The Confession

19

I drove us through the busy evening streets, stopping for busses and trams and bicycles, until we were back among the unfinished towers of the Ninth District. We parked half in a ditch, and I worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it out later on. Claudia was outside with her chickens again-she stopped to give me a severe nod. She was still waiting for me to pick up her drunkard brother, and no doubt Magda had been filling her head with advice to pester me. But this time she chose silence.

Agnes opened the door. She wore a knee-length dress I had never seen before, with a pattern of purple-and-yellow flowers. She stood on her toes to kiss my lowered cheek. “Do you remember Leonek?” I said. “Leonek, Agnes.”

Leonek kissed her hand, and, over his head, she winked at me.

“Where’s your mother?” I asked.

She nodded toward the kitchen, then Pavel trotted in from the bedroom and gave Leonek two high barks.

Magda’s hair hung over her face as she brushed a plate of chicken bones into the trash can. When she looked up at me, I could hardly see her through the strands. She brushed them away with her wrist and smiled. It was the first time we’d really seen each other for a while, and momentarily it was as if nothing bad had ever passed between us in the provinces.

Then it came back to me: Stefan, his choking breaths beating out of him as he writhed over her breasts, her clean smooth belly, her face.

“You’re late,” she said.

“How was the train?”

“Well, it got me here.”

I went to a cabinet for the wine as she washed the plate off in the sink and set it with other dishes on a towel. “You know Leonek, right?”

“Sure, yeah. I don’t remember the last time I saw him. A year ago?”

“His mother died recently. So he might be a little strange.”

“I see.”

“Come on, then.”

Leonek stood up stiffly when we came out, Agnes folded on the sofa beside him. He kissed Magda’s hand with purpose. It reminded me, if I needed the reminder, that Magda was really quite beautiful; she could still stop a man in his tracks.