The Devil's Harmony, page 25
Carefully and clearly, at the top of each score, he wrote The ‘Demon’s aria’. Anton Rubinstein. Beneath this, he wrote ‘Ne plach’ ditya moya’.
Now the ‘Dark Cadence’ could hide behind the sad, beautiful lament that his lost Romanov girl had sung on the way to her own death.
He picked up the original, and with the feeling that he was completing a ritual he deliberately consigned it to the fire.
TWENTY-FIVE
Warsaw, mid-1940s
Tanwen felt strange to be in Warsaw again. She could not entirely believe she had even managed to get here at all, but somehow she had done it.
After finding the documents in the old suitcase, she had watched her father closely. For a long time there had not been even the tiniest wisp of a fact that might weave into actual proof, and even if she had found any wisps, Tanwen admitted to herself that she was not sure what she would do with them.
And then one day, her father announced, casually, that he had to go to Warsaw.
‘A nuisance, and a difficult journey,’ he said. ‘But I still have a seat on several boards, and there’s a meeting – sadly to dissolve most of the boards. Documents will have to be signed, and resolutions passed.’ He gave her the indulgent smile that she had known since childhood, and that she now believed to be as false as stairs of sand. ‘Not into the city itself,’ he said. ‘I’m not going into the turbulent heart of the war.’ He patted her hand, and Tanwen had to force herself not to snatch her own hand away, because every time he touched her, grotesque images flooded her mind. Images of her father with Irina – the two of them grunting and heaving in a bed in the house she had lived in herself … ‘There are dubious rumours about G’s bedroom tastes,’ Bruno had written to Irina. ‘I hope you can cope.’
Her father left the following day, and Tanwen at once put her own plan into action. She said to her mother that she had had a letter from one of her old Academy friends – there was a concert in the friend’s little town, and they would like Tanwen to be part of it. To help with the organization and also to perform, of course. She could stay with the friend for a week or two. No, it was not a dangerous journey, it would all be perfectly easy and safe. Her mother was completely unsuspicious; Tanwen was not surprised that her father had deceived her so easily and for so long.
And now, at last, she was in Irina’s house again, and her rooms at the top of the house were available. ‘Empty for many months,’ Irina had said. ‘No one wants to live in Warsaw now.’
Tanwen did not allow time for Irina to ask why she herself wanted to live in Warsaw again. She looked at Irina from the corners of her eyes as if bashful, and embarked on the lies she had worked out. There was a man, she said, here in Warsaw. But there was a wife in the picture, so it all had to be utterly secret. But she had come to be with him – you snatched at whatever fragments of happiness you could in these times, didn’t you? She hoped Irina would understand.
Irina seemed to understand, and Tanwen was relieved, although she had thought it all sounded perfectly plausible. Irina gave Tanwen a key to the front door, warned her about the patrols, and that was all. This was all very good, and everything was going as Tanwen had planned.
What she had not expected was that Helena would still be in the house.
Helena.
Tanwen could not believe that anyone could look at the small lively Helena and not see that she was an exact print of Yan. It was all there – the dark eyes, the slanting cheekbones, the impression of light and life and intelligence. And music, she thought, and saw, as she had seen after Helena was born, the instant, instinctive response to music of any kind.
She had been determined not to show any emotion when she and Yan met again, but several days later, accompanying Irina and Helena to the small restaurant near the Street of Music, she felt something constrict around her heart when Helena ran straight to him. Watching her clamber delightedly on to Yan’s knee, and pick out notes on an old piano with him, she wanted to shout to him to recognize Helena for who and what she was. Later, Helena sat with a small group of children who had remained in the city, and listened when Yan read to them from a book of old fairy stories. Tanwen, still watching covertly, thought he had some sort of magic with children – it was as if he knew and understood how their minds and their imaginations worked. This was surprising, because it was not a quality she would have thought he would possess.
