The Confession

11

I called the Militia switchboard in the morning and coughed through my lie. The operator took it as easily as she’d taken all the other calls that morning, finishing with a knowing Take care of yourself that meant more than a warning about illness.

Agnes and Magda left together, and I sat with Pavel and the newspaper. My coffee became cold. Although the fighting in Budapest would go on for a few more days, it was evident to The Spark that the battle was over. The Hungarian agitators of reaction are shrinking back into their bullet-riddled holes. They were defending from broken windows. And the Americans, despite their proud radio talk, were staying out of it.

There were only a few lines about the demonstration: Yesterday, an unwelcome scene appeared on our streets. Hungarian and other foreign elements staged a counterrevolutionary riot that quickly exposed their violent intentions. Four brave members of the People’s Militia were injured restoring order.

I was preparing to take Pavel for a walk when the telephone rang. It was Moska. “How are you feeling?”

I hesitated. “Sick. I feel sick.”

“So do I, Ferenc, but I can’t do anything about it. Other than Brano and Kaminski, this place is deserted.”

“Oh.”

“Listen. Your disappeared woman has been found.”

“Svetla Woznica?”

“Third District. Central train station. Ferenc, they picked her up for prostitution.”

“For what?”

“When they brought her in, someone noticed the missing person’s report, so they called over here. Are you too sick to pick her up? I can’t leave the station.”

“Can’t they drive her over?”

“Too short-staffed. Seems half their men are out with the flu.”

The Third District Militia station had been moved when its previous home-the old royal police station on Bishop Albert Street, later Engels Street-caught fire in 1952. The cause of the fire was never fully proven, but five Party officials who had, before the Liberation, been high in the Peasant Party were blamed. The charge was subversion, and they were executed. The new station was a concrete slab built on the ruins of a bomb-damaged apartment building. Flat-faced, four floors. It stood out on a street of Habsburg homes. Above double doors, a blue sign told visitors in flat, unadorned letters: MILITIA, DISTRICT III.

The old desk veteran who took me to the basement cells muttered about all the young men who had called in sick. “Forty-three years, and not a day missed. What’s this? They don’t fool me. Not one minute. Lazy. ”

I wondered if he really believed that. “What about this girl?”

“She wasn’t even hooking for money,” he said as he turned on the corridor light.

“What?”

“Ticket. She was selling her goods for a train ticket. Can you believe it?”

“Where to?”

“Does it matter?”

Svetla Woznica was behind a steel door with a barred view-window. She was curled up on the cot in the back corner, and though I didn’t look close, her bedpan smelled of fresh vomit. From the ceiling, a fluorescent light buzzed.

When she rolled over to look at us, at first I didn’t recognize her. Her upturned nose was ringed by a purple bruise where someone had hit her, and above her thin cheeks her eyes bulged out.

“Svetla Woznica?”

She used an arm to help sit up. Her hair was chopped strangely, as if with gardening shears. “You’ve come.” Her voice cracked.

“You going to take the whore?” asked the veteran.

I squatted beside the cot. Her skin, where it wasn’t bruised, was as white as a corpse’s. “Can you leave us alone?”

The veteran hesitated. “You’re not-” he began, then shrugged and walked out, closing the door behind him.

Svetla’s smile exposed a few missing teeth. “Want a good time, mister?” The Russian accent was more apparent now. “You’re very big, aren’t you?”

“How long has it been?” I pointed at her bruised forearm.

She looked at it too, and shrugged. “Yesterday morning. You got some?”

I tried to lay out the questions in my head, but the stink was distracting me. “Svetla, tell me why you left your husband.”

Her mouth opened behind her closed lips, as if she was going to be sick again. But she found her voice. “That prole bastard.” She rubbed her face. “Do you know? Did you get it out of him? Of course you didn’t.” She trembled in a way that reminded me of him. “He had the drug. It was for him. Then when Papa went back to Moscow Malik said, Svetla, you want a try? It’s very nice.” She closed her eyes. “It was nice, just like he said. But he didn’t say how you need it. Because that,” she said, tapping her temple, “ that was his plan. First a little, it’s for both of us. Svetla, we share. Then all of it, all the medicine for my little Svetla.” She was remembering with her expressions, half-crying, half-laughing. “You know how it is? At first it’s very good. And then it’s better.”

I watched her bruised nose, her squinting eyes, understanding slowly. “The morphine?”

“First morphine, yes. Then pills and needles with no names-names I don’t know. I’m a whore, not a doctor. Not like Malik.”

I swallowed.

“At first, you know, it was not bad. Then he said, You need rest, my Svetla. I know a spa in Southern Bohemia.”

“Trebon.”

She shook her head. “But we didn’t go to Trebon. I knew, I could tell he was driving to the mountains. To that dacha.” She covered her mouth with a hand, eyes big. “That was,” she said. “That was when it was very bad. He wanted to know what he could do to his little Svetla when no one could hear. He found a lot of things. He’s imaginative.” She uncovered her mouth. “And when he wasn’t doing his things, he moved me around. That prole’s so smart. He said Svetla, we exercise you so you don’t have bedsores, we make sure you don’t die. Like a very smart doctor.”

I started to say Why? but I didn’t know what that meant, or what the answer could be.

Her smile was wide and thin, and flattened out her emaciated face as she read my mind. “I wanted to go home. I want to go home.” She glanced at the steel door. “Malik, he wanted a quiet wife. He said, a good wife. He made me a good wife. You stay here, Svetla, with me. In that room with the lock. And no windows. He showed his love with a needle and his prick. You know what I mean? He dressed me up, put all that makeup on my face, and gave me this lovely hairstyle.” She touched her chopped bangs. “Needle and the prick.” She looked very tired. “And now. Now you take me back, I know. I know this. I’m a crazy whore, but I’m not stupid.”