The Bridge of Sights

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

They crossed the Georgian Bridge and parked near the arched footbridges leading into the labyrinth. It was quiet here-no farmers shouted out their vegetables, and no engines rumbled- so their footsteps on stone, and the fifth step of Emil’s cane, echoed before them. They walked in perpetual shadow. Faces peered through slits in yellowed lace curtains, and some pensioners came out to their stoops to watch Emil and Leonek pass. In place of engines, there was the quiet murmur of water smacking stone. Cats in windowsills kept track of them.

After a few turns, they were in an area of the Canal District Emil had never been to before, not even when he was younger and curious. “We aren’t lost,” he whispered involuntarily; it was a question.

“You’ll get to know this place well,” said Leonek. He whispered too.

It was quickly apparent that everyone knew they were Militia. Hesitant glances and mistrusting frowns shot their way. The prostitutes smiled at them, because a single pair of policemen with law enforcement on their minds wouldn’t have a chance back here. Emil noticed the young one who had whispered to him before. Her freckles peeked out from beneath powder, and when she whispered to one of the veterans he caught sight of her milk teeth. She moved now with the smooth grace of the broken, as if she had nothing left to lose.

A redheaded, barefoot hooker cut the distance between them in half. “There’s four of us, Comrade Inspectors.” Her voice was smoky and rough. “That’s a mighty good time.”

Leonek smiled and touched her arm lightly. “Maybe we’ll come back for that, Beatrice. But this time it’s easier money.” He took a few bills out of his pocket.

She folded the koronas until they were a tight, tiny package she could slip into her mangled stocking. “How easy?”

“Your brother. Where is he?”

She pouted playfully. “ Inspector. What kind of sister-”

“Just business, Bea. It’s always just business.”

Dora’s address was in the center of the Canal District, in the grimy back passages where water trickled loudly-Emil heard the occasional high pitch of rats. It was a small courtyard still named after a dead king, and Dora’s front door was a soft, waterlogged plank that stank of the sea. There was a worn hole instead of a handle. They climbed the narrow, damp stairs where light came in through a shattered window, and knocked at one of three doors at the top.

There was scurrying inside.

“Dora! It’s Terzian. Want to open up?”

The movement stopped, but then they heard a faint shhh from someone’s lips.

“I just want to talk, Dora. It’ll be worth your time.”

A lock snapped, and the door opened a few inches. An eye appeared from the gloom, looking at them jerkily, one and then the other. Then the door opened the rest of the way, and a thin, graying man in his forties stood in boxer shorts and an undershirt. He had a thick white scar along the side of his neck. “What is it?” His voice was high like a child’s.

“Some help,” said Leonek. He showed more bills, but returned them to his pocket. “Can we come in?”

Dora’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of help?”

“We need you to set up a meeting. Simple stuff.”

Dora retreated into the room, where a fourteen-year-old sat in a corner, her bare, scratched knees pulled to her chin. Her makeup had been smeared by old tears, but she smiled at them.

“Hanna,” said Dora. “Get out of here.”

She looked at the visitors again, then at him, and went into the next room. When she stood up, Emil noticed the black needle marks on the pale inside of her left thigh, and maybe that was what did it.

Dora sat on the edge of a cracked coffee table, bare feet spread, and stuck a cigarette in his mouth. “Who’s your kid?”

“Inspector Brod,” said Emil, but he was no longer seeing clearly. What he saw was that first week, the humiliations, the fighting, the gunshots. He saw the unfounded, nearly fatal suspicion all over again, felt it grinding in his gut. The suspicion caused by this one wretch. He saw the abused girl who had just left, saw the freckled hooker who was once a girl and now completely broken, and he saw Liv Popescu and Alana Yoskovich rotting in their graves because of the same kind of sickness. He saw those faceless schoolgirls who now walked the Capital as women who had known more of this man than they ever wanted. Emil’s hands were ice cold. “Inspector Emil Brod,” he said, making his identity completely clear.

He waited for it. Dora lit a match, but the flame didn’t make it to the cigarette. He had no doubt learned what had followed his stab in the dark- There will be a spy…

His hand lowered again, and his face fell slack.

