Samson 05 - Hope, page 10
I remained awake for a long time after that. From the forest there were the cries of animals: foxes or wild dogs perhaps. Once I fancied I heard the barking of wolves. Dogs locked in their kennels in the courtyard joined in the howling. Perhaps tomorrow George would come. Unless it was George they were digging up in the forest in the dark.
4
The Kosinski Mansion, Masuria, Poland.
The following day brought no further news of either George or Stefan Kosinski. I got up early and, having abandoned the effort of making a palatable pot of tea with the warm water delivered to my room, I went to the kitchen and ate porridge and drank coffee with the servants. Dicky didn’t like porridge. He slept late and then went out to examine the vehicles in the coach house. There were six of them. They included a sleigh with hand-painted edelweiss and functioning jingle bells a coach, a carriage and a pony trap, the last two in good condition and evidently in regular use. Apart from the car in which we had arrived, there were no motor vehicles to be seen except for the remains of a tractor which had been stripped bare for tires and spare parts.
Dicky had heard a story about a young Dutch banker finding two vintage Bugattis in a barn not far from where we were. This Dutchman was said to have persuaded the fanner to exchange the priceless old cars for two modern Opels. I didn’t believe the story but Dicky insisted that it was true, and the thought of it was never far from his mind. Several times on our journey from Warsaw I’d had to dissuade him from going to search likely-looking farm buildings for such treasures.
‘Do you think the Russians will come?’ Dicky asked me as I found him opening the door of a carriage and looking inside to see the amazing muddle of cobwebs.
‘Invade’? I don’t know.’
Dicky closed the door, but the lock didn’t engage until he tried three times, finally slamming the door of the carriage with enough force to shake the dust out of the springs. ‘I don’t want to find myself explaining my presence to some damned Russian army intelligence officer,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want you here explaining yourself either.’
There was little I could say to that. It established Dicky’s superiority in a way that required no elaboration. I reasoned that the danger was not imminent. My own guess was that the Soviets would order the Polish security forces to stage a mass round-up of every possible Polish odd-ball, opponent and dissident, before risking their infantry in the Warsaw streets, or even the open countryside. But it was better to let Dicky worry; he was a worrier by nature, and it kept him occupied and off my back.
I followed him as he walked to the far end of the coach house where a trestle bench had been cleared. It was covered with clean newspaper, and there were three shiny black rubbish bags, empty, folded and ready, at one end.
‘A body,’ mused Dicky, picking up one of the plastic bags and putting it down again. ‘That’s all we needed.’ He sneezed. ‘I’ve picked up some sort of virus,’ he said after wiping his nose on a large handkerchief.
‘It’s the dust,’ I said.
‘How I wish it was dust,’ said Dicky with a brave smile. ‘You’re lucky; you don’t get these damned allergies and stiffer the way I do.’
‘Yes,’ I said. I could recognize the symptoms; Dicky had had enough of Polish austerity hard beds, potato soup and chilly bedrooms and now he was preparing to make his excuses and depart.
Dicky looked at his watch. ‘Shall we go down to look at the digging? Everyone seems to have disappeared. Except that secretary fellow, he left the house at six-thirty this morning. It was scarcely light.’ Dicky went out into the courtyard and stamped around on the cobbles. The sky had cleared in the night, and the temperature had dropped enough for the cold to sting my face and give Dicky a glittering pink complexion.
‘You saw the secretary leaving?’
‘On a horse. A beautiful hunter. Dressed up to the nines in riding breeches, polished boots and a hacking jacket, like some English country squire. He’s a shifty sod, we must watch him.’
‘And he hasn’t returned yet?’
‘I was checking the stables. The horse is not here. I wonder where the bastard’s gone. He was very quiet last night, wasn’t he? He was watching you like a hawk, did you notice that?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘All the time. You should be more observant, Bernard. These people are not to be trusted. They tell us only what they want us to hear.’
‘You’re right, Dicky.’
‘You probably didn’t notice that there is no telephone in that house.’
‘That’s probably why the secretary went off somewhere on his horse.’
