The Confession

by Steinhauer, Olen

  “Sure.”

  “Are you working hard?”

  I looked at him.

  “I believe we had a deal, Comrade Kolyeszar.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m working hard.”

  “Good to hear.” He returned to Sev and bent over the desk and read something Sev was pointing at, but I couldn’t quite see them anymore. I could hear him laughing, saying Good good, but could no longer make out his features.

  I took the tram home. It seemed unbelievable that the other riders could chat and smile or simply doze in their seats. I wanted to shake them out of their ignorance—didn’t they know what was going on, at that very moment, on Yalta Boulevard? But they knew. They knew that they could be next. I could be next.

  I took a bath, sinking into the murky, cooling water, thinking still of electricity. Ágnes knocked on the door. “You going to be in there forever?”

  “Just until I’m clean.”

  She knocked again. “I don’t know if I can wait that long.”

  So I toweled off and went to the bedroom to lie down. She bolted past me and slammed the bathroom door shut.

  Magda came once and settled on the edge of the bed. “Was it awful?”

  “Of course it was.”

  “Did he seem…I don’t know. In good spirits?”

  I turned my head, the pillow crackling in my ears, and looked at her. “What do you mean, good spirits?”

  “You know what I mean. It’s Georgi we’re talking about.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “No good spirits today.”

  She got up to finish dinner.

  We didn’t tell Ágnes, because there was no need yet. She talked about the rope-climbing exercise that she and Daniela had apparently excelled at. The Pioneer chief—a man with the unlikely name of Hals Haling—brought them to the head of the class as examples of the female ideal of fitness, then awarded them with lengths of knotted rope.

  “I suppose you were proud,” said Magda, trying to smile.

  “You’d suppose, wouldn’t you?” Ágnes said into her plate. “I mean, it’s all kind of stupid in the end, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “Climbing ropes. All we did was climb up so we could come back down. What’s the point in that?”

  I managed a smile of my own. “That’s pretty perceptive, Ági.”

  She nodded formally at me. “Thank you, Daddy.”

  “You can take it further, though, can’t you?”

  She shrugged.

  “Why get out of bed each day when you’re just going to get back in at night?”

  “Well, that’s certainly a reason not to make the bed in the morning,” she said, making a face at Magda.

  “Or why,” I continued, “should you eat a meal when you’re just going to crap it out later?”

  “Ferenc,” warned Magda.

  Ágnes was grinning. “That’s a good question, Daddy. And why should I study French when I’m just going to forget it anyway?”

  “That,” I said, “is a different issue altogether. You really need a course in logic, sweetheart.”

  But the levity only lasted until we’d cleaned up the plates and headed into the living room. Ágnes insisted on listening to the Americans, and we heard a report on Bulgarian work camps. An emigrant described slave labor and casual killings in hushed tones that made us lean close to hear. The commentator apologized for his guest’s too-quiet voice, but explained that, while in a camp, a guard had crushed his windpipe with a boot. Then the radio whined like a sick animal, and I turned it off.

  46

  There were only a few white hairs left on his head, but a plume of them rose out of his blue prison collar. He had big eyes, one smaller than the other, and long fingers with darker hairs covering them. He looked exactly as I remembered him from last summer. He placed his hands on the table and waited.

  “Lev Urlovsky?”

  He nodded. No smile, no sound.

  “Do you remember me?”

  He nodded again. “Ferenc Kolyeszar. You and your friend Leonek Terzian found me out.”

  “Not me. I only came on the case when they went to get you.”

  “You’re modest.”

  “Still no regrets?”

  “Nothing that keeps me awake.”

  “Vassily was your son.”

  He moved his hands together until the thumbs touched, then dragged them apart. “Was, yes. Until he decided to join the regime that took away my life.”

  “Part of your life. You were at the camps for—how many? Five years?”

  “Seven.”

  “Seven, okay. But you were free again—it was over.”

  He chewed the inside of his mouth, looking at his hands. “Inspector, if you think my life was given back just because they let me walk around this beautiful city, then you’re more stupid than even you look. Just because it’s another day doesn’t mean that yesterday never happened.”

  It was an elegant way to put it, but he’d had a long time to think over his reasons for bludgeoning his son to death, and maybe only elegance could justify it. “I’m here to ask about someone else. Someone you were in Vátrina with.”

  He leaned forward, just a little.

  “Nestor Velcea. Does the name ring a bell?”

  He leaned back again. “The Romanian.”

  “Romanian?”

  “He sat in with the other Romanians when there was time—there wasn’t much time. Very tight, those Romanians.”

  “But you knew him?”

  “Sure I did. He had nothing against Slavs. I had nothing against Romanians. We all had the same enemy.”

  “The state.”

  He closed his eyes as he nodded.

  I opened my notepad on the table. “You were friends?”

  “Not hard to be friends when you’re treated as we were.”

  “You talked.”

  “When we weren’t too exhausted and beaten.”

  “So tell me about him.”

