The confession tyb-2 Read online

  Emil opened a bottle of champagne.

  We drank in the living room and listened to a sweet-voiced American singer on the record player-Sarah Vaughan, Emil explained-and began to loosen up. Despite her apprehension when I had told her our plans, Magda was awed by the size of the apartment and the glittering rocks hanging from Lena’s ears. “Tell me,” she said after her second drink, “what is it like to travel out of the country?”

  “Haven’t you been?” asked Lena.

  Magda shook her head.

  Lena took a deep breath before launching into a description of the glories of international travel. She had been to Paris, Rome, Zurich, London and Stockholm, and had found each one more enchanting than the last. “Except, perhaps, London,” she said as her lip began to twitch at the corner. “Well, it’s obvious, the problem with that town, isn’t it? It’s filled with the English. What a dry, dour race. Do you know, not one person in all of London looked at me crossly? If I bumped into someone-you know what they did? They apologized. Can you believe it? The entire nation, and not a single testicle among them. But,” she said, looking sadly into her empty glass, “Westminster was beautiful.”

  Emil had gone with her on a couple trips, but admitted he seldom had the urge to leave. “I used to love to travel. But I don’t anymore. Not sure why. Anyway, it takes twice as long for me to get a visa. I just slow her down.”

  Lena stood to refill our glasses. “They seem to think I couldn’t stand to leave the country for good if my husband wasn’t with me. They don’t know much, do they?”

  Emil slapped her thigh as she passed, then held up a finger. “Let me show you something.” He went to another room and returned lugging a large reel-to-reel recorder.

  “Not that, ” muttered Lena.

  He set it heavily on the coffee table and plugged in a microphone. He flipped some switches and the reels began to turn, the tape sliding through metal gears and heads to the take-up reel, humming.

  “I don’t hear anything,” I said.

  Magda leaned close. “I think I hear something.”

  “It’s recording,” said Emil. He returned to his chair. “Just act normal. I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, and I want to see what we sound like.”

  It took a few more drinks to act normal, to pretend that the big humming machine in the middle of the room did not exist. But we did normalize finally, touching on the Magyars, which was the only subject that could effectively silence Lena, then the Sixth of November Strike. “It’s a shame,” Emil said. “I would have liked it to do something in the end.”

  “You don’t think it did?” said Magda. “I was under a different impression.”

  “What was your impression?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know. I don’t mean it accomplished anything really apparent. More than anything it set a precedent, don’t you think? It’s clear that, if another crackdown like that comes along, there’s an option for people. Striking is an option.”

  “But striking’s always been an option,” said Emil, leaning into the debate. “It’s been done enough times in East Germany, in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and, of course, Hungary. It took a long time for us to get around to it.”

  “Everything takes a long time here,” Lena said.

  “But it’s something,” said Magda. “It’s late, but it’s something.”

  We all looked as the end of the tape emerged from the recording heads and flapped in the full reel.

  Emil rewound the tape and rethreaded it. He was grinning. “Now we can find out what we really sound like.” He tugged the switch.

  At first, there was little conversation-half phrases and spare words-and then the clink of glasses and muted drinking. Then I was saying something about Agnes, and the sound of my voice gave me pause. “I sound like that?”

  Emil shrugged. Magda stared at the reel-to-reel. “Of course you do,” said Lena, leaning close to the speaker as her own voice chattered about something insignificant, and I could see the disappointment in her face.

  Magda talked and Emil talked and when my voice appeared again I was still surprised by the lilt of my deep voice, the singsong quality. It was effeminate and soft, as if it did not want to offend. It was an embarrassing realization.

  Then Magda was talking again-… there’s an option for people. Striking is an option.

  We had the same thought at the same time, all four of us. But it was Emil’s machine, so we waited for him to do it. He rewound it again, rethreaded the tape, and pulled the switch to the marker that said ERASE.

