They drank the wine down, put the glasses on the table.
Mariya turned and looked toward the window. “I should not do this.”
“What?” asked Janos.
“Even though Viktor is still here … I want to dance. He would want me to.”
And so, they danced.
At first Janos stood away from her as they danced. But as the music grew louder and tears came to her eyes, she held Janos tightly and he held her tightly. His arms were strong; his legs pressed against hers; his breath at her ear reminded her of Viktor, became her link to the world.
Janos lifted her chin, and when she opened her eyes she could see his smile through her tears.
“It is all right,” said Janos. “We can stop now. I’m sorry if—-”
“No … Don’t stop. Life is too short to stop. Viktor said this. Life is too short. Somehow he knew life would be short for him … He knew.”
When the tempo of the music increased, they continued holding one another and danced faster.
“This is the czardas!” said Janos.
“I remember my grandfather dancing it with me at a wedding!”
“How old were you?”
“Very small! He had to bend down!”
“Did you weep then, when you danced?”
“No. I was too young to know what life had planned for me.”
The music began to flow like a river, and they danced out of the small living room and bumped into the kitchen table. When the czardas ended, another slow song began. Mariya spoke softly, mimicking the music, thinking out loud. “I danced when I was a little girl, and I danced when I was a teenager. I danced for men, I married a man, and now I am dancing again. Perhaps I will never stop.”
But suddenly she did stop. She let go of his hands and stepped back, staring at him. “I have danced my way through life. My dancing is dangerous. I am dangerous. In one Kiev strip club I danced to Russian versions of American rock songs.” She continued staring at him. “One of them I especially remember was from The Rolling Stones. A techno Russian group had pirated the song. Although they did a terrible job, something in the words—the manager, who spoke English, said the Russian group messed up the translation—’Do not play with me, because I am fire.’“
The Gypsy music from the CD continued sadly and quietly. Janos moved closer to Mariya. “Warmth is not fire, Mariya.”
“But … I don’t want you … I am dangerous, Janos!”
Janos pulled her back into his arms. “And, likewise, I am dangerous.”
Mariya stared at him seriously but finally smiled, kissed him on the cheek, and rested her head on his shoulder. As the music kept to its melancholy journey, Mariya led, waltzing them slowly, very slowly, to her bedroom.
“You make me feel young,” said Janos. “If you wish, I will leave now.”
“It is too late,” said Mariya. “The fire has been ignited.”
They fell onto the bed, in the dark, side by side, Janos’ arm across her breasts. After a moment, Mariya stood and turned on the light. Janos looked up at her, sat up. The music from the living room sad, and Janos’ eyes sad, and she sad she had not met him twenty years earlier.
“My grandfather would have liked you,” she said as she unbuttoned her blouse. “Viktor would have liked you.”
When she had removed her blouse and hung it on the doorknob, she kept her back to Janos and said words she knew she had once said to Viktor. “It was always Russian techno in the clubs. The Mafia manager hated Russian techno, but it brought in young men who had trouble holding onto their money.”
“This music is much more sensual than techno,” said Janos. “Don’t you agree?”
“Yes.”
When Janos came to her, his breathing was so loud at her ear it became the music, the rhythm to which they danced.
Janos was a welcome feeling, a cleansing. For a long time, she breathed into him and he breathed into her. The ending was unclear. Then there was silence and sleep.
She awoke from a dream in which she rode her bicycle downhill through a forest. Cool, calm, always downhill, the rear sprocket on her bicycle click-click-clicking as she coasted.
She opened her eyes. The room was dark. She reached out and … he was gone.
But there was a shadow in the room, against the wall. And clicking, clicking like…
Janos turned on the light as he sat awkwardly on her bicycle. He was naked and smiling. He pushed off the wall and coasted around the bed, the front wheel jerking back and forth as he struggled to maintain his balance in the narrow space between bed and dresser. He got off the bicycle and leaned it against the dresser, his back to her.
When she stopped laughing, she saw red marks on his back where she had held him. Then she saw redder marks on his buttocks. She reached out and touched him gently.
He looked into the dresser mirror, smiled at her. “I was going to ride your bicycle back to my apartment, but I thought I would get a chill. So it seems I will need to stay here.”
“I must say something,” she said.
He came to bed, and they lay on their backs staring at the ceiling. “Confession?”
“No,” said Mariya. “I need to speak about time. I need to speak about how little time has passed since Viktor’s death. Love is a double-edged sword. After the fire, I thought it would have been better if we had never married. But it was too late. Now I worry you and I move too quickly. I want to say your name right now, but I cannot because Viktor’s name is still with me. Does this make sense?”
“Yes,” said Janos, who continued staring at the ceiling. “I have also thought about time. But mostly, I am preparing to kick myself in the head for taking advantage of you.”
He turned toward her, reached down to pull the blanket up, but did not touch her. He simply stared at her, his eyes as wet as hers.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
At sunrise, after crawling from beneath thick, warm eiderdowns to gather around rekindled fires, Gypsies often speak of the past: great leaders, especially harsh winters, or certain horses which served them well. Because Gypsy history is not written, recalling the past is routine.
