The Confession

by Olen Steinhauer

  “You should be embarrassed.”

  “Anyway,” he said as he went back to searching, “in ’fifty-one the heavy drinking began and just got worse. He drank throughout the day, hid it from no one, and after he’d drunkenly insulted enough Ministry officials, they sent him to the bottling plant. The drinking didn’t stop.”

  “Did you catch up with Martin again?”

  “He disappeared.”

  “I saw him hiding from you in the Fourth District. What did you do to him?”

  Stefan smiled. “Maybe I was a little pushy.”

  “What happened after the bottling plant?”

  “Josef survived. That’s a mystery, how he made ends meet. I suspect someone was helping him out.” He appraised the living room as he walked to the paintings on the wall. “Probably Antonín. Hey—this is good.” He took down the one I’d noticed and brought it to the window, turning it so the pig’s head became even more illuminated.

  “Josef made this guy famous.”

  Stefan turned it in the light. “This painter made himself famous. Josef just came along for the ride.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Here’s another one.”

  I brought him the factory scene, and when he took it his head slipped back, as if afraid of catching something. “What happened to him? This is trash.”

  We held the paintings side by side. Beneath each signature was a year. The good one was dated 1949, the factory scene last year, 1955.

  Stefan grunted. “It’s criminal. That’s what it is. Someone with this much talent, and he sells his soul. To make this.” It was more than he could bear. He tossed both paintings on the sofa and reached for his hat.

  24

  Emil, sitting on the edge of Leonek’s desk, looked surprised when we entered together at noon. Leonek did too.

  I called the forensics lab to give them Antonín’s address. Emil appeared as I hung up. “You guys together, then?”

  “For the moment. Can you see about this Vlaicu guy? He might know something.”

  “Already did. He’s having a show.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night, seven o’clock. Have you heard about Malik Woznica?”

  I peered up at him.

  “He came by yesterday. Looking for us. Seems to think you found his wife and didn’t give her back.”

  “What did Moska do?”

  “Told Woznica he was mistaken—it was a wrong ID. What else could he say?”

  “I better talk to him.”

  Emil shook his head. “Don’t. I started to, but he put his hands over his ears and told me to leave his office.”

  I called the civil records office over at the Ministry of Justice and spoke to a man with a guttural Polish accent. “This is Militia Inspector Ferenc Kolyeszar. I need some information about a divorce and a marriage.”

  “We close at three.”

  “It’s one now.”

  “Then you’ve got plenty of time to come over.”

  “I’d rather not. The name is Kullmann. Antonín Kullmann. He divorced his wife Zoia Lendvai in ’forty-eight.”

  There was a long, phlegmy sigh, then a bang as he set the receiver down.

  I wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder and watched Emil sitting opposite Leonek, where they pored over more interviews, muttering to each other now and then.

  “Antonín and Zoia Kullmann,” said the unhappy clerk. “It’s right here.”

  “Good. Is there any mention of who Zoia Kullmann married afterward?”

  “Of course not. This is a divorce certificate.”

  “I want to know who she married. It would have been the same year, or the next.”

  “You’re really going to have to do this yourself. I’m busy here.”

  “Comrade,” I said. “This is a direct request from Colonel Mikhail Kaminski, from Moscow. I suggest you take care of it.”

  Another pause as the threat registered, and he envisioned everything it signified. “Moment.”

  Moska came out of his office with a sheet of paper and went over to Brano Sev’s desk. I hadn’t noticed Sev’s arrival. He had the silence of all those in his field, and I wondered if he had heard me use Kaminski’s name. Moska showed him the paper, then they conferred quietly. After a minute or two, he straightened and returned to his office, going out of his way not to look at me.

  “Please tell Comrade Colonel Kaminski that there is no record of a Zoia Kullmann or a Zoia Lendvai remarrying in 1948, or any year since then.”

