36 Yalta Boulevard

13 FEBRUARY 1967, MONDAY

His back ached when he finally rose at noon; his ribs were tender, and his head still throbbed. A dark bruise had grown around his left eye. Mother was not in a good state, either. Her pale eyelids had swollen so that she peered at him through slits when he asked where Zygmunt Nubsch, the bread man, lived. “Why on earth do you want to know that?”

“I need to talk to him about something.”

“About this?” she asked, and touched a finger to his injured eye.

He walked to Zygmunt’s home, which was just across the street from the graveyard. Passersby flicked their gazes over his beaten face, but no one spoke to him. He paused at Zygmunt’s front gate and glanced back at the lines of stones, a jumble of styles, some clumsy and eroded, others fresh slabs with fine edges. A group of them were low and simple in the long grass, with Cyrillic names etched below five-pointed stars: Russian soldiers fallen during the liberation of their country from the fascists. He stomped through snow to the front door and knocked.

After a minute, a squat woman looked up at him, pulling a length of gray behind her ear.

“Ewa Nubsch?”

Though she peered at his bruises, she didn’t recognize his face, but his accent-measured and purposeful, from the Capital-gave her pause. She placed a shriveled hand on her breast. “Yes?”

“I’ve come to speak with Zygmunt. Is he in?”

She shook her head. “He’s working. You can speak to him this evening.”

“Perhaps I could ask you a couple questions, Comrade Nubsch.”

“I’m very busy now, Comrade Sev.”

“This is rather important.”

“But-” she said, then lowered her hand. “Come in.”

The Nubsch house was tidy and proper. A small television in the corner overlooked a sparse living room covered with lace doilies and table runners. Ten paperbacks were on display behind a glass-doored cabinet, and an electric coil-and-fan by the kitchen door kept the place very warm.

“Something to drink?”

“If you’re drinking.”

She hesitated again. “Coffee?”

“Perfect.”

She limped off to the kitchen and ran water for a while, and he heard the pop and hiss of the gas stove being lit. Then she was in the doorway again, wiping her hands on a white towel. “Something to eat?”

“No, thank you,” he said, and settled in a chair. She ranged farther into the room but didn’t sit down. He said, “Do you mind if I ask a personal question?”

She shook her head with two tight jerks.

“Where did you get that limp?”

Ewa Nubsch looked down at her right leg, as if she had never noticed it before. She took a breath. “Well, you know, I’m not a young woman anymore.”

“Neither of us is young.”

She rocked her head from side to side. “I twisted the ankle in one of those badger holes in the fields. I should have been watching better.”

Brano looked at his palms, then placed them on his knees. “You know, Comrade Nubsch, there’s a rumor going around that I wanted to verify. About the thirty-first of January, a Tuesday night. Zygmunt lost a hand of cards.”

Ewa blinked at him.

“People lose at cards all the time; it’s seldom notable. But the story is that Zygmunt made a very rash wager. The same kind of wager Tomasz Sakiewicz made last year. But Tomasz was lucky enough to win his bet.”

She glanced into the kitchen, and by the time she turned back, she had found something to say. “There are a lot of rumors in Bobrka, Comrade Sev. I wouldn’t believe them all if I were you.” She gave him a half-smile and limped off.

He followed her into the kitchen. It was small, but the space had been used economically. She poured the steaming water into a filter that dripped black coffee into a glass pot.

“Comrade Nubsch, we both know the story is true. I don’t really care about gambling, but I do wonder why you’re still standing here, living and breathing, making me a cup of coffee.”

Her eyes took on a forced vacancy, staring at the now-full coffeepot. “I really don’t know what you mean, Comrade Sev.”

“Card games in the provinces are a very particular phenomenon.”

“Are they?”

“Their rules are firm. And the gamblers, for lack of a better word, are like members of a cult. The rules give their lives extra meaning. So when Zygmunt bet your life and lost, he couldn’t just change his mind. He had to follow through.”

She poured the coffee into cups, staining the counter with black puddles. “This is sounding ridiculous,” she said without looking at him.

