36 Yalta Boulevard tyb-3

by Olen Steinhauer

  When he left the bathroom, he smelled fried food-eggs, kielbasa-and coffee. “Hello?” he called as he wobbled through the living room to the kitchen. Beside an icebox, the old man was on the telephone, smiling at him. He covered the mouthpiece. “You look better, but your face is still funny. Have something to eat.”

  “Who you are talking?”

  “What?”

  He focused. “Who are you talking to?”

  “I’m waiting to speak with Dr. Simonyi. He can take a look at you later.”

  “Hang up.”

  The old man frowned. “You sure?”

  “Yes. Please. Hang up.”

  The old man did as he was told, then cocked his head, but didn’t ask the question. “You must be hungry.”

  They ate sitting on tall stools at the beige kitchen counter. He had a little trouble with the coffee-it trickled out of the corner of his mouth-but it was good, all of it, and it seemed to build energy beneath the pain.

  “You know,” said the old man, “I’m not a stranger to this. The lake’s on the border, and we’re used to finding waifs washed up. You’re Hungarian, aren’t you?”

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  “Usually, though, we find them washed up with a few bullet holes in them. Back in ’fifty-six, we got hundreds across this lake. Some even settled here. Dr. Simonyi was one of those. First he tried his luck in Vienna, like they all do, but do you know how many Hungarian doctors showed up there? The competition was terrible. So he tried village life. He knows a thing or two about jumping the border. That’s why I was calling him. I thought he could help you, besides the medical attention.”

  “Thank you. Not yet. Now I need sleep.”

  “Sure you do. You’ve been through a lot. Did you have that condition before? The face,” said the old man, touching the left side of his own face.

  “Yes,” he said, though he didn’t know.

  They didn’t speak as they finished their plates; and afterward, when the old man offered him more, he just shook his head. He squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and asked if there was a bed he could use. The old man pointed at the door beside the bathroom.

  He got up and limped across the living room, clutching anything for support, and when he got through the door, he dropped into the bed with his clothes still on.

  Behind his closed lids the memories began as action-a train at night, sitting across from three old provincial women. Him, running through rolling vineyards with gnarled, barren branches. Then water and reeds, ducking his head into cold blackness.

  22 APRIL 1967, SATURDAY

  He woke to a large face with a thick jawline. It was handsome, with light blue eyes and flared nostrils. It smiled and blinked at him.

  “About time you woke,” said the man, but not in German. Hungarian. “Gerhard was worried you’d die in his bed. That would be bad luck. He’d have to throw the damn thing out!”

  “Is it night yet?”

  “Listen to you-Is it night? You’ve been in and out for four days. We got you up enough to put some food in you yesterday, but I imagine you’re still pretty hungry.”

  “You’re the doctor?”

  “Andras Simonyi. Gerhard said you’re Hungarian. You speak it, but you’re no Magyar. Where are you from?”

  “What happened to me?”

  The doctor paused. “I don’t know. It’s possible you had a stroke. Give me your left hand.”

  “A stroke?”

  “A minor one, if one at all. Give me your left hand.”

  It took some effort, but Brano was able to pull his hand from under the sheets and give it to the doctor.

  “Make a fist.”

  Though he could move his fingers a little, a fist was impossible.

  “That’s better than I expected. I can’t say how much you’ll recover, but you haven’t done badly so far. How’s your memory?”

  Brano considered that. “It was bad at first, but it’s come back.”

  “All of it?”

  “Almost all.”

  The doctor nodded, then took Brano’s pulse and checked the dilation of his pupils. He seemed satisfied as he stood up. “There’s a robe over there with your clothes. Gerhard was good enough to clean them. Come out and join us. Let us know if you need some help.”

  Brano said, “ Koszonom.” Thank you.

  Once the doctor was gone, he slowly raised himself into a sitting position, feet just above the rug. He was naked, and he smelled sour, as if lake water had festered inside him. When he touched his face he felt a beard. His left side was still numb, but he was able to stand and make hesitant steps to the chair where his clean, folded clothes lay.