‘Damned odd, isn’t it? No phone?’
‘Maybe. Stefan’s a writer; perhaps he doesn’t want a telephone in his house.’
‘Writer, huh. I’m going to see what those people are digging up in the forest, just in case it is a body. I’ll jog there, it’s not far. Better we both go.’
Today Dicky had delved into his wardrobe for a three-quarter-length military jacket. It was an olive-green waterproof garment with huge pockets, a long-sleeve version of the sort of garment General Westmoreland modeled in Nam. The name patch had been carefully unpicked from it, leaving the impression that it was an item of kit retained after Dicky’s military service. This was an interpretation that he liked to encourage, but Daphne once confided that all Dicky’s military wardrobe came from a charity shop in Hampstead.
It did not matter that Dicky had brought his oddments of (démodé military uniform; half the population of Poland seemed to be outfitted by the US army. But other men wore stained and patched ones, and wore them in a sloppy and informal way. Dicky’s well-fitting jacket was clean and pressed. With the jacket fully buttoned, and a red paratroop beret worn pulled down tight on his skull, Dicky was conspicuous in this country governed by soldiers. Only his trendy blue-and-white running shoes saved him from looking like a general about to inspect an honor guard of the riot police.
‘It’s a long hike,’ I warned.
‘Come along, Bernard. A brisk canter would do you good. Ye gods, I jog across Hampstead Heath every morning before breakfast.’
‘Daphne said you’d given up the daily jogging,’ I said.
My remark had the calculated effect. ‘Daphne!’ Dicky exploded. ‘What the hell does Daphne know about what I do? She’s in bed when I get home, and in bed when I get up in the morning.’
‘I must have got it wrong,’ I said. ‘I noticed you’d put on weight, and thought it must be because you’d cut out the jogging.’
‘You’re a bloody shit-stirrer,’ said Dicky. ‘Do you enjoy making mischief? Is that it?’
‘There’s no need to get upset, Dicky,’ I said, trying to look pained.
‘I’ll show you who is out of condition. I’ll show you who is puffing and collapsing. Come on, Bernard, it’s no more than three miles.’
‘You start. I’ll go upstairs and put on my other shoes,’ I said. My accusations about his lack of exercise had aroused something in Dicky’s metabolism, for he began running on the spot, and punching the air around him to fell imaginary assailants.
‘You’d better hurry,’ he called and, with no further prompting, went jogging across the cobbled courtyard through the gate and along the path that led through the woods. I watched him slow as he entered the meadow that was now knee-high with dead ferns and weeds. They produced a crisp puffing sound as Dicky jogged through them. The impression of a choo-choo train was completed by the white vapor his breath left on the cold air.
I went inside the house to the kitchen. There was no one in evidence. I helped myself to a cup of warm coffee and toasted a slice of dark bread before following Dicky down the forest path at a leisurely pace. There were starlings, blackbirds and sparrows foraging for food. I understood their shrill cries; being without food in Poland was a grim plight. I was moved enough to toss a few bite-sized fragments of my breakfast bread to them, and decided that if I started to believe in reincarnation I’d go for something migratory.
‘My God, where have you been?’ Dicky said when I got to him. He had joined some men standing around looking at a shallow ditch. It was where they had been digging when we passed them the previous day. Accompanying the men there was a brown shaggy-haired mongrel dog; presumably it was Basilisk, the noted truffle-hound. It was sniffing at Dicky’s running shoes that were now caked in mud.
‘I took it easy; it was icy,’ I explained.
‘I know, I know,’ agreed Dicky, gently kicking the dog’s nose aside. ‘I slipped on a patch of it near the stream. I went full-length and hurt my back. But still I was here half an hour before you.’
‘It’s just as well that one of us remains uninjured,’ I said.
‘Very droll,’ said Dicky. Then, turning his dissatisfaction upon the laborers, he said: ‘They say they got a part of a leg yesterday not an arm, the old man got it wrong but it’s gone off to the police station.’
