She didn’t answer.
“Comrade Nubsch, I have no doubt that Jast cheated at that game—not because he wanted you dead, but because he wanted Zygmunt to commit a murder. He had someone particular in mind. Jakob Bieniek.”
She reached for the second cup but faltered, knowing she wouldn’t be able to bring it to her lips. She tugged at her ear; she swallowed. “Pavel Jast is a fiend. I’ve told my husband this for years, but the game—it’s hard to explain.”
“It’s an addiction.”
“More than that, Comrade Sev.” She focused on his ear, considering her words. “Do you know what Zygi used to be?”
“No.”
She paused, and when she spoke again the sentences were clear and without hesitation, as if part of a speech she had practiced for years. “He was the head manager of the Bóbrka Petroleum Works. He was an important man. But one day the Gas Committee sent some men from the Capital; they had no idea what they were looking at. A bunch of bureaucrats who made policies without understanding a thing.” She opened one hand and used the other to tap the wet countertop. “Zygi was foolish enough to point out this fact, and two weeks later he received a notice in the mail. He’d been given a new job. He was to deliver bread for Bóbrka and the surrounding villages. Do you know what that does to a man? A man with Zygmunt’s talent and experience?” She shook her head. “No, Comrade Sev. I don’t think you have any idea.”
“Then explain it to me, Comrade Nubsch.”
This, at least, was understood. His pains receded, the barking mutt behind the white wooden fence no longer distracted him, and he even found himself smiling as he walked past the church and the bus stop that still, beneath its bench, sheltered the empty book of matches Pavel Jast would never pick up.
Ewa Nubsch was the kind of person who, in the end, doesn’t care about punishment; the guilt is so strong that all she desires is to be understood. And with the story came tears. She explained between sobs that they’d used razor blades because they couldn’t be traced.
We thought we were being smart. We didn’t use the shotgun. We thought we could find a vein. But we couldn’t, and it only made everything more horrible
.
That was because they’d been drunk; it was the only way they knew to prepare themselves for murder. Then they’d gotten Jakob drunk and brought him out there. She was still surprised he’d come. He had seemed, almost, excitedly curious. But once they gagged him he fought back, and that was when she had hurt her leg.
And what about the matches?
The matches?
The matches you stuffed in his mouth
.
That was Pavel
, she said.
He wanted them to be on Jakob’s body when it was found. And the shirt. Yes, the shirt. He wanted us to give him the shirt. And yes, yes—he even told us where to do it, behind the Emilia 4. He told us everything
.
And she told him everything, except the answer to the one question that mattered most—
Why?
Why would Pavel Jast frame him for the murder of a reclusive peasant? Pavel Jast had not run off with the Sorokas; he had simply disappeared.
“You look like hell,” the captain said as Brano approached his white Škoda at the Militia station.
“It’s nothing. But listen.” Brano drew close as Rasko fooled with the lock on the front door. “The Bieniek case is solved. It was Zygmunt and Ewa Nubsch.”
Rasko let go of the lock. “Are you kidding me?”
“Pavel Jast arranged the whole thing. He made Zygmunt bet his wife’s life in a Cucumber game, then he offered Zygmunt a trade—Jakob’s life for Ewa’s.”
Rasko got the door open. “And they’ll admit all this to me?”
“Ewa told me everything.”
“How did you get it out of her?”
“I asked.”
Rasko tossed his keys on the desk and dropped into his chair. He ran a hand through his black bangs. “Let’s see how it all turns out. First you might want to get in touch with the Ministry. They called for you this morning. Maybe they want you to go back home.”
Regina Haliniak, at the Yalta front desk, softened when she heard his voice. “Hello, Brano. Are you enjoying the provinces?”
“Not particularly, Regina. Are you and Zoran well?”
“Well enough. Did you want to talk to the colonel?”
“Yes, Regina. Thank you.”
He listened to clicks and static.
“It’s about time you called, Sev.”
“I just got the message.”
“What’s the progress?”
“I’m afraid Pavel Jast’s crime has been proven. He forced an old couple here to kill Jakob Bieniek.”
“Jakob who?”
“Bieniek. Jast used them to frame me for the murder. The wife admitted everything.”