  When I hung up, Emil dropped his pages and came over. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You bring Magda to this Vlaicu show, I’ll bring Lena, and beforehand we can all have dinner at our place. That way we won’t look so much like a couple of flatfoots.”

  “Flatfoots?”

  “It’s American,” he said proudly. “American for cop.”

  25

  There really was no getting out of it, and since, for once, Magda wasn’t occupied with Lydia, we arrived at the Brod household at five. Ágnes was happy to see us go. “Have a good time!” she called from the door, and that only made me worry. Lena’s olive, floor-length dress seemed a little much for the occasion, but Magda complimented it with sincerity.

  “Come now,” said Lena as she used her pinkie to wipe excess mascara from her eyeball. “You need nothing to help you shine. When you’re as over-the-hill as me, you’ve got to buy your beauty.”

  Emil opened a bottle of champagne.

  We drank in the living room and listened to a sweet-voiced American singer on the record player—Sarah Vaughan, Emil explained—and began to loosen up. Despite her apprehension when I had told her our plans, Magda was awed by the size of the apartment and the glittering rocks hanging from Lena’s ears. “Tell me,” she said after her second drink, “what is it like to travel out of the country?”

  “Haven’t you been?” asked Lena.

  Magda shook her head.

  Lena took a deep breath before launching into a description of the glories of international travel. She had been to Paris, Rome, Zurich, London and Stockholm, and had found each one more enchanting than the last. “Except, perhaps, London,” she said as her lip began to twitch at the corner. “Well, it’s obvious, the problem with that town, isn’t it? It’s filled with the English. What a dry, dour race. Do you know, not one person in all of London looked at me crossly? If I bumped into someone—you know what they did? They apologized. Can you believe it? The entire nation, and not a single testicle among them. But,” she said, looking sadly into her empty glass, “Westminster was beautiful.”

  Emil had gone with her on a couple trips, but admitted he seldom had the urge to leave. “I used to love to travel. But I don’t anymore. Not sure why. Anyway, it takes twice as long for me to get a visa. I just slow her down.”

  Lena stood to refill our glasses. “They seem to think I couldn’t stand to leave the country for good if my husband wasn’t with me. They don’t know much, do they?”

  Emil slapped her thigh as she passed, then held up a finger. “Let me show you something.” He went to another room and returned lugging a large reel-to-reel recorder.

  “Not that,” muttered Lena.

  He set it heavily on the coffee table and plugged in a microphone. He flipped some switches and the reels began to turn, the tape sliding through metal gears and heads to the take-up reel, humming.

  “I don’t hear anything,” I said.

  Magda leaned close. “I think I hear something.”

  “It’s recording,” said Emil. He returned to his chair. “Just act normal. I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, and I want to see what we sound like.”

  It took a few more drinks to act normal, to pretend that the big humming machine in the middle of the room did not exist. But we did normalize finally, touching on the Magyars, which was the only subject that could effectively silence Lena, then the Sixth of November Strike. “It’s a shame,” Emil said. “I would
have liked it to do something in the end.”

  “You don’t think it did?” said Magda. “I was under a different impression.”

  “What was your impression?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know. I don’t mean it accomplished anything really apparent. More than anything it set a precedent, don’t you think? It’s clear that, if another crackdown like that comes along, there’s an option for people. Striking is an option.”

  “But striking’s always been an option,” said Emil, leaning into the debate. “It’s been done enough times in East Germany, in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and, of course, Hungary. It took a long time for us to get around to it.”

  “Everything takes a long time here,” Lena said.

  “But it’s something,” said Magda. “It’s late, but it’s something.”

  We all looked as the end of the tape emerged from the recording heads and flapped in the full reel.

  Emil rewound the tape and rethreaded it. He was grinning. “Now we can find out what we really sound like.” He tugged the switch.

  At first, there was little conversation—half phrases and spare words—and then the clink of glasses and muted drinking. Then I was saying something about Ágnes, and the sound of my voice gave me pause. “I sound like that?”