She was careful not to let anyone become aware of these thoughts, of course, although Bruno looked at her questioningly a few times, and even Alicja emerged from one of her gloomy moods to study Tanwen thoughtfully. But that was all.
She had a very simple plan. Those letters had suggested that Georg – it was increasingly difficult to think of him as ‘Father’ – was suspicious of the Chopin Library. If he was here to unmask some kind of Resistance group based inside it, then that was where he would go. He might do so openly, walking nonchalantly across the square in broad daylight, but it was more likely that he would go stealthily, by night. He would reason that it would be night when plotters would gather. So Tanwen had only to slip out of the house each evening – letting Irina assume she was off to see her mythical lover – and conceal herself in one of the dark corners of the square. And wait.
It was curious to find that rather than this nightly vigil being tedious, which Tanwen had expected, it was exciting. There was a feeling of purpose and importance each time she stole through the unlit streets, wrapped in a concealing cloak (it was black, which was not really her colour, but it was all she had been able to find). And later, when the war was over – as one day it would be – she might even be hailed as a heroine. She would be the woman who had patriotically given evidence against her own father. ‘I did it for my country,’ she would say.
It was not, however, until the third week of her stay in Warsaw that Georg finally appeared. It was a dismal night, with a thin misty rain falling, and, as a nearby church clock chimed nine o’clock, Tanwen heard footsteps come along one of the narrow streets that led into the square. Her heart bumped. It was not unknown for a solitary person to be abroad out here at such an hour, but it was unusual, because people tended to be indoors by this hour. She pressed back into the shadows.
Into the square came the well-known figure, wearing the familiar long dark overcoat, the collar turned up so that it hid most of the face. Tanwen felt a spiral of triumph. She had been right. He was going into the Library to catch the Resistance group, and Tanwen herself was going in to catch him. She was not sure what she was actually going to do with him, but if the Resistance group was in there, they would know.
He paused, glanced about him, then crossed the square and went around the side of the building. How would he get in? Then Tanwen heard the faint sound of glass breaking. She gave it a couple of moments, then went towards the Library.
She saw the broken window at once. It was near the back of the Library, and it was narrow, but her father had been able to climb through, and Tanwen could do so, as well. Once inside, the remembered scents of the Library closed around her, and she stood very still, listening. Soft footsteps were going towards the back of the house, and then came the sound of a door being opened. The kitchens below ground? It must be. No secret group would carry out their work up here, in these public rooms with their tall windows through which anyone could peer.
She went across the floor, and down the flight of stone steps that led to the scullery. She had never been down here before, but she knew the way, because on the night of the concert these doors had been propped wide, so that the famous tradition of lighting the Iced Polonaise could be followed. Her footsteps echoed in the emptiness, and Tanwen tried to move more stealthily. The steps went quite a long way down, and they were steep, so that it was necessary to put a hand out to the wall once or twice. But she reached the bottom, and there was the scullery. It was unexpectedly large, and it was shadowy and dim. But there was no one here, and Tanwen felt suddenly unsure. There did not seem to be anyone down here, and everywhere was in darkness—
Everywhere was not in darkness. On the other side of the room, a section of timber had been moved out, and propped against the wall, and a dull, smeary light spilled out from the opening. She went towards it, her heart bumping with nerves, but also with a stir of excitement. The opening was easily wide enough to step through, and beyond it she could see stone steps, going down, and tarnished old wall sconces, cobwebs dripping from them. She hesitated, and then heard a murmur of voices from below.
Taking a deep breath, she went cautiously down the wide stairs. The light from below was obviously from candles or maybe oil lamps, because it was flickering wildly, causing shadows to form on the stair wall. It was absurd to think that the shadows watched her, and that at any moment one of them would reach out and snatch her up.
She heard her father’s voice say, ‘We’ve never been introduced. But I know you’re Bruno Sicora, and you’ll certainly know who I am.’
‘Georg Malek,’ said Bruno. ‘I know you.’