  His memory, over the last four days of drifting in and out of sleep, had begun with a word from a dream-zbrka. Then other details followed, slowly filling him, telling him who he was, and why he was in Austria. He knew he had killed a man who had tried to kill him, and he remembered having the presence of mind, after shooting the man, not to run to the woman nor to the Westbahnhof, which was close to the restaurant. He’d instead walked quickly through the Liebengaste’s kitchen, past confused cooks, into an alley, with the dead man’s wallet and gun stuffed in a pocket. He’d taken a tram south to the Sudbahnhof and boarded the first departing train, a slow regional with a rusting shell.

  He remembered that he was sweating then, a spectacle for the prim suburban Viennese with their shopping bags and children. When the conductor arrived, he bought passage all the way down the line to Payerbach-Reichenau but instead got out at Neunkirchen. While waiting for the next train, he read a schedule he’d gotten from a somber man behind the ticket window, then went through the dead man’s wallet. He found the schillings and a driver’s license under the name of Karl Bertelsmann. He put the money in his pocket, then dumped the rest into a trash can. That’s when he noticed his shoe. He used his handkerchief to wipe the blood off of it.

  He remembered taking the westward line to Murzzuschlag, where the station bar was closed, and he paced the empty platform for hours as the sun set, wishing he had a heavier coat and trying not to wish for anything else. When he failed, it was her voice that came to him. Dragi, where you are going? The headache returned, pressing sharply behind his trembling right eye.

  By the time his eastbound connection arrived, he was sneezing.

  In the warmth of the full train, he became inexplicably dizzy. He worried that he would be recognized, but around him were old women who dozed, and when they woke they chose not to look at him at all. The only life in the car was a compartment of three drunk soldiers, howling into the night. One of the old women cracked her eyes at the sound, and he smiled and shrugged. She closed her eyes.

  At Wallern im Burgenland, two stops short of Hungary, a soldier with a rifle smoked under fluorescent lights. He glanced up as Brano helped an old woman down, tensing his throat to suffocate a cough. Pain crackled through his skull.

  He made the last bus to Apetlon as the station clock told him it was midnight. He and a smiling old man were the only ones on it.

  From Apetlon he had walked, trying to retrace his path from months ago across the wet grass, but it was difficult; his memory was spotty. The headache surged again from the back of his head, and he found himself stumbling. But there was only one desire in him by then, to leave this country and return to a place where he understood the rules.

  He stopped once when the sound of barking dogs reached him. He waited, sinking into earth that had become mud. His headache had ebbed, but when it started again, his left leg became weak; his face tingled.

  He fell sometimes, rising with mud-colored hands. In spots he sank into brackish, cold water or stumbled over sharp reeds, and by the time he reached a marsh he thought might be the one he was looking for, he was soaked by cold water and sweat.

  Then he stepped into the water.

  His memory, perhaps out of revulsion, would not take him further.

  Old Gerhard, boiling vegetables in a po
t, was relieved there would be no deaths in his house. Dr. Simonyi was curious. He complimented Brano on his admirable German and Hungarian. “But what is your native tongue?”

  Brano sipped hot tea. “ Mowi po polsku.”

  The doctor frowned, and Gerhard leaned forward. “What was that?”

  “Polish. My language.”

  “You know,” said the doctor, “we’re both familiar with your situation. I left Hungary in “fifty-six, and Gerhard here has a soft spot for immigrants. Always has.”

  “Beginning with this man,” said Gerhard.

  “The point is, we’re not going to hand you over to the police. You don’t have to be shy.”

  Brano nodded. “I appreciate everything. But really, I can’t remember much.”

  The doctor sighed, either because he expected this or because he didn’t believe it.

  “What about your name?” asked Gerhard.

  “I assume you know it already,” said Brano. “My passport is in my jacket.”

  The doctor smiled. “And we also know your native language isn’t Polish.”