  Emil shrugged. Magda stared at the reel-to-reel. “Of course you do,” said Lena, leaning close to the speaker as her own voice chattered about something insignificant, and I could see the disappointment in her face.

  Magda talked and Emil talked and when my voice appeared again I was still surprised by the lilt of my deep voice, the singsong quality. It was effeminate and soft, as if it did not want to offend. It was an embarrassing realization.

  Then Magda was talking again—…there’s an option for people. Striking is an option.

  We had the same thought at the same time, all four of us. But it was Emil’s machine, so we waited for him to do it. He rewound it again, rethreaded the tape, and pulled the switch to the marker that said ERASE.

  26

  Most of the art admirers were choked around the drinks table, far from the paintings. It was an older crowd than I was used to, white-haired members of the Culture Ministry with red pins wedged in their lapels, their wives, and only one beard in the whole room. The wood-framed paintings were more of what we’d seen at Antonín’s: the virtue of the working life. Young, fresh proles working wrenches on machines and pushing shovels into the hard soil. Names like Comrade M. Harvests a Record Yield and A Five-Year Plan in Four. Emil and I had to shove to get drinks for our wives, and when we returned a couple of officials were flirting with them. One worked in the Interior Ministry, and though he wore no leather coat, he knew the effect the name of his ministry, which had long ago been put in control of the Ministry for State Security, had on people. He whispered it. The other was in the upper ranks of the Pioneers. Magda mentioned we had a daughter. “So how does she like it?” he asked. “We try to give young ladies the confidence to make their lives an active, purposeful affair.”

  “She loves it unequivocally,” Magda lied, and brought up a weekend camping trip that Ágnes returned from in tears, but left out the tears.

  “So which one is Vlaicu?” I asked.

  The Interior Ministry official nodded at the one man with a beard. He was noticeably younger than the rest, and already drunk. He shook hands and nodded at their comments and laughed. He knew how to work a room. “Would you like to meet him?” the official asked.

  All six of us migrated over and cornered the artist. “More admirers, Vlaicu,” said the official.

  When we shook hands, Vlaicu’s brilliant, green eyes shifted over to Magda. “What do you do?” he asked her.

  She smiled and shrugged. “I work in a textile factory.”

  “Aha. So what do you think of my representations of factory life?”

  She gazed at the walls a moment. “A little clean, maybe.”

  He laughed and clapped his hands together. “And what about the rest of you?”

  Lena held her drink to her lips. “I sit around.”

  Emil said, “The two of us are militiamen.”

  Vlaicu nodded in mock-admiration and asked if it was a difficult job.

  “Tiring,” I said. “You should paint our work. It could be interesting.”

  “Maybe a little sensationalistic.”

  “Paperwork? Trust me. It’s not sensational.” The two officials had wandered off, and Emil seemed to want to get this going, so I said, “We’re working on a case regarding someone you know.”

  “Oh yes?” He bobbed his eyebrows. “Someone sinister?”

  “Antonín Kullmann.”

  His eyebrows dropped. “You’ve found him? Where is he?”

  “He’s dead,” said Emil.

  Vlaicu’s eyes flicked back to me as his lips twitched, ready for this to be a joke. But our expressions convinced him otherwise. “I can’t believe it.”

  It was real shock, I had no doubt. His hands floundered out to the sides, and he stepped forward, then back. Magda and Lena went off for more drinks.

  I grabbed his arm lightly. “Come on.”

  We made it through all the greetings of the crowd and out to the dark, chilly sidewalk.

  “Can you tell us about him?” asked Emil.

  The hand that brought the cigarette to his mouth shook. “Of course. Yes.”

  I said, “How long has Antonín been missing?”

  “Two weeks? Maybe three. I’ve been so busy. We had drinks together.”

  “You two close?”

  “Not really. State painters drink together because the others won’t drink with them.”

  “Did he tell you anything about fearing for his life? We have a letter of his that suggests this.”