Emil swung before he could gather himself, fist connecting with bony cheek. Dora’s feet lifted from the floor a moment, then he fell back off the coffee table, sprawled across the floor.

Leonek’s shock paled him.

Dora propped himself up with a hand and wiped his nose with the other. It came up with blood. “What the fuck is this, Leon?”

The urge was all over him now: to jump on Dora and beat him unconscious, to take a blade to him. He couldn’t even remember why he hated this man, but the hatred was running him now. For a moment he was sure that if he killed Dora he could get them all back. Janos Crowder, Aleks Tudor, Irma. Lena. Maybe even Filia. Ester.

“Fuck!” shouted Dora.

Leonek found his voice, but all it said was “Emil y “ pleading. Emil’s breaths were shallow and loud as he walked out.

From the mossy square he could hear Dora saying that he wouldn’t be treated this way, not by anyone, for no amount of money, and he wasn’t going to help a single fucking cop again, it wasn’t worth it. Then he was quiet while Leonek counted out koronas and tried to convince him otherwise.

Water dripped from a ledge, and between the stone houses he thought he saw things moving. It was early afternoon, but cold and damp.

Scraping. Their voices again.

Hanna looked down at him from an open window. Her smile was still there-a vacant, bruised one. She had wiped her eyes, but instead of repairing them the makeup had streaked to her temples.

“Is Hanna your real name?” he asked in a high whisper.

The smile deepened into her pale cheeks. When she nodded, her dark, stringy hair bobbed around her ears.

“Where are you from?”

She glanced back into the apartment, then hissed, “Presov” “I knew a girl from there,” he lied.

She leaned farther out the window, and he saw how thin her shoulders were. She reminded him in some unnamable way of Ester. “Really?” “A beautiful girl.” “More beautiful than me?”

“Hardly,” he said, and a mist of color came into her cheeks. “How long have you been in the Capital?”

“Six weeks,” she said. “And three days.”

“Are your people here? Your family?”

She shook her head.

The adrenaline had faded, and he was getting a pain in his shoulders from looking up, so he backed against a wall. “My name’s Brod. Inspector Emil Brod. Do you think you can remember that?”

“Inspector Emil Brod,” she repeated. “I’m very bright.”

He wasn’t sure if she was making fun of him. “I work in Homicide. Our station is in the First District.”

“I’ve seen it,” she said. Very seriously.

“If you need anything, you come to me. Okay?”

She looked at him blankly.

“Hanna? Can you remember that? Anything, whatever. I’ll try to help.”

She nodded, still very serious. Her brow was stitched tight. Then she looked back into the room and disappeared. Dora took her place. Sadly, there was nothing left on his face of the punch, though Emil’s knuckles were still sore. “Get out of here, Inspector!”

Leonek was stepping sheepishly down from the front door.

Emil showed Dora his teeth, then growled.

“Christ, Brod. What the hell is going on?”

Chief Moska glared from his side of the desk. Someone had partly repaired the radiator, and it hissed in the corner, a thin line of steam shooting from a loose bolt. The window had been opened to air the office out.

“Nothing, Chief.”

“What’s t/ns?” He leveled a thick finger at Emil’s bruised face.

“A fight, Chief. Happens all the time.”

Moska settled on his elbows. He lowered his voice. “What about Berlin? You went?”

Briefly, Emil wasn’t sure what to say. “I made a visit.” He knew the man wanted to know as little as possible.

“And how was it?”

When Emil spoke it came out as a long exhale: “It’s a city that makes you think, Chief.”

A smile finally cracked his features, and he leaned back again. He looked ready to laugh. But instead, he scratched his scalp, fingers knuckle-deep in his gray mess. “There’s a whole world above you, Brod. You know that, right?” He dropped his hand to the desk. “That’s why I’m here. I’m the one who has to listen to their worries. They say, Why do we have complaints from a politicos about your new inspector? I have to have an answer. I tell them what I can, and sometimes I even ignore them. But they’re not the bad guys, Brod. They’re just like me. Someone above them is asking questions, wanting answers. So when they come to me I must have answers, or at least promises.” The chief paused to look at him, and blinked once, slowly. “They say someone in the Central Committee wants a rookie on this dead songwriter case, don’t waste time with good men.” He touched his chest. “I say okay. Later, they say the same committeeman wants that rookie off the case, wants the case closed. I promise, because I’m a loyal servant, that this will be done. I haven’t lost you in all this, have I, Brod?”

