The Confession

2

Her parents’ modest farmhouse looked exactly as it had when I first saw it-1935, October. I can mark only a few things in time. Magda was a lithe schoolgirl who spent the days in class being ogled by my best friend Stefan and me, and after some unbearable amount of time, I was the lucky one invited to her house for lunch on a Friday afternoon. Sixteen years old, and I was already hers. Storm clouds had overrun the sky then, like now. A warm wind rolled over the orchard-covered hills.

Teodor was outside, eyeing the car before I turned off the engine. His washboard face was crossed by scars and pits. Farming had done it to him, that or the 1949 collectivization push. At family gatherings there were always veiled allusions to commissars starving them out of their complacency.

“Ferenc.”

“Teodor.”

We shook hands, and he asked how long the trip had taken. He always seemed to think he could judge the value of a man or a day by the economy of travel.

“Two hours, about.”

“Some good time, that.”

“My daughter around here somewhere?” I asked.

Teodor nodded at the house, and as we approached it he spoke beneath his breath: “How about my daughter?”

“Your guess.”

“Don’t be smart.”

“She’s in the city, I suppose.”

The old farmer opened the door for me, and Pavel, our black-and-tan dachshund, trotted up and let out a short bark.

Magda’s mother’s baked apples smelled sweet and fruity-it was all she knew how to cook. She came out of the kitchen, wiping fat fingers on her apron, and gave me a kiss. Pillow cheeks and thin lips.

“Hello, Nora.”

“Hello yourself.” She didn’t need to ask the question; she only needed to look significantly over my shoulder at the empty doorway.

Agnes stumbled out of the guest room holding a book and squinting through thick, black-framed glasses. “Hello, Daddy.”

Fourteen years old and, even behind glasses and foggy with sleep, showing strong signs of her mother’s lazy beauty. I could smell the boredom of these three weeks all over her.

We ate Nora’s meager potatoes and paprika outside in the shriveling, bush-lined private garden, shaded by the house. A dusty breeze from the apple orchard made the napkins tremble on the worn wooden table. Teodor kept on with his questions about the condition of the road, the shape of his dacha, and, after these practicalities were out of the way, the writing. “Is your book still in print?”

“It’s not,” I admitted as I finished the meal. “Maybe once I get this other one finished, they’ll print more, but not now.”

“And when will this second book be done?” asked Teodor. “It’s been-how long?”

“Four years,” said Nora, but without judgment.

“It took ten years to get that first one out,” I said.

“Daddy’s going to write a proletarian novel,” said Agnes. It was the second time she’d spoken since I arrived, and in her long grin I read a lovely irony.

“Like that man?” asked Nora. “What was his name?”

“I don’t know what I’ll write.”

Magda’s father leaned forward. “You mean you haven’t started? ”

I wanted to explain, again, that I was a militiaman. Maybe I had only one book in me-that was okay-and now I could go back to what I actually was. And lead, at least generally, a virtuous life. The brief celebrity had been good, the friends I’d made-the literary clique led by Georgi Radevych-and the supplemental income. Although the primary proceeds of the book went into the state bank, a personal allocation had bought the Skoda sitting outside, most of Agnes’s better clothes, and the big German radio set back at home. But now, the writing was probably finished. It certainly hadn’t come at the dacha, once my wife had left me again, and the last two weeks had been an unproductive alcoholic misery.

But I said nothing. I forced a smile and looked at Agnes in order to forget the old farm couple waiting for that next book.