The Minotaur's Head: An Eberhard Mock Investigation (Eberhard Mock Investigation 4) Page 6

  “Well, go on, Gum.” Popielski pushed away the plate with the half-eaten cutlet. “Tell me everything, one thing at a time.”

  “I’ll describe everything as if I was in a confessional.” Gum looked at Walerku and Alfonek who nodded. “It was Thursday. We’d knocked them back that day and then evening came, what a hangover! And a hangover wants more of the same, eh? Hair of the dog.” He laughed, echoed by his friends. “Right, so we’re off to Wacki in Zamrstynowsk. There’s these three circus strongmen, you know, from the one that’s come for Christmas, and two chicks, sorry, two young ladies with them. All dolled up, like. And there’s this giggling, squealing and screaming behind the screen … Well, Alfonek, am I right?”

  “The strongmen really had the chick thrilled,” muttered Alfonek.

  “One of those young ladies,” said Gum slowly, “right there at the table and not behind the screen, was the commissioner’s own daughter, like.”

  Silence fell. The crooks stared at Popielski, smiling. It seemed to him as if everyone around was raising a glass to drink the health of the degenerate seventeen-year-old Rita Popielska. He poured himself a third glass, emptying the bottle, and sipped at it. He wanted the vodka to burn him; he wanted the raw taste scratching his throat to act as a substitute for the punishment he deserved for all the sins he had committed as a father. He lit another cigarette even though the previous one had only half burned down. The tobacco was as sour as vinegar. And at that moment Popielski picked up the stench of excrement. He pushed himself away from the table, held up a candle and studied the sole of his shoe. A stinking clod was lodged behind the heel, where he had not wiped the sole properly. Shit. He carefully set down the half-empty glass, wiped the wet rings on the surface of the table with a napkin, and then lunged across the table.

  He heard a faint crack and saw blood spurting from the nose and onto the plate with what was left of his meat. Alfonek and Walerku leaped away and reached for their pockets. Popielski did not even glance at them. He grabbed Gum by the hair, pressed the man’s face to the table and pushed against his head with his entire weight. If the crook’s nose was not damaged before, it most certainly was now. Felek did not utter a peep but lay silently on the table with blood slowly pouring around his face. He felt the commissioner’s alcoholic breath in his ear.

  “And now take back what you said,” hissed Popielski. “Say it’s not true. That my daughter wasn’t there with those circus types. Say it in a complete sentence.”

  Despite his violent reaction, the commissioner’s thoughts were now clear. He knew what would follow. He knew he would not hear anything from Felek because there was one thing he had not taken into account. Gum, a strong-willed rogue, would never withdraw what he had just said in front of his pals. Popielski could mould Gum’s death mask in the table-top, yet he would not hear a retraction of the words he had spoken. It was a question of honour. On the other hand, he himself could not now leave, or he would lose whatever respect these men had for him. This, too, was a question of honour.

  He grasped Felek by the collar and dragged him to the exit. The latter offered no resistance as they climbed the stairs. Popielski held him well away, so as not to soil his suit with blood. Eyes filled with hatred followed him out, but this did not surprise him. These thugs had all been humiliated by him today because they could not help their pal, who had been brutally attacked by the untouchable Hairless.

  Once in the yard, Popielski grabbed Felek by the throat and pressed him against the tavern wall.

  “You got drunk out of your mind on Thursday, did you?” He purposely used precise Polish grammar which the rogues disdained.

  “Uh-huh,” agreed Gum and sniffed.

  “So much so that you slept through the entire day and did not wake up until late at night, right?”

  “No,” croaked the rogue. “’Wasn’t night, it was evening.”

  “It was dark, was it not?”

  “It was.”

  “So it could have been night? You do not have a watch and you see it is dark. So it could have been night, could it not?”

  “It could.”

  “So it was night.” Popielski’s resonant voice carried in the well of the yard. “It was night and my daughter is always at home at night! At home!” he yelled to a woman who leaned out from a built-in balcony. He turned to Felek who was wiping his nose on the sleeve of his jacket. “Go back to the tavern and bring me my coat and hat.”

