'I didn't gouge out Lovas's eyes because I didn't have enough time. But yes, I did cut off all their fingers and I did blind Bodo before cutting his throat—'
'You're insane.'
'I was insane. Insane with grief. With rage. With an absolute need for revenge. I thought if I killed the men who killed the most important people in my life, somehow the fury that consumed me would cease.'
'But you just didn't kill them. You butchered them.'
'That is also correct. I butchered them in a completely premeditated way . . . and with great malice aforethought. I was determined to make them pay for what they did to me.'
'But to cut off their fingers?'
'Dupré didn't suffer that fate. I stabbed him repeatedly in the stomach and arms and made him look me in the face – so he could hear me tell him how he destroyed my life – before I plunged the knife into his heart and then cut his throat.'
'And then you left a note and took a shower and left all your clothes behind.'
'They did get very bloody during the attack. But yes, I had planned it all out. And yes, after administering the coup de grâce I used his bathroom to shower. I left the note. I made myself some coffee, as I had some time to kill before the first train left at five twenty-three . . . funny how I can still remember all such exact details. I reached the Gare du Nord forty minutes later. I collected my bag and bought my ticket and boarded the train. I splurged on a first-class couchette – so I had a compartment to myself. I remember giving the porter my passport and a large tip and telling him I didn't want to be woken up at the German or Austrian borders. Then I took off my clothes and got into the couchette and slept soundly for the next eight hours, by which time we were somewhere near Stuttgart—'
'You slept soundly after murdering a man?'
'I had been up all night. I was tired. And the adrenalin rush . . . well, it did exhaust me.'
'Did you feel better after killing Dupré?'
'A crazed numbness best describes it. Ever since I had decided on this course of action, I had been operating like an automaton. You do this, you do that, you go here, you go there. It was all carefully plotted out in my mind. Point by point.'
'Including your own suicide?'
'That wasn't part of the plan.'
'So you are dead?'
'I'll get to that – but only after I tell you about Bodo and Lovas.'
'I don't want to hear about how you tortured them.'
'Yes, you do – and you have no choice but to listen.
Otherwise you won't find out what you want to know.'
I reached for the Scotch, poured myself two fingers, and threw it back.
'Tell me then,' I said.
'Some weeks before I set my plan in motion, I contacted a friend in Budapest – a man who, like my father, was part of the entire samizdat newspaper brigade that operated for a time in the fifties. He was now in his seventies . . . and had done time in prison for his crimes of talking back to the State. He had been "rehabilitated" – though he'd also been tortured so badly during his "re-education" that he could no longer walk. I had made one journey back to Budapest in 1974, right after I had become a French citizen. I had a need to see it again, I suppose, as an adult – and had taken tea with this gentleman at his apartment. We couldn't talk openly – he was certain the place was bugged – but he did ask me if I'd push him out in his wheelchair in a nearby park. Once we were outside, I asked him if he could find the whereabouts of the men who executed my father in front of me. He said, "It's a small country . . . everybody can be found. But are you sure you want to find them?"
'I said, "Not now. But one day, perhaps . . ." He told me that when that day arrived, I should inform him by mail that "I would like to meet up with our friends", and he would take care of the rest.
'So, six years later, when I decided to régler les comptes, I sent him a letter. He wrote back, saying, "Our friends are alive and well and living in Budapest." I made my plans, deposited my bag at the Gare de l'Est, and cut Henri Dupré's throat. When I arrived in Hungary I went directly to this gentleman's apartment. He was now a very old man, very infirm. But he smiled when he saw me and told me he'd like to head out to the park. Once I had wheeled him outside, he handed me a piece of paper and said, "Here are their addresses. Is there anything else you need?" I told him, "A gun." He said, "No problem." When we went back to his apartment, he sent me rummaging around an attic storage room for a shotgun that his father used for hunting back when Charles I was our King. He even provided me with a saw to shorten the barrel. As I left the apartment – with the gun in my bag – he pulled me toward him and whispered in my ear, "I hope you kill them slowly." Then he sent me on my way.