  Confusion crossed his face, his eyes losing focus. “No, nothing. He didn’t discuss his personal life much. Except his love life.”

  “Did he have much of a love life?”

  “Well, he didn’t have a lot of women, if that’s what you mean. But love…” He scratched his beard, still confused. “Well, he had found it.”

  I said, “Zoia.”

  “Exactly. But she left him.”

  “She remarried, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “A clerk.”

  “We couldn’t find the record of the marriage.”

  “Probably because she changed her name. She thought Zoia was too provincial a name. So she changed it to Sofia.” He grinned around his cigarette. “That’s a provincial name.”

  “Do you know the name of her husband?”

  “Mathew Eiers. Never met him, but Antonín hated the man. Eiers probably hated him, too, because he was still trying to get Zoia back.” He blinked at the sidewalk, then looked at us. “You don’t think Eiers—”

  “We don’t think much yet,” said Emil. “Does the name Josef Maneck ring a bell?”

  “Sure. Curator-turned-drunk. He was before my time, though. He and Antonín still talked sometimes. I think Antonín felt sorry for him—I mean, without Josef maybe he would’ve never had a career.”

  “Did he help support Josef?” I asked. “Financially, I mean.”

  Vlaicu held up his cigarette. “Wouldn’t surprise me if he did.”

  A low figure came limping out of the darkness. It was Stefan. He raised a hand when he saw us, and Vlaicu looked briefly worried as he realized there were now three of us.

  “Why didn’t you invite me along?” asked Stefan.

  I shrugged.

  Stefan looked at Vlaicu. “This is the artist?”

  “I’m the artist, yes.”

  I could smell the alcohol on him, probably from his favorite Turkish bar.

  “Why don’t you go say hi to Magda,” I told him. “We’ll be in in a second.”

  “Magda’s here?”

  “Why do you think I didn’t invite you?”

  I watched his face carefully, trying to read anything from it. I read confusion, maybe a little surpri
se, but I wasn’t sure. He went in.

  “You guys come in all types,” said Vlaicu.

  “About Antonín,” I said. “Is there any way we can get in touch with his friends? Some you know?”

  “I didn’t know his friends. I have a feeling he didn’t have any. Not the easiest guy to get along with.”

  “No one?”

  He rubbed his beard. “Might try a Nestor—Antonín mentioned him last time we talked.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know his last name, but when he and Zoia moved to the Capital they roomed with this Nestor. An overeccentric painter, Antonín told me. He was released from a work camp last summer—that’s all I know.” He looked at the sidewalk again, rubbing his arms. “I need another drink.”

  27

  Stefan was at the drinks table with Magda, while Lena entertained three officials in a corner, one hand fluttering over her head in an imitation of something mysterious. Emil went to save her. Stefan and Magda didn’t seem to be talking when I approached them, and I turned this over in my head throughout the rest of the night, trying to ascertain any meaning, but finding nothing. Stefan told me he had been watching Antonín’s apartment, but without luck—no one had approached it. “What about you?”

  “I’ve got Antonín’s ex-wife’s name. She changed it to Sofia, and married a clerk named Mathew Eiers.”

  “You got that from the records?”

  I nodded at Vlaicu at the end of the table, filling up a glass with wine. He noticed me looking and wandered off.

  Magda whispered in my ear: “Can we go?”

  “In a little while.”

  “We should talk.”

  “Later,” I said.

  I tried to give each painting a good look. I took my time, cradling my drink, and examined the brushstrokes. I knew Moska did a little painting, but I’d never tried it, and I was always impressed by that much attention to detail. In writing, it was simple to change a word here and there. With painting, each little mistake seemed unfixable. I told this to Vlaicu, and he shrugged. “You paint over it. It’s the same thing.” He’d regained his easy drunkenness. “Painting’s a breeze. Writing is too literal. Everyone knows exactly what you’re saying, so if you make a mistake, everyone sees it.”