Liberation movements tyb-4

by Olen Steinhauer

  “Go on, Doctor,” said Gavra.

  He took a drag. “Zrinka Martrich had delusions. In particular, a very strong delusion of ‘thought broadcasting,’ which means that she believed her thoughts could be heard by other people. The difference between Zrinka and schizophrenics who usually suffer from this was that she didn’t believe the people were listening in. She wasn’t afraid of mental spies or anything like that; she wasn’t paranoid. She instead felt that she could speak, with her mind, to other people, and that by doing this she could manipulate people into doing her will.”

  “So she was crazy,” said Katja.

  “Well, it wasn’t that simple.”

  “How do you mean?” said Gavra.

  The doctor tapped ash and brought his hand to his ear, as if he had trouble hearing. “At first, yes. For the first year she showed characteristics of hysteria, violent panic, and once tried to kill herself. But by the second year she seemed to… adjust. She stopped displaying the normal characteristics of delusion. Zrinka became completely lucid. Her thoughts were clear; they all made sense. This sort of thing is extremely rare.”

  “And she left the asylum,” said Gavra. “You cured her?”

  The doctor took another drag. “I never cured her of her delusions. I tried, many times, but she always maintained her calm. Over the next six years. Six years of weekly talks.”

  “So why did you let her go?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “She was transferred to another clinic in seventy-two. It was out of my hands.”

  Katja sat up. “What other clinic?”

  Rokosyn. It’s small, in the mountains. I didn’t want her to go, because it’s a research institute. Their only interest is observation. Their excuse was that in seven years I’d done nothing for her, so she might as well serve the state. I was unable to keep her.”

  “What happened to her then?” Katja asked.

  The doctor tapped off some ash. “I’ve checked, but there are no records. The last documents I have are her transfer papers to Rokosyn, from three years ago.”

  In the silence that followed, Gavra went to the window, looked down into the street, then turned back. The light from the window behind him left his features in darkness. “Would it surprise you if I told you she was spotted in the airport three days ago? She made a telephone call to the Hotel Metropol, then boarded a flight to Istanbul.”

  The doctor’s mouth fell open, revealing badly made false teeth. “The one that exploded?”

  Gavra looked at Katja; Katja nodded.

  “Yes,” said Arendt, staring at his thin rug. “It would surprise me.”

  Gavra came closer. “Did she display any political passions when you knew her?”

  He shook his head. “Absolutely none. She was apolitical. I also tried to cure her of this, but…well, it’s difficult.”

  “Of course it is.”

  Katja said, “Does she have any relatives who might know more?”

  “Only her brother, but I doubt he knows anything more.”

  “Brother?”

  The doctor nodded. “Yes. Adrian Martrich. I told him about the Rokosyn clinic as well.” He noticed their faces. “You didn’t know she had a brother?”

  Peter

  1968

  There is something comforting about being taken prisoner by amateurs. They make mistakes all the time. Though he realized their mistake quickly, Peter did not at first move. He remained on his cot and listened to the undertones and footsteps in the corridor, trying to ascertain his position here. The sonata came to mind. Themes in a sonata change roles depending on the melodies around them or the key they’re in-a light, airy melody becomes ominous in a minor key. Peter had gone from incompetent farm boy to demure, silent music student, then co-conspirator-albeit a minor one-in the making of socialismu lidskou tvar. Then, for mere days, he’d been a refugee until, for just a few moments that night in the field outside eske Bud jovice, he’d become a fool.

  And that role, like a change in key, had colored the roles that followed. Prisoner, suspect, traitor-and now, fugitive.

  Peter climbed out the window and jumped two floors to the bushes below. Bare branches scratched his sore face, but he had no trouble getting up and running through the warm dusk, past unsuspecting students, down Pod Stanici.

  He wasn’t sure where to go. His family was in Encs, on the southern border-but that was no longer his home. His small circle of friends now despised him. So he found himself, after another long tram ride, on Celetna, in front of the Torpedo bar.

