To tell my story.
With the play’s final sigh, the audience sighed with him, No. It can’t be over. Let us have more. We love you! The applause that greeted the final curtain, and the appearance of Dano, was a huge wave that resounded through the aisles. The subsequent rhythmic, synchronized clapping that is so characteristic of Eastern Europe continued for a good ten minutes. They were all Horatios and Ophelias, promising not to forget him.
Jana had come to the theater with Monika, a friend who was, even before this performance, in love with Daniel. And, as usual with Dano and women, he had already moved on to his next conquest. There was never any animosity on the women’s side when these brief romantic dalliances ended. The women he blew a farewell kiss to were always convinced they were parting because of an uncontrollable set of circumstances, their love now to become a deep friendship which, in actuality, soon faded away.
Monika, who led Jana backstage to meet the blind hero, was now going through the end of the deep-friendship phase with Dano, still wanting to maintain a modicum of closeness by showing up after the play to at least kiss the man of her past dreams on the cheek.
Dano was surrounded by well-wishers. Monika ran over to embrace him and congratulate him on his wonderfully felt and interpreted performance. After a moment, ever so gracefully, she was gently ushered aside to allow the next courtier to greet the prince.
Jana had lagged behind, not wanting to mix with the royal heir’s entourage. She was interested in what Daniel was really like, but this was not the place where anyone could find that out. So she focused on the surroundings that had created the illusions of the play: the false walls that conveyed the strength of Elsinore Castle, the flats, the throne itself. She even picked up one of the rapiers the prop master had not yet collected and, for a moment, engaged in an imaginary duel, thrusting and parrying with her unseen enemy, stopping only because she realized that the stage had become silent.
Jana turned, and there was Dano staring at her, his league of admirers behind him, all of them waiting to see what their hero would do.
He continued to look at her, not eyeing her up and down, simply watching her face. In turn, she stared at him: tall, face even more expressive up close, his hair darker, his eyes deeper. He finally gave her a slow smile; she smiled back.
“I think I like you,” he said softly.
“Impossible.” She shook her head, smiling anyway. “Too early.”
“I wish we had met sooner.” He said it as if he truly meant it. “We will be friends.”
Jana felt her smile getting even wider, happy with his attention, but unsure how to respond. She knew she was pretty, with an athlete’s trim figure, but women police officers, even in civilian clothes, have a look and a posture that tends to drive suitors away. So she was not quite prepared for a Dano in her life.
Their next meeting was at police headquarters. Jana had just finished working up a background on one of her defendants, a farmer who had killed his son because the boy had disrespected him. The mother, in hysterics, had related how her husband had hit her, then hit her again. Their son, a fourteen-year-old, had stepped between the two to stop any further injury to his mother. The father wasted no words. He went to his bedroom, came out with his shotgun, and killed the boy. The mother still had blood spattered on her clothes and kept patting the spots, gently rubbing them, as if her son could feel her touch and be comforted by it.
So Jana was not in a great mood when she saw Dano standing outside the doors to the building. Her bad mood gave way to surprise, then surprise turned to pleasure at seeing him.
Dano was too busy acting out a part for the police officers stationed at the front door to notice her at first. She watched him continually changing characters, first by pretending to be a Golem, his next role; then transforming himself into seventy-year-old King Lear; then into the gangster Mack the Knife in Brecht’s
Threepenny Opera.
He was in the middle of singing the opera’s signature theme song when he saw Jana.
Dano danced over and finished his performance of the song for her. When she told him she was too busy to see him that evening, he pretended to cry, then wandered around the lobby acting the part of a distraught country swain begging for the support of the other police officers in the lobby, all of them eventually urging her to give in.
The chorus of support was so loud that Jana finally agreed to go for coffee. Dano held out his arm to her, the rest of the cops applauding and shouting approval as the two walked down the steps together. Dano charmed her into pushing the farmer’s wife and her son’s tragedy into the back of her mind. And, despite his reputation, Dano kept his distance during the evening they spent together. Jana drove him home and he only kissed her on the cheek.
Their next date was at least planned. The two of them went rollerskating along the Danube, both laughing and giggling at their awkwardness on skates, finally stopping several kilometers upriver to sit on a cold bench that required them to bundle together for warmth.
And always they talked, nonstop. Dano was filled with the idea of leaving the National Theatre and starting his own company; Jana spoke about her cases, Dano taking an intense interest in them. The two worlds mixed and matched, very different but both intense with action, with pathos, with sudden passions of love lost and regained, with tragedy lurking at every intersection of people’s lives. And with joy. How wonderfully surprising it was to them both that their worlds, so different, could be so alike.
Jana brought Dano home to meet her mother, who had seen Dano onstage and was already talking to her friends and neighbors about the growing liaison between Jana and the most promising actor in Bratislava. The older woman went out of her way to cook halushka and to bake up a storm so that Dano would see the kind of hospitality he could expect as a son-in-law.
The courtship lasted one month. They were married without fanfare in a civil ceremony. Jana was rapturously happy, married to the handsomest man in Slovakia. She knew about his past reputation, his romantic grand passions. He swore they were over. And she believed him. She did not care about the government, the world, politics, and certainly could not predict what would happen to them.
Chapter 4
T
he phone rang. Jana quickly picked it up, afraid its insistent clamor would wake the cats. “Yes, right away, Colonel Trokan.” She hung up and reached into the top drawer of her desk to pick up the decedent’s papers that Seges had left for her. She walked to the door just as Seges came in without knocking. He was still doing things the wrong way.
“You didn’t knock.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m going to see Colonel Trokan.” She went past Seges. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it can wait.”
Seges followed her into the hall. “All the men are talking about the blind cats. They think they should be put to sleep.”