Emil shook his head.

“Good. Because sometimes I make promises for other people. You. I promise you’re no longer involved in this case. It’s a promise I can keep, isn’t it?”

The chief had given him everything he needed-had asked him a question and given him the answer. So Emil nodded soberly. “Yes, that’s a promise you can keep.”

Moska’s tongue rummaged around in his mouth. They did not misunderstand each other. “Go on, Brod. Go do your job.”

His job consisted of waiting. Dora would not get back to them until the next day, Tuesday, when they would wait in a cafe for his phone call. Dora would contact the people he knew, the ones who knew Michalec, and either it would happen or it wouldn’t. Emil wasn’t sure what he would do if the deal wasn’t accepted. He floated through the afternoon indecisively, and during long bouts of silence had the uneasy feeling that he might be near the end of his life. He was a young man, but if Lena was dead he felt an obligation to follow through with certain measures that would certainly be fatal. And he realized then that he had achieved what he had told Leonek he truly wanted: He had achieved devotion.

Leonek brought him home for an early dinner. The house was a low, two-room shack on the edge of the city, just before the farmland, with an outhouse and a well. It had once been a servants’ quarters to the large house Emil could just make out on the horizon, beside a black stretch of woods, but after the Liberation the land had been chopped up and redistributed. There were other hovels peppering the field, and a few makeshift tents where families lived until they could build. It reminded Emil of the Tiergarten.

Seyrana Terzian wore her long past on her face. Emil thought he saw the roads of Armenia in her cheeks, and the other countries she’d had to go through to get here. She said only the obligatory greetings to Emil and served them a lentil-and-apricot dish she called mushosh, which he ate ravenously. This pleased her, and she finally smiled. She listened as the men talked. Emil told them about Helsinki, the Arctic, and Ruscova. He said his life was not something you could base a movie on, and Leonek said that their life-Emil noticed he never said my life-was a movie that couldn’t be made. Armenia to Yugoslavia, then Bulgaria, Italy and here. Poverty and violence all along the way. The life of a refugee was not photogenic.

“Then you came here.”

Leonek nodded. “After a few more countries, yes. You go where they’ll take you. The king was feeling liberal the month we arrived. He even let me go into public service.”

Seyrana nodded a steady agreement, occasionally wiping her eyes.

“And here you are,” said Emil.

“A simple life.”

“Not so simple.”

“Extremely,” said Leonek. “It’s just me and mother.” He smiled at her, and she patted his hand on the table with her own shriveled hand. “Look at the others,” Leonek said to him. “Ferenc is writing his novel, can you imagine?”

“A book?” Emil had trouble imagining it.

“You didn’t know?” Leonek grunted and raised his eyebrows. “Why do you think he’s typing all the time? Those aren’t reports he’s working on. He’s been writing that book as long as I can remember. And Stefan is a magician at rebuilding engines. Any time you have trouble with the car, bring it to him. Astounding work. Even the chief.”

“The chief?”

“He paints. I guess you couldn’t know that. Landscapes. Really very beautiful. But me? All I do is sing. Sometimes. And not very well. And I’m a detective. Not the best, but I make do. And there’s you.”

Emil didn’t answer. He was wondering as well.

“For you, Her Highness.”

“Who?”

“Madam Crowder.”

Emil smiled, but then there was no energy to sustain it. He looked at his empty plate.

They discussed the case while Seyrana was in the kitchen. Emil told him what he had learned, the details of Janos’s blackmail. “This went on for a while. Six months or so. With his money he left his wife and got an apartment in town. But along the way something happened-maybe excess greed, I don’t know. Michalec felt he had to kill him.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Leonek, his hand on his rough, dark chin. “You saw how much money they were dealing with. Who’s stupid enough to screw that up?”

