The Confession

88

All four of them arrived, Leonek and Emil with guns drawn. Kaminski smiled at everyone. I wanted more from him. I wanted some kind of pleading, something to let us all know that now he was finished. But he only smiled as I gathered the audiotape and Emil and Leonek lifted him and took him out to the car. Louis and Nestor sat together on the sofa. Louis said, “What about us?”

“What do you think?”

Nestor was tipsy-Lena had kept him drinking. He smiled grimly. “I suppose it’s time for me to pay back society again.”

Louis was a French national, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to charge him with anything. He was a fool, but that had never been much of a crime in our country. So I drove him back to the Metropol. He and Nestor hugged on the dark street, and Louis kept apologizing, but Nestor was serene. The alcohol must have helped.

As we got into the car, I glanced back at the hotel. A white-haired man in the lobby stood and approached Louis. Jean-Paul Garamond did not look happy.

Kaminski was already in a cell, and Leonek and Emil were waiting for me. They stood to the side as I filled out forms for Nestor’s detention, then Moska showed up. He was tired and confused and a little angry that he hadn’t been told what was going on. But he got over it. After Nestor was taken away we went to a bar. I wanted to be drunk, to gain Nestor’s serenity, but intoxication only made me feel sick. I couldn’t quite hear what the others were saying. One thing I did make out was Emil’s confusion over something Kaminski had said. “He told us that by tomorrow no one will give a damn about him, or Nestor, or anyone. He said tomorrow everything is going to be different.”

“What does that mean?” Moska asked.

Emil shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

Leonek wagged his head over his glass. “I don’t wish I did. I’m very glad not to know a thing.”

I felt the same way. I wanted to forget Kaminski’s last words to me- That will be the end of you — but memory and knowledge are the killers of serenity. Then, around one, when we were all too drunk to read a thing, a heavyset woman came in, red-faced, frantically waving a special late-night edition of The Spark.

“God, oh God,” was all she could get out, repeatedly.

Leonek swiped the paper from her, and as he moved it back and forth, trying to focus, he looked baffled. “It’s Mihai,” he muttered, maybe to us, maybe to himself. “He’s dead.”