The Bridge of Sights

CHAPTER SIX

He was on the road, gliding past crowds of proles migrating home from work, their faces suddenly alert to the shiny, immaculate black Mercedes-no doubt a remnant of the German occupation-passing them. A couple of half-built apartment blocks rose on the outskirts, just the beginning of what was called in the papers equal housing for all The professors, it was said, would live alongside the peasants and factory workers in the concrete homes of the future. He shifted gears and felt the anxiety of that miserable station unravel.

He’d only driven one other car in his life, the Academy practice vehicle, a KIM-10 with Rostov plates that spent most of its time on concrete blocks in the shop. When it was let out, it sputtered and jerked like a lame horse. This Mercedes took the corners like a cat. The Tisa flowed to his left, and the sun caught in his rearview.

The construction disappeared into farmland. Small houses and a tiny one-room bar lay on the corners of wheat fields, and when the hills began he saw the first of the huge homes. Some were built-up farmhouses, the land around them either tended by renters or gone fallow. Others were the mansions of the old world. He’d heard in the Academy that General Secretary Mihai kept two houses out here, one for himself and his family, the other for a mistress, but that was the kind of rumor schools produce.

He was anticipating the Crowder interview, his first. As he had learned in the Academy, there was a window of opportunity in the interrogation of widows-just after she has learned of her husband’s death, and just before the shock has worn off. In this window any question can be asked and answered with authority and clarity. Its length varies with each widow-for some it is only a minute or two-but it can always be taken advantage of. This was a theory of interviewing that originated in Moscow and had been field-tested repeatedly. He outlined his precise use of this window, his questions and alternate lines of inquiry.

But when he turned up Lena Crowder s poplar-lined drive, the questions slid away as the jealousy caught in his throat. Compared to this big, two-story house covered in brown vines and surrounded by tall, manicured hedges, the puny apartment that Grandfather insisted his family cherish was a pitiful joke.

Another huge Mercedes was parked in front of the house-a white and gleaming 540K-and when he stepped out, his foot sank into the soft grass. The afternoon sun was unforgiving, but the air was easy and clean. He filled himself with it. Pink and violet flowers wilted in the heat. Flat stones formed a walkway to the front door, where he paused and touched its etched glass. It was a spiral, ornate design he had seen a lot of in Helsinki. The door opened before he could find the bell, and a short, stunned woman in a maid s uniform stared up at him, surprised. She held a pail of dirty water.

“Comrade Crowder?” said Emil. “She’s in?”

The maid glanced back quickly into the house. “Maybe-”

He opened his Militia certificate. “Now, please.”

She retreated a step as he came in, and water sloshed up the sides when she set the pail down. She walked quickly, almost running, past thick-framed portraits, lamps and a broad, curving staircase. At the end of a brief corridor, she disappeared through a side door.

Emil followed. He tried to ignore the chandelier above him, the long marble stand balanced by two porcelain vases, and the enormous bearded faces on the walls. But he couldn’t. Finally, he made it to the door-heavy oak polished to a reflective shine- and found the maid in a deep room bent over a long, white- gowned woman stretched on a white sofa.

“Show him in!” called the woman, and the way her words slurred and slid, he knew she was drunk. She waved him forward and fell back, then used an arm to raise herself again. It was cool here. The only light was the orange dusk through the windows, but as he approached, her details became visible. Black hair bobbed around a thin neck, and her wide, pale face was marked by small, dark features. Lena Crowder squinted, trying to make him out. “More police?”

“Militia,” he corrected quietly.

“The difference,” she said, “is no difference to the rest of us.” She sighed loudly. “At least I can see your face this time.”

He stood in front of her coffee table-no longer local peasant crafts, but something that belonged to a Paris of the East-and held his hat in his hands. He couldn’t manage any other pose. “Comrade Crowder,” he began, trying to remember the right words, “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Her expression fell, and he noticed how thick her lips were, how damp. Then the smile came back as a red, angry thing. Her voice was thick too: “Who died now — my mother? No-she’s already dead.”

The hat slipped from Emil’s fingers. “You know? About your husband?”

Her anger was replaced by a stumbling, buoyant prettiness as she tried unsuccessfully to light her cigarette. She held the lighter out to him-a man’s silver piece-and as he lit it her face went bright in the sudden flame, her pale cheeks smooth as china beneath coal eyes. She looked up at him and spoke smokily around the cigarette. “You really must get your communication straight.” She leaned back. “Is this how you run the security of our socialist utopia?”

He sank into an overstuffed chair. He felt awkward and overgrown, his knees leaning together. She shifted her legs on the sofa beneath her gown, and white, manicured toes appeared briefly, the nails a wet-looking burgundy. “Irma!” she called. “A drink for the inspector!”

