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 Antonin 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 Antonin 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 decor, 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 ma
de 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 cell. 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.
Afterward, we had pork and zucchini by candlelight. The candle seemed out of place. It was something that belonged to the world of romance, but what we did could not be called romantic.
“You like the wine?”
“Delicious.”
“Did you know that Karel’s going to be gone another week?”
“Is that so.”
“Seems the Yugoslavs are fond of his poems. He’s been invited to Split to give a reading and take part in their ‘Week of Culture.’ That’s what they call it.”
“So what do you have planned for the Week of Culture?”
“I’m planning to stay in, entertain a guest.”
“Someone I know?”
“Maybe.”
That night we did the closest thing to making love we would ever do. We stroked one another’s bodies, as if comforting the flesh, and kissed more than we ever had. For a long time we just lay together, embracing, sometimes whispering tender words. She said beneath her breath, “I don’t have to say it, do I?” and I told her she didn’t. She smiled and slid under me and took me in herself. She didn’t need to tell me she loved me, and by the next morning I was glad she hadn’t.
We ate toast and jam with our coffee. I noticed, with a little shame, that Vera looked a mess in the mornings. Some women are this way. In the afternoons and evenings, they’re radiant. But catch them before they’ve had a chance to put themselves together, and their looks turn to ash. Magda always looked like herself. Her hair could be pillow-pressed and her makeup gone, but there was an essential beauty to her that always came through. Vera looked as if she had taken off a mask.
“This is nice,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
“The coffee’s good.”
“I mean, this. Breakfast, sunlight coming in, sitting here with you.” She nodded into the cup she brought to her face.
“You’re right,” I lied. “It’s wonderful.”
“Remember what I said before about us not talking?”
I nodded.
“Well, I forgot to mention that sometimes I’m wrong.”
I smiled at her smile.
She watched me a moment. “You’ve never asked me about my Swiss professor. Not interested?”
“I knew you’d tell me when you wanted.”
“I want.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“It was very strange with him,” she said. “I was a virgin-Karel and I had only kissed before-and this professor was forty-five. Very experienced. And very…unexpected. He had what he called toys. ”
“Toys?”
“Handcuffs. A riding crop for horses.”
Stupidly, I said, “He rode horses?”
“He’d never ridden one in his life.”
I put down my fork.
“It’s strange for a girl when her first lover uses all that Western decadence. It makes her feel dirty, but she also learns to love the filth.”
“Did you?”
She nodded. “But after a while it frightened me. I felt like I didn’t have any more control of myself. I ran back home like a little girl. That’s what the professor said when I told him I was returning: You’re just a scared little girl.”
“So you ran home and married Karel.”
She looked at her hands on the table, at her tarnished wedding band. “I married him as fast as I could.” She blinked, eyes damp. “And I still don’t know.” Then she smiled. “Want to learn some more philosophy?”
“Next time. I have to leave.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like someone thinks he’s going to get a next time.”
I gave Vera a proper kiss good-bye, but when I made it to the car and sat behind the wheel, I stopped. I was suddenly very heavy, a swarm of leaden feelings buzzing in my limbs. I did not want to return to Vera again, and I did not want to go back to Magda the way things were. We had both avoided our problems for so long that I doubted we even deserved happiness anymore. I hated our immaturity, and knew I had to be the one to start climbing out of it. I had to try to be mature, to face at least part of this problem. Immediately.
The Militia radio hissed through the Sixth District-no one was talking today-and on the stairs to Stefan’s apartment I noticed the brown drops. I leaned down and touched them-dry, blood.
I took the steps two at a time and saw that his door was ajar, but not broken. I took out my pistol. There was no sound. Then I kicked the door. It popped open and the first thing I saw was more blood on the wall. A brown burst. It was on the wall and sofa and rug, where Stefan lay. He was facedown, one hand extended awkwardly as if reaching for the pistol that lay between him and the sofa. His head was turned to the side, eyes open, mouth pressed against the blood-soaked rug.
The building was unbelievably silent. No noise from other apartments, only my footsteps squeaking against the floor and rug as I leaned over him. Then my head cleared a little, and I checked the other rooms. They were empty, but the bedroom window, despite the cold, was open.
I sat on the couch and looked at Stefan. I looked at him a long time.
49
Through the bad phone line Moska’s voice had no air to work with. “No, don’t say it.”
“Let’s get some people over here.”
“Immediately.”
The fifteen-minute wait lasted forever. I looked over the apartment again. There were dry crusts of bread beside two bowls of fish soup and a half-empty bottle of wine.
Who had been eating with Stefan?
I grabbed the phone and dialed. No answer. There was a telephone directory in the kitchen, and I flew through it, frantic, until I found Galicia Textiles. The shift head didn’t want to get her, so I had to become a brusque militiaman rather than a terrified husband.
“Ferenc? Ferenc, what is it?”
“Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”
I couldn’t catch my breath.
“Ferenc, are you okay? Is something wrong?”
“No,” I said. “Everything’s fine. I’ll see you tonight.”
I hung up and sat in the living room, heard the dry blood crackle beneath me, and rubbed my face in my hands. I hadn’t told her, because she would have to deal with it all day at the factory. I would tell her tonight and make it as easy as I could. I would tell her at night so there would be fewer hours to go through before the respite of sleep.
Looking at the body, thinking suddenly of Stefan’s guilt and the years of loneliness since Daria had left him, another wave of dread came over me. I squatted beside him and lifted the pistol to my nose. No smell at all-it hadn’t been fired. He had not taken his own life.
Moska arrived with Leonek and Emil. They were in almost as bad a state as I was. Leonek paced furiously from corner to corner, picking up crumpled greasy wrappers and overfull ashtrays, then setting them back down, disappointed that they gave him no answers. Emil crossed his arms by the door, speaking occasional mysteries- It smells like baklava, can you smell that? Stefan’s wrist is bent, what does that mean? Moska marched into the bedroom and emerged a while later shaking his head. “Can someone tell me what’s going on here?” No one touched the body.
When you’re faced with a corpse, you fight the instinctual urge to look at it by staring at the smoke-stained curtains, the frayed sofa cushions, the grime in the unwashed rugs. It would be a blessing if you noticed the sunlight or the bright colors of the quilt that Stefan had hung on the wall to remember his mother by. But the brain is clear enough to know such details are a lie. Somewhere in the room lies a dead man with a bullet in his belly. So what I remember from that day is the detrius of Stefan’s life, and because of that his bloated body is that much clearer.
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