  When had Felek disappeared, Popielski walked over to a sack lying in the porch. Wiping his heel, he thought about the consequences of the day’s events. Firstly, he was sure the crook had lied to him in order to harass him in front of everybody. Secondly, he realized that by leading Felek out he had sown a seed of doubt among the rogues. They were going to start wondering: did that chancer Felek crack out there in the yard or not? Did he bark back or not? A rift, a crack was going to appear between them, and they particularly despised representatives of the law who infringed upon the eternal solidarity of rogues.

  Gum emerged and handed Popielski his coat and upturned bowler. The commissioner peered into the hat to check whether anyone had spat into this exquisite product of the Skoczów hatmakers. There was no spittle, but a pig’s ear pierced with a nail. It represented a stool pigeon, but also a cop. And the meaning of the nail was unequivocal.

  “Tell everyone, Felek” – he brought his face close to the swollen nose – “that I’m not frightened, but thank you for the warning. And that next time I’m going to bring a can of petrol. And burn you all out.” He sniffed. “You stink. Wash more often, you slob, don’t be a beast! You sleep in a pigsty or what?”

  Suddenly he felt a pain in his chest and a spasm in his diaphragm, but this was not a heart attack. It was the thought of Rita sitting amongst circus strongmen, bandits and whores. “Smoking? Drinking? Did she step behind the screen? Did the stench emanating from Gum ever reach her delicate nostrils? Impossible,” he thought, “after all, the thief had denied it all!” He told himself that he woke up at night and Rita had not as yet – thank the Lord! – spent a single night away from home!

  He heaved a sigh of relief, donned his hat and coat and made his way across the small, dark yard followed by Gum’s gaze. He even nodded as he left. He had understood the crooks’ message. It was, in the end, a matter of honour.

  LWÓW, THAT SAME MONDAY, JANUARY 11TH, 1937 TEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT

  Rita Popielska, already dressed in her pyjamas and dressing gown, was sitting at her desk in her room. The bright light coming from beneath a green lampshade fell on scattered text and exercise books. It illuminated a schoolbook of Polish–Latin exercises, a small exercise book full of handwritten Latin vocabulary and a school selection of Cicero’s speeches, including explanatory footnotes. Nearby lay a trigonometry textbook, a compass and a set square. The lamp also illuminated an open drawer in which lay two pages covered in a girl’s rounded script and giving off a faint scent of perfume. It was a letter from her friend, Jadzia Wajchendler. Rita’s entire attention was focussed on this letter, which she was reading for the hundredth time that day. With every reading her anxiety grew.

  … I am certain, dear Rita, that when we were leaving that horrible place in Zamarstynów on Thursday we were seen by an acquaintance of my father’s, a man called Szkowron who works in sanitation and often orders hats from us. He was riding in a droschka; I think he was a bit drunk, but he did see us. I’m scared he’s going to tell my father everything. You absolutely must talk to Miss Deskur and beg her (and even bribe her with something, brrr … how awful!) to swear to your papa that you were having lessons with her on Thursday! I’ve already got an alibi. Should the need arise, Beanpole is going to back me up by saying that I was helping her with her French. She got a whole tin of Zalewski cakes from me in return. She has to eat them on the quiet because what’s she supposed to tell her mama? Where would a poor thing like Beanpole get the money to buy cakes at Zalewski’s? If only we could trust your Hanna, then everything’s goin
g to end well. Admit it was worth it, my dear Rita! We hadn’t seen a world and people like that before! A real thrill of the unknown!

  Rita reflected once more on the danger posed by their servant, Hanna Półtoranos. “No,” she shook her head, “that decent woman’s not going to give us away! She loves me too much and she’s known me since I was little! How many times have I entrusted her with secrets! No, she’s not going to tell Papa that I went to the circus – and not wearing school uniform at that! And Auntie? But she wasn’t here. She went to play bridge at Assistant Judge Stańczyk’s. And at the circus? Oh, well … Maybe somebody did see us, but we’d already had time to paint our lips and put on so much make-up that the old cow in the front row spat at the sight of us, thinking we were harlots! Nobody would have guessed that the two young made-up women were schoolgirls from Queen Jadwiga’s, that’s for sure! Everything would all be alright if it weren’t for that cursed sanitation worker! But maybe he was drunk and can’t remember anything?”