“When I asked about progress, I wasn’t talking about this murder. You know what I was talking about.”
Brano cleared his throat. “I’ve had more contact with Soroka, and Jast told me he’d be leaving soon. But I no longer trust Pavel Jast’s information.”
“Well, trust him, Comrade Sev. We have the same information. Jan Soroka is leaving in the next couple days, probably for Austria, and you’d better clear this up before that happens. If you can’t manage to stop him, then you follow him and report back when you can. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel. But—”
“But what?”
Brano paused. “I’m known there, Comrade Colonel. In Austria. If I enter the country without diplomatic papers … I don’t think I’d be safe.”
Cerny gave one of his unimpressed exhales. “You’re exhausting, Sev. You’ve been given an opportunity few men receive. And who do you think insisted you could be trusted to come back on this case? It’s my neck we’re talking about.”
“I know, Comrade Colonel.”
“You know me, Brano. You know disappointment doesn’t sit well with me—makes my bladder go awry. And it doesn’t sit well with the Comrade Lieutenant General, either.”
“He knows?”
“The man knows everything, Sev. It’s my job to keep him informed.”
His legs ached by the time he made it to the house, trying without success to evoke that memory of Cerny’s suicidal weeping to settle his nerves. But the man was right—he’d been given an exceptional opportunity to redeem himself. He climbed into his Trabant and drove west.
Again, he didn’t have to wait long. To the south, beyond the silent cows, a small figure materialized near the base of the mountain. He parked by the road, and his feet crunched through snow as he walked through the cold, hissing wind to meet Jan Soroka.
He suddenly remembered what Klara had said, the pink anger filling her cheeks:
The religion of the apparatchik only gives you paperwork and a bad conscience
.
This wasn’t far from the truth.
Jan was crouched, looking at something on the ground. “Hello!” called Brano, and Jan glanced back over his shoulder. He didn’t stop what he was doing: using a stick to slowly pick apart a high, encrusted anthill. Brano squatted beside him. “Going to destroy that thing?”
“I’ve always hated ants,” said Jan. “When I was a child, a whole army attacked me. I’m a lover of nature in general, but not these things. Whenever I get the chance, I kill them.”
He brushed the stick through the base of the hill, quickly, and the tower collapsed, releasing a flood of confused black spots that spilled onto a patch of snow.
Brano said, “Ants in winter. That’s strange.”
“Yeah,” said Jan.
Then the two men began walking along the edge of the mountain in silence, until Jan said, “How’s that case of yours coming?”
“Which one?”
“That dead man. Bieniek?”
“Yes, Jakob Bieniek.”
“Any leads?”
“The Nubsches killed him.”
Jan, for once, looked surprised. “So it wasn’t you after all. But I’m not sure the village will believe a nice old couple like Zygmunt and Ewa sliced him up.”
“It doesn’t matter what Bóbrka believes.”
“It might. From the look of your face, you could probably use some allies around here.”
Brano touched his sore eye. “You’re right about that.”
“But why did they do it?”
“The Nubsches? A bet.”
“Cucumber?”
“Pavel Jast got them to do it.”
“And why did
he
do it?”
“I have no idea.”
They stopped beside a boulder, where Jan took out a cigarette. Brano cupped his hands around the match to keep it alight. Jan took a drag and handed it to Brano. “My father knew you didn’t kill Jakob—he had Pavel fingered from the beginning.”
“Why?”
“My father’s got intuition.”
“Well, he’s a lucky man. I just stumble through the facts as I see them.”
“What about your father?” asked Jan as he took the cigarette back.
“My father?”
“Is he dead?”
“He was a farmer,” said Brano, “and when the Germans came, the Wehrmacht forced him into service. He built antitank obstacles. All through the war he did this in a factory up in Rzeszow. By the end of the war, he was managing the factory, and by late ’forty-five, he was back to farming.”
“But he left the country, didn’t he?”
“He had to. His name was put down as a collaborator. If he’d stayed he would have been arrested.”
“Arrested?”
“Yes.”
Jan handed the cigarette over. “By whom?”
“By me.”
