Nightmare in Poland by Richard Wake

Author:Richard Wake [Wake, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Manor and State, LLC
Published: 2025-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

PART III

22

Szczecin wasn’t that far on a map. The only reason the train took so long was because it was the mail train. Every dot on the map that had a post office — and that was all of them — paid a clerk to be waiting on what passed for a platform with a sack of envelopes to be passed down the line. There were two cars full of men who sorted what they took in as quickly as they could. The goal was to be done with the last sack by the time they reached the next stop — like, 10 or 15 minutes later. And so, after the first stop, the clerk on the platform handed over his sack and received a sack of sorted mail in return. In the morning, the whole thing happened in reverse.

One of the clerks told me about how it all worked when he was drinking a beer on his break. It was the only interruption I had in nine hours, the only time I wasn’t thinking about what I had just done.

Not the killing of Carney. Well, not exactly. I had shaken off the act itself after the first beer, the one I drank in the station in Swinoujscie. That wasn’t it. The actions weren’t haunting me. It was the decisions.

I hadn’t helped Father Pete.

I had killed Carney.

I was going to Krakow.

I was all the way back in.

The whole thing felt a bit out-of-body, but I knew better, deep down. Human being, human decisions. I wasn’t kidding myself — well, not completely. Grown man, free will, et cetera. So why did it feel like the bus was driving itself? Why did I feel like a passenger in my own life?

It was a long train ride, a train ride where we must have made 30 stops. I could have gotten off the train at any of them, gotten off and turned my ass around and headed back to Swinoujscie, and then the border, and then Ahlbeck, and then Karin and Lotte. Back to the bar at The Denkler. Back to something resembling a normal life — or, as close to a normal life as I had experienced since 1938. After a dozen years, more, of ducking into the shadows and listening for footsteps behind me and checking the reflections in plate glass storefronts, I had been living a different way — a humbler, simpler, saner way, except for the one-day trips across the border to Stella Maris. If I hadn’t found peace, at least I thought I might be able to see it over the next hill. And yet…

I hadn’t helped Father Pete.

I had killed Carney.

I was going to Krakow.

I was all the way back in.

I felt terrible about Father Pete, even though I knew it really wasn’t my fault. I felt fine about Carney, even though there was no urgent need for me to have bashed in his head with a rock. I was on the train now, first to Szczecin

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