Siren of the Waters: A Jana Matinova Investigation

by Michael Genelin

  “I’m glad you brought that up. It is the topic I wanted to discuss. Not my divorce. Yours. Have you thought about a divorce?”

  Jana had opened the door to the topic she wanted most to avoid. “I haven’t recently.”

  “Think about it then.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the wrong people bring it up with me very often. ‘Has she severed all her ties to him?’ they ask. I remind them that you are a good police officer, and you don’t need watching. I don’t have to tell you how they react.” He shrugged as if to say, what can I do? “For all I know, they might be watching you now.” His voice became more matter-of-fact. “They probably are.”

  “Divorce is a private matter.”

  “Not for a police officer in this country.”

  “To put your mind at ease, I will think about it.”

  “Good.” He pulled a manila folder from his desk drawer, opening it on his desk to reveal several sheets of paper within it. “Papers. All folders contain papers which must be read by me. You see this stripe?” He pointed to a thin red stripe along the edge of the open side of the folder. “It means I have to read these first under penalty of being called color-blind by the Secret Police. That is a severe accusation, so I read these immediately, just in case.”

  He read a little of the facing page as if to satisfy himself that he was referring to the correct folder. “A number of items are in here which might most certainly affect you in the future. Let me see. . . .” His voice trailed off as he read a few more sentences, humming out loud as he read. Then he closed the folder as if slamming a door.

  “I forgot. I can’t talk to you about any of this. It is marked ‘Highest Secret.’ Sorry.”

  He stood. “I am going to the W.C. I will be gone, let us say, exactly five minutes. It is now fourteen hundred. Remember, although I am leaving this material here,” he patted the file, “a file which some idiot has labeled secret, it should not be touched by you. That is too bad, considering the fact that the person who would most benefit by it can’t peruse it.” He walked out of the office, closing the door very quietly behind himself.

  Jana wasted no time in opening the folder and laying the papers side by side on Trokan’s desk. It was a report on the investigation of the Democratic Party of the Revolution, the DPR. The members of this “counterrevolutionary group” had been holding secret meetings throughout Czechoslovakia. According to the reports, all their meetings had called for actual armed rebellion against the state. The person who was most active in this call for action was Dano, her husband. Part of his last speech was printed verbatim in the report:

  We are not here to discuss abstract issues. We are not here to evaluate the economics of poverty, disease, or starvation. We are here to discuss those processes that oppress the mind and sicken and starve the spirit in the most concrete way: We must be allowed to work, to train for what we and we alone want to do, to be promoted for our excellence and not on someone’s whim. Why must we be prevented from talking to each other about the simplest of political needs: the questions that have come into our minds about our governing officers and their institutions? We cannot speak about our simplest needs as citizens.

  What are we allowed to do? Watch our minds and spirits starve? Walk about like burglars in the night, concerned about making noises that the owner of the store, or the house, might hear? Remember, you don’t own the house; you don’t own the store. You don’t own the country. They do! And they will always stop you from trying to own even a part of it. Under this government we will always be thieves in the night, afraid!

  End the fear. Take the country back. It is our country, not theirs!!

  Jana could see Dano in the light at the clandestine meeting, his hair tousled with passion, everyone enthralled by the drama of the moment, including Dano himself. She could see everyone coming to their feet, applauding every comma and period of the talk, including the police informants both in the audience and on the stage with Dano.

  This time Dano and his DPR friends had fled before the police arrived, but there had been other arrests and other meetings. All this activity was succinctly summarized by the warrants that had been issued for his arrest for criminal acts against the state, listed on the last page of the report. They were hunting Dano.

  She carefully replaced the pages in the folder and sat back down across from Trokan’s desk. A moment later Trokan returned, pretending he had no notion that she had reviewed the folder.

  “Sorry you couldn’t read these.” His voice was full of good cheer. Then the bonhomie was replaced by a slightly sour look. “Do what you have to, but stay away from him. I will not be able to save you this time if you don’t. Understand?”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “Good.” He paused, trying to remember something. “Your vacation. In the Tatras. Enjoy it.” He went back to his work as she left the office.

  Chapter 25

  A week later, Jana, her mother, and Katka were in Stary Smokovec, in the High Tatras, at the Grand Hotel. The hotel had seen better days. Now it offered bargain prices and a genteel poverty that reflected the way life had been three decades ago. Jana and her parents had vacationed there when Jana was a child. The country was still very green, none of the city noises or smells intruding, and aside from the one-too-many tourists, it was how Jana wanted it. Yet problems had followed them.

  Jana’s mother had had a very bad night, coughing, her breathing labored, forced to sit up to ease her lungs. Jana ordered food to be sent up for her mother and Katka, who insisted on staying with her grandmother during breakfast. She was still the little take-charge girl.

  Feeling guilty about being more comfortable and less pressured away from her mother, Jana went down to the dining room and sat at a small table near a window. The window was slightly open, and through it a cool breeze came to refresh her neck and arms. She idly looked at the card that served as a menu, then looked up at the waiter to order.

  The waiter was Dano.

