The Confession

20

The silence hung over us as we dug into the bean soup, then the paprika chicken, forks and knives scraping plates, glasses pressing to lips, quiet gulps, water and red wine. I saw Agnes place a sliver of chicken in her lap, glance to the side and toss it to Pavel, who silently gobbled it. When she looked up again I gave her a sharp shake of the head. Magda glanced at Leonek, who was focused on his food, then looked at me. I smiled, but she didn’t. I said the most benign thing that came to mind: “A Frenchman told me recently that plot is dead.”

“What?” Magda asked, leaning forward as if she hadn’t heard.

“Plot. He says that no one’s doing it anymore.”

She grinned. “In the West maybe. Was that Georgi’s poet?”

“It was.”

Leonek looked up. “What are you talking about?”

“Literature,” I said.

“Oh.” He nodded at his plate.

Magda tried. She told us about the hour-long line she’d stood in, waiting for beef, but when she reached the front, all that was left was chicken.

While she spoke, Stefan’s pale flesh came to me again, and I couldn’t muster any comment. Neither could Leonek.

But her stamina was high. She launched into a description of her factory. “Textiles, we even make the Militia uniforms. Well, the shirts at least. Lydia works opposite me on the line, and she makes jokes about undermining quotas every time she leaves for a cigarette. You should meet her sometime, she’s hilarious. I’ll set you up.”

Leonek smiled politely but said nothing. I leaned down and scratched the mosquito bite on my ankle.

Magda watched him return to his plate; it was almost empty. “Would you like some more?”

“Thank you, no,” he said through a mouthful. “It’s very good.”

“I told you it would be,” I said. At the end of the table, Agnes was bent toward the floor, feeding Pavel, but I no longer felt like reprimanding her.

Magda refilled our wineglasses, then turned to me with round eyes and tilted her head in Leonek’s direction.

“Are you on a case now?” I asked.

His tongue searched behind his lower lip. “The city’s pretty quiet. Except for those students, maybe.”

I couldn’t see Agnes at all; she had vanished behind the edge of the table.

“Students?” asked Magda.

I shrugged. “Demonstrators.”

“Oh.”

“Otherwise,” said Leonek, “not many homicides.”

Magda spoke again, but slowly. “On the way home today, I saw two men in front of the cinema. I’ve never seen them before. They were pretty destitute. They had long coats, both of them, and through the flaps I could see their old prison shirts. Striped, you know?”

Leonek seemed to wake a little.

“They looked menacing to me, standing with their hands in their pockets, and when they watched me pass I was a little scared. I don’t know what they were thinking.”

I said, “I can imagine what they were thinking.”

“No-not that. I know that look. They were thinking something different.” She paused. “But you can’t really read faces, can you?”

“Sometimes you can.”

“They’ve been through a lot,” said Leonek.

We both turned to him.

“After the funeral, I talked to one of them in a bar.” He thought a second, eyes glazed, then returned. “Slavery. That’s what it was. And after years of being watched over by guards, after the malaria and executions-yes, that’s what he told me: They often executed men in a field near the barracks. After all that, what can you expect from someone?”

Agnes was in her chair now, paying attention. She stared at Leonek with something approaching wonder.

“Remember in August?” he asked me. “Just before your vacation. There was that Ukrainian. He came back from the camps and beat his son to death because he’d become a clerk for the Central Committee.”

“Lev Urlovsky,” I said. “He was at the Vatrina Work Camp.”

“Yeah.” He leaned forward. “When we arrested him, he showed no remorse. None at all. It was strange to see.”

“After killing his own son?” said Magda. “That’s horrible.”

“Agnes,” I said, and it took a second for her to hear me. “Agnes, take Pavel for a walk.”

She sighed loudly, but got up and left the room. Pavel followed, nails clicking on the floor.

“You don’t know,” said Leonek. “You just don’t know what they’ve been through. The Turks were going to take my father to prison, but they shot him instead.” His hands settled on the table, on either side of his plate. “Maybe he was lucky.”

I heard the front door open and slam shut.