  Stanislav Klym was already at their back table, but without his rifle. Before him was a full ashtray, a sheet of paper, and three empty beer glasses, a fourth at his lips. He lowered it. “Peter! Come on, come take a seat.” Stanislav waved to the bartender for another beer. “What happened to your face?”

  “Some trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Some friends.”

  “Not very friendly.”

  Peter touched his cheek. “They had reason.”

  “Did you kill someone?”

  “I’ve made mistakes.”

  Stanislav grunted. “Haven’t we all! But the kinds of friends who beat you to teach a lesson, those are friends you can do without. Here.”

  The bartender set a fresh glass on the table and, before leaving, caught Peter’s eye. It was a hard stare. Stanislav slid the glass to Peter. “Drink up. You’re among friends now.”

  It surprised Peter how comfortable this soldier made him feel. Stanislav was in a mild state of euphoria, waiting for his trip back home. He patted his pocket. “Ticket’s here, I’ve already said good-bye to the regiment, and now I’m going to drink until eight thirty in the morning, when the train leaves. You know what I’m going to do as soon as I get back?”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to marry my Katja.” He tapped the paper in front of him, which Peter now saw was one of her letters. “That’s all I’m interested in doing. And then we’re going to stay in bed for a week.” He folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket. “You ever been in love?”

  “I think so.”

  “What do you mean, you think so?” Stanislav shook his head. “You must not have been, because when you are, you know it.”

  “I did a lot of things so she would notice me. I abandoned my schoolwork for her. To me, that’s love.”

  “And how far did it get you?”

  Peter didn’t answer at first. He stared at his glass, then at the soldier’s face. He felt a pang of the thing he had felt that whole trip-first in a pickup truck, then on foot-to the Austrian border: jealousy. An intense jealousy that erupted whenever he saw the two of them under their blanket, the way Ivana stroked Toman’s cheeks until he fell asleep, and the kisses she woke him with. “It didn’t get me far at all. You can see the result here.” He touched his pink eye.

  “Then you need to stop that.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Doing so much for others. You’ve got to be independent. Women like that.”

  “I can’t be independent here. Everyone knows me.”

  “Then get out of Prague,” said Stanislav. “Try Bratislava. Start doing things for yourself.”

  “Once I get some money together, maybe.”

  The soldier placed a fist on the table. “Don’t procrastinate. I’ve spent enough of my life procrastinating. Now I know what I want. It’s my girlfriend, my apartment, and a quiet life. You should go somewhere else. Then no one will disrupt your plans. You can start again, become who you want to be.”

  It struck Peter that this soldier, unlike himself, did not change key. He had no relation to the sonata. Whether or not he donned a uniform, Stanislav Klym remained what he would always be-a simple man motivated by his love for one woman.

  “You sure you’re all right?” asked Stanislav.

  “Can you excuse me a minute?”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “I just need to make a call. There’s a pay phone o
utside.”

  “There’s a phone behind the bar.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He got up and wound his way through tables and smoke and wide, hunched backs until he was outside. Across the street, two more soldiers shared a cigarette, unaware of him. He walked to the Czech Telecom booth on Republic Square, across from the Obecni Dum, and closed himself inside.

  After a minute, the voice spoke to him. “Captain Poborsky here.”

  “Look at you. You’re shivering. It’s cold out there?”

  “No,” said Peter. “Mind getting another round for us?”

  Stanislav held up two fingers for the bartender, mouthing pivo, then turned back. “You look like you just saw a dead man.”

  Peter rubbed his arm. “Tell me about your home.”

  “You don’t want to hear about that again.”

  “I do. Really.”

  So Stanislav began to speak. When he talked of his grandfather’s apartment on 24th of October Street-building number 24, in fact-it was as if he were speaking of a palace. One with limited hot water and peeling walls, but a palace nonetheless. His description of his village, Pacin, was cursory, a few friends and a loyal family, but with one truly extraordinary detail-Katja Uher. They had been in school together, their parents distantly related like everyone in that village. Even though they had spent all their time together, neither of their parents had expected them to fall deeply in love when she was fifteen and he seventeen, but they all condoned it, as if it were as inevitable as the harvest.

