Victory Square Read online

  He tried to silence his head but couldn’t. The song refused to leave as they were led toward him.

  Then Michalec appeared, confused. In his hand was a bulky video camera. He ran, gasping, past the couple, almost knocking into Ilona Pankov, and grabbed Gavra’s arm. “You’re not supposed to be here. Come on.”

  He rushed Gavra to the end of the corridor, then out a steel door into a freezing stone courtyard with high walls that stank of mold. Against one wall, three soldiers with Kalashnikovs stood smoking nervously. They looked up as Michalec shouted, “Now. Now! Other side.” He waved to a corner of the courtyard; they shuffled over stiffly. “Lose the smokes.” They tossed them to the ground. He set the camera on the stones, took the Kalashnikov from one of them, and handed it to Gavra, looking him in the eyes. “You’re going to stand in that corner over there. No fanfare, okay? They’ll come in through that door and you just do it. Okay?”

  Gavra nodded dumbly, hearing:

  Away with all your superstitions.

  Servile masses arise,

  arise! We’ll change henceforth the old tradition,

  And spurn the dust to win the prize.

  “Those guys,” said Michalec, jerking his head at the other corner, where the soldiers stood rigidly. “They’ll shoot you if you try

  anything. So don’t. Now go.” He pointed at the empty corner, then picked up the video camera and walked to the wall, not far from the steel door. He propped the camera on his shoulder, looked through the eyepiece, and started shooting the courtyard, then focused on Gavra, who was gripping the Kalashnikov as if it were something he’d never seen before.

  He was completely numb. It didn’t occur to him to just turn the gun on Michalec, and he would later hate himself for that.

  The door opened, and there they were, stepping out into the cold dawn light, stunned.

  Gavra couldn’t move. His hands were stuck. He couldn’t raise the gun or squeeze the trigger.

  He didn’t have to.

  The three soldiers in the opposite corner weren’t looking at Gavra. They were mesmerized by the Pankovs, who had started to run. Instinctively, one of them raised his Kalashnikov and pulled the trigger. That led the second one to do the same, and the third produced a pistol, stretched out his arm, and began firing, too. Loud snapping sounds filled the cold air.

  So comrades, come rally,

  And the last fight let us face!

  The Internationale unites the human race.

  Gavra shivered, watching the couple run along the wall, stumbling. Ilona Pankov squealed. Bloodstains erupted on the stones as they fell, and he thought for an instant that he was killing them. Then he realized he wasn’t, and that troubled him more than even murder. He raised his rifle and squeezed, the recoil shaking through him. The scent of cordite was heavy as he filled the now-dead bodies with more bullets, so that they began to tremble, as if still alive. That only encouraged him to keep on shooting.

  Once his Kalashnikov had run out of bullets, Gavra dropped it and watched as Michalec, breathing heavily, ran his camera over to the bullet-riddled bodies. More people poured into the courtyard, gaping, until all he could see was a wall of backs. He stepped over the rifle and walked past them, back inside.

  In the corridor, he ran into the witnesses. Harold gripped his arm. “Is it done? Is it over?”

  Gavra nodded, and Beth kissed his cheeks. As if a switch had been turned, the old people began to weep and hug and thank him, calling him their savior. Then they hurried on to get their own look.

  Andras Todescu was crouched in the corridor, no farther than where he’d been minutes before. He looked up at Gavra with a pleading expression, but Gavra went on, past the now-empty courtroom and the other classrooms until he was outside in the cold again, near the stone walls surrounding the barracks. He got on his knees in the dirt, but his sickness stayed in him.

  Sometime later, maybe hours, he saw a man get into a jeep clutching a medical bag filled with video cassettes. Then soldiers came out carrying stretchers with two bodies covered in gray army blankets. They put them in a truck and roared off. A while after that, he looked up to see Jerzy Michalec staring down at him, hands in his coat pockets, not smiling. “Hell of a thing,” said the old man.

  That’s when Gavra noticed Michalec had blood on his coat, as if he’d hugged the corpses. “We have a deal.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Michalec, but like someone who didn’t know what he was saying.

