making and he couldn’t blame Frenzel.

The recognition sent Anselm first to a florist and then to a rundown corner of Praga, a central district on the east bank of the river. This was where Stalin’s army had watched the Nazis crush the Uprising of 1944. It was where the Tsar’s troops had massacred 20,000 civilians following the Uprising of 1794. It was where Brack’s personal assistant now lived, a survivor without her name.

Anselm walked into a narrow courtyard of tall cramped buildings. Paint blistered off the crooked window frames. Red and black graffiti marked the cracked walls as if they were stitching to hold the place together. Higher up, the stucco had fallen away, the remnant oval sections like flaking scabs on the facade of orange brick. It was early evening and the light was slipping away with something like relief. Having stepped gingerly through an open, communal door.’ Anselm mounted a creaking staircase and halted on a second floor landing. Rapid gunfire sounded from behind Flat 8. It ceased abruptly on Anselm’s firm knock. A long, sliver of light appeared like a drawn blade.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Anselm to the dark, spectacled face. ‘I was rude, superior and insulting. You were right. I have no idea what it was like. Can I have some tea? My name is Anselm.’

The door chain slid from its groove.

‘Yes, of course, come in… I’m… I’m Irina.’

Taking the flowers, she smiled uneasily, one hand nervously brushing back her grey hair. Set against the dull wallpaper, the bunched yellows and greens turned bright. She held them out like an Olympic torch, beckoning Anselm to follow, but he paused by an open door just inside the entrance. Stretched out on the faded carpet lay the podgy son dressed in a Man United top and camouflage trousers.’ his legs splayed, his hands gripping a plastic Kalashnikov. Secure behind a cushion for a sandbag, he was shooting Afghan insurgents on a large computer screen, his kill rate mounting against the clock.

‘Please, this way,’ she called from the kitchen at the end of the short corridor, her voice embarrassed, already pleading for more understanding, already fearing another kind of condemnation.

The room was small and clean, the white enamel on the cooker chipped but shining. A small, polished window looked on to the courtyard and a fragment of sky Anselm drew back a chair by a small Formica table and said.’

‘Irina, it’s important you know something: Frenzel doesn’t have your name. Certain things always remain in our possession.’

Her back was against him. She was arranging the flowers in a vase, jiggling the stems to get the arrangement right. Without turning around, she said, ‘He didn’t take it, Father. No one did.’

Still not facing Anselm, and without prompting, she began to speak of August 1989 as if she’d forgotten to mention it first time round and was now making up for the lapse. She’d been called into work early Mr Frenzel had rung to say there was housework to be done. The place needed cleaning from top to bottom. For the next three months all the staff had worked like mad to tidy up the files.

‘It was non-stop shredding.” she said, turning on the electric kettle. ‘In every room on every floor the machines were whining and whirring. There were rows and rows of garden sacks filled with all the sliced up paper. After a week others were brought in, more people, more machines, more sacks. Department and Section Heads sat at their desks, picking the files to be destroyed. It was one long office party

… with laughter and joking and larking around. Some of the senior officers were maudlin, leafing through old folders. “Do you remember that one?” “I wonder what became of him.” Others were frantic, knowing they couldn’t pull all the weeds out of the garden.’

Irina broke her recollection to pour the boiled water into two cups. She sliced lemon and placed cubes of sugar on the saucers. Three harsh shots came from down the corridor, followed by the crump of grenades and the cries of the Afghan dying. The son had ambition. He was going to succeed where the Russians had failed.

‘That’s when Mr Frenzel selected which documents to keep,’ sighed Irina, wiping some spillage with a cloth. ‘He took them home every evening in his car. Told me to keep my mouth shut if I ever wanted to work again. If my son was ever to get a job.’

At last she turned round and travelled the great divide between them — just two short steps — her eyes lowered, not wanting to meet Anselm’s gaze. She was wearing a McDonald’s T-shirt and neat green trousers. Her expression was hard behind the frail wire glasses.

‘The only person missing was Colonel Brack,’ she said, sitting down. ‘He made his appearance on the last day, after everyone else had gone. He came late at night… I only found him because I’d left my keys behind.’

Anselm stirred his tea, flipping over the slice of lemon. ‘He’d kept away from the party?’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t he have any files for the shredder?’

‘No. He wasn’t like the others… he was a believer. He was proud of his work… proud of the ministry; he wanted whoever came next to see what he’d done. His junior officers saw things differently — they cleaned his cupboards to protect themselves.’ She dropped a cube of sugar into her tea and began to break it down with the teaspoon. ‘For him, there was nothing to celebrate. Quite the opposite.

He wanted a funeral. When I opened the door to his office, he was there, sitting bolt upright holding a gun to his mouth:

Irina had approached him stealthily, like a cat, speaking assurances in a low whisper. She’d edged round the desk and put her hand round his, slowly drawing the barrel from between his teeth. It had been the first time she’d ever touched his skin and he’d been cold; simply cold and still, no clammy surface or shaking limbs; no fear or tension. He’d watched her from afar, letting her unpick his fingers from the handgrip. Irina, trembling violently, had stepped back and dropped the gun into her coat pocket.