“The only way Zygmunt could get out of taking your life was to make a deal with Pavel Jast. You would remain alive, but another life would have to be taken.” He approached her; she flinched. But he only took a cup. “The choice wasn’t up to Zygmunt, or you. It was Jast’s choice. Wasn’t it.”

She didn’t answer.

“Comrade Nubsch, I have no doubt that Jast cheated at that game-not because he wanted you dead, but because he wanted Zygmunt to commit a murder. He had someone particular in mind. Jakob Bieniek.”

She reached for the second cup but faltered, knowing she wouldn’t be able to bring it to her lips. She tugged at her ear; she swallowed. “Pavel Jast is a fiend. I’ve told my husband this for years, but the game-it’s hard to explain.”

“It’s an addiction.”

“More than that, Comrade Sev.” She focused on his ear, considering her words. “Do you know what Zygi used to be?”

“No.”

She paused, and when she spoke again the sentences were clear and without hesitation, as if part of a speech she had practiced for years. “He was the head manager of the Bobrka Petroleum Works. He was an important man. But one day the Gas Committee sent some men from the Capital; they had no idea what they were looking at. A bunch of bureaucrats who made policies without understanding a thing.” She opened one hand and used the other to tap the wet countertop. “Zygi was foolish enough to point out this fact, and two weeks later he received a notice in the mail. He’d been given a new job. He was to deliver bread for Bobrka and the surrounding villages. Do you know what that does to a man? A man with Zygmunt’s talent and experience?” She shook her head. “No, Comrade Sev. I don’t think you have any idea.”

“Then explain it to me, Comrade Nubsch.”

This, at least, was understood. His pains receded, the barking mutt behind the white wooden fence no longer distracted him, and he even found himself smiling as he walked past the church and the bus stop that still, beneath its bench, sheltered the empty book of matches Pavel Jast would never pick up.

Ewa Nubsch was the kind of person who, in the end, doesn’t care about punishment; the guilt is so strong that all she desires is to be understood. And with the story came tears. She explained between sobs that they’d used razor blades because they couldn’t be traced. We thought we were being smart. We didn’t use the shotgun. We thought we could find a vein. But we couldn’t, and it only made everything more horrible.

That was because they’d been drunk; it was the only way they knew to prepare themselves for murder. Then they’d gotten Jakob drunk and brought him out there. She was still surprised he’d come. He had seemed, almost, excitedly curious. But once they gagged him he fought back, and that was when she had hurt her leg.

And what about the matches?

The matches?

The matches you stuffed in his mouth.

That was Pavel, she said. He wanted them to be on Jakob’s body when it was found. And the shirt. Yes, the shirt. He wanted us to give him the shirt. And yes, yes-he even told us where to do it, behind the Emilia 4. He told us everything.

And she told him everything, except the answer to the one question that mattered most- Why? Why would Pavel Jast frame him for the murder of a reclusive peasant? Pavel Jast had not run off with the Sorokas; he had simply disappeared.

“You look like hell,” the captain said as Brano approached his white Skoda at the Militia station.

“It’s nothing. But listen.” Brano drew close as Rasko fooled with the lock on the front door. “The Bieniek case is solved. It was Zygmunt and Ewa Nubsch.”

Rasko let go of the lock. “Are you kidding me?”

“Pavel Jast arranged the whole thing. He made Zygmunt bet his wife’s life in a Cucumber game, then he offered Zygmunt a trade-Jakob’s life for Ewa’s.”

Rasko got the door open. “And they’ll admit all this to me?”

“Ewa told me everything.”

“How did you get it out of her?”

“I asked.”

Rasko tossed his keys on the desk and dropped into his chair. He ran a hand through his black bangs. “Let’s see how it all turns out. First you might want to get in touch with the Ministry. They called for you this morning. Maybe they want you to go back home.”

Regina Haliniak, at the Yalta front desk, softened when she heard his voice. “Hello, Brano. Are you enjoying the provinces?”

“Not particularly, Regina. Are you and Zoran well?”

“Well enough. Did you want to talk to the colonel?”

“Yes, Regina. Thank you.”