During breakfast that morning, Janos told Mariya the story of the Gypsy dancer. He described in great detail her costume, the dance itself, the violinists, the kiss on the cheek of a naïve boy having great meaning, and the coins thrown into her basket. He told Mariya the event was responsible for his having taken up the violin years later and falling in love with its power and uniqueness. Instead of banging away on keys or blowing through a hole, one played a violin as if making love. Perhaps he exaggerated when he told these things to Mariya during breakfast; perhaps not. What mattered to him was that he made her smile.
After breakfast, Janos described his recent excursion via camper van to the Carpathians. The details of various campsites unearthed memories of family picnics from long ago. Mariya said her father built huge fires for cooking bacon so grease could be dripped onto bread, creating a concoction called “dirty bread.” When Mariya recalled picnic fires from long ago, Janos saw sadness in her face and realized it was caused not by nostalgia but by her recent experience with the fire that killed her husband and Aleksandr Shved. When she finished speaking sadly of past picnic fires, Mariya was silent for a time before the spell was broken.
“Do you think my phone could be tapped?”
Mariya had begun clearing the breakfast dishes from the table, and Janos watched her. She had on a robe, her hair was disheveled, and she wore no makeup. She looked wonderful.
“It is possible,” said Janos, “if your kidnappers are organized.”
Mariya went to the kitchen counter and took a wireless phone from its charger. “Perhaps I should use only the plug-in phone in my bedroom. Wireless phones can be picked up by wideband receivers.”
“I’m surprised you know of such things,” said Janos.
Mariya put the phone back in its charger. She came back to the table and sat across from him
. “I have read about wideband receivers, the way they can scan all frequencies looking for nearby signals. What about my apartment being bugged?”
“If so, they’ll know both of us are ignoring their warning.”
“You said we have a militia guard until the end of the week. What will we do after that?”
“We need a plan,” said Janos, wondering if Mariya had one.
“Should I still use the phone to inquire about orphanages Viktor might have lived at?”
“Yes. If you discover something, they most likely already know about it.”
“What will you do today?”
“I have people to call on.”
Mariya stood, walked behind him, and rubbed his shoulders. “Will you be back tonight?”
“Do you want me to come back?”
She put her arms around his chest and bent close, whispering in his ear. “You must. What I said last night about time … I feel time collapsing, and there will not be much left.”
When Janos left the apartment, when he breathed in the cool morning air, he still felt the warmth of Mariya’s kiss. He waved to the two replacement militiamen on duty and went to his car feeling like a newly married man. Mariya was at the window when he drove off.
Janos drove north toward the central city along the river and stopped at a park in the shade. He plugged his cell phone into the car charger, took out his notebook, and flipped to the names and numbers he’d copied at Aleksandr Shved’s office from the “Adults Only” file. The former image of pornography spilling out of a cabinet was amplified by the present one of schoolchildren being led along a path by two teachers, one young woman in front and one at the end of the line. The children in the distance resembled jewels on a necklace being pulled through the forest.
Before Janos called any of the numbers, he called the Korona Club, a restaurant, bar, and casino that was always open.
“Jarek.”
“Jarek, this is Gypsy. I need to leave a message for Comrade Strudel.”
“I can do this. If his heart survived the night, he will be in shortly.”
“Ask him to meet me at the usual location at seventeen hundred hours.”
“Five, the happy hour. You should meet here. I have your Hungarian wine.” Jarek paused when Janos did not comment. “I will pass the message to Comrade Strudel.”
It took Janos an hour to call the numbers he’d copied from Shved’s “Adults Only” file. No answer at four numbers, and two were adult bookstores he’d never heard of. But most importantly, the rest of the numbers connected to either the mother or father of a missing child.
The morning before, when he’d called several of the numbers, he had not mentioned missing teenagers and children, because he hadn’t known about the connection. But today, as soon as he asked if the person he spoke with had a son or daughter missing, none of them hung up. It was difficult asking them to hang up, even after giving the facts he knew. He did not mention the child pornography issue or the possibility of trafficking. He simply said Private Investigator Aleksandr Shved died under what he considered mysterious circumstances and that, because he was a colleague of Shved’s, he would help in anyway possible.
Listening to the parents’ stories, one after another, was disturbing. Most of the missing were teenagers. One was a thirteen-year-old girl. The missing youths became real to Janos, even though he had never met them. Each became a son or daughter, through each anguished voice detailing his or her disappearance. It became obvious the parents had gone over the events thousands of times in their futile attempts to turn back the clock.
During his conversations with parents, Janos paused to calm his emotions. Mariya’s description of what was said in the van came back to him. One man had said, “How would you like to be a little girl?” The other had said, “Little girls are taught to watch for traffic.”
Two of the parents gave him the name Eva Polenkaya and said she was the head of their committee. Because her name was familiar, Janos saved her for last. When he called Eva Polenkaya and explained who he was, she asked him to come to her apartment.