“No, thank you.”

Lena Crowder’s tone dropped: “Don’t refuse me in my own house.” Then the smile returned. “You were saying?”

He rubbed a temple with the tip of his finger. “I want to apologize for the confusion.” He noticed his hat on the rug, a little distance away. The rug was thick and white, like her dead husband’s blood-stained one. He looked at her. “Do you mean we already informed you of your husband’s death?”

Lena Crowder picked tobacco from her lip. “At least you come in person, yes?” She waved the cigarette. “A telephone call. What’s that? When you breed in equality, you breed out manners. That’s a scientific fact.”

Irma set down a glass of something clear with crushed ice, then left again.

“Drink,” said Lena Crowder.

It was cool and lemony and potent. The outside of the glass was slick with condensation, and he had a sudden, irrational fear he was going to drop it. “If you want,” he said, “we can talk later. I just have a few questions.”

“Just ask, Inspector. The quicker we can end this.” She threw a hand into the air, and it fell limply to the side of her thigh. “Irma!”

The far door opened immediately.

“For me?” She held her hand as if there were a drink in it.

Emil found himself staring at the side of her thigh. When he realized she was looking at him looking at her, he took out his notepad and looked at the scribbles instead. He cleared his throat. “Your husband. Did he have any enemies? Of which you are aware?”

“Only those who knew him.”

Emil raised his head.

“That’s a joke, don’t you see?” She laughed, not very convincingly, then took another drag and shot smoke into the room. “He was nasty to be around when he’d been drinking, no doubt about it. But enemies ^ 7. Janos? An infectious little man. He was always that. You do know we were separated?”

He shook his head.

“The organs of state security at work. I thought you knew everything.”

“I’m not state security,” said Emil, “and I’m not with the police. Homicide is a division of the People’s Militia, and we only know what people tell us.”

She accepted the drink Irma handed her and tested it with a frown. Her voice came out thicker, clotted. “Six months. That’s how long we were separated. Maybe a little more. Still married, yes, yes.” She waved her hand again. “That kind of thing drags on, but he lived in town, and I lived, well, here.” She opened her hands to display her world of oak cabinets and framed portraits and French lounge pieces.

“So, no enemies?”

“He had bill collectors, but as far as I know they just disappeared.”

“What kinds of bills?”

She shrugged. “ Living, what else? Food, drink, women”

“Women?”

“Suspicion, intuition. Nothing you would call hard evidence.”

“When did you last hear from him?”

She opened her mouth as if to let another casual remark spill out, something she might find funny and expect him to be amused by as well, or horrified by, but nothing came. She closed her mouth again. “A week ago,” she said. “He came to see me.”

Emil’s pencil was poised above paper.

She took another swill, then set her drink down. “What he said was he wanted to come back. To me.” She looked into her empty glass, eyes glazed. “That’s what he said. He said six months was much too long, and he knew now what he had always wanted. And that was me.” She pointed at herself with a finger that touched her chin. “Me. “ She smiled thinly.

“Didn’t you believe him?”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t have?” Her smile was gone. “You know, there was a time when I mattered to him. Sometimes that’s enough, just knowing you matter. He even used to show jealousy. He called me an unredeemable flirt.” She paused. “But then not even that mattered to him.”

“I-”began Emil.

She dropped the glass and threw her face behind her thin fingers, instantly sobbing. There was no transition, no warning, just a sudden plummet into tears.

Inexplicably, he almost cried as well.

Irma appeared out of nowhere, arm around her mistress, and whispered things Emil could not make out. But he was already standing and retreating to the door. He could think of nothing else to do; the Academy’s limits were becoming more apparent by the second. “I’ll be in touch later.” His voice sounded weak. “When it’s better.”

Lena Crowder did not look up.

Irma met him at the front door with his hat. The walls had muted the weeping. “Be easy on her,” she whispered, and Emil recognized her accent-the southern provinces, maybe near Ruscova. She had ruddy, loyal features.

“Where are you from, Irma?”

She held out the hat and blushed marginally. “You wouldn’t know. It’s south of Sighet. Vadu Izei. Just a village.”

“Of course I know Vadu Izei,” he said. “My family came from Ruscova.”

She blinked at him.

“See?” he said. “You think you come from a small village.” He accepted his hat and slid the brim in a circular motion with the tips of his fingers. “When did they call Comrade Crowder?”

Her face went serious again. “About Master Crowder? Yesterday.”

“Early? Late?”

She thought a moment. “Before dinner.”

He placed the hat on his head and nodded thanks before going out into what had quickly become a purple, breezy night. His hand in his pocket came up with his father s watch and its soft, soothing tick. The other hand held the black garter he had forgotten to show the widow. His hands, he noticed, were trembling.