The confession tyb-2 Read online

  “It looks like shell shock,” he said.

  “Those shakes?”

  “Was he in the war?”

  “That would be a long time ago.”

  He shrugged. “Let’s check his file.”

  Files on public officials were kept in the basement of the Central Committee on Victory Square. We caught a bus from Woznica’s neighborhood, got out at the vast circle of roads around a huge statue of a man and woman holding up a torch, and made our way to the columned Central Committee building. Before it stood the Lenin of all capitals, a recent gift from Our Friend, arm elevated like the couple in the middle of the square, stepping into the future, the wind raising his jacket. A guard stood smoking at the small side door, beneath the emblem of the hawk at rest. The sight of our Militia certificates did nothing to excite him.

  The records room was down a dark, musty corridor, and Milos, the old Slovak record keeper, wasn’t known for his helpfulness. Beneath a large, smiling Mihai, he scratched the gray stubble on his cheek. “I don’t imagine you have the proper forms, do you?”

  “What forms?” I asked.

  Milos opened his hands. “Read your regulations, comrades. Article seventeen-fifty. Permissions for all Militia inquiries must be prefaced by signatures from your superiors. Isn’t that old Karl Moska?”

  Emil shook his head. “Subsection three,” he quoted: “‘This article pertains to investigations not previously authorized by Militia decrees G-34 or G-72.’ These are blanket decrees which cover Homicide Department work.”

  Now I was impressed.

  Milos shoved a thumb over his shoulder at the wall of black drawers. “Don’t mess them up.”

  Comrade Malik Woznica, his brief file told us, was forty-eight years old and married to Svetla Levin (daughter of a Russian tailor who had moved here with the Red Army). He had been suffering from an unknown neurological disease for the last decade. The doctor’s report offered no answers, but speculated that the cause might be found in a mining town where Comrade Woznica had spent two years as Party boss before developing his condition. The water in that region, said the doctor, was known to have been contaminated by mercury, and the town was almost famous-in the medical community, at least-for its cancer rates. As for Comrade Woznica, only morphine seemed to help the condition. I wondered aloud if Woznica was hooked on his medication.

  Emil shut the file. “The way he was jerking around, I’d say he hasn’t touched it for a long time.”

  “Maybe she took his prescription with her. For herself.”

  “Or to sell. But she couldn’t move in the first place.”

  “Give me the name of that doctor, will you?”

  Back at the station, I called Dr. Sergius Brandt’s office at Unity Medical, but his secretary curtly informed me that the doctor was out of town. “When will he be back?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I’d like an appointment.”

  I listened to static while she, I assumed, examined his schedule. Emil was on his own telephone, checking in with Lena. He was smiling.

  “Two weeks.”

  “What?”

  “The doctor will be able to see you in two weeks. Wednesday the twenty-first.”

  “This is official business,” I told her. “I’m not a patient, I’m a Militia inspector.”

  “Comrade Doctor Brandt is a busy man.”

  “So am I. I’ll be there at noon. Tomorrow.”

  Before she could protest, I hung up.

  4

  Agnes showed off her athletic uniform that evening. They’d just arrived at school for the Pioneers’ new fitness campaign. Like the students I’d seen in the street: white short-sleeved shirt and shorts that stopped just above the knee. “Aren’t those a little revealing?” I asked. She modeled in the living room to a Prague Symphony rendition of Mahler, her milky legs goose-stepping. “Where are your glasses?”

  No question could faze her. She demonstrated the new, scientific exercises-sharp bows from the waist, arms out, bent, forward, down. When she stopped finally, her face was as red as the Pioneer scarf.

  We went in to help Magda with dinner, but she was already plating it. While we ate, Agnes went through the eleven-point Pioneer pledge she was supposed to memorize: “ One: We the Red Pioneers honor our socialist motherland by wearing this red scarf. Two: We the Red Pioneers value learning as it advances the wisdom of our motherland. Three: We the Red Pioneers respect our parents-”

  “That’s a good one,” I said.

  “Shh,” Agnes warned. “You’ll throw me off. Four: We the Red Pioneers love peace and the Soviet Union, and hate all warmongers. Five…”

  She stumbled over number seven, the one about loving and respecting work and all working people, but otherwise did a fine job. It was impressive enough to provoke a smile from Magda.

  “You coming tonight?” I asked her.

  “What tonight?”

  “Georgi’s party.”

  She gave an exaggerated expression of anguish, as if she’d forgotten, then shook her head. “I’ll stay here. I don’t want to leave Agnes alone.”

  “I’m fine by myself,” she muttered through a mouthful.

  “She’s old enough. Come on, you’ll enjoy it.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me: no contradictions in front of the child. “Really. I’d rather spend some time with my daughter.” She turned to her daughter. “We’ll do something nice. Girls’ night.”

  Agnes shrugged and went back to her plate.

  5

  In addition to the same ten from my last visit, there were twenty more crammed into that small apartment. Georgi had painted a red banner that hung over the kitchen door: ARTISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

  “You like?” he asked me, his drunkenness clear from the first glance.

  “It’s clever,” I lied.

