The Confession

by Steinhauer, Olen

  I wanted her to ask more, because I was feeling reckless, too—I could stretch the truth or simply lie—but she didn’t ask anything else. She finished her plate and put it in the sink, then went to the bathroom.

  I threw away the food I hadn’t eaten and turned on the radio. She came out before I could sit and asked me to turn it off.

  “You don’t want music?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I checked her eyes for any sign of tears, but there was none. She walked up to me and nodded at the radio.

  “You going to turn it off?”

  “No.”

  She slapped me. The burn slid down my cheek and over my neck. When she stepped back I snatched her arm, jerked her to me, and bit her cheek.

  She punched my stomach—a light thump—and I grabbed her waist and half carried her into the bedroom. She slapped me again in the darkness until I held her down, ripping at her buttons. She got a hand free and tore at my shirt.

  It was more violent than before, more anguished. Her teeth drew blood from my shoulder and I bruised her wrists holding her down. It was angrier than it had ever been before, it hurt. I could tell by her whimpers in the dark.

  I rolled over on my back. We were both covered in sweat.

  She lay a while, facedown in the pillow, making low, grunting noises. I didn’t know if she was crying or not, and I didn’t ask. Then she flung herself on me. When she kissed me, her teeth chipped against mine and her tears rubbed into my cheeks. After a while, she calmed and settled her head on my chest.

  As she dozed a fresh wave of dissatisfaction overcame me. The recklessness I had tried with her satisfied nothing. But I didn’t know what else to do.

  In the middle of the night, she woke me with her mouth. She rose on her knees, and from the lights of other apartments I saw that she had Ágnes’s knotted rope in her hands. She presented it to me and lay down. I didn’t understand at first, but she smiled and said, “I want to sleep like this.”

  So I tied her wrists behind her back, then her ankles. In the dim light the shadows on her thin body made her seem emaciated, starved. I gave her a kiss on the mouth, then another one between her legs.

  I slept deeply until seven, when a nightmare woke me. I couldn’t remember it all, but one detail floated through and settled in my mind: Malik Woznica on top of Magda, trembling. It was strong enough to give me the feeling I was still dreaming, and when I sat up and went to put on my clothes it was with a gliding, dream-walk across the rug. I washed my face and returned to Vera staring up at me, her wrists bound behind her. Her eyes were very big. “Are you going somewhere?” Her voice was dry. Yes, I said. I’m going somewhere. “How long?” Not so long. I’m not going to untie you. She seemed to be looking inside me. “Okay.”

  70

  I drove to the Fourth District and parked a street in from the river. The Saturday morning sun was just beginning to come out, casting everything in a gray shroud, and a cold wind swept up the Tisa. I quickly found the door to his building. I hadn’t really looked at it before, but now I had time. It was large, polished oak, with a bronze handle in the center. His wide, riverview window was on the top floor. The light was on.

  I could have gone right up and taken care of it, but that would have been unnecessarily risky. The deaf woman below him could be up early, and might see me going up or down the stairs. So I buttoned the top of my coat, sniffed, and leaned against the railing by the Tisa, fooling with my rings.

  I did not think as I waited. I did not reflect on the past or the future; I did not plan. So many of the things I’d planned and committed to had fallen apart, and now I was finished with that. I simply waited, and would act according to the moment. When some early risers passed—merchants on their way to work—I did not think about them. All I noticed was the light changing from gray to yellow, then gray again as clouds filled the sky.

  He opened the door a little before nine, and I turned toward the water to hide my face. Once he was halfway down the street, I followed.

  He moved slowly, his white hair and sunburned head bobbing over his heavy body, and tugged now and then at the lapels of his trench coat. His shortness was apparent when he passed others on the slowly filling street. He stopped at a newspaper kiosk and bought the day’s Spark, then scanned headlines, his pace slowing more until he turned into a café two streets east of his building.

  I waited outside, holding down my thirst. I didn’t need the coffee—adrenaline kept me awake—but my mouth was parched, and I needed a bath.

  He was in there for three-quarters of an hour, then returned to his apartment. When it was clear where he was heading, I stopped at a kiosk and bought cigarettes and a bottle of water. I moved my post to his side of the street, so that if he decided to look outside, he wouldn’t notice the big man who did not take his eyes off the front door.

  It occurred to me as I waited that I did not have to hold my emotions at an arm’s length anymore. They were too far away to matter.

  I was lucky. In less than two hours he was on the street again. He turned the west corner and began looking through his keys while standing beside a green Sachsenring P240, a new model I admired. Once he found his keys I had passed behind him and was getting into my škoda.

  We drove westward, following the Tisa out of town, then north. There weren’t many others on the road, and I had to keep a good distance. We passed Uzhorod and moved into a long stretch that slid slowly up into the mountains. Pine trees popped up around us, and with one hand I took my map out of the glove compartment. The only major town along that road was Perechyn, but it wouldn’t appear for another hour and a half. We were the only ones on the road.

  I imagined he was heading to the dacha where he had taken his wife to find out what all he could do to her. But I didn’t want him to arrive—I didn’t want to leave clues in an obvious place.