  Jana sat paralyzed, not knowing what to do. Dano the lover, Dano the husband and father, Dano the revolutionary had taken on a new role: Dano the waiter.

  He placed the typical Slovak meat-and-cheese plate breakfast in front of her, than asked if she wanted coffee or tea, finally deciding to give her tea when she did not respond. He nodded, smiling as a waiter should, asked for her room number so the meal would go on Jana’s room bill, then went back into the kitchen as if he and Jana had never seen each other before.

  Jana carried on with the motions of eating, then casually walked into the lobby, pretended to read the flyers advertising local events that the tourists could attend, while she unobtrusively checked the dining and desk areas, and then walked out onto the porch, deeply inhaling the mountain’s pine scent, all the while trying to determine whether Trokan’s intimation that she was being watched was true.

  With the ebb and flow of tourists, and with the possibility that hotel functionaries were in the employ of the Secret Police, all of them watching her, she determined not to go back into the dining room to see Dano again in his incarnation as a waiter. Nor could she go into the kitchen to see him. Everyone would wonder why a guest was in that area. It was better for Dano not to look for her, but now that he was aware that she was at the hotel, Jana knew he would come to find her.

  Jana wanted to see him and she didn’t want to see him. If she was observed with him, the authorities would never believe that it was a chance meeting. They would place Jana at the hub of the outlaw activity that they were hunting Dano for, and, without a doubt, the case against her would be provable. The Procurator General would point out that she had never made a move to denounce Dano. Ergo, as a police officer and a citizen of the SSR, she had acted against the state’s interest. At this very moment, simply by not doing anything, she was committing a crime.

  Katka and her mother were upstairs. Jana knew Dano. He would visit Katka, daring people to recognize him. Even more worrisome, Katka would take enormous joy in se
eing her father, and would waste no time in telling the world that her papa was back. No amount of cajoling or swearing her to secrecy would work. She was a little girl, and secrets were hard to keep. Katka would go to school, see her friends, and within days, a week at the most, everyone would know about it. Then someone’s parents would denounce her.

  Jana took several steps toward the telephone in the lobby, an inner voice urging her to call Trokan, to have the Secret Police come and pick Dano up. It was a simple, concealable act, an act that would forever remain locked away. Who would suspect her of denouncing Dano?

  Instead, Jana went to the stairs, sprinting up them as fast as she could climb. There was another way: Get them all out of the place, out of the Grand Hotel, out of the Tatras. She rehearsed her lines as she ascended: “I’ve had an emergency call from Colonel Trokan. The minister has ordered me back to Bratislava to take personal charge of an investigation, an investigation of the highest priority. I could not refuse such an order, so we must leave at once.”

  A good plan. They would all be disappointed, but it would get them away from Dano.

  When Jana opened the door to the hotel room, the plan vanished. Katka, distressed, met her at the door to inform her that Grandma was having a problem. Katka had tried to help, but Grandma became worse. She couldn’t speak.

  Jana’s mother’s condition had deteriorated dramatically. She was semi-comatose, her mouth open, a trickle of saliva running down her chin. She was inhaling with labored, sucking noises, as if she were not getting enough air. Jana tried to wake her, but she did not respond to either voice commands or a gentle shaking. Jana quickly gave up and called the desk to request an ambulance.

  When it arrived an hour later, the ambulance took them all to the small hospital in Poprad. The doctors asked Jana for a quick history of her mother’s ailment, then began working on her. The family could not stay in the emergency area, so Jana and Katka sat in the badly lit corridor outside the room where her mother had been placed. They settled in for the wait.

  “She is very sick,” Katka announced with great solemnity.

  “They will save her,” Jana replied, not at all sure they would.

  “It’s possible she will die.” Katka patted her mother on the hand, then took it into hers, trying to give comfort to Jana.

  “Doctors know what to do. They will give her things which will help her body fight. She will get stronger.”

  “Good,” Katka declared. “But in case she does not, you have me, so you won’t be alone.”

  “We have each other,” Jana promised her.

  “Always?” asked Katka.

  “Always!”

  A woman from the admissions office came into the hall and walked up to them. “The hospital director wants to see you at the front.” She leaned close to Jana, whispering in her ear. “He wants to see you without the little girl.”

  The woman sat on the other side of Katka. “I’ll stay with you while your mother attends to things.”

  Jana walked to the admissions desk. The duty person recognized her, pointing to a room with a closed door. Jana went through the door, knowing Dano was inside.

  The small room was sparsely furnished, even by Slovak hospital standards, containing just a torn sofa and a pair of rickety old wooden chairs. Dano sat on the chair that stood against the far wall; Jana closed the door behind her and took the chair nearest to her and to the door. Picturing it in her mind later, they could have been two boxers in their corners waiting for the bell to ring to begin the fight, except that neither one of them really wanted a fight, both of them fearful that an all-out war was what this meeting would lead to.

  For the first time Jana, noticed Dano was wearing glasses, and just below the left lens there was a small red scar on his cheek indicating a recent injury. Dano looked haggard and older: aged in a haunted way. As if he had just remembered needing to fulfill a duty, Dano reached into his jacket pocket to pull out an official-looking document.

  “I have this for you.”

