The Day of the Lie (3 page)

‘About the murder of
your husband?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the other man?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘He turned the tables.
He
gave information to
me.’

‘
Information?’

‘Yes. He told me the
name of the informer. He told me their secrets. He told me things they didn’t
even know about themselves. He gave me the awful power that comes with
knowledge.’

Sebastian stared back,
expectant but uncomprehending.

‘It was a special kind
of blackmail,’ explained Róża, patiently ‘He was warning me that if I ever
accused him of murder, he’d not only expose the informer, he’d release all the
details of their undisclosed past, as a means to shatter their future.’

Sebastian waited for a
long time, holding Róża’s gaze, wondering if there was any more to come;
and then he realised she’d finished speaking, that she’d explained herself in
full.

‘He threatened to burn
your enemy’ he asked, eyes closed and brow furrowed, ‘and that threat silenced
you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How? Help me. Why not
let ‘em fry?’

‘Because they might
never recover from the shame, from the public destruction. They could very well
end their own life.’

‘Don’t get me wrong, but
so what?’

‘In part, it would be my
fault and I’d share the responsibility. I would be no different to Brack. I
might as well have pulled the trigger myself … and that’s why Brack put the
gun in my hand. He knew I’d never take aim and fire.’

Sebastian blinked
rapidly one hand scratching the back of another.

‘No, no, no, Róża,
you’ve got it wrong, so wrong,’ he laughed without humour. ‘That’s not how the
world works, not now, not then. If a shamed collaborator opts for suicide that’s
their
choice … that’s
their
way of dealing with responsibility.
Everyone at some point has to face up to what they’ve done. They can’t run off
or hide behind your … what is it? Decency? That’s the one thing they threw
away … you of all people can’t give it back to them.’ He seemed to come
closer but he hadn’t moved. He was still now, almost predatory. ‘Róża, you’re
talking about an
informer.
They got a handful of silver. They’ve had
their’

Sebastian’s voice
trailed off.

Róża had stood up
and walked to the mirror. She picked up the bullet and returned to the table,
placing it between them as if it were a tiny storm lamp, something from a doll’s
house. She sat down, looking at it as if she, too, was perplexed by its
meaning.

‘When I was first in
Mokotów, Brack used one of these.’ She turned it slightly, as if to adjust the
flame. ‘The next time round,
I
discovered he was no ordinary
executioner. He’d learned how to silence someone without violence, without
committing a crime. He did something
I
never could have imagined: he
used me against myself. I won’t vindicate Pavel at the cost of another life,
Sebastian, even that of an informer. When people are stripped down in public,
when every sordid detail of their past becomes cheap gossip at the bus stop,
they can lose the will to live. That’s not the kind of free speech we fought
for. I won’t use words to bring about another death … not when words were all
we had to keep ourselves alive.’

Róża insisted on walking Sebastian to
the street below It was a mild night with a soft breeze carrying the hum of
distant engines and downtown activity. Sebastian loitered, hanging back, making
Róża walk more slowly His hands were in his pockets in that relaxed way of
his that was somehow smart. He was thinking hard, trying to find a way to end
the meeting on the right note. His car keys jingled and he struggled with the
lock in the driver’s door.

‘I won’t trouble you any
more, Róża,’ he said, yanking at the handle. ‘But I’ve got one last
request. Come to the IPN. Let me show you something else that lies beyond your
imagination.’

Chapter Three

For a long while Róża considered the
two trees. They stood by the entrance to the Institute of National Remembrance.
One was upright but the other seemed it might lose balance and fall over, its
trunk curved as though it had grown in a gale. The lower branches were
stretched out like arms ready for the fall. They were just the right height for
a boy wanting to climb and get a better view of any commotion.

‘Welcome, Róża,’
said Sebastian, holding open the door. ‘This is the place where we try and
clean up the past.’

She shrank from the
towering block. The Shoemaker had once said that history was our sacred curse;
that we were forever torn between the duty to remember and the joy of picking
daisies.

