The Cairo Affair

8

1991

Emmett and Zora were arguing.

“This is criminal,” he said. “Jesus Christ—can’t you see that? It’s sick.”

“What he do is sick. You don’t see what is in front of your nose?”

“And this doesn’t make it any better!”

“It is justice.”

“Starving? It’s medieval. Just shoot the guy if you have to, but this?”

Sophie had said nothing. They had descended into the musty basement, the distant thumps of shells still going off in the direction of the city, and under the harsh glare of an unshaded lightbulb they’d found him tied up and gagged in the corner. Pale and filthy, a blond beard growing out on his face, sunken eyes wild with terror and, briefly, a moment of hope that evaporated when he saw the old pistol in Zora’s hand. That was when Emmett had broken, waving his hands around, sometimes striking the low beams that ran just over their heads, sawdust and dirt raining down on them.

Sophie just used her eyes. She looked at the Croat soldier’s torn fatigues and saw crusted black blood on his sleeves and collar and thighs. She watched the heels of his filthy boots digging into the damp dirt, the bruised, glazed eyes rolling in their sockets, the sharp red marks in his cheeks where the gag pressed. Looking at him made her sick, but thinking of his crimes was worse. She imagined the jack-booted Ustaše rounding up bony villagers and driving them, packed in trucks, to extermination camps. She saw a laughing man holding a small girl’s ankles, swinging her against a brick wall, long blond hair flying. She thought of this man—this very one—drunk on rakija, drop-kicking a newborn, raping a bedridden woman. Suffocating her. She imagined herself on that bed, unable to get any air, the pain between her legs.

On the train to Prague, Emmett had said, This is what the rest of the world looks like. She’d had no idea, not really. Books, she felt all at once, had taught her nothing. Those who want to know, do. Harvard Square was Disneyland.

“Give me the gun,” she said quietly, but loud enough for them to hear, for they stopped in midargument to look at her. Again, Sophie said, “Give me the gun,” and held out her hand.

Zora at first looked surprised; then her face filled with understanding.

Emmett said, “No, Sophie. This is crazy.”

But Zora had already handed over the pistol, and Sophie felt the comfort of its weight. It was a dangerous world, so much more dangerous than she had imagined in Massachusetts. You needed something on your side.

Emmett stepped closer. “Give it to me. Sophie? Are you listening? Give it to me.”

Sophie put voice to her reasoning, though when she said it aloud she knew it was an excuse: “It’s mercy. He’ll starve.”

“It isn’t our place,” Emmett said, as if that meant anything. Hadn’t they come here believing that this was their place—that they were responsible for what occurred in these Balkan homes?

She raised the pistol.

“No,” he said, holding up his hands and stepping between her and the groaning Croat.

“Move,” she told him. Cold now. So cold.

“It is Sofia’s choice,” said Zora, approaching, “not yours.”

Emmett pushed her away and focused on his wife. He looked hard into her eyes, trying to read intent in them. He saw her resolve—she was sure he could see it, for at that moment he changed as well. Wearing an expression Sophie had never seen before, he stepped up to her. One long, purposeful step. Lips pressed tight together, he grabbed the gun by its barrel and twisted. She let him take it from her hand. This was her husband, after all. He was thinking more clearly than she was—that was obvious.

Then Emmett turned the pistol around in his hand so that he was holding the grip. He turned his back on Sophie, raised his arm, and shot the Croat twice. Once in the stomach, then once in the chest. The Croat tried to scream and cough behind his gag, kicking hard, leg spastic, blood seeping through the gag. Though they could see his death shivers so clearly, they only heard the high ringing in their aching ears. Then Emmett dropped the gun into the dirt, shocked by himself. Eventually—who knew how long it took?—the leg ceased its kicking, and the man sank deeper into himself in a final gurgling sigh. Zora, mouth agape, could only stare.

Sophie was shaking uncontrollably, the tears starting, yet she was still together enough to be surprised by how still and hard Emmett’s hand was when he put his arm around her and pulled her close.

They couldn’t go home that night, for a skirmish had occurred along the road they’d come in on. Bojan, the guitar still on his lap, was listening to updates on television, and he told them to wait until morning. He didn’t seem particularly upset that the Croat in his basement was dead. He just shrugged, as if someone had burned his dinner. Zora brought out the rakija.

Later, their ears still ringing faintly, she said, “I see it in you. In both of you. You are not tourists; you are not just passing through.” When Emmett accused her of having manipulated them, she said, “You overestimate. I just bring something for Bojan. I think you want to see. The pig in the basement—I don’t know nothing about him. How you feel?”

“Angry,” said Emmett.

“Cold,” said Sophie.

“You was ready,” Zora told Sophie. “You see the problem, and you want to fix it.” To Emmett, she said, “You are right—starvation is medieval. Sofia knows it, too. You watch out for her.”

“You’re delusional,” said Emmett. “You trapped us, and she was just—”

“No,” Zora interjected, wagging a finger at them both. “Stop pretending. I show you something, that’s it. And now it is our secret. Something between us. Our connection. No one will know.”

“Bojan will,” said Emmett.

Zora shook her head. “If Bojan survives winter, I eat my hat.”

Suddenly finding words again, Sophie said, “You don’t own a hat.”

For two full seconds they stared at her in silence, and then both Emmett and Zora burst into hysterical laughter. A quick release of the anxiety rippling through them. Sophie couldn’t laugh, not yet, for she understood that Zora was telling the truth: She hadn’t manipulated them into anything. Sophie had done the manipulating. She wasn’t even sure now that she believed the story of the Croat’s crimes, and what was most troubling was that this didn’t bother her. She thought of how she had felt on that bridge in Prague—vacant, naive, stupid—and wondered if she could ever become that way again.

They raised their glasses.

Zora said, “Our secret. What hold us together.”

Everything was just beyond her understanding that night, but by the next day, when they returned to Zora’s uncle’s house, she understood it better. When Viktor came by, it took only an hour for him to accuse the Americans of having had a ménage à trois with Zora, and so they went with that story, Zora even kissing them both in public. There was a kind of pleasure in this deception, and Sophie soon wondered why she had wanted to be naive again. She was real now. She was authentic. Decades later, when Zora offered her a new path to authenticity, she leapt at it.

Back in Boston, the job applications and interviews Sophie went to felt so unimportant, and employers could read the lack of ambition in her face. No one called her back. Emmett, on the other hand, applied himself with new fervor, redirecting himself toward diplomacy. “We didn’t understand anything there,” he told her one night. “I don’t want to be that ignorant ever again.”

She smiled and kissed him. “And I will be your wife,” she said, believing that this was enough. He had sacrificed himself for her, after all, and she would never be able to forget that. Much later, when she saw him looking handsome and strong in Chez Daniel, she would still think how lucky she was.