The Confession (32 page)

The Canal
District was colder than the rest of the city. The water seemed to suck any heat from the air, and wind funneled through the empty passageways. In Augustus II Square, where long before I had found a black shoe, the water level had dropped, and I arrived relatively dry at number three. The chalk x had faded away. The inner room was still a pool, the small well still dry, but the blemish from Antonín’s body was completely gray now, with spots of black corroded by the wet air.

I could not find Nestor, and Louis was in another country. I was no longer sure who had killed Stefan, but I was convinced I would never figure it out. And it didn’t matter how valiantly I protected my family—my marriage was slipping away. Now, my only virtuous act in recent memory—the only one that I had followed through on—had been erased. No action I took seemed to stick. I wanted to sleep.

In the mosaic beneath the water were chalices, wine, debauchery—a satyr leaned, grinning, over a white-robed young woman with a breast exposed. In the corner, a platter of wild berries and the head of a pig gazed up at me.

The Romans had themselves a time in their day, putting everything into their mouths like children. They slaughtered whole civilizations and sowed lands with salt. These were a people of extremes, but somehow over time all the extremes had been bred out of humanity, so that we wore ties and took busses and trams and clocked in and out of the jobs that fed our family. We spoke with calm, responsible detachment and made words that seemed to show what logical beasts we were. But the only important words are those that result in action—Vera knew this. And so did I. In the war I learned who I was—not by the words I spoke, but by the things I did.

We were captured near Humenne on a bleak, dry hill that had become our home for a week. We ran out of ammunition, and our commander, a young man from Hust, announced that the fight was over. Then he went behind the hill and shot himself in the mouth with his last bullet. The Germans came over the hill in a cloud of dust and their bold helmets, well fed and scornful. They arranged us into lines and walked us westward.

Before shooting himself, our commander had told us about the camps set up by the Germans. They were for Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs. The Germans, he pointed out, were a people of extremes. His stories were difficult to believe, and some of us laughed at him, though since then his descriptions have seemed mundane. But on that dusty walk, as we starved on blistered feet, we began to suspect the truth.

Each day we stopped so the Germans could rest, and during one of these breaks I escaped with a couple other soldiers. I’ve written about this. I’ve written about the calculations we made, the old trenches we dropped into in order to escape snipers, the grass we ate to hold off starvation, the peasants’ homes where we rested and received nourishment. What I never wrote down was the bitterness between us when we stopped over a clump of grass and tried to divide it up. I used my size to force the largest portion, and once when another escapee—Yakov Teddi, a skinny boy with long hair—tried to take his fair share I kicked him in the face. This is something I never wrote about. My boot broke his nose, and I didn’t care. But he stayed with us until the end.

Vera was
in a mood when she arrived. She didn’t tell me what it was, but the mood was evident by her silence, and the way, in bed, she held my big hand up to her face and turned it to see it from every angle. She brought the palm up close to her eyes, as if to read my future, and kissed the hair on the back of it. She smiled, then quickly sank her teeth into my middle finger. The pain shot through me, and I instinctively slapped her, harder than I would have wanted. When she got up on her elbow there was a bright red spot on her cheek. But she was still smiling.

At the station, Leonek was busy struggling through Kliment’s interview of Boris Olonov, in Russian. “Why didn’t he translate it?” Leonek muttered to himself. “He could have translated it.”

“Get Kaminski to do it,” I muttered.

Leonek looked up at me, unsure if I was joking. In case I wasn’t, he said, “Kaminski’s got the flu. That’s what Brano says.”

Brano didn’t seem to notice his name being said.

Leonek tried a smile. “Maybe we can get Kaminski for sabotage.”

Through his open door, I saw Moska eating a sandwich at his desk. “Come in, Ferenc. Haven’t seen you much lately. A bite?”

I shook my head.

He set the sandwich down and cocked his head. “I heard about the Woznica woman.”

“What about her?”

“That she was found dead in her home village.”

“Who told you?”

“Brano,” he said as he lifted the sandwich again. “She was officially one of ours, so Moscow sent a report. Brano didn’t think you’d tell me. Was he right about that?”

“I don’t know. I would’ve gotten around to it.”

“Are you going to follow up on it?”

“Any reason I shouldn’t?”

“Of course not, Ferenc. It’s your job. I’ll see if I can get some clearance for you to work on international cases. It’ll take a week or two, so wait before arresting him. He won’t go anywhere.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m closing down the other investigation. I told Brano this morning. I know you didn’t touch Stefan. He knows it, too.”

