The Bridge of Sights

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

On the edge of the Fourth District, just east of the old administrative center, Victory Square had been built in the midst of defeat. Luftwaffe bombs had decimated this northern bank of the Tisa, then Soviet bombs expelled the Germans and turned the rubble into dust. By Liberation, it was a vast square of negation, a noncity inside the Capital. But General Secretary Mihai, with the financial backing of Comrade Chairman Stalin, had other ideas. He repaved the roads and began building. He crisscrossed the area with wide boulevards, their names reflecting the names in every other city under the Empire s shepherd eye. Liberty, Gorky, October, Progress. And from the rubble that had symbolized the nations history of inevitable military defeats, a huge concrete intersection had been constructed around the statue of a strong man and woman with rolled sleeves sharing a torch held aloft. The intersection had been named Victory.

Gazing past the spastic windshield wipers, Emil realized with some dread that they hadn’t agreed on a corner. He left the car in Victory Park and used his cane unsteadily along the wet concrete. He had no umbrella, and his hat quickly flooded as the gusting rain came at a sharp angle into his face. Between two light poles, a wind-tossed banner proclaimed: unity industry collectivization-onward the future!

He moved gradually around the endless edge of the roundabout, stopping when the traffic blared before him. His cane splashed in puddles as he crossed each of the eight roads. He passed the wide steps leading up to the one government building here, topped by the sculpture of a hawk at rest-the Central Committee chambers, its rear facing the river. The wet, cold air was hard on his weak lungs, and when he finally saw Lena stepping out of a taxi on the far corner of the square, he was out of breath.

She was in a crisp, rain-speckled overcoat that looked like it had never been worn before. A wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses hid her face. She tensed visibly beneath her black umbrella when she saw him making his way back across the streets, then crossed one in order to meet him sooner.

“I have a car,” he gasped. She followed him silently toward the park. Despite the glasses, he could feel her gaze locked on his cane, on his limping form. He opened the door and made sure her head didn’t hit the roof, then got in on his side, throwing the cane in first. She had taken off the hat and glasses. Tasseled hair and brilliant, bloodshot eyes.

He started the engine to obscure the sound of his labored breaths. The car became hot, stuffy. “You want to tell me?” he finally managed.

She leaned forward, quickly, and placed a small, warm kiss on his cheek. Then she pulled abruptly back. “Drive, please.” He was driving before he had decided to.

He took them westward along the Tisa. He checked the mirror a number of times, and forced himself to twist around to point. “See? We’re not being followed.”

Her eyes followed the line of his finger out the back window and down past the Georgian Bridge. During rainstorms the city’s dust settled and you could see the empty outbound boulevard for miles.

When she spoke, it was a whisper: “You’ve been hurt.”

It sounded good to Emil. Soft, concerned. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re using a cane.”

“Nothing,” he repeated. “What about you?”

She turned to look out the back again, then sank into her seat. The hot car was unbearable now, and she cracked her window. The wet air hissed. He almost didn’t hear her say, “They’re trying to kill me.”

Although he could not have admitted it to himself, he knew she was going to say this, or something like it. It was the inevitable end point of her behavior. It was no small part of his adoration. He could smell the alcohol on her breath, and her paranoia was apparent. He turned north into the maze of medieval Fifth District houses and parked at the curb. He shut off the engine, then painfully faced her. “ They?”

“Him, they-I don’t know.” She opened her silver cigarette case and waited for him to light the one she put in her mouth. She exhaled toward her open window, but the smoke rolled back inside. “They, he, broke into the house. Tore apart the second floor, looking for I-don’t-know-what.”

“When was this?”

“A week ago. Well, we found it a week ago. After I saw you last, Irma and I went to Stryy.”

“Stryy?”

“Up north,” she said. “I told you. I took my father’s ashes back home. Then, when we came back a week ago, the house was a wreck. I called you. Immediately. But a rude woman said you were on leave. Where were you?”

He was uncontrollably pleased that the reason she hadn’t called him before was that she hadn’t been in town, and that as soon as she returned she had tried-but he only said, “Go on.”

“The woman patched us through to the district police, and they poked around. A bunch of imbeciles, of course.” She clutched her cigarette, filling the car with her smoky breath.

She shot him a nervous smile, and he felt a tremor of pain in his side. She was really very beautiful. “What did they take?”

“Nothing” She stared at the dashboard. “Not that we could find. No jewelry, money, nothing. Irma spent the whole week cleaning up, such a job she did. Then the phone call came.” She took another drag, but forgot to even try for the window. A cloud hung between them until Emil opened his own window and the cross-draft sucked the air clean. Water dripped from the window frame to her overcoat, but she didn’t notice.

“A call?”

“Same as before. The same voice. The same one who called when Janos was dead. It wasn’t your people after all.”

Figures passed in the rain, women and men wrapped against it, jogging from doorway to doorway. The storm was beginning to let up. He noticed a clear drip forming on the tip of her pale nose, and fought the urge to wipe it.

“It, he said. He knew I had it. He said that it didn’t belong to me. Said I should hand it over before I ended up like Janos. That’s what he said.”

Emil started the car and took them around cracked walls and wet pedestrians. He didn’t know how much to trust. He wanted to trust it all, but she was drunk and frightened and maybe a little manipulative. Even so, he wanted to believe every word that came from her lips.

“And you don’t know what it is?”

“If I did, I’d hand it over, wouldn’t I?”

“That would depend on what it was.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the window.

“When did the call come?”

“Last night,” she said to the window, and when she brought the cigarette to her lips her hand shook. “I need a drink.”

They were beside the Tisa again, driving west. “You said Janos came back to you before he died.”

