The Confession

by Olen Steinhauer

  “I was trying to restart my marriage.”

  “And?”

  I drank the wine, but it had a spoiled edge. I set it on an end table. Somebody in the kitchen turned on the radio, and we heard static until voices rose through it. It was the American station that you could sometimes hear from Germany, broadcasting eastward. In certain weather it drifted through. News and music and more news. Georgi’s eyes closed as he meditated on the commentary on developments in Poland: negotiations between Moscow and Warsaw to end the unrest. “The Frenchman, he’s staying here?”

  He nodded, eyes still shut. “Been here two weeks. But tomorrow it’s off to Prague, and then back home to Paris. A glorious tour of the People’s Republics.”

  “There was no trouble, then? Him staying here? No knocks on the door?”

  Georgi opened his eyes, then his hands, and spoke with the simplicity of spirit that reminded me that I actually liked him. “We’re living in the most wonderful of times, my friend. And if we’re not, then please, don’t let me know.”

  12

  “I’ll tell you what I’m trying to do,” said the Frenchman. He had come in after Georgi left and leaned forward on the edge of the chair. “I’m trying to grasp this situation we’re in right now. It’s unprecedented, you know, in human history. The entire planet is split between two camps, and the rest of us are intermediaries. We’re the ones fighting it out. I want to find a way to express this puppetry. Because that’s what we are. We’re puppets of history, and we’re playing out a tragedy. Those hydrogen bombs are ready to be dropped. There are enough idiots in the White House and the Central Committee to ensure one of those buttons is going to be pressed. And the longer the wait, the bigger the explosions—they’ll put bombs into space before long. I’m not kidding, all our leaders are mad. In the West we vote them in, but the vanity only makes them more crazy. Don’t you see? All our efforts are toward our own annihilation.”

  He was drunk, but this was something he’d thought about for a long time and needed no sobriety to express—just a listener.

  “Now, I’m not trying to deride this situation. I’ll leave that to the pacifists. It simply is, and I want to see it as clearly as I can. Without prejudice.”

  “So what’s this?” I asked. “Your visit here. Research?”

  He crossed a leg over his knee with some effort, then gripped his raised ankle. “Yes, maybe, in part. But I’ve spent a lot of time here over the years, and I always have friends to see. A very special one recently got out of the camps, thank God. This soil is in my heart,” he said, touching his nose. “You should see the miles of paperwork I had to fill out in order to come here. Then the checks at the border, the soldiers who went through my luggage. They kept half the gifts I brought! I’ll never see them again.” He frowned. “You probably don’t see it in the newspaper, but the East Berliners are running through the border like mad. Nobody can stop them. There’s not enough room in the refugee camps.”

  “They just pick up and leave their homes?”

  “They’re desperate, Ferenc.” He leaned closer. “You know what happens when I walk down the streets here? People follow me.”

  “State security?”

  “No—investors. They want to buy French francs. They can smell it on me.” He paused. “And do you know, Comrade, what Western money smells like?”

  I shook my head.

  “Soap,” he said. “It’s the smell of a clean body washed with Western deodorant soap.”

  I settled back, remembering the excuse for a bath I’d put myself through that morning, in the sink, and all those weeks in the dacha. “You’re not a communist after all.”

  He smiled. “I’m a communist all right. I just haven’t seen an ounce of real communism since crossing the Iron Curtain.”

  There was commotion in the kitchen; someone had won a hand. But it was a weak enthusiasm. They were getting tired.

  “Georgi tells me you’re having trouble writing,” he said.

  I was surprised Georgi considered it important enough to mention. “It’s just not coming.”

  “But no ideas? Nothing at all?”

  “A couple things, maybe.”

  He gave a fatigued smile. “You’ve heard, though, haven’t you, that plot is dead?

  “Is it?”

  “I read it in l’Humanite, some editorial. Plot is a capitalist construct made to give lives a false sense of totality, so they can be valued like a wheel of Brie, then bought and sold.” He grinned. “Luckily, I’m a poet. It doesn’t affect me.”