  “It’s my family’s language. So I wasn’t lying.”

  “You were just skirting around the truth.”

  Brano shrugged.

  “Listen,” said the doctor, lowering his voice. “I imagine I have some idea what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking you want to get out of here. But that’s just paranoia, Brano. The best thing you can do for yourself now is to stay here. You understand?”

  The doctor’s eyes seemed to be saying something more. Or maybe they were just asking to be trusted. He tapped the table with a flat hand-a wedding ring clicked. “Well, I suppose I should get back home. You can take care of our new friend?”

  “Of course,” said Gerhard as he placed boiled carrots and potatoes on a plate. “No more grease, like you said.”

  “Thanks again,” said Brano.

  “My pleasure.’ The doctor and Brano shook hands, and Gerhard walked Simonyi out. Brano sipped his tea while they whispered by the front door. By the time the old man returned, he was finished eating, and he pushed himself into a standing position. “I suppose I should take another bath.”

  Gerhard sniffed. “I was hoping you’d be the one to say that.”

  The warming water ran into the tub, and Brano gazed at himself in the mirror above the sink. The weak half gave his face a suspicious look, like a wicked character in one of those films Ludwig loved. His left eyelid hung low, and his left cheek, beneath his spotty beard, had become flaccid. There was a razor behind the mirror, but he didn’t use it. He did use Gerhard’s toothbrush to scrape the detrius from inside his mouth. Then he sank into the water and, briefly, plunged his head under.

  He had panicked-he knew this. After the one strand connecting him to his home had broken-or he had broken it, by killing Josef Lochert-Brano had panicked and fled. He hadn’t even worried about the border guards along the lake, had only plunged in without forethought; this, in the end, worried him more than the possible stroke. He had, in the space of a few minutes in a Viennese bathroom, collapsed. He could have stayed in Vienna, could have even marched out to that shadow waiting on the street and explained that the Vienna rezident had tried to kill him. Ludwig would have been amused, but in the end he would have been satisfied that Yalta considered Brano a defector and was trying to silence him.

  He came up and took a breath. He wiped his eyes with his right hand and blinked at the bathroom.

  His mistakes were now irrelevant. Brano Sev was on the Austrian border, physically less than he had been, and he could either stay under the guardianship of these strangers, trying to find a way into Hungary, or he could return to Vienna.

  That second possibility scared him most, so he set it aside for the moment.

  Gerhard could perhaps be trusted, but the doctor was an unknown. He met with numerous people each day and had a wife, and one loose word to the wrong person could lead anywhere. The doctor was Hungarian, and as such he respected the legalities of paperwork; he would certainly feel the need to file something on the crippled, waterlogged stranger in need of his care.

  So Brano would leave.

  He could not walk through the border, because the Austrian post would be looking for him. He would have to wade through the marsh again, or find a point south of Sopron to make the farmland trek to the barbed wire. But in his state, that would be impossible.

  And so, the option that he held at an arm’s length came back to him.

  Everything was in Vienna. In its intrigues lay the answers he’d been pursuing. In Vienna lay what was left of his career. And in Vienna, he thought as he stared at the murky water, lived Dijana Frankovic.

  He unplugged the tub and reached for the towel. Insecurely, he stood and dried himself, then slipped into the robe. Before leaving, he squatted by the floor drain and popped it open. The pistol was wet, so he used the towel on it, then dropped it into the pocket of the robe.

  Gerhard took out a bottle of Monopolowa potato vodka. He offered a toast to Brano’s successful escape from the Empire, and Brano accepted the toast cordially. The liquor warmed him, but after that he drank no more. He refilled his glass and affected sleepiness, but each time spilled his shot into the rug beneath the table, watching as Gerhard, always willing to accept one of Brano’s inventive toasts-to Gerhard’s health, to the spawning zander of the lake, to an end to the troubling situations history forces upon us-became more drunk and exhausted. Finally, around one, when Gerhard was having trouble remaining in his chair, Brano helped him to the bed. “I’ll stay on the couch tonight,” Brano told him. “You deserve a decent night’s rest.”

