Siren of the Waters: A Jana Matinova Investigation

by Michael Genelin

  He’d had many women, too many to count, too many to remember. And all of them were a part of his Siren of the Waters. It was always the same. Like her, when he finished with touching them, he went away, never thinking of them again, never really caring until he needed another. At the beginning, even as it started with a new one, he knew he would walk away, sooner rather than later.

  Objects, all of them. Actors on his stage. Ugly, beautiful, no matter. Some stayed longer; only one of them had stayed for years. They had not had a sexual relationship but they had enjoyed setting the stage together and now she, too, was gone from him.

  The rain stopped. He looked up. Still overcast. Not a good day. He walked on, into the old quarter, entering the small restaurant that served socca, a local dish he liked. The man took a seat, as was his custom, away from the windows, next to one of the walls, allowing him front and rear views. Then he motioned the waiter over, ordering a glass of red wine and the plate of socca he had come here for. While he was waiting, he reviewed what would happen this evening.

  The Manager and friends would arrive at the party between 2000 and 2100 hours. The title Manager had not been used; but how vain and stupid to announce their arrival time giving their real names to the press. Hubris. They would mingle at the party, showing the world their trappings of wealth and privilege; then they would leave for the night taking the short trip to their “nests.” They would confer among themselves; they would think they had arranged their futures. The man grimaced. Their plans were incomplete. He was here now.

  The waiter brought the glass of wine, than came back a moment later with the socca. The man nodded his thanks, took a small piece of the socca with his fingers, glanced at it to make sure it was the right color, then fed himself.

  Time enough to determine what he would do. It was never hard to find a way to kill. It was the drama of the situation that was difficult, the choreography that everyone would remember. Events like this should never be casual affronts. Death needed to be staged as an event, as in Shakespeare or Ibsen’s plays.

  He ate another bit of socca, then sipped at the wine. The police officers, they were another matter. Together they would present a problem, again not in killing them, but in the end result of the killing. What would the audience think if he removed these objects from the stage all at once? What would the public’s reaction be to conjoining their killings with the killing of the Manager and the Manager’s associates?

  He ran the taste of the socca around his mouth. For some reason, the socca did not taste as good as he remembered. Unevenly fried? Too much oil? Well, it was a fast-food dish.

  He laughed at himself. All these years, all that money, all that luxurious living, and he still liked the occasional taste of food that was barely out of the gutter.

  He drank the last of the wine, laid the money to pay for his meal on the table before the waiter had time to even prepare the bill, then walked out.

  The overcast was lifting. Good. Maybe there would still be some sun today? It would be a shame to waste the opportunity to sit in the warm sun for even a few minutes.

  Chapter 41

  Jana had tried to find work that would pay enough to support herself and then still have a little left over to send to America for her daughter’s upkeep. They had not dismissed Jana from the police force. Instead, she had been suspended indefinitely pending a departmental hearing. Each time the hearing was scheduled, for one reason or another it was delayed again. Not that she minded. Any hearing would have a forgone conclusion: She would be terminated, her career ruined.

  So she did not push for an adjudication. Rather, she hoped it would be delayed until a new regime came in. Perhaps then events would move in her favor. Jana did not have great hope, but she fastened on the only one she had. Jana did have one ally: Trokan. His hand had to have been at work in securing the continuances. Trokan was trying to buy time for her.

  Jana worked in a bakery in the early morning hours and a tannery in the afternoon. She had entered the same informal hiring system that Dano had been in, lower wages for jobs already paying low wages, with no reports filed with the government. She earned enough to keep herself, and every month she sent money for Katka.

  Katka had tried calling her mother from the United States until she finally understood, from her aunt and others, that Jana was under further threat every time one of those calls was made. They would be used against her. Eventually, they stopped coming.

  On the other hand, Jana did not stop writing. When she sent money to Katka, she used a number of ways to have it delivered. Generally, people she trusted who were going to other countries carried it. They could mail it from outside the country. Once she had used an Austrian traveling through the country. She had even mailed money from Prague under the name of a person she’d picked out of a directory.

  The letters she included with the money contained all kinds of information: a smattering of what Jana knew about what was happening with Katka’s school chums, bits and pieces of news of the rising tide against the communists, encouragement of Katka in her school studies. All the things a mother wants to say . . . except news about her father. That would have been catastrophic for Katka.

  Dano was on the run. His activism had gone sour for him, as Jana had known it would, ultimately culminating in a botched attempt to rob a truck carrying the payroll for the large steelworks in the north of the country. One of the drivers had been killed.

  Before the disaster, Dano had had a small following and had ridden the general wave of dissatisfaction with the government. Everyone loves a Robin Hood. Dano’s three prior successful robberies had all been followed by declarations that he and his group were taking the money not for themselves, but to foment revolution and to do away with an oppressive government. Moreover, he had made sure that some money was distributed to other groups, groups following more normal channels of democratic dissent. And Dano had not forgotten the impoverished, doling out sums to them with a soupçon of anti-government rhetoric. Then came the botched robbery.