“Thanks,” I said, then looked at him. “Really.”

He took a bite, pulling his lips back to expose the two holes where teeth had once been, then dropped the sandwich again. “Is there anything you need to talk about? You seem a little weird these days.”

“You know about Magda and me.”

“That’s been going on a long time.”

“It’s worse.”

His sympathetic smile made me wonder if he, also, knew about Leonek. But he said, “Ferenc, everyone’s marriage is rough. Don’t think you’re alone in this.”

“I didn’t say I was.”

“I never told you about Angela and me, did I?”

“I knew you had some problems.”

“I don’t gab about it, but it wasn’t pretty. It got bad enough that I started sleeping with some young girl from the administrative typing pool. Exceptional girl. She’s married now, with two kids. Very happy.”

“Good for her.”

“The point is, Angela and I finally sat down and talked. There were a lot of things she had never said to me, and a lot of things I hadn’t said to her. Nothing easy about it, marriage. You’ve got to make some sacrifices. How long have you been married?”

“Seventeen years.”

“Not long at all. We’ll talk again when you get to twenty-five years, and I’ll have some more advice for you.”

I grinned. “I can’t wait.”

Emil asked
where I had been the previous day, but didn’t wait for the answer I didn’t want to give. “You should’ve come out with me. I had a grand time talking to old women who didn’t want to say a thing.”

“In Stefan’s building?”

“Yeah. And Antonín’s. Nothing of use. But then,” he said, sitting on the corner of my desk, “I started thinking about this Frenchman. This Louis Rostek.”

“Did you?”

He looked at me.

“Go on.”

“There’s a French school over on Yalta Boulevard.”

“The one I’m going to send Ágnes to.”

“Exactly. The head didn’t know anything about Louis, but he suggested I check with their consulate. They host parties for French nationals.”

I sat up. He’d actually been working while I moped in the Canal District. “And?”

“And I haven’t been there yet. Want to come?”

It was west of Victory Square, along the tree-lined streets of the diplomatic area. Three identical Mercedes were parked behind the gate, and the guard, a local boy, picked up the telephone in his little guardhouse for permission to let us enter. Then he opened the gate and watched us walk up the stone path to the front door, where another guard stood waiting. This one was French. He took us into a large marble entryway with a board covered by posters for upcoming events and a front desk where we signed in. Another man arrived: thin, white hair, an eye that twitched. His name was Jean-Paul Garamond. He shook our hands. “Good to meet you, Inspectors. Please, please.”

He waved us down a marble corridor to his office, then waited until we were inside before entering and closing the door. The chairs opposite his desk were old and comfortable, and he held out an open box of cigars. I shook my head, but Emil, intrigued, took one. “Thank you.”

Garamond lit it for him, then settled behind his desk, looking very pleased to have us both there. “Now what is it I can do for you gentlemen?”

Emil was puffing frantically on the cigar to keep it lit, and the smoke began to bother me. I said, “We’re here in connection with a homicide investigation. Evidence has turned up a connection to a French national who frequents our country. A Louis Rostek.”

Garamond didn’t seem to know the name. “Rostek?”

“His family was from here originally, years back.”

“I see,” he said, eye twitching. “And you think he killed someone?”

“No. But he’s connected to our suspect, and he certainly has information that could help us.”

Emil was finally satisfied with the ember at the end of his cigar, and began waving smoke away. “Do you have,” he said, then blew some smoke from his face. “Do you keep records of your citizens when they’re here?”

Garamond smiled, but this was a smile I didn’t trust. “Well, we don’t run things
your
way.”

“Our way?”

He shrugged expansively. “We don’t follow our citizens down the street taking notes.”

“And if you did,” I said, “you wouldn’t give such notes to the local authorities.”

“That would be our prerogative.”

Emil had gotten rid of most of the smoke. He took a normal draw of the cigar, crossed his leg over his knee, and exhaled. “Can you tell us, then, why a French national was seen at a labor camp last spring trying to get inside?”

“Maybe he was a journalist.”

“He’s a poet,” I said.

Garamond took one of the cigars for himself, but didn’t light it. He rolled it between his fingers. “I think you should be going through other channels for this kind of information. Here at the consulate we’re more interested in protecting the privacy of our citizens than divulging their secrets. Your people can talk to the embassy.”

“We’d rather not do it that way,” I said. “For Louis Rostek’s good as well as our own.”

His eye twitched when he lit his cigar. Three short puffs, and the ember glowed. “I’m afraid I can’t help you men. I can point you to our cultural and language programs if you’re interested.”

