Emil set up the reel-to-reel under the kitchen table. We put blankets over it to muffle the sound of the motor and tested it until it was silent. Only the microphone peeked out. Then I used a tablecloth over the whole thing. We walked around the table to make sure it was hidden.
“I’ll hide in the bedroom,” he said.
“No. He’ll check everywhere. He won’t want to be caught like he was at Stefan’s.”
“But you need some help.”
“You’ve helped enough, Emil. I’ll call when it’s over.”
He was still confused as I drove him home.
I arrived a little after eight, as the entertainment, two brothers who called themselves the Tatra Twins, was preparing to perform. The Crocodile was half-lit so that all the attention would be on the stage, where the brothers-who were as far from twins as one could imagine-strolled on wearing self-consciously large suits with bow ties and hats with the brims turned up. The large one, Balint, spun a wooden cane as he walked, while short, fat Boris waddled behind him, weaving in order to avoid getting hit. At the center they stopped and introduced themselves.
I didn’t see him, and I wasn’t completely sure he would come. The round tables were filled with groups of Russians dressed in fine eveningwear. My suit was noticeably cheap among them. I took a table near the stage because I wanted light to fall on me. This was imperative. The waiter looked at me strangely when I asked for a martini, so I instead ordered a palinka. The Twins began a rapid back-and-forth debate about their poverty-stricken village childhood, Balint sometimes shaking his head in apology to us all for his brother’s ignorance. They argued about who had less to eat, who was beaten more by their drunkard father, and which brother lost his virginity first. Each argument culminated with Boris receiving a slap and the audience convulsing in laughter.
The palinka was gone in no time, so I waved to the waiter for another.
Periodically, I looked back over the smiling faces raised to the stage. The women were a mix of Russian and local girls, but the men were all Russian. Their conversations mingled with the comedians’ hysterics and left me in a state of utter incomprehension.
He arrived with a very young woman, almost a girl, who held his arm at the elbow and laughed obligingly when he whispered to her. They took a table in the middle of the club, ordered, and watched the stage. The girl leaned into him and settled her head on his shoulder.
They both burst into laughter with everyone else.
I could be overt-it would certainly do the trick. But I wanted to make it back home. So I turned back to the brothers’ antics-Balint was using the cane now, bringing it down heavily as Boris skittered out of the way-but I couldn’t understand the humor at all.
When I looked back to the audience, I lost him for a moment. Then I found him because I was looking into his eyes. He had recognized my large form from the back, and was staring, no trace of smile left on his face.
I had been calm until then. I’d turned the plan over so many times that I knew it was the only thing to do, and in that surety there had been no fear. But looking into his eyes, the reasons for fear came back, and my hand was shaking when I raised my palinka beside my head, then nodded at him and turned back to the stage.
I drank it quickly because I did not think I could remain there much longer without screaming. So I walked out, hunched below the lights, and did not look over at him again, though I felt his eyes following me through the dark streets all the way home.
87
I didn’t have to wait long. Twenty minutes passed before I heard the steady footsteps in the stairwell, rising. I ran to turn on the machine, then covered it again. It was silent. Then there were three knocks on the door. “Ferenc?” He had a sparkling, happy voice. He sounded like an old friend.
I opened the door and saw what I hadn’t noticed before: how his left shoulder bulged beneath his jacket. The bandages over Nestor’s bullet. When he walked in he showed no sign of injury, but he took his hat off with his right hand a little awkwardly.
“How are you, Kaminski?”
“Mikhail, Ferenc. I think we can be on a first-name basis.”
“All right, Mikhail. Want something to drink?”
He shook his head. “I had one at The Crocodile. What were you drinking?”
“I asked for a martini, but couldn’t get one.”
He winked. “That’s because it’s an imperialist drink, Ferenc. I’m surprised at you.” Then he cocked his head. “Well, maybe I’m not. Tell me,” he said as he wandered to the kitchen and glanced around. “What is it you want?”
“What I want?”
“Well, you come to a regular spot of mine and wait until I see you, then you leave. You like vaudeville?”
“My favorite.”
“Pretty good, aren’t they?”
“I thought so.”
I had left both bedroom doors open, and he stood between them, glancing around. “Nice apartment,” He opened the bathroom door and sniffed. “Smoking on the crapper, huh?”
I smiled.
“So what did you want, Ferenc?”
“I was going to ask the same of you. You were here last night.”
He wandered back into the living room. “And you didn’t answer the door.”
“I wasn’t here. But we all have our informers. What did you want?”
He reached into a pocket for a cigarette, and when he lit it I noticed the unsteady left hand, which made the lighter flame wobble. “I came to talk to you about your case. Have you made any progress tracking this Nestor Velcea character?”
“He’s hard to find.”
“I expect results from you,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you that already?”
I nodded.
“Before Stefan was killed, I chatted with him about the case. He seemed to have some ideas.”
“Before he died?”
“Seemed to think he was close to finding Velcea.”
“I wish he’d have told me. Why are you so interested, Mikhail?”
He settled on the sofa, the trigger finger of his right hand tapping the cushion. “Me? I’m interested in the security of this country. I care about all levels of security. This Velcea character strikes me as a real threat, and I’d like to see him stopped.”