  While the old man slept, Brano counted out two hundred schillings and left them on the kitchen table, then took one of Gerhard’s overcoats from a rack beside the front door. Inside the pocket, he found the keys to his car.

  There were no lights around the house, and for a moment it felt like Bobrka, with its treacherous holes. He drove south, to where the roads again became erratic and the earth soft. This time he did remember, and repeatedly played the geography of his Austrian entrance in his head.

  He parked near the marsh where Gerhard had found him, and only now understood that he had been at the wrong place. Had he not been incapacitated by that stroke, he would have struggled from one end of the marsh to the other and come out still in Austria. He had to go farther.

  His limp troubled him as he walked, but not as much as the low guard towers he knew were hiding not far away in the darkness. When an occasional flash of light came his way, he lay flat in the grass and waited, then, each time with more difficulty, climbed to his feet and moved on.

  Then he spotted the upturned blue rowboat on the bank of the marsh that he and the Sorokas had once waded across.

  He looked up. The clear sky was choked with stars.

  He squatted in the water alongside the cold hull. Then he plunged his hand into the water.

  23 APRIL 1967, SUNDAY

  “ So, I don’t want to be rude, but what happened to you?”

  Brano looked away from the road at the truck driver, a big man with a mustache that curled up at the ends.

  “You get into a fight or something?”

  “Never know who you’ll run into late at night.”

  “That’s for sure,” said the driver. “I once picked up a guy north of Graz. Skinny kid, hair a little long, but nice enough looking. We started talking and he tells me he’s trying to stop the war in Vietnam.” He grunted. “A little kid. So I ask him how he expects to do that. With this, he tells me, and pulls out a gun as big as my forearm. Can you believe it?”

  “Unbelievable,” said Brano, involuntarily touching the weight in his pocket.

  “At the next gas station you can bet I drove off before he was back from the toilet.”

  Brano gave the man a half smile and returned to the road. The sun had just crested the hills behind them, casting long shadows, and ahead the outskirts of Vienna were comin
g into view. He’d parked Gerhard’s Volkswagen on the northern shore of the lake and walked with a dead milkman’s wet passport to the highway. He didn’t have to wait long for a ride, and this talkative man, shipping lumber from eastern Hungary to Vienna, had kept him awake.

  “I’m Heinrich. What’s your name?”

  “Jakob,” said Brano. “Jakob Bieniek. You can let me off at Floridsdorf.”

  “I can take you through the center if you want. I’ve got to check in with my office.”

  “Thank you.”

  He got out at the Museum District and took a tram north along the Ringstra?e. The morning was cool, breezy, and gray, the shaking tram filled with only a few early risers. They yawned into their hands, but Brano was too exhausted to do even that. More than anything, more than even Dijana Frankovic, he wanted a bed. He got out at Schottenring and crossed the street. The embassy was on Ebendorferstra?e, between Universitatsstra?e and Liebiggasse, so he took a parallel street to Liebiggasse, then approached the corner and waited.

  There was the regular uniformed guard, standing outside his pillbox with a machine gun hanging off his back. He was trying to light a cigarette with matches. Through the iron fence, a ground-floor light was on. At the very least, Brano would be something to brighten someone’s otherwise dull Sunday morning.

  The street was half full of parked cars. Those nearest him were empty, blocking the cars farther up the road. He stepped out to get a better look, then slipped back behind the corner when the guard tossed down his empty book of matches, looked around, and crossed the road. He approached a car Brano could not see and bent over the window. The guard spoke a second, reached through the window, and brought a lighter to the cigarette in his mouth.

  Brano backtracked and crossed Ebendorferstra?e two blocks away, then approached again from the opposite side. From this corner, he could not see the embassy but could plainly see the gray Renault with the half-open window and the cigarette smoke misting out. Inside, Ludwig’s crew-cut employee looked exhausted.