The Bridge of Sights

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The nurse s name was Katka, and she hovered over Emil through the daylight hours, provoking brief erotic fantasies to accompany his naps. The doctor finally appeared again after a week to remove the stitches from his chest; the ones in his stomach would have to wait. They left behind a dull, throbbing ache that settled into his ribs and back, particularly when he struggled to the corner of the room in his soiled, gray robe, practicing the art of walking.

Katka told him about her family. Mountain shepherds from the north. She said her grandfather was famous for breeding the loveliest sheep in the Tatras. He wondered how close they lived to the spot where Maria Brod had starved to death, somewhere, perhaps, above the treeline. He asked when he would be released, and as she took his bedpan she said she would find out.

His father’s watch had been chipped along the edge of the glass. Its ticking filled the hours.

The photographs were still on the bureau, and he asked Grandmother to bring them to him when she visited. She turned them over in her hands. “What’s this?”

“Nothing.”

Two men, a street, night.

She handed them over and smiled before turning to go.

He wished for Lena Crowder all the time.

It was a little embarrassing when the roses and daffodils arrived with a card that said in typed capitals: homicide, first district. He imagined those gorillas fumbling through a flower store. They’d probably sent a woman from Accounts, or one of their wives. He wanted to like the bouquet, the way it lit up the room in reds and yellows, but couldn’t escape the feeling that the flowers were a trick. Something to humiliate him, or to lure him.

At the end of two weeks, Katka brought him a damp bag of baked apples and said he was free to go. He was helped into his clothes-Grandmother had left behind a fresh change when she incinerated the bullet-and-blood-scarred suit-and given a worn, wooden cane. He hobbled around the room a few times- clumsy, shaky. Leonek was waiting in the corridor. He looked Emil over approvingly. “Let’s get you out of here.”

In the Mercedes, each small bump ripping through Emil’s insides, Leonek asked about the broken headlights.

“We didn’t know. We thought maybe you went crazy and broke them.”

“Yes,” Emil grunted. “I went crazy. I took a piece of wood and I beat the hell out of them.”

He spent two miserable weeks at home, in bed. It was difficult holding in the frustration. There were so many hours in each day, and during most of them he tottered on the verge of shouting at his grandparents to leave him alone. Grandfather beamed, reveling in his newfound pride-he had a hero in the house, after all-and Grandmother pestered him with food. Grandfather read the paper to him, using his most urgent voice to say that General Secretary Mihai had announced his distaste for the corruption being practiced in some corners of the state security division. It was an urgent matter-the stability of the nation was at risk- and would be looked into. Grandfather smiled when he said that the General Secretary’s standing ovation had lasted seven full minutes. Sometime during those two weeks the refugee mothers who slept on the staircase disappeared. No one knew if they had found their sons, or if the supervisor had had them shipped away. Grandmother appeared with a bowl of cabbage soup and a crust of stale bread. Emil was beginning to hate all leafy vegetables.

On his second Thursday, he used his cane to reach the communal telephone on the landing. A Militia operator patched him through.

“Terzian.”

“It’s Emil.”

“You’re ready to come in?”

“I think so. You have something I can help with? Some work?”

“Sure…” He made clicking sounds with his tongue. “Two bodies. In Republic Park. Coitus interruptus.”

“Can I help?”

“I’ll bring the file by.”

As he hung up he heard movement behind him-the building supervisor, on her blue-veined, tree-trunk legs, puffy hands folded on her wide hips, stared suspiciously. He was the first one to use the phone in over a week, and her sweat-sealed brow said she would brook no nonsense on her landing.

True to his word, Leonek arrived a little after five with a folder under his arm. Hungry face, hungry eyes. Grandfather asked if he was called Mouse.

“Mouse?” He frowned at her.

“No,” Emil said quickly. “Not this one.”

“Dinner,” said Grandmother, her soft, lined cheeks flushed from the heat of the kitchen. “You should eat. With us.”

“My mother’s expecting me,” said Leonek. “I live with her.”

“That’s a good boy.”

Grandfather plied him with his bad cigarettes. “Come on, have one on me. Rolled myself.”

They withdrew to the bedroom and opened the file. Emil supported himself against the headboard, and Leonek sat at the foot of the bed, passing individual pages on to him.

“Here it is. Two kids, teenagers.” Leonek produced photographs of a boy and girl, both blond and half-naked, bent among the overgrown bushes along the eastern edge of Republic Park. Near the bush was a small splash of white vomit, also photographed. Then, a map of the park with the location of the bodies marked by two overlapping Xs.