  He was a slow, careful driver, so it was easy to change gear and close the distance between us. The road curved as we gained altitude, and trees kept us from seeing what lay around each turn. I pulled the sun visor low and tailgated him. In his mirror I could vaguely make out his nervous face checking for the reckless driver behind him, but I stayed close. Finally, he did what I wanted: He slowed, drew to the edge of the road, and stuck his hand out to wave me around. I took his offer, and as I passed turned my head in the other direction.

  Shadows of trees hung over the road as I took the turns abruptly, wanting to give myself enough space. The road was narrower than in the plains, and now and then a warning sign told me that it could not accommodate two-way traffic. At one of these points I stopped and placed the car at an angle. I got out, opened the hood, and leaned underneath it.

  I heard him come up behind me, apply brakes, then honk. I kept my head beneath the hood. A second honk. Then, the sound of his door opening and his heels crunching pebbles.

  “Is there some trouble? Maybe if you’d slow down, you could—”

  I straightened and faced him.

  Sometimes when people are stunned, there is a hesitation before the actual recognition. For Malik Woznica there was no pause. I saw the shock, then the back of his head as he ran to his car.

  But his legs were short. I caught his coat as he was pulling the door open and jerked him back, then kicked the door shut.

  He was saying No, no, but there seemed no reason to reply. I pulled him, kicking, away from his car, turned him toward me, and punched him hard on the brow. His head buckled back, flesh trembling. I ignored the pain in my knuckles and gave him another one that knocked him out and sent blood dribbling down his face. I dragged him to my car, opened the trunk, and stuffed him inside. It was difficult getting his legs in, but after a couple tries I could fold them properly. I slammed the door shut. I jogged to his car and drove it off the edge of the road, into the trees, wiped off the wheel, gearshift and handles with my shirt, then returned to my own car and closed the hood. I turned it around and began driving south again.

  71

/>   Not everyone knows the history of the Canal District. It was originally attached to the southern bank, a waterlogged narrowing of the Tisa, and until the founding of the Hungarian principality in the ninth century, it was uninhabited. After the coronation of Saint Stephen I at the millennium, the Canal District itself was used as a base for collecting tolls from boat traffic along the Tisa. During that time the region suffered attacks from the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires, and in 1241 fell into the hands of the Mongolian-Tartian hordes under Batu Khan, who only left when their khan died. Anticipating another attack, King Béla IV donated large areas of the Carpathian basin to encourage the building of forts to protect from another eastern attack. That was when the Canal District was separated by a defensive canal from the southern bank of the Tisa, connected by only one stone bridge—the Béla Bridge. But this engineering feat also had the effect of flooding the buildings that had been there for the previous couple centuries, and the residents were forced to cut smaller canals into the island to control the water. As trade in the region increased, the Capital grew into a wealthy city that then fell to various nation-states—now an outpost of Transylvania, then a victim of Ottoman conquest, and until the Great War an insignificant piece of the Dual Monarchy of Vienna and Budapest. After that war our independence was finally gained, and now we acted as if we were a real nation, with a long and epic history—though in reality we were less than forty years old.

  I crossed the Béla Bridge, which deposited me among rotting wooden scaffolding put up half a decade ago to shore up the buildings against sinking, then abandoned when money was funneled to other, more practical projects.

  I parked in gravel, then took a breath. An unsure map of the Canal District appeared in my head, and I charted my way, trying to recall where the waters had blocked paths, and where haphazard repairs had recovered them. The gray sky was bright and cold. I looked around, then put my ear to the trunk. A heavy, wheezing breath. Another. I opened it and saw him lying there, scrunched up, his face blue, struggling for air. He was only half-awake, dazed and sick, and I realized a broken pipe must have leaked carbon monoxide into the trunk. He was heavy and limp over my shoulder. His feet splayed in front of me, and I used a hand to hold them together, to keep balance. Against my back, he coughed.

  On the straight paths it was easy enough. I leaned to the right in order to accommodate his weight. But the insecure arched bridges gave me trouble. I had to reach out my free arm, grab railings, and watch where I stepped. In one square I caught sight of a prostitute limping home. She looked at me, I at her, then she nodded at my load.

  “Too much fun,” I whispered.

  She sneered. “Me too.”

  I walked through flooded squares because there was no avoiding it, and by the time I reached Augustus II Square, I was cold and wet. But I wasn’t feeling much by then. I wasn’t feeling the soreness in my shoulder that would settle in by the next day, nor the confusion that would come afterward. For now, there was no confusion and no doubt.

  My feet crunched broken glass. I dropped him on the soiled spot where Antonín had died, stretched my arms, then lit a cigarette and waited on the other side of the pool for him to come to.

  He was the kind of fat that, in the end, gave him a false look of health. His face cleared up, shifting back to its sunburn, purple emerging on his brow and nose around the crusted blood where I had punched him. He muttered something, then fell quiet. He woke with his eyes first, looking at the walls, not remembering, then his gaze moved over the water. When I brought the cigarette to my lips, he scrambled back against the wall.

  “W-w—”

  “What am I doing here? Is that what you’re trying to ask?”

  He shut his mouth and nodded.

