Victory Square

by Olen Steinhauer

  He knew the Atkinses’story, but when they told it again the emotion multiplied because they were finally faced with the villains they had spent the last thirty years hating. They had an audience with the devil, and the devil had no choice but to listen. “You broke apart a family, and you ended our lives,” said Harold, pointing. “You made us subhuman.”

  A lone woman witnessed for herself and her now-dead husband and son, both of whom had been tortured to death in the early seventies within the walls of Yalta Boulevard number 36 around the time Gavra joined the Ministry. The story she told surprised even him, who had seen his employer do plenty of shocking things during his tenure.

  Farmers arrived with stories of the effects of the “New Agro-Policy” Pankov implemented in the late seventies, leaving whole families starving while the land around them was full of wheat. The Maternity Laws of 1982 also produced witnesses, like one man whose wife, having already borne three children, was warned by her doctor to stop. An accidental pregnancy followed, and because abortion was now illegal, she died in childbirth, along with the baby. Others told of their fifth or sixth child being sent off to a state orphanage because there was no way to feed them all, and the child then disappearing. There were children dying of starvation in the Carpathian ranges and children dying of diabetes and influenza in hospitals with barren medicine cabinets. And homes. Homes had been lost endlessly as agro-policies forced fifth-generation farming families into socialist cubicles along the always-under-construction edges of the Capital, or the numerous homes that had been plowed under to make space for the Workers’Palace, which covered ten hectares of demolished land.

  Some accusations were less visceral, such as the steady decline of electricity, which had turned once lively cities into morbid nighttime holes, and the fact that, during the last years, light bulbs available to the public had steadily declined in wattage. These days, the best you could get was a murky ten-watt bulb, all so that the country would use less electricity, and Pankov could pay off the foreign debt while he and his wife lived in well-lit splendor.

  The witnesses included the senior citizens shipped in from other countries, as well as others who had never left, who could document what had become known as the Dark Eighties. There were stories of suicides, which Gavra knew had become more frequent in the last four years, and they asked what kind of man could do that to his people. What kind of man could make of his country a prison from which the only escape was suicide?

  The Pankovs had no answer. They just shook their heads.

  Gavra had no answers either. A few times he caught himself wiping tears from his eyes. No, it didn’t matter that this was all theater, because half the players didn’t know what kind of stage this was. They didn’t know they were being used.

  Each time the Ministry was brought into the stories—and this happened frequently—Gavra felt a sharp pain in his stomach. What the Ministry did, he felt responsible for. He had murdered children and forced people from their homes and into underground cells and tortured them until they couldn’t remember their own names anymore. His breath became shallow as he remembered his own crimes, ones he’d actually committed himself, which were certainly many, and knew that whatever justification he’d had back then no longer applied. He was as guilty as the Pankovs, as Romek, who was smiling from his seat, and Michalec, who was now somber, arms crossed over his chest.

  The stories continued. Whenever he thought they had finished, the prosecutor would motion to another person in the audience, state his name, and ask him to speak. It seemed to go on forever, and Gavra wanted to run out of the room—but couldn’t. It wasn’t Michalec or the big guard who kept him there; it was his own morbid curiosity. He wanted to know the stories, but more, he waited for the moment when Tomiak Pankov would cut in with a few words that would explain it all, offer up some simple evidence that would justify what had been done in his name, or express his shock and insist they knew nothing about this. But the best he ever offered was, “This should only be done in front of the Grand National Assembly.”

  The president of the court told him to be quiet.

  When the last weeping witness was led back to her chair, the prosecutor turned to the bench and said, “The people rest.”

  The president of the court turned to his associate judges, whispering a moment. They ended the conversation with nods, and the president said to the room, “The court will now retire for deliberations.”

  The soldiers turned off the cameras.

  The president stood, as did the other two judges, and the audience stood as well. Michalec tugged Gavra’s sleeve until he, too, was standing. Only the Pankovs remained in their chairs as the judges walked along the wall and out into the corridor.

  The prosecutor and defense attorney followed the judges out of the room.

  As they settled back into their seats, Michalec said, “Well?”

  Gavra peered over heads at the Pankovs, who were whispering to one another. “I want to talk to them.”

  “That’s out of the question.”

  “I insist.”

  “Listen, Gavra. You know what we want you to do. You strike up a relationship with those bastards, and you’re not going to be able to do it.”

  “That won’t be a problem. I’ve done it before.”

  “Yes? Do tell.”

  Gavra wasn’t going to regale this man with stories of jobs he’d prefer to forget. “The deal is this,” he said. “You give me a few minutes with them, and I’ll do it. You have my word.”

  “Is your word worth something?”

  “More than yours, certainly.”

  Michalec peered over the crowd. Romek came over and whispered something in his ear, then left again. He patted Gavra’s knee. “You’ve got yourself a deal. But I’m depending on you to stick to it. There’s no way out.”

  He motioned to the big guard and told him where Gavra was going. The man, despite his size, was frightened, but by then Gavra was already walking around the edge of the chairs toward the front. The guard hurried to catch up.