  26

  Most of the art admirers were choked around the drinks table, far from the paintings. It was an older crowd than I was used to, white-haired members of the Culture Ministry with red pins wedged in their lapels, their wives, and only one beard in the whole room. The wood-framed paintings were more of what we’d seen at Antonin’s: the virtue of the working life. Young, fresh proles working wrenches on machines and pushing shovels into the hard soil. Names like Comrade M. Harvests a Record Yield and A Five-Year Plan in Four. Emil and I had to shove to get drinks for our wives, and when we returned a couple of officials were flirting with them. One worked in the Interior Ministry, and though he wore no leather coat, he knew the effect the name of his ministry, which had long ago been put in control of the Ministry for State Security, had on people. He whispered it. The other was in the upper ranks of the Pioneers. Magda mentioned we had a daughter. “So how does she like it?” he asked. “We try to give young ladies the confidence to make their lives an active, purposeful affair.”

  “She loves it unequivocally,” Magda lied, and brought up a weekend camping trip that Agnes returned from in tears, but left out the tears.

  “So which one is Vlaicu?” I asked.

  The Interior Ministry official nodded at the one man with a beard. He was noticeably younger than the rest, and already drunk. He shook hands and nodded at their comments and laughed. He knew how to work a room. “Would you like to meet him?” the official asked.

  All six of us migrated over and cornered the artist. “More admirers, Vlaicu,” said the official.

  When we shook hands, Vlaicu’s brilliant, green eyes shifted over to Magda. “What do you do?” he asked her.

  She smiled and shrugged. “I work in a textile factory.”

  “Aha. So what do you think of my representations of factory life?”

  She gazed at the walls a moment. “A little clean, maybe.”

  He laughed and clapped his hands together. “And what about the rest of you?”

  Lena held her drink to her lips. “I sit around.”

  Emil said, “The two of us are militiamen.”

  Vlaicu nodded in mock-admiration and asked if it was a difficult job.

  “Tiring,” I said. “You should paint our work. It could be interesting.”

  “Maybe a little sensationalistic.”

  “Paperwork? Trust me. It’s not sensational.” The two officials had wandered off, and Emil seemed to want to get this going, so I said, “We’re working on a case regarding someone you know.”

  “Oh yes?” He bobbed his eyebrows. “Someone sinister?”

  “Antonin Kullmann.”

  His eyebrows dropped. “You’ve found him? Where is he?”

  “He’s dead,” said Emil.

  Vlaicu’s eyes flicked back to me as his lips twitched, ready for this to be a joke. But our expressions convinced him otherwise. “I can’t believe it.”

  It was real shock, I had no doubt. His hands floundered out to the sides, and he stepped forward, then back. Magda and Lena went off for more drinks.

  I grabbed his arm lightly. “Come on.”

  We made it through all the greetings of the crowd and out to the dark, chilly sidewalk.

  “Can you tell us about him?” asked Emil.

  The hand that brought the cigarette to his mouth shook. “Of course. Yes.”

  I said, “How long has Antonin been missing?”

  “Two weeks? May
be three. I’ve been so busy. We had drinks together.”

  “You two close?”

  “Not really. State painters drink together because the others won’t drink with them.”

  “Did he tell you anything about fearing for his life? We have a letter of his that suggests this.”

  Confusion crossed his face, his eyes losing focus. “No, nothing. He didn’t discuss his personal life much. Except his love life.”

  “Did he have much of a love life?”

  “Well, he didn’t have a lot of women, if that’s what you mean. But love…” He scratched his beard, still confused. “Well, he had found it.”

  I said, “Zoia.”

  “Exactly. But she left him.”

  “She remarried, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “A clerk.”

  “We couldn’t find the record of the marriage.”

  “Probably because she changed her name. She thought Zoia was too provincial a name. So she changed it to Sofia.” He grinned around his cigarette. “ That’s a provincial name.”

  “Do you know the name of her husband?”