  Georgi stumbled through to the kitchen. Someone had opened the window over the sink to cut through the smoke and humidity of so many sweating bodies, and a brandy was shoved into my hand. I noticed Vera-the hard stare and red lips playing on the edge of her glass made her unavoidable-then the others, squeezed tight: pairs and threesomes in heated conversations and lonely drinkers peering around in anticipation or nodding off.

  “Did your Frenchman make it out all right?”

  Georgi leaned close, looking baffled. I repeated myself. “Ah! Louis sent word from Paris! Come, come!”

  I followed him back to the living room, pushing past faces that said Ferenc so good to and Where have you been hiding and I’ve been wanting to talk, until we had reached the bedroom. There was a young couple on his small bed, half-dressed. The girl tugged her bra strap up to her shoulder; the boy blushed. I didn’t know them, and neither, apparently, did Georgi. “Who did you come with?”

  There was some confusion as they buttoned their clothes and tried to manage an answer. “We just…well, everyone knew about…it was… no one, okay?” The boy, a Gypsyish southerner, finally stood straight. “Is there a problem with us being here?”

  Georgi gave me a sidelong glance. “I don’t like my bed being soiled by other people’s fluids.”

  They were edging along the wall toward the door. The girl’s lipstick was smeared to her chin. “No need to get all heated up,” said the boy.

  “I’m not heated,” said Georgi. “It’s just my friend here. He’s a little protective. He keeps breaking people into little pieces. I don’t know what to do about it.”

  Both of them looked up at me, and when I laid my hand over my rings and cracked my knuckles, they bolted.

  Louis had sent a picture postcard of Notre Dame, with a question mark and an exclamation point scratched beneath it. My dear Comrade! Here in the bourgeois capital looking for ways to take back my surplus value. Thoughts of my days with you warm me in this cold place. Please look into coming to Paris, where I can show you the hospitality you’ve shown me.

  The scribbled Louis at the bottom was illegible.

  “He’s got your sense of
humor,” I said.

  Georgi put it back in his bureau. “You going to the Union meeting on Friday?”

  “The Writer’s Union?”

  “What else?”

  “Haven’t been to one of those in years.”

  He squeezed my knee. “That’s because you’re a sweetheart. You stopped going when they kicked me out.”

  I shrugged. “Coincidence.”

  He patted my cheek and gave a bleary smile, then raised his glass. “To our Magyar comrades-in-arms. Kick those bastards out!”

  I allowed myself a slow, quiet intoxication. It was a gift for writing again, for surviving Stefan’s stab at collapsing my marriage, and for not thinking too deeply about Magda’s late nights out, with Lydia. I swept through the rooms and back again, caught by half conversations about Budapest and Moscow and Washington, DC, and the Suez, and about writing. Stanislaus was working on a series of poems remembering the end of Stalinism, and Bojan was in the final edits of a surrealist memoir-a “dream book.” A couple artists were ridiculing Vlaicu, probably the most popular state painter at that time. A journalist I’d never met before provoked a few words on what I’d been writing and seemed genuinely interested in my vague answers, which helped my mood. There were more students, a few making out, and another young couple in a corner, telling Georgi loudly that there would be a strike very soon. “Citywide,” the girl said earnestly. “It will be unambiguous. They’ll know how the People feel.”

  Georgi was humoring their optimism, but an older painter whose name I didn’t remember asked how they expected to get word around. “How are we supposed to know when to strike?”

  “We won’t need to utter a word,” said her boyfriend. “The government will tell everyone when to strike. All they need to do is close down one demonstration. Just one. Then the People will react.”

  The painter laughed, and the ensuing argument lasted a long time, all shouts and condescending one-liners.

  Then, very late, as the party was clearing out and I thought I’d avoided it, Vera cornered me.

  She had made herself up very well: Her dark hair hung loose down her back, and she’d worked hard on blackening her eyes. Red sweater and one of those tight skirts I’d seen a lot of in the summer. Stockings and heels. I’d noticed all this when I first saw her in the kitchen, but now, drunk and a little aroused, I couldn’t ignore it.

  “Where’s your lovely wife?”

  “Home. Your husband?”

  “Writing, somewhere. Why don’t I ever see you anymore?”

  “We run in different circles.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  Vera had studied philosophy in Switzerland during the war, and returned to teach and marry her childhood love, Karel. But over the years their fights had been as public as her subsequent affairs. When she turned her attention to me the previous Christmas, no one knew about the problems in my marriage, but Vera’s philosopher eye had been able to divine our secret without much trouble.

  I tried to change the subject to the one still lingering around us-the fighting in the streets of Budapest-but she stood on her toes and leaned close to my ear.

  “Don’t bore me,” she breathed. “I expect better from you.” Then she rubbed a hand down my tingling arm. “Do you have a cigarette?”

  I lit it with a match because I’d never replaced the lighter Martin had taken. She stared at me through the smoke. I said, “Agnes is doing some fitness program now. They gave out uniforms.”

  “She’s a pretty girl. Are the boys showing interest?”

  “I hope not.”

  She picked something off her lip with her long nails.

  I started rambling about wanting Agnes to go to a foreign school in order to learn languages. “The French high school is exceptional, but they won’t take her unless she passes the exam. She’s not studying her French.”