  “My friend.”

  He nodded. “Right. Liguria metro station. Five minutes’walk from here. He’s waiting for you.”

  Michalec told the guards to let Gavra out. Once past the barracks walls, the gate closing behind him, Gavra started to run. His knees were wobbly, but he could just manage a straight line that took him past apartment blocks and people walking with shopping bags. They didn’t know. Not yet. They had no idea.

  Somewhere along that brief run, Gavra became convinced that his friend was dead. It was inevitable, the only logical conclusion to this day. So when he found Karel sitting nervously on a bench in the brown-walled station, he squeezed and kissed his friend fiercely. The three other commuters waiting for the metro turned to stare. That didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

  THIRTY

  •

  By now everyone in our country knows that tape, has memorized every nuance and impotent rebuttal from both of them. But as the edited video played on, the cameras never showed us the faces of the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the members of the tribunal, or the audience we sometimes heard gasp at statements. We saw the Pankovs, staring and accusing and pointing fingers at people we never saw. Then, after a while of this, the camera cut to another table, and we saw the witnesses, one after the other, their stories progressively more terrible and damning.

  I can’t say what other people felt during that first viewing of the famous tape. While Gavra was reminded of the show trials of the late forties and early fifties, I was instead reminded of the various courtrooms I’d visited during my career, where I witnessed against murderers and other criminals. Those times, I’d been able to separate my emotions from the trial. Not with this one. To each accusation, I felt myself saying, Yes, yes. I had no love for the Pankovs. They were worse than the murderers I put away, because their crimes were vaster, and they were untouchable. Now, finally, they were being touched. During that first viewing, I didn’t think about the hypocrisy of the people who had arranged and run the trial. I didn’t care who had put them in the dock. I only cared that it was being done.

  We all thought we knew what it would lead to. The unseen tribunal would announce its verdict, that the Pankovs were guilty of crimes against the nation, and they would be sentenced to life in one of the rank prisons where they had sent so many others. What really happened was a shock.

  Toward the end, the unseen prosecutor said, “They not only deprived the people of heating, electricity, and foodstuffs, they also tyrannized the soul of the people. They not only killed children, young people, and adults in Sarospatak and the Capital; they allowed the Ministry members to wear military uniforms to create the impression among the people that the army was against them. They wanted to separate the people from the army. They used to fetch people from orphans’homes or from abroad whom they trained in special institutions to become murderers of their own people. They were so impertinent as to cut off oxygen lines in hospitals and to shoot people in their hospital beds! The Ministry hid food reserves on which the Capital could have survived for months, the whole of the Capital!”

  “Who are they talking about?” muttered Ilona Pankov.

  “You should have stayed in Libya!” shouted the prosecutor.

  Ilona laughed. Mockingly, she said, “We don’t stay abroad!”

  Tomiak agreed. “Of course not. This is our home.”

  It went on. The charges were repeated, and I even said, “Yes,” aloud, my hands sweaty on my knees, my heart palpitating in my chest.

&
nbsp; The president of the court asked if they wanted to appeal the ruling, and Tomiak Pankov crossed his arms and stared into space. Ilona placed her hands on the table and stifled a yawn.

  “All right,” a voice said. “Proceed.”

  I knew that voice, or I thought I did. Even now, I’m still not sure.

  Four soldiers entered the frame carrying Kalashnikovs on their shoulders and frayed cords in their hands. They twisted the Pankovs’arms behind their backs and bound their hands together.

  At first, Tomiak took it quietly, as if afraid to embarrass himself. When he was pulled into a standing position, he shouted for the last time, “I do not recognize the legitimacy of this court!”

  Ilona, though, struggled. She spoke in bits. “Everyone has … the right to die as … they wish.” We could hear the hysteria in her voice. “Don’t tie us up! My children, you’re breaking my hands. It’s a shame, a … disgrace. I brought you all up like a mother,” she said, her voice sounding like what she thought their mothers might sound like. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Whoever staged this coup,” said Tomiak, “can shoot anyone they want. The traitors will answer for their treason. The nation will live, and learn from your treachery. It is better to fight with glory than live as a slave.”