The girl, Alana Yoskovich, had been strangled with her scarf. The boy, Ion Hansson, had been struck with an ax where his shoulder met his neck. The ax had not been found at the scene.

“You’ve done some work on this?” asked Emil, setting the photographs aside.

Leonek lit one of Grandfather’s cigarettes. “Of course. The evidence points to the girl’s father.” He took a drag and gave the cigarette an abrupt, fearful look. He jumped up and tossed it out the window. “Christ!” He blinked, recovering, and waved away the black smoke, then was back. “It’s simple: The old man finds young Hansson molesting his only daughter, and proceeds to kill him. Then strangles the girl-out of rage, shame, whatever.”

“And you’ve followed up on it?”

He settled on the bed again. The shifting mattress shot sparks through Emil’s sewn gut. “He’s in the holding cell. Hasn’t admitted to anything yet. We searched his home and a small dacha out of town they share with another family. But listen to this: not a single ax.”

Emil understood immediately. “With winter coming on? No ax?”

“Exactly,” said Leonek. “And rows of firewood up to my chin.”

“There’s another boyfriend?”

“No one knows of any.”

“And a mother?”

“Died. Back in’forty.”

“Boy’s parents?”

“Live in Cisna. He stays with an uncle, who’s been on business in Prague for the last three weeks.”

Emil let this settle in. He tried to see it from different angles in his head. It was a simple mental exercise, but something. Finally something after these empty weeks. “You’ve talked to the friends?”

Leonek smiled. “School’s out until next week.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“You’re sure?”

Grandfather stuck his head in and asked how the cigarette was.

“Terrific,” smiled Leonek.

Grandfather waved, grinning, as he withdrew.

“I am,” said Emil. “I’m very sure.”

The next day-Friday, the first of October-he came by the station. It took a lot of effort, hobbling down the stairs, then along the insecure cobblestones to the main street-he couldn’t move faster than a steady walk, nor raise his hands over his head. He didn’t know why the pedestrians looked at him-his wounds were hidden beneath his shirt, and there were so many real amputees and maimed citizens in the Capital that a pale young man waiting for a bus could not have deserved much attention. But they did watch him as they passed, and on the bus a woman offered him a seat, but he refused. Each bump and turn ripped through him. In the station, his shaky form limping toward his desk was the only thing to look at. He was the youngest in the room, but he looked like a pensioner. Leonek appeared next to him. “You aren’t up for this.”

“Change of scenery,” said Emil. He settled into his desk and again took the pens and ink out of his pockets. He took out Grandfather’s still-unlit cigars and the notepad filled with scrib- blings about his dead case. Everything into the drawer. His eye kept wandering the desk for telephone messages from her he knew wouldn’t be there.

The chief stood in his doorway, hesitant, as if preparing to tell Emil to come to him, then realizing his mistake. He said something under his breath and lumbered forward. Emil leaned back in his chair to look up at him. “Chief?”

Moska reached into his jacket pocket and placed Emils Militia certificate on the desk. He left his index finger on it. “This is yours, Brod.”

Emil looked at the chief’s finger, at the green, glazed cover with the imprint of the hawk, its head turned aside as though trying to ignore something.

The chief was plainly uncomfortable having an invalid in the station. But the others, after a few minutes, were relieved to have a chance to express their self-loathing. Big Ferenc said it outright as he brought Emil a cup of coffee: “I must apologize for the way I’ve acted. It’s unforgivable. I can only try to repair what’s come before.” His tight, sympathetic smile and eloquence were unexpected, and Emil, stunned, accepted the coffee.

Stefan brought a potato casserole his wife had made, his limp a little more noticeable today. “Russian recipe, but filling.” It was the first time he had spoken to Emil. He smiled then, winking. “Now I’m not the only cripple.”

Brano Sev did not approach him directly, but gave him a knowing nod and smile from his desk. Leonek shot Emil a wide- eyed look of warning.

The holding cells were right beneath their feet, reached by a long walk down the corridor, deeper into the building, through an unmarked door and down metal stairs into the blackness. The air was humid and stank of sweat. The bare lightbulbs gave a hard, contrasty light. The walls became vertical steel bars, and in the gloom behind them Emil saw faces buried in shadow. Gaunt expressions, hungry. He thought again of refugees. Leonek looked positively regal beside them. Cornelius Yoskovich was at the end, on the right; his bald head hung below his shoulder blades. When Leonek tapped the bar with a knuckle, the man looked up quickly, then stood. He was tall, his grimy, sleeveless shirt too short, exposing his navel. “Are you letting me go?” He had a voice like a radio announcer, like someone speaking to a crowd.