'I checked into a hotel. I went to an apothecary – they still had such things in Budapest – and bought a cut-throat razor. I went to another shop and bought tape. I took the métro over to the Buda Hills where Lovas had his flat. I found it, no problem. I even rang the intercom and put on a funny voice and asked him if the woman of the house was in. "She died five years ago. Who is this? " I said I was a member of the local Party committee for Senior Activities, and apologized for the mistake. Then I went over to Bodo's flat in some ugly modern block in Pest. This time there was no intercom. But he answered the door himself: a hunched man around seventy in a dressing gown and wheezing while he smoked a cigarette. Of course he didn't recognize me. "What do you want?" Is the woman of the house in? "She left years ago." I said, "I'm from the Party committee on Pensioners and we want to see . . ." and I spun some lie about looking into the needs of the elderly. "Well, the woman you want isn't here . . . but if you want to talk about the needs of the elderly . . . you can come in now and hear an earful."
'Now, I hadn't expected to carry out my plan so quickly – but I did have everything I needed with me, so I let him usher me into his small, depressing flat. Crap furniture, crap wallpaper, a nasty little kitchen, brimming ashtrays, empty bottles of cheap booze.
'"So who are you again?" he asked.
'I told him my name.
'"Kadar . . . like our Party chairman?" he asked me.
'"No . . . Kadar like Miklos Kadar. You remember Miklos Kadar, don't you?"
'"I'm an old man. So many people have come and gone in my life."
'"Yes, but Miklos Kadar must hold a special place in your memory . . . as you executed him in front of his daughter."
'By this point we were seated in his little bed-sitting room. I opened the bag. I pulled out the shotgun. He gasped, but I put my finger to my lips and he didn't say another word.
'"Surely you must remember his little girl, Margit? You ordered one of your police stooges to keep her eyes open while you lynched him two meters from where she stood."
'At that point, he started to feign ignorance. "I don't know what you're talking about . . . I don't remember such things." I hit him on the side of the head with the gun and told him that if he didn't tell me the truth I'd shoot him on the spot. That's when he started to cry, to plead, to say how sorry he was, how he was "only following orders". . . Yes, he actually used that expression.
'I told him, "My mother and I were whisked out of the country afterward and even paid a pittance of a recompense by the government, because they were ashamed of what had happened. So please do not tell me you were only following orders. The cop who held me, he was only following orders – because you barked at him on several occasions when he let me shut my eyes. You, sir, wanted a seven-year-old girl to witness her father's death. You wanted that scene burned on my memory forever. You succeeded. I've spent the ensuing decades trying to wipe that image away – but it simply will never leave me . . . a trauma which you inflicted on me out of sheer malice and cruelty—"
'"You're right, you're right," he cried. "I was so wrong. But they were terrible times and—"
'That's when I hit him again on the head and ordered him to sit down at his kitchen table. The fool complied. When I told him to lay his hands flat down on the table, he didn't resist . . . even thou
gh he could have made a break for it when I had to put down the gun to start taping him. I used three rolls of tape – making certain he couldn't move his arms and couldn't get out of the chair.
'When I had finished I said, "You dare to tell me, 'They were terrible times.' You were one of the perpetrators of those terrible times. You were an essential part of a repressive regime – against which men like my father had the courage to raise their voice. And how did you respond to his criticisms of your tyrannical methods? You strung him up in front of his daughter and forced her to watch him jerk and twist as he slowly strangled to death. How can you justify such a thing? How?"
'He didn't answer. He just sat there weeping. Much later, I was certain the reason why he didn't put up a fight when I started taping him down was not just because of the gun within reach of me. It was also because part of him knew he merited this . . . that what he had done was so monstrous he deserved a terrible retribution.'
'But what you did to him . . . that wasn't monstrous?'
'Of course it was. And after I wound the tape around his mouth and head – ensuring that he couldn't scream or breathe – I did tell him, "In a few moments, you will wish I'd shot you and ended your life quickly." Then I reached into my bag and pulled out the razor and opened it and severed his right thumb. It's not easy, severing a finger. You have to work your way through bone and tendon and—'
'Enough,' I said.
'I told you, if you don't sit through my story you don't get to hear the truth—'
'The truth? You expect me to believe there's any truth to any of this?'
'Where are you right now, Harry? In some dream?'
'I haven't a fucking idea anymore . . .'
'In dreams you might get your hand cut, but it doesn't bleed. This is real. It's simply a different version of real. But again, you're interrupting my story. And until I finish the story—'
'You're sick, you know that?'
'Sick because I cut off all of Bodo's fingers? Without doubt, it was a sick thing to do. Even through the tape around his mouth I could hear his screams. But I was very systematic. Every finger on his right hand. A short pause. Every finger on his left hand. Then I started on his eyes. The police were wrong, by the way. I didn't gouge them out. I simply sliced across them. You remember that Buñuel exercise in surrealism: Un chien andalou, where a woman gets her eye cut by a razor. It approximated that. And yes, you can think me mad and twisted for inflicting such horror . . . but surely you can grasp the madness that overtakes someone when they have been so wronged that—'
'Don't try to justify it. Don't.'
