The Confession (8 page)

I drove
us through the busy evening streets, stopping for busses and trams and bicycles, until we were back among the unfinished towers of the Ninth District. We parked half in a ditch, and I worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it out later on. Claudia was outside with her chickens again—she stopped to give me a severe nod. She was still waiting for me to pick up her drunkard brother, and no doubt Magda had been filling her head with advice to pester me. But this time she chose silence.

Ágnes opened the door. She wore a knee-length dress I had never seen before, with a pattern of purple-and-yellow flowers. She stood on her toes to kiss my lowered cheek. “Do you remember Leonek?” I said. “Leonek, Ágnes.”

Leonek kissed her hand, and, over his head, she winked at me.

“Where’s your mother?” I asked.

She nodded toward the kitchen, then Pavel trotted in from the bedroom and gave Leonek two high barks.

Magda’s hair hung over her face as she brushed a plate of chicken bones into the trash can. When she looked up at me, I could hardly see her through the strands. She brushed them away with her wrist and smiled. It was the first time we’d really seen each other for a while, and momentarily it was as if nothing bad had ever passed between us in the provinces.

Then it came back to me: Stefan, his choking breaths beating out of him as he writhed over her breasts, her clean smooth belly, her face.

“You’re late,” she said.

“How was the train?”

“Well, it got me here.”

I went to a cabinet for the wine as she washed the plate off in the sink and set it with other dishes on a towel. “You know Leonek, right?”

“Sure, yeah. I don’t remember the last time I saw him. A year ago?”

“His mother died recently. So he might be a little strange.”

“I see.”

“Come on, then.”

Leonek stood up stiffly when we came out, Ágnes folded on the sofa beside him. He kissed Magda’s hand with purpose. It reminded me, if I needed the reminder, that Magda was really quite beautiful; she could still stop a man in his tracks.

The silence
hung over us as we dug into the bean soup, then the paprika chicken, forks and knives scraping plates, glasses pressing to lips, quiet gulps, water and red wine. I saw Ágnes place a sliver of chicken in her lap, glance to the side and toss it to Pavel, who silently gobbled it. When she looked up again I gave her a sharp shake of the head. Magda glanced at Leonek, who was focused on his food, then looked at me. I smiled, but she didn’t. I said the most benign thing that came to mind: “A Frenchman told me recently that plot is dead.”

“What?” Magda asked, leaning forward as if she hadn’t heard.

“Plot. He says that no one’s doing it anymore.”

She grinned. “In the West maybe. Was that Georgi’s poet?”

“It was.”

Leonek looked up. “What are you talking about?”

“Literature,” I said.

“Oh.” He nodded at his plate.

Magda tried. She told us about the hour-long line she’d stood in, waiting for beef, but when she reached the front, all that was left was chicken.

While she spoke, Stefan’s pale flesh came to me again, and I couldn’t muster any comment. Neither could Leonek.

But her stamina was high. She launched into a description of her factory. “Textiles, we even make the Militia uniforms. Well, the shirts at least. Lydia works opposite me on the line, and she makes jokes about undermining quotas every time she leaves for a cigarette. You should meet her sometime, she’s hilarious. I’ll set you up.”

Leonek smiled politely but said nothing. I leaned down and scratched the mosquito bite on my ankle.

Magda watched him return to his plate; it was almost empty. “Would you like some more?”

“Thank you, no,” he said through a mouthful. “It’s very good.”

“I told you it would be,” I said. At the end of the table, Ágnes was bent toward the floor, feeding Pavel, but I no longer felt like reprimanding her.

Magda refilled our wineglasses, then turned to me with round eyes and tilted her head in Leonek’s direction.

“Are you on a case now?” I asked.

His tongue searched behind his lower lip. “The city’s pretty quiet. Except for those students, maybe.”

I couldn’t see Ágnes at all; she had vanished behind the edge of the table.

“Students?” asked Magda.

I shrugged. “Demonstrators.”

“Oh.”

“Otherwise,” said Leonek, “not many homicides.”

Magda spoke again, but slowly. “On the way home today, I saw two men in front of the cinema. I’ve never seen them before. They were pretty destitute. They had long coats, both of them, and through the flaps I could see their old prison shirts. Striped, you know?”

Leonek seemed to wake a little.

“They looked menacing to me, standing with their hands in their pockets, and when they watched me pass I was a little scared. I don’t know what they were thinking.”

I said, “I can imagine what they were thinking.”

“No—not that. I know that look. They were thinking something different.” She paused. “But you can’t really read faces, can you?”

“Sometimes you can.”

“They’ve been through a lot,” said Leonek.

We both turned to him.

“After the funeral, I talked to one of them in a bar.” He thought a second, eyes glazed, then returned. “Slavery. That’s what it was. And after years of being watched over by guards, after the malaria and executions—yes, that’s what he told me: They often executed men in a field near the barracks. After all that, what can you expect from someone?”

Ágnes was in her chair now, paying attention. She stared at Leonek with something approaching wonder.

“Remember in August?” he asked me. “Just before your vacation. There was that Ukrainian. He came back from the camps and beat his son to death because he’d become a clerk for the Central Committee.”

“Lev Urlovsky,” I said. “He was at the Vátrina Work Camp.”

“Yeah.” He leaned forward. “When we arrested him, he showed no remorse. None at all. It was strange to see.”

“After killing his own son?” said Magda. “That’s horrible.”

“Ágnes,” I said, and it took a second for her to hear me. “Ágnes, take Pavel for a walk.”

She sighed loudly, but got up and left the room. Pavel followed, nails clicking on the floor.

“You don’t know,” said Leonek. “You just don’t know what they’ve been through. The Turks were going to take my father to prison, but they shot him instead.” His hands settled on the table, on either side of his plate. “Maybe he was lucky.”

