The Confession

8

“ Jesus, Ferenc. What did they do to you?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t even smile. Because I knew this must all be a dream. And I would wake soon to the bugle call and rotting mattresses and truncheons.

The female desk clerk at the Hotel Elegant-not Tania-was reluctant to give us a room when she saw me, and Emil had to use his Militia certificate to persuade her. “Don’t destroy the place,” she said as she handed over the key.

I took a long bath. Emil had been speaking ever since he picked me up, pausing only to puzzle over my silence and try to think of something else to say, but I hadn’t heard a word. The water blackened very quickly, so I emptied and refilled the tub. My sores hurt when I squeezed them dry, then scoured them. My hair had been shaved again the previous week, but the lice had returned to infest the little hair that had grown, so I used a razor to shave it off again. As I dried I caught myself in the mirror and understood Emil’s horror.

He was talking again when I came out, something about how he’d had to drop the Malik Woznica case because there were no clues, but I only said, “Did you know prisoners built this hotel?”

They were the first words I had spoken, and by the look on his face I knew they were the wrong words. “No. I didn’t know that, Ferenc.” He spoke the way one speaks to an injured child.

“I’ve got to admit,” I said, trying to sound human again, “I haven’t heard a thing you’ve said all this time. I’m sorry.”

He dropped onto a bed. The sun was beginning to shine through the cheap curtains. “I didn’t say anything important. Anyway, I bet you’d like to sleep on a real mattress.”

“Oh God,” I said, and fell into the other bed.

When I woke up, groggy and aching but rested, it was nighttime. Emil was out, but by the time I had gotten up and washed another time, he appeared with a small suitcase. “What’s that?”

“You’re not going to live in those striped rags, are you?”

Inside were clothes I could hardly remember after these months of prison garb. They were clean and pressed-perfectly. “Where did you get them?”

“Magda packed it all.”

“Did she try to come with you?”

He looked at the bed. “No. I suppose she didn’t think she could take it.”

“Leonek?”

“What?”

“Is she with him?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know, Ferenc. No one tells me a thing.”

“But you’ve seen them together.”

He looked away, nodded.

I didn’t ask anything more, because a part of me knew this all along.

In my clothes again, I almost felt like a man. My face was still battered, but my suit covered the sores, and when I walked the chafing reminded me that I was back with the living.

In the hotel restaurant I ate too much and had to vomit in the bathroom. When I returned I passed Tania at a table with a camp guard. She noticed my face and muttered something to the guard, who looked at me and nodded. But as I sat down I realized that she had no idea who I was.

The next morning we drove south, to Pocspetri. Emil didn’t tell me until we were halfway there that Lena had lost the child. “Emil. I’m sorry.”

He tugged down the sun visor. “I suppose we should just stop trying.”

“Has she been checked out by a doctor?”

“A dozen times. She’s physically fine. It could be her nerves, or the drinking. Probably the drinking.”

“Then try it again after she stops drinking. That’s all you can do.”

“Pick yourself up and try again? We’ll see.”

We reached the farm by eleven, the sun bright over the rolling orchards, lighting the dirt road winding past the cooperative offices and down to Teodor and Nora’s house. I could just make out Nora standing on the front steps, hand shielding her eyes, watching us approach.

“You’re going to stay here?” Emil asked as he looked ahead along the road.

He was smiling as if the question were funny. I wasn’t sure why, until I looked ahead to where Nora was waving beside the Skoda I hadn’t noticed before. I reached to twist a ring that wasn’t there. From a distance it looked like Nora, but it wasn’t.