‘Are you okay?’ queried
Sebastian.

‘Yes … just something
I read in the paper.’

Alongside the windows
were canisters hiding external lights. Róża had seen them illuminated
after dark during one of her walks. Reminded now of the building’s purpose Róża
wondered why she’d got into that taxi. She’d made another mistake: first, she’d
said too much; now she’d come too far.

‘We’ve got lots of
papers here,’ quipped Sebastian, leading Róża inside. ‘You can read them,
too.’

His suit was charcoal
grey verging on black. His white shirt had that factory gleam, persuading Róża
that it had been torn from its cellophane wrapper earlier that morning. The
maroon tie was slightly loose at the neck.

‘The lifts are out of
order, I’m afraid,’ he explained, passing a couple of vexed technicians. ‘So we’ll
have to use the stairs.’

On the other side of a
door marked ‘Private’ they were met by a man whose job description did not
permit a smile. An officer of the Internal Security Agency — Special Forces —
said Sebastian in a low voice. He followed them down three floors, along a
corridor and to a locked grey door. Róża felt unsteady, her stomach
churning at an old memory. The cage had been three floors down, too; there’d
been guards who didn’t smile; and the cellar door had been grey The paint had
been peeling and the ground was damp. Brack had fumbled for his keys, breathing
recrimination.

‘Most people aren’t
allowed to see what I’m going to show you, said Sebastian. ‘Special clearance
is needed. I had to fight to get yours.

He pushed a card into a
narrow slit and the electronic lock flashed green.

‘Come on in. This is
part of what Brack and his friends left behind.’

The room comprised
nothing but shelving: row after row of long metal units jam-packed with buff
folders, box files and bound reports. Between each block was a narrow walkway
providing cramped access to the documentation. A musty smell tainted the air. Róża
felt vaguely ill. She’d said too much, she’d come too far and now she’d gone
too deep. She hadn’t expected this.

‘Lined up, there’s about
one hundred miles of material,’ said Sebastian, leaning on the wall, legs
crossed. ‘Over ninety thousand informers from all walks of life. Here is some
of what they said, noted down by the secret police. As I explained before, a
lot of the really damaging stuff has been destroyed, though we reckon a duplicate
archive exists in Moscow’

Sebastian walked down an
alleyway, drawing Róża along by a tilt of the head. She lingered, looking
right and left, feeling the weight of information leaning towards her, the
spines of the files like the backs of their authors turned in shame. All at
once she wanted to get out of this terribly silent place. The intimidation of
the handlers had been left behind like the harsh smell of cheap aftershave.
When Sebastian opened a door on to an office, Róża entered with a sigh of
relief, but then instantly recoiled as from a slap to the face.

The room was brightly
lit. There were two comfortable chairs on either side of a table. In the middle
of the table was a microphone wired to a recording machine. Beside the machine
were two folders, one a dull orange, the other a pale green. Both were secured
by a black lace tied in a bow There was a jug of water and an upturned glass. A
coat stand watched like a sentry. Sebastian appeared before Róża’s frozen
gaze.

‘Róża, I’m not
going to make you stay here. You don’t have to say anything. You’re a free
woman. You can turn around and I’ll call another taxi. But I want you to
understand what you’re doing.’

Róża smiled thinly
at the offer of advice.

‘Out there, behind you,
is
their
story,’ said Sebastian. ‘They’ve had their say The secret
police and their informers have put their slant on every event since you were
fifteen — and not just the politics but what your neighbours had for breakfast.’

It was far more complex
than that, objected Róża, not bothering to say so. It had been so much
more
involved.
Yes, some had taken the silver for a better standard of
living … but there’d been others:

parents, desperate to
obtain medical treatment; one time adulterers, blackmailed to save a marriage;
careerists who’d bought promotion with cheap gossip known to everyone but the
cat; the stupid, who’d thought they could play the game better than the ones
who’d made up the rules; and that special class — the almost innocent, the
trusting kind who didn’t even know they were being used. They’d all been
informers. They’d all betrayed someone. But there was no true equivalence, not
really The many faces of choice and coercion kept them well apart. All they
shared was exile, deserved and undeserved. Róża looked at Sebastian’s
mouth as it moved, not hearing the words, wondering why his generation couldn’t
differentiate between the varying shades of wickedness and co-operation; why
they smudged together malice, blabbing and whimpering; why they found it so
easy to apportion blame.

