Lumen (7 page)

“They could have shot her from the outside,” Schenck suggested. “After all there are tall buildings around the convent.”

“I’ll do the rounds of the neighbourhood, to see from where a shot could have been fired. However, the bullet entered her chest straight on. Hardly the angle that would suggest a shot fired from a distant vantage point.”

Hofer, who’d been slouching, sat bolt upright, as if words said before were just now reaching him. “What do you mean, the priest doesn’t believe in her mystic powers?”

“Well, he’s an investigator in his own right - he shouldn’t be biased to begin with.”

“But disbelieving is a bias all the same. What do
you
believe, Bora?”

Bora knew Schenck was curious to hear the answer as much as Hofer was, and weighed his words. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s important what I believe about the abbess. The German command wants to know who killed her, and I’m trying to figure it out.”

“But you must believe in miracles if you’re Catholic!”

Schenck inwardly smiled when Bora kept silent.

3

Colonel Hofer’s departure was as quick as it had been predictable. Bora went to see him off at the Cracow Glowny station on Tuesday. He was himself on his way north to question ethnic Germans on their complaints about violence by retreating Polish troops.

Hofer seemed to appreciate Bora’s presence. Pale but composed, he let his bitterness through by commenting on how a “hair-line crack causes the whole pot to be thrown away”.

“I hate to say I’ll be better off in Germany, Bora. I know how your generation hankers to expand. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Colonel, did the abbess give you reason to think that she feared for her life, or that she might die shortly?”

Hofer’s composure gave way a little. “No.”

“But do you think she
knew
?”

“Please let us not speak of it, Captain. I cannot add any piece of information that will help you solve her murder. I’d rather not speak of it.” The train was preparing to leave, so Hofer boarded. Without leaning out of the window, he added, “Goodbye, Bora. When you talk to your farmers today, keep in mind they’ll tell you what you want to hear.”

Bora saluted. “It’s unlikely, sir. I don’t know myself what I want to hear.”

“Hopefully the truth - whatever the truth means to you.” Hofer cleared his throat. “Try not to be more self-assured
than the situation calls for. It won’t serve you well.” Slowly he answered Bora’s salute, as if raising his hand to the temple were too much for him, or he no longer cared for the gesture. “Remember Adam and the apple.”

The train began to move. In the time it took Hofer to leave the Cracow metropolitan area, Bora and Hannes had already taken the road into the countryside. When the train stopped in Kielce, Bora was sitting on the rubble wall of a fly-infested farmyard, surrounded by disgruntled Silesians who wanted to have their say.

“Was
L.C.A.N.
the abbess’s motto?”

Father Malecki didn’t need to look at the photograph Bora held in his hand to answer. “Yes, it was her Latin maxim. You may know it translates into ‘Light of Christ, Succour Us’.”

“Yes, I know.”

The evergreens in the cloister gave an illusion of spring which the low temperature dispelled as soon as the men walked out into it. Bora regretted his decision not to wear his greatcoat this morning, since he was soon uncomfortable in his woollen uniform. The news of a failed attempt on Hitler’s life the day before had thrown the military establishment into such confusion, the wearing of a coat seemed a superfluous preoccupation.

Bundled around the neck with a bulky scarf, Malecki wore nothing over his cassock, but had already taken care to wear long johns underneath.

Although no photographs had been taken of the body, Bora remembered the position in which it had been found. He walked to the well, and with a twig showed Malecki approximately where the head and feet of the nun had lain.

“Had it been up to me, I wouldn’t have let them move her,” Bora said as he leaned against the rim of the roofed well. “It was clear that she was dead, still the sisters hauled her inside to try to revive her. They wouldn’t have let me help even had I been so inclined.”

Malecki watched Bora pensively rub the metal-clad toe of his boot on the grout between bricks, where a dark residue was all that remained of the blood flow. He told himself he was putting up with Bora at this point. Resentment for a military presence in the convent found no open expression because there was nothing in this situation over which he had control. The archbishop of Cracow felt very differently from the Vatican on the issue of collaboration with German authorities, but he, too, had to keep it to himself. So Malecki had resolved to be here whenever the German visited, in hopes of keeping a check on him.