  “Peter?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not listening.”

  Peter smiled. “I’m listening to every word. Trust me. Do you have the time?”

  The soldier squinted at his watch. “Little after eight.”

  “Mind if I step out again? Ten minutes.”

  Stanislav took the letter out of his pocket again and unfolded it. “Take your time.”

  Gavra

  Doctor Arendt told them what little he knew: that Zrinka Martrich’s brother, Adrian, was twenty-three years old, two years younger than her; that he was unmarried, living in the Fourth District; and that he managed the state butcher’s shop on Union Street.

  Gavra drove while Katja opened the doctor’s file on her lap, squinting in the failing light. Beneath the stacks of memos she found a photograph of Zrinka, taken five years ago at the hospital. “Pretty girl,” she said.

  He glanced over and saw a striking brunette with eyes that in the black-and-white were a very pale gray. “Yeah.”

  “Do you believe the doctor?”

  “It’s an elaborate story for a lie.”

  “I don’t trust him,” said Katja. “This Zrinka is just swept away to Rokosyn and vanishes? How does that happen?”

  Gavra considered his answer, then just gave it. “Katja, people disappear all the time.”

  On Union Street, they found the butcher’s shop where a young man was locking the front door from inside. As they got out of the car and approached, he seemed to be trying to work the key faster, but he stopped when Gavra knocked on the glass. He looked terrified.

  “Adrian Martrich?” asked Gavra.

  The young man shook his head and said something they couldn’t hear.

  Gavra pointed at the key. “Open the door.” The young man did this.

  “We’re looking for Adrian Martrich,” said Katja.

  “Not me. Adrian’s in the back.”

  Gavra put his hand on the door. “Well, then. Take us to him.”

  He led them past the empty glass cases, in which Gavra noticed traces of blood still not wiped clean, and to a back door. He knocked.

  “Yeah?” came a voice.

  “Adrian,” said the young man, his voice weak, “some people to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” said Adrian Martrich, and they heard papers being put away. By the time the boy had opened the door, Zrinka’s brother was at a clean desk. He stood and offered his hand, smiling congenially, as if he’d been expecting their visit.

  Gavra felt a choking sensation in the back of his throat. Adrian Martrich was tall and handsome, similar to the way his dead sister was beautiful. As they sat, Gavra grew warm, looking at that well-formed face, pale blue eyes, and thin, coiffed sideburns beneath a wave of brown hair. This man took good care of himself. He looked like no butcher Gavra had ever seen.

  From his smile, it appeared that Adrian Martrich wasn’t disappointed by what he saw, either.

  All this, Gavra knew, should have been a warning.

  “Comrade Martrich?” said Katja.

  He answered her but continued to look at Gavra. “Yes?”

  “We’re here to ask about your sister.”

  Adrian blinked at her. “You know where Zrinka is?”

  She began to shake her head but stopped short of lying. “When was the last time you talked to her?”

  “Three? Yes, three years ago. When she was in the clinic.”

  “Tarabon.”

  He nodded.

  “Did your sister have friends in Istanbul?”

  “Istanbul?” Adrian snorted lightly. “Not that I know of.” Then he looked back at Gavra. “But three years is a long time.”

  “It certainly is,” said Katja. “And you never wondered where she was?”

  Adrian Martrich sized her up a moment. “Of course I wondered where she was. Some months ago, her old doctor, Comrade Arendt, sent me to a little town in the countryside. He said she was there. Rokosyn. But when I arrived I realized he was lying.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, “there was nothing there. As far as I know, there’s never been a clinic at Rokosyn.”

  Gavra leaned forward; Katja frowned. She said, “Did you talk to the doctor again after that?”

  “Why should I? He obviously wasn’t interested in helping me.”

