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5
—Mr. Kocerka.
The interior of the former restaurant was dark, the wooden booths and dark-paneled walls absorbing what little morning light managed to come in through the wide front windows. The two men sat alone near the middle of the main room, talking quietly though there was no one to overhear them.
—Mr. Kocerka. You can help us end this. You can help us.
Not desperation in the voice, but something very close. Maybe it was a click past desperation, with an undercurrent that owed its existence to repeated, agonizing failures, small and large, failures that called into question the ability of a man to protect and preserve his family. Maybe that was the voice. Not desperation, but a grim and raging determination contorted by hopelessness. A dangerous combination.
—There is a right way. This is not the right way. These people, they. These people. You know them. I know them.
Yes, he thought, he knew them. And he could help. He certainly knew helping, remembered when his addiction to helping had really begun. He fled Bielsko with his best friend’s family after warning them of what he had seen, and hid with them for two days in the hills below the summit of Szyndzielnia. He still could not believe that the German soldiers had murdered the townspeople, whole families, because of their religion. Because of that. He later came to understand just how naïve he had been. He quickly grew tired of hiding. Of remembering the bodies. He knew the mountains, and could have stayed hidden, could have moved quickly away with his friend and his family, who had no choice but to escape with young children and grandparents. After two days he made his way back to the city, and spent another two days watching the soldiers carefully. Stalking, thinking. Remembering. At twilight in a narrow alley near Wgorze Street, not far from the crypt at St. Anne’s Chapel, he killed three officers wandering carelessly in search of Jewish hiding places. The third one died more slowly than the first two, but in the end he was more than happy to go. He left Bielsko for good the next morning, making his way through the forest toward the ancient settlement of Lobnitz. He had never returned.
—Yes, I know them. They are everywhere.
Jerzy looked past his visitor out to the street beyond the window. Paused.
—Why is it now you are coming to see me? Why after all this time?
There were two small glasses on the table between them. The younger man, dressed in a plain white shirt, work pants and boots, lifted his glass an inch from the tabletop and swirled the clear liquid. His hair was cut short to the scalp, his eyelids heavy over hard blue eyes.
—This is your question? The time?
He drained the glass.
—Maybe we are too late. Maybe we would have been too late no matter when we came. We choke on maybe. But now, I am here.
Set the glass down, carefully. This old man. What had he expected? Waited. Was rewarded.
Jerzy looked across the table, decided.
—How are they doing it?
So he told him. And, just as Jerzy would have guessed, the scheme was simple. Direct, brutal and efficient. No wonder it had been working for so long. As he listened, he was already searching for weaknesses, for the weakness that could be exploited and used to get inside and bring them down. He had no question that it could be found, that he could find it. But he was far from certain that anything could be done.
For days, he walked toward Lobnitz, shaking the whole time. He managed to lose his bearings more than once in hills and forests that he knew like the sunrise. He killed two more soldiers in a kind of furious trance.
They agreed to meet in three days. Jerzy left the restaurant to walk back to his house. He had a lot to think about.
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Losing the Bronze is Copyright ©2009 Nigel Hinshelwood