They didn’t talk for a while, and despite the lingering memory of that trip to Bóbrka back in ’45 to arrest the man he instead handed forged papers and ordered to emigrate westward, Brano found it a peculiarly peaceful moment. He never learned what had become of Andrezej Fedor Sev; the few times he’d tried to look into it he’d come up with nothing. Perhaps he never made it out of the country, or he died in one of the many displaced persons camps of postwar Germany. He simply didn’t know, and when he reflected on it, he found he didn’t care. That man was part of another life.
Jan took out another cigarette and offered him one. They smoked and watched the cows standing in patches of snow. Brano said, “Either you had an affair with Dijana Franković in Szuha, or you went to Vienna and left your family behind—it really doesn’t matter. But why would you leave at all? Lia’s a beautiful woman, she seems like a good mother.”
Jan tapped his ash and thought a second before answering. “Did you know that when I was sixteen years old I met Mihai?”
“Nineteen-fifty,” said Brano. “You were a Red Pioneer.”
“You guys really do know everything, don’t you?” He took a drag. “Well, I was excited. I’d never been much for the Pioneers, but every now and then we’d do something interesting. This time we met the most powerful man in the country. And I, like any other kid, idolized Mihai.”
“A lot of people still do.”
“So I’m told—no one seems to idolize Tomiak Pankov. Anyway, we went to Victory Square, to the Central Committee building and his office on the third floor. You been there?”
Brano nodded.
“It was impressive. All that red satin, the paintings, that enormous desk. I remember a silver ink bottle—it had the hawk etched in it. It was a beautiful thing. And then I saw Mihai himself. You met him a lot, I guess.”
“A few times.”
“Well, the photos and newsreels never really showed how short he was, did they? He was a head shorter than me. This was a shock, I can tell you.”
“That he was short?”
“Not just that he was short. He had a cold at the time, and whenever he breathed you could hear how hard it was for him. I was a kid, you know, and I couldn’t imagine how such a great man could be like this—short, snot-nosed, no better than the guy who sells vegetables in the market. And this was the head of our country?”
“Well, you were young.”
“I was. But I don’t think that reaction ever really left me. I got older, I married Lia—to me she was the most gorgeous woman in the Capital—but I was still a stupid teenager up here,” he said, tapping his skull. “I didn’t realize she’d catch colds, that she’d be lazy in the mornings and not make coffee. She’d be short-tempered and shout at me about things that weren’t my fault; she’d be completely unreasonable sometimes. And no amount of expectation can prepare you for a child. Everything shifts and becomes a little dirtier. Your wife’s body begins to fall apart.”
“You’re brutal, Jan.”
“To be fair, I’m sure she had similar complaints about me. I was unreasonable
all
the time; I got fatter, lazier; I stopped talking to her.”
“And so you left.”
“At first I just had affairs. An afternoon, sometimes a whole night. And I saw some of what I was missing. I suppose I wanted to get out on my own and learn what life with another woman was like.”
“Until you became disillusioned with the new woman.”
Jan shrugged.
The cigarette was strong, and Brano’s head buzzed as he wondered if it would have been this way had he stayed with his Dijana. “Did you ever actually know her?”
“Who?”
“The real Dijana Franković. In Vienna.”
Jan smiled. “I only knew the one in Szuha.”
Brano was smiling as well. He tossed his cigarette into the grass and felt, for the moment, that time had slowed. For the moment, there was no one in the Capital waiting for results, no press of minutes.
Then Jan said, “I’m not sure I understand. You seem to believe a lot of bad things about me. Why aren’t I in jail?”
Brano considered this. When he first arrived in Bóbrka, he believed that sticking to his cover story, that he was simply a factory worker on vacation, would be simple enough. But no one in this town really trusted that, least of all Jan—he’d clearly been waiting for Brano’s arrival. There was nothing left to hide. So he said, “Arresting you isn’t my job. I was supposed to find out why you came back.”
“And what’s your conclusion?”
“My conclusion is that I really don’t care.”
“Is that true?”
Yes, Brano realized—it was true. “I came here to do a simple job. But immediately my one contact double-crossed me—he framed me for murder. And now that I’ve proven my innocence, the Ministry doesn’t care. I went into this with all good intentions, and now,” he said, looking for the right words, “now I have the suspicion I’m being used, but I don’t know why.”