“You were interested enough to demand answers from a friend of mine.”
“Oh,” he said, lipping his cigarette. “Georgi Radevych. He’s a funny guy. He wanted me to think he didn’t really know you. Funny. Tell me-who’s Gregor Prakash?”
“And then you came to my home at night, when you could talk to me in the office anytime you wanted.”
“Well, you weren’t in the office yesterday, Ferenc.”
“Maybe you don’t want to talk about this around other people.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I sat across from him and looked deep into his eyes. “That is the question, isn’t it?”
Kaminski leaned forward, tapping his knee. “I think you’re trying to scare me, Ferenc Kolyeszar. I think you believe you’re a threat to me. Did I tell you I had a talk with a certain Malik Woznica a couple weeks ago? He told me an interesting story. It includes you and a lot of bribery. Seems he learned it all from his wife in Moscow.”
“Before he killed her.”
He shrugged. “He didn’t tell me that part of the story, though I learned it on my own. But as for you, my friend, this is just one more thing I have on you. I’ve got you on a string. All I have to do is drop you.” He took his hat off the chair and stood up.
This was not how it was supposed to go. I took out my pistol.
“Now, Ferenc,” he said, smiling at it. “You’ve gone from dumb to moronic.”
“Maybe a little stupid,” I said. “I just want to know why you killed Sergei Malevich.”
“Where did this come from? First it’s Nestor Velcea, and now it’s Sergei Malevich? You’re all over the place. Do you have a fever?”
“I’m well enough.”
&nb
sp; “What about the others-Leonek and Emil? Are they suffering from similar delusions?”
“I haven’t told them anything yet. First, I want to know why.”
“Always a loner, right?” He looked at his cigarette. “Well, if I had killed Sergei Malevich, I suppose there could have been some good reasons. Security reasons. He was trying to cause more scandal for the liberating army. There had been enough scandals by that point, and public opinion was turning against us. Sergei, from what I’ve heard, was a little like you. He never cared about the larger picture.”
“Public opinion was always against the Russians.”
He raised a finger. “No, Ferenc. Private opinion was always against us. It’s public opinion that is the danger to stability. Once hating Russians becomes a public opinion, you’ve got what you had in Budapest. You’ve got busses set on fire and windows broken. You’ve got tanks in the street. No one wants that.”
“That sounds admirable.”
“It is what it is.”
“But it’s not true. You killed Sergei because you were one of those four Russians who took those two girls into the synagogue. And the night you killed him, he was meeting his one witness, Nestor Velcea. You got rid of Sergei, then needed to get rid of Nestor.”
He smiled.
I steadied my pistol. “But it was hard to find and kill him on your own, because he went into hiding. So you used the machinery of state security and a French informer to put him away. It must have been a surprise when you were in Moscow and found out that not only had he survived ten years in a work camp, but he was going to be released. You requested a transfer so you could finally take care of him personally.”
He brought the cigarette to his lips and took a slow drag.
“But you won’t get him.”
“So you do know where he is.”
“He’s safe,” I said.
Kaminski’s smile returned, and he shook his head. “Nestor is not safe-he’s a dead man. And you, Ferenc, you’re walking and breathing, but you’re also dead. Remember, I have plenty to use against you.”
“I know.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
I raised the pistol so he could see into the barrel. “Lie down.”
“You wouldn’t shoot me.”
I shot a bullet past his ear that buried into the wall. He got on his knees. “Down,” I said. “Arms out.”
With his nose in the rug and arms spread, I found in the lining of his jacket his pistol-a nine-millimeter with a long silencer attached to it-and tossed it into the kitchen. I knelt beside the chair where I had left Agnes’s knotted rope and bound his hands behind his back. He wrinkled his nose when the rope passed near his face. “Damn, Ferenc. That thing smells like piss.” I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching him as I phoned Emil, but he made no move. When I hung up, he said, “This is it, then. You understand, right? Once I’m in custody, I’ll tell everything about November the sixth, and about Svetla Woznica. If you put me away, I’ll put you away. That will be the end of you.”
I sat in the chair. “Then we’ll go down together.”
88
All four of them arrived, Leonek and Emil with guns drawn. Kaminski smiled at everyone. I wanted more from him. I wanted some kind of pleading, something to let us all know that now he was finished. But he only smiled as I gathered the audiotape and Emil and Leonek lifted him and took him out to the car. Louis and Nestor sat together on the sofa. Louis said, “What about us?”
“What do you think?”
Nestor was tipsy-Lena had kept him drinking. He smiled grimly. “I suppose it’s time for me to pay back society again.”
Louis was a French national, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to charge him with anything. He was a fool, but that had never been much of a crime in our country. So I drove him back to the Metropol. He and Nestor hugged on the dark street, and Louis kept apologizing, but Nestor was serene. The alcohol must have helped.
As we got into the car, I glanced back at the hotel. A white-haired man in the lobby stood and approached Louis. Jean-Paul Garamond did not look happy.
