The Crooked Maid

by Dan Vyleta

“There’s a bell, you know.”

  “Yes,” he said, “but I like the noise.”

  He knocked again, then stepped back when Gustav Kis opened the door. Anna recognized him at once; later, she would be surprised that she had done so. The man who had opened the door to this flat nine years ago had been young and gently plump; had owned a clean, fine-pored, almost luminous skin, and a thinning crown of lightly oiled hair, worn neatly parted to one side. The one who stood in front of her now was fat around his thighs and midriff but had seen the weight fall off his cheeks; was bald on top, with only a sparse island of hair plastered to his forehead. The skin had coarsened, a rash of pimples clinging to his chin. What remained was the speed and harmony of his gestures, the hint of femininity as his hands rose in surprise.

  “Grüss Gott,” he said, looking first at Anna then at the bulk of Neumann looming behind her. “How can I be of service?”

  “I’m Anna Beer. Dr. Beer’s wife.”

  He smiled, a little nervously perhaps. Behind him, in his hallway, the face of a man emerged at one of the apartment’s doors, looked over at them, then disappeared. He might have been one of Kis’s lodgers.

  “I am afraid,” he said, “I do not recall a Dr. Beer.”

  “Please, if we could just have a moment of your time.”

  “If you must,” he said, stood aside, then led them into the hallway and on to the second door on his right. The room was large, well-appointed, and clearly served as both his living room and bedroom. A little table stood by the window, on it the remnants of his cold lunch. The large bed was half hidden behind an Asian folding screen, ornate dragons writhing in black lacquer. Two bookshelves were entirely crammed with records. On the wall a large pale rectangle indicated a space where a wardrobe had once stood. There was a blotchy mirror but no pictures.

  Kis pointed them towards the sofa and drew up an armchair to sit across from them. “I remember now. Dr. Anton Beer. He treated me for hives. But that’s half a lifetime ago.”

  “Herr Kis,” she said, sat stiffly on the edge of her cushion. “I have quite an accurate picture of the nature of your relationship with my husband. You will believe me that I have no desire to spell out the details. My husband and I have been living apart these past years.”

  The fat man smiled at her, slid quietly from buttock to buttock. He interlaced his stubby fingers, looked over to Karel. “And who is this gentleman?”

  “Never mind him. He is here to assist in what is to me an unpleasant duty. The fact is, Herr Kis, my husband has disappeared. Or rather, he has not been seen in several days, and he hasn’t come home. I would like to know whether you know his present whereabouts.”

  Kis shook his head with almost comical emphasis, the chin swivelling from shoulder to shoulder. “No,” he said, “I do not.”

  “But he has come to see you, has he not?”

  “No.”

  “Please, Herr Kis. Tell me the truth. When did you last see him?”

  “Not for—” He stopped, gave an affected little cough, then started coughing in earnest, one hand searching his pockets for a hanky. “Not since the war, Frau Doktor. Thirty-nine, maybe ’40. He had me over for dinner one evening. Yes, I believe that’s the last time I saw him. The fall of 1939. We’d just taken Warsaw.” He smiled, coughed again, tucked away the handkerchief. The reference to dinner stung her, conjured pictures of dessert.

  “You are quite sure?”

  “Quite, quite sure.” Kis rose to dismiss them. “I’m afraid I have some pressing business to attend to.”

  Anna stood, allowed herself to be walked to the front door, Karel Neumann by her side.

  “My compliments,” Kis said in parting, happy now, bending his neck to suggest a bow.

  They heard him lock the door behind them and quietly descended the stairs. Outside, in front of the building, her eyes found Karel’s. The big man was smirking.

  “He’s lying, you know.”

  Anna was inclined to agree. “What do you want me to do?” she asked. “Beat it out of him?”

  His smirk grew wider. “Wait here,” he said. “It appears I forgot my cap upstairs. I won’t be a minute.”

  He turned, but she stopped him, put a hand upon his arm. “Don’t—” she said. “You’ll get arrested.”

  Playfully he cupped her face, the palm so large she felt herself disappear into its curve. “Is kind of you to worry, Pani Beerová,” he said in his broadest Czech accent. “But I’m just fetching hat.”