“I’ll decide that.” She began walking toward Trokan’s office. “No one lays a hand on them except me.”
“Naturally, Commander Matinova.” He followed her for a few steps. “The coroner wants the papers of the decedent. He keeps phoning me, citing office regulations.”
“Tell him to call me. I’ve dealt with him before. Not a problem.”
“He says that’s why he called me. I think he’s afraid of you.” He waited until she was almost at Trokan’s door. “I found out where the Albanian lived. I am going there.”
Jana stopped at the colonel’s door, raising her voice just enough so that Seges would hear the no-nonsense quality of the command. “You will wait until I finish with the colonel! Understood?”
“I can toss the place myself, you know.”
“You are to wait.” Everything with Seges had to be repeated twice. “Or I will feed you to the department dogs.”
She knocked on the door, waited a full five seconds, than went into the colonel’s office.
Stephan Trokan had been a colonel of police for ten years now. Three months ago, he had been put up for promotion to general by the minister of the interior. Unfortunately, the president, who approved all promotions at that level, disliked the minister of the interior because of an imagined slur he was thought to have uttered about the president’s party in Slovakia’s coalition government. So he refused to sign the promotion, sealing Trokan in his colonel’s rank until this government fell or the president died. Since the president was a born survivor and the next government might be even worse for Trokan, he had decided to stop being ambitious, at least for the moment.
Not that Trokan, a robust man despite his bureaucratic responsibilities, was disheartened enough to become angry or frustrated, or ready merely to let the years go by until he retired. He shrugged it off as a part of life and decided to enjoy the job he had. Which was good for everyone he supervised: No anger was directed their way. Although a fearsome reputation as a martinet continued to follow him, his subordinates were now surprised to discover that he had a sense of humor. Jana walked into an example of it when she entered his office: He had a London bobby’s cap perched on his head.
She took a seat, ignoring the cap, as Trokan pretended to finish something he was writing until she noticed. Finally, to break the stalemate, Jana reached over and took the cap, putting it on her own head.
“It’s mine,” Trokan mumbled, pushing the papers away. He looked up to take in her appearance wearing the cap, then gave her a fleeting smile. “It came from a British cop who is over here with the EU to tell us how bad our police practices are and how we have to become more like the English, or the Italians or the Germans, in order to catch more criminals.”
Trokan leaned back in his chair, ogling her. “Women do look better in hats than men. However, if one of our officers should walk through the door, they would begin inventing stories about us to explain why you look a little strange.”
She took the hat off, carefully laying it on the desk. Trokan immediately put it back on his head.
“Police colonels are allowed to be a little strange.”
“The face below the hat is too Slavic. You would never pass as British.”
“Nothing wrong with looking Slavic.”
He placed the cap on a shelf behind him, in line with a number of police caps he had collected from other countries. “The English always look too prissy.” He swung back to face her. “They know they can’t bribe me with money, so they try to get me to change by offering these little gifts I have to take.”
She eyed the shelf of caps. “Dust catchers.”
“Spoken like a housewife, not a police officer.”
“I’ve not been a housewife for a long time,” she reminded him.
“I know.” He cleared his throat. “How is our daughter Katka?”
“My daughter is still
my
daughter.” Trokan was not her daughter’s father, but he had seen so much of her when she was in her pre-teens that he liked to pretend she was his.
“You haven’t heard from her in a while?”
“A year.”
“No cards, letters, phone calls?”
“One, from her husband, when she had the baby. I sent presents. I called. She wrote back once, a standard store-bought thing with her name written under the printed ‘Thank You.’ I think her husband forged her signature. Americans are very polite. The family is in France. He’s the American consul in Nice.”
“Very warm in Nice; sunny most of the time. Good sea air.”
“They eat lots of fish.” Jana hesitated, then asked, “How is your wife?” It was no secret that his wife and Trokan did not get along.
“Always a madwoman.”
“Too bad.” She laid the papers, collected from the bodies that had been in the burning van, on his desk. “I thought Seges would have filled you in on the details of the case by now. And informed you, because of all his brilliance, how he was close to clearing it.” They both knew that Seges had come to her with a reputation for going behind his supervisor’s back and claiming credit for other people’s successes. ”I suppose a medal would be in order for him, from his perspective, of course.”
“He told me everything from his perspective,” Trokan amiably agreed. He looked a bit uneasy. “We both know he is a sneak. Since I don’t trust his perspective, I thought I might ask you.”
“Why do you have to assign all the problem people to me?”
“I gave a problem child to a problem child. That way, I only have to focus on one place to determine where grief is coming from.”
“When was the last time I gave you trouble? Are you complaining about the way I do things?”
“Of course. Everything is a major event with you. At least that’s what Seges implied.” His belly jiggled as he chuckled gleefully. “I think he said you were making mountains out of molehills.”
“You want to give the case to someone else?”
“No.”
They always had this argument at the beginning of a case. Trokan took pleasure in needling her. He would have come up with a reason to do so even if Seges had not complained. She took it in good humor, because it always ended up with Trokan letting her have her way.
“You can’t complain about the results,” she reminded him.
“It’s my job to complain.”
“As long as it’s only a little bit.” She eyed him, knowing he had something more to tell her. “What else?”
“One
working
girl dead, no problem. Two dead, a sigh but good riddance. Three dead, a little uncomfortable. Four, and we are sweating. Five, and the building is falling down. Here there are six of them. Time for the government people, the newspapers, everyone, to run to an insane asylum and take lessons from the inmates. Throw in the man and there are major earthquakes, particularly with the Western community. The EU is already asking questions.”
“All the women were probably prostitutes.”
“That is your call.”
“Not for sure yet. Seges was supposed to run the records. He told you; he didn’t tell me.”