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The Confession Page 14


  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, Ágnes 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 Ágnes 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 Ágnes 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.

  Ágnes 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.”

  “Cosmowhat?”

  “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

  I arrived at the office early and found Mikhail Kaminski hunched over my desk, hand on his forehead, absorbed in a slim stack of typed pages. He’d had a haircut since I’d seen him last, his mustache was trimmed to a razor’s width, and his coat had large shoulders that rose as his elbows spread on the desk. Then I realized what he had before him.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  He looked up, blinking, and smiled as if suddenly recognizing me. “Ferenc!” He tapped the sheets with that trigger finger. “You’re really very talented. I had no idea.” He pushed himself back in my chair, scratching the floor, and crossed his hands in his lap. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  There was something in his voice. So I took Emil’s chair. “You’ve been going through my things.”

  He nodded at the papers. “How do you do this? I mean, all I write are reports. They’re so dry. But you, Ferenc, you’ve got a way with words. How do you do that?”

  “I work at it. Now please put them back where you found them.”

  He lifted the top sheet and read aloud: “She moved through the world as if nothing was worth her effort, but she nonetheless influenced the outcome of situations. The proper word, or a subtle gesture, and someone was filling her empty glass with wine. You see what I mean? I feel like I’ve known this woman before. You’ve nailed it just right. I’m impressed.” He tapped the pages again. “Impressed, and a little disappointed.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “I’m not an artist, not like you. But like anyone, I enjoy a good read. I know what I like. It’s a shame to see your great talent wasted like this.”

  I waited.

  “This,” he said, laying his hand on my words, “It’s so…so unreliable. All this—how should I put it?—this me me me. You understand?”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  He crossed a leg over his knee. “Who do you think would be interested in this, Ferenc?”

  I shrugged.

  “There’s my point! No one, except for yourself. You should be writing about subjects that unite people, subjects we can all relate to! For example, there’s a wonderful Soviet writer, whose name I can’t remember now, but he wrote about the building of a dam in Siberia. Now that’s a story! You see the human drama of people working together for a great aim, and when you read it, you feel a part of that endeavor. And when, in spite of foreign saboteurs and some nasty hooliganism, the dam succeeds, you can’t help but clap and feel the same pride those workers feel. But this,” he said, abruptly changing tone. “This is about you, and only you. And this relationship—this marriage—what depressing people! The story about the dam, that’s what people want to read. I ask
you again, who would want to read your story?”

  I wanted to reply, but there was no satisfactory answer.

  “I’ll tell you who,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning closer. “People who revel in their pain. You see what I’m saying? Healthy people want to read about camaraderie, about healthy love, about how to be valuable to their society. They want lessons on life. What does this teach them? How to fail in life. Do you plan on publishing this?”

  I was wordless. Then, finally, I managed: “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Well. I wonder. This stuff is bourgeois, cosmopolitan. It’s rootless. This sort of thing could be dangerous.”

  “For me?”

  “For the city, for the country, and yes, I suppose, even for you. Keep it to yourself, Ferenc. That’s my little bit of literary criticism. Keep these kinds of thoughts to yourself, and for the rest of us explore the things that people really care about. We want healthy writers. Healthy writers are concerned with progress, enthusiasm for life, human industry. Unhealthy writers…well, they’re the kind of people who walk away from battle when their country needs them. They attack their superiors. Am I making myself clear?”

  I nodded, my fingers fiddling with my rings.

  “Good,” he said, still smiling. He patted my shoulder. “Keep at it, you’re very good. And I look forward to reading your great proletarian novel one of these days.”

  I watched him walk away, his casual stride, and all the organs in my exhausted body hardened into heavy rocks.

  Kaminski wasn’t there just to critique my fiction. He greeted each inspector as he arrived, as if they were all old friends who had been unfortunately separated from him for a while. Then Moska came out of his office and asked us to gather around. “New regulations,” he said. “We’ve fitted all the Militia cars with two-way radios. We’re later than a lot of cities getting this done, but the funding came through, I think for obvious reasons. From now on, whenever you go out on a case, you’re supposed to use one of our cars rather than your own. So we can keep track of you.”

  Kaminski shook his head. “It’s so you can call for help whenever you need it. The streets aren’t as safe as they once were, we all know this.” He must have taken our silence for agreement, because he clapped his hands together, grinning hugely. “You may have wondered where I’ve been the last week and a half. Out west in Budapest, as they say. You’d be surprised how good things are now. They’ve cleared up the barricades, it was a mess. Busses turned over, set on fire. It took some real pigs to do that. But you’ll be happy to know that now it’s peaceful, and they’re busy rebuilding. It’s becoming almost normal.”

  Brano Sev gave a lesson in the garage, all of us bent over the open doors of a new Mercedes. “You pick it up like so. Press here and speak. The reply comes from here.” He pointed at a small speaker grille. “When a message comes in, you do the same thing. Pick it up, press, and talk. But remember that when you press the speaking button you cannot hear what the central office is saying.” He turned it on by flicking a switch. A red light glowed and we heard static. He pressed the button, silencing the static. “Central, this is a test. Can you hear me?”

  When he released the button, a garbled woman’s voice said, This is Central, Sev. We hear you fine.

  “Who’s that?” asked Stefan.

  “Regina Haliniak. She’s new.”

  “A new girl,” he said, smiling at the rest of us. “Cute?”

