The Bridge of Sights

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Emil expected the Russian to pull over to the side of the road, place a pistol to his temple and shoot. He wouldn’t have had the energy to fight it. But then Schonefeld Airfield rose out of the predawn gloom. “You may wonder,” the Russian said, smiling as he drove, “and be afraid to ask. Really, you shouldn’t be afraid. Just ask.”

Emil’s voice was hoarse: “Why?”

“Because,” he said, “this is not for us. This is for your people. If you want to make trouble with your men, your politicos, as you say, then the people’s representatives of the Soviet Union would not consider standing in your way. Each of our socialist brothers acts independently, and this is for the good of the whole. You follow?”

Emil nodded, then said that he did understand.

“Your own state security may take some issue with you, but we don’t. We are for freedom and international peace.”

Emil wanted to laugh, because it sounded like a joke, but didn’t. As they drove through the gates, the Russian showed an ID to a guard who waved them on.

“Anyway,” he added, “you certainly didn’t kill those lowlifes. They’re the kind of men you hire to do the kind of thing that was done to them.” He parked in a lot and ran around to open the door for Emil. They began walking to the terminal. “I’m Andrei,”he said. “From Tblisi, you know? Georgian Republic. Good luck finding your man.”

He shook hands with Emil outside the airplane, and held his forearm firmly. A wink and a smile. Ruddy cheeks. All the way up the steps to the plane, Emil waited for the bullet in the back of the head. But it never came.

He searched each face and ignored any taxi driver who approached him. He hobbled to the edge of their crowd and woke an elderly driver dozing beneath the morning’s Spark. More airplanes covered the front page, more exclamations.

It was Sunday-the Militia station wouldn’t be open until tomorrow-so he directed the driver home.

In the Third District they had to wait at an intersection for a parade to pass. Children with red flags held high. Girls with red kerchiefs and boys with red suspenders. Their song sounded familiar. He folded his arms in the backseat as the driver hummed and waved at the children and the portraits of the Great Economists, as a writer in The Spark had called them. Emil closed his eyes. He saw nothing but failures.

Janos Crowder, Aleks Tudor, Irma-

God, he had forgotten her family name again.

So many dead, it left him numb.

Lena was the only thing left. Maybe.

A few uniformed Militia followed the marching boys and girls, and waved the taxi through.

Grandfather looked disapprovingly at Konrad’s clothes before Emil changed into his own. Grandmother boiled tea. They buzzed and whispered, but did not speak to him. His abused face kept them quiet. He went out to the telephone in the corridor.

As he listened to the ringing on the line, he had a hopeful dream of escape-air or train, no matter-back to Berlin, but with her-find her and drag her along-she packs something small-a few dresses and hats and shoes-he brings nothing but a handful of Ostmarks for the Brandenburg guard, and maybe a joke in Russian. Then they would be through.

Maybe a coffee with the American officer at Brandenburg, whatever he wants to know, then another excruciating flight. To Hanover, or Frankfurt. The West.

Filia had asked him why he didn’t stay over there, in the West. The truth was that he didn’t know how to live anywhere else.

He hung up when it was plain there was no one home at Leonek’s. He had never thought to get Leonek’s address, then a word came to him from the back of his mind: Bobia.

Swiftly, gratefully. Irma Bobia.

“Who did it?” Grandfather finally asked. He pulled up a blistered balcony chair he’d brought inside. He touched his face to make himself clear. “Those.”

“A Nazi,” Emil said, and rolled in the sofa to face the ceiling. He wondered what would happen to his grandparents if he left.

“Nazis.” He sighed. “They’re still around? I thought the Red Army made good meat of them.”

Emil closed his eyes. He wondered if they would be put under house arrest. Sometimes that happened to families when traitors ran out on utopia.

“Shut up about your Russians,” snapped Grandmother. She almost barked it. She replaced Emil’s cold tea with a fresh one. “He doesn’t want to listen to your claptrap.”

The light was hazy through the windows. Emil blinked toward the sky. “Do you know the time?”

“Seven o’clock,” said Grandfather.

He had tried the telephone at least ten times and considered visiting all the bars and cafes in the Capital to find him, but went to bed and tried, again, to focus.

Lena had been taken. Fact.

Unlike the others, she had been dragged out of Ruscova, not executed where she stood. So maybe she was still alive, somewhere.