‘I’ve still got it,’ she laughed, bitterly ‘I didn’t dare leave the thing behind so I brought it home and shoved it in a safe place.’ Her head made a tilt to some shelf out of her son’s reach. ‘To this day I don’t know why I did that… why I stopped him from killing himself. He meant nothing to me. He never once so much as asked if I was all right, or if my son was doing well. He just worked, fighting “the enemy”. Years later, when I realised that most doors in the free world were shut to me, I thought of him and everything he represented; I saw him at his desk, reading files by a lamp, biting his lip. And if I could have gone back into that room, I’d have taken the gun from him and pulled the trigger myself.’ Irina coloured at the admission. ‘I hate him… and as the years go by I hate him even more. Isn’t that an awful thing to say?’

‘Yes.” replied Anselm, simply, with the empathy of a doctor. They both knew that hate is the infection from an unhealed wound; that it’s difficult to treat properly.

‘I couldn’t find interesting work,’ she said, glancing towards the corridor and the battle of her son. ‘Every conversation, every memory, every story… they all led back to the ministry. I was part of it. I’d drawn my pay Like you said, I was one of them. People who’d never bothered to care when Brack was opening their next door neighbour’s mail became former activists. They’d all been underground. They’d all taken risks. They’d all fought the good fight, whereas me…’ Irina turned aside again, showing Anselm her profile, the fine nasal bone and the strong but delicate chin. Her tone was flat without a trace of self-pity: ‘I’ve paid the penalty for everything he represented. I’ve picked up the responsibility for everything he did… as if I’d fought for his ideas… as if his ideas were mine. I carry the virus. And what about him?’ For the first time she looked at Anselm directly, her eyes naked, the hate creeping quietly like a flame on the edge of some paper, invisible, but alive and black. ‘He’s paid nothing… I’m sure of it. And I saved his life. Do you know what he did afterwards? He didn’t say a word. He just opened a drawer, looked inside and then walked past me as if I wasn’t there.’

Anselm sipped his tea, unsettled by her calm self-disgust, that secondary infection often found in good people who can’t see any road to forgiveness, especially for themselves, never mind the person who wounded them in the first place.

‘Why do you let Frenzel keep his hold on you?’ asked Anselm.’ wanting to find some way out for this cornered woman.

‘He offered me some money,’ she replied, not quite answering the question. ‘He said that some investigators were sniffing around Polana, that they might embarrass Brack… that I could play my part and line my pocket at the same time. He’s a very difficult man to turn down, Mr Frenzel — ’ the strain appeared in the fine lines around her mouth; she looked inward, it seemed, her eyes glazed — ‘and anyway, I’d nothing to lose.’

With slow deliberation her attention shifted towards the gunfire: she hated it; she hated the computer screen; she hated the game. But it’s what her son had wanted. She’d bought the lot with her cut from Frenzel (thought Anselm); she’d treated her son to an upmarket toy with adult specifications, the kind of indulgence he’d never received when he was so much younger, excluded from the other kids’ birthday parties.

‘He’s addicted to kompot,’ she said, abstracted. ‘It’s a drug made from poppy stalks… weaker than heroin or morphine, but harmful all the same. He steals from me…

She stared at Anselm, begging him to ask no questions, to simply understand why she needed Marek Frenzel’s backhanders.

‘Irina,’ said Anselm, nodding understanding and pity, ‘I’m not here to embarrass Brack. I’m here in an attempt to bring him before a court.’

‘Oh really?’ She regarded him with polite but mocking disbelief. ‘For what? For crushing someone’s will to live?.’

‘No, for murder,’ supplied Anselm.

Irina’s glasses flashed.

‘Yes, Irina. Maybe you got paid. Maybe you didn’t have much of a choice. But you’ve helped to bring Otto Brack closer to justice. You’ve made a step towards finding your name.

She smiled reluctantly, as if Anselm had produced more flowers.

‘It goes right back to the beginning.” explained Anselm, ‘to the building of the system and the institutions that you’re now ashamed of

… which you wish you’d never served: He leaned over the table slightly, giving emphasis to the trust he was about to impart: the confidence one only shares with upright, decent people. ‘Roza Mojeska witnessed the execution of her husband and another man in nineteen fifty-one. Otto Brack pulled the trigger. Roza.’ like you, has been trapped — but not by shame or regret. Polana wasn’t all about finding the Shoemaker. Brack wanted to confront Roza… to tell her the name of the man who’d betrayed her from the outset; to tell her that she couldn’t condemn Brack in the future without exposing someone at the centre of the Shoemaker’s organisation and intimately connected with his reputation, not to mention that of the Church. Out of esteem for them both Roza kept a long, long silence. But now she’s changed her mind.’

‘Why?’

‘The time is right. The fact is, whatever your motives, whatever your past, she’ll be grateful to you.

Irina had asked the question in a disconnected way, as if her curiosity was a yard behind her memory and understanding. In a searching, faraway voice, she said, ‘ Polana, Roza… it all makes sense.’ I suppose. No other operation meant more to him; no other woman so unsettled him.’ She glanced at a wall clock as if it was time for work. ‘My son asked for a pizza. Will you stay for something to eat? We have a speciality here.’ pierogi… they’re difficult to describe, but I’ve got some in the fridge.’