The confession tyb-2 Read online

  Magda wanted to know if I preferred potatoes or fried cornmeal. I looked at her a while before answering.

  “It’s a simple question, Ferenc.”

  “Cornmeal. Yes, cornmeal.”

  She returned to the kitchen. No wonder he had jumped at the chance to be with her again. He had nothing else.

  The radio told me that Comrade General Secretary Mihai wanted us to revel in our history, to learn from it the possibilities for our future.

  Agnes scribbled letters into boxes.

  When I came back from the war, I was nothing to look at, nothing to consider, nothing to be. Magda thought she recognized me at first-I looked the same and spoke the same-but soon she knew better. All I would do was sit on the sofa and ask for water. She always brought it, but there wasn’t anything else I wanted. There had been a week in the trenches when we did not have fresh water, and in the middle of a dry field, pinned in by mortar fire and explosions puncturing the sky, we thought we’d die the way sailors once died-scurvy, salt water on the brain. What was she to think? She offered what she thought I wanted. Hot meals, a warm woman. But all I wanted was fresh water. Finally, she talked me into sex. It was a revelation. Beyond water there really was something. There was flesh and warmth and that tremor of the glands that I hadn’t thought of since I’d seen glands and flesh exploded by German mines, and the glands and flesh of my parents when I imagined their small house obliterated by that German bomb. My emotions were suddenly in reach after so long; I felt human again.

  We had dinner with brief moments of conversation. Agnes wanted a bicycle, which I at first said we could not afford; then, as she pressed, I told her I’d see what I could find. Magda was melancholic, but not the way I’d expect from someone who had just seen her lover buried in the earth. How well did I know her? Perhaps I had lost track of her in the provinces, just before we moved to the Capital, when she cared for me like a nurse. Perhaps she began hiding hard facts from me then, beginning with her night with Stefan, and had steadily built her own, secret world.

  The idea of Magda’s leaving had come to me on and off over the years. Married people do this. In a small part of their minds hides a secret world of independence, and in that parallel world there are other companions. Some beautiful, some less so, and for a while it seems these others are more or less the same as the one that you have, in the real world, devoted your life to. How different are the breakfasts and dinners, the weekends in the country, the lovemaking, the conversations? Not so different, in the end.

  But when troubles begin, this secret world grows. It is visible on the horizon. It takes roots in reality. I thought about the other women I knew. Vera, sure. Seductive and strong. There was something there. Roberta, a stenographer who visited the office now and then, had been single for the last five years-I imagined how her famished and ample body would be in bed. She would have the virtue of gratefulness. I even wondered about the bodiless voice from the Militia radio: Regina Haliniak. There were others whose names I didn’t know, women on the street who held my gaze for a few seconds longer than polite-and within the brackets of these flirtations a new future presented itself.

  This is the first stage, the hopeful stage. Promiscuous fantasies without the burden of responsibility. When I thought of Agnes, I ignored the unavoidable custody worries. Although she seldom appeared in my fantasy life, it was granted that Agnes was with me, waiting at home.

  In this first stage, divorce seemed survivable, maybe even a little invigorating-the building of a new life always is. But then it approached from the horizon, moved close enough that I could make out its barren details. The second stage is knowledge. While sleeping with other women had its virtues, I couldn’t imagine what would follow.

  What had we to say to each other? I couldn’t eat breakfast with these women, and the thought of taking a weekend trip with any of them was unbearable.

  I realized then what I’d always known: Magda was in every action I took and shadowed every thought. A life without her was no life at all.

  When Agnes asked me to pass the salt, I had been staring blindly at her for a while. “You all right, Daddy?”

  “Fine, honey.”

  “You don’t look so good.”

  “It’s been a hard day.”

  Magda looked questioningly at me, and I smiled and shook my head. “I’m going to have to take off after dinner. I’ve got something to do.”

  “Will we see you again tonight?”

  “Yes,” I said, then repeated it. “Yes.”

  54

  I parked on the dark, empty street outside her block and went over the words in my head. I took a breath, wiped my face, and got out.

  She wore slacks and a white blouse that hung loose and transparent over her breast. She wore a smile as well. “Ferenc, I didn’t think you’d come. Give me that coat.”

  I gave it to her and watched her take it through the kitchen to the bedroom to toss it on the bed. She noticed my hesitation when we kissed.

  “I was going to whip up something to eat. You hungry?”

  “I just ate.”

  “Then I’ll wait.”

  I sat on the sofa. She stood in front of me a moment, then straddled my knees. “Tell me, Ferenc.”

  “Yes, we should talk.” I moved her off of my knees-she was light, easy to lift-and onto the cushion beside me.

  Frowning, she left a hand on my thigh.

  “It’s over. From this moment. It’s over.”

  “Us?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Look: I have to make things work with Magda. It’s what I have to do.”

  Vera looked at her hand on my leg, then began to stroke. “You don’t have fun with me?”

  “That’s not it.”

  “You don’t like what we do?”