“Whatever happened, Janos was scared they were going to kill him, so he booked a flight to Berlin.” Emil smiled at Seyrana coming back to sit down, and decided to avoid mention of Janos’s sexual tendencies. “There is one possibility, though, for what screwed all this up for Janos.”

“Aleksander Tudor,” said Leonek.

Emil nodded. “Tudor knew about the boxes of money. He was that kind of supervisor. And he could get inside the apartment whenever he wanted. Maybe he had found the picture, or at least those ten pictures Janos had taken of Michalec meeting the German colonel. Maybe he wanted something out of it.” He shrugged. “Too many people in on a conspiracy, and it starts to crumble. Janos was killed, and Tudor knew he was next. I thought he was just a nervous man when I met him. But he had reason. He knew he was going to die.”

“Please,” said Seyrana. Emil enjoyed the heavy sound of her accent. “No more death at the table, okay?”

“You were in Italy?” Emil asked later, remembering.

Leonek shrugged, Seyrana nodded. She set down plates of sadayify syrupy shredded dough. They gave proper attention to the dessert before Emil picked up the thread again.

“Venice. Did you see Venice?”

Leonek smiled and shook his head. “No, but Trieste, yes. It was a gorgeous city.”

“But terrible without money,” Seyrana said finally.

“Youve seen Venice?” asked Leonek.

“I’ve heard of it,” said Emil. He described the Bridge of Sighs, trying to tell it as the Croat had, but knowing he couldn’t do it justice. “You know when you’re on the bridge that all hope is gone, and you’re now and forever a prisoner. Behind iron bars.”

Leonek leaned back and lit two cigarettes. “I don’t think I want to go to Venice; sounds like a sad place.” He handed one to his mother, then got up. “Before I forget,” he said as he found his leather satchel in the corner and brought it back to the table. He set his fuming cigarette on the edge and took a pistol out of the bag. Not a Walther, but a Marakov 9mm. He set it on the table. “Be careful-it’s loaded.”

Seyrana raised her weathered hands and muttered something in Armenian, a loud moan of misery.

“Come on, Mama.” Leonek frowned at her, and she rattled an angry stream of abuse at him, her brows shifting, hands fluttering about her face. “You better take it before she does something crazy.”

Emil held it in his hand. It was heavy.

“Go on,” said Leonek, ignoring his mother’s shouts. “In your pocket.”

Emil dutifully dropped it into his jacket pocket.

Seyrana seemed to quiet a little, but the abuse continued, even as she collected the plates.

“We could go through the paperwork,” explained Leonek, “but Christ knows how long that would take. It was faster to go to Roberto for your weapon.”

Emil smiled, a sudden, unexplainable joy overcoming his despondency. It was the gift of the gun, the mother, and Leonek’s love for the old woman. He put his hand in his pocket, felt the cool barrel.

“Good God,” said Leonek. “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

He felt like laughing.

Emil went home and took Janos Crowder’s 35mm Zorki from the shelf where Grandfather had displayed it beside the books. He walked a few blocks to a photographic studio that was still open, where a man in a white smock with a gold front tooth loaded it for him. He explained some of the details of taking photographs, emphasizing light. “If in doubt, more light!”

He brought their electric lamp from the bedroom. Then he turned on the overhead bulb.

“What the hell?” asked Grandfather when he came out of his bedroom into the radiant living room. It was almost eight, and the old man had been napping again. The spot on his jaw was pink. He went out to the balcony for a cigarette and watched suspiciously through the door.

Emil used a book at each corner of the photograph to flatten it, shifting until the shadows from the books did not obscure the two men and their Iron Cross. He adjusted the focusing ring to the approximate distance between him and the photo. He raised the camera to his eye. The button the photographer had said to press was stiff, but finally he heard that click.

He adjusted the diaphragm and shot it again. Again.

When the roll was done, he sat down and smiled. This was the first smart thing he had done for as long as he could remember.