‘What kind of leg?’ I kicked at the ground. Here under the trees where no sunlight ever came, it was hard, very hard. ‘What kind of leg?’ Dicky scoffed. ‘How many kinds are there? Left and right?’ He coughed. His exertions seemed to have exhausted him and now he stood arms akimbo and breathed in and out slowly and deliberately, smiling fixedly while he did it, like those girls who sell exercise machines on television.
‘Young? Old? Decomposing? Mall? Short? Hairy? Smooth?’
‘How do I know?’ said Dicky, abandoning his breathing exercises. ‘It’s gone to the police.’
I turned to the men and tried my inadequate Polish on them but got only vague answers. Their attitude to the dismembered corpse was not unlike Dicky’s; a leg was a leg.
‘You didn’t change your shoes,’ said Dicky accusingly. ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I only brought the pair I’m wearing.’
‘You said you were going to change.’
‘I forgot. I’d not brought spares.’
‘You’re a bloody scrimshanker,’ said Dicky.
I didn’t deny it. I singled out the German-speaking Blackbeard and said: ‘Show me the leg.’ Before he could start his excuses I added, ‘These are human remains. I’ll bring the priest. If you try to prevent me arranging proper Christian burial I’ll see you damned in hell.’
He stared at me angrily. After a moment in which we stood motionless he pointed to a battered old wooden box. I pulled the top off it to see a shoe, a wrinkled sock and a grotesque hunk of chewed flesh that was undoubtedly a leg.
‘The dogs got it,’ explained Blackbeard. I glanced at the sleepy Basilisk. ‘Not this one … dogs from the village. They run wild in packs at night.’
I leaned over to see the well-chewed piece of flesh the men had discovered. It was chafed and grazed as if it had been scraped with a wire brush. Chunks of flesh were bitten away deeply enough to reveal the tibia bone. The big toe had been entirely torn off, leaving some of the small neighboring gray bones visible. The four other toes were intact, and complete with toenails. I reached into the box and turned the remains over to see where it had been detached from the upper leg. Surrounding the rounded stump of the bone there was a mop-like mess of ligaments, cartilage and tendon. ‘It’s a human leg all right,’ I said, carefully replacing it in the box. ‘And it looks like the dogs made a good meal of it.’
‘Uggh!’ said Dicky. ‘How repulsive.’
I picked up the shoe. Despite being damaged it was an Oxford brogue of unmistakably English origin. It was the expensive handmade sort of shoe that George Kosinski liked, and the leather had a patina that comes when shoes are carefully preserved by servants, as George’s shoes were. Such shoes, in such condition, were not commonly to be found in Poland even on the feet of the most affluent. The sock was silk, and although I couldn’t decipher all the markings, there was enough to establish that it was English too.
‘George Kosinski?’ said Dicky.
‘It looks like it,’ I said as I leaned over to estimate the size of the shoe against the foot.
‘You don’t seem very surprised.’
‘What do you want me to do … ? No. In fact, someone in Warsaw told me he had been killed.’
‘In Warsaw? Why don’t you bloody well confide in me?’ said Dicky in exasperation.
‘You don’t want me to repeat every last stupid unlikely rumor I hear, do you?’
‘How did you know?’ Dicky turned to glance at the men. ‘That these buggers still had it, I mean. They told me the police had collected it.’
‘The police?’ I said. ‘You think the police would have come out here, parceled up a bloodstained section of cadaver, said thank-you, and then gone quietly back to the barracks to think about it? In this part of the world, Dicky, the cops come complete with armored cars and assault weapons. Fresh human remains dug up out here in the sticks would have had them interrogating everyone in the house. We would have been paraded in our nightclothes in the courtyard, while search and arrest teams tore up the floorboards and kicked shit out of the servants.’
‘Yes, yes, yes, you’re right.’
‘That’s why no one sends for the bastards. That’s why I knew they were still thinking about what to do with this.’ I tossed the shoe and the sock into the box with the severed leg, and then put the lid on it. I looked round and found the diggers looking at me.
‘Where did you dig it from?’ I asked them.