'I'm trying to justify nothing, Harry. I am simply relating to you what happened.'
'Did it settle the score? Did doing that to Bodo in any way make you feel better about your father's death?'
'At the time, all I could think was, Do what you must do . . . Be systematic . . . Then get out of this dreadful country. So after blinding Bodo, I made a small incision in the side of his throat – to let him slowly bleed to death . . . though within moments I could hear gurgling and gasping behind his taped nose and mouth: a sign that he was starting to drown in his own blood. I had packed a spare set of clothes in the bag – so it was the same drill as with Dupré. I stripped everything off and had a shower. Only this time, I cleaned up all the evidence. I wanted everyone in France to know what I did. I also wanted everyone to know in Hungary . . . but only after I was out of the country. So I scrubbed down every surface I touched and bundled up my bloody clothes and waited until Bodo was no longer gasping and gagging.
'Then I left and took the métro back across the city to Buda. I returned to the shop where I had purchased the duct tape and bought four more rolls. I walked over to Lovas's apartment and rang his bell. He said, "Go away, I ant to see nobody."
'I said, "But I am the woman from the Party's senior services. I have come with a special present for you. You must let me deliver it."
'Once I had talked myself inside his apartment and revealed who I was and brought out the gun, he began to scream. I told him to shut up, but he kept screaming. That's when I slammed him on the head with the gun. It knocked him out cold. I taped him down, I gagged him as I had done with Bodo. But just as I started working on him, there was a banging at the door. It was some neighbor who'd evidently heard his screaming, as she kept shouting, "Mr Lovas, are you all right? Is someone there with you? " If I had been sensible, I would have cut his throat right there and hightailed it out of the kitchen window – his apartment was on the ground floor. But I wasn't sensible. I was deranged. So deranged that I convinced myself I had to dismember all of his fingers and blind him as well. The pain caused Lovas to wake up when I was cutting off his right pinky, and I'd been sloppy when it came to taping his mouth, as I left a small gap. So he started to scream again. The neighbor heard this and told him she was going to call the police. But I still didn't make a run for it. I just continued my grim work—'
'You wanted to get caught—'
'I don't know what I wanted at the time. When you're deranged you don't think logically. You just tell yourself, Get the next finger off . . .'
'Jesus . . .'
She smiled and lit up a cigarette.
'It gets worse. The police arrived. They pounded on the door, demanding to be let in. I worked super-fast, making certain all his fingers were severed. By this time, their pounding was replaced with the boom-boom sound of a battering ram they were using against the door. As it began to give, I grabbed Lovas by the hair. As soon as the door burst open and the cops fell in, I cut his jugular. Then, as they watched in complete horror, I drew the razor across my own throat.'
'And then?'
'And then . . . I escaped arrest, detention, trial and probable execution by a regime I loathed.'
'By dying?'
'Yes. I died.'
Silence. She continued to puff on her cigarette.
'And then?' I asked.
'Death is death.'
'Which means?'
'I no longer existed in a temporal form.'
'But what happened after you died?'
Another smile. Another deep lungful of smoke.
'That I cannot say.'
'Why not?'
'Because . . . I can't.'
'The cops showed me your death certificate. And you yourself have confirmed that you slit your throat and you died. So why . . . why . . . are you here?'
'Because I am.'
'But that doesn't make sense. How can I believe you when I know what you're telling me is impossible?'
'Since when has death ever made sense, Harry?'
'But you've been there. You know.'
Another smile.
'True – and I'm saying nothing.'
'You have to tell me—'
'No, I don't. And no . . . I won't. Any more than I have to explain my work on your behalf.'
'Your work on my behalf. Now I know you are insane.'
'Think what you like, my sweet. But consider this: every person who has recently done harm to you has, in turn, been punished.'
'You ran over Brasseur outside the hotel?'
'Yes.'
'How?'
'How else do you run a man down? I got into a car that I borrowed on the street. A Mercedes C-Class – not the best Mercedes, but still a car with considerable kick. I waited for him to emerge from Le Sélect. When he stepped off the pavement, I hit the accelerator and ran right into him.'
'He said he couldn't see the driver, but he thought it was a woman.'
The Woman In The Fifth Page 35