  “You know I like it.”

  “Well then,” she said. “You keep working on Magda, and at the same time keep working on me.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Sure it is. I do it all the time, and I can tell you how easy it is.”

  I took her hand from my leg and put it on her own, but her other hand fell upon mine and pressed it to her thigh.

  “Listen, Ferenc.”

  “I can’t listen.”

  She drew my hand up into her groin, and though I could have resisted, I didn’t.

  “I should go now.”

  “Don’t be a bastard,” she said, but her voice was soft. She put her free hand on my crotch. “She won’t do the things I’ll do, you know this.”

  As she massaged me, she leaned up to my ear and whispered what she would do. I looked at her, momentarily shocked, then easing into it. But the fears of a life of regret flashed back, and I took her hand off me. “I really should go.”

  “You know what your problem is?”

  I should have stood up and left. But I said, “Let’s pretend I don’t know.”

  “Simplicity.”

  “Thanks for the insight.”

  She shook her head. “It’s true. You’re desperate for simplicity. It’s why you’ve held on so long to a dead marriage. You want to think you understand everything, but you’ll never understand yourself until you accept your contradictions.”

  I stood up, but didn’t walk away.

  She said, “You need to learn that specific actions do not yield specific results. Just because you’re good to your marriage doesn’t mean it’ll be good to you.” She grabbed my arm, but I pulled it away.

  “You don’t get it,” I said. “It’s…it has to do with Stefan. With my daughter, with everything.”

  She pulled her lips back and showed me her teeth.

  “Where’s my coat?”

  “You know where.”

  I didn’t want it like this, but my explanations had turned to smoke. I went back to the bedroom and took my coat from the bed. It was the right decision, I knew this, and I had to see it through. When I turned, she was standing in the bedroom doorway, blocking my exit.


  “Let me see something,” she said.

  She took the coat from my hand, tossed it back on the bed, and sank to her knees. When she started to take off my belt, I reached down to stop her, but she slapped my hand.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  She unbuttoned me quickly. I was excited despite myself. She looked at it, almost curiously, then put it into her mouth.

  The telephone woke us. Vera turned on the bedside light and looked at the clock-a little after five in the morning. She walked naked to the living room. “Yes?…No, he’s not…okay, all right. I’ll get him.” Then: “Ferenc!”

  “I won’t say a thing, okay, buddy?”

  “I’m not worried about that, Georgi. What do you need?”

  “Not me. Magda. She called over here looking for you. She was worried.”

  “About me?”

  “No, not you. At least she didn’t say that. Someone was banging on your door.”

  “Who?”

  “She doesn’t know. A man. She thinks he’s gone now.”

  “When was this?”

  “Fifteen minutes ago. Something like that.”

  It was cold, and the car took a while to start. My breath steamed the windshield. I bounced through the holes and crevices of our parking lot. The block looked empty. I climbed the flights, pausing to listen and check the color of the steps. Then I listened at the door and used the key. “It’s me,” I whispered as I pushed it open.

  55

  I put the car through more than I should have, cutting across the parking lot and flying up Tashkent Boulevard, out of town. I’d rushed them through the packing, answering all Agnes’s questions with a hysterical It’s a trip! We’re going on a trip! Magda had thought I was overreacting.

  “What are you saying?”

  “That man might have killed you both, like he did Stefan. Get your bag.”

  She stood by the bathroom door with a towel in one hand, and nodded.

  As dawn grew, we passed the outskirts, the final unfinished blocks falling away, and the earth leveled into fields. Magda pointed out that I was going the wrong way. “We need to go south.”

  “I don’t want to drive through the city.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to get into a wreck.”

  She smiled a little strangely.

  “I’m just terrified.”

  She reached over and held my free hand.

  After a while, Agnes passed out, sprawled across the backseat, Pavel stuffed under her arm. Magda yawned. Teodor and Nora would watch them for however long was needed, but I couldn’t see any further than dropping them off.

  Teodor was in town sitting in on an informal collective meeting, and Nora was scrubbing the wood floors in the kitchen when we arrived. She smiled at the front door and gave us all kisses, but looked apprehensive when Agnes ran across her clean, wet floor. “Let’s sit around back,” she suggested.

  The shrubs around the garden had thinned considerably, and now you could see directly through them to the orchards leading to the horizon. A cold wind blew, so we crossed our arms over our chests for warmth.

  “You’re looking good,” Nora said.

  “No we aren’t, Mama.” Magda grinned. “We both look worse than we have in a long time.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.” She touched her fat fingers on her arm, as if playing a piano.

  “I’d like them to stay here a few days,” I said.

  She picked a white puff of something off her blouse and flicked it away. “Are we still a family?”

  “Of course,” said Magda.

  “No. The three of you. Are you still a family?”

  “We’ve never stopped being a family,” I said, and Magda, to my surprise, gave a smile.

  I helped Teodor unload half a lamb from the truck-a Czech Tatra the new local commissar let them use-and as we walked he asked what the hell was going on.