  As Gavra approached the couple, an officer cut ahead of him and squatted in front of the table. “Sir,” the man said to Tomiak Pankov. “Major Ignac Maslov.”

  “What army?”

  Ilona Pankov turned away with an expression of disgust.

  “I wanted to know why you’re not accepting the court’s legality. Don’t you realize you’re only making things more difficult for yourself?”

  “Because,” said Tomiak Pankov in exasperation, “there is no legality to this court. Legality is granted by the Grand National Assembly, which these putschists ignore. None of this is legal.”

  Maslov nodded. “Also, why did you try to leave the Central Committee Building by helicopter?”

  Pankov looked past the man’s head, past Gavra, to the doorway where Andras Todescu still stood. “Because I was advised to take the helicopter by those who were plotting against me, and some of these traitors are right here in this room.”

  “Aha,” said the major. He stood up and stepped away.

  “They can’t do a thing,” whispered Ilona Pankov. “There’s nothing they can do.”

  “Do I know you?” Tomiak said, looking up at Gavra.

  “Lieutenant Gavra Noukas of the Ministry,” Gavra said, only afterward realizing how ridiculous this sounded.

  “You’re with them, too?”

  Gavra shook his head. “I was forced to come here. This is all a surprise.”

  Pankov raised a finger. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled. “I remember. A friend of General Brano Sev, correct?”

  Gavra couldn’t get the word out, so he just nodded.

  “How is Brano? I shouldn’t have let him retire. He would’ve taken care of this mob.”

  “Sev?” said Ilona, suddenly taking interest. “I never trusted him. I’ll bet he’s running this from Moscow.”

  “I can assure you,” said Gavra. “He’s not.”

  “Then where is he?” said Ilona.


  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Hunting!” Tomiak said suddenly. He wagged his finger. “I remember now. You came out to one of the lodges and we went hunting. I’m right, yes?”

  Gavra nodded. “I’m pleased you remember. But, sir, we don’t have much time. I wanted to know something.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why didn’t you answer the witnesses? Didn’t you have some kind of explanation for them?”

  The smile disappeared from Pankov’s face, and his wife made a hissing sound. “You haven’t listened to a thing,” said the old man. “None of you. I will say everything in front of the Grand National Assembly. I won’t recognize these putschists.”

  Gavra straightened. They didn’t care, neither of them. “It’s too late. They have the country, and after this no one will be around to take it from them.”

  “After what?” said Pankov.

  “After your execution.”

  Ilona, eyes red along the lids, bared her teeth at him. “So they’re going to do it. They’re going to do to us what they did to our son. Animals.”

  She looked away, but Tomiak held Gavra’s gaze a moment. The younger man’s fear had finally left. He turned on his heel, much as the flamboyant prosecutor had done so often, and returned to Michalec, the guard struggling to catch up. “I’ll wait in the corridor until it’s time.”

  Michalec nodded at the guard, who followed Gavra out. As they entered the corridor, they passed the three judges and two lawyers, who were filing somberly back inside.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  •

  After breakfast, we prepared to go into Sarospatak so Ferenc could show off “the operation.” Magda had stared at me often during the meal, but I couldn’t figure out what she was trying to tell me until I was putting on my coat. She pulled me aside. “What I said last night is true.”

  “I know.”

  “The other part, I mean. I love you. And I want to help you. I don’t care if what they say about Lena is true. If she worked for them, she did it because she felt she had no choice. No one’s going to convince me otherwise.”

  “Thanks.”

  Bernard decided at the last minute to join us, because he wanted to find a Christmas tree for Sanja. Squeezed between them in the truck, I realized that, whatever his flaws, Bernard loved his family. “Here,” he said near a cluster of pine trees before the main road.

  Ferenc didn’t bother slowing. “Too small.”

  “Anything bigger, you won’t be able to fit it in the house.”

  “We’re not doing it half-ass this year,” said Ferenc. “We’ll find something on the way back.”

  They argued, shooting barbs back and forth past me as we bounced along the shoddy country road, but I wasn’t listening.

  Ferenc was right: Lena had worked for the Ministry, probably ever since we married in 1950. Four decades. For four decades, she’d maintained an enormous lie, and I never, not once, suspected.

  It was humiliating. I’d lived forty years with a stranger. A liar. How could she have kept it from me during all those drunken years? The only way a drunk can keep such a secret is if she’s living with a complete fool.

  Yes, I was angry at my dead wife. I felt like I was the good but dull and dull-witted husband in those films about adultery. The husband who listens to classical music and sucks on a pipe in his study, while in his bedroom his wife is breaking out of her monochrome existence with the gardener or the business partner. She’s filling her dead life with clandestine passion.

  But adultery would’ve been easy. I could have walked in on her in another man’s embrace, shouted and wept, and been done with it. This was something more, a parallel life, no doubt Lena’s real life, and I never even noticed that it was right there, right next to me.

  After forty years, I’d just learned that my life’s role had been the pitiful one. I was the dumb but harmless mouse, the one who never raised a question, who never noticed that my wife was a spy.

  It was really too much to take. It felt as if every few minutes my life, and my world, changed. I wished it would stop. I wished that something, anything, would remain as I remembered it.

  “Emil?”