  “Mathew Eiers. Never met him, but Antonin hated the man. Eiers probably hated him, too, because he was still trying to get Zoia back.” He blinked at the sidewalk, then looked at us. “You don’t think Eiers-”

  “We don’t think much yet,” said Emil. “Does the name Josef Maneck ring a bell?”

  “Sure. Curator-turned-drunk. He was before my time, though. He and Antonin still talked sometimes. I think Antonin felt sorry for him-I mean, without Josef maybe he would’ve never had a career.”

  “Did he help support Josef?” I asked. “Financially, I mean.”

  Vlaicu held up his cigarette. “Wouldn’t surprise me if he did.”

  A low figure came limping out of the darkness. It was Stefan. He raised a hand when he saw us, and Vlaicu looked briefly worried as he realized there were now three of us.

  “Why didn’t you invite me along?” asked Stefan.

  I shrugged.

  Stefan looked at Vlaicu. “This is the artist?”

  “I’m the artist, yes.”

  I could smell the alcohol on him, probably from his favorite Turkish bar.

  “Why don’t you go say hi to Magda,” I told him. “We’ll be in in a second.”

  “Magda’s here?”

  “Why do you think I didn’t invite you?”

  I watched his face carefully, trying to read anything from it. I read confusion, maybe a little surprise, but I wasn’t sure. He went in.

  “You guys come in all types,” said Vlaicu.

  “About Antonin,” I said. “Is there any way we can get in touch with his friends? Some you know?”

  “I didn’t know his friends. I have a feeling he didn’t have any. Not the easiest guy to get along with.”

  “No one?”

  He rubbed his beard. “Might try a Nestor-Antonin mentioned him last time we talked.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know his last name, but when he and Zoia moved to the Capital they roomed with this Nestor. An overeccentric painter, Antonin told me. He was released from a work camp last summer-that’s all I know.” He looked at the sidewalk again, rubbing his arms. “I need another drink.”

  27

  Stefan was at the drinks table with Magda, while Lena entertained three officials in a corner, one hand fluttering over her head in an imitation of something mysterious. Emil went to save her. Stefan and Magda didn’t seem to be talking when I approached them, and I turned this over in my head throughout the rest of the night, trying to ascertain any meaning, but finding nothing. Stefan told me he had been watching Antonin’s apartment, but without luck-no one had approached it. “What about you?”

  “I’ve got Antonin’s ex-wife’s name. She changed it to Sofia, and married a clerk named Mathew Eiers.”

  “You got that from the records?”

  I nodded at Vlaicu at the end of the table, filling up a glass with wine. He noticed me looking and wandered off.

  Magda whispered in my ear: “Can we go?”

  “In a little while.”

  “We should talk.”

  “Later,” I said.

  I tried to give each painting a good look. I took my time, cradling my drink, and examined the brushstrokes. I knew Moska did a little painting, but I’d never tried it, and I was always impressed by that much attention to detail. In writing, it was simple to change a word here and there. With painting, each little mistake seemed unfixable. I told this to Vlaicu, and he shrugged. “You paint over it. It’s the same thing.” He’d regained his easy drunkenness. “Painting’s a breeze. Writing is too literal. Everyone knows exactly what you’re saying, so if you make a mistake, everyone sees it.”

  Stefan and Magda kept their distance from one another. Magda chained herself to the drinks and smiled and nodded at the old men who ogled her. Stefan lingered around Emil and Lena, getting more drunk himself, pointing with his cigarette hand at the paintings and laughing. Vlaicu asked him what he thought.

  “Of this?” He pointed at a picture of workmen pouring tar for a highway.

  Vlaicu shrugged.

  “It’s the most useless thing I’ve ever seen. How can you live with yourself?”

  Vlaicu smiled thinly. “Lay into it, Comrade.”

  So Stefan did. He called it empty and redundant. “Why not use a camera? Save you time. But don’t make other people look at it; they look at this dirt every day.”

  “Maybe that’s my point,” said Vlaicu.

