‘Why do you suppose I’ll believe you?’
She took a folder full of papers from her bag, some of which were so curled and yellowed that they must have got very wet once upon a time. ‘Read these, then decide whether you should take another look at the Polakowski file.’ She pressed the folder into his hand. He felt a little ambushed. He had underestimated her. ‘Inspector, you have to promise me something,’ she said. ‘Don’t show this folder to anyone. Don’t tell anyone where you got it. No one, do you hear, not even Karl Rammoser…’
‘I don’t know if…’
‘Look after it.’ She gave him a pleading look. ‘This is… something very private. It isn’t easy for me to part with, but you have to make sacrifices for the truth. Take the time and read it, I beg you.’
He looked at the closely written papers. ‘What is this?’
‘That,’ Maria Cofalka said, ‘is the truth about Anna von Mathée’s death.’
58
The truth about Anna von Mathée’s death wasn’t easy to read, scrawled as it was in tiny letters, and with the ink smudged in various places or grown faded.
Rath began leafing through the papers immediately, taking up position on a bench by the shore and doing his best to decipher a few lines, but it was mostly guesswork. The only thing he could discern with any conviction was the signature that concluded each text, even if the word itself made little sense. Tokala, he read, and, after comparing a few times, he felt certain he was right, since the word appeared over and over again in the documents. Someone was writing about themselves in the third person…
Tokala will never live among humans again, ran one of the opening lines. The letters, if indeed that’s what they were, had no date, no salutation, no sender, just a signature that was always the same.
There was no point carrying on; he’d need a magnifying glass to get anywhere with these. He snapped the folder shut and strolled along the shore towards town, passing the district office and reaching the Catholic cemetery. Noticeably smaller than its Protestant counterpart, it was nevertheless better situated, behind the modest Catholic church by the lake. He didn’t take long to find Jakub Polakowski’s grave. Plain, with a wrought-iron cross, there were no flowers, nor anything to suggest it was looked after.
Why had the man been buried in Treuburg, when he had no relatives or friends here to tend to his grave? Why hadn’t they laid him to rest in the prison cemetery at Wartenburg? Jakub Polakowski was only thirty-five when he died, scarcely older than Rath now. A generation betrayed. He’d probably fought in the war, and, barely two years later, they’d thrown him in jail for a murder he hadn’t committed. If, that is, what Maria Cofalka had said was right.
Jakub Polakowski didn’t kill Anna von Mathée, he was just a convenient scapegoat.
Rath returned to the marketplace, but the stationer was closed, the bookstore likewise. Almost all shops had ceased trading; only the Treuburger Zeitung remained open.
‘A magnifying glass?’ a secretary said from behind the counter. ‘There should be one in the editorial office. I don’t know if I can lend it out, though. Herr Ziegler will be here any moment. His article on the plebiscite anniversary is due in tomorrow’s edition.’
Rath showed his identification. ‘Would it be possible for me to use the magnifying glass here?’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
She smiled and disappeared towards the back. Rath looked around. On a table by the wall was a pile of old newspapers from 1920. Evidently the editor, Ziegler, would be making use of the archive for his latest report. He leafed curiously through the pages, tickled by the Polish Agitation Bureau, which was having difficulty recruiting a female copyist; even the 500 Mk. monthly salary had failed to find any takers.
The hateful atmosphere so prevalent in those days could be inferred from an editorial. We must sow hatred, Rath read, in the same way that we have learned to hate Germany’s external enemies, so must we now punish its internal enemies with our hatred and scorn. Mediation is impossible; it is only through extremes that Germany can recapture what it was before the war.
This chauvinistic crowing had its roots in the Empire, and was still fashionable in the Republic, at least in German National and Nazi circles. He had heard it again during the speeches this morning; the same crowing that had cost one brother his life and driven the other from his homeland.
The secretary returned holding an enormous magnifying glass.
‘That should do it. Many thanks,’ Rath said, sitting at the visitor’s table with Cofalka’s folder. Even now the task was no easier. First he had to get used to the handwriting. Soon, however, he was on his way.
No, Tokala will never live among humans again. Living among humans would signal death, just as it signalled death for his mother. The truth must speak without him. And it will, for Winchinchala will reveal it as she sees fit. She knows the world of humans and how to move within it, Tokala does not.
Winchinchala must understand him. He cannot go back, never again. They will imprison him, no matter what he says, and being imprisoned is worse, even, than death. Tokala has no other choice but to carry on with his life, alone in his solitude and in his guilt.
What happened at the little lake cannot be undone. Niyaha Luta, the woman with the red feathers in her dress, is dead, and nothing can bring her back to life. Tokala fled and returned too late; he will never forgive himself for that. If he knew how he could put things right, he would.
He will never forget how she lay in the shallow water. The wicked man is gone, she is alone again, only her body remains, rocking gently with the waves, eyes looking up at the blue sky, seeing nothing now. Her dress is torn to shreds, between her legs streaks of blood ripple in the water.
Tokala hears the clatter of a bicycle up in the forest, and crawls back inside his hiding place; he sees a man approach the shore, the same man Niyaha Luta had been expecting – when the wicked man came. He looks as if he has been fighting.
And then he spies her in the water. He kneels as he reaches her; her corpse. It is as if someone has sapped the life from his knees. He lifts her head out of the water, gently, as if afraid he might hurt her.
Tokala stays hidden, he doesn’t dare breathe.
The man takes her head in his lap and strokes it, kneeling in the water as he silently mourns her death. His face has turned to stone.
A bell rang as the door opened behind him. Rath looked up. Gustav Wengler entered with one of the men from the dignitaries’ table, a fat, moustachioed type suffering from shortness of breath. Wengler spoke animatedly, apparently no longer grieving for his dead brother. When he saw Rath, he blinked in surprise.
‘Inspector,’ he said, before the fat man could get a word out. ‘What are you doing here?’
Rath shoved the papers back inside the folder. ‘I lent the inspector here a magnifying glass,’ the secretary said.