The Confession

22

It was getting late, and Emil had plans with Lena, so I told him I’d see him in the morning. I called home using Antonin’s phone. Agnes had received a red ribbon for her fitness aptitudes, and was being chosen as a group leader. “The Pioneers are funny. I don’t think I understand half of what they tell us, but the sports aren’t bad.”

“What about your French? How’s that coming?”

“Our Pioneer chief said that French was below me. That’s what he said word for word.”

“Well he’s not your father. I expect you to study tonight.”

Her grumble broke apart through the telephone lines.

“Your mother around?”

“She’s going to be late too. I told her not to be out with more than three friends.”

“Why not?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in the Militia? They even told us in class about the new law. After dark, more than four people together can be arrested for hooliganism.”

“I see. Can you make yourself dinner?”

“I’m not a child, Daddy.”

I found a tin of orange juice in the refrigerator. I was no longer particularly interested in finding out who had stayed here. If it was the killer, he hadn’t left obvious clues. In the morning I’d call in the lab coats to dust for prints, but for now I could do nothing. So I focused on who Antonin was. In some desk drawers were newspaper clippings chronicling his shows. He’d had his first one in the Museum of National Contemporary Art-Josef Maneck’s place-in 1948, and soon after became a regular fixture of the state-owned museums. There were even clippings from a German newspaper praising his early work, some of which traveled to Paris and Koln as part of a series of “international friendship exchanges.” I knew a little German, and could muddle through an article about him, published in 1954, that described “the rise and fall of Antonin Kullmann.” According to the critic, Antonin had burst upon the socialist world in 1948 as a full-fledged genius “by any regime’s standards.” His compositions were ahead of their time and utterly original. But in 1952 that changed. Antonin, in the statement that accompanied his 1952 Koln East/West Friendship Exhibition, claimed to be reinventing himself. But to the German critic it was not a reinvention, but an eradication of the Antonin Kullmann of the earlier exhibitions: The flat, insipid Socialist Realism of this Kullmann seems to give doubt to the idea that the soul can rise above totalitarianism. He has given up art for the pleasures of submission.

Some of our local critics, on the other hand, felt his genius was continuing to grow “by great schismatic leaps.”

Once I started looking, I found papers everywhere. Reams of typewritten sheets-half-written artist statements, catalogs for upcoming exhibits and, in the bottom drawer of the bedroom bureau, typed drafts of letters. I took them to the living room and settled into the sofa.

Antonin had been a meticulous man. In his correspondences he seemed to work out different versions-sometimes three variations of one letter-before sending them off. There were some addressed to gallery owners and critics-a couple names I recognized-and one was to his ex-wife, Zoia. It was dated 1 November, two weeks ago, about a week before his death, and there was only one draft. The second, presumably, had been sent. My dear Z. I’ve tried, and I’ve failed so often. The times we’ve spent together are the happiest of my life, but I’ve made clear that this is not enough. I have to be firm about this, or we will go on with these dishonest rendezvous. You know what’s brought this on, this sense of my mortality, and yet you will not succumb. Why? I again offer myself to you and ask you to leave him. He’s never made you happy in the way that I have. We can leave together. We can go west. I will take care of everything. Please, don’t think of this as desperation. These are only the words of a man who knows the one thing he wants, and must have it at all costs. With love and shame, Antonin.

The entire letter was nullified by a large red X.

I went through everything, but could find no replies to his letters, and no address book.

I looked again at the trembly hand on the studio’s easel. It was green-tinted and the paint was very thick. I touched it and jerked back as the small hand smeared onto my index finger. I washed it off.

The pictures on his walls were scenes of socialist utopia-one by the famous Vlaicu, the others by himself, though in one corner I saw the “new” Kullmann and the “old” Kullmann side by side. First, a factory scene of determined, muscled men at work. Nothing new. The second one was entirely different. Two men sitting at a table in a dark room, and on the table was a pig’s head, with black flies hovering over it. But the pig’s head glowed, casting fly-shadows on the wall and lighting the men’s faces. I didn’t know if I liked it or not. It left me with an unsettled feeling.

I bought a cheese sandwich from a store in the neighborhood, then looked at the painting again as I ate, sitting at Antonin’s typewriter. I rolled in a fresh sheet. But nothing came. I typed a few useless words and found myself surprised that the T did not stick. Its ease almost disconcerted me, and the whole machine felt too foreign, too perfect. I finished the sandwich, grabbed the Kandinski book, and settled into the chair again. Although Kandinski was not actually banned, he was certainly in disrepute, and the only places one could find his works were the used bookstores with their spare selections of dusty, twenty-year-old paperbacks like this one. I didn’t make it much further than the introduction, where Antonin or the other man had marked some lines that still stick with me: Our souls, which are only now beginning to awaken after the long reign of materialism, harbor seeds of desperation, unbelief, lack of purpose. The whole nightmare of the materialistic attitude, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, purposeless game, is not yet over.

I woke to the key turning in the lock, and for an instant didn’t know where I was. The floor lamp was still on, and I had to blink to adjust to the light. On the other side of the room, the apartment door opened a little, stopped, then closed again.

I ran. The glass front door was easing shut, and in the dark street a figure bounded away. I skipped over craters in the sidewalk and shouted for the runner to stop. But despite his visible limp and the bag bouncing on his shoulder, he was small and quick, turning the next corner, then the next. By the time I stopped to catch my aching breath, he was gone.