  “It’s a case,” I said. “They’ll be safer here.”

  “When are you going to get out of that work, Ferenc? Be a writer.”

  “Don’t you want me to support your daughter and granddaughter?”

  He huffed as he propped open the door. “I’d rather they were poor than shot dead by one of your suspects.”

  A little later we told them about Stefan, and after the required moment of reflection Teodor told me again to find another line of work.

  We ate a dinner of potatoes and lamb swimming in paprika and listened to Teodor mutter about the new directives to get rid of private plots for farmers. “They expect us to buy the food we grow back from them! That just makes no sense. I’ve got the land here, you can be damn sure I’m going to keep some of it for myself, so I can grow what I like.”

  Agnes rolled the fork in her hand. “It’s been a record year for crops.”

  Teodor eyed her. “They say that?”

  “Best crops in twenty years.”

  “Well, don’t you believe a word of that, darling.”

  After dinner he pulled out the brandy, and though I tried to feign sleepiness, he stood and looked squarely at me. “Ferenc.”

  I got up.

  We could no longer see the apple trees in the blackness. He handed me a glass and stood beside the shrubs. “Nora tells me there’s been no progress. Is that true?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “Is it worse?”

  I wanted to tell him that his daughter’s lover was finally out of the way, but could think of no way to express it without telling him. “Some of it’s gotten better.”

  “I suppose that’s something.”

  The brandy warmed me, then cooled me off, so I had to keep drinking.

  “How long are they staying?”

  “Maybe a week, I can’t be sure.”

  “And Agnes’s school? Magda’s factory?”

  “Magda will call them both.”

  He seemed satisfied with that and turned to look over the orchards he couldn’t see. “Nora and I have been talking about leaving here.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “Where else? The Capital.”

  “Ah.” I imagined them moving into our same building, one of the floors below us, always appearing with dishes of Nora’s dull meals. A part of me hated the idea, and another part wondered if it could help. They wanted us together, and they would fill Magda’s ears with reasons to love me, or at least reasons to stay with me. “Could you afford it?”

  “It’s almost time for my pension, Ferenc. Not much, it never is. But maybe it’s enough.”

  “Won’t you miss it out here? It’s a different life in the Capital.”

  “Of course it is,” he said, and came to sit beside me. He found the bottle and refilled us both. “A lot of our friends have moved away, and now when we go to the cooperative’s social club we know fewer and fewer people. They’re all leaving,” he said. “That, or dying off.”

  56

  Magda and I slept in the guest room. It was a large bed, and we didn’t touch, didn’t say anything. I put my hands behind my head and stared at the ceiling, just visible in the light from the porch. She rolled on her side, away from me. After a while, I heard her heavy breaths, but it wasn’t the sound of sleep. I touched her bare shoulder. “What is it?”

  She shook her head and didn’t look at me. “I was just thinking of Stefan.”

  I withdrew my hand. “It must be hard on you.”

  “Not so much. I was thinking about how his life was. He must have been so lonely.”

  “He had you.”

  She quieted, then rolled over so she faced me. I couldn’t quite see her face. “What does that mean?”

  “Come on, Magda. There’s no more need.”

  “No. What are you talking about?”

  I took a breath. We were finally having this conversation, but in a bed that didn’t belong to us. “You were having an affair with Stefan. I’ve known it for a long time.”

  She didn’t say anything at first. I heard a
couple sighs, as if she was going to speak, but nothing would come. Then she said, “You’re such a fool sometimes, Ferenc.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “I slept with him once, many years ago, and I’ve never stopped regretting it.”

  “And now?”

  “What now? I never touched him again.”

  I took this in gradually. “But I saw you go to meet him. At that Turkish bar. It’s his favorite.”

  “You followed me?”

  “When you believe your wife’s having an affair, you’re allowed some improprieties.”

  “I can’t believe you followed me.”

  “Give it a rest, will you?”

  She rolled away again, and after a minute sat up on the edge of the bed. She looked at the floor while I waited for something to come. “It’s Leonek,” she said finally.

  “It’s-” I started to repeat, then didn’t.

  “We’ve been together, on and off, for a month and a half now. I don’t have any excuse. I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, but I wanted to know what I really wanted first.” She was still looking at the floor, and her voice was clear and strong. “At the beginning it was just desperation. It looked like everything was over between us, and I wanted something for myself. Can you understand that?”

  I said, “Yes, I can,” but I was in a fog.

  “And I’ve broken it off with him I-don’t-know-how-many times. Remember that night when you came back from Georgi’s party, and I wasn’t there? Stefan called. He’d been drinking, and he wanted to apologize for telling you about what he and I had done during the war. That’s how I found out you knew. It was such a shock. I immediately went to Leonek and told him it couldn’t go on. I broke it off.” She shook her head. “But you remember how I was when you saw me later that night. You wanted to talk, and I couldn’t. I was confused. The next morning I called him, and we started it all over again. On the Sixth of November.”