The Killing Spirit

by Jay Hopler

  He poured himself some coffee, then leaned across the table and refilled our cups. “It has been a strange couple of weeks,” Kruchnik said, breaking the silence. “Now, it is the others who must worry.” He laughed a little at his own remark.

  “Yes,” I said, not really committing myself one way or the other.

  Kruchnik smiled back and took a large, gurgling sip of his coffee. He was a younger man, I don’t mean as young as Leni, but still young, and his meteoric rise within the party was well-known. Even his detractors were amazed by the fact that he had accomplished so much at such an early age. Yet, Kruchnik’s success was actually justified. Although I had never seen anything in writing, I knew of his ability to make quick, ruthless decisions that always left him on the right end of things.

  “Well, this is a wonderful day,” Kruchnik began again, maintaining his jovial mood. Leni and I forced polite smiles, and Kruchnik seemed to take no notice of our uneasiness; instead, he continued laughing and called Ivan Quristi to bring out some fancy pastries.

  “Allow me to select something for you both,” Kruchnik said, eyeing the cart Ivan had rolled out from the kitchen. “I’m usually pretty good at making decisions.” There were three large, crusty fruit tarts, all cramped together in the middle of the platter. One of them would have been enough to split among us. “We’ll take all three,” Kruchnik said loudly. Ivan nodded slightly and asked if we wanted them heated.

  “Of course!” Kruchnik moaned, before adjusting himself in the chair.

  “Thank you, sir,” Leni managed.

  “Here,” Kruchnik said, his tone suddenly subdued and businesslike. He reached into his satchel, pulled out a light blue paper bag, and handed it across the table to Leni, who remained silent. Some crisp lira notes and a few tattered dinars, all of high denominations, dribbled out of the bag momentarily before Leni quickly crammed them back inside. He glanced over at me and I looked down at my empty coffee cup, trying not to let him know I’d seen the money.

  “So what’s this?” Kruchnik said, noticing our exchange, Leni’s look of anxiety, me averting my eyes. Neither of us answered, perhaps a little dumbfounded at his acknowledgment of a moment that should have been ignored. Kruchnik sat back in his chair and a sly smile came over his face, the first time I’d ever seen such an expression.

  “Have either of you ever heard the story about the two fish swimming in the Drina?” he said, leaning back in his chair.

  “No,” Leni said.

  “Well, this is one from my childhood, from way way back. These two fish had grown up together, you see … had been spawned together. Brothers. And when they got older, one got bigger than the other all of a sudden. But the two of them ignored this difference between them. Instead, they made every effort to remain equal, and every effort to remain friends.”

  At that moment, Ivan returned with our heated pastries. “Ah, good, good,” Kruchnik said. As the old cafe owner set down our plates, I looked over at Leni sitting there, silent, expressionless, as quiet as I’d seen him in years.

  “And so everything was fine,” Kruchnik said, hacking off a piece of his tart. “They just did their best not to address the massive physical difference between them. But then one day the head fish—the mayor I guess you could say—approached the larger brother with an errand. The mayor wanted the large one to protect him, to serve as his bodyguard. In exchange for these services, the large fish would be introduced to the mayor’s daughter, a beautiful guppy.”

  “Did he take the job?” Leni said.

  “Well, he thought about it for many days, until finally he went to ask Mila, the goddess of the sea, for advice,” Kruchnik answered, and as he said this last part, his eyes widened, the whites of them grossly clear—as if we weren’t making the painfully obvious connections here. “And so while he was away, the smaller brother swam around the Drina alone, wondering where his large brother had gone.” Kruchnik’s voice was hushed now, almost sinister, and a knowing look formed on his face. He stared at both of us for a moment and then continued his story.

  “One morning, the smaller brother, still swimming on his own in the lovely Drina, came upon a beautiful young guppy, scanning the bottom of the riverbed for food. ‘I have plenty of food,’ the smaller brother said, ‘Would you like to share?’ And so the beautiful guppy, the mayor’s daughter, went with the smaller brother to eat.” Kruchnik smiled as he said this last part, and then put down his fork. “So do you know what happened next?” he said in my direction.