  She shuddered as the sound of a key grating in the lock reached her from the hallway. Quickly, she pulled herself towards the desk and closed the drawer. Of course, it must be gone ten and Papa was back.

  Familiar voices resounded in the hallway: Auntie joyfully greeting her father. Such joy it made you sick! Always the same! “Edward! One can set one’s clocks by your habits! Hanna’s already asleep but she’s left you a roast as a snack. Do you want some tea? It’s hot and waiting. Or maybe I should heat the roast up for you?” And more bantering between her father and auntie; he feigned anger at the Russian custom of setting up the samovar, she – laughing and pleased – criticizing her father’s “Austrian twaddle”. Now he would go and put on his smoking jacket, remove his bowtie, come to his daughter’s room, kiss her on the head and ask about her day at school and she would reply the same as always: “Everything’s fine, Papa!” Then her father, reassured at having fulfilled a father’s duty, at having devoted an entire minute of his busy day to her, would sit down with Aunt Lodzia in the parlour and start talking in German so that she, Rita, would not understand what they were talking about. No doubt he would tell her about some terrible things that had happened in the suburbs, unaware that his daughter also knew these mysterious and foreboding places!

  And they were sure to keep throwing in those cursed Latin sayings all the time!

  Rita’s conjectures proved only partially right. Her father did indeed banter a little with Aunt Lodzia, but only very briefly, and a moment later he was already in her room, wearing his smoking jacket. He did not, however, kiss her, nor did he ask what had happened at school that day.

  “Good evening, Rita,” he said and sat down in the other chair.

  “Good evening, Papa,” she replied, a little worried by his atypical behaviour.

  Her father looked at her strangely for a while, then started to examine various odds and ends in her room: photographs of film stars, the teddy bear she had found beneath the Christmas tree when she was three and had loved madly ever since, dried flowers hanging from the shelves of her escritoire, shells found on the beach in Wielka Wieś, and a chocolate box with pieces of paper on which were written quotations. His bald head reminded her of the head of the strongman who had so admired her a few days earlier. Her father’s ears, however, were not as deformed as those of the other man. She looked at his hand and its signet ring adorned with a cabbalistic symbol. He did not have such massive and dirty paws as the other man; her father’s hands were strong, cared for and tipped with convex nails. This observation warmed her heart. She stood up, approached her father and, without a word, kissed him on the brow. She was met by the odour of alcohol, eau de cologne and tobacco, and when she sat at her desk again, she saw that his face had changed.

  “I was at a meeting of the Polish Society of Philology today,” said her father quietly. “And I met Professor Sedlaczek there.”

  “Ah, Claudius the Blind!” Rita slapped her forehead. She always forgot the name of the Latin teacher who owed his nickname to his habit of taking off his glasses and staring at the giggling girls with the bulging eyes of someone who is short-sighted.

  “You’re going to get the lowest marks in Latin this term, and from a pretty undemanding teacher! How do you explain that?”

  “Don’t worry, Papa!” Rita bit on a pencil with her pretty little teeth. “I’m definitely going to improve next term. I simply loathe having to translate those stupid texts into Latin! I even prefer Cicero! Look, Papa, this idiotic letter from Bronisław to Stanisław, for example.”

  She got to her feet, picked up a book with one hand, raised the other like a Roman orator and began to recite:

  “‘Dear Stanisław!’” – she lifted her eyes to heaven – “‘We went to Italy with our beloved teacher. Oh, what raptures we experienced there!’ It’s so stupid it makes your teeth ache!”