  He slid off his chair, stooping as if the ceiling were too low to allow him to stand erect, then took the two steps between them and handed her the paper. Without waiting for her to read it, he stepped back and sat again.

  Jana opened the paper: a decree from the state granting a divorce to Dano and Jana Matinova, with all rights attendant thereto.

  Jana ran her fingers over the seal on the document. Real enough. So was the rest of the paper. Except that she had never heard about any divorce action. This had to be a forgery.

  “I didn’t get any notification of this; I didn’t appear. It can’t be valid.” The shock of receiving the document was in her voice. She shook her head, repeating herself. “It can’t be valid.”

  “It was done in Prague. Today, you can buy the world and all its oceans in Prague. Not to worry, I did it right. I had a friend stand in for you. There was a lawyer and everything. Now my friend goes around telling everyone she used to be married to me.” He saw Jana’s lips tighten, angry at the joke. He stayed quiet for a moment. “It’s good, unless you say it’s no good.”

  “Why did you do it, Dano?” Jana folded the paper, then folded it half again, wishing it were not in her hands but also glad that it was. “Your reason, please?”

  “They are after me. Better to close off all the points they might use to connect us.” He gestured nervously with his hands, his face now registering fear. “I hide well, but not well enough that they won’t sniff me out one of these weeks.”

  “Leave the country, Dano. Anywhere but here.”

  “Why must I go?”

  “You don’t need my answer to that, Dano.”

  “Why should I leave my home to them? No! It’s clear, I shouldn’t. So, I stay.” He paused to regroup, to change the subject. “I am sorry your mother is ill. When did it start?”

  “We first noticed serious problems a year ago.”

  “And Katka? I caught a glimpse of her when you left in the ambulance. She’s wonderfully beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “Of course.” Jana thought about the morning. “When you saw me at breakfast, did you have to stop yourself from coming to our room to see her?”

  “Yes. And then, again, when the ambulance came. And now.”

  “What has stopped you?”

  “You would have been angry.”

  “It would have made me afraid for all of us. Thank you for not giving in and coming to see her anyway.”

  “Has she started having boys come around?”

  “No.”

  “So I’m still her only boyfriend.” He stopped, realizing he had to wind their meeting down. “Almost time.” He began patting his hair down with his palms, an old nervous gesture Jana recognized. He always made it just before he went on stage.

  “Jana, things are going to heat up a bit more in the future. I want to warn you.”

  She raised a hand to stop him. “Dano, I don’t want to hear what you are going to do. If I know that, and it is truly a criminal act, I would have to stop you.”

  “Not to worry. I’m through speaking.”

  She stood up; he stood up. He walked toward Jana as if he were going to kiss her on the mouth, then thought better of it, brushing his lips lightly across her cheek.

  Close up, they looked at each other, each a little sad. “You haven’t changed at all.”

  Jana smiled at the lie.

  “You have glasses,” she pointed out. “They are becoming.”

  Her turn to lie.

  “I can’t read my speeches now without them.”

  “And the little scar.”

  “A tree branch.”

  Another lie.

  “The branch had been made into a club,” she suggested.

  “It was very hard wood,” he acknowledged.

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  He walked out. She looked at the room: an ugly place, even too ugly for what had just gone on.

  Chapter 26

  Jana had missed her call fr
om Kiev, from Mikhail. He’d had to respond to a police emergency, leaving a message that he would call back. Worse, the meeting chaired by Moira Simmons was still sputtering on. Given the catastrophic beginning to the conference, perhaps it was inevitable that the glitches in scheduling and presentation would be larger than normal. Speakers failed to appear, or arrived long after they were due; speeches would go on and on, way over schedule; audience participation was minimal, translations were inadequate; until the second half of the day when Moira Simmons decided to junk the agenda.

  As the Chair, she declared that the participants would now interact directly on a number of issues. A freewheeling debate on the actions that should be taken and the recommendations they should promulgate for the EU would take place. She herself had generated a list of priorities and offered them for the delegates to discuss.

  Jana watched Moira produce success from disaster. The woman cajoled, browbeat, insisted, gave ground when necessary, advanced when the opportunity presented itself, argued brilliantly, challenged national policies, skewered individuals, nagged, and finally cobbled together an agreed-upon set of principles, a timetable for goals and objectives to forward those principles, and, finally, a ringing call for immediate action.

  The meeting lasted until four in the afternoon, with the last item the formulation of a press release that everyone could agree upon, not an easy task considering the egos and sensitivities involved. With that, the meeting was concluded.

  Jana had made a few suggestions; Levitin had sat, Jana could swear, without blinking or uttering a word all day. But Jana came away from the session with a feeling of pleasure at Jeremy’s participation. Her son-in-law was quite intelligent. He had made several contributions to the final resolutions of the group.

  Jeremy begged off joining Jana for dinner because of a prior commitment, but promised to see her in the morning before he flew to Nice. She set out, not particularly wanting to talk to Moira Simmons. But Moira caught her eye, even while engaged in a five-way conversation encircled by other delegates, and beckoned Jana over. Moira stepped out of the circle, meeting her halfway, looking a little abashed.