Bora knew it, and accepted it for the time being.

“Captain, you must believe me when I say that if you’re looking for culprits within this convent, you’re making a colossal mistake.”

“Am I?” Bora lifted his glance to him. Under the brief shade of the visor he had a look of quickly controlled animosity. “Judging by the angle of entry, the shot was fired from a few feet away, by someone standing somewhere between here and there.” He pointed to the south side of the cloister, where an arbor vitae sat in a massive clay pot. “As best as I can reconstruct the series of events, Colonel Hofer was let into the convent shortly after half-past sixteen hundred hours. Though he has no precise recollection of the time lapse, he probably entered the cloister no more than two minutes later. He had an appointment, and you know the sisters automatically let him through. When he walked into the cloister, he saw Mother Kazimierza’s body. The shock was such that it took him a few minutes to gather
his wits enough to run out for help. It was fifteen minutes to seventeen hundred hours when he made it out of the convent to call me. Somebody did the abbess in just before our arrival, Father: make what you will of it.” Sensing Malecki’s disgruntlement, Bora added, “By the way, Father Malecki, I read your annotations very carefully, and I believe there are some parts missing. There’s no history of the abbess previous to her entrance into the convent, and more importantly there are no personal observations on her character. You live on Karmelicka Street.” Bora took out a notebook and flipped through it. “Number 17, third floor. I imagine you keep the rest of your papers there. I had no intention of being disrespectful, and resisted the temptation to go see for myself. May I impose on you to get the rest of the documentation for me before tomorrow? I noticed you number the pages of your notebooks, so I’d know at once if there were any missing entries.”

“I see.” Malecki felt his teeth creak in his mouth, by the tightness of his jaw. “And where do you want them delivered?”

“Kindly bring them here. I’ll be back to pick them up at sixteen hundred hours, by which time I hope to be able to start interrogating the sisters.” Bora walked away. Only after reaching the porch did he turn around to see if the priest had followed. Seeing that he had intentionally stayed behind, he retraced his steps to the well. He stood facing the priest for perhaps a minute, something which might make the American uneasy, although - unwilling like many soldiers to share physical closeness - Bora kept at some distance.

He said finally, as if rushing out of some unrehearsed, impulsive process of thinking, “We can work together or separately on this, Father Malecki. I’m not going to offer more than once.”

Malecki felt his heart race. All of a sudden, resentment and hope and his own anguished curiosity about the death struggled in his mind so fiercely, he feared the German might hear the screaming in his head. It was one of those moments when one becomes perfectly aware of what is around: time and place and circumstances, as if a revelation of eternity within the fleeting moment were granted. All Bora had asked him was to collaborate.

He suspiciously returned Bora’s attention. To him, somehow Bora looked Anglo-Saxon more than German. He had the face of good breeding but not of inexperience, a sensitive and disciplined expression, harder, yet not unlike the faces of idealistic young priests Malecki had known.

“But of course you wouldn’t share your findings with me, Captain.”

“I will share what I see fit.”

Bora was taking off his glove to shake hands. Malecki felt for an instant that this might just as easily be God’s way of offering him the right choice or an unrecognized compromise with virtue. He grabbed hold of the proffered hand much in excess of rude firmness.

Bora understood the warning, and laughed. “You shake hands like a longshoreman.”

“I worked among them long enough.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport, Bora! It’s only the third time I ask. Do I complain when you play your damn Beethoven and Schumann every night? Just stay away, no one is telling you you have to sleep outdoors.”

“But what does the major expect me to do in the middle of the night in this town? I don’t think it’s appropriate for
me to sit in a hotel room or in my car until the major is
done
.”

“Well then, I’ll make it easy for you: I’m ordering you to stay away, and I don’t give a damn what you do with yourself in the meantime.”

Bora swept his coat from the back of the armchair, and left the apartment.

An hour later, Colonel Schenck was leaving the officers’ club as Bora walked in. Bora saluted. Schenck returned the salute. He stopped on the threshold, and so did Bora.

