Hope. Len Deighton

is not an old city, it only looks like one. In beauty it is eclipsed by its rival Cracow; its lop-sided high position on the west bank of the Vistula exposes it to the harsh east winds, and it has no backdrop of hills or mountains or attractive coastline. But for Poles, Warsaw has a significance that is not explained in either political or cultural terms but is inextricably linked to Polish nationalism. Perhaps the Germans knew this, for when the German army retreated from Warsaw they destroyed it in a way they did no other capital city. They razed it not by haphazard bombings or shellings but stone by stone, as an act of deliberate and vindictive devastation. The steel street-car tracks, the drains and even the sewers were ripped from the cobbled streets like the guts from a plucked chicken.

      But with the same sort of determination, the Poles built it up again stone by stone. With the fastidious zeal that only hatred can feed, they scoured the museums and the archives to look at old paintings and drawings, and they copied the nineteenth-century plans of Corazzi. And using the skills of architects and historians, carpenters and artists and masons and labourers, and the contributions and good will of Polish men and women throughout the world, they built Warsaw again the way they remembered it.

      It was October when we arrived. Generals loyal to communism had appointed themselves to government, the nation was deeply in debt, virtually everything was in short supply, and Warsaw’s streets were grizzled by snow that, despite being unseasonably early, fell without respite. Dimly lit windows of shops on the Nowy Swiat were displaying a final few miserable heirlooms, and there were people huddled on every corner accosting any well-dressed passers-by and trying to swap their last treasures for anything edible or combustible.

      In the gloomy entrance hall of the Europejski Hotel there was less evidence of such deprivation. Crowding around the bar at the side of the lobby – their waist-belts straining, and faces flushed – black-marketeers were mingling in noisy accord with army officers and surviving elders of the Party faithful. Behind the bar at busy times like this there was the regular barman. He’d been there for years: a jovial retired member of the ZOMO, the widely feared anti-riot police. Stuffed behind the vodka bottles, and in plain view, he always kept a copy of Trybuna Ludu, Warsaw’s Communist Party daily paper; it was in effect a proclamation warning one and all of the political climate to be found there. But that didn’t preclude jokes, and this evening he was getting anticipatory grins while telling a long involved story about how scientists in the government laboratories were working hard to transform the nation’s vodka supplies back into potatoes. The same joke was being repeated everywhere, but outside in the streets it was received with laughter less hearty.

      It was late that evening, and the crowd at the bar were at their noisiest, as I pushed my way through the crowded lobby of the Europejski Hotel for a second time. Dicky was sitting on a leather sofa facing the reception counter. I had been back to the airport on a mission to find Dicky’s extra suitcase, which had lost its label and gone astray in the baggage room. As Dicky explained, it was better that I went because I could speak the language. Now it was almost midnight and I wiped the wet snow crystals from my face and polished them from my glasses with a handkerchief. One of the two solemn-faced young women behind the hotel desk reached behind her for my room key without looking to see where it was. It was the sort of practised gesture that made Western visitors to Poland uneasy. ‘Well?’ said Dicky.

      ‘I found your suitcase. But those bastards in customs took their time. It was all those fragile labels you stuck on it that had them worried. They probably thought you were smuggling bombs for Solidarity.’

      ‘They didn’t hold on to it?’

      ‘It’s here, and it’s gone up to your room.’ We both turned our heads to watch six tall girls in bright green tartan skirts and tam-o’-shanter hats walk across the lobby. They stopped at the door of the restaurant and blew softly into the bagpipes they carried before proceeding inside. After a moment of silence there was the sudden explosion of massed drums, soon joined by the skirl of the pipes. Then the sound of the music was muffled by the closing doors.

      ‘There’s only cold food,’ said Dicky. ‘I argued, but you know how they are; they stare at you blankly and pretend they don’t understand.’

      ‘What was all that about?’ I asked him.

      ‘It’s a girls’ pipe band from Chicago. All from Polish neighbourhoods. They’re here for three nights. They go to Cracow tomorrow. I was talking to one of them; a blonde eighteen-year-old drum majorette. She’s never been away from home before.’

      ‘I’d watch your step, Dicky,’ I advised. ‘Her father is likely to be a 200-pound butcher in a canning plant, and very protective.’

      ‘I’m going to bed,’ said Dicky, chewing a fingernail. ‘I’m getting a cheese sandwich from room service and hitting the sack. You’ll do the same if you’ve got any sense.’

      ‘I’ve got phone calls to make, but first I must have a drink at the bar.’

      ‘I’m bushed,’ said Dicky. ‘I thought you were never coming back. I would have gone to bed but my pyjamas are in that case.’ He thought about what I’d said. ‘Telephoning? Your contacts must be insomniacs. I’d leave it until the morning.’ He yawned.

      ‘Goodnight, Dicky.’ It was useless trying to explain to him that my sort of contacts are working people who get out of bed at five in the morning, and slave all day.

      I watched Dicky walking across the lobby to the main staircase. He cut a slim long-legged elegant figure in a way that I would never again become. One hand was in the pocket of his tight-fitting jeans, the other brought a chunky gold Rolex into view as he flicked his long bony fingers through his curly hair. He was studied with anthropological detachment by the two girls behind the reception desk. When his decorative cowboy boots had disappeared up the stairs, they looked at each other and sniggered.

      I crossed the lobby and edged my way through the noisy drinkers at the bar. Here was the essence of Poland in 1987, a nation commandeered by its army. I recognized the pale faces of an army captain I’d met in Berlin, and a pimply lieutenant who was an aide to a general in the Ministry of the Interior. The young officers, both dressed in mufti, watched the Party officials with superior and impartial amusement. As part of the settlement with the army, the Party had promised to reform Poland’s system of government while the most active Solidarity protesters were locked away. But socialist theoreticians are not noted for their zeal in self-reform, and debt-ridden Poland was sinking deeper and deeper into economic ruin. Rumours said the Russians would take control of the country within a week or so, and that the Polish army had already agreed to let them do it unopposed. But tonight the nation’s misery was temporarily forgotten as the revellers celebrated the end of capitalism that they proclaimed the West’s stock-market crash heralded.

      Among the celebrants there were university lecturers, a diplomat, some journalists, and assorted writers and film-makers. These were the intellectuals, the nomenklatura, the establishment. These were the people who knew how to read the signs that pointed to shifts of power. To them it was obvious that Lech Walesa, and his fellow workers in the Lenin shipyard, had failed in their bid for power. This was a time for the establishment to close its ranks, to find a modus vivendi with the nation’s military rulers; and with the Russians too if that was what Moscow demanded. Meanwhile they would indulge in long, jargon-loaded discussions with the Party’s reformers, watch the Polish generals for danger signals, and down another double-vodka before going back to their warm apartments.

      From the restaurant the girls’ pipe band started playing ‘My Wild Irish Rose’. The music was greeted with heady applause and shouts of appreciation from an audience fired by enthusiasm for things American, or Polish, or Irish. Or perhaps just overcome with vodka.

      I alternated mouthfuls of strong Tatra Pils with sips of Zubrowka bison-grass vodka. With both drinks in my hands I moved around, keeping my eyes and ears open. The UB men were here too. The ears of the Urzad Bezpieczenstwa were everywhere. I counted six of them but there were undoubtedly more. These security policemen were another sort of élite, their services needed by the Party and by the military rulers too. The UB thugs enjoyed their own private shops and housing and schools, and their own prisons into which