  But Vera wasn’t listening. She gazed at the living room, which was empty except for the young couple we’d caught in Georgi’s bed. They were on the sofa, and the girl was determined to smear her lipstick again. Vera stroked my back. The drunkenness slid up to my scalp. When I turned back, she was back on her toes, our faces close, and her lips were on mine. I could taste smoke and bitter lipstick in her long kiss, then her tongue sliding against my teeth, probing deeper. Her hands held my head still.

  It was Christmas again, her body pressed on top of mine, her saliva filling my mouth, hips shifting over me.

  I held on to her waist and pulled her closer.

  Then I let go. I pushed her down by her shoulders. She looked up at me, licking her lips. “You want to go somewhere?”

  I shook my head. I even said no-either to make it clear to her, or to myself.

  I could tell by the sudden widening of her jaw that her teeth were clenched behind her lips. “Ferenc, I’m not going to wait forever.”

  “I know.”

  “Once a year, that’s not enough for any woman.”

  I looked at her a moment more, at her hard, determined expression, then gave her shoulder a squeeze.

  6

  Agnes listened to a staticky American crooner while she half read a civics schoolbook on the sofa. Pavel was asleep beside her. She wrinkled her nose when I kissed her. “You stink. Are you drunk?” When she took off her glasses to examine me, she seemed very much like a grown woman.

  “No, I’m not drunk.” But I slurred the last two words. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “I told Stefan to come see us more often. Is he all right?”

  “Stefan was here?”

  “He called. But not for you. He wanted Mama.”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it.

  “After she talked to him she was crying. Is something wrong with Stefan?”

  I looked around. “Where is your mother.”

  “She went out.”

  “What about girls’ night?”

  She put her glasses back on and returned to the book. “I guess she meant other girls. She went to see her friend Lydia.” After a moment, she looked at me again. “Daddy, are you all right?”

  Later, as I lay on the sofa in the dark, a sheet over me, staring at the ceiling, she arrived. First the key clicked in the lock, then light spilled in from the corridor. I waited until she had locked it again. “Where were you?”

  I heard her gasp, then the keys being set down. “Out. With Lydia.”

  “Come over here, Mag.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “This is important.”

  Her shadowy form moved over to me, and I sat up. I patted the sofa for her to sit.

  “Where were you?”

  Her profile was black, but I could see her thinking about it. “I told you, Ferenc.”

  “We’ve got to talk about this.”

  Her profile tilted so she was looking at her hands. “I just need to figure everything out. I don’t know what I want anymore.” She paused. “I can only do this on my own. Can you understand that?”

  I put a hand on her knee.

  “Don’t. Please.”

  I took back my hand. “We used to talk about these things together.”

  She turned to me, but I couldn’t make out her expression as she stood up. “Yes. We used to.”

  7

  The next day, Emil and I walked back to Woznica’s neighborhood and split up at the Tisa to canvass the local shops for information. I talked to a fishmonger, two bakers, a keysmith, and two bartenders, all with no luck. They had never seen Comrade Woznica’s wife-him, yes, but never her. “Not once?” A shrug and a shake of the head. Maybe years ago, they couldn’t be sure. The second bartender, a man nearly as large as I, with a shock of black hair marked by little thinning spots, had never even met Malik Woznica. I took the news with a handful of pumpkinseeds and turned to go, but recognized a figure hunched by the far wall. The name took a moment to materialize, but it did come, along with a cool wave of repulsion.

  “Oh god damn, ” he said when he saw me.

  “Mart
in.” I didn’t stick out my hand because I didn’t want to get that close. His dry nose was peeling.

  “Comrade Inspector,” he mumbled, then finished his shot. “You’ve found me, now I must go.”

  “I’m not looking for you. Josef Maneck’s case is over.”

  “Tell that to your goddamn friend.” He started to stand, wobbled, and settled back down.

  “Is that why you’re in this neighborhood? Has the other inspector been asking questions?”

  “Don’t tell.” This time he made it to his feet and put a purple stump of finger to his lips. “Don’t say I was here. Be a pal?”

  He didn’t look back as he tumbled out the door.

  The bartender told me he’d been coming in there a week, maybe more, and I knew then that Stefan was still obsessed with that old suicide. The thought brought some small satisfaction. Stefan, perhaps, was spiraling into darkness.

  Emil met me at the Georgian Bridge, and as cars passed we huddled against the cold and compared notes. It had been the same for him-they’d seen the husband but not the wife. “Talked to Woznica’s pharmacist, though.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Picks up his morphine every week, like clockwork. He told me those first weeks he’d been suspicious-it’s no small amount for one man.”

  “What convinced him?”

  “How big Woznica is. And how extreme his condition. The pharmacist said it’s gotten worse this half year or so.”

  “So he’s been taking more?”

  “I asked him that. It’s increased, yes, but only because of his tolerance. In essence, Woznica’s been on the same dosage for the last five years. But it’s no longer helping-we’ve both seen how he shakes.”

  We leaned against the iron rail, the wind battering us, and faced the Canal District.

  “How about Svetla?”