  I blinked. Ferenc was frowning at me as he turned onto a main road. I said, “What?”

  “You’re not listening.”

  “Sorry. What’s the topic?”

  Bernard cut in. “He was telling you how much of a hero he was during the revolution.”

  “Not a hero,” said Ferenc, shaking his head. “Just what happened.”

  “You’re making yourself out to be a hero. Admit it.” “Shut up, Bernard.”

  Sarospatak traces its official history back to 1201, when it was granted town status by the Hungarian monarch King Emeric. It grew during the Middle Ages as a stop on the trading route to Poland. In the early fifteenth century, Ferenc told me, King Sigis-mund declared it a free royal town, and in 1460 King Matthias granted it the right to its own market. With the Reformation it became an academic center, and in the mid-1600s the famous educator Jan Comenius taught there. Ferenc told me all this as we crossed the city limits, adding that the famous Rakoczi family, which had owned the town’s castle, took a major part in the revolution against the Habsburgs. “They call Patak‘the Athens on the Bodrog’because we’ve got a history of education and revolution here.”

  “In that order,” said Bernard.

  But on the outskirts, before reaching the muddy Bodrog River, there was no sign of the First City’s glorious past. The remaining Habsburg buildings were crumbling from years of neglect, and the pedestrians bundled against the cold seemed insecure and confused under the gray sky.

  By eleven thirty, we crossed Bodrog Bridge. On a hill to our left, the Red Tower of Rakoczi Castle rose high, looking out over the entire city.

  Ferenc and his friends’base of operations was a small third-floor apartment in the center, just off Comenius Street. I spotted the window, because a sheet hung from it with the words NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC FORUM painted in blue. The stairwell stank of mildew—some pipes had frozen and burst a month ago and still hadn’t been fixed—and Ferenc had to hit the door with his shoulder because it was bloated with moisture. I expected a little more from the cradle of our revolution.

  Inside were five mismatched tables and seven mismatched chairs that had been borrowed from sympathizers. Today two young women and a young man watched a small television and manned two telephones, one of which had a lead that went out the window into a neighboring apartment. “Where the hell is everybody?” Ferenc asked them.

  “It’s Christmas,” said one of the girls, a striking blonde. “I’m not staying here all day either.”

  Christmas? I thought.

  Ferenc turned to me. “See? Is it any wonder those bastards in the Capital make more headway than us?” To the girl: “Aliz, you think the Galicia Committee’s taking off for Christmas?”

  Aliz shrugged, then looked at the television, where, from a hospital bed, Rosta Gorski told a reporter that his injuries wouldn’t stop his mission to restore democracy to our beleaguered country. “It’s no secret my assailant is connected to the Ministry—his wife was an agent. This only strengthens my resolve.”

  I found a chair and settled into it.

  Ferenc sat with his workers and went through papers. Bernard put a hand on my shoulder. “That’s the guy, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s calling you a Ministry agent.”

  I nodded again as he pulled up a chair beside me and began whispering.

  “This is what we’ll do,” he said, as if he’d been thinking about it a long time. “We go back to the Capital together. You and me. I’ve got my Militia Walther. We’ll find a way through the roadblocks, then I’ll track down Michalec’s address. He’s got to be living somewhere. We’ll get him to admit to everything on tape and play it on the radio from Patak.” He sounded excited by the idea. He was a lot like his father-in-law.

  I was about to thank him but tel
l him no when the young man at the other table, who had sideburns down to his jawline, looked up from some papers at the television. “Hey. Guys. Look.”

  All of us did as he asked and were surprised to see washed-out video footage of Tomiak and Ilona Pankov sitting at a long table, arms crossed over their chests, in a concrete-walled room.

  “Turn it up,” I said.

  TWENTY-NINE

  •

  Hours before it was broadcast, before the last tapes had been recorded and edited to make sure none of the judges or lawyers would be seen in the final cut, Gavra was given a set of infantry fatigues. While the court delivered its verdict, he changed in the corridor, watched by his guard and Andras Todescu, who looked haggard and scared in his expensive suit. “So you’re going to do it,” said Todescu.

  Gavra buttoned his pants.

  “It must be done,” said Todescu. “Yes. It must.” Then he gazed through the open doorway. The prosecutor was listing the couple’s crimes.

  Gavra didn’t want to see. He buttoned the jacket and walked farther down the corridor, peering into other, empty rooms. The guard didn’t bother following.

  His stomach still hurt, but it was the cold that bothered him. He couldn’t manage Brano’s mathematics in this chill. Escape paths, contingency plans, spatial relations, even past and future—they were all just beyond his reach. Then he heard the scuffle.

  Todescu, pressed back against the opposite wall, stared at two soldiers dragging Ilona Pankov out of the room. Her hands were bound behind her back, but she tried to kick the soldiers, breaking the heel of her shoe. She stumbled. Tomiak Pankov followed; he didn’t fight.

  He walked patiently between his guards, loudly humming a song. Gavra’s mind betrayed him by singing the words to the tune.

  Arise ye workers from your slumbers.

  Arise ye prisoners of want.

  For reason in revolt now thunders,

  And at last ends the age of cant.