Of course, for Brano Sev there was a level of insecurity beneath his harsh judgment. Linguistic cleverness had never been his strong trait, and he could remember many times in West Berlin falling silent as his fat acquaintances spoke over him, provoking laughter and table slaps. When Brano chose to speak, there was seldom a reaction. Silence, maybe; sometimes a nod of agreement. But only rarely laughter, for Brano had never been, and never would be, an entertainer.
He considered this as he walked from the cinema to the Carp. Why would he never feel part of these expatriate cliques? Was it really that he had no humor about him, that he was always heavy, without the idle buoyancy that makes a born entertainer?
But this was not the right question for him to ask himself, and he soon realized this. The real question was, Why should he care?
He mounted the stairs at Sterngasse as the sun was beginning to set and understood why he cared. When he was with the exiles, he felt as if his documents and rank and even the medals he’d garnered over the years were just pieces of paper and iron. It was as if he, like them, had just been born when he entered the West and now had to start all over again. It was as if the scars and sweat of his long past were no longer of any consequence.
Monika served him beer, then settled her elbows on the bar. “How are you making out?”
“It’s a difficult transition.”
“Of course it is.” She lit a cigarette. “The thing I’ve noticed over the past twenty years is that those who do well are those who recognize the situation.”
“How do you mean?”
She took a drag and considered her words. “Well, we’re all in a foreign country. We didn’t choose to come here because we’re in love with Austria. We came because it was convenient. Maybe we want to be back home, maybe we don’t. It doesn’t matter. The thing is, we’re all here for the same reason.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re all running away from something. That’s the only reason anyone leaves his home.”
Brano sipped his beer and looked into the mirror. Behind him, two old men played backgammon by the wall. “I know someone who left Yugoslavia. She wasn’t running from anything. She simply decided she didn’t want to be in that country anymore. She told me that it had become a country of losers, and she didn’t want to become a loser herself.”
Monika shrugged. “And what’s that? She was running away from boredom or emptiness or whatever. And if she’s been here long enough, she’s probably come to terms with the fact that she can’t escape any of those things. Certainly not here. You know what’s interesting?”
“What?”
“Ask anyone around here for their story. Ask what happened to them. If they just arrived, you’ll find that their story goes on for a long time, with details on top of details, and you can watch them get upset—I mean, visibly—as they tell it to you. Ask someone who’s been here a few years, and they’ll have it condensed down to a sentence, maybe two, and that’s it.”
“Interesting.”
“It’s inevitable,” she said, then put out her cigarette. “Over here, your past is just a story. It gets smaller with time, until it’s just a haiku. Until it’s got no more emotion in it.”
“Until it’s cold.”
“Until your past can’t touch you anymore,” said Monika. “Watch out you don’t turn cold, too.”
Rather than wait for the cold exiles to fill the bar, Brano returned home. He was unsurprised by another piece of propaganda in his mailbox. The Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations explained that, because of its godless nature, the believer in Communism could not feel emotions beyond fear and pride. “Little more than animals,” Dr. Ned Rathbone argued. He had studied the Communist Menace since 1938, and the one thing he knew above everything was that the Christian faith and the Communist faith could never exist in harmony on the same planet. And the martyrs of the side of Right demanded that the war be brought to the steps of the Kremlin itself.
Brano unfolded the pamphlet in his living room, flattening it with the side of his hand. He folded it down the long midpoint, then folded it a few more times until he had it right. Then he opened the French windows and tossed out his paper airplane. A breeze held it aloft for a moment; then it began to spin and plummet to the street, where Ludwig’s old white-bearded shadow leaned on his Volkswagen and watched it crash into the sidewalk.
7 APRIL 1967, FRIDAY
•
Ersek Nanz’s
party was in Kahlenberg, in a house perched beyond the woods on the last dying bumps of the Alps. The taxi driver made noises under his breath as they approached the iron gate in front of a wide, modern bilevel. Brano looked over from the passenger seat. “What was that?”
“Nothing. Just wishing I had the money to live up here.”
“One day, comrade, maybe you won’t need money to live up here.”