  Beside his wife’s hysteria, Tomiak’s voice was so steady. Then the camera shifted, and in the light I could see that his eyes were wet, his cheeks as well. His wife, despite the rising pitch of her voice, had dry, hard red eyes.

  The soldiers managed to move them out of the camera’s frame, and as they disappeared, we were left with Ilona Pankov’s choked voice. “If you want to kill us, kill us together. We will always be together.”

  Then blackness. It lasted a full second, and in that second we all exhaled audibly in the small apartment and throughout the country. It was over—we imagined them sitting in their cells now, awaiting the execution, which would happen tomorrow or next month. Sometime.

  We were wrong. The screen brightened, and the now-handheld camera moved around a sullen courtyard in what we would later learn was the Sixteenth District Third Infantry barracks. The stone walls were dirty with bird shit, and in the corner stood a man in army fatigues, clutching a Kalashnikov. Stunned, I leaned closer to the television. “Christ, that’s Gavra.”

  “Noukas?” said Ferenc, not taking his eyes off the screen.

  “Oh Jesus,” said Bernard. “You’re right.”

  The camera jerked to the opposite corner of the courtyard, where a steel door opened up, and first Tomiak, then Ilona, stepped through, blinking in the morning light. Tomiak hummed a song I knew all too well—then stopped. Their vision cleared enough to see who else was in the courtyard, what he was carrying.

  We heard Ilona Pankov’s quiet voice; the air had gone out of her. “They’re going to kill us like animals.”

  They ran along the wall, hands behind their backs. A sudden, distorted sound of automatic gunfire. They jerked and seemed to trip over themselves, then fall, Ilona on top in her fur coat. The gunfire didn’t cease, and their dead bodies trembled from the impact of all the bullets.

  Cut to a close-up of their faces on the ground, bodies turned over so no one could argue they weren’t truly the dead Pankovs.

  The air went out of all of us, and when, after two full minutes of blackness, the tape began playing again from the beginning, I got up and turned off the television. I had trouble walking. My knees made noises. My veins ached. I managed to reach my chair again. Everyone was still staring at the blank screen.

  The young man with the sideburns was the first to speak. He stood and slapped the table. “They’re dead! They’re really dead!”

  From outside, through the thin glass, we heard other young men screaming out their windows. “They’re dead! They’re dead! The tyrant’s dead!”

  So the young man ran to the window, ripped it open, and joined in. The young woman whose name I didn’t know leaned over her knees and started to vomit. Aliz, beside her, rubbed her back.

  Bernard stood, as if he were going to join the chorus at the window, then sat again. “It’s good. Isn’t it?”

  Ferenc had his face in his hands, rubbing. He didn’t answer. I nodded a moment. “It’s good. Yes.” I rubbed the cold tabletop with my palm. “This is what it had to lead to.”

  Ferenc took his face out of his hands. “Yes. They had to do it. To stop the terrorists.”

  “But them,” said Bernard suddenly. “They’re the ones who did it.”

  I didn’t need him reminding me, nor did Ferenc. The kid with the sideburns tired of shouting. He left the window open, through which we heard whistles and car horns blaring in celebration, and returned to us, rubbing his stomach sickly. He went to the bathroom. The nameless girl had recovered, and Aliz went to the kitchen to find towels and water.

  Ferenc was staring at me. I didn’t know what he was thinking, and he didn’t know what I was thinking. I was stunned, but clearheaded enough to be focused on Gavra’s presence there. Had he joined Michalec’s people? Had he turned on me? But why? It made no sense.

  Ferenc said, “I didn’t know your Ministry man had it in him. I’m impressed.”

  “I’m not,” I said, slowly becoming angry.

  Ferenc knew what I meant. He searched his pockets for a cigarette as the noise of delirious shouts and car horns filled the room. I went over to the window and looked down. People were pouring out of their homes, whistling, shouting, kissing, and even dancing. I’d never seen anything like it in my life.