‘I’ve been watching you and this house for a while. You’re sending messages to the Resistance movement from here. I think my friends and contacts in the Third Reich will be very interested indeed to hear about that.’
‘Malek, this isn’t what it looks like,’ Bruno said, and Georg laughed.
‘It’s exactly what it looks like. Now, you’ll stay here – and if you try to jump me, I’ll use this revolver. Be sure of that.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘I’m going back upstairs – I’ll have you covered all the time, of course – and I’ll replace that panel of timber, and put a barricade across it. Then I’ll bring in one of the patrols. How will you – and your sly colleagues – like being marched out to face a firing squad?’
Bruno said, ‘I don’t think it’ll come to that, Malek.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ he said, and there was the sound of a chair being pushed back. With that sound, Tanwen went down the remaining stairs and hurled herself at her father’s figure, knocking him to the ground.
The gun went off, deafeningly loud in the underground room, but the bullet went wide, burying itself in the stone wall. Bruno had bounded forward, and grabbed Georg’s arms, twisting them behind his back.
‘Something to tie them,’ he said. ‘Quickly. And what on earth are you doing here?’
Tanwen snatched off the belt of her frock, and Bruno bound her father’s wrists tightly behind his back. ‘I was watching him,’ she said. ‘I found out ages ago what he is. I wanted to catch him.’
‘You nearly gave me a heart attack erupting down the stairs like that,’ said Bruno. ‘How did you get in?’
‘He—’ Tanwen pointed, ‘he had broken a window and climbed through. I followed him. The window by the little side door.’
‘The boarding was always a bit chancy on that side window,’ said Bruno. He tightened the belt around Malek’s wrists. ‘That should hold all right,’ he said. ‘And I can use the belt from my trousers for his ankles. That’ll be good enough for the moment.’
A stream of curses was coming from Georg as Bruno bound his feet. Tanwen flinched at the vicious spite and hatred in his tone, but Bruno said, ‘Curse all you like. You’re the one who’ll be facing death. A spy against your own people – against Poland – my God, you’ll suffer for that.’
Tanwen said, ‘Do we leave him here and …’ She stopped, because finally she was forced to face the practicalities of who they should go to about this. The Nazis ruled here – they ruled all across Poland – and they would certainly inflict their own punishment on the Polish spy – Bruno – who had unmasked one of their men. And on Tanwen herself, as well.
When at last they both straightened up and looked at one another, she saw these thoughts mirrored in Bruno’s expression.
He said, ‘I think this is one we’ll have to deal with ourselves, Tanwen. How far can I trust you? Because he’s your father, so—’
‘You can trust me to the ultimate,’ said Tanwen. ‘Whatever we do, I’ll never speak of it, not for the rest of my life, or yours.’
‘That could be an easy promise to keep, because our lives might not be very long,’ said Bruno. ‘If we don’t handle this right, we could still end up facing that firing squad and it could be very soon.’ He looked down at the man lying bound on the floor. ‘An honest-to-goodness German spy, I might have almost accepted,’ he said. ‘Because, damn it all, I’m spying. But this—’
‘This is spying against his own people,’ said Tanwen.
‘Yes. And that,’ said Bruno in a soft voice that whispered eerily around the room, ‘is why I think he had better die.’
The silence closed down, and they looked at one another. ‘Now?’ whispered Tanwen at last. ‘Here?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
Bruno said, ‘The means are to hand.’ He reached down to pick up the revolver, but Tanwen put out her hand to stop him.
‘No – wait. What about … afterwards? Where do we put him? Because he can’t be found, can he? Not in here, anyway – it would point back to you. To the people you’re working with.’ It might point back to Yan, said her mind. Helena’s father. Even to Helena herself.
‘We can’t carry him through the streets,’ said Bruno, frowning. ‘We’d be seen by the patrols. We probably wouldn’t even get him across the square. Only I can’t think …’ He broke off, looking about him, then he said, ‘D’you remember Anatol talking about an old ice room? And how Yan said there would be bound to be one in a house of this size?’