  Gavra placed a hand on the desk. “Zrinka was on a plane three days ago. It was headed for Istanbul, but it was hijacked and exploded. She’s dead.”

  “Dead?” said Adrian. A nervous smile crossed his face, then vanished. He placed his own hands on the desk, flat. “Zrinka?”

  “We’re sorry to have to give you this news,” Katja said, and followed with words of sympathy, but it was obvious that the butcher was no longer listening. He was staring at his hands.

  “You’re talking about that plane,” he said finally. “The one in the Spark. Flight 54.”

  “Yes,” said Gavra, his voice now very soft. “We’re trying to find out what your sister was doing on that plane.”

  Adrian breathed a few times, loudly, then looked at Gavra. “I wish I knew.”

  Gavra drove again as they headed through the dim streets back to Doctor Arendt. Katja stretched, trying to get rid of the tension of a long day in the car. She said, “Okay. If we believe the brother, then the question: Why did Doctor Arendt tell him, and then us, that Zrinka had been sent to a nonexistent clinic?”

  “Because he doesn’t want to say where she really went.”

  The sun was low behind the doctor’s Fifth District apartment, and they had to squint to see well. The door to the building was locked, so Katja pressed Arendt’s buzzer.

  Along the street, families were promenading after early dinners. Katja followed Gavra’s gaze and pressed the buzzer again. “They look satisfied, don’t they?”

  Gavra didn’t answer. He was thinking of Adrian Martrich, the handsome butcher.

  Then the door opened, but it wasn’t the doctor. It was an old woman with a tattered pink babushka tied around her head. When she noticed their dress uniforms, she froze in the doorway, eyes wide.

  Katja gave her a smile.

  “Potatoes,” the old woman said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Katja. “We don’t have potatoes.”

  The old woman raised a bent finger and pointed across the street to a vegetable shop, and Gavra stepped out of the way. She passed quickly. They caught the door and went inside.

&n
bsp; As they took the stairs, they didn’t say a thing. It wasn’t worth discussing.

  Gavra was the one who knocked on the doctor’s door. He was the one standing there when it opened on its own, from the pressure of his knuckle. Against the far wall, the open wardrobe spilled files all over the floor, a few covering the doctor, who lay in the middle of his living room, facedown, with a bullet hole in the back of his skull.

  Peter

  1968

  He could not walk. The occasional soldier watched him jog past in the darkness, and a few even seemed to consider stopping him, though none did. Soon he was running through vacant streets, the evening humidity choking his nostrils and eyes, so that when he stopped at a doorway not far from where Jungmannova crossed Jungmannovo Square, he could hardly make out the large, flat facade of the Church of Our Lady of the Snows. Through the arched doorway leading from the church courtyard, shapes stumbled out, and beyond the thumping in his head he heard voices. Come on, you bastards. Hooligans. The sound of bodies being thrown to the ground. The crack of a truncheon against bone. One scream, but just one. By the time his vision cleared it was a surprisingly quiet scene. Two white trucks and a white Mercedes. Twenty gloomy students. Jan. Gustav. And a black-robed old priest. Josef was probably already inside the trucks the soldiers were leading everyone into.

  Peter stepped back, farther into the darkness, and measured out his breaths. It helped to remember that Emperor Charles IV had built this massive church to remind him of his coronation. What an ego. Despite the humidity, Peter felt the August night turning cold.

  When he looked again, the back door of the Mercedes opened, and that man stepped out to light a cigarette. He didn’t seem proud, not as proud as he’d seemed in the interrogation room or later in the cafe. He instead looked like a man at the end of a long day of factory work, the weight of repetitive motion bearing on him. But strong. Bald, tall, and strong.

  “Now you look like you’ve been hit by a train. Where do you keep running off to?”

  He tried on a smile as he sat down. “I’ve had enough beer.”

  Stanislav folded the letter into his pocket again. “Listen, this is my last night to be foolish. Once I’m back…well, I’ll have responsibilities. You up for a final blast?”