  The government apparatchiks went into high gear, exploiting the death of the driver. He’d had four children, and his wife and children were featured in the government media for weeks, all talking about how they had loved their father, how kind, generous, and caring he had been to them, how the dead man’s mother had suffered a mental breakdown at the death of her only son and had been confined to a hospital.

  Dano was vilified at every opportunity. A supposed mistress surfaced who, she claimed, Dano had forcibly taken from her boyfriend. Later, the woman recanted. There was a purported drunken brawl in which Dano had beaten up a teenager who supported the government. The government procurator claimed that the teenager was underage and should not be subjected to public scrutiny, so he was never produced to verify the facts. Then the usual government informants appeared and were pirouetted before audiences, all of them attesting to various public and private sins. Dano was termed everything from a sexual deviate to a homicidal maniac, capable of killing anyone, who would, if given any further chance, kill again.

  A large reward was offered for Dano and his confederates. The circle of repression became more constrictive. Travel restrictions became more severe, roadblocks became routine, suspected dissidents were placed under house arrest or imprisoned. One by one, the few men whom Dano had recruited were seized. The ones who had participated in the robberies with Dano confessed publicly, naming Dano as the ring-leader. All of them expressed remorse, all of them placed the blame for the killing on Dano. The fact that, according to the eyewitnesses, the actual killer of the driver did not fit Dano’s physical description, but clearly fit that of one of the confederates who was screaming the loudest that Dano was the murderer, did not matter. The government had decided.

  A small country became smaller and smaller for Dano. Where could he run? Where could he hide any more?

  It had turned into morning, and Jana was coming from her job at the bakery when she realized there was a man up ahead, looki
ng back at her. Dirty, grimy from cleaning out ovens, fatigued from working two separate jobs which resulted in broken sleep and no time for the personal matters that everyone needs, she was surprised, even at this distance, that anyone would take an interest in her.

  When he began walking, also in the general direction of her home, she decided, making rude noises to herself under her breath, that she had come too close and he had lost interest. Jana had decided to walk to her house, just to take the fresh air into her lungs after working in the bakery where the air was always filled with the fine grains of flour. She was strolling, in no hurry.

  She noticed the man had stopped again, nearer this time, allowing her to close the distance between them. She came within twenty meters before she recognized him. Dano had come home.

  The police officer still in her struggled with the fact that he was a robber. No matter. She pushed the policewoman deeper inside herself, remembering that they were both outcasts. She took his arm, threading his fingers through hers. Two lonely people walking home.

  They did not say a word as they walked. Dano seemed to be in a daze. Jana’s instincts, and needs, told her to accept the moment for whatever it was. No one bothered them; no one seemed to notice their presence. The neighbors were filled a space in another part of the universe than the place the two of them shared.

  When they got to Jana’s front door, she unlocked it. Both were comfortable in the shelter of the house. Jana took off her coat. Dano looked around, no longer familiar with the house as he once had been. He took the changes in: Things were shabbier, the walls needed painting. He was bone-weary, not from working two jobs as Jana was, but from the burden of trying to create a world he wanted and couldn’t have. Dano was lost; he was beaten. She finally led him to an armchair, gently pushing him down into it.

  “I only have tea.”

  “Tea is good.”

  “Are you as hungry as you look?”

  “A little hungry,” he acknowledged.

  She hustled into the kitchen, feeling eager, lighter than she had in years, quickly washing her face, neck, and arms in the sink, hoping he hadn’t noticed how drab she looked. She put the kettle on for tea, then searched in the refrigerator. Not very good. It was filled with leftovers from half-eaten meals. There was a little hope: two eggs, not enough for a complete meal, but a start.

  The cupboards were next, but they were so barren and disappointing that she had to restrain herself at the last moment from slamming the doors. There was a bag of flour. Thankful, she pulled out a mixing bowl, poured flour into it, cracked both eggs on top of the flour, added water, then mixed it well. A second later, she had put a pan on a high flame just to get it warm quickly. Then, when it was hot enough, she spooned butter in. She turned the flame lower, and then she set about brewing the tea.

  Five minutes later, her hair now tidied up, Jana came out of the kitchen with pancakes on a large platter, a half jar of apricot jam rescued from the back of the refrigerator, and pre-sweetened tea the way Dano liked it. She set it in front of him to help himself.

  He stared at the platter.

  “It’s all I have in the house.” She was worried that he would blame her. “It will be good to see you eat.”

  “Just a taste.” He took a forkful of pancake without the jam. Jana ladled jam on the remainder of the pancake. He looked at it, chewing slowly. “I think one may be enough.” He took a sip of the tea. “You know, I’ve developed a taste for coffee.” He set the cup down, staring into space.

  Jana found that she was irritated. Her perceptions were that Dano needed food, but he didn’t want what she had. He eventually agreed that he would take tea because it was the only beverage in the house; now he criticized it because it was not coffee.

