The Confession (22 page)

Sunday was
bright as Leonek and I waited in one of the new cemeteries. The ones in the center had been filled to overflowing by the war, and the overflow had been directed to these modern expanses in the outer districts. There was no fence around this one, and the graves were flat stones in the grass. Name, dates, and sometimes a rank. Nothing more. The graveyard’s flatness was made more noticeable by the narrow shed on the edge of the grounds, and the block towers in the distance. There were two trees, though they were no more than twigs rising hopefully out of the grass toward a white sun that warmed nothing. A man with a shovel stood beside a pile of dirt.

“No one here yet?” Leonek asked him.

The groundskeeper’s weathered face buckled when he shut his mouth tightly. “No one ever comes early to a funeral.”

“Well, we do.”

Between us was a rectangular hole, well dug, and a slip of stone that read.

Grubin Tevel

1856–1956

“Tevel was a century old,” said Leonek. “Good for him.”

“One lousy century to live through,” I said.

We retreated to the closest of the two saplings, which made us feel less exposed.

“You know what you’re going to say to him? You only get one chance.”

“I never prepare an interview. I’ll know what to ask when I’m asking it.”

A cold wind buffeted us, then died down. In the distance a hearse drove toward the cemetery. It moved slowly along a gravel path through the graves and stopped near the groundskeeper. He and the driver heaved a cheap casket out of the back and placed it beside the hole.

“Where’s your mother buried? Not here.”

“Other side of town. It’s a small graveyard, out of the way. Lots of trees. Not like this.”

After a while, five mourners appeared on foot. They were all in black and, I saw as they neared, stooped and old. Two men in Hassidic garb, three women with ceremonial scarves covering their heads. Neighbors or friends from the Jewish quarter. They waited beside the casket, muttering and occasionally shooting us mistrustful glances. One of the men—he seemed to have the serenity of a holy man—approached the casket and opened it; inside, the body was covered by a shroud. He said some Hebrew words over it.

At first we were afraid that Zindel Grubin would not arrive. Then Leonek spotted the reflection of sun off a white car coming toward us. We left the tree and waited with the others, and all of us watched the car stop behind the hearse. Three men were in the front seat, Zindel Grubin between two beefy men who walked him over silently. The old ones moved forward to greet him.

Zindel had a thin face and big ears on either side of his shaved head. His thick-lipped smile seemed a little unsure of itself as he bent to receive hugs.

The hearse driver opened a leather-bound book and said a few words. This was the official eulogy, the one that would go into the record books. He awkwardly inserted
Grubin, Tevel
where blanks appeared in the text. The guards retreated to the tree we’d left and started smoking. They had no worries—there was nowhere for Zindel to hide.

Afterward, the old man who had opened the casket stood over the enshrouded body and began to read outlines of Hebrew. Leonek and I glanced at one another. Everything was a mystery. One of the women cried, but briefly, and Zindel stared at the shroud as if trying to see through it.

After the words were said, we helped Zindel and the groundskeeper lower the casket into the earth. It was surprisingly light.

The mourners talked briefly with Zindel, and we waited behind them. Leonek stuck out his hand and introduced himself. “My condolences,” he said, as Zindel hesitantly took the hand. “Look, can we talk?”

Zindel let go. “That’s up to my keepers, I suppose.”

The guards were still smoking by the tree. “We’ll say I’m a cousin. Come on.”

He put a hand on Zindel’s shoulder, and Zindel, to my surprise, did not shake it off. I stood beside them as they talked, keeping an eye on the guards, but I was all ears.

“I read you’re in for sabotage. Is that right?”

Zindel smiled. “I wish. I was passing out leaflets at the barracks outside town, to the soldiers. That’s what they call sabotage these days.” He looked back at the mourners. “Being a Jew didn’t help, it never does. You know, I’m told the entire neighborhood wants to move to Israel. I didn’t think it was possible, but someone in the Interior Ministry said they’re considering shipping the whole neighborhood off. Does that sound realistic to you?”

“No,” said Leonek. “Doesn’t sound realistic at all.”

“Are you one of the tribe?”

“What?”

“Are you a Jew?”

“Armenian.”

“Ah.” Zindel nodded. “Well, that’s not so bad either.”

“Listen. I’ve come to talk about your sister, Chasya. Can you tell me about her?”

Zindel shrugged. “She was sweet,” he said. “My sister was a doll. That’s why they went for her. Russians see something that’s pure, they want to piss on it.”

