So Brano Sev was not our man after all.
“Are you going to take her back?”
I closed the file. “I don’t think that’s your business.”
“You’re right,” he said, nodding. “Just be good to her.”
“I’ve always been good to her. And I’ve always been good for her.”
As he took his cigarette into the hall, too distracted to ask about the files, it occurred to me that, despite what he said, Leonek was still hopeful. Magda had shown she could change her mind. She had chosen me years ago, then she chose Leonek. She had probably, in our bed, told him she would leave me for him. And now she was choosing me again. Neither he nor I knew which decisions were final, or if any would be, ever.
81
I waited inside the café window, while Leonek walked a few paces behind Louis into the October Square market, where round peasant women sold wormy apples and soft potatoes. Along the edge, the Romanians Ágnes disapproved of stood in a semicircle playing fiddles. A couple uniformed Militia watched them a moment, then checked their papers. In the center of the crowd, Louis rose on his toes to see over heads.
“You going to just stand there?”
“Yeah, Corina. I’ll just stand here for now.”
She went back to the tables, and I watched the militiamen give the Romanians their papers back and move on, out of the square.
He arrived at five minutes after noon.
Like the gum-chewing teenager had said, he was short, but not a real shorty. He limped through the crowd from the east side of the square, pausing for women to pass, taking his time. I could only see his head and sometimes a shoulder. Blond hair and a gaunt face. Cheekbones sharp and clear and white, eyes set deep into his skull. He noticed Louis, but didn’t alter his slow, steady pace. Louis’s face lit up in one of his bright smiles as he pushed through bodies to get to Nestor.
Leonek remained a couple people back, glancing in their direction only casually, and I stood at the window with my face half-exposed.
“Sure you don’t want a coffee?”
I didn’t look at her. “Give me a few minutes, will you?”
“Whatever you say.”
They talked a moment, and Louis motioned to the café. I slid farther out of sight as Nestor turned in my direction and considered it. Then he shrugged and limped forward. Leonek kept close behind them. Then Nestor stopped. So did Louis and Leonek. He turned and said something to Louis, and Louis’s face melted, his lips opening and shutting rapidly. Nestor turned back then, quickly, and used his hands to part the crowd. But Leonek caught his arm and stuck a pistol into his ribs. All three turned back to the café. I waved to Corina and pointed at an empty booth. “Four coffees.”
He did not struggle. I noticed this immediately, but I didn’t know what it meant, if anything. I sat at the booth and watched them enter, Leonek still gripping Nestor’s arm. Louis’s face looked like pain as he whispered into Nestor’s ear. I only heard a little of it once they were at the table: “…the only way…no choice…just listen…”
Louis sat beside me and Nestor across from me, Leonek beside him. “Hello, Nestor,” I said.
His thin face moved beneath the surface, his jaw shifting. “Good afternoon, Ferenc.” His voice was high but coarse, as if his throat had been put through a lot.
“Nestor, please give Leonek your gun.”
He kept his eyes on me as he pulled it out of the inside of his jacket and passed it beneath the table.
Corina arrived with our coffees and looked significantly at me before walking away.
“Tell me about Stefan.”
Nestor frowned. “Here?”
“Yes. Then we’ll go somewhere else. Right now, Stefan.”
The other customers didn’t notice us. They smoked and ate and talked loudly with one another. When Nestor lifted his trembling cup to his mouth, I saw the missing finger—just a pink stump. “I didn’t do it,” he said.
“Tell me what happened.”
He set the cup down. “I went to see him. To turn myself in.”
“What?” said Leonek.
“Let him,” I said.
Nestor looked at Leonek, then at me. “Stefan didn’t believe me at first either. He kept his gun on me, and we talked. I told him why I had killed Josef and Antonín and Zoia. The paintings, and—” He frowned at his missing finger. “And my time in the camp.” He looked at Louis. Nestor couldn’t hold his gaze still. “He was all right, that militiaman. After a while he made some fish soup; he knew I was hungry. He kept his gun with him, but we talked and ate, and he asked why I was turning myself in.”
“What was your answer?” I asked.
He turned to me again. “Because it was done. I had killed them, and I didn’t care anymore what happened to me. But then he arrived.”
“Kaminski,” I said.
“Kaminski?” That was Leonek.
Nestor blinked a few times, then nodded. “Stefan asked who it was, and that’s when I learned his name. I didn’t know it before. Stefan told me to wait in the kitchen, so I did. Kaminski asked Stefan about me. He wanted to know if Stefan had found me yet, and that when he did he should give me to him. To Kaminski. But as I was listening to his voice, it sounded familiar. I hadn’t seen him yet, so all I had was the voice. I stuck my head around the doorway. It was so stupid of me.”
“He saw you,” I said.
“And I saw him. And I recognized him right away. When you see a man commit murder, his face never leaves you. It was the same face I’d seen in that crowd of four Russians who were talking with those little Jewish girls. The same one who killed that other militiaman, Sergei Malevich. And I knew it then: Antonín hadn’t sent me to the work camps after all. I knew it immediately.”
“You’re right.”
