Free A Grain of Truth by Zygmunt Miloszewski Page B

but they cancelled it and I didn’t feel like going a second time. You know how it is, a single woman, long evenings, too much thinking. Thinking there might be something wrong with her, maybe she needs therapy. Stupid thoughts.”
    Szacki couldn’t believe his own ears. She was trying to pick him up. This sex bomb with legal training was trying to pick him up. He braced himself, the old habit of a married man. He braced himself at the thought of the flirting, the rendezvous, the lying, the text messages sent on the sly, the phone set to silent, and the office hours wasted on meeting up in town.
    And he realized the married man’s habit was just that – a habit, second nature, but only that. He was free, he was single, he had a flat with a view of the Vistula. He could make a date with a girl from the provinces and roger her standing up in the kitchen. Simple as that. Without any pangs of conscience, without any scheming, subterfuge, or pussyfooting about innocent friendship.
    He had to fly. But he made a date for the evening. Hellinger, of course, that was quite a case, he’d be happy to tell her about it.
    Except that he’d have to stand Klara up.
    II
    WITNESS INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT. Grzegorz Budnik, born 4th December 1950, resident at 27 Katedralna Street, Sandomierz, higher education in chemistry, chairman of the Sandomierz City Council. Relationship to parties: husband of Elżbieta Budnik (victim). No convictions for bearing false witness.
    Cautioned re criminal responsibility under Article 233 of the Penal Code, his statement is as follows :
    I met Elżbieta Szuszkiewicz in the winter of 1992, during the “Winter in the City” campaign, when she came here from Krakow to run drama workshops for children. I had never met her before, although she had spent her childhood in Sandomierz. In those days I used to coordinate all events held at the town hall. I couldn’t help noticing her because for some people that sort of campaign is drudgery, but she produced such a good show with the children at the end of the festival that they got a standing ovation – it was Stories for Children by Isaac Bashevis Singer. She was young, not yet thirty then, beautiful and full of energy. I fell head over heels in love, without any real hope – I was a provincial official, and she was a big-city girl who’d been to drama school. But two years later we got married in Sandomierz cathedral on the Sunday after Easter. Unfortunately we never had any children, though we very much wanted to. When it turned out we would have to go through all those medical procedures, we considered adoption, but finally we realized that we would continue to look after children through our social activities. I less so, in view of my duties on the council, but Ela devoted herself entirely to it. She taught at a school, but mainly she organized events, brought in artists and devised the most fantastic workshops. It was our common dream to set up a special place, an arts centre for children, where we could organize entire summer camps, like the American ones. But we kept putting it off, there was always some issue of the day to take care of. We were supposed to get it off the ground this year, to look for property and take out a loan.
    Our life together worked out well, there was only the occasional quarrel, we had a good social life, maybe a bit less these days – the winter is so long, and our place is at its best when you can sit in the garden.
    Szacki felt worn out. The short transcript was the result of a three-hour conversation. Budnik went off into digressions, or long silences, sometimes wept, and occasionally felt obliged to affirm how very much he loved his wife, and to tell an anecdote from their life together. At times he was so genuine that Szacki’s heart was bleeding. But only at times – besides that, the prosecutor’s nose for lies could smell something nasty. Budnik was definitely telling the truth about one thing – his feelings for his