Olen Steinhauer - The confession

He said, “It was luck, at first. At least that’s how I thought of it. I was in this stinking bar, wondering how I could get back at the people who had put me away for so long, and there was Josef Maneck. Like a gift from God. He was so drunk, I hardly recognized him. I’d met him before, and Louis had told me he was connected to all of it, so I waited outside for him. He’d gotten into a fight with another drunk, and was finally thrown out. So I helped him home. He had no idea who I was. He was just grateful I wasn’t hitting him. I got him up to his place and made some coffee, and started to question him.”

There was a knock at the door. Leonek looked in, saw the two of us sitting morosely in the white bathroom, and left again.

“Go on.”

He rubbed his hands to keep them warm. “I didn’t plan to kill him. I really wanted Antonin. But when I told him my name, he went wild. He hit me and tried to run out of the apartment. So I dragged him back. And made him tell me what he knew. He believed the same thing I did, that Antonin had sent me to the work camp in order to steal my paintings. He said he didn’t know for a long time, until Zoia told him. He cried and apologized and finally gave me Antonin’s address.”

“You wrote it on Josef’s notepad.”

“I guess I did.”

“Go on.”

“Well, once I had what I’d come there for, I didn’t leave. I couldn’t leave. Something kept me there, kept me hammering at him. I wanted to know why, once he knew the truth, Josef hadn’t gone to the Militia. He said he would have been implicated, because by that point he’d been showing the paintings for months. And he pointed at the apartment and said that it was what he’d been reduced to, because he couldn’t take the guilt. But that wasn’t enough for me, you understand? It was as if I were someone else for an hour. I wanted to take from him what had been taken from me. So I gave him one more punch that knocked him out and dragged him over to the oven and turned on the gas. Then I left.”

I rubbed my own hands together. It seemed very cold in that bathroom, like the cold of the Canal District, and the cold that comes from an hour of being someone else, and looking back at what you’ve done. “Then you found Antonin.”

“You saw the body. You know what I did. With him I was an entirely different person. I don’t-” He shut his eyes. “I don’t know how to explain it. By that point I had gone to the Canal District and bought a gun. I arrived at his apartment, and when he opened the door I held the gun on him. At first we talked. He admitted to stealing the paintings, but swore he had not turned me in to Yalta Boulevard. And for a moment I did believe him. He was so earnest. He offered to split everything he had with me, he said I deserved it, but he kept swearing he hadn’t turned me in. But by then I’d already collected three opinions against him-Louis thought he had turned me in, and so did Josef and Zoia. So I was sure he was lying. Because he knew what I would do to him. But I don’t think he could have imagined it-what I did to him.” Nestor shifted on the edge of the tub. “Do you have a cigarette?”

I got two out. The bathroom quickly filled with smoke, but I didn’t open the door.

“I don’t know if you can understand what I did without having lived in the camps. Even having lived in the camps, I still can’t believe what I did, but I at least understand it. The things that they do to you, the power they have over you. It throws off your sense of right and wrong.” He shook his head. “I can’t explain it.”

“Just tell me what you did. I’ll see if I can understand.”

He took another drag. “I gagged him, then tied his hands and feet together. Then I sat and talked to him for a while. I described my life in the camp, I told him how I’d lost my finger, how I’d gotten my limp, and the kinds of things I saw on a daily basis. I told him that what I’d do to him would not be as bad as all that. But I told him exactly what I would do to him. I said I would break his arms and legs with a hammer, drive him to the Canal District in his own car, and then drag him by his broken arms to a place where I would then set him on fire. And that’s what I did.”

I coughed into my hand. The sound reverberated in the small room. “Why did you tell him?”

“That’s what they did in the camp. Sometimes they would tell you in the morning that they would kill you, and by the afternoon you’d be dead. They had ways to make even death worse.”

“But you didn’t put Zoia through all of that, did you?”

He shook his head. “I had pity on her. I broke in over the weekend and waited in the basement for morning. I didn’t want Mathew around. So after he left I came up behind her and strangled her. Josef had told me she left Antonin because of what he’d done. But still, she-like Josef-hadn’t turned him in. That was what I could not accept. Why did they remain silent when I was stuck in hell for a decade?”

“Because they didn’t want to join you,” I said, and he squinted at me through the smoke.

“But I got it all wrong in the end,” he said. “Antonin stole my art, but he couldn’t have done that if this Russian hadn’t gotten rid of me. It seems like human nature that if you give someone an opportunity for easy criminality, he’ll take it. Kaminski gave Antonin the opportunity.”

“Do you regret it?”

“What?”

“The murders.”

His eyes wandered into the smoke, focusing on something I could not see. “Ferenc, all I know is that I’ve failed. I used to be a human being. But now, with what I’ve done, and the mistakes I’ve made, I don’t know if I can call myself human anymore. That’s why I tried to turn myself in. Because it no longer mattered what happened to me.” He focused on my eyes then. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

My cold hands froze and my feet tingled. “I know exactly what you’re saying, Nestor.”

“Ferenc?”

It was Emil calling. “What’s going on?”

“Malik Woznica.”

“What about him.”

“He’s gone missing.”

I opened my mouth and, after a long exhale, said, “Maybe that’s best for everyone.”

“They’ve given me the case. He was supposed to visit a relative in Perechyn on Saturday, but didn’t, and he didn’t show up at the office yesterday. I’ve checked the apartment; it’s empty.”

“Any sign of a struggle?”

“None. His car is gone, but it doesn’t look like clothes are missing.”

“Maybe he was in a hurry.”

“We did find a store of drugs. Opiates. Pills and liquids.”

“All for his Svetla.”

He paused. “Ferenc, you didn’t…”

“Didn’t what.”

“I don’t know. Did you threaten him?”

“He threatened me. But I never said a word to him.”

“Okay. I just want to know why he’d leave.”

“He left because he murdered his wife.”

“What?”

“He followed her to Moscow and killed her. Kliment told me last week-Sev and Moska know about it, too. But that’s all I know.”

“Okay, Ferenc. Thanks. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”

When I hung up, I leaned against the wall and tried to measure out my breaths. It was difficult. The kitchen seemed to be underwater, and the icebox shivered, but that was because I was shivering. I made it out to the living room, where they were all sitting, looking up at me.

“You all right?” asked Leonek.

“Keep an eye on them. I need to lie down.”

I got into bed with my shoes still on and pulled the blankets over me. But I couldn’t get warm. I kept seeing Malik Woznica in that well, his bloated, dead eyes staring up at me. I had felt nothing then. I had been confused, yes. I had been worried. But I had felt no guilt. And there had been no guilt when I returned to Vera tied up in her own filth and watched her rush with all that self-hatred out my door. I hadn’t known what I had done wrong.