Nestor nodded. “Kaminski recognized me, too, and he was quick. Stefan was taking out his gun, but Kaminski turned and shot him twice. So fast. But quiet, with that silencer.”
“But you had a gun too.”
“I’d taped it to the small of my back; I didn’t know if I could trust this Stefan. I shot Kaminski in the shoulder. But he jumped back into the corridor before I could get him again.”
Leonek gaped, “So it’s true.”
Nestor nodded at him, but his face was pale and unwell. “It’s true.”
“And you got out through the window,” I said.
“I thought he would be waiting at the front door.”
“He probably was. Did you come to my apartment a few days later?”
“But the woman wouldn’t let me in. Your wife?”
I waved to Corina for the bill.
Louis finally spoke. “Nestor. Good goddamn. Nestor.”
82
Leonek and I walked on either side of Nestor, holding his arms. We left October Square by the north road and climbed into my car, Louis and I up front. I had to stop continuously in the traffic and honked when a broken-down Moskvich blocked my way, the men pushing against the spare tire on the back shouting at me for patience. It took a half hour to make it to the Ninth District, and the whole way I tried to decide what I was going to do.
The first thing, of course, was the interrogation.
We climbed to my apartment, and I got a bottle of brandy and four glasses and filled them and handed them out. Louis’s brandy shook when he brought it to his mouth, but Nestor, settling into the soda, had calmed. He had the ability to accept his situation and wait for his opportunities—learned, no doubt, from a decade in the work camps.
Leonek put his glass down. “All right, Nestor. I want to know what happened to Sergei Malevich.”
Nestor took a deep breath that stretched his thin cheeks, then he exhaled and began. “Sergei Malevich had talked to a friend of mine, Osip Yarmoluk. He was a good guy, a Russian soldier who’d had enough of things. I’d known him ever since they marched in. Did you know he was killed, too?”
Leonek looked at me. I shook my head. “We’ve never heard of him.”
“Well, he was the only one I’d told about the four soldiers taking those little girls into the synagogue. There were a couple other witnesses, but they kept quiet. I can’t blame them, particularly after all that’s happened to me.”
“But you saw it?” asked Leonek.
“I saw enough. They took the girls in there, and I heard them scream. I tried to find some help, but everyone was too frightened. I was, too, or else I would have gone into that synagogue. I told all this to Osip. He knew some of these men. He thought I should go to the Militia about it. But I wasn’t sure. I mean, I didn’t know who I could trust and who I couldn’t. Finally, this Malevich guy started asking questions. He didn’t get anything until he finally came across Osip. Osip told him about me, and he set up a meeting that same night. At the Tisa. Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. “With that fog, I knew something had to go wrong.”
“So you showed up,” said Leonek.
“I showed up, all right. And I found him. He was on the bank, waiting. But Osip had never really described what he looked like. He’d only told Sergei what I looked like. So I came closer, to let him get a look at me, and Sergei did see me. He started to step forward, then a man’s voice called his name. I could tell this was unexpected because he quickly stepped back into the fog and looked away from me. It was thoughtful of him. The last act of his life was to save mine.”
Leonek leaned back, hands on his knees, and nodded. “And you saw what happened afterward.”
“I had no choice,” he said. “I was afraid that if I started walking, this second guy would hear my footsteps. And I didn’t know anything about him. So I stood a little bit away, not moving, and watched a tall man—Kaminski—come over and start talking with Sergei.”
“What did they say?”
“I don’t know. It was all in Russian. I know some now, but back then I didn’t know any. Kaminski was very calm, it seemed to me. And at first Sergei was calm, too, but then he wasn’t. Because Kaminski had a gun on him. He must have told Sergei to lie on the ground, because that’s what he did. He lay facedown, and not once did he look in my direction. Then Kaminski squatted and shot him in the back of the head.”
I remembered it myself. The thick fog and the sound of the gunshot echoing off the water.
“When the Russian heard more footsteps, he stood up. That’s when I recognized him, from the Jewish quarter. Then he pocketed the gun and ran off. I did, too.”
Leonek was flexing his hands in his lap, staring. He looked at me. We were both remembering the running footsteps that echoed back at us as we stood over Sergei’s dead body, immobile.
“My mistake was that I told Osip about it. He didn’t turn me in, nothing like that. But somebody must have suspected he knew something—he was dead a week later. I didn’t know if they knew about me or not, so I kept myself hidden just in case.”
I said, “You stayed in your apartment with Antonín and Zoia.”
“They were the only ones who knew where I was, so it only made sense that they had turned me in.”
“They weren’t the only ones,” I said. “Louis knew.”
Louis was pouring himself a second shot, and at the sound of his name spilled some on the table. He started shaking his head vigorously. “No. That’s not it. That’s not how it was at all.”
Nestor stared at Louis.
I said, “Louis didn’t turn you in on purpose. But whenever he came into town he notified the Office of Internal Corrections. He also told the office who he was going to meet. But Louis couldn’t know that the man who killed those girls and Sergei not only ran this office, but had also probably learned Nestor’s name by beating it out of Osip Yarmoluk before killing him. With all this information, Kaminski didn’t have to track Nestor down at all. Didn’t have to kill him. All he had to do was plant a couple anonymous accusations against him, then connect him with a foreigner coming into town. That’s all that was needed.”