  “No,” I said. “What happened?” I was grumpy now.

  “The mayor’s daughter fell in love with the smaller brother?” Leni said.

  “Aha,” Kruchnik said. “I see you have heard this one before. Why did you not stop me earlier? Now I feel as if I have made a fool of myself.” Of course, Kruchnik did not feel this way in the slightest. If he had, he never would’ve admitted it. Besides, I was fairly certain that he had made the whole thing up anyway, and probably even as he was telling it.

  “Well,” Kruchnik said, slyly laughing and examining each of our expressions. “Seems as if we have come to the end.” He then deliberately took the package of money out of Leni’s hands and plopped it on the table directly in front of me. Studying our expressions, he cut a large portion of his strawberry tart and stuffed it into his mouth, emitting a small gushing sound as he chewed. How strangely things had twisted. There was my young friend Leni, who hardly knew anything of my evening with Mila, and then there was Kruchnik, who seemed aware of everything.

  I wanted time to think about the money and what Mila could have done to earn it. Clearly, her hotel room had been arranged by Kruchnik, which explained how she had secured such a fancy suite, yet I didn’t have even the slightest indication why.

  “See,” Kruchnik finally said, leaning back in his chair and gesturing toward the cafe’s crowd, “while other officials are losing power, I’m gaining it by the minute.” He smiled widely, opening his mouth just a bit as if to release a silent laugh. For a moment, I suspected he might burp. “Last week, or last night for that matter, I might have been afraid to dine in public, to be seen spreading money around like this. But how quickly things can change, I tell you. It’s an amazing thing.”

  “Yes, it is,” Leni said cautiously.

  “Ah, my young friend,” Kruchnik said to him, taking hold of his hand, “there is nothing to worry about. Believe me! You’ve done your part.”

  Both of Kruchnik’s hands were clasped on Leni’s now, cupping them much like a father might as he consoled his troubled son. In the background, other customers in the cafe sat up and began leaving, some even before they had finished their meals. The expression on Leni’s face remained unchanged.

  Although they managed to create a good deal of noise, the crowd gathering in the square was nowhere near as large as it had been the previous day. Perhaps people were finally running out of energy, their stamina waning. The longer a celebration lasts, I figured, the harder it must be to maintain the frenetic pace, the constant revelry. Recapturing the energy of that first day seemed nearly impossible now Clearly, the gatherings were no longer the result of an impulse, a spontaneous force within the people. As the days continued, the immediacy and passion could not help but fade.

  Kruchnik had instructed me to meet Mila back at the Dajti sometime that afternoon, so I lingered in the square only for a few minutes. Across from the Ministry building, still silent and deserted, I saw Altin’s white pushcart, neatly planted in the exact spot it had been the afternoon before, but no Altin Leka to be found. Instead, a group of children were gathered around it, and one of them, his head buried from view, was handing ice creams out from the storage compartment. Altin’s smelly coat lay across the back of his chair, with important-looking documents sprouting from the inside pocket. I stood there staring.

  “The almond man’s not coming back,” a young girl said to me. She was carrying a small bag with a loaf of bread leaning out of the top.

  “What?” I sa
id, kneeling down to her.

  “The almond man won’t be back.”

  At that moment, the girl’s mother showed up and the two of them held hands.

  “They sent somebody to find his family.”

  “Why?”

  The mother and daughter looked at each other for a second, a sullen expression on their faces, and they remained silent. “I suppose somebody should do something about those little thieves,” the mother finally said, indicating the children raiding Altin’s cart.

  “Yes, somebody should,” I mumbled back, not sure what else I could say. The three of us stood there for a moment, staring at one another. Then I ran over to the cart yelling, and the kids fled in every direction, scattering and screaming, but without fear in the voices. It was more like laughter, as if we’d been playing a grand game. I flipped the top of each compartment closed, fastened the partitions on Altin’s vehicle, and rolled it into the shade by the Ministry building. Up the street, the woman and her daughter continued watching me. I guess they wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to steal anything myself.