“What about Sergei Malevich, the inspector who was investigating her murder?”

He shook his head. “Another Russian.”

“He was different.”

“Maybe to you, Inspector, but not to me. He’s a good talker, that Russian, he even made me doubt myself, but in the end I was smarter.”

“You didn’t know he was killed.”

I looked over in time to see the doubt come into Zindel’s face. “Who killed him?”

“The Russians killed him when he was investigating the case. Because he was different.”

He frowned at the pile of dirt beside his grandfather’s open grave.

“That’s why I’m here,” said Leonek. “He was killed because he had figured out who the murderers were, and I’m trying to sort it all out. To get a little justice finally.”

Zindel smiled at the word, as if it were a joke.

“I need you to tell me what you remember.”

He said he didn’t remember much, but he did. He remembered the night when Chasya didn’t come home, so he went to her friend Reina’s home. It turned out that she was missing as well. He went into the streets—it was raining that night, he said—and looked in all the corners and alleys he knew they sometimes wandered to. He found her other girlfriends, but all he learned was that they were last seen heading home. “I had nothing to go on but my feeling. Fear. That something terrible had happened.” So he and his father went out again and started asking strangers. It was a rare thing in those days to talk to strangers, and after the suspicion died away they finally got a lead: A shopkeeper had seen two young girls talking with some soldiers at the corner of Polska and Josefov. “I suppose those streets have different names now.”

Leonek nodded. They did.

“So we stuck to that area. We passed the synagogue several times—it was boarded up, and we didn’t think to look inside. But after we’d exhausted all our other options we walked around it until we found a door where the boards had been ripped off. It was very late then, and we didn’t have a flashlight. So Father lit matches. It didn’t take long to find them. They were lying between the pews. Raped. Their throats slit.”

He stepped over to the edge of the grave, glanced at his guards who were looking back at him, and turned to us with a strange smile.

“Think I should jump in? Would that get them off my back? No,” he said as he wandered back. He nodded at the mourners. “Those poor old mothers would get piles from sitting shiva so long.”

They filed reports and complaints in rapid succession. Or at least Zindel did. His father, after seeing the bodies and learning what had been done to them, was unable to function. He stopped going in to work, and his wife had to take over everything. For weeks there was nothing from the authorities, and in that time Zindel investigated on his own. He got descriptions of a couple of the men—there were four in all—and brought his descriptions to a tired Militia clerk, who shrugged and put them in a drawer. “When I left I’m sure they went into the trash.” By the time Inspector Sergei Malevich showed up at the apartment with an earnest expression that could not fool him, he even had a name: Boris Olonov. “He bought his bread from the same woman every day, that’s how I learned who he was. But after he killed my sister he didn’t come to the neighborhood anymore. I never got my hands on him.”

“And you didn’t tell the inspector his name.”

He shook his head.

Leonek’s voice stuttered with irritation. “That was a mistake. You don’t realize what a mistake it was.”

Zindel seemed surprised by Leonek’s sincerity. He glanced at me, then said, “If I’d given him the name, would it have brought my sister back? Would anything have happened to Boris Olonov?” He shook his head. “Nothing would have happened. Except the Russians would have known everything I knew.”

“My partner might have lived.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be so sure.”

Zindel returned
to the custody of his captors, each one holding an elbow to guide him to the front seat of the white car. They squeezed in on either side and drove back to Ozaliko.

“Does it help?” I asked as I started the engine.

“Not really. Maybe. I don’t know.” Leonek drew his finger along the windshield and looked at the dirt on his print. “I can file a report on Olonov, at least that. He might be the one who killed Sergei. But he’s somewhere deep in Russia now, I’m sure, forgetting about the two dead girls and Sergei. I can’t touch him.”

I changed gear. “Maybe you can.”

He looked at me.

“Kliment. He helped me out recently on a case. He might be willing to look around.”

“
Kliment
helped you on a case?”

“He’s a good man.”

“Like his father,” said Leonek, watching the blocks go by. A smile spread across his face. “Yes. This could work.”

We had a few drinks at his tiny, tin-roofed house. It was dirty; ever since his mother had died, it seemed, no one had cleaned a thing. Except for the bedroom. The bed was made and the sheets starched, and all the surfaces had been dusted. “This where you live?” I asked him, and when he realized what I was asking, his face darkened in an uneven blush.

