The Confession

14

The anxiety collapsed upon me on the front steps, the bright sun spotting my vision. I had bribed state employees of the railroads, frontier guards, and even a Moscow militiaman. I’d aided the wife of a Party official in leaving the country illegally. Yesterday, I had walked away from the scene of battle, and in the process attacked a member of the KGB.

I reached the empty sidewalk and found my car. I had trouble getting the key into the door, then into the ignition. My joints were heavy, gummed up. I leaned my head on the wheel and took deep breaths.

A burned body would not walk away. I could wait for tomorrow. Or the next day. Or forever.

There were only a few farmers in the markets I passed, looking bored and alone. No children, and all the window shutters were closed. A general, unspoken strike had descended on the Capital. Just as the students had predicted.

I turned on the radio and settled into the sofa. There was a show of song and recitation for the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. There is nothing secret about the Party-we all know what it is. I wished the day would end. I lit a cigarette, and in the smoke saw Svetla Woznica sick in her cabin, racing toward the Soviet border. It’s all of us. It’s me; it’s you. I saw an empty city, shutters closed, then another one filled with tanks and gunfire and shattered windows. The Party is a tree in the desert; it’s a star at midnight. Magda beneath Stefan’s sweating white body, half-listening to the Americans’ radio broadcasts, then stumbling home and muttering some guilty words about Lydia, but feeling only the ache in her groin.

Be happy. A great Party means you are never alone.

Agnes showed up with Pavel, and I realized I hadn’t noticed his absence. He sprang onto the sofa and climbed on me. His breath stank as he licked my chin. Agnes brought a cup of water from the kitchen.

“Why are you home so early?” I asked.

She sat on the floor and squinted-her glasses were nowhere to be seen. “Not enough teachers,” she said. “Sick. They tried to teach us anyway, but by lunchtime they saw it was no use.”

“You took the bus back?”

“Had to wait forever. But Daniela came along. Wasn’t so bad. Where were you? I thought you were sick too.”

“I had to work.” My cigarette was burned down, so I carried it to the kitchen, dropping ash along the way. Agnes changed the radio station.

“Daniela told me about this,” she said by way of explanation.

So we sat together on the sofa and listened to the Americans. It was a day of injustice, they said. Although sporadic fighting continued in some areas of the city, Budapest was now clearly lost. Imre Nagy was hiding in the Yugoslav embassy. I put my arm around Agnes, and she leaned into me. Pavel was quiet in her lap. When the news began to repeat itself, I turned it off.

Around six, as I was cooking eggs for dinner, Magda showed up. She seemed disheveled somehow, as if she’d put her clothes on backward. But they looked fine. She sat at the kitchen table and watched me with surprise. I didn’t think it was because I was cooking.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked finally.

“What?”

“Yesterday. The demonstration. Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

I stared back at her. “How did you know?”

“Word gets around.”

I wondered if Stefan had shed tears when he’d told her the story. I set a plate in front of her. “You weren’t in a listening mood.”

After dinner, we put on the Americans again, sitting together like a proper family, until the screech of jamming overcame it. As I turned it back to music, I told Agnes that, whether or not everyone else listened to this station, it was still against the law. It should not be discussed outside the family. “The volume should remain low,” I said. “And afterward, always change the station. You understand?”

“I knew all this before, Daddy.”

“Now it’s more important than before.”

She nodded, and so did Magda.

We put Agnes to bed, then drank wine in the living room. We didn’t talk, but for the first time in weeks the silence wasn’t strained. I didn’t know why. I was too exhausted to dwell on her and Stefan or even the mistakes I’d made these last two days. I was blank. I was disconnected from everything around me, even all that we had learned from the radio. It was disturbingly like the blankness I acquired on the battlefield, where all tender emotions are kept at arm’s length, so they will not harm you.

But then she smiled and nodded at the bedroom door. “You want to sleep in a real bed tonight?”

I did.

We undressed and got beneath the sheets in the dark. At first we did not touch, then she slid against me, and I could feel that she had not worn her nightdress. She buried her face in my chest in a way that made the blood rush into my head. It had been so long since she’d held me like that, and I stroked her bare, warm ribs with the tips of my fingers. But it was no use. After the initial flush of excitement, my body wouldn’t stay up for it. Everything receded to arm’s length. I kissed her ear and let her go. She rolled away from me, her cold heels just touching my shins, and began to cry.