He listened to clicks and static.

“It’s about time you called, Sev.”

“I just got the message.”

“What’s the progress?”

“I’m afraid Pavel Jast’s crime has been proven. He forced an old couple here to kill Jakob Bieniek.”

“Jakob who?”

“Bieniek. Jast used them to frame me for the murder. The wife admitted everything.”

“When I asked about progress, I wasn’t talking about this murder. You know what I was talking about.”

Brano cleared his throat. “I’ve had more contact with Soroka, and Jast told me he’d be leaving soon. But I no longer trust Pavel Jast’s information.”

“Well, trust him, Comrade Sev. We have the same information. Jan Soroka is leaving in the next couple days, probably for Austria, and you’d better clear this up before that happens. If you can’t manage to stop him, then you follow him and report back when you can. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel. But-”

“But what?”

Brano paused. “I’m known there, Comrade Colonel. In Austria. If I enter the country without diplomatic papers… I don’t think I’d be safe.”

Cerny gave one of his unimpressed exhales. “You’re exhausting, Sev. You’ve been given an opportunity few men receive. And who do you think insisted you could be trusted to come back on this case? It’s my neck we’re talking about.”

“I know, Comrade Colonel.”

“You know me, Brano. You know disappointment doesn’t sit well with me-makes my bladder go awry. And it doesn’t sit well with the Comrade Lieutenant General, either.”

“He knows?”

“The man knows everything, Sev. It’s my job to keep him informed.”

His legs ached by the time he made it to the house, trying without success to evoke that memory of Cerny’s suicidal weeping to settle his nerves. But the man was right-he’d been given an exceptional opportunity to redeem himself. He climbed into his Trabant and drove west.

Again, he didn’t have to wait long. To the south, beyond the silent cows, a small figure materialized near the base of the mountain. He parked by the road, and his feet crunched through snow as he walked through the cold, hissing wind to meet Jan Soroka.

He suddenly remembered what Klara had said, the pink anger filling her cheeks: The religion of the apparatchik only gives you paperwork and a bad conscience.

This wasn’t far from the truth.

Jan was crouched, looking at something on the ground. “Hello!” called Brano, and Jan glanced back over his shoulder. He didn’t stop what he was doing: using a stick to slowly pick apart a high, encrusted anthill. Brano squatted beside him. “Going to destroy that thing?”

“I’ve always hated ants,” said Jan. “When I was a child, a whole army attacked me. I’m a lover of nature in general, but not these things. Whenever I get the chance, I kill them.”

He brushed the stick through the base of the hill, quickly, and the tower collapsed, releasing a flood of confused black spots that spilled onto a patch of snow.

Brano said, “Ants in winter. That’s strange.”

“Yeah,” said Jan.

Then the two men began walking along the edge of the mountain in silence, until Jan said, “How’s that case of yours coming?”

“Which one?”

“That dead man. Bieniek?”

“Yes, Jakob Bieniek.”

“Any leads?”

“The Nubsches killed him.”

Jan, for once, looked surprised. “So it wasn’t you after all. But I’m not sure the village will believe a nice old couple like Zygmunt and Ewa sliced him up.”

“It doesn’t matter what Bobrka believes.”

“It might. From the look of your face, you could probably use some allies around here.”

Brano touched his sore eye. “You’re right about that.”

“But why did they do it?”

“The Nubsches? A bet.”

“Cucumber?”

“Pavel Jast got them to do it.”

“And why did he do it?”

“I have no idea.”

They stopped beside a boulder, where Jan took out a cigarette. Brano cupped his hands around the match to keep it alight. Jan took a drag and handed it to Brano. “My father knew you didn’t kill Jakob-he had Pavel fingered from the beginning.”

“Why?”

“My father’s got intuition.”

“Well, he’s a lucky man. I just stumble through the facts as I see them.”

“What about your father?” asked Jan as he took the cigarette back.

“My father?”

“Is he dead?”

“He was a farmer,” said Brano, “and when the Germans came, the Wehrmacht forced him into service. He built antitank obstacles. All through the war he did this in a factory up in Rzeszow. By the end of the war, he was managing the factory, and by late ’forty-five, he was back to farming.”