  She watched him re-enter the building and charge gamely up the stairs.

  3.

  Kis opened the door, listened to Neumann’s explanations, and announced he would look for the cap himself. Unperturbed, the big Czech strolled after him into the flat then closed the door of Kis’s room, where its owner was crouching on one knee, searching the worn carpet.

  “I cannot find it,” he said, flustered to find his visitor had followed him.

  “Kis,” said Karel. “That’s Hungarian, isn’t it?”

  Kis looked up at Karel as though he required reappraisal. “My grandfather,” he said at last. “Are you—”

  “No, no,” said Karel, pushed past him, sat down on the couch where he had sat before. “Sudeten-Bohemian, with splash of Gypsy. Which is to say, Viennese.” He made an expansive gesture with his bony hands. “So when did you last see Beer?”

  “I already told you—” Kis flushed, finally understanding the situation. Almost instantly a sheen of sweat settled on his pimply face. He took a step back, raised a finger in his guest’s direction. “I will call the police.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  Karel stood up with no particular hurry, crossed the distance separating them with a single step, caught Kis by the florid tie hanging from his ruddy throat, and hit him. It wasn’t an angry gesture, or even particularly threatening. He hit him with the flat of his hand, not hard but repeatedly. And with every blow Kis gave a soft little cry, as though of surprise. And no matter how often Karel hit him, Kis answered every blow with precisely this cry of surprise until, at last, Karel relented and watched the pale cheek fill with blood.

  “Come now,” he said, no more angry than before. “When did you last see Beer?”

  A tug at the tie manoeuvred Kis over to the couch. En route Karel scooped up a decanter of brandy. Before he sat down, he returned to the little coffee table on which it had stood, fetched two nicely cut glasses, and settled them in front of them. They sat side by side like two passengers on a bus. Kis had tears in his eyes. His cheek had turned a violent shade of red.

  “I haven’t seen him since the war—” he began.

  “Have a drink,” said Karel, poured him a glass, and placed it to his lips. Kis gave signs of struggle, then relented at once when Karel turned his eyes on him. Feeding him like a toddler, Karel poured the whole of the glass down his throat. It was followed by a second. Kis’s sweat had spread from his face to his whole body, a patch of wet emerging on his fatty chest. There was a smell to it quite out of keeping with its freshness. Casually, as though not to startle him, Karel stretched an arm behind Kis’s neck and took hold of his far earlobe between forefinger and thumb.

  “He came here, I suppose,” Karel said, “sometime in the past two weeks.” His fingers pinched a little, relented when Kis spoke.

  “Once. He only came once.”

  “Go on, tell me about it.”

  But Kis wasn’t talking.

  “What’s the big secret? I already know you are—” Neumann stretched out his free arm, swivelled the hand, and let it droop affectedly from his strong wrist. “Whatever you call it.”

  He took hold of the decanter, forced another drink on Kis. A second pinch, a little more forceful, prodded him into story. And every time Kis stopped, Karel hurt him a little and fed him booze. After a while he started speaking less guardedly. Perhaps he had begun to enjoy his confession.

  “He came maybe a week ago. Just walked up to the door. I didn’t recognize him.”
>
  “Thin?”

  “Yes. And—” He looked for the word. “—dishevelled. I was entertaining guests, and he simply walked in, not saying a word, not even a greeting. Sat in a corner of the room, eyes on the wall. The guests left pretty fast. I expected him to talk then, but he simply sat there, waiting.”

  “Why did you think he had come?”

  “I don’t know. To say hello, I suppose.”

  “Look at you sweat! There was more to it than that.”

  “We had not parted—That is to say, we parted in perfect equanimity. But later, during the war—”

  “You weren’t drafted.”

  “No. Heart trouble. But then, in ’43—” He looked up terrified, awaited eagerly his glass of brandy. “—they caught me. A denunciation. I was interrogated. Everyone kept shouting at me. They wanted names.”

  “And you gave them Beer’s.”

  “Yes. Not right away, you understand. But soon enough.”

  “And now you thought that Beer had come to have it out.”