  Rita broke off and laughed brightly. Popielski admitted to himself that the present-day texts in the book were pompous and pretentious. He looked at his daughter still posing as an orator. “She has her mother’s talent for acting,” he thought. “She ought to be performing in the theatre rather than translating texts about Bronisław and Stanisław.” Professor Sedlaczek had complained that Rita aped him when he wrote Latin sentences on the blackboard, and that he had had to punish her accordingly by testing her on the consecutio temporum. Her shameful ignorance of consecutive tenses immediately became evident and, as a result, he had been obliged to give her the lowest marks, which had proved decisive in her end-of-term assessment. Popielski could imagine Sedlaczek tapping at the dictum “Errare humanum est” on the blackboard with his nicotine-stained yellow finger, and in his squawking, slightly stumbling voice exploring the maxim while adding appropriate exempla from Ancient Rome. All of a sudden he remembered the great enthusiasm Rita had shown when he himself had started to teach her Latin after lunch on Sunday afternoons. He could still picture her underscoring dictums in her exercise book. How pleased she had been when, in return for her conjugating correctly, her father had given her some ginger biscuits! But later he had neglected it; he had preferred to read newspapers rather than devote time to his daughter. Sometimes he had been treating a hangover with a beer. It was all his fault, all of it!

  He clenched his teeth and approached Rita to kiss her on the head. He picked up the same scent of her dark hair as he had many years earlier when – or so it seemed to him – he had rewarded her with a kiss as she ran through the declensions and bantered with him at the table: “Primum philosophari, deinde edere.” He clenched his teeth even harder and as he left his daughter’s room, he heard her say: “Good night, Papa!”

  LWÓW, THAT SAME MONDAY, JANUARY 11TH, 1937 HALF PAST TEN AT NIGHT

  Leokadia Tchorznicka interrupted her game of patience while Edward finished telling her about his meeting with the bully boys from Łyczaków. She had listened to him carefully and understood everything, even though she disliked German and much preferred French. Edward’s German was so rich and refined that she generally took great pleasure in listening to it, but now the pleasure had been considerably spoiled and tainted with bitterness by the contents of his account. Her game of “galley-slave” patience had not worked out for Leokadia, as usual, so she set aside the cards and looked at her cousin.

  “Listen, Edward,” she said, taking care to find the appropriate German words. “You don’t know girls and you’ve never been a seventeen-year-old girl yourself. But I have. And I was just as curious about the world as Rita is. Let me tell you a story. It happened in Stanisławów. At the time, I was a year younger than Rita is now. I remember secretly slipping out at night in order to watch hussars drinking wine through the window of the Mikulik Restaurant on Ormiańska. They had looked so beautiful parading down Sapieżyńska in the day! One of them stepped out into the yard to take a leak.” Leokadia used this crude description, which sounded vulgar coming from a lady’s lips. “He saw me at the window and invited me to his table, offering me cakes and dancing. And I agr
eed, even though it was almost two o’clock in the morning and the hussars were drunk and very much aroused. And do you know why I agreed?” Leokadia slowly gathered the cards. “Because I really did think – and I must emphasize this – that I’d only be eating cakes and dancing. I believed it, forgetting that there weren’t any cakes at Mikulik’s at that time of night. I fancied that hussar so much I believed in those cakes of his!”

  “And what happened?” Edward asked, a little concerned.

  “I didn’t eat any cakes, of course.” Leokadia smiled. “Nor did I dance. And if it weren’t for Mikulik and his son I would have left there a dishonoured woman. I never believed any man after that and maybe that’s why … I’m alone today. Well, I apologize, I’m with you – Rita, yourself, Hanna … Don’t worry,” she said in a reassuring voice after a moment, lost in thought. “When I returned from my game of bridge at Assistant Judge Stańczyk’s, Rita was already home. There were traces of lipstick on her face but I thought she’d only been playing with make-up. I told her to wipe it off, said you’d be angry if you saw it. She did and we talked for a long time. She was especially friendly towards me which, as you know, does not happen all that often. She was laughing and larking about. That’s not the way a seventeen-year-old girl from a good home behaves when she’s just got out of a stinking rascal’s miserable bunk – excuse my language.”