The driver squinted as Brano grabbed his bottle of red wine and climbed out.
A man in a tuxedo opened the gate. Brano began to reach for his documents but stopped when the man simply smiled and nodded him on, up the paved drive, to the house. Another tuxedoed man opened the front door and took the wine and Brano’s coat.
Beyond a stark white foyer, the living room opened up, rising two dimly lit floors to a glass wall that looked down on Vienna. About fifty people milled around, clutching champagne glasses and murmuring steadily. A few glanced at him. He was underdressed.
“Jesus Christ, Brano. You’re late. I thought you were different than your brethren!”
“I’m just the same, Ersek. You live well.”
The Norwegian smirked. “I wish this was mine. On loan from the Italian ambassador.” He raised a finger. “One benefit of always gravitating toward power.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Let’s get you a drink.” Ersek walked him over to a white table covered with a hundred full glasses of champagne. “Don’t worry, there’s more in the kitchen. Unless this guy already sniffed it out,” he said, nodding at Filip Lutz, who reached for another glass.
“It’s our spy!”
“That’s one thing you’re right about,” said Brano.
Lutz patted the lapel of his tuxedo. “I tell you, Nanzi, she wants it.”
Ersek looked around. “Who?”
“Who do you think? The interpreter.”
“I’d give it to her in a second.”
Their longing looks were directed through the terrace doors, to where a tall, thin-boned blonde stood; her broad, sculpted jawline suggested she had come from the Slovak provinces of their country. She held a long cigarette beside her head as she laughed at a short, bearded man’s joke.
As Brano took a second champagne and wandered past the Bősendorfer grand piano to a dark corner, he heard Ersek mutter, “Little Rolf thinks he’s going to give it to her.”
“I’d just like to see that,” said Lutz.
Some faces he recognized, though they did not know him. In late July, he’d gone through the files in order to uncover the identity of
GAVRILO
, and before settling on his short list of suspects, he’d come across half these faces. They were in the files because they were of use, because they could be of use in the future, or because they posed a threat. A tall man in the corner, a chain-smoker, looked familiar—yes: He’d been marked as a possible resource, because Yalta held a roll of 16 mm film of the man in a local brothel with a nine-year-old girl.
He wanted another champagne, but over by the drinks table he spotted a small, beaten-looking man hoarding glass after glass. It was Sasha Lytvyn.
He did finally talk to people, though without enthusiasm, always sidestepping the drunk man from his past who didn’t seem to recognize him. A journalist from
Die Stern
explained to him the intricacies of recent Egyptian-Israeli tensions, as if Brano had never heard of the state of Israel. “When Israel shot down those Syrian MiGs, it was a provocation. Now, I’m no anti-Semite, but …” Another man, young and pale, quoted Svetlana Alliluyeva from a manuscript supposedly awaiting American publication—
God grants an easy death only to the just
—then smiled rapturously. A gaunt woman with large glasses, originally from Sighet, described herself as an actionist painter, which to Brano meant nothing. When he asked, her explanation only confused him further.
“People like to say that painting has moved across the Atlantic to New York, but seriously, Europe is the center of art civilization as it has been for centuries. I doubt a bunch of monkeys with paintbrushes would be able to take that from us. Do you?”
“I really don’t know,” said Brano, edging away.
Lutz elbowed him in the ribs. “My friend, I’ve had a brainstorm.”
“Tell me, Filip.”
“I suggest you find yourself a Viennese girlfriend. Best way to ease into the transition. Yes, what you need is a nice fräulein.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“Well, you’ve got a very progressive mother. Does she also do this?” Lutz reached into his jacket and pulled out a small wooden pipe. He squinted into the bowl.
“What’s that?” Brano asked stupidly.
Lutz stuck the pipe in his mouth and flicked a lighter over the bowl. As he inhaled, the flame bowed, crackling the hashish inside. He held the smoke in his lungs a few seconds, then exhaled.
“Here.” Lutz handed him the pipe.
