Olen Steinhauer - The confession

“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.

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 had 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.”

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.

Halfway there I started to worry about how to get him out. He was heavy, and the well was deep. I had brought along the knotted rope that still smelled of Vera’s urine. He could tie it around himself, but I wasn’t sure I had the strength to pull him out on my own.

Like Vera, he wasn’t calling for help. No doubt he’d tried earlier in the day, moaning through his underwear, but no one in the Canal District came to anyone’s rescue. My eyes had adjusted over the long walk, and stars shone through the shattered ceiling on the mosaic. “Malik,” I said as I approached the well. “Malik Woznica, it’s time to go home.”

The well was too dark to see into.

“Malik? You there?”

I lit a match and saw Malik Woznica’s bound head tilted back, his dead eyes staring up at me. The match slipped and fell onto his shoulder, where it glowed brightly before going out.

My first scattered instinct was to get rid of the body. I uncoiled the rope and ran it down into the darkness before realizing that this wouldn’t work. I sank my hand down into the well, but fell just short of his head. Then I tried to see all of my options, but it was hard to see anything with a dead body beneath me. I went out to the square and sat on a step. My knees were shaking, so I walked.

A heart attack made sense. That or suffocation-if his nose stopped up, it was the end of him. But that possibility had never occurred to me as I was tying him up and shoving him into that black hole. I pulled my rings off and slipped them back on, one at a time. That other Ferenc-reckless and sure-had been unable to see the simple consequences of his actions. But now I was back.

I had killed a man.

I could not move the body, and so I would leave it. That seemed the only option. When found, it could be another murder to add to Nestor’s tally. But this one did not fit. A victim outside the group of art friends, one already known to the Militia. One that could be traced-by Sev and Kaminski, or anyone-back to me.

I returned and looked for something that could help me, but the place had been cleaned out years ago by vagrants. I lit another match. He was naked except his shirt, its collar loose and high around his ears. I climbed on the lip of the well, lying across it and bracing myself with my waist and my head. I reached down. My fingers groped, just reaching the hair, the top of the ear, then the shirt. I had to tilt my head to grip it fully, then use my neck, straining, to tug him up a little. My veins were ready to burst. He stuck to the walls, then slid up a bit. I grunted, rolled, my rising shoulder pulling him farther. It took a lot of sweat, but finally I had his upper half folded over the lip of the well. I gasped at him in the darkness.

Burning came to mind, but there would be smoke-Nestor had been lucky when he burned Antonin. And the canals weren’t deep enough to cover him for long.

I collected the rest of his torn jacket, his pants, and shoes, and lifted him over my shoulder, covering him with his trench coat. Then I started for the car. A smaller man couldn’t have pulled it off, and I almost didn’t make it. I stumbled through puddles, tripped over loose stones, and dropped him twice, his body making a wet thud when it hit the ground. The sky was still black when I folded him back into the trunk.

Once his car was found up in the mountains, they would search the area for his body. So I drove southeast, where the forests near the Soviet border would be out of their reach. The woods were thick there, and the roads empty. The sun had begun to turn the night a bluish gray. A dirt road turned off to the left, and at the end of it were the ruins of an old dacha that had burned to the ground. I carried Malik Woznica deeper into the forest, using my free hand to push aside thorns and vines. Finally, I looked back. I was out of sight of the ruins. I dropped Malik and his extra clothes on the dry leaves, covered him ineptly with a few more, and stumbled back to the car.

I arrived at the train station at nine-thirty as the rain began. It was a strange bit of luck that no one had seen me when I returned home. I had only had time to wash in the sink and change out of my clothes, which I put into a small trash bag. I then drove to the outskirts of town, where I added stones and dropped the bag into the Tisa. It sank quickly.