  “I thought he was dead. But there he was, sitting in my living room. Smelly he was, nothing like his old self. Thin as a rail. And the way he looked at me: shifty, always from the corner of one eye. So there I was, babbling, saying nothing really, and all the time I was wondering how much did he know. Then it occurred to me that he was giving me a chance. To make a clean breast of it. That he had said to himself, sitting in the camp, ‘If Gustl tells me, of his own free will, I will let it pass. But if he doesn’t—well, then.’ I swear I almost saw it: him sitting in his prison clothes, a pink triangle on the chest, plotting revenge. So I came out with it, and even while I was talking, I could see he was surprised. I faltered, but I had already said too much; I had to finish my story. He just looked at me, and it struck me that he was still a very handsome man, he just needed a good wash. ‘Nineteen forty-three,’ he said, the first thing he’d said all night. ‘The Russians took me in ’43.’ He started grinning then, like a madman, one eye staring at the wall. Next thing I knew, he had changed topic and started telling me all about this girl he used to know, some sort of cripple; how he’d sworn to find her, see she was all right. He got very agitated, as a matter of fact. I didn’t say a word. It occurred to me that he was lonely. Nobody else around in whom he could confide. That struck me as odd, you know. He is a doctor, after all. He must know any number of people, but he came to me.”

  Kis smiled, as though cheered by the thought of having been the subject of such privilege. “Next I knew, he got up and walked out, shook my hand on his way out the door. It’s the last I’ve seen of him.” He paused, licked his lips, searching them for brandy. “Has he really disappeared?”

  Neumann did not answer, sat pondering Kis’s words. His right hand was still thrown around the fat man’s shoulders, holding on to his ear. The left was pouring out the last of the liquor, a sip for them each.

  “It’s a good story,” he said at length, as though he were evaluating a manuscript. “The problem is, one couldn’t really print it. Only darkly hint, perhaps. ‘Fruit-love. Sundered by the swastika.’ Scandalous, but it won’t do.” He shrugged, swallowed the contents of his glass. “You know what sells these days? Espionage. ‘The Cold War.’ That’s what people want to read. Especially abroad.” He patted Kis’s knee, grateful to him that he had helped him establish the point. “How about you, then? Did you go to a camp?”

  Kis shook his head. “I underwent re-education,” he said vaguely.

  “Really?”

  “There was an operation …”

  Karel stared at him, then burst into a good-natured laugh. “They chopped off your balls? Christ almighty, the things they came up with! But listen to this. I had a comrade in the army, had one of his testicles shot off. From behind, mind. Bullet came in from under his arse, shot his testicle clean off. Not a scratch on the rest of him—not the arse, not the thigh, not his peter. There was a physics student there with us, tried to work it out. The trajectory. Said it was impossible. Against the laws of nature. A real joker he was, too. The guy with the shot-off bollock, I mean. One day, on leave, we go to this brothel. We are hardly through the door when he throws down his gloves and pulls down his pants. ‘I demand satisfaction,’ he shouts. The girls laughed and laughed.” He stopped, again patted Kis’s knee. “But I suppose it’s different when they take away both.”

  He yawned, rose from the couch. “One last thing, Kis,” he said. “Did Beer mention which camp he was in? In Russia. Did he mention a number, or a name?”

  Kis shook his head, looked at him in confusion. “No.”

  “Fine, forget about it. If Beer’s wife comes back—” He paused, considered. “She won’t, you know, but if she does, just stick to your story. You haven’t seen him since ’39. To avoid complications. Don’t you agree? Gustl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then! Na shledanou, my sweaty friend.”

  And walked out without another word.

  4.

  She asked him what he had learned.

  He told her. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? You were up there a long time.”

  “I wanted to make sure.”

  “He hasn’t seen Anton?”

  “Not since the war.”

  “Good.”

  She did not hide that she was pleased. Why shouldn’t she be? Some part of her had feared that they would find him there, cuddled into the warmth of Kis’s bedding; that he would stare at her with limp, embarrassed eyes; stretch and sink back into pillows.

  “I’m thirsty,” she said. “Let’s find a café.”