  Vera and Karel appeared, and when she kissed my cheeks, I thought I heard her whisper, Call me, but wasn’t sure. When she pulled away she smiled conspiratorially. Karel shook my hand. The others gave quiet greetings on their ways out, and I knew then that Georgi had told them all about Magda and me. I was too tired to be bothered by it. They filed by the sofa, asking why they never saw me these days, telling me to give them calls. Their requests for a call were entirely different from Vera’s. They told Louis they would see him again, and, with an elegant bow, he said that this was undoubtedly true. And then, after what seemed like forever, they were gone. Georgi settled on the other corner of the sofa, and the three of us were silent for a while. Georgi laughed once, but when we looked at him he shook his head.

  “Alors,” said Louis. He leaned into a standing position.

  Georgi stood as well. “Staying?”

  I shrugged.

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  Once they were in their rooms, I got another glass of wine, lit a cigarette, and stretched out on the sofa. Vera was behind my lids. Almost a year before, at a Christmas gathering, on that same sofa, she lay on top of me and kissed me deeply. I could feel the weight of her slight body, her narrow hips, her small breasts against me. It was a wonderful kiss; I hadn’t had one like that from Magda in a long time. Ever since then she had watched me when we were all together, and it had taken a long time to rid her stare of the heat that spread along my neck and cheeks. Now, though, her suspicions about Magda’s and my problems had been verified. I rolled over.

  13

  Georgi woke me by shaking my shoulder. “Telephone.” He was in a thick beige robe that had his initials GR, on the breast. “Your oaf.” I knew then that it was Stefan.

  “Magda said to try for you there. You’re no longer sleeping at home?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Come see me at Josef Maneck’s apartment. Here’s the address.”

  I yawned. “What is this, Stefan? The man killed himself.”

  “Just get over here, okay?”

  Georgi was frying eggs when I came into the kitchen. “Is the oaf requesting your presence?”

  “Shut up, Georgi.” I sat at the table and started filing the playing cards back into their boxes. The empty wine bottles still lined the counter, and every surface was stained by red circles. There was a sour stink in the air. Georgi brought over two plates.

  “Want coffee?”

  I nodded.

  “Then make it yourself, I’m going back to bed.”

  I put some water on to boil and searched for the grounds.

  “What do you think of Louis?”

  There were enough grounds for a few cups. “He’s all right.”

  “He told me that things here are looking pretty bad.”

  “In what way?”

  “Says this won’t last. This thaw.”

  “What does he know? He’s a tourist.”

  “No, he’s lived here before, and he’s visited a lot.”

  “Well, then, he’s a foreigner.”

  “Not really—his last name’s Rostek. His grandfather’s one of us, from one of those purges, you know, in the ’teens—if you could afford it, you went to Paris. His opa could afford it.” Georgi brought his empty plate to the sink. “I worry too much in the mornings.”

  The water was boiling, so I added the grounds. The froth ran over, hissing on the burner. “Don’t worry so much,” I to
ld him. “And don’t listen to foreigners. They mean well, but they know nothing about our lives.”

  He considered that a moment, then got two cups out of the cabinet. “Give me one of those, will you?”

  Josef Maneck’s apartment was in the old town, a three-room, high-ceilinged place that had been his father’s. Now it was no one’s. The old furniture was still here, dusty chairs and cabinets and trinkets collected over too long a life. On the walls were faded portraits in ornate frames, and a few empty frames stuffed recklessly behind the sofa.

  Stefan was sitting on Maneck’s sunken mattress, reading a book. He showed me the cover—a state edition of poetry by someone I vaguely remembered—before throwing it on the dirty, knotted rug. “Josef liked his verse,” said Stefan. “Pretty uplifting stuff for a suicidal drunk.”

  “Someone gave it to him. How long have you been here?”

  “I spent the night.”