I did consider it briefly, for Ágnes, but said, “No thank you,” and stood up.

She had
told Karel she would spend the weekend with her sister, so I watched her make dinner in my apartment, standing where Magda would stand when I got home from work, turning to lay plates on the kitchen table. I went through some papers while she cooked, old notes for a second novel that had never come together. A lot of ideas, but no words, sentences, or paragraphs. I only had the pages I’d written about Magda and me. I picked up my old novel and gazed at it.

The French consulate had been just one more dead end—one more that convinced me that I had no control over the case, or my life. So I sat there with my book—shoddy, as Stefan had called it—wanting the strength to take control of something, anything. But more than that, I wanted the complete silence of solitude and the ease of a life without responsibility.

She was bent over the oven when I came in, but I didn’t touch her. This was something I’d noticed. As our relationship progressed, we touched less outside the bedroom. The distance maintained a tension between us—we both understood this. Our time outside the bedroom was spent preparing for the bedroom.

As she plated the food she told me that she had come upon a fresh understanding of herself. “It’s through failures. After enough of them you can look around and see what’s left to you. Not Karel, that’s for sure. And my career is dwindling before my eyes. My friends are all distant, and even you,” she said, setting the plates on the table. “I don’t really know about you, do I?”

I didn’t say anything.

“So when I look around, what’s left standing? Only one thing. Recklessness. It’s the only thing that makes me feel like I’m becoming.”

“Becoming what?”

“Just becoming.”

“Recklessness, huh?”

“Yes. Recklessness.”

While we ate I mentioned the visit to Vátrina. She didn’t seem interested until I told her it was a camp town. “Were there prisoners?”

“There will be once they get it going again. The guards sit around drinking and waiting for them.”

She touched her fork to her lower lip, then went back to eating.

“I slept with a woman there.”

She laid the fork beside her plate. At first the expression was confused, then it settled. “Did you?”

“She worked at the hotel desk.”

“How was she?”

“All right. Interesting.”

I wanted her to ask more, because I was feeling reckless, too—I could stretch the truth or simply lie—but she didn’t ask anything else. She finished her plate and put it in the sink, then went to the bathroom.

I threw away the food I hadn’t eaten and turned on the radio. She came out before I could sit and asked me to turn it off.

“You don’t want music?”

“I don’t think so.”

I checked her eyes for any sign of tears, but there was none. She walked up to me and nodded at the radio.

“You going to turn it off?”

“No.”

She slapped me. The burn slid down my cheek and over my neck. When she stepped back I snatched her arm, jerked her to me, and bit her cheek.

She punched my stomach—a light thump—and I grabbed her waist and half carried her into the bedroom. She slapped me again in the darkness until I held her down, ripping at her buttons. She got a hand free and tore at my shirt.

It was more violent than before, more anguished. Her teeth drew blood from my shoulder and I bruised her wrists holding her down. It was angrier than it had ever been before, it hurt. I could tell by her whimpers in the dark.

I rolled over on my back. We were both covered in sweat.

She lay a while, facedown in the pillow, making low, grunting noises. I didn’t know if she was crying or not, and I didn’t ask. Then she flung herself on me. When she kissed me, her teeth chipped against mine and her tears rubbed into my cheeks. After a while, she calmed and settled her head on my chest.

As she dozed a fresh wave of dissatisfaction overcame me. The recklessness I had tried with her satisfied nothing. But I didn’t know what else to do.

In the middle of the night, she woke me with her mouth. She rose on her knees, and from the lights of other apartments I saw that she had Ágnes’s knotted rope in her hands. She presented it to me and lay down. I didn’t understand at first, but she smiled and said, “I want to sleep like this.”

So I tied her wrists behind her back, then her ankles. In the dim light the shadows on her thin body made her seem emaciated, starved. I gave her a kiss on the mouth, then another one between her legs.

I slept deeply until seven, when a nightmare woke me. I couldn’t remember it all, but one detail floated through and settled in my mind: Malik Woznica on top of Magda, trembling. It was strong enough to give me the feeling I was still dreaming, and when I sat up and went to put on my clothes it was with a gliding, dream-walk across the rug. I washed my face and returned to Vera staring up at me, her wrists bound behind her. Her eyes were very big. “Are you going somewhere?” Her voice was dry.
Yes,
I said.
I’m going somewhere
. “How long?”
Not so long
.
I’m not going to untie you
. She seemed to be looking inside me. “Okay.”