“But he left the country, didn’t he?”

“He had to. His name was put down as a collaborator. If he’d stayed he would have been arrested.”

“Arrested?”

“Yes.”

Jan handed the cigarette over. “By whom?”

“By me.”

They didn’t talk for a while, and despite the lingering memory of that trip to Bobrka back in ’45 to arrest the man he instead handed forged papers and ordered to emigrate westward, Brano found it a peculiarly peaceful moment. He never learned what had become of Andrezej Fedor Sev; the few times he’d tried to look into it he’d come up with nothing. Perhaps he never made it out of the country, or he died in one of the many displaced persons camps of postwar Germany. He simply didn’t know, and when he reflected on it, he found he didn’t care. That man was part of another life.

Jan took out another cigarette and offered him one. They smoked and watched the cows standing in patches of snow. Brano said, “Either you had an affair with Dijana Frankovic in Szuha, or you went to Vienna and left your family behind-it really doesn’t matter. But why would you leave at all? Lia’s a beautiful woman, she seems like a good mother.”

Jan tapped his ash and thought a second before answering. “Did you know that when I was sixteen years old I met Mihai?”

“Nineteen-fifty,” said Brano. “You were a Red Pioneer.”

“You guys really do know everything, don’t you?” He took a drag. “Well, I was excited. I’d never been much for the Pioneers, but every now and then we’d do something interesting. This time we met the most powerful man in the country. And I, like any other kid, idolized Mihai.”

“A lot of people still do.”

“So I’m told-no one seems to idolize Tomiak Pankov. Anyway, we went to Victory Square, to the Central Committee building and his office on the third floor. You been there?”

Brano nodded.

“It was impressive. All that red satin, the paintings, that enormous desk. I remember a silver ink bottle-it had the hawk etched in it. It was a beautiful thing. And then I saw Mihai himself. You met him a lot, I guess.”

“A few times.”

“Well, the photos and newsreels never really showed how short he was, did they? He was a head shorter than me. This was a shock, I can tell you.”

“That he was short?”

“Not just that he was short. He had a cold at the time, and whenever he breathed you could hear how hard it was for him. I was a kid, you know, and I couldn’t imagine how such a great man could be like this-short, snot-nosed, no better than the guy who sells vegetables in the market. And this was the head of our country?”

“Well, you were young.”

“I was. But I don’t think that reaction ever really left me. I got older, I married Lia-to me she was the most gorgeous woman in the Capital-but I was still a stupid teenager up here,” he said, tapping his skull. “I didn’t realize she’d catch colds, that she’d be lazy in the mornings and not make coffee. She’d be short-tempered and shout at me about things that weren’t my fault; she’d be completely unreasonable sometimes. And no amount of expectation can prepare you for a child. Everything shifts and becomes a little dirtier. Your wife’s body begins to fall apart.”

“You’re brutal, Jan.”

“To be fair, I’m sure she had similar complaints about me. I was unreasonable all the time; I got fatter, lazier; I stopped talking to her.”

“And so you left.”

“At first I just had affairs. An afternoon, sometimes a whole night. And I saw some of what I was missing. I suppose I wanted to get out on my own and learn what life with another woman was like.”

“Until you became disillusioned with the new woman.”

Jan shrugged.

The cigarette was strong, and Brano’s head buzzed as he wondered if it would have been this way had he stayed with his Dijana. “Did you ever actually know her?”

“Who?”

“The real Dijana Frankovic. In Vienna.”

Jan smiled. “I only knew the one in Szuha.”

Brano was smiling as well. He tossed his cigarette into the grass and felt, for the moment, that time had slowed. For the moment, there was no one in the Capital waiting for results, no press of minutes.

Then Jan said, “I’m not sure I understand. You seem to believe a lot of bad things about me. Why aren’t I in jail?”

Brano considered this. When he first arrived in Bobrka, he believed that sticking to his cover story, that he was simply a factory worker on vacation, would be simple enough. But no one in this town really trusted that, least of all Jan-he’d clearly been waiting for Brano’s arrival. There was nothing left to hide. So he said, “Arresting you isn’t my job. I was supposed to find out why you came back.”