“This is him,” Leonek said to Emil.

Yoskovich came to the bars and held them in his fists. His beard was coming in, and his eyes were desperate.

“Where’s your ax?” asked Emil.

“I told them.” He looked at Leonek. “I told you, didn’t I?”

“Tell me,” said Emil.

Yoskovich released the bars so he could open his hands to them. “I don’t know. Disappeared. Stolen, I guess.”

“When did it go missing?”

“I’ve been through all this.”

Emil turned to Leonek-slowly, because the motion shot hot threads up his spine. “Is there a reason he’s giving me trouble?”

“I-” began Yoskovich. “I didn’t know it was missing until the police came. I used the ax last week. Saturday. For wood.”

“Witnesses?”

Yoskovich shook his head and whispered, “Only my Alana.”

At first, Emil didn’t recognize the expression that covered his face. Then he did. He’d seen it on the train, on his way back from Helsinki, on the faces of German villagers following Germany’s new borders out of Poland: heavy eyes finding nothing to focus on, mouth hanging loosely open, wordless and useless. The expression of someone who once had something and now has nothing. The look of someone who is staring into the abyss and can find no reason to keep on going.

No, he hadn’t killed his girl. But he’d done something. Emil would bet his fresh Militia certificate on it.

Leonek, Stefan and Ferenc took him out for drinks. It was Fer- enc’s idea, but the big man didn’t know until they reached the bar that Emil couldn’t drink anything but water and some fruit juices. He couldn’t even drink the coffee Ferenc had brought earlier. The bartender unearthed tins of pineapple juice taken from a shipment, he said, of abandoned American army rations. Very expensive stuff. Ferenc bought three glasses of it, and Emil drank out of kindness. It was sticky, and tasted of the steel it had come in.

“Who did it?” asked Stefan. He’d found a bowl of pumpkin seeds on the bar and was shoving his fingers deep into them. “Your holes.”

“We know who,” said Leonek. “But our hands are tied.”

Emil nodded. “Smerdyakov.”

Stefan wasn’t surprised. “You did throttle him, after all.”

“But I didn’t.” He tried to lean back on his stool, but it was more painful than sitting straight, which was also becoming unbearable. He grabbed his cane and pointed with it. “Can we sit over there? My back.”

They moved to a low table near the splintery wood wall, where the chairs could support him, and for their patience Emil took out Grandfather’s cigars. Leonek at first was wary, but Emil assured him they had been bought, not rolled, by the old man. The cigars were rough on the throat, dry from sitting around for so long, but tasty. Soon their corner was thick with smoke. Stefan waved his cigar when he picked up the thread again: “You said you didn’t do what? Didn’t throttle Smerdyakov?”

“I only knocked him over.” Emil shrugged. “I was going to hit him, but all I got in were a few slaps. Then, he-I don’t know. He shook!’

“Shook?” asked Stefan.

“You mean a seizure,” offered Ferenc, puffing smoke.

Emil thought about that. “Maybe.”

“You don’t know your literature.” Ferenc leaned into the table. “The name Smerdyakov comes from Dostoyevsky. A fool stricken by the falling sickness. The Russians love their epileptics-turn them all into holy fools.” He rolled ash into a small saucer. “Nicknames don t come out of nowhere. They come from Karamazov.”

Emil remembered eyes rolling to whiteness, arms and chest trembling.

“Yes,” muttered Stefan, understanding now.

Understanding, Emil thought, made the experience no less disturbing.

The others became drunk surprisingly fast, and Emil, stone sober, watched their steady decline. Their words became weak and overlapped; their bodies slid deeper into their chairs. Stupid grins popped into their faces unannounced, and there were sudden, unpredictable silences. Leonek, distracted by his own thoughts, fell quiet and did not really recover. Emil asked about Chief Moska.

“What about him? Where’s he from? Why is he…”

“The goddamn way he is?” asked Ferenc.

Emil nodded.

Ferenc and Stefan looked at each other, as though waiting for the other to begin, and finally Ferenc blurted it out: “The old guy’s wife is leaving him. What else?”

Stefan puffed three quick times on his cigar. “Not everyone has the perfect marriage.” He nodded at Ferenc, who shrugged.

“You get what you put into it,” he explained. “The chief has no time to put into his.”

“And me?” asked Stefan. “What the hell don’t I put into mine?”

Emil felt the tension rise between them, and tried to redirect: “What about my drunk fool over here?”