He could try to force his way onto the estate, but Michalec would be prepared for him. He would only join that long list of dead. Lena’s doom would be sealed.

He had nothing. No leverage, no power. Nothing.

Around four he woke from a cold, dreamless sleep to shouting from the next room. Grandmother’s voice quivered at a hysterical pitch, a sound Emil had never heard from her. Grandfather’s voice was staccato and weakly defiant. Then louder, more angry. Emil covered his head with the blanket and tried to sleep, but the walls were like paper. It was as if they were shouting in the room with him. This was one sleep he needed more than any in his life; he needed to be unconscious. Words floated through- Grandfather called her a whore and an ungrateful cunt, words he’d never heard him use against anyone. Sharp slaps. Emil was on his feet then, the cold hardly touching his half-naked form, the impulse carrying him through the door, where Grandfather’s hand was raised to hit her again. The old man was shouting hoarsely, his face twisted in pink fury. Emil caught his hand on its way down, and used a quick fist on his jaw. Grandmother gasped-she was falling back into the sofa-and Grandfather tumbled to the floor.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

But she wasn’t listening to him. She was on her feet and then crouching beside her stunned husband, the trace of blood on her lip quickly licked away as she whispered and lifted his head into her lap.

She woke him at eight by sitting on the bed and stroking his hair. She did this all the time in Ruscova, before the Jews came. He remembered enjoying how much she enjoyed it.

“I’m sorry,” he said groggily, but he wasn’t. He would do it again. He hadn’t gotten much sleep, thinking of how he would do it again.

She tilted her head from side to side and smiled. The corner of her lip looked a little swollen, but her eyes were sky blue in the light. They had an unreal quality that Grandfather’s dark eyes could never have. She picked at her eyebrow. “Your grandfather’s a little stupid sometimes.”

He nodded into the pillow and slid up against the headboard. “What was it? The argument.”

She shook her head. “It’s from a long time ago.”

He furrowed his brow, and she pressed a warm hand to his cheek.

“It’s time for you to get up.”

Leonek’s mother answered again. “This is Emil Brod. I called the day before yesterday.”

“When?”

“Saturday.”

Emil waited. Finally a wary male voice said, “Yes?”

“It’s me.”

“Emil! Thank God it’s you. Let’s meet.”

“Why?” This morning he felt the full, deep knowledge of his powerlessness. It had taken all night to seep into his bones, but now it was there, in his marrow. Leonek was saying something. “What?”

“I said, it’s not all bad.”

That didn’t make any sense. Emil leaned against the railing as some children scurried and laughed on the ground floor. It was utterly bad.

“Emil? You there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, listen to me, okay? Last night I went to Lena Crowder’s house again. I searched everywhere. Nothing was coming up. Then I remembered those pictures you had. You remember them?”

Emil said he did.

“You found them behind the icebox,” he said. “So I went to the kitchen, and there it was. It had been tied up.”

“With twine.”

“Exactly. A photograph. I recognized Smerdyakov right away. And get this: He’s accepting a medal from a Nazi officer. Can you believe it? Emil?”

Leonek picked him up in the Mercedes with the smashed headlights, and his face fell when he saw the bruises. “ Christ,” he said as he drove. “You really are the world’s punching bag.”

“Let me see the photograph.”

It was a large print that had been folded for so long that a white crease cut down between the two men sharing a medal. The difference was that it was a photograph of a photograph that was lying on a floor.

“This is it,” said Leonek. “Right?” He squinted at some soldiers crossing the street.

Emil held it up in the sunlight, then returned it to his knee. He began to think clearly again.

She was not dead. Michalec was a killer, but he did not kill without reason. He knew this photograph was still at large. Michalec worked according to the logic of self-preservation. Others make the rules. We can only try to live by them.

When they trembled over the tram tracks at Yalta Boulevard, Emil saw what he had to do. A swift, immaculate vision.

“Can you get in touch with Dora?”

“Dora?” Leonek sounded doubtful. “Why do you want that son of a bitch?”

“We need him.”

Leonek gazed ahead at nothing in particular. “Did you hear about Liv Popescu?”

Emil shook his head.

“They took her to the holding cells north of town, and she used her prison clothes to hang herself from the pipes.” He turned at the next corner.

A bruise on Emil’s cheek was beginning to itch. He scratched it. His organs felt hard and cold. Outside, parade banners were on the ground, and crowds of drunk soldiers were mindlessly trampling political slogans.