‘That’s the problem,’ said Blackbeard. ‘The dogs had it here, under the beech tree. It could have come from anywhere. It could have come from miles away.’
‘So why are you digging here?’
‘The ground was disturbed. Shall we stop digging?’
I wasn’t going to fall for that one. ‘No, keep digging. We’ll keep it to ourselves,’ I suggested. ‘Tell no one. When Mr. Stefan returns he’ll know what to do.’
This wait-and-see solution appealed to the men. They nodded and Blackbeard picked up the wooden box and placed it further back in the darkness of the forest.
‘Are you jogging back for lunch?’ I asked Dicky.
‘Can’t you see I’ve hurt my back?’
‘We’ll walk then,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you the ruins of the generator house and traces of what must be the German fortified lines from the Tannenberg battle in 1914.’
‘Tannenberg?’ said Dicky doubtfully.
I said: ‘Every German schoolboy knows about Tannenberg, just as every English boy is taught about Trafalgar. Fifty miles of Masurian lakes split the Tsar’s attacking army. The invincible General Hindenburg walloped one half and then the other, to win a classic victory.’ I stopped abruptly as I realized to what extent my upbringing at a Berlin school had caused me to forget that the Tsar and his army were fighting on the Allied side. In 1914 Hindenburg had been Britain’s deadly enemy.
‘Do you know why you’ve never got on?’ said Dicky in a friendly tone, while putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘You can’t distinguish the important things in life from self-indulgent trifles. ’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And anyway, it was General Ludendorff who did the work while Hindenburg snatched all the credit.’ Dicky smiled to show he knew which general he was.
Karol arrived back at the house just after two o’clock. Everyone was fretting for their lunch but it was delayed until he arrived. Dicky had somewhat overstated Karol’s riding attire. He came into the drawing room dressed in stained slacks, scuffed high-boots and a baggy tweed jacket. He sat down after no more than a gruff greeting and we were served more soup made from unidentifiable vegetables followed by a plate of peppery mashed swede with onion in it.
‘Father Ratajczyk said he would come,’ Karol said suddenly. This seemed to be directed to Uncle Nico, but he turned to take in the whole family. ‘He had a christening and then he is coming directly here.’
‘There is no need for him to go into the East Wing,’ said Uncle Nico.
‘Every room,’ said Karol. ‘He said he would go into every room and that is what I want.’ Uncle Nico said nothing. ‘It’s what Stefan wanted,’ Karol added defiantly.
After the swede plates were cleared away, we were served a heavy pudding with a few raisins in it, and a sweet white sauce over it. There were murmurs of satisfaction from everyone and the pudding was devoured to the last drip of sauce and the final crumb.
‘I have saved some food for Father,’ said Aunt Mary.
‘Yes,’ said Karol. ‘He will be hungry. They never serve food at christenings.’
The priest arrived about an hour after lunch was eaten. He came striding through the house, a small scrawny figure who gestured extravagantly with hands high in the air. ‘I’ll start here,’ he said, looking into the dining room and sparing no more than a glance at the big stuffed eagle. ‘We’ll bring the box.’ He said it as if to himself and then turned abruptly on his heel, so that the skirt of his ankle-length cassock swirled around him. He sped back to the hallway and shouted through the front door to the sweaty old chap he’d brought with him, ‘Bring the box, Tadeusz.’
It was a large wooden box and weighed heavily, judging by the panting, flush-faced old man who carried it into the house and put it down in the dining room with a deep sigh.
‘I’ll need the second box too,’ said the priest. ‘It’s a big job.’
The priest looked around. As if seeing for the first time the crowd of spectators who’d gathered round him he said, ‘You must leave the house. All of you. Right away.’ He again made a fidgety gesture with his hands high in the air, as a child might shoo away worrisome hens.
‘What’s it all about?’ said Dicky.
I didn’t know. ‘What’s it all about, Uncle Nico?’ I asked.
It was Karol who answered. ‘Everyone must leave the house,’ he said. ‘There is a little cottage near the lake. I ordered that it should be swept and a fire lit to warm it. You will be comfortable there for as long as this takes.’