Leonek, deep in his silence, didn’t stir.

“He’ll be a bachelor until the end,” said Stefan. “What woman would live with his mother?”

Leonek finally stirred. He looked up, blinking himself into focus, and smiled.

“That’s right, eh?” said Stefan, patting him on the arm. “Isn’t that right? The boy, the devoted son!”

Leonek’s smile slipped away again, and he faded.

“I’ll bet you’re not married,” said Ferenc.

Emil shook his head.

“But you want it. I can see that.”

Emil said he didn’t know-he hadn’t thought of it-but Ferenc didn’t believe him.

“Kid like you, it’s all you really want.”

Once the cigars had burned down, Ferenc stood up-his own wife and daughter (that was a surprise to Emil) were waiting for him, and Stefan, also standing, teased him. “Tell your old bitch to sit down and wait, for once in her life.”

Ferenc laid an arm over his shoulder. “You’ve just proven my point.”

They gave Emil a comical salute and pronounced him the finest cadet they’d ever met. Stefan thought the rhyme was funny, and laughed the whole way out.

Leonek’s silence was hard to ignore.

Emil looked past him to the short bar, where men just off of work sat in their blue coveralls, drinking silently. The bartender, a man with blue-veined features, knew them all.

“Where were you?” asked Leonek, and Emil turned to him again. His dark face was covered in black spots where blood beneath the surface had collected.

“When?”

“The war-wait!” He raised a finger. “ Finland.”

Emil hadn’t realized how drunk Leonek was.

“The ovens. Did you see them? In your travels?”

He shook his head. “I was in the south. Ruscova, a village.”

“So you didn’t see it. Nothing.”

Emil drank the metallic pineapple juice. He was still, after three weeks, thirsty. “We saw some refugees,” he remembered. “From Romania. They said it was some kind of mania. Whole villages turned on them. Some stayed at our dacha.”

Leonek spoke loudly: “ My people. They did it to my people first.” He took another swill and banged the glass on the table. Beer spilled over.

Armenian, Emil remembered the Uzbek saying. Terzian was an Armenian name.

“In my family’s village the Turks took a whole family. Ten, I think. Yes. I was seven, and there were ten of them. The soldiers tied them together with rope. You know, from the back. Hands back here,” he said as he demonstrated with his own hands behind his back. “All of them connected so they couldn’t see each other. Their faces.” His hands were in front again, clutching his glass. “I watched from a ditch. They tied them so they couldn’t move, then pushed the family into a lake. One whole family. Sunk like a rock. First they screamed, then they were underwater.” He took another drink.

“And you?” asked Emil.

“Look at me!” He opened his arms and let them fall by his sides. “I’m here, right? They tattooed my father and took him away with the other fathers. We thought they were going to prison, but as soon as they were out of sight we heard gunshots. On our way out of Armenia we saw Turkish soldiers using knives. You know. Casually. Like cutting fruit.”

He slipped back into his silence. There were voices building in the front of the bar, jokes and sporadic laughter. Leonek’s black face was sweating.

“You all right?” asked Emil, leaning closer.

A tight, glistening smile. “What are you doing here? This job will eat you up.”

Emil opened his mouth, groping for an answer. Then he realized-with cool shock that drained into his arms and legs-that he had been let into this man’s head.

This story was the basis of Leonek Terzian. It was the root of all the choices he had made since that day when he was seven and watched a family drown, or saw his father grimace at the burn of a tattoo. It was the same as Ester watching her mother be dragged through the streets of Iasi. It colored everything that followed. It was why Leonek was devotedly living with his mother, and why he worked in Homicide, where the stink of death and the misery of humanity was thickest.

“Come on, then,” said Leonek. “Out with it.” His smile had become loose, more convincing.

Then he knew. For the first time. He had known it when he was in Finland and felt that need to return, when he saw the mauled woman on the street and knew it was too late to leave. He had felt it in all his love and hate for this city. He saw it in Lena Crowder s wonderful eyes when he closed his own. He tapped the table with his knuckles. “Because I want to be devoted.”

Leonek looked into his empty glass, then back at Emil. “What?”

He knew it all now, and the realization was a rush of pleasure like a clean, warm bath. “I want to believe in one place,” he said. “I want it in my blood.”

Leonek looked again into his glass, and smiled. “It’ll get into your blood, all right.” Then he did the unexpected. He leaned over the table and pinched Emil’s cheek, like a Ruscova grandmother wanting to make sure the sweet vision of boyhood in front of her was actually there, in the flesh.