  Urlovsky opened his nostrils and took a deep breath. I wondered how old he was—sixty? Sixty-five? Or was he one of those who returned from the camps looking twenty years older than they were? “He used to draw on the wall. With a piece of coal. Anything you asked for. He had fantastic hands, at least until they took off that finger.” He touched the pinkie on his left hand.

  “Who took it off?”

  “The guards, of course. First time he did a sketch on the wall. They took him in the yard and cut the thing off. But that didn’t stop him.” He smiled. “That Romanian was something.”

  “I’ve heard he was a great artist.”

  “Talent, yes. So much talent. But he was worse than me.”

  “Worse than you?”

  He tilted his head. “Worse is the wrong word. He was stronger, that’s what he was. He could sustain his hatred in a way most of us couldn’t.”

  “His anger against the state.”

  “The state, sure. But not really.”

  “Then who, really?”

  “The bastards who put him there.”

  “State security.”

  “Them, too.”

  I looked down at my empty page and sighed. “Tell me, then, who Nestor Velcea was angry with.”

  “Who shouldn’t he be angry with?”

  The guards would allow me to beat him if I wanted, but I didn’t think it would work. He had been through a lot worse than I could give him, and had held on to all his rage. “Josef Maneck? Was that someone?”

  “Might have been.”

  “How about Antonín Kullmann?”

  He looked me in the face, as if judging me. Then he nodded, big eyes holding onto me. “These names, they do ring a bell.”

  “Why did he hate them?”

  He frowned, as if reassessing his judgment. “Why do you think? They put him in there.”

  “He was sure about this?”

  Urlovsky leaned back. “Not at first, no. A lot of us only figure it out later. For me, it
took almost a year before I realized who did it. My ex-wife. You know why? Do you know why?”

  I said I didn’t.

  “She wanted the dacha—that’s why. I told her it was in my family before we were married, and it would stay in my family. I spent my summers in that dacha as a child. But she wanted to vacation in the countryside, so she made a phone call to Yalta Boulevard.” He shook his head and smiled. “A crafty bitch, that one.”

  “Why didn’t you kill her instead?”

  “She was already a bitch; I couldn’t do anything about it. But my son, I could stop him from becoming one. I’m his father.”

  “Let’s get back to Nestor. Why was he turned in?”

  He pursed his lips. “That boy was talented, and he knew it. It made him vain. He thought they’d done it out of jealousy.” Urlovsky turned his palms to the ceiling. “I don’t know, maybe he’s right. But it takes a bold man to suggest that.”

  “Your wife did it for a house.”

  “You can live in a house. A house is security. What’s art? Each time Nestor made his pictures on the wall, one of us used a wet rag to clean it so the guards wouldn’t see.” He patted the table. “It’s pretty stuff, art, but it just wipes away.”

  47

  On the drive back, I considered what Urlovsky had said. Josef Maneck and Antonín Kullmann had turned in Nestor Velcea because they were jealous of his talent—Kullmann didn’t want to compete against a better artist. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t imagine someone doing such a thing when the reward would have been so undependable. Was Nestor so self-centered to really believe this?

  Moska was posting notices on the bulletin board behind my desk when I came in. “There was a call for you. That friend of yours—Georgi?”

  I ran to the phone.

  “My blessed friend! I’m in only one piece, and I’ve got an appetite that could stall a Volga.”

  We met in a restaurant near his apartment. It was an old place that writers in the prewar days used to fill with smoke and wine and literary arguments. Behind the bar were grainy photos of well-dressed men in stiff collars at tables, a few wearing looser, more artistic clothes, toasting the photographer. The great Romanian poet Eminescu sat next to our national poet, Pasha, and not a single blow was being exchanged—Georgi pointed this out as we edged our way to our own table. He was positively buoyant, and waved to people he recognized, then ordered cutlet and a long series of sides that came to him like flashes of inspiration. “Roasted potatoes! Yes, and…peppers!”

  “You will stall a Volga.”

  He winked at me. “I’m just so happy to be alive.”

  He was too distracted by everything around him—the smells, the décor, the women. Only after he had dived into his food could he, between mouthfuls, begin to tell me.

  “I thought it was over. You can be sure of that. They stuck me in a cell without a word. It was no bigger than a water closet. I remembered the prayers Mother taught me when I was a child. Pieces, though, never an entire prayer. And in that little concrete room I whispered whatever I could remember. Do you know, I even worried that if I couldn’t remember a single prayer from beginning to end, God wouldn’t take me? I thought my soul would be doomed because of bad memory!”

  He laughed at this, fully, expressively, though it didn’t seem particularly funny to me.

  “Time stops in a cell without windows. You know this, it makes sense, but when you’re in it, it’s a whole new reality. So I waited. There was nothing. No food, no voices, no sounds at all—they’re soundproof, those new cells they’ve got. Incredible.” He took another mouthful and spoke as he chewed. “But they kept the lights on. Even at night. I couldn’t even guess the time.”

  “So they didn’t talk to you?”

  “I think it was the second day I heard from them. The guards woke me up and took me to another room on the next floor up. It was an office with a desk, and a chair in the middle of the room. I was told to sit down. Then the guards left. That room was not soundproof. I could hear someone shouting in the next room. No no, please no—that sort of thing. Christ.” He shook his head. “I was crapping my pants, you can believe it.”