I heard the front door open and slam shut.

The two
wine bottles were empty, so I went to get another from the kitchen, and when I returned, Leonek was leaning back in his chair, legs stretched out beneath the table, frowning again. Magda shrugged. When I filled his glass, he took it absently and pressed it to his lips, but did not drink. Then he set the glass back on the table and looked at Magda. “I’m going to do it,” he said.

I was almost afraid to ask. “Do what?”

He turned to me. “I’m going back into the files. I’m going to investigate Sergei’s murder.”

“You’re sure?”

“Why not?” He drank some wine. “I told you before, there are no more responsibilities for me. This is the only responsibility I have left.”

“Who’s Sergei?” Magda asked.

“You met him a couple times during the Occupation.”

“My partner, Sergei Malevich.” Leonek put his elbows on the table. “He was killed just after the war. Shot in the back of the head.”

“I think I remember. The Russian, right?”

We nodded.

“He was nice.” She looked at Leonek. “And it wasn’t investigated?”

I spoke up. “He was looking into the rape and murder of a couple girls in a synagogue. We knew who had done it, everyone knew: Russian soldiers. But we couldn’t do a thing. Sergei was insistent, though.”

“Because
he
was Russian,” said Leonek. “It tore him up that everyone in the Capital thought of Russians this way, as rapists and murderers.”

Magda refilled our glasses.

Leonek took another drink. “He wanted to prove either that the killers weren’t Russian, or that if they were, a Russian could bring them to justice. You remember that night?”

I did.

“He called me,” said Leonek, “then I called you. He wanted us to meet him down by the water. There was that thick fog, and by the time we showed up he was dead. It was unreal. We could even hear the gunman running away, but couldn’t see more than a foot ahead of us.”

“Is there anything left of it?” I asked. “In the files. After so long, it’ll be hard to follow the leads.”

“I can at least try.”

“What about his family?” Magda asked. “Wasn’t he married?”

“His wife and son, Kliment, moved to Moscow.” Leonek smiled. “Kliment became a militiaman too.”

Magda stared at Leonek, cheeks flushed, and I realized then that she had been doing most of the drinking. She was a little drunk, and maybe I was too.

Leonek looked into his glass, then popped his head up. “This is really good wine!” I guess he was drunk as well.

I heard the front door open, saw Magda’s face turn to me, flushed and radiant, and that was when it bubbled through me, and over me.

I was in the present. I was not thinking of later that evening, when we would be alone again and the strained silence would keep us far from the one sad subject that was the only thing we could ever think about. I was in the present, where I was generous and could forget a single night almost two decades old, because marriage and all the years, and Ágnes—they were so much bigger than one carnal act. I could see her cheeks redden; her smile warmed me. I saw my daughter watching from the doorway. Our guest smiled at all the riches I had in this house, his admiration all over him. And that’s when I thought, hopefully, that Magda and I still had a future together.

“Leonek,” I said. “That really is a nice tie you’re wearing.”

He looked down, flipped it with his fingers, and we all laughed, even Ágnes.

You can read it all; it’s no secret. The Magyars have grown loud. Because if they scream enough, they might get their Nagy with the mustache like two paintbrushes, just as the Poles have their Gomulka. And after a momentary face-off, the Empire bows its head and allows Imre Nagy to control their path to socialism. You read this, and you wait. And far a while you’re encouraged—who isn’t? Collectivization is halted in the Hungarian plains, and People’s committees are formed to air complaints.
The Spark
calls these moves
bold, unprecedented.
The sun shines on the Magyars, and even over here in the Carpathian basin the clouds are dispersing. Kozak the Engineer opens the Tenth Central Committee Meeting with a declaration of solidarity with
the revered Comrade Nagy.
Mihai does not condemn the phrasing, and his silence is greater than any words. Bobu the Professor asks for an investigation into the benefits of trade agreements with nations outside the socialist neighborhood.

Yet just as quickly, the cooling begins. In their enthusiasm, Magyar workers seize government buildings and form revolutionary councils. Bobu says nothing, and even Kozak stares quietly at his podium. Nagy announces the end of the one-party system in the Hungarian People’s Republic. Breaths are being held; the oxygen grows thin. The Magyars decide to take their soldiers out of the year-old Warsaw Pact and ask to be united with the nations of the West. Exhale. The Empire mobilizes. Russian tanks reach the edge of Budapest. The lack of air makes everyone a little crazy—there are barricades in the streets along the Danube, then the tanks move in. The American radio gives instructions on guerrilla warfare. The radios of the Empire shout of imperialist-financed counterrevolutionaries. And in the Budapest streets busses are turned over and rifles disseminated and Magyar students and Magyar workers line up at the barricades. Nagy calls for quiet and calm, but he is whispering to a hurricane. On Radio Budapest he says,
Today at daybreak, Soviet troops attacked our capital with the obvious intent of overthrowing the lawful democratic Hungarian government.
Then Radio Budapest sends an SOS signal and drops quietly off the air.

Here in the Capital the silence reigns. But it is a tense silence, like the one that hangs over a failing marriage. No one in the street can smile cleanly, and even you hear whispers about the tremblings beneath the surface. Here, the only shouts are unheard: the epidemic of workers calling in sick. One day someone is at the factory, the next day he is not. Then there are five gone, then twenty. This is not the news that reaches
The Spark,
but is passed along on the street and in bedrooms and over drinks. You hear it once or twice—you’re not sure anymore who from, or when—but then it is common knowledge, the whole country is part of the secret society that has only one weapon at its disposal.

The radios whine like sick animals when the electronic jamming functions, and whisper orders for street-battle tactics when it doesn’t. While that other capital is aflame, this capital is silent. There is a secret society of discontent with its hand on its only pistol, waiting to fire.