  “Your point? Paint a pile of dog crap next. We see it daily on the sidewalk, you know.”

  “Don’t you think labor has meaning?”

  “It’s to get a job done-that’s its meaning.” Then he leaned forward and, in a whisper high enough for a few of us to hear, said, “You’ve sold your soul, Comrade Vlaicu.”

  No one expected the artist to swing. His fist caught Stefan’s jaw, then they were on the ground, tangled, throwing punches as best they could. I pulled Stefan off, and some officials took Vlaicu into their protection.

  Outside, I noticed how drunk Magda was. She was laughing about the fight, leaning on Lena’s elbow, then she started to cry. Lena patted her head like a mother. Stefan said nothing as he stumbled back into the darkness, and the rest of us piled into Emil’s car.

  Surprisingly, Agnes was on the sofa, snoring. Pavel, dozing beside her, woke up and trotted over. “He needs to pee,” I said. Magda wandered off to the bedroom. I carried Agnes to her bed, then took Pavel downstairs. He crapped on the front steps, and I wondered what a painting of that would really look like.

  Magda lay in bed staring at the ceiling.

  “You said you wanted to talk.”

  She shook her head. “Stefan,” she said, but could hardly get the word out.

  “What about him?”

  “He told me days ago. When you were at Georgi’s. That he told you.”

  I sat on the edge of the mattress. “He hasn’t told me everything. Are you going to tell me?”

  She tried to look at me, but her eyes crossed and uncrossed, so she returned to the ceiling, then shut them. “It was a long time ago, Ferenc. You were gone. I couldn’t-”

  But I was standing up again and leaving. If she wasn’t going to be honest about the present, about everything, then I didn’t want to hear.

  28

  Her hangover lasted all Sunday, and she stayed in bed, the lights out and the blinds drawn. I brought water and lunch, but whatever she took in she immediately threw up.

  “Don’t tell me she drank last night,” said Agnes over breakfast.

  “Sometimes it happens.”

  “Maybe I should start drinking.”

  “Maybe you should take Pavel out for a walk.”

  Magda was able to get a small dinner to stay down, and as she ate in the dark room she asked what she had said last night. “I don’t remember at all. But we spoke.”

  “You didn’
t say anything, really.”

  “I said something.”

  “Do you want to say something now?”

  She considered it, frowning through the pain. “We should talk, yes, but I can’t. Not in this state.”

  “Have you figured out what you want?”

  She looked at me, her expression still painful. “I wish I knew, Ferenc. God, you don’t know how much I wish that.”

  I pulled the blanket to her chin.

  Agnes was rolling a ball across the living room floor for Pavel to bring back, but the dog was uninterested. She stood up, retrieved it from the corner, and came back to try again. “I think we need a new dog. Pavel just isn’t working out.”

  I sat on the sofa. “What kind of dog would work out?”

  “Something larger, that’s for sure. Pavel can’t keep up when I run.”

  “Maybe we could make some wheels for him.”

  “Wheels and an engine.”

  “Tell me about school. Is it going better this year?”

  She nodded into her chest. “Better than last year, yeah. I learned about cosmonauts.”

  “Cosmo what? ”

  “Cosmonauts,” she repeated just as incomprehensibly. “People who go into space. The USSR has big plans for putting us in space. Communes on the Moon.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” I said. “I’m still looking into the French school. But you’ve got to pass that exam.”

  “Maybe I should stay where I am.”

  Her hair needed a trim. “I thought we’d decided to give it another try.”

  “I’ve made friends this year. I don’t want to just leave them.”

  Then she pulled her foot toward herself and started playing with her toes. You learn a child’s behaviors so they become simple clues to the inner life. I wanted this school for her, but knew that nothing would come of it if she didn’t want to go. “What’s his name?”

  “What?”

  “The name of the boy you’re in love with.”

  “Daddy.” She glared at me, but her mouth was smiling.

  29