  “I have nothing else to give you, Dano,” she said. He continued to sit, staring into space. Didn’t he realize that she was hungry too? Maybe she should encourage him to eat by eating herself? She forked a piece of pancake into her mouth and chewed enthusiastically, then took a mouthful of tea. “It’s good to have food in your belly.” She took another forkful.

  “I am sorry that you did not come with me.” Dano did not look at her as he spoke. “It would have been easier.”

  Jana’s irritation increased. “There was no possible way I would have come. None at all. You knew that; you told me to stay here. Why are you now saying I should have come?”

  “We would have been together.”

  “You wanted to go on a mission. I read about you, heard about you. The new Messiah come to bring the idolaters and despoilers down.” She did not like the direction the conversation was taking. However, her rising anger refused to allow her to stop, so she rushed on. “You were the one who left us. You were the one who had a daughter. She needed you here!”

  Dano started to stir. His voice took on a sharp, edgy quality. “Could I let her be brought up in the conditions in this country? Would it have been better to let her see me rotting away, a little bit every day? No.”

  “Our family was not so badly off. We had a house. I had a good job. My mother was happy. The family was fine. Since you went on your selfish way, we now have Katka far away from her home being brought up by someone else, my job gone, my mother dead, and you a fugitive.”

  Dano finally looked directly at her. She had reached him. Jana got up and moved away. “I do not like this government. I do not like what they did to you.” She corrected herself. “No, I do not like what they did to both of us. Did that mean I should run and hide?”

  “I stood up. I didn’t run and hide!”

  “The actor stood up for his bow. That’s what you did, played a role and waited for the applause. Who were you? Moses bringing the Ten Commandments to his people? Did they applaud when you came down from the mountain? If they applauded, I could not hear it.”

  Dano closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for some inner voice to tell him how to respond. Then he managed to open them as if afraid to see reality. “Did I do you an injury? Did I do my daughter an injury? It was a risk. I knew that; you knew that, when I left. I did not think I was playing a stage part. It was real. Realize something: I hated myself for leaving; I would have hated myself more if I had stayed.”

  “I stayed, Dano.”

  “I know.” He shrank a little. “We both have been damaged. I wish it were not so.”

  “Dano, you became a bank robber.”

  “We needed the money to keep going. The Party needed it.”

  Jana’s anger, which had started to abate, flared up again, stronger this time. “The Party needed it,” she mimicked. “How many of you were there? Five or six people, that was your Party. It was not a political movement; it was an armed outlaw band.”

  “We had others. They needed the money to publish, to hold meetings, to fight the establishment in other ways.”

  “Fight the establishment? You sound like the establishment. The government. The Party. You became like them. Everything and anything for the Party.” She was drained. She felt anguish for Dano, her lover, her husband, the father of her daughter. She felt it for herself.

  Jana picked up the plate of uneaten pancakes to take them back into the kitchen. She turned to face him once more. “My god, a man died in one of your armed attacks, Dano. Think about that. He had not committed a crime.”

  “We knew there was risk.”

  “How dare you decide what he should risk? Did you ask him?”

  “I didn’t want him to die.”

  “That’s what most robbers say.” She walked into the kitchen with the plate, then heard the door open. It should not end on this note, she told herself, hurrying back to the front room.

  Dano was standing at the open door, looking out. Then he stepped back inside, closing the door.

  “They’re here.” He had a resigned look on his face. “They’ve come for their criminal.”

  Jana ran to the window, pushing the curtain aside. Police cars were parking, more were driving down the street. There were armed
men everywhere. She let the curtain fall back.

  Dano smiled, the captivating smile she remembered when they first began to go together. “It had to end.”

  She nodded, not knowing what she could say. “I’m sorry,” was what came out.

  “It isn’t right. I brought them to this house.” He quickly stepped over to her, kissing her on the cheek. “I’m going to wash up. I want to look clean for the photos they will take.” He walked toward the back of the house. “Just let them in when they knock.”

  Jana heard footsteps on the front stair. There was a long pause. Maybe they were trying to decide whether to break in without demanding entry. Why have them damage the front door, she thought. Just open it, Jana. She was reaching for the doorknob when she heard the shot.

  As if in a distorted dream, she watched herself opening the door. Trokan was standing there, alone. He stepped in, closing the door behind him.

  “Where is he?” Trokan asked.

  “In the back,” she heard herself say.

  Trokan walked to the back of the small house. Time stopped, she would swear afterward. Even the ticking of clocks was stilled. The air did not move. The sun was fixed in place. The world had stopped revolving. No pulse, no breath, no life.

  Trokan came back, holding her service revolver by the barrel. He walked over to her, placing the butt of the gun in her hand, closing her fingers around it. “It is a good thing you shot the fugitive murderer, Matinova. Otherwise we would have to believe you were giving him shelter. That, of course, would mean prison.” He walked to the door, opening it. “I’m calling the others in. Congratulations on your proving your loyalty to our country and our principles of justice.”

  He walked out. Three weeks later, a state hero, she was reinstated in the police force at her full rank.