that a security company used part of the ‘citadel’ for training courses, and the officers had been selected for politically sensitive duties supervising municipal authorities. For Poland was a land governed by its soldiers.
I was punched and slapped a few times. Never by Reynolds. Never when Reynolds was present. It happened after he became exasperated by my smartass answers. He would puff at his cheroot, sigh and leave the office for ten minutes or so. One or other of the guards would give me a couple of blows as if on his own account. I never discovered if it was done on Reynolds’s orders, or even with his knowledge. Reynolds was not vicious. He was not a serious interrogator, which was probably why he’d been assigned to this military backwater. He wasn’t expecting me to reveal any secrets that would raise questions in Warsaw, or even raise eyebrows there. Reynolds was content to do his job. He asked me the same questions every day; changing the order and the syntax from time to time but not waiting too long for a reply. Usually the final part of the day’s session would consist of Reynolds telling me about his sister Hania and his lazy good-for-nothing brother-in-law, and the wholesale delicatessen business they owned in Detroit.
On Friday afternoon the wind dropped and the trees were unnaturally still. From under low grey cloud the sun’s long slanting rays hit the battlements. A sentry stepped forward and stood fully in the light to capture the meagre warmth. Watching him I noticed a flickering in the air. Tiny golden pin-pricks, like motes of dust caught in a cathedral interior. Snowflakes: the winter had returned. As if in celebration, from one of the rooms along the corridor Tauber burst into a scratchy tenor rendering of ‘Dein ist mein ganzes Herz’. He sounded terribly old.
By morning the snow was no longer made of gold. It had spread a white sheet across the land, and my bronze warrior was dusted with it. It didn’t stop. By Saturday evening the snow covered everything. I heard the grinding sounds of the trucks that brought sentries back from guard duty at the nearby radar station. They came in low gear, their engines growling and their wheels intermittently spinning on the treacherously smooth section of roadway that was the approach to the main gate. The snow had blown across my yard, to form deep drifts along the wall, and the bronze warrior was entombed in it. I opened the window and put my head out into the stinging cold. The world was unnaturally hushed with that silence that such snow always brings. Then I heard shouting and saw an agitated sentry aiming his gun at me. I pulled my head in and closed the window. Happy to see such a quick response he waved his gun and laughed so that his happiness condensed on the cold air.
On Wednesday night, after five days in custody, a soldier came for me in the middle of the night. I recognized him as one of the PT instructors. He was a wiry fellow with the inscrutable face that seems to go with gymnasts, as if prolonged exercise encourages the contemplative condition. He led me down the back stairs and through a part of the building I’d not seen before. We passed through the muggy kitchens and a succession of storerooms that had once been cellars. Finally he indicated that I should precede him.
As I bent my head under the low doorway, he hit me in the small of the back. He followed that with another punch that found the kidneys and sent a jolt of pain though my body from heel to head. It was like an electric shock and my mind blanked out as I contended with the intense pain. I fell like a tree.
It was dark, but there was another man in the darkness. He came from the shadows and caught me, giving me a couple of hard jabs in the belly that brought my supper up into my mouth. I tucked my head down and tried to cover myself from their blows but they weren’t deterred, nor inconvenienced. These two were experts. They worked on me systematically as if I was a side of beef being readied for the stewpot. After a few minutes one of them was taking my whole weight, holding me up to be punched. When he let go of me I crashed to the stone floor only half-conscious. I couldn’t think straight. Every part of my body was singing with pain. Under me I could feel coarse matting, and, reaching beyond its edge, smooth pavement. I moved enough to press my face against the cold stone. I vomited and tasted blood in my mouth.
The two men stood over me watching; I could see a glint of light, and their shoes. Then they went away, satisfied no doubt with the job they’d done. I heard their footsteps fade but I didn’t try to get up. I pressed my head against a bag of onions. At the bottom of the sack, rotten onions had fermented to become a foul-smelling liquid that oozed through the sacking. I blacked out and then came conscious several times. Despite the stench I remained there full-length for a long time before very very slowly rolling and snaking across the floor, slowly getting my back against the wall and inch by inch sitting up. No bones were broken; no bruises or permanent marks on my face. Theirs was not a spontaneous act of brutality or spite. They had been assigned to hurt me, but not permanently cripple me, and they’d done their job nicely. No hard feelings, chaps, it’s all in a day’s work for a soldier serving in a land ruled by generals. Lucky me that they hadn’t been told to tear me limb from limb, for I’m confident they would have done it with the same inscrutable proficiency. Having decided that, I lost consciousness again.
Someone must have carried me up to the room in the tower. I don’t remember anything of it but I certainly didn’t get there unassisted. But why, after a week of Mister Nice-guy, suddenly take me out of my bed and beat the daylights out of me without interrogation or promises? There was only one explanation and it slowly became clear to me. Some higher authority had ordered my release. This was Mr Reynolds’s tacit way of protesting that decision, and saying farewell to me.
Higher authority was satisfied, I suppose. The generals in Warsaw were not trying to provoke World War Three. They just wanted to show their opposite numbers in London that they didn’t like nosy strangers coming into their territory and doing the sort of things I’d done last Christmas at Rastenburg. They didn’t want me demonstrating short-take-off-and-landing aircraft after dark, and kidnapping useful Polish spies. They didn’t like me torching shiny new government-owned Volvo motor-cars which were in short supply in Poland in 1987. And they didn’t like the way I’d shot and wounded Polish security men who, having failed to stop me, had made sure that arrest-and-detain notices were posted throughout the land.
Well, that was my mistake; I should have killed the bastards.
Reynolds put me on the train the next night. He took me to the station in a car, talking all the time about his sister in America and pretending not to notice that his men had almost beaten the life out of me. It was the same Moscow-to-Paris express train, on the same day of the week. They even put me back into a compartment with the same number. My overcoat – which I’d not seen during my incarceration – was folded and stowed on the rack. Pointedly my passport was balanced on the small basket the railway provides for rubbish. Everything was the same, except that Jim and his nurse were not there.
The train compartment was warm. Outside it was snowing again. Wet dollops of it were sliding down the window glass. I slumped on the berth and stretched out. The pain of my beating had not abated and my clothes still had the sickening odour of putrid onions. My bruises and grazes were at that stage of development when the pain is at its most acute. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t even raise enough strength to get up and slide the door closed. From the compartment next door I heard the raised voices of a young American couple arguing with a soldier. They say it’s a political magazine,’ said the woman. She had a nice voice, with the sort of musical Boston accent that the Kennedy family made patrician.
‘I never saw it before,’ said the man. Then he repeated his denial loudly and in German.
There was a moment of silence, then the woman coughed and the man gave a short angry laugh.
I heard my door slide open. I half-opened my eyes and a Polish officer stepped inside to stare down at me. Then the sergeant joined him and the two of them moved on along the corridor. I suppose the American couple had picked up the local traditions without my assistance.
Some extra railway coaches were shunted and coupled to our train with a rattle and a jarring that shook me to the core.
