The Confession

12

I signed the forms and took her and her small bag of clothes into my custody. We drove along the Tisa as I tried to make up my mind. It was his word against a morphine addict’s. He’d gotten rid of the lock on the bedroom door, and she had taken the rest of the morphine and the other drugs he’d used to keep her incapacitated. There were no witnesses. Malik knew all of this, and that was why he had felt secure enough to face the People’s Militia when regulations required our entry-and, ultimately, to use us to retrieve her.

“How did you get away?”

She lifted her forehead from the door window. “Svetla’s not stupid. I told you this, now listen. I even have control, a little.” She smiled crookedly. “I just didn’t take it-the pills, no pills. Simple. Very hard, da, but simple. The medicine under the bed and Svetla playacted. After a week, just a week, I was stronger. Maybe Svetla shouldn’t have brought the medicine with her, but I did. Now here I am, back on the medicine.”

“But the lock. You were locked in.”

She considered it, then spoke slowly, “God unlocked the door for me.” She looked at a passing bus. “It was a miracle, you know? But not so strange. God wanted Svetla to get away, so she did. But first I looked for a knife, you know, to kill him. Malik is a clever prole. So clever. He took away all the knives. The whole kitchen, no knives! Such a clever prole.”

Malik forgets to lock her door, or maybe he’s decided there’s no longer any need, then she tears the kitchen apart in her desire to kill him.

I stopped at the central bank, and while she waited in the car, humming to herself, I stood in line and withdrew a quarter of the money from my account, more than half of it in rubles. Then, at the train station, I bought a sleeper cabin to Moscow, both beds so she would be alone.

I found the conductor and pulled him aside. Using both my Militia certificate and a stack of koronas, I commanded him to keep a close watch on her. “She’s not to leave the cabin, you follow? You bring her meals. She’s to stay on the train until Moscow, where someone from the Soviet Militia will pick her up. You are also to hold this,” I said, handing over an envelope heavy with rubles. “You will give it to the Moscow militiaman. He knows how much to expect. This one,” I added, handing over another, “is for the border guards. She does not have papers. You’re still with me?”

He started to protest, but I leaned over him to make it clear that we both knew what was and was not possible at the frontier.

I gave Svetla a third envelope of rubles, in case something went wrong once she was on the other side. That was when she finally understood what was happening. She started to cry, fell on her knees, and pressed her bruised, wet face to my hand. Some old women in the ticket line looked at me with scorn, and a few men smiled.