  “All fine,” I yelled toward them, waving. They did not call back to me or make any motion. They just stood there, watching as before. I wanted to walk over and demand a detailed explanation of Altin’s fate, but I knew that was not possible. Even the slightest of my questions, I fearfully imagined, would be met with more stone-faced looks, sinister glances that might say, “Of course, you know what happened to Altin. And didn’t you have a part in it, too?”

  Quickly arriving home, I went through the apartment and looked for potential money-hiding places. From the Italian crime shows I’d seen on Nossi’s TV, I remembered two or three good spots to do this: behind a painting, under a floorboard, or in the hollow pipe of a brass bedpost. But I didn’t have any of these things in my place—they were back at the old house with Ana—and so I took the money and sat on the bed, trying to figure a solution. I did have one picture up, but it was just an unframed print of boats resting in the Adriatic.

  The light blue money bag was next to me, and I held it with both hands, squeezing it again and again. Then I dumped it out across the blanket, letting everything come free. For a moment, seeing it all there, I genuinely thought about taking it for myself. I was surprised at the nice feeling it gave me. Freedom. Of course, even if I could convince myself, I knew that this one bag was not nearly enough to take me beyond the range of its consequences.

  I gathered the bills into small piles and paused a couple of times to look at the currency itself, the strange green and purple etchings of Ruder Boškoviċ, his hair tied back in the old-style ponytail, the ruffles of his shirt helping to balance out a slight double chin. Scientific spatial models, spheres, equations rested above his left shoulder. I couldn’t remember what they were, what he’d done. I once knew the answer to this, I suppose, as a child, back when there was time and reason to know such things—long before I’d become a member of the Ministry.

  I went to my desk and pulled out the large bottom drawer completely, setting it to the side. There was a good four inches of space between the floor and the rail that held the drawer in position. Before reconfiguring the currency into three-inch piles, I wiped the area out with a towel, then lined the money inside. There was something slightly gratifying about seeing it neatly tucked into this hiding spot, and as I replaced the drawer, I felt strange having so much cash concealed within my desk.

  After that, I immersed myself in routine housework—washing the dishes, soaking my work shirts, darning some socks, even scrubbing the floor. I tried—without success—to reach my father by telephone to explain the lack of transportation, why I wasn’t coming. Of course there were other reasons, too, but they had surfaced afterward. Truly, the buses had stopped me.

  I replayed the moment Mila insisted I join her and Leni for a drink at the hotel; the way we lost Leni in the crowd; the look on the desk clerk’s face as the two of us headed up to Mila’s room; and even Kruchnik handing me the light blue money bag with such showy self-assuredness. To be honest, I was embarrassed at how easily I’d been drawn into such a scheme. Yet, I wasn’t ready to disentangle myself from whatever it was, whatever it would be. Even if my part was merely that of the naive fool, it was still infinitely more interesting than anything I had done in a long while.

  I began preparing for Mila’s arrival, planning what I would be doing when she appeared, what the best way would be for her to see me. Reading the paper on the couch, the front door slightly cracked? Hunched over the stove, preparing dinner? Or even leaning on the small balcony, studying the night sky? My mind raced on to other considerations, too. Was there enough food in the kitchen if she agreed to stay? Were my clothes appropriate? And yes, the sheets on the bed—were they clean?

  I knew how foolish this was; clearly it was causing my small seed of hope to multiply upon itself. But then, I pictured Mila as my ex-wife Ana, and imagined how successful my initial scheming had been with her. That first night, many years ago, Ana had come to my apartment planning to visit for only a moment, but gradually I had convinced her to stay. At first, it was the warmth of my burning fireplace, and then later impeccable cooking and well-planned conversation. It worked for a long time, nearly ten years, before she decided that, yes, she really must go.