“Do you know what time it is, Captain?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want you to be aware that I don’t approve of junior officers staying up late. Are you alone?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“In that case, I suggest you order one drink and drive back to your quarters.”

Bora went to the bar and ordered a cognac. Through the mirror behind the counter, he could see that Colonel Schenck had not moved from the entrance. He drank, paid and walked back.

Schenck saw him outside to his car. In the frigid rain he gave him a lecture on the benefits of a regulated life and the necessity to maintain peak levels of energy at a time when German manhood was tested at the front and at home.

“Especially with an eye to reproduction, Captain, it is imperative that easy but temporary and unhealthy habits and liaisons be avoided by the responsible German male. The step between an innocent drink at the officers’ club and wasteful profligacy - even race defilement - is often too brief. I speak for your own good, as a commander and a political comrade, out of concern for your unborn sons and our great country.”

Bora gave up wondering what the officers’ club had to do with his unborn sons. He thanked Colonel Schenck, assured him that he would remember the advice and drove off towards the south-west of town.

Street repairs were being carried on at the corner of Święty Sebastiana, where a powerful bomb had exploded three days earlier. Army trucks idled with headlights on, and carbide lamps were also being used. The glare formed an eerie hole in the dark, where wraiths of fog drifted in front of the lights, and men working in the fog seemed infernal denizens doing their eternal penance. Men were carrying stones - kerb stones, the darkish basalt from Janowa Dolina - to an upheaved section of sidewalk.

Bora stopped the car, and for a few moments just sat behind the wheel. The interior of the car was cold. Trickles of rain mixed with ice crystals blurred his vision through the windshield. Ahead, the glare drew ghostly yellow streaks that seemed to rain and melt down the window. Bora stretched his legs. He couldn’t help thinking about Retz. How Retz at this time was sipping wine, or talking in his loud voice to Ewa Kowalska, or already fingering the fly of his breeches on the sofa. Blood came up his face, a neat little surge of envy dressed in righteousness. His head ached. He felt uncomfortable and tense. Gooseflesh travelled up his thighs, making him bristle.

Impulsively he left the car and stood by it as if it interested him to watch forced labour at one in the morning.

The shadows wore armbands.

He neared the edge of the upheaved earth, where the concentration of light flooded the small area, and moisture condensed before the lamps in a cold vapour. The closest soldier saluted him.

“Has to be patched up by tomorrow morning, Herr Hauptmann.”

Observing one of the workers shuffle by, a slope-shouldered old man in a ridiculously unsuitable tweed jacket, Bora felt the cold in his greatcoat and upturned collar.

“Are these Polish Jews or German Jews?”

“German Jews, Herr Hauptmann
.
”

“All right. Carry on.”

The stooping old man followed back and forth the path from the upheaved sidewalk to a heap of basalt blocks, pacing more and then less quickly as the weight came to lodge between his hands. He brought the block to someone at the edge of the hole, who passed it to a third man. Younger workers carried their stones against their stomachs without bending their backs. Each time the old man received his block, he hunched to a greater stoop.

Bora waited for him to halt outside the circle of light, in the shadow where the basalt blocks lay, and approached him.

“Herr Weiss.”

Not so much that a German officer had addressed him, but that he’d used a form of respect intimidated the old man, whose first reaction was to step back and aside with head low, as required.

“Herr Weiss, it’s Martin Bora.”

Other workers were coming for their blocks and jostled Weiss, casting furtive glances at Bora. Weiss regained his balance, staring up at the officer. Brusquely Bora took his hands, turning them palms up. He examined them in the way of a teacher checking if a pupil has washed properly.

“How long has this been going on?”

Weiss spoke to him for the next few minutes. His breath could be seen as short, fleeting clouds when they reached the circle of light. “I only wish I could be employed to
work during the daytime, you see. At times I feel I shall go down like Goethe, crying out for more light. But they move us to a camp tomorrow, a much better place, I’m told. As things are there’s no complaint, really. You see? And a good street worker is as honourable as a good piano teacher. Things pass, Captain Bora, things do pass. The good times, the peaceful times come back eventually. One should see these things like intervals, shouldn’t one?”