“And what’s your conclusion?”

“My conclusion is that I really don’t care.”

“Is that true?”

Yes, Brano realized-it was true. “I came here to do a simple job. But immediately my one contact double-crossed me-he framed me for murder. And now that I’ve proven my innocence, the Ministry doesn’t care. I went into this with all good intentions, and now,” he said, looking for the right words, “now I have the suspicion I’m being used, but I don’t know why.”

“Maybe it’s all about Pavel Jast,” said Jan. “Maybe he framed you in order to improve his position with Yalta. He probably wants to get out of Bobrka and go to the big city.”

“Did you tell him much about yourself? I mean, the things you don’t tell me.”

“I’ve told you much more than I told Pavel Jast.”

“Then that isn’t the answer. He could only improve his position if he arrived in the Capital with all the information on you that I couldn’t get.”

“But he could also improve his position if he stopped me from doing what I plan to do.”

“Which is to return to Vienna.”

“Or maybe I want to go to Moscow.”

They both laughed out loud, and Brano admired this clever man who could subdue his own fears and laugh with a man who might, at any moment, kill him.

Jan nodded past Brano’s shoulder, toward the road, his smile fading. “Isn’t that Captain Rasko?”

Brano turned, peering through the winter dusk he hadn’t noticed descending. The white Skoda was parked behind his Trabant, and Rasko took awkward, high steps through the snow toward them. They helped close the distance, and when they met, Rasko’s face was pinked by the wind. “Hello, Jan,” he said.

“Tadeusz.”

Rasko nodded at Brano. “Can I have a word with you?”

“I’ll talk to you later,” said Jan as he retreated toward the cows.

“What is it, Captain?”

Rasko was wearing a heavy coat-blue, Militia regular issue. He buttoned the top button. “I went over to the Nubsches’.”

“And?”

“And nothing, Comrade Sev. They’ve left. Taken a lot of clothes and gone away. I called the Dukla factory, and it seems Zygmunt abandoned his bread truck on the side of the road this morning. They don’t know where he is.”

“They fled.”

“They’re your alibi, Comrade Sev.”

Brano looked into the captain’s dark, steady eyes, then wiped his hands on his pants. “They’re still my alibi. They left because they were guilty. It’s obvious.”

“Not to Yalta.”

“What?”

Rasko arched a brow. “They’ve been in touch the whole time you’ve been in Bobrka. Seems they don’t trust you completely. And when I told that colonel about the Nubsches’ disappearance, I was given leave to arrest you again.”

Brano’s hands jumped involuntarily from his hips. “Colonel Cerny?” He settled them down again. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“We live by our orders, Comrade Sev.”

That was a well-rehearsed line from the Militia Academy, the kind of motto only repeated at official functions. Now Brano Sev was hearing it in a field littered with blank-eyed cows.

He cleared his throat. “Give me a little more time.”

“It’s difficult.”

“No, it’s not. Tomorrow. I’ll have something for you by tomorrow.”

Captain Rasko squinted into the wind a few seconds, waiting for something more-a bribe, perhaps, or some sign of desperation-but Brano waited him out. The captain nodded. “All right. Tomorrow.”

As Rasko made his way back to his car, Brano turned back to Jan, who-magically, it seemed-had disappeared.

The captain was right. The Nubsches’ home, which he entered by reaching through the hole Rasko had broken in the window, was cleared out. Clothes had been thrown around the bedroom in a frantic act of packing, and remnants of a quickly thrown-together meal littered the kitchen: bread crumbs, cheese, salami. He went through each room, his calm slipping away, trying to find anything-a coat, perhaps-that connected them to Jakob Bieniek. But after tearing apart cabinets and wardrobes and searching under all the furniture, he realized it was useless. When he slammed the door behind himself, broken glass fell and shattered on the concrete steps.