The sky grew overcast, and it began drizzling while Janos used his GPS to locate Eva Polenkaya’s apartment. She lived in an area of expensive apartments in the Pechersk district. When Janos got out of his car, a sudden gust of wind released large drops from the leaves of chestnut trees lining the street.
The apartment was on the top floor with a magnificent view of the city and of the river through the window at the end of the hallway. To admire the view, Janos walked past the apartment door after exiting the elevator.
“Investigator Nagy?” inquired a strong voice behind him. “I have been waiting. It is quiet up here, and the hallway floor squeaks.”
Eva Polenkaya was an energetic, well-endowed woman in her fifties. She had long, black hair and wore black slacks and blouse. She walked quickly but gracefully behind a huge desk piled with stacks of paper and phone books in the middle of the main room.
“I don’t know if you recall, but we have met,” said Janos.
“Of course I recall,” said Eva Polenkaya. “I danced the czardas with Lazlo Horvath, your detective friend from Chicago. You danced with my daughter-in-law. We had dinner at Casino Budapest and could not resist the Gypsy music. As I recall, you were both talented dancers.”
“Thank you, Eva Polenkaya. I’m sorry I don’t recall your daughter-in-law’s name.”
“No matter,” she said. “Please call me Eva, and I will call you Janos.”
There were two telephones on a side table and a computer on another desk behind her. Living room furniture was pushed to one wall, and the other walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books.
Eva Polenkaya pointed to a chair in front of the desk. “Janos, please sit.”
He must have stared at her too long without speaking, because she said, “Sometimes people think I am insane to have converted living room into office.”
She sat in her desk chair, which was not taller than the guest chair, as happened quite often with desks so large. “My husband, Valentin Alekseevich, had his office in the House of Government, where he was a deputy minister.” She lifted her arms and looked upward. “He worked many hours to afford such an apartment. We were leftover Russians, but ones who supported the Orange Revolution. I have been in La Strada many years and made this into my office when our own grandson, Alek, disappeared. Shortly after Alek disappeared, Valentin died of a heart attack.” She pointed to a group of photographs in stand-up frames on a side table. “That is Alek before we lost him. He was fourteen. Now he is sixteen. My daughter-in-law divorced my son, and I joined La Strada. That one is my husband, Valentin, God rest his soul. So now you know our broken history.”
The boy named Alek smiled out at Janos from the photograph. On either side were other photographs—grandmother and Alek; father, grandfather, and Alek. Eva Polenkaya’s face in her photographs with the boy was full and round. Now her face was thinner, younger looking. Her husband’s face was stern, yet sad, and Janos wondered if his grandson’s disappearance had caused Valentin’s fatal heart attack.
“One thing I should tell you, Janos. You will not see me weep. This upsets some unless they know I spend twelve hours a day in here.”
“What do you do?”
“Besides working for La Strada, I am chairwoman of the committee for the missing. We have twenty-seven members … couples and singles. They are parents; I am the grandparent. Some children disappeared while living at home; some disappeared while away at school; some, the militia insists, have simply run away. Most were teenagers when they went missing, most are girls, but some of the youngest are boys. I call all of them children. One parent is a single father whose wife committed suicide after their daughter was gone three years. I do not oversee the operation. I spend most of my time placing phone calls, looking for leads. We do not simply search for our own. We search for all missing children. This morning, I called every militia office near Odessa asking about a Podil gi
rl. This afternoon, I will call Donetsk militia offices. Many militiamen know me by the sound of my voice.”
After a pause, Janos asked, “Are you an official in La Strada?”
Eva shook her head. “I am a member of La Strada, one who feels more can be done. Some in La Strada object, saying I am not diplomatic. Simply announcing one is against trafficking at NGO meetings is not enough. Many parents refuse to consider trafficking as the answer to where their children have gone.”
“Did you hire Aleksandr Shved?”
“Our Kiev parents hired him to report his findings to me.”
“Did he find anything?”
“I do not know,” said Eva, staring at Janos. “You should tell me. You were his friend.”
“We were close,” said Janos. “But I have only begun. Do you know how Shved died?”
“Yes. Our members are unhappy about this, as well as other things.”
“What things?” asked Janos.
“He took many trips. Some claimed he was vacationing at our expense.”
“Did he say what he did on these trips?”
“Shved claimed to have information from informants; the latest was from Odessa. Shved said the Odessa informant believed young people were being held as a group somewhere. He spoke of communes and cults. Many parents think he simply wanted to take trafficking out of his investigation because so many refuse to believe their children would work as sex slaves. Recently, he was at Black Sea villages looking for some kind of compound. And now, back in Kiev, with Shved killed in an adult video store, our committee began discussing pornography. One mother who lost her daughter, Nadia, has already begun visiting video stores. She searches photographs on the video jackets and has even purchased and watched videos.”
“Has she found anything?”
“She found there is enough pornography in Kiev to fill many garbage containers.”
“Are there many in your group whose children have disappeared within the last year?”
“More than ten recently joined, for obvious reasons, after hearing a Kiev Radio news program warning about trafficking of young people, usually young girls. I noticed you are exactly like the parents.”
Traffyck: The Thrilling Sequel to Chernobyl Murders Page 17