  “I believe it.”

  “Then he came to me. Tall guy, he smiled a lot. Russian. He walked around my chair and started talking. Conversationally. As if we were old friends.”

  “Okay.”

  “He talked about nightspots in town. He was fond of The Crocodile—you know that place?”

  “A nightclub?”

  “Russian-run nightclub. I’ve never been there. He suggested I go on Tuesdays, like he does—when some vaudeville act does their comedy. This is the conversation he started with. I suppose it was to relax me, but it didn’t. Then he started talking literature. Seems he’s a fan of our writers. He brought up some names, then he said he’d been reading your old novel recently.”

  I reached for my drink, my fingers cold and my rings heavy. “Did he have a mustache?”

  “Yeah. A thin one. He asked if we were good friends, but I told him we were just acquaintances. I didn’t want him to ask too much.”

  “Good.”

  “But he knew we spent a lot of time together—of course they’d seen you bring me to them.”

  I waited while he dug into the peppers, then spoke through a full mouth.

  “But he left that alone for a while, and asked about my poetry. He wanted to know why I hadn’t published anything for years. He’d seen my old book, thought it was pretty good.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t suggest he read my self-published pieces. I told him I wasn’t inspired much these days.”

  “Did he believe it?”

  Georgi rested his wrists on the edge of the table. “Ferenc, I have no idea what he thought about anything I said.”

  There was a lot of noise in the restaurant, voices and clattering dishes and scraping silverware.

  “After a while he asked about you again. He asked if I’d read anything you’d written lately. I said no. He told me he’d had a peek, and that it was brilliant stuff. I didn’t ask him how he’d gotten his peek.”

  “I know how he got it.”

  “You know this guy?”

  “He works out of our station. I know him. Go on.”

  Georgi stretched an arm over the back of his chair. “He also praised your Militia work. The man was full of praise, I tell you.”

  “It’s his tactic. He’s good at it.”

  “Don’t I know. But he asked about the case you’re working on. I said I didn’t know anything about it. But you’ve helped him? he asked. Helped him find Nestor Velcea?”

  “He said that name?”

  Georgi nodded. “I didn’t think it possible, but I was even more terrified than before. I said I hadn’t helped with anything, and he shook his head. Come now, let’s be truthful. He had me in a corner, you see?”

  “He did,” I agreed.

  “I had no choice.”

  He waited for me to agree with that too, so I did.

  “He was staring at me, with those eyes. I admitted I might have helped once.”

  Now it was coming out.

  “He pressed on about it. How had I helped? What did you need? So I told him you were looking for someone else, not Nestor. I made up a name. God help me, I did.”

  “What was the name?”

  “Gregor Prakash.”

  “Who?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I told him he was a painter I’d never met. A formalist. And the Russian asked what information I’d given you. By then it was easy. The lie was begun. I told him that Gregor lived over in the Fifth District, and if he was any kind of painter at all, he’d go to the bar on the corner of Republic and the Eighteenth of January.”

  “Incredible,” I said. “And he bought it?”

  “What do I know?” He picked up a cube of roasted potato with his fingers and popped it into his mouth. “All I know is he sent me back to my c
ell. This morning a guard took me out to the street and told me to keep walking.”

  I paid for the lunch, and we walked toward Victory Square. Georgi bought a couple fried doughs from an old man in a kiosk. We crossed the streets, passing the ideal socialist couple holding their torch, and entered Victory Park. I didn’t know why Kaminski didn’t just come to me for this information. He could have learned the details of the case from me—I saw no reason to hide such things from him. But no—I’d already hidden information about Nestor Velcea from Sev. And why? Brano Sev knew: The fear had gone to my head.

  “So when are you going to have that brilliant writing ready for me?”

  We were on a bench, staring through the trees at the Culture Ministry building, which had been white, but was being painted gray by a crew of workmen on scaffolding. “You’re still going to print it?”

  “Of course.”

  “This experience hasn’t frightened you away from your publishing?”

  Georgi licked his sugarcoated fingers. “All it’s done is remind me how much I like being alive.” He held up an index finger. “Alive, Ferenc. Not one of the walking dead.” He placed the finger in his mouth, and sucked.

  48

  I called to tell Magda about Georgi’s safe return, and that I might not be in that night either. Then I called to be sure Vera was in. There was no longer any hesitation. On the drive over I wondered if Magda knew about Vera, and I wondered if she knew what I knew about her. It was all a hopeless puzzle that could only be solved by two adults sitting face-to-face and speaking the truth. But neither of us was adult enough to do that yet.

  Vera was fixing dinner when I arrived. She had strapped a soiled apron all the way around her narrow waist, down to her bare knees, and she held her wet hands like a surgeon’s. She got on her toes and kissed me, her wrists holding my neck.

  I tossed my coat on the bed and found her bent over the open oven. I held her hips and rubbed myself into her. She groaned, reached back, and parted the apron. She was naked underneath.