Liberation Movements

Katja

The stewardess smiled when I asked for water, but that was twenty minutes ago, and now she’s talking to the fat man in first class. He flicks his little red star self-consciously, flirting, and the stewardess is so flattered she’s forgotten my drink.

There’s a middle-aged man snoring beside me. Before passing out he tried to start a conversation, informing me that he was to meet with some extremely important Turks to discuss exporting locally made electric fans. “We’re famous for manufacturing the best fans in the region, did you know that? Better even than the Poles, and they’re admirable competition.”

“Interesting,” I told him, then turned away and asked for water.

His face is now pressed into the cushion of the headrest, his mouth flaccid and damp.

Up front, the stewardess laughs liltingly.

So I wave until she notices, touches the fat man’s sleeve to ask his patience, and walks over.

“Yes?” The stewardess squats beside me, showing off her intense brown eyes.

“That water, please.”

“Water?”

“Yes. I asked for water a while ago.”

“I see,” she says, though it’s plain she doesn’t. “I was just getting that.”

Or maybe, I think as the stewardess continues to the rear of the plane, it’s just that unreliable sense of time. Maybe I did only just ask for the water, and the stewardess has decided I’m one of the troublesome passengers, one of the bitches.

As if to confirm this, the fat man grunts and twists in his seat so he can get a good look at me.

I find myself wishing the fan salesman awake. Conversation would at least distract me from the fact that I’m having trouble remembering the last week. There are details-the explosion of the Turkish Airlines flight. The insane asylum. And the trail leading to a dead woman and her brother, Adrian. Adrian Martrich. And, of course, Gavra.

Out of the week there are only three vivid faces that remain with me, all men. Gavra, Adrian, and him. But I’ve lost track of what connects them all. Why were we protecting Adrian Martrich? Gavra never would explain anything in detail. Soon after the investigation started he became cold and uncommunicative.

And then, two days ago, Adrian Martrich suggested we go out for a drive. “Where?”

He shrugged. “To someplace I think you’ll be interested in.”

A voice is speaking to me.

It’s the stewardess, holding a plastic cup. “You did want water, right?”

“Of course. Thank you.”

The stewardess hands it over, smiles briefly, and returns to the fat man, shaking her head as she speaks to him.

I drink the whole cup in one go and crush it into the pocket of the next seat.

There is a part of me that tries not to remember that short trip with Adrian Martrich, because when I recall its details I shake and the surety of what I’m doing begins to collapse. So I jump to Wednesday morning- this morning-when I called the Militia station. Imre, that poor dunce, had spent the last week completely in the dark; I treated him with the same silence Gavra gave me, and when I called I was in no mood to fill him in. “Get me Brano Sev.”

“Brano?” said Imre.

“Just get him, will you?”

Imre timidly called for our Ministry officer to please take the phone.

“Sev here.”

“This is Katja.”

“Good morning, Katja.”

“Where’s Gavra?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him.”

“Can we meet?”

“You don’t want to speak in the office?”

“No.”

He sighed. “Can you make it to the Hotel Metropol at noon?” He sounded so much more accommodating than he naturally was. “The bar.”