“But I didn’t show up!” said Louis. “They had nothing on him!”
Nestor, sunk deep into the sofa, arms crossed over his chest, stared at Louis. “Accusations were enough back then.”
Louis’s face was red and damp. “You don’t understand! I tried to get him out. I tried.”
“You did,” I said, then turned to Nestor. “He’s not lying. He went straight to Yalta Boulevard, to Kaminski’s office, when he found out. Kaminski didn’t even open his door.”
Nestor said to Louis, “But why would you tell them anything in the first place?”
Louis chewed air, eyes rolling as he tried to find the right words.
“He was an informer,” I said. “It was his job to tell them when he was in the country. All for the glories of world revolution.”
Nestor stood up and went to the bathroom. Leonek stood too, as if to follow, then settled back down. He looked at me and shook his head. “Christ.”
83
There was a knock at the door. I pulled out my gun and stood beside it. Leonek had his gun out as well, and Louis shrank into his chair, terrified.
“Ferenc?” It was a woman’s voice. A high squeak.
I put my gun away and opened the door a little. Claudia peered up at me. “Hello, Claudia. I don’t have a lot of time—”
“It’s not that,” she said, and glanced down the stairwell. “I just thought you should know. There was a man here last night.”
“A man?”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “A Russian. He knocked on your door, I could hear him from downstairs. Loud, that one. Loud.”
“Do you know what he wanted?”
“How should I know? But he was calling your name. He said he knew you were in. Then he left.”
“That’s all he said?”
“That’s it. You weren’t there, were you?”
I shook my head.
“That’s what I thought. I’d heard you go out earlier. But I wasn’t about to open my door and tell him. I’m not that kind, you see.” She smiled and patted my hand on the door to assure me of this.
“Thank you, Claudia. I appreciate it.”
She tried in vain to peer past me into the apartment, then rocked back on her heels and shrugged. “We’re neighbors, Ferenc. It’s nothing.”
After I’d heard her footsteps descend the steps and her door open and shut, I sat across from Louis. “Did you tell them about this trip?”
“Them?”
“Yalta Boulevard.”
He shook his head. “I stopped that after my last visit. They’ve tried to get me back, but I haven’t done anything for them since.”
Leonek pocketed his pistol. “Louis checked into the Metropol, and the hotel sent in the daily registration report. Of course they know he’s in town.”
I walked over to the radio set. “And when Kaminski went to Louis’s room, the lock was broken and the room was empty. But he didn’t think to check for our names on the register.” I looked at Leonek. “The three of us were very close to death in that hotel.”
84
He had been in there a while, so I knocked on the bathroom door, then opened it. Nestor was on the edge of the tub, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He looked old and exhausted. I came in and closed the door. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” That’s when I realized he’d been crying. He said, “It’s just that I’ve ruined everything. I thought that when I got out of the camp I could make everything right. I would make some justice where there hadn’t been any before. But look at what I’ve done.”
I sat on the toilet and folded my hands on my knees. The bathroom was very white, and it hurt my eyes.
He said, “It was luck, at first. At least that’s how I thought of it. I was in this stinking bar, wondering how I could get back at the people who had put me away for so long, and there was Josef Maneck. Like a gift from God. He was so drunk, I hardly recognized him. I’d met him before, and Louis had told me he was connected to all of it, so I waited outside for him. He’d gotten into a fi
ght with another drunk, and was finally thrown out. So I helped him home. He had no idea who I was. He was just grateful I wasn’t hitting him. I got him up to his place and made some coffee, and started to question him.”
There was a knock at the door. Leonek looked in, saw the two of us sitting morosely in the white bathroom, and left again.
“Go on.”
He rubbed his hands to keep them warm. “I didn’t plan to kill him. I really wanted Antonín. But when I told him my name, he went wild. He hit me and tried to run out of the apartment. So I dragged him back. And made him tell me what he knew. He believed the same thing I did, that Antonín had sent me to the work camp in order to steal my paintings. He said he didn’t know for a long time, until Zoia told him. He cried and apologized and finally gave me Antonín’s address.”
“You wrote it on Josef’s notepad.”
“I guess I did.”
“Go on.”
“Well, once I had what I’d come there for, I didn’t leave. I couldn’t leave. Something kept me there, kept me hammering at him. I wanted to know why, once he knew the truth, Josef hadn’t gone to the Militia. He said he would have been implicated, because by that point he’d been showing the paintings for months. And he pointed at the apartment and said that it was what he’d been reduced to, because he couldn’t take the guilt. But that wasn’t enough for me, you understand? It was as if I were someone else for an hour. I wanted to take from him what had been taken from me. So I gave him one more punch that knocked him out and dragged him over to the oven and turned on the gas. Then I left.”
I rubbed my own hands together. It seemed very cold in that bathroom, like the cold of the Canal District, and the cold that comes from an hour of being someone else, and looking back at what you’ve done. “Then you found Antonín.”
The Confession Page 29