  I decided to await Mila’s arrival on the couch, reading the news journal and glancing over some of my old papers from work. I was able to spend a long while in this position, anxiously listening for that knock on the door. Eventually, though, I grew bored and moved into the kitchen. For about an hour, I dawdled around the stove and counter, mindlessly preparing one of Ana’s old recipes. From there, I went outside to the porch and listened intently for Mila’s solid footsteps along the dirt street. Inevitably, the cold night air and a growing sense of disappointment forced me back to the warm couch where I drifted into a light sleep.

  The next morning, without thinking, I ate breakfast, put on my work clothes, and headed off toward the Ministry of Slogans. The warm sunshine distracted me from the setback of the previous night, just as recent events had helped me overlook the fact that I would soon lose my job.

  As I walked across the boulevard toward the city center, I noticed a small group of people heading in my direction. My old boss Hansa Splite and his wife Katarina were leading the spectacle, arm-in-arm and dressed in their blackest of black clothes. Beside them was Hansa’s sister, Lena, and she was crying inconsolably. As they got closer, a small horse cart pulling a casket appeared, followed by a meager, slightly underdressed and seemingly uninterested group of mourners. Altin Leka was no longer missing.

  Though I hadn’t cared for him much, seeing Altin’s mother Lena in tears made me reconsider him for a moment. Even figuring his supposedly swift decline in power, it seemed rather odd that there was not one uniformed party official in the procession. This almost seemed to confirm the rumors of his shadow position.

  Up ahead in the square, the large crowds of the past few days had entirely subsided, giving me the distinct impression that all of the changes that had taken place would no longer be detectable to the human eye. If things had indeed changed, maybe now they were simply of the mind and of the mood—something outsiders might easily overlook.

  The front door to the Ministry was unlocked and propped open by a large brick. Inside, I unexpectedly found apprentices and managers alike moving about the place in a flurry of activity. They were carrying reports and diagrams back and forth across the office, much in the same way as they had the week before, but now there was a palpable sense of eagerness and almost giddy optimism among the workers. I stood in the foyer, somewhat entranced by the action. After a while, however, I felt strange and began the trek upstairs, through the corridor, and across the wing to my corner office, seeking the comfort of my routine. Along the way, I watched other workers, hoping to gain clues as to my approaching fate. But there was nothing—no frowns of dread, looks of sympathy, or even glances of morbid curiosity.

  Thro
ugh the distorted glass of my office door, I could see people moving inside. I entered with a bit of trepidation and was relieved to find my two assistants arranging large stacks of paper across my desk.

  “Good morning,” they said in unison.

  “Good morning,” I responded. Then there was a strange moment of silence, as if both parties were waiting for the other to make some important declaration. Yet, nobody spoke.

  “Okay then,” I finally offered, trying to ease the tension.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” the younger one said.

  “We have a lot of work,” the senior assistant added, straightening one of the piles. “I have placed the most important items—those that require immediate action—on the left. The secondary documents have been divided into three stacks atop the rear table.”

  “Action,” I said, sliding down into my old chair. “Action is good.”

  It occurred to me that the desk drawers were empty and my box of personal possessions was sitting across the room, exactly where I’d left it. I considered ways of walking around the desk to retrieve it without betraying my recent uncertainty, but then reconsidered.

  “There’s also been a delivery for you this morning,” the older assistant said with some hesitance. He had very thin lips and an extremely short haircut that made him appear quite young. The other assistant, ruddy-faced and eager, pointed toward a basket of fruit.

  I quickly moved to open the tiny card pinned to the front. A fancy wax seal embossed with the letter “K” held the envelope together. Inside, I found a simple piece of paper imprinted with the words “Thank you.” From the concerned looks on their faces, I could tell that my assistants had recognized Kruchnik’s stationery. I smiled, quickly relieving their apprehension, and then tossed them each a pale melon from the basket.

  “Okay,” I said, allowing the commotion to resume.