  He leaned forward with his hands on the bed and lifted his weight with a grunt. He passed me on his way to the living room and took a notepad off the coffee table. The top page had been ripped out, but Stefan had rubbed a pencil all over the second page. Not all the scribbled letters were recovered.

  A—TO—ÍN

  K——R—5—

  2—2.—0—

  “Antonín,” said Stefan. “The rest, I don’t know—address and phone number, maybe. But I’m sure about the name.”

  “So he knew someone named Antonín. Does it really matter?”

  “It could matter.” His voice was trying to encourage me to believe, with him, that this suicide was more than it seemed. “I’ve been all over the place looking for an address book. Nothing. But I’ll bet that if we can find Antonín, we’ll learn something important.”

  I doubted this, but got up with him and handed him his hat from the coffee table.

  14

  Café-bar #103 had just opened, and the bartender, when he saw us come in, said with sudden, false brightness, “Comrade Inspectors, you’ve returned!” He set two somewhat clean glasses on the counter. “What will it be?”

  Stefan climbed onto a stool while I stood beside him. “This Josef Maneck,” he said. “Did you ever see him with other people? Someone named Antonín?”

  The bartender’s smile faded. “Not much business lately. Won’t you have a drink?”

  “We’ll just take some answers,” said Stefan.

  “Give me a coffee,” I told him.

  “Coffee? Come on, Comrade Inspector.”

  “Palinka,” I said.

  He grabbed a bottle of apricot brandy from the shelf behind him. As he poured, he said, “Well,” then corked the bottle and set it beside my glass. “The nut only came in alone. He was that kind.”

  “What kind?” asked Stefan.

  “A friend of nobody. You know what I mean.” The bartender pushed his eyeglasses up the arch of his nose, then leaned an elbow on the counter. “He came in alone, ordered his drinks quietly, but as he got drunk he ordered them louder, like I couldn’t hear.” He shook his head. “We could all hear him.”

  I picked up my brandy. “So he always came in alone.”

  “Of course he did. No one would spend time with that guy, except maybe Martin. But Martin only did it for the drinks. Martin will do most anything for a drink. Sometimes I get him to clean up the toilet for a drink, and he does a hell of a good job.”

  “But did he ever talk to you?” said Stefan. “About anyone he knew. An Antonín?”

  He put away the second, empty glass. “If he ever did, I wasn’t listening.”

  The brandy was coarse; it burned my tongue. “What about Martin?”

  “What about him?”

  “You said Josef Maneck talked to Martin.” I placed some koronas on the counter, more than the drink cost.

  He looked at the money. “That’s what I said. But I don’t know what they talked about.” He placed his hand over the coins.

  Stefan looked at me, at the drink beside the bartender’s hand, then at the bartender. “Where does this Martin live?”

  He slid the coins off the counter. “That, I can tell you.”

  Around the corner, down an alley, and through a misaligned side door that did not shut all the way. There was a short, dark entryway that led to a curtain of beads missing half its strings. “Martin?” Stefan called through the beads. “You in there, Martin?”

  We heard a horrendous, wrenching cough.

  It was an old storage room, with a couple rusted shelves in the corner. I wondered for an instant how someone could end up in a hole like this, in a time of assigned housing. Then I saw Martin on a thin mattress, his back against the stone wall, trying to light a cigarette, but the matches wouldn’t catch. No paperwork, that’s how you ended up here. Lost, or sold for a drink. From a high barred window enough cold light came through to see the cockroaches scurrying from our entrance. Here, beneath the surface of the Capital, lived the lumpenproletariat—or, as The Spark would put it: the underworld criminals, antisocial shirkers and prostitutes. The place stank of feces.

  We stayed on our side of the room. “Having a rough morning, Martin?”

  Martin’s face was swollen and red-veined. He dropped the matches, then leaned to pick them up again. “You got a light?”

  “We’ve got questions, Martin.”

  I saw on the rusted shelves his only possessions—a pair of lopsided shoes, a frayed jacket, and an empty bottle of rubbing alcohol. I threw my lighter; it landed beside his bare foot. When his eyes focused, he made something like a grin and took it.