  Brano looked at him, expressionless, and switched off the radio. And I stared at Stefan, disturbed that, with Magda, he could even joke about a voice on a radio.

  When we got back to the office, there were two notes on my desk: one from the lab, saying that they had clear prints from five different people in Antonín’s apartment—I could pick them up whenever I wanted; the second was from Moska, asking to see me in his office.

  “Ferenc, you were looking for the Kullmann woman?”

  “I’m going over today. But her name is different now.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. Sofia Eiers.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because she’s just been reported dead, Ferenc, and the only names I learn are those that don’t matter anymore.”

  30

  The Eierses lived out on the edge of the Fifth District. These low homes were still as they had been for a hundred years: a stone suburb of clay-roofed houses that were charming because of their style and infuriating because of their plumbing. Emil had decided to stay behind, and Stefan sat in the Mercedes passenger seat, switching the radio on and off, listening to bursts of static.

  “Just turn it off, will you?”

  He did, then watched the homes pass. “What do you think of this case?”

  “I don’t know what to make of it. An art curator is killed, then his prize artist. Now, the artist’s ex-wife.”

  “I’d like to know why Josef Maneck started drinking,” he said.

  “Back to that.”

  “He was doing well for himself, he was respected. Martin said he couldn’t live with himself—why? Maybe Eiers knows.”

  Mathew Eiers looked nothing like a clerk. He was a dark man with broad, massive shoulders, and at home he wore a tight-fitting undershirt that showed off his thick biceps. Which made it all the stranger to see him burst into tears at unexpected moments. I offered him a cigarette. He shook his head. “And please, don’t smoke in the house. Health.”

  He had laid Zoia, or Sofia, on their bed, and at the foot of the bed was a weight bench. Above the bed, on the wall, was a crucifix. She was dressed in a short, fashionable black dress. I nodded at it. “Is this what she was wearing, when…?”

  He straightened the hem over her thigh. “It is.” Then he started to weep.

  She looked a little pale, but asleep. No great beauty, she had a certain peasant attractiveness. Short, dark hair and a rounded chin. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her arms, her hands and neck, seeking clues, but I didn’t want to touch her. There was some discoloration around the neck, a bruise. “Do you know what caused this?” I asked.

  He leaned over her. “I didn’t notice that. What—what do you think?”

  “I don’t think anything yet, Comrade Eiers. Please sit down and tell us what happened.”

  Mathew Eiers settled on the weight bench, tears under control now. “We spent the weekend in the country with my parents. She was in a good mood, she liked to travel. You know, we had a good time every time we traveled.” He looked at her closed eyes. “We got in late last night. This morning was, well, as it always is. Blessed. I went out to buy the paper, and when I returned she was—” He looked at me. “But I don’t understand.”

  “You found her here?”

  “In her chair, in the kitchen. I tried to make her heart start again. I’ve heard of it. You hit right here.” He pressed a hand to his heart. “But it didn’t work. Nothing worked. So I cleaned her off and put her to bed.”

  “You cleaned her off?”

  “Her face.” He touched his own. “She had…fallen. Into her breakfast.”

  “What was it?”

  “Porridge. She eats it every morning. It’s good for her.”

  Stefan had been standing in the doorway, keeping notes. “Did you eat the porridge as well?”

  “Never,” he said, holding down the sobs. “I eat yogurt. Fresh yogurt from the country. It’s for the bones.” Then he looked again at his wife, sniffing. “Oh Lord. You don’t think it was…?”

  “We should check on it,” I said. “Tell me. Were the doors unlocked when you went for the paper?”

  He shook his head. “I locked the front door when I left—I had to use the key to get back in. I checked the back door, too, after I found her. Both were locked.”

  We looked into the bag of oats, but if it was poisoned, we’d never know without the lab.

  “You know,” I told him, “we were planning to come see your wife today before hearing about this.”

  “What?”

>   “About her ex-husband, Antonín.”

  He straightened and his voice leveled off: “What does he want?”

  “He’s been murdered, Comrade Eiers. Before he died he had been in correspondence with your wife. He mentioned in a letter the sense of his mortality. It’s vague, but perhaps he knew who was going to kill him. Perhaps she knew.”

  “Or maybe you know,” said Stefan.

  Mathew Eiers glared at the floor. “I would have liked to do that.”

  “To kill him?”

  He looked as far from tears as we would ever see him. “I didn’t, no, but I could have. She still saw him now and then. Sofia thought I didn’t know, but husbands know these sorts of things, right? They didn’t make love, I’m sure of that, but she wasn’t honest to me about it. I could either do something about it or not.” He shook his head. “I didn’t.”

  “Why not?” asked Stefan.

  He concentrated on the floor and spoke slowly: “Because I didn’t want to lose her. Sofia had left him for me. She could choose to go back just as easily. I knew this. It didn’t matter how evil he was.”

  “Evil?” I said. “Isn’t that a little strong?”

  “That’s what Sofia told me. She used that very word. She never told me why, but she said that his evil deeds had made him a star in the Capital. His fame was at a terrible price.”

  Stefan didn’t seem to understand. “But if she thought he was evil, why would she still see him? Why would she go back to him?”

  He smiled for the first time. “Come on, Comrade Inspector. Don’t be naïve. You don’t go to bed with someone because you know they’re pure. And sometimes you don’t love purity. Sometimes you do everything precisely because of impurity. Sometimes you can’t help it.”

  We let that sit a moment. The living room was stuffy; he’d sealed it against unhealthy drafts.