She nodded.

“And he didn’t give you anything? No gifts? Nothing?”

When she looked at him, a familiar, ironic smile had appeared. “Janos thought he was gift enough.”

They were passing half-built blocks that gave way to large, open plains.

“You’re taking me back!”

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He could ask someone to stay at her place. Leonek, maybe. He owed Emil at least that. Someone who could fight back if necessary-not an invalid. “This person wants something. Right?”

“That’s what he said.”

“If he kills you he won’t have it.”

She closed the window. “That didn’t help Janos, my dear inspector.”

The rain had let up, but the long driveway to the Crowder house was marked by black puddles and long tire tracks. The stone walkway was dark with wetness as his cane tapped along it. He could hear birds, but couldn’t see them in the low trees surrounding the house. She walked ahead of him, and all he could think of were the dreams he’d had of her while lying in the hospital.

“You’re going to have to tell me about that cane, you know.”

“I thought as much.”

The door opened by only the pressure of her hand. She stopped and stared. When her eyes focused, she caught her breath and bolted inside. He hobbled up to join her.

Irma was lying at the foot of the staircase, arms hanging out like logs beside her, trying to breathe through a smashed nose and swelling cheeks. She blinked behind blood-stained strands of hair, and they could barely hear her whisper as Lena lifted her head into her lap: “He’s still here”

Then they heard it: the bark of an engine outside, a high whine, tires spinning in mud.

Emil moved as fast as possible, jumping into each step, ignoring the pain, and saw a short, blue car-a make he wasn’t familiar with-spraying mud as it rocked through the driveway, laboring over lumps and puddles toward the road. Emil dropped his cane and ran after it. The pain ground inside him, but he pushed it down. The car slid sideways, then caught again. He was sprinting now, and the engine whined in his ears. Dark blue, no license. He was close enough for the mud to spit across his face as the tires climbed forward. Then the pain jumped again, into his chest, suffocating him. He opened his mouth, but all that came was mud. He was almost at the fender. Then he wasn’t. There was something on his chest, squeezing the air out of it. The car dwindled in the distance, turning onto the main road, and his vision dimmed. He dropped into the mud, unable to move, gasping, his lungs two useless bags heaving inside his bullet-scarred chest.

Lena helped raise him, her narrow shoulder under his. She didn’t notice the mud smeared all over her coat, or that her shoes-her feet, now that her shoes had become stuck a few paces back- were deep in it. Nor did she mind the tracks they made across the marble, the sitting-room rug, and all over the sofa she dropped him in. She was remarkably strong for her size.

“You’re bleeding!” Lena kneeled beside him and unbuttoned his shirt.

He’d already known it; he could feel the bite where each suture in his belly had ripped loose. She pressed a soft white towel to him, and it came up red. He took the towel from her hands and used it on his face.

“You need a doctor.”

“Irma needs a doctor.”

Irma, on the chair, was wiping her own face with a towel.

“Tell us about it,” said Emil.

“Not yet, Irma.” Lena stood up. She looked lost, touching everything. “First, yes. First, a doctor.” She reminded Emil of shell-shocked soldiers-he’d heard about this from veterans. The bounciness just before their explosions.

But he looked at Irma instead. He had his window-it would soon close. “Now,” he insisted. “If you can.”

Lena’s brief hysteria passed, and she sank, cross-legged, to the floor. She was still in her dirty raincoat, her bare feet thick with mud.

Irma talked out of the side of her mouth, as though the right side were filled with pebbles. The man had come soon after Lena went to meet Emil. He wore sunglasses and knocked at the front door. He had been caught by the rain, he said, and had lost a tire on the main road. “But he didn’t look so wet,” said Irma. “I should have seen that.”

“And you let him in?” Lena asked.

She shook her head. “I remembered what you’d told me. I asked him to wait, but he didn’t wait.” The man shouldered his way inside and began rifling through Lena’s cabinets and drawers. Irma followed him, explaining that he would have to leave, that her mistress would return soon with a policeman. The intruder finished with the drawers and moved on to the bookshelves.

They looked around. Half the books from the shelves covering the wall lay scattered on the floor.

“I put a hand here.” Irma placed her fingers on her own shoulder. “He slapped me then. He had white gloves. Soft. And he asked me where it was.”

“It?” said Lena, “it?”

Irma nodded as vigorously as her blood-puffed face would allow. She didn’t know what it was. She told the man as much, but he began beating her, and as his fists struck he repeated the question: Where is it? Finally, he gave up and returned to the shelves. He took each book and flipped through it very quickly, as though speed-reading, catching any slip of paper that fell out and looking at it before going on to the next title. He shouted sometimes out of frustration: It’s here, isn’t it?

Lena looked at Emil, then at her maid. “And he never said-”

“Never.” Irma s grainy voice had acquired an edge of impatience.

There was little more to the story. When Emil’s Mercedes rolled up the drive, she had tried to make it to the door, but the intruder was on her again. He beat her face and chest until she collapsed on the stairs. Then he ran to the rear of the house, where he had parked his car.

“Can you describe him?” asked Emil.

“Tall,” she said resolutely. “Light hair, old eyes.”

“Old eyes?”

“Wrinkled. Dark.” She closed her own eyes. “His face was thin. He had-I think-a German accent.”

“German?”

She looked at him again with wet, red eyes. “I’m sure. German.”

Emil took out one of the nine photographs still in his pocket. He showed it to her. He pointed at the man who was not Smerdyakov, the one who had said: Comrade Emil Brod?

“Oh God.” Her bruised head nodded with conviction.

“Go,” Emil said. “Both of you pack some clothes.” He felt himself sinking.