‘—but the files are with
us for ever, and we have to make sense of them, here in a building that’s meant
to house your memories,’ he continued, searchingly, trying to win Róża
back. He’d sensed her drift away He’d felt a remote coolness in her appraisal
of him. ‘If you ever decide to speak, everything you say would count as a memorial
to the kids playing with the rope. Otherwise, this is what they’re left with.
The lies, the obsessions, the compromise.
Their
story. ‘Róża turned
around. Ahead was the narrow passage, walled by fading covers. At the far end
the grey door seemed wedged between distant protruding binders. For those who’d
grown while the shelves were being filled, the place was frightening. There was
a terrible implied intimacy between lives lived ordinarily and these secret
memoranda; these notes on what others had heard while you poured the tea or
washed the cherries.

‘On the table are two
files,’ said Sebastian. He’d moved to the door and taken its handle, ready to show
Róża the way out. ‘The orange holds your interrogations from nineteen
fifty-one. The green is the Shoemaker file and what’s left of Operation
Polana
in nineteen eighty-two. If you leave now, that’s what you’re turning your
back on. When I return the folders to the shelf, there’ll be no other version
of your life and times; the beginning and end of your resistance. Brack gets
the first and last word. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Róża appraised the
orange file. It was thick, the cover faded and bulging. With the sudden jolt of
an electric charge she recalled a little man with a tatty briefcase, a
spectacled pen—pusher who’d come to Mokotów shortly before she was released.

‘Can I be alone for a
moment?’ she asked, suddenly hoarse. ‘I need to gather my wits.’

‘Sure.’

As soon as the door
closed, Róża quickly untied the bow on the orange file and lifted the
cover, her eyes scanning one side of the stacked grey paper. They came to a
halt towards the bottom, when she spotted a pale blue line, a single sheet.
With a quick tug, her memory shuddering with emotion, she tore it free from the
binder. Without even a glance at the columns and boxes she crumpled the paper
and thrust it deep into her pocket. Hastily closing the file, she made a new,
tight bow, and then opened the door.

‘I’ve thought about it,
and I’d like to leave immediately, thank you very much.’

Sebastian’s mouth opened
in stunned disappointment. He stammered some sympathy but finally said,
blocking her way ‘You only gave it a minute, Róża, whereas that lot —’ he
nodded past her towards the table ‘— was built up over years. Don’t you want to
take a little more time? Just give the proposal the consideration it—’

‘What do you want me
from me?’ Uncontrolled feeling spilled from some inner guttering. He was
watching her expectantly not realising how deep despair can run. ‘You bring me
here … you push my face into my past; you ask me to clean it up? You ask me
to explain to children I don’t know why I failed, why I leave Brack’s account
on the table, why Brack won and I lost … lost everything I loved and cared
for? You bring me here and offer me a glass of water and a chance to redeem
myself? You expect me to sit down and smooth out the creases in my life?’ She
paused, unable to express the extent of her subjection. ‘You have no idea — and
I mean
no idea whatsoever
— of Brack’s power, back then; of its
reach.
You don’t understand. You haven’t the faintest—’

‘Róża,’ Sebastian’s
whisper stifled her indignation. ‘We have something in common. I’ve got a
story too, you know. Not as bad as yours, I accept, but it’s a story. It marked
me and others. It’s why I became a lawyer.’

Róża blinked and
noticed that her hands were clenched; her teeth were tight against each other.
Relaxing her bite, she made a low moan, wanting to get away from untold
stories, other people’s and her own. Not telling them saved a lot of harm; kept
life manageable. She swallowed hard, knowing it wasn’t true.