As he drove through the darkness, he labored with the mass of facts that were filling him with an acute sense of zbrka. What he’d said so casually to Soroka-that he was being used-now felt real. Cerny was pressuring him, either to get results or to flee-he didn’t know which. There was no ready answer to the why of Jast’s frame-up nor the why of Cerny’s phone calls. Was it possible the colonel believed Brano had killed some nondescript milkman? Or was he only following the Lieutenant General’s orders?

Again, the question: Why?

His mother was settled in the dim kitchen with Lucjan’s vodka when he returned. Her head rolled back as she tried to get him into focus. “He returns!”

Brano sank into a chair without removing his overcoat. “Are you drunk?”

“What do you thing?” she said, slurring “think.”

“That can’t be good for you.”

Her eyes were shiny. “Don’t start telling me what’s good for me. You’re on your way to jail.”

“You know?”

“The whole town knows. My criminal son.”

“Criminal son,” he repeated, and reached for the vodka bottle. There was a dirty water glass on the table that he filled to the rim. “But I didn’t do it.”

“What do I know about that? You don’t tell your mother anything.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“Just like you told me about your Tati.”

“I did what I could.”

She looked at him for a little while, then spoke slowly. “You know, Brani, I’m an old woman now. I know a few things. I know, for instance, that life is sometimes too long. There are a lot of years. What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t made your father leave?”

“You know what would have happened. He would have been sent to prison. I had no choice.”

“Yes,” she said, and brought her glass to her cheek, pressing it into the soft flesh. “He would have gone to jail, but for how long? A couple years, maybe five. Then, my dear son, my husband would have been returned to me. We would have been a family again.”

He did not answer.

She said, “You think your life is going to be one way, then it isn’t. Your son leaves for the Capital, then your husband leaves the country. Your daughter marries an idiot who can’t give you grandchildren.” She took another drink and set her glass down. “Tell me, Brani. Do you think this is the family I always hoped for?”

He lifted his glass to his lips.

She passed out in her chair, and Brano carried her to bed. He undressed her, then pulled the duvet to her chin before kissing her forehead. He felt very much like a father at that moment-at least, how he imagined fathers felt-looking down on this old woman who, in her more honest moments, hated him. She’d had to eke out a living without her husband and had never remarried-she instead lived on the fantasy that Andrezej Sev would return from the West. But unlike Jan Soroka, most people did not return when they escaped the Empire. If they survived, they made their way as best they could, despite loneliness and poverty, and became citizens of another world.

And she was only partly right about what he’d done. There was no telling what would have happened to his father in one of those labor camps. Many never returned.

He drank more in the kitchen, enough to maintain dizziness, and took his passport out of his coat pocket. He had a dull face, he knew, not the kind of face a young Vojvodina Serb living in Vienna would fall in love with. In his other pocket he found Jakob Bieniek’s passport and flipped through its pages. Both men had features that suggested plainness, perhaps even stupidity.

He hung his coat by the door, then undressed in the bedroom. There was nothing to do but wait. Tomorrow-yes, tomorrow-Captain Rasko would visit, with full Ministry authorization, and take him to that puny cell. The climax of a half-year of failures. Then Brano would be faced with the end of everything. He would be transferred to a holding cell in Rzeszow, given a trial, and moved to a work camp. Perhaps Vatrina, in the Magyar provinces, where he had once visited an old colleague who had been put to work digging a canal that had never been completed, and probably never would be.

A factory job would seem like a blessing.

He was, inexplicably, free from worry. Some of it was the vodka, but as Brano climbed into bed and closed his eyes, the darkness swirling around him, he felt that it had to do with Jan Soroka, the man who chose to wander with idiot cows while the apparatus of state security haunted him. Jan was a disciple of acceptance.

So it surprised him when he opened his eyes to that familiar voice in the darkness. He reached out to touch the shoulder of a coat and heard the voice again, as if from a dream: Don’t move, Brano. I’ve got a gun.

Is this it? he asked the darkness.

The voice said yes, this was it, though it didn’t mean what Brano had meant. Right now. Come if you want, but now-grab your bag. No hesitation. But if you try to stop us, I’ll kill you.

Jan Soroka turned on the bedside lamp.