With our third round of brandies, Leonek turned on the radio. It was set to the Americans. These days they were calmer, reporting on international events with a steady, tempered voice and leaving the vitriol to their guests, exiles recently escaped from the Empire. There was a writer from Kiev who chronicled in painful detail the interrogations he had faced at the hands of the KGB. He described the use of heat and cold on the flesh, the simple effects of clubs struck repeatedly against his legs. I wondered what simple tools Kaminski preferred, then wished I hadn’t. I said, “You listen to this a lot?”

Leonek touched his glass to his chin. “It’s the only thing I listen to.”

I left just after dusk, feeling a little vibrant from the drinks, and I didn’t want this pleasure to be undermined by Magda’s silence or by dreams of Stefan sliding over her body, so I drove into the Fifth District and slowly turned up and down the narrow streets, stopping generously for pedestrians. My hands and feet knew where I was going, but I was in no hurry. When it occurred to the rest of me, I tried to deny it, but then I was parked in front of Vera’s building and could no longer fool myself.

If I wanted to justify it, it would have been no problem. But I didn’t try to justify it. That would have made what followed into part of a game between me and Magda. That would have trivialized it. So I held the loose banister as I ascended, thinking only that it was a lovely building where Vera and Karel Pecsok lived.

She opened the door, started to say
hello,
then stared.

She was half-dressed, as if getting ready to go somewhere. A brassiere and a black skirt over stockings, her hair tied in a bun on the back of her head.

“Well,”
she managed, along with a smile.

“You busy?”

“Just wondering what to do with my night. Come in.”

Vera’s beauty lay less in her physical appearance than in her ferocity. Long, hungry fingers that pulled off my jacket and hat, large eyes that roamed over my chest, arms, face. Her brassiere was loose on her white, bony shoulders. She was so thin. She took my jacket away and reappeared in a blouse with glasses of red wine, smelling of lavender.

“You surprise me, dear,” she said. “You always surprise me.”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

Her lips were the only fat part of her. They stretched when she drank, and her strong teeth made clinking sounds against the glass.

She turned on the radio. I was relieved to hear no Americans, just some tamed Soviet pianist tapping through a countryman’s scribblings. I realized I was still standing, somewhat foolishly, in the middle of the room. I moved to the edge of the couch. Vera settled next to me, a hand on my back and her thigh against mine.

“Don’t feel strange, Ferenc. I don’t want you like that.”

“How do you want me?” I said this quietly.

“Silent. But I want all your strength. You’ll need it.”

I finished my glass and held it out. “For strength.”

She got up and refilled it, but before returning the glass she leaned down and kissed me on the mouth. Full, hard. It was in her kisses that her ferocity was most evident. She looked me in the eye, her voice a whisper: “You’re going to enjoy yourself.”

Her kiss had already convinced me, but I still drained my glass.

The Soviet pianist was having a fine time of it.

We kissed on the sofa for a while. First she initiated it, then I did. We were like those kids monopolizing Georgi’s couch, smearing lipstick and saliva. Hands groping, my fingers pressed beneath her brassiere, over her tall nipples, then slid up her skirt. She flinched and pulled my hand out. A smile. “Your rings hurt.” I took them off.

We were out of our clothes quickly, but it was not simple. It was more complicated than I had imagined. Their bed was wide enough for two couples, and we shifted positions often, twisting in a mad clockwork. She rolled to face the sheets and held her backside high for me, then turned over and brought her knees to her ears. She slid down and took me in her mouth. The gymnastics were strenuous. She brought me to the edge many times, then changed everything completely. I was sweating freely. Once or twice she expelled a brief orgasmic shout, then took a breath and kept on. She dragged her tongue over the moist inside of my thigh, then bit me. I flinched. She said, “Wait.”

There was a drawer beneath the bed. She took out a frayed purple belt, part of a lost robe, and crouched on the bed, her long white body glowing.

“Tie me up.”

I used the headboard and her wrists and a knot I’d learned in the army. It was secure, but would not bind. I paused to consider her beneath me, arms above her head, her long hair scattered over the sheets. Her rib cage tightened behind thin flesh as it rose and fell. She was so small and breakable.

I used her facing up, then facing down. She squirmed and made noises I’d never heard from any woman before. Once she trilled a consonant, then grunted. I could just make out the words that followed: “Hit me.”

I struck her rear end with my open hand and heard the pleasure come out of her mouth.

“Harder.”

I did, smacking until she was bright red, then I kissed her. I kissed anything I could reach. I licked and gnawed her until she made that sound again. Then I did, too.