‘Yes. But where would it be?’ Tanwen felt as if she had stepped into a nightmare, and this no longer felt real. She did not look at the figure on the ground, because she did not dare to look at it. She was overwhelmingly grateful for Bruno’s presence – somehow he was no longer the flippant person he had been when she first came to Warsaw; he was sharp and purposeful.
As he reached for one of the oil lamps, Tanwen saw for the first time that there was what must be a wireless transmitter on the table, and a notepad. Bruno saw the look.
‘Yes, there really is a Resistance network in this place,’ he said. ‘Very small, but we’re doing what we can. Tonight I was sending messages to tell others in the group about a meeting at Anatol’s at the end of this week.’ He looked across at the figure lying bound in the corner, and said, ‘You see, Malek, you were right.’
‘I knew it.’
‘Would there be a door going into an ice room,’ said Tanwen, as Bruno moved the lamp across the walls, then lowered it to the floor.
‘If there is, I should think it’s more likely to be off this room – maybe below this floor,’ said Bruno, kneeling down, and running his hands slowly across the stone floor. ‘In fact … Ah, what’s this?’
Tanwen had seen it at the same time. A section of the stone floor in a corner – a large square of the stones that was slightly out of true with the rest.
‘A trapdoor?’ she said.
‘It could be. Take the lamp and hold it up. And,’ said Bruno, looking back over his shoulder, ‘keep an eye on that one, as well.’
‘He’s still tied up,’ she said, casting a quick look over her shoulder.
As she said this, there was a hard scraping sound as Bruno prised up the square of stone. It came up unwillingly and it showered dust and debris as it did so. Cold, dry breath came out at them, and Tanwen flinched.
‘It’s not an ice room,’ said Bruno, peering down. ‘It’s more of an ice pit. My God, it’s cold down there. Tilt the lamp, will you?’
The lamplight showed up a cellar-like structure – Tanwen thought it was about nine or ten feet across. There were several deep shelves, and a rickety-looking ladder that extended from beneath the slab.
‘And there seems to be an extra layer of stone on the underside of the lid,’ said Bruno, still investigating. ‘That would seal the place up quite effectively – in fact it has done. There are still slivers of ice on some of the shelves.’ He straightened up. ‘As graves go, Georg,’ he said, ‘you could do a lot worse.’
‘You’re going to put me in there?’ For the first time Tanwen heard a note of fear.
‘We can’t risk letting you live,’ said Bruno. ‘You’ll go running to your masters in Berlin and you’ll blow our cover, and we can’t let that happen.’
‘You won’t get away with it.’
‘I think we will.’
‘She won’t let you execute me.’ It came out with a kind of vicious satisfaction.
‘Tanwen?’ said Bruno, turning to her. ‘Will you let me shoot this creature?’
This creature. This man who had always been in her life. Who had encouraged her, helped her, been proud of her when she achieved something. Yes, but who had been prepared to sell out his own country and his own people to the oppressors – to those greedy, soulless men who were burning Jews wholesale and dragging innocent victims to dreadful concentration camps, and who were destroying cities and cultures. And who had manoeuvred his own daughter into this very building in order to inveigle its secrets from her.
Tanwen said, ‘Yes. Yes, I will let you shoot him.’ She looked very directly at the man she could no longer think of as her father. He returned her look levelly, and something disquieting stirred within her mind. He’s frightened, she thought – but there’s something else. Something that’s calculating and cunning. But what? Because he can’t possibly escape.
She turned back to Bruno. ‘Do it,’ she said, but as Bruno picked up the revolver that had skittered across the floor, she said, suddenly, ‘But not through the head.’ Not splintering the face and the eyes that once had watched her with love and pride …
‘No,’ said Bruno, as if understanding. ‘Not the brain, but the black evil heart of the traitor.’
