Olen Steinhauer - The confession

I could hear the tears.

She said, “I found that letter you wrote.”

“What letter?”

“It was in your jacket. You said you were going to leave me and take Agnes with you.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t understand-”

“Don’t explain.” Her hand tensed on mine. “I deserve it. But please, consider growing old with me.”

I held her with my arms and legs for a long time until, the crying done, she fell asleep. To the sound of her soft snores, I tried to figure out what I wanted now, now that it had all been exposed. I was numbed by the prospect of decision.

But what numbed me more was my impotence: My decisions did not matter. Kaminski’s threat still resonated in me, and reminded me that any life I chose had a fast-approaching expiration date.

The next morning, over breakfast, Agnes smiled at us-she could tell we were better. Then she asked the question: “Daddy, do you know where my rope ladder is? I can’t find it.”

Friday morning I typed up the paperwork on the Nestor Velcea case. I listed off the victims-Josef Maneck, Antonin Kullmann, Sofia (a.k.a. Zoia) Eiers, and Stefan Weselak.

Then I outlined the understood sequence of events, from Sergei’s case in 1946 to the art fraud in 1948 to its discovery in Paris by Louis Rostek and Nestor Velcea’s attempt to right history. Were there a place in the report to mention such things, I might have noted that history can never be made right, but the forms did not ask those kinds of questions. Nor did they allow me to observe that if there was a God, His aims were inconceivable: He gave Svetla an unlocked door, and He also handed Nestor a chance meeting in a bar with his first victim.

I wasn’t far into the report when Leonek approached me. Nestor and Kaminski had been moved up to Ozaliko, but Leonek had gotten a call from a friend who was a guard there. “Tells me they took Kaminski away. A couple state security guys.”

“They’re going to want to know everything he knows,” I said.

Leonek smiled. “I hope he makes it difficult for them.”

I felt my eyes glazing over. Leonek was saying something. “What?”

He had settled in a chair beside me. “That night. Before you went to The Crocodile. You asked me if I loved them. Why did you do that?”

Part of me wanted to smack him, another part to embrace him. “Insurance,” I said. “Now get out of here. I’ve got to finish this report.”

I didn’t get much further before Emil pulled up the chair that Leonek had vacated. “Thought you’d like to know, they found Woznica’s car on the road to Perechyn. It had been rolled into the trees.”

“Did he have a wreck?” I asked with surprising calmness.

“Don’t think so.” He scratched his chin. “Haven’t seen it yet, but the local Militia told me the fender only tapped a tree.”

“You haven’t seen it yet?”

“I’m going now. Want to come?”

I looked at the half-written report in the typewriter. “No. I don’t think so.”

He didn’t move, and I noticed he was grinning.

“What?”

When he told me, my grin matched his.

“For Christ’s sake, Emil. Congratulations!”

“We’ll get it confirmed by the doctor, but she’s pretty sure. I just hope it works this time.”

“When’s the due date?”

“Twentieth of August.”

“So you’ve decided,” I said.

“What?”

“Not to leave her.”

He touched the corner of my typewriter. “I suppose my love’s not that mature, Ferenc.”

He went to his desk as I looked at the report, dazed by the white paper. Emil’s new life was just beginning as my new life was preparing to end. Then, on cue, two men entered the station. They were obvious-the long leather jackets, the low-slung hats-but they walked as if no one knew they were state security. They paused in the doorway. This had come sooner than I expected. I took my fingers off the typewriter and reached for my bag. But then they noticed Sev, smiled and walked over to his desk.

Not yet.

So I continued, working with the sticky T to make the name Nestor and being gentle with the carriage return so the roller would not shoot out of the machine. I was almost finished when I heard his footsteps behind me. “Ferenc?”

I turned to Sev.

He looked at the report in the typewriter, then at me. “Can you tell me, generally, what you did after the riot on November the sixth?”

I looked past him at the two men waiting by his desk. “I walked back to the station and drove home.”

“And did you receive any telephone calls at home?”

“No,” I lied. “I went to sleep.”

Sev blinked, no expression cracking those features. “Thank you, Ferenc.” He returned to his desk.

Through the rest of the report my hands did not shake. My stomach was steady, and my mind was focused. It didn’t matter that everything was closing in on me. I was still able to work like an automaton through the details of my life, grab my hat, and go home to my family as if each hour did not lead nearer to my demise. I had taken so many steps toward my own end that by now the steps were easy. I could believe in fate or not; it no longer mattered. Nothing mattered. I sat with Agnes on the floor, helping her fashion a new knotted rope out of one she had found on her way home from school. I smiled at her and joked as though I were still a man with human feelings. Magda touched me in bed and I made love to her as if I still knew what that meant. And she believed it. Both of them believed it.

The crowd lined the entire length of Yalta Boulevard, sprouting out of Victory Square and growing straight and sure past state security headquarters at Number 36, out to where Yalta terminated in the middle of the Seventh District. We were somewhere in between. The announcements had been plastered on walls ever since Wednesday, and the radios had broadcast unending reminders of the time and place, but I never imagined so many would heed the call. After the Sixth of November, this kind of turnout seemed impossible. But here they were, all the discontented of the Capital alongside the satisfied and even the apathetic. And they were all weeping.

Children sobbed on fathers’ shoulders; mothers clutched their heads whenever anything appeared on the cleared boulevard. Banners fluttered down from windows, announcing that MIHAI LIVES FOREVER IN THE HEARTS OF THE WORKING CLASSES and quoting him: “ THE PATH TO FREEDOM IS TREACHEROUS, BUT WE ARE GREATER THAN MERE TREACHERY.” His younger portraits hung from lamp-posts like Roman standards and filled shop windows. Magda grabbed my hand as we were pushed forward. The motorcade began with white Militia cars, their aerials bound in black ribbons, then came the long hearse. Magda slipped as the crowd surged, but steadied herself on my arm. Bullhorns on the hearse’s roof bellowed a slow dirge and a deep voice listing all his titles: Liberator of the Nation; Friend to the Young and Old; Fount of Impenetrable Knowledge…Wails shot up around us.

On a family vacation we once drove to Baia Mare to see Mihai’s childhood home. It was a letdown-a two-room shack outside the city, with portraits of him everywhere, looking down on the ratty BED WHERE HE SLEPT and the clay oven in the KITCHEN WHERE HE ATE. I didn’t understand until Magda sighed, and said, He really is one of us, isn’t he?

Magda’s fist covered her quivering lips, and her red eyes tried to see past shoulders and heads. Then she buried her nose in my chest. I turned to my other side. “Where’s Agnes?”

Magda’s face was twisted. “What?”

…Seed of the Land; Thunderstorm in Times of Drought…

“Agnes!” I shouted. “She’s not here!”