Through the door, he saw the back of the old man s head, smoke rising from it. He got up and joined his grandfather on the balcony. There were seven women down by the six spigots, one waiting for her turn. Grandfather passed his cigarette over, and Emil took a drag, but didn’t give it back. He blew smoke over the railing, where it formed a loose cloud before sliding away. Grandfather cleared his throat. Emil said, “You’re going to have to talk.”

Grandfather grunted. Neither acquiescence nor debate.

“This will go on.” Emil didn’t look at him as he spoke because he didn’t want to pressure the old man. “It will get worse, and we’ll grow to hate each other. So you have to tell me because I don’t want it to come to that.”

“It’s not your business,” Grandfather said finally.

“Everything is my business.”

They settled on that for a moment as more women and a thin man showed up with pails and others left. They heard metal striking metal, and water spilling to the cobblestones. Grandfather took out another cigarette and lit it. His voice wavered now and then, but it pushed on, reluctantly, to the end.

“When we came back here from Ruscova, when you were still up there, abroad, the Capital was mad. You’ve heard stories,” he said. “The starvation, the violence. The Russians.”

“I’ve heard a little.”

“It’s all true, and you’ve only heard a fraction. For a while people really were starving. A month, I’d say. They hadn’t organized the distribution well, and nothing was getting where it was supposed to go. People were desperate. When they’re desperate, when they think they could die at any time, they act differently. Terribly.”

The Arctic had been no different. He looked down on the fat women in the square who were the result of wartime starvation- they ate everything now. Grandfather said that on some days they couldn’t go out at all. There were gunshots outside, and they had to sit in the dark and wait for them to pass. Then, he would go out looking for food. “It’s hard to imagine now, but for a few weeks this is how the Capital was.”

“I’ve never heard this before,” he said. “Why haven’t I heard about this?”

Grandfather’s eyes were almost dry, and his thin lips moved spastically before his voice came: “Why do you think?”

They rewrite history like if s their own goddamn Tolstoy novel

He shrugged. “I’m sure you know about how the Russians were then. Mara likes to ridicule them, but she’s right in some ways. They stole everyone’s watches. They were like children listening to their ticking watches. In the street. Wherever. They took them off of dead bodies. And if it was a very nice watch, they might kill for it. They took what they wanted. I can’t make excuses for them,” he said, shaking his head toward the sky. “I know what they can be, both good and bad. They’re a people of extremes, Emil.”

He looked out over the city, over the windows and clay roofs and women with pails and the broken fountain and the dogs sniffing around it. His voice was even and quiet, and he told the story to the city, not to his grandson. It involved two Russian soldiers. They came to the apartment when he was gone foraging for food. The soldiers came looking for watches. They banged on the door, and when Mara did not answer they kicked it in.

Grandfather didn’t describe them, but Emil imagined the soldiers from the bar outside of town. Loud, scraping fabrics, nervous pistols, acne.

Mara Brod hid her dead son Valentin’s watch in the wood stove, and gave the soldiers her husband’s broken wristwatch instead. One of them wound it and listened. He shook it and listened again. They were both very drunk. They smelled of cigar smoke. Then they raped her.

The old man was welling up as he stared at the city, and his mouth kept slipping into nervous smiles. He squeezed and released the arms of his chair.

“That’s when I came back. They had her on the floor. I saw her there and…I don’t know how to say it…I saw her seeing me seeing her. I couldn’t move. They were still…and I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. It was-I could only fall down.” He was crying now like he had then, shaking all over, the chair clicking against the balcony, saying, “You have to understand, they had guns. One to her head…”

Emil was cold from head to foot.

When they were finished, they gave Avram Brod a pint of vodka. “A thank-you, they told me. Then they were gone.” His weeping sounded choked and small, like a child’s.

Women’s voices came up from the square.

“I just want someone,” he began, then shook his head. He looked at the sky. “I just want someone to make it better. Worth living. You see?”

Emil didn’t know what to say. He was praying the old man would not ask to see his father’s watch.

“We have everything here,” said Grandfather. “And we have lost it all. You. You’re everything we have left.” He was finally looking at his grandson.

He was so old, and Emil was still so young.