  Stefan stepped forward. “Just a few questions.”

  He lit the cigarette and drew on it deeply, his whole body rising, then coughed again, lips wet.

  Stefan squatted to his level. “Remember your friend, Josef Maneck? He talked to you, didn’t he?”

  Martin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took another drag. He nodded, maybe in answer to the question.

  “Did Josef tell you about his other friends, Martin? Did he tell you about a friend named Antonín?”

  The lighter was no longer in Martin’s hand. I didn’t know where it was.

  “Surely he told you about Antonín. That’s his oldest friend. Did he talk to you about his friends, Martin?”

  That’s when I noticed the source of the stink. In the corner, behind the shelves, were a few fresh turds. Martin had been too drunk to make it outside last night, or this morning.

  “Stefan,” I said, but he didn’t hear me.

  “Tell us about his friends, Martin, come on.”

  “I don’t know,” Martin said. He sat up a little, as if to look dignified, and took another drag. “He talked, yeah, but he didn’t tell me nothing.” His voice was strangled and labored, and I wondered how a man like that could keep taking breaths.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Stefan settled a little lower, on his haunches. “So what did Josef talk to you about? He bought you drinks, he talked to you. What about, Martin?”

  “Nothing nothing. I didn’t listen.”

  “You’re not that rude, Martin. He told you about his friends, maybe, or how he used to be an art curator. Surely he talked about that.”

  Martin squinted, then nodded slowly. “Yes, art. He wouldn’t shut up. Art.”

  “Of course he did. And he told you why he stopped doing that. Why he stopped being a curator.”

  Martin’s next drag was aborted by a fit of angry hacking that turned his face purple and ridged his neck with fat veins. Stefan looked away finally, and I caught his eye and nodded at the door. He shook his head and turned back.

  “Why did he stop working in the museum, Martin? You know the reason. It was a good job, why give it up?”

  “And you’ll leave me alone?”

  “Sure, Martin. Then we’ll leave you alone.”

  He squinted again, trying to think it over. His eyes were red all the way through. “He couldn’t.”

  “Couldn’t what?”

&n
bsp; “Couldn’t live with himself.”

  “Why couldn’t he live with himself?”

  “Because.”

  I cleared my throat. The stink was making my eyes water.

  “Because why, Martin?”

  “He was terrible,” said Martin. “A terrible person.”

  “How’s that? How was he terrible?”

  I stepped forward, and it shot out of me: “Because he was a goddamned drunk, for Christ’s sake!”

  They both looked at me, Martin with some hesitant surprise, Stefan clearly angry.

  Then, just as I had done the day before, I turned around and left.

  15

  Since we had brought separate cars, I drove back to the station to wait for him. On the way, I saw wives in windows brushing off their shutters and waving away pigeons, and in Victory Square there was a procession of university students. They had signs—small, hand-drawn boards—that demanded accountability within the universities. LET US GRADE PROFESSORS, SO WE CAN TRUST THEIR GRADES! Along their edge, a handful of bored, uniformed Militia looked on.

  I didn’t regret my outburst; I didn’t care what Stefan thought. I’d had enough of his worthless needling, because when I looked into Martin’s decomposing features I felt like I was one with him again, in those black bars just after the war. Like I had never crawled out of that subhuman existence.

  Leonek gave a smile for my benefit, but when I talked to him there was still that underlying misery. “You’re coming over tonight, then?”

  “New tie and everything.” He flipped it up for me to see. It was green silk with small brown dots forming diagonal lines.

  “I’m sure Magda will appreciate it.”

  Emil passed me on his way to Leonek’s desk and gave a wink. “When are you going to invite me and Lena over for dinner?”

  “When you get a decent tie.”

  Mikhail Kaminski had set up a chair across from Brano Sev, and they were hunched on either side of the desk, conferring over typewritten pages from the files of state security. Their voices were a distant rumble.