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 Bela 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 Bela 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 Bela 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 Antonin 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.
Georgi had just returned from lunch with some friends, with whom he had talked poetry and politics and the search for the new socialist man. I hardly heard a thing he said until I took off my jacket and he stopped abruptly: “Is that blood on the back of your shirt?”
“It’s nothing. Just a fight. Can I use your shower?”
“Going to tell me the details?”
“I don’t think so.”
Once the water was hot, I relaxed into it. Instead of Malik Woznica, I thought of Vera. She lay in my bed, probably terrified of what had become of me. Perhaps she thought I was never coming back. I wondered what that thought did to her and how she would react when I returned and made love to her.
Georgi opened the door as I was toweling off. “By the way, I finally got hold of Louis.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re not going to arrest him, are you?”
“I’ve no plans to.”
“Well, he’s coming into town tomorrow morning, the ten-twenty from Vienna.”
“Did he say why?”
“I didn’t ask. You be nice to him, all right?”
“I’m nice to everyone, Georgi.”
“I don’t imagine you were nice to the guy whose blood is on your shirt.” He smiled. “I tell you, it’s going to be good to have him around again. This city’s become a goddamn bore.”
I went to dress.
Georgi found a shirt that barely fit me. “You hear Karel’s back in town?”
“Yeah, I talked to him.”
“Did he show you those awful photos? That’s what I mean about this city. A goddamned bore.”
At least Georgi could still make me smile.
73
I paused outside the door and listened. From down the stairs came Claudia’s high, irritating voice squealing at someone over the phone, so I leaned closer, but heard nothing.
I let myself in quietly, then moved to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. No hurry. In the icebox lay a leg of cold chicken from last night. I took a few bites, which only increased my hunger. Each time I made a noise, I stopped and listened for a reaction that didn’t come. So I left the chicken on the counter and stood next to the open bedroom door. I heard it then: the high rasp of labored, wet breaths. She was just as I had left her, tied at the ankles, wrists behind her, large mouth open in her sleep. There was a strong smell of urine-a dark spot had spread on the sheets. The last rays of evening sun through the windows glimmered on the curve of her stomach and her eyelids where old mascara had run from the edges: She had been crying. She looked beautiful.
I ran warm water over a hand towel in the bathroom and began to clean her. She woke with a start, then saw it was me. “What time is it?” she croaked.
“You wet yourself.”
“My wrists hurt.”
“Hold on.”
I finished cleaning her and took off my pants. The smell was still strong, but what I saw and what I smelled came together and filled me with desire. I entered her slowly. She was dry at first, but soon wasn’t, though at one point she shifted beneath me and repeated, “My wrists hurt.”
Afterward, I cleaned her again and untied the rope. Her hands were purple when she took them out from behind her and started rubbing them. I kissed them before she went to the bathroom.
When she finished her shower, she dressed and ate the rest of the chicken, then watched me as I sat listening to the radio. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost five.”
“Five?” She sat in the chair. “What the hell were you doing all this time?”
“I had some work to do.”
She looked at the floor. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”
“Did you call out for help?”
“I would have once it got dark.”
“I’m glad I didn’t leave you that long.”
She got up and turned off the radio. “You’re a real bastard.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
She went into the bedroom and closed the door.
I waited a while before following. It says something about me that I could not understand. I could not see that I’d done anything wrong that day.
She was sitting on a dry corner of the bed, crying. She had opened the window to air it out; the room was becoming cold. I stood over her and watched her shoulders tremble. If she had been Magda, I would have embraced her. But she wasn’t.
“I can’t believe this,” she said through her sobs.
“What?”
“Myself.” She uncovered her swollen eyes and looked at my knees. “I can’t believe what I’ve done to myself.”
“You didn’t do it. I tied you up.”
“I feel so humiliated.”
I touched her shoulder then, and she shrugged me off.
“You know,” she said very quietly, so that I had to lean closer to hear, “my mother always said to me: Vera, you’re just like your father. You never know how good you have it.”
I followed her into the living room, where she found her purse and the small bag with her change of clothes. “Let’s talk about this,” I said halfheartedly.
“I can’t.”
I opened the door for her. “Where are you going?”
“My sister’s.” She stopped and looked up at me, as if deciding whether or not to kiss me. She decided against it.
74
I changed the sheets and closed the window, then made myself a drink. I browsed my old book, finding the passage that Emil had been affected by. But it did not affect me. My own writing bored me.
I still could not see what I’d done. I knew I should, but the fact that I couldn’t did not trouble me. Every feeling was beyond my reach. I had given in to the recklessness that Vera claimed was all she had left, but the problem with recklessness is that there are other people in the world. They lie in the path of your recklessness, and you inevitably run them down. I understood this later. But on the sofa, gazing into the murkiness of my empty wineglass, I only understood that I had continued a game that Vera h
ad started-a game she had first learned in Switzerland; and as for Malik, I had shown him the inevitable result of his own recklessness.
Once I was drunk I settled deeper into the sofa, closed my eyes, and tried to think over the case. Antonin Kullmann had used the state security apparatus to get rid of Nestor Velcea, then stole his paintings. Zoia became aware of the scheme and left Antonin in disgust. Yes-and Josef Maneck was caught between turning Antonin in and keeping his own prestige. The tension had turned him into an alcoholic.
Nestor, when he was arrested, had been waiting for a foreigner in a train station: Louis Rostek. Louis tried in vain to get him out. Then, years later, he figured out what had happened. So he went to the camp and told Nestor, then returned again after the Amnesty, when he told me of that most glorious of human desires: revenge.
And tomorrow Louis would return.
My first impulse was to call Emil, but there was a possibility of gunplay, and I didn’t want him hurt.
“Hello?”
“It’s me, Leon.”
“Oh. Hello, Ferenc.”
“Look, I need your help tomorrow morning. Can you meet me at the central train station at ten?”
“What is it?”
“We’re going to get Nestor.”
He paused. “Ten o’clock?”
“Don’t be late.”
75
Around one in the morning, I drove over the Georgian Bridge and parked in the Canal District. There were no lamps, so I had to feel my way, unsure, through the narrow alleys. I kept stepping in puddles, but pressed on. I had woken with a head cleared by a wave of remorse. For Vera, first of all. I had gone too far-this was now apparent. It may have begun as her game, but I had changed the rules and turned a simple enjoyment into torture. Then I remembered Malik Woznica, stuck in his hole. I had no remorse for him-just remembering Svetla justified anything I could do to him-but again, I knew that this was going too far. It could only end in prison. After what I’d put him through already, he wouldn’t risk turning me in. I had proven that I could track him down, even in the mountains, and end his life.
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