  “You just come back from a trip, Malik? Looks like you’ve gotten some sun.”

  He leaned forward on his hands and vomited.

  I squatted in front of him. “I worked hard, you know. It was a real chore to get your wife out of the country and back to her own. Not to mention expensive. I hate to see all my good work ruined.”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded.

  “What did you think you’d accomplish?”

  I could hardly hear his reply: “Get my Svetla back.”

  “But she didn’t want to come back, did she?”

  He couldn’t answer that one.

  “Tell me, Malik. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Did you think, perhaps, that after all my hard work, I wouldn’t be a little angry about this? Or did you think that my anger wouldn’t matter?”

  He had backed into the corner again, and his arms were crossed in front of him, as if he could ward off an attack.

  “Look beneath you, Malik. See that stain? A man was brought here, his legs and arms broken, and set on fire. Right where you are.”

  He looked down.

  “How would you like it done?”

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  “Really,” I said with a bright voice. “We both know you have this coming. There’s really nothing else you deserve. So how would you like it?”

  “No.”

  I stood up, reached through his fluttering hands, and pulled him by the collar into the water. A few loose pieces of mosaic—grapes and nipples—threw me momentarily off-balance, but I got him quickly to the center. I was starting to feel the cold up to where the water reached my knees. His feet splashed, his mouth finally producing shouts: “No! No! Help!” Then I shoved his face into the water to silence him.

  He was easy to hold down. His hands pressed on the floor, his feet kicked water into my face, but all I had to do was look up at the ceiling and hold his neck and head down with my two hands. I’d never noticed the ceiling before. It was blackened by centuries and ribbed with arches that met in the center. I imagined there had been another image there at some time, more scenes of pleasure, but I really didn’t know.

  I let go of him. He coughed, red-faced, slime spilling from his mouth and nose. The sound of his labor filled the room and echoed back down on us. He made a halfhearted attempt to run, falling into the water as I grabbed an ankle and dragged him back. He came up again, a mess of hands and feet splashing.

  “You see,” I told him, “you might have gotten away with this, were it not for the rest of my life. Things have been very difficult for me lately—I don’t expect you to have known this—and right now, you…you’re the least of my worries.”

  “I—” He coughed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you, Malik.”

  “No,” he said, finally finding sentences: “I can help you. Tell me what, I can help you. Don’t—just don’t kill me.”

  I made a show of thinking about this. But I knew from the outset there was nothing he could do for me, and nothing I would ever want from him. It had all gone too far.

  I looked around and noticed the dry well. I’d had no plans for it—I had no plans at all—but the sight of it seemed fateful. “Take off your coat.”

  He hesitated.

  “I’m not going to kill you.”

  He got up on his knees and took off his trench coat and handed it to me. Underneath was a gray jacket and a white shirt grayed by water.

  “Come on, let’s get out of this pool.”

  I held on to his arm to help him up to the ledge, water pouring off of us.

  “The jacket, too.”

  He took it off. I used my teeth on the stitching of the shoulder until a few threads broke. Then I forced my fingers into the hole and tore off the arm. I did the same with the other arm as he watched, his imagination making the worst images he could come up with.

  “Come here.”

  I used one jacket arm to tie his wrists behind his back. The knot was awkward, but strong.

  “Sit down.”

  He hesitated again, because this was not what he had hoped for, but finally crouched and dropped back on his butt. I took off his shoes, then unbuckled his belt and took off his pants. “It’s pretty cold
here,” he said as gaily as he could manage, but a quick hard look from me shut him up. I forced his underwear off. “Hey,” he said, squirming a little, so I punched him on the chin. He didn’t pass out, but he wavered a little between waking and sleep, waking more when I stuffed the underwear into his mouth. His eyes gaped, and he tried to yell something through the fabric. I took the other arm of his jacket and tied it around his mouth. He was completely awake now, his breaths harsh through his wide nostrils. His eyes rolled back and forth in panic.

  Did I want to kill him? Yes. But I wasn’t ready to do that. What he’d done to Svetla was so much worse than simple murder, and my real impulse was to put him through a fraction of the hell he’d put that poor girl through. I wanted to skin him alive.

  I picked him up again, the way one holds a bride when crossing the threshold. When his shirt rose, his hairy, shriveled member came into view. His legs kicked now and then, but he couldn’t see where I was taking him until we were right over the well. I sat him on the edge so his feet dangled inside. It was wide enough for him to fit, but just barely. He was screaming something through his gag, the veins in his head popping out beneath the welts, and then I pushed him forward.

  At first he didn’t fall because his hands tied behind his back caught on the wall of the well, twisting upward, all his weight focused on his burning elbows. He screamed louder; this time it was only pain. I lifted him by his shoulders, centered him, and let him drop.

  He scuffed the walls on the way down, and in the darkness I could barely see him when he settled, could just hear his muffled moaning.

  72

  It was after three when I left the Canal District and drove back to the southern shore, then crossed the Georgian Bridge, back over the Canal District and into town. I didn’t want to go home. The reason eluded me at first. It was Vera. I didn’t want to let her go just yet. I wanted to control, with precision, the moment of her release.