  They walked some minutes and chose a hotel café whose painted sign insisted on hard currency. A third of the tables were already taken: officers, journalists, NCOs in civilian dress. Most of them spoke English; in the foyer, a slender youth in a dinner jacket stood barking French obscenities into the phone. They chose a table by the window. She was amused when Karel pulled back the chair for her; helped her out of her light summer coat. The big Czech was in an expansive mood and bantered with the waiter, who turned out to be Moravian, from Zlín. On the Moravian’s recommendation he ordered pot roast with dumplings and bread, two different types of cake; a glass of beer and a coffee. Anna stuck to water. She watched Karel eat, hurriedly, crudely stabbing the spoon into his open mouth. She wanted to ask, Do you think Anton loved him? But it was impossible to ask this simple question.

  “So that’s that,” she said instead, and he nodded, coughed up gravy, held the rest down with a swig of beer.

  “Mind if I have another?”

  “Go ahead.”

  It was understood that she would pay.

  He waved over the waiter, asked for a beer along with the bill. The man bowed, smiled, shuffled, at once obsequious and fiercely independent, a Viennese waiter born in Zlín. They used to write feuilleton articles about figures such as him. Outside, across the street, there was a neat gap where there had once stood a building. In the muddy yard crouched a child, sinking pebbles in a puddle, his buttocks outlined by a double print of dirt. Anna Beer lit a cigarette.

  The bill came and was presented to Karel, who glanced at it then handed it to her. She pulled out her purse, counted the money, the big Czech counting along with her, gauging her wealth. She caught his look, overturned her purse, pushed the money across the table. He stared at the little pile of coins, dark eyes puzzled under the overhang of brow.

  “Can you find him for me?” she asked. “There’ll be more if you do.”

  His face shifted in surprise. “So you really want to find him?”

  She nodded, thought. “Yes.”

  “You think he’s changed?”

  “You tell me.”

  Neumann spread his fingers on the tablecloth, a noncommittal gesture. He had yet to touch the money. “And all the years before,” he asked, ignoring her question, “when you were married?” He paused, grinned at her, his meaty tongue hunting for crumbs along the corners of his lips.

 
; “Did I know? Was it love, or was I just happy to have a husband pay my bills?” She sat unflinching before his brazen smile, chin up, shoulders squared, hid her doubt behind her beauty. “You wouldn’t understand, Herr Neumann.”

  “True, true, I wouldn’t.” He leaned back and carried on, giving prominence to his accent. “It reminds me, though, of little adventure I had. This was before war. This girl and I, we were in love. Her parents did not like me, so we ran away, to Vienna, and found a room with landlord who did not care we weren’t married. Yarmilla, she was called, a redhead, legs all the way up to her arse. Anyway, one day I come home and she’s in bed with the landlord. I turn around, go to a tavern, get good and drunk. When I come home, she’s still in bed, looking at me same way you are looking at me now. Proud, you see, daring me to tell her off. So I don’t tell her off. I simply ask her, ‘Why did you do it? Are you worried about the rent?’ She looks at me, considers. ‘No,’ she says. ‘For love.’ So I go away again and chew on it, this ‘for love.’ I have another round of beers, then coffee, then more beers, until money is gone. ‘Very well,’ I say, when I come back second time. ‘For love. But we might as well save on rent too.’” He laughed, unrestrained, the whole café turning to watch.

  Anna stubbed out her cigarette. “You are a show-off,” she said, irritated, amused. “The sort of man that will brag about anything. His poverty, his baseness, the holes in his socks. Just for a laugh.” She paused, touched his hand with her fingertips as though to assure herself that he was real. “How is it that someone like Anton is your friend?”

  He shrugged, a heave of mighty shoulders; swept the coins into his pocket. “I’ll find him for you,” he said, reached forward, swallowing her hand in his. “Or Sophiĉka will. She’s already making calls.”

  He sat petting her hand until she pulled it away from him. “Let’s go home,” she said.

  The tip she left was rather meagre. The Moravian waiter scooped it up and sadly shook his head in their wake.

  5.

  She had expected him to part ways with her on the first-floor landing, but Neumann dogged her steps all the way to her apartment door.