In another situation, Brano would have declined, but nothing so far had helped him relax. Even the champagne seemed of a light variety. And when Lutz exhaled, that pungent aroma reminded Brano of the few times he’d smoked it, back in Tel Aviv. It had been available everywhere, sticky clumps in a wooden box in everyone’s home. When he’d smoked it there, his heartbeat had settled as he warmed into an easy languor, in which everything—even the complexities and brutalities of his job—seemed manageable.
“Are you coming Monday?” asked Lutz after they had finished.
“Where?”
“To my lecture. ‘The Lies Behind the Communist Dove of Peace.’ Didn’t Nanzi tell you?”
“Where is it?”
“The Committee for Liberty in the Captive Nations, over on Schulerstraße.”
Brano snorted, then covered his mouth. Half laughter, half surprise.
Lutz leaned closer. “
What?
”
“The Committee for Liberty?”
“Yes.”
“The Christians?”
Lutz frowned, and Brano covered his mouth again as the stoned, monotone laughter rolled out of him.
“You don’t understand,” said Lutz. “They sound a little crazy sometimes, but they’re not. No, not at all.” Lutz made an expression that looked similar to pain. “Like many opposition groups, they have their use. They have money, influence. If you have their ear you have …”
Brano nodded, but he wasn’t listening anymore. The tingle at the base of his neck had spread over his scalp, and his blank smile no longer meant a thing.
Frustrated, Lutz sneaked off after the interpreter, and Brano took another champagne to the glass wall, staring at the dancing lights of the city down below. From this height he found himself thinking mystically, like Dijana Franković, as if the lights were stars to be read. In them he read the truth of Vienna’s underbelly: conspiracies. There were so many conspiracies going on in that city—simultaneously, often bumping into one another. In neutral Vienna the intelligence services of the entire world converged to talk and trade and do battle, and up above it he was stoned, drinking expensive champagne.
By the time the pianist started, he was deep in a padded chair, trying to see if there was anything left in his glass. There wasn’t. It was a Bach piece, a—if an overheard voice could be believed—
Fantasia
, the one in C minor, and it played in his muscles and bones, the high notes tickling his shoulder blades. He peered past the thin, tuxedoed man swaying at the keyboard, past smoking groups, into the darkness under the staircase leading to the second floor. He thought he saw the reflection of water there, maybe plants, but wasn’t sure. And why plants in a dark spot? So he closed his eyes. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was—this was the first time he’d really relaxed since he had left Bóbrka, a world away. A family that hated—
The piano played and he tapped his foot, unsure if he was keeping time but not caring. Through the notes, a voice said,
Brani?
but he didn’t look to see who it was. The music was warm and excellent, and he didn’t want inane conversations destroying something that perfect. He sank deeper into the chair and tried to ignore the hand shaking his shoulder.
“Brani, you is sleeping?”
For the second it took his drug-stunned eyes to adjust, he tried to imagine what she would look like. All that came to him was a moment during their one night together, when he opened his eyes to find her head at the foot of the bed. He’d first noticed her feet by his face, then the long calves that disappeared beneath folds of white sheet. Then he’d sat up and looked at her sleepy face beside his feet, puffy cheeks covered by a splay of dark hair, the light from the scarf-muted lamp lighting the soft down on her cheeks. He’d paused then, staring, before realizing he should leave.
But the dim light here was entirely different, and when she came into focus she looked like another woman. The down was gone from her cheeks, and her hair was different; it was short, cut like a boy’s. Her mascara was thick. And unlike in sleep, she was smiling a smile he knew was not authentic.
She blinked three times. “I am in the shock!”
Then all relaxation left him, as if through a hole in his foot. He stood. But the hashish was still with him, fiercely, and he wobbled as he kissed her cheeks and awkwardly hugged her, taking in the aroma of some Viennese bottled scent.
“Oh, Brani,” she said, and looked down at her champagne glass. “I have so much for to tell you.”
He was flushed; the blood beat in his head, and everything was too warm. The piano player didn’t notice the change in temperature; he tapped on. Then, for an instant, he could see through her eyes and mouth to the dark staircase behind her that hid an entire forest. That was when he decided she was not there. She was an illusion.
But she did not dissolve into mist.