Kaminski was already in a cell, and Leonek and Emil were waiting for me. They stood to the side as I filled out forms for Nestor’s detention, then Moska showed up. He was tired and confused and a little angry that he hadn’t been told what was going on. But he got over it. After Nestor was taken away we went to a bar. I wanted to be drunk, to gain Nestor’s serenity, but intoxication only made me feel sick. I couldn’t quite hear what the others were saying. One thing I did make out was Emil’s confusion over something Kaminski had said. “He told us that by tomorrow no one will give a damn about him, or Nestor, or anyone. He said tomorrow everything is going to be different.”
“What does that mean?” Moska asked.
Emil shrugged. “I wish I knew.”
Leonek wagged his head over his glass. “I don’t wish I did. I’m very glad not to know a thing.”
I felt the same way. I wanted to forget Kaminski’s last words to me- That will be the end of you — but memory and knowledge are the killers of serenity. Then, around one, when we were all too drunk to read a thing, a heavyset woman came in, red-faced, frantically waving a special late-night edition of The Spark.
“God, oh God,” was all she could get out, repeatedly.
Leonek swiped the paper from her, and as he moved it back and forth, trying to focus, he looked baffled. “It’s Mihai,” he muttered, maybe to us, maybe to himself. “He’s dead.”
89
It rained most of the drive. I had not had the patience to clean up the house; all I wanted was Agnes and Magda. I wanted them with me immediately; there could be no delay. I splashed through craters of rainwater and flew past hitchhikers stumbling through the mud, the sputtering radio teaching me more about the life of Mihai than I would ever have wanted to know. All I learned of his death was that lung cancer had taken him.
I ducked beneath my coat to stay dry and banged on the loose front door. Nora looked surprised.
“Where are they?”
“Inside, dear. Eating lunch.”
Agnes threw herself into my arms, weeping. It was strange to hold my daughter again, and I had to adjust my arms to accommodate her. Maybe she’d grown in the past week. But her tears weren’t for me. “He’s dead, Daddy! W-what can we…” She broke down again.
Magda was easier to hold. I sank my face into her shoulder and held her for a few seconds longer than she expected. Then she pulled back. “Are you okay?” She wiped my cheek.
“Me? Oh, sure. I’m fine.”
“Your hand is scratched.”
“It’s nothing. I’m okay.”
It took a while to relax, a meal that tasted better than any Nora had ever made before, and a long smoke with Teodor. We discussed Mihai’s passing and speculated without knowledge on what would follow. No one that week had any idea what would happen. “Agnes is a wreck,” he said. “Does that surprise you?”
“Maybe those Pioneer meetings had their effect.”
He asked about the case.
“It’s over.”
“And it went well? You got your man?”
“I got him.”
“And what about you two?”
“What about us two?”
“Mag told me she asked you to take her back.” He put out his smoke. “Are you going to do that?”
I didn’t know how to answer.
All five of us took a walk across the wet communal plots and greeted farmers who stood smoking in empty, long-harvested fields. We made it to the social club, a low wooden building where a couple men played guitars in a corner while drunk farmhands danced with young girls. I didn’t like it when one of them covered us with his atrocious breath and asked to dance with Agnes, but I was pleased when she declined.
At the farmhouse Magda and I took the room where she had once told me about Leonek. But this time she examined my hand with concern, then told me again how sorry she was. I ki
ssed her to keep her quiet, and we made love in a way I’d not done for a very long time: simply, and without any motives other than love. Afterward she told me she could never leave me, because a man as pure and true as me was a once-in-a-lifetime find. “Pure?” I asked her. I was standing naked by the opened window, smoking.
She put herself up on an elbow, and in the darkness she might have been any woman. “I know you, Ferenc. Your impulses are pure. You’ve proven it to me all these years.”
“I’m not pure, Magda. I’m so far from that.”
“But you are.”
“No,” I repeated, then told her about Vera. I told as little as possible.
She was quiet for a moment, then whispered, “I knew something was going on. All those nights out.” I noticed her breaths were uneven. “But what else should I expect?” she said. “I’m surprised you didn’t do it earlier.”
I flicked the cigarette out the window and latched it tightly.
90
Magda was disheartened by the apartment-I hadn’t cleaned a thing while they were gone-and peered closely at the bullet hole in the wall. Standing with her and seeing it through her eyes, shame overcame me. Agnes ran with Pavel to her room, and Magda leaned against the radio and sighed.
“Look,” I said. “I’ll help.”
“You’re damn right you’ll help.”
So we spent that afternoon cleaning. She dusted and mopped; I swept and washed dishes. Both of us went through the apartment with rags, wiping down all surfaces, and by the afternoon it was done. We bathed together, washing each other’s backs, and when we were done I suggested we go to a puppet show. “That’s a nice idea,” she said.
But the theater was closed in deference to Mihai, and on the front door was a twenty-line poem extolling the virtues of that great patron of the arts. We ended up at a restaurant where I told them to get whatever they wanted. Agnes chose fried potatoes. I tried to get her to add some meat to her order, or vegetables, or even ice cream, but she shook her head firmly. “You said whatever I want.”
The confession tyb-2 Page 30