  When, an hour later, we drove out of town again, we had to keep stopping for the crowds. Sarospatak had changed its mood in an instant. It looked like Mardi Gras, not Christmas, but it was Christmas, and they’d been given a gift they’d never even thought to hope for.

  Ferenc and Bernard tracked down the largest Christmas tree they could find. We were never able to wrestle it into the house. That didn’t matter, though, because at around seven thirty a car appeared on a hill, its double headlights bouncing toward us. Magda noticed first, rising from the front steps and pointing. We let go of the tree and watched. Ferenc said, “It’s a Moskvich. Russian plates. Mag, get the gun.”

  She ran inside; so did Bernard.

  His eyes were good. It was a dark brown Moskvich 408 with Moscow plates. It parked behind the Citroen as Bernard came out clutching his Makarov. Magda followed with the Kalashnikov and handed it to her husband.

  Just as I had when I first arrived, the driver rolled down his window first. “Don’t shoot!” He was a flabby-faced Russian with gray around his temples. He gave us a reassuring smile as Bernard approached, waving his pistol.

  “Who’re you?” Ferenc called.

  “Fyodor Malevich. Don’t shoot, now.”

  “Malevich? What do you want?”

  “Just to talk. To Ferenc Kolyeszar and Emil Brod.”

  I looked at Ferenc, who shrugged. I said, “What about?”

  The Russian said, “I come with word from Brano Oleksy Sev.”

  “Well, shit,” said Bernard.

  THIRTY-ONE

  •

  On a rumbling metro train manufactured in a Leningrad factory a decade before, Karel told his story of leaving me to search the Metropol. “I was terrified. Some Frenchwoman told us you’d gone in the day before but didn’t come out. I didn’t know what that meant. I even let Emil take your car.” He paused. “Sorry.”

  Karel had asked everyone he met, soldiers, journalists, and hotel clerks, until he ran across two broad-chested men in wrinkled suits on the third floor. “I must’ve had‘gullible’written across my forehead. Said they were Ministry, and you were somewhere safe. They’d take me to you.” He shook his head as they arrived at the Moscow Square station, on the outskirts of the Twentieth District. “What a chump I am. Stuck me in a crappy apartment and we sat around watching revolutionary TV. You know how boring that gets after eight hours?”

  Gavra smiled for the first time in days and pulled Karel up to le
ave the train.

  “Hey,” said Karel. “Where are we going?”

  “We’re leaving.”

  They took the escalator up to the concrete circle of Moscow Square, full of kolach shops, cigarette kiosks, and waiting buses. The square was busy at that hour, and in the setting sun they saw thin, dark faces in cheap faux-leather jackets wandering around in a daze,most of them drunk. One grabbed on to Karel, singing, “Ol’e, ol’e, the tyrant is dead!”

  Karel looked scared, so Gavra shooed the man away. He’d thought he’d have more time before they broadcast the tape. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Let’s just keep going.”

  “Where?”

  Gavra didn’t want to tell him, not yet, because he knew what Karel’s reaction would be. Instead, he gave his friend silence and led him to a rickety bus on the edge of the square, number 86. The destination sign over the windshield, luckily, hadn’t yet been changed. They took a seat among a few passengers and waited for the driver to arrive.

  Up front, two teenaged boys were with a girl who sat on one’s lap, bowing her head and kissing him lustily. The friend who wasn’t being kissed stood up, grinning, and faced the passengers. He raised a finger and in a pretty good imitation said, “I’ll only speak to the Grand National Assembly!”

  A few nervous titters went through the passengers. Karel whispered to Gavra, “What’s that about?”

  “Wait,” said Gavra.

  The boy at the front shook violently, as if he were being filled with bullets, and fell back into the stairwell as the bus driver stepped on. The driver, a big man, caught him easily and pushed him back up. He, too, had gotten the joke, and started laughing.

  Once they were under way, Gavra drew Karel close and began to whisper the story of the Pankovs’demise. He didn’t reveal his own role in it, though at one point a middle-aged man two seats up began peering back at him. He tugged his wife’s sleeve and whispered something, and then she, too, turned to peer at him.