The Confession

29

I arrived at the office early and found Mikhail Kaminski hunched over my desk, hand on his forehead, absorbed in a slim stack of typed pages. He’d had a haircut since I’d seen him last, his mustache was trimmed to a razor’s width, and his coat had large shoulders that rose as his elbows spread on the desk. Then I realized what he had before him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He looked up, blinking, and smiled as if suddenly recognizing me. “Ferenc!” He tapped the sheets with that trigger finger. “You’re really very talented. I had no idea.” He pushed himself back in my chair, scratching the floor, and crossed his hands in his lap. “Why don’t you sit down?”

There was something in his voice. So I took Emil’s chair. “You’ve been going through my things.”

He nodded at the papers. “How do you do this? I mean, all I write are reports. They’re so dry. But you, Ferenc, you’ve got a way with words. How do you do that?”

“I work at it. Now please put them back where you found them.”

He lifted the top sheet and read aloud: “ She moved through the world as if nothing was worth her effort, but she nonetheless influenced the outcome of situations. The proper word, or a subtle gesture, and someone was filling her empty glass with wine. You see what I mean? I feel like I’ve known this woman before. You’ve nailed it just right. I’m impressed.” He tapped the pages again. “Impressed, and a little disappointed.”

“Disappointed?”

“I’m not an artist, not like you. But like anyone, I enjoy a good read. I know what I like. It’s a shame to see your great talent wasted like this.”

I waited.

“This,” he said, laying his hand on my words, “It’s so…so unreliable. All this-how should I put it? — this me me me. You understand?”

“I don’t think I do.”

He crossed a leg over his knee. “Who do you think would be interested in this, Ferenc?”

I shrugged.

“There’s my point! No one, except for yourself. You should be writing about subjects that unite people, subjects we can all relate to! For example, there’s a wonderful Soviet writer, whose name I can’t remember now, but he wrote about the building of a dam in Siberia. Now that’s a story! You see the human drama of people working together for a great aim, and when you read it, you feel a part of that endeavor. And when, in spite of foreign saboteurs and some nasty hooliganism, the dam succeeds, you can’t help but clap and feel the same pride those workers feel. But this,” he said, abruptly changing tone. “This is about you, and only you. And this relationship-this marriage-what depressing people! The story about the dam, that’s what people want to read. I ask you again, who would want to read your story?”

I wanted to reply, but there was no satisfactory answer.

“I’ll tell you who,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning closer. “People who revel in their pain. You see what I’m saying? Healthy people want to read about camaraderie, about healthy love, about how to be valuable to their society. They want lessons on life. What does this teach them? How to fail in life. Do you plan on publishing this?”

I was wordless. Then, finally, I managed: “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Well. I wonder. This stuff is bourgeois, cosmopolitan. It’s rootless. This sort of thing could be dangerous.”

“For me?”

“For the city, for the country, and yes, I suppose, even for you. Keep it to yourself, Ferenc. That’s my little bit of literary criticism. Keep these kinds of thoughts to yourself, and for the rest of us explore the things that people really care about. We want healthy writers. Healthy writers are concerned with progress, enthusiasm for life, human industry. Unhealthy writers…well, they’re the kind of people who walk away from battle when their country needs them. They attack their superiors. Am I making myself clear?”

I nodded, my fingers fiddling with my rings.

“Good,” he said, still smiling. He patted my shoulder. “Keep at it, you’re very good. And I look forward to reading your great proletarian novel one of these days.”

I watched him walk away, his casual stride, and all the organs in my exhausted body hardened into heavy rocks.

Kaminski wasn’t there just to critique my fiction. He greeted each inspector as he arrived, as if they were all old friends who had been unfortunately separated from him for a while. Then Moska came out of his office and asked us to gather around. “New regulations,” he said. “We’ve fitted all the Militia cars with two-way radios. We’re later than a lot of cities getting this done, but the funding came through, I think for obvious reasons. From now on, whenever you go out on a case, you’re supposed to use one of our cars rather than your own. So we can keep track of you.”

Kaminski shook his head. “It’s so you can call for help whenever you need it. The streets aren’t as safe as they once were, we all know this.” He must have taken our silence for agreement, because he clapped his hands together, grinning hugely. “You may have wondered where I’ve been the last week and a half. Out west in Budapest, as they say. You’d be surprised how good things are now. They’ve cleared up the barricades, it was a mess. Busses turned over, set on fire. It took some real pigs to do that. But you’ll be happy to know that now it’s peaceful, and they’re busy rebuilding. It’s becoming almost normal.”

Brano Sev gave a lesson in the garage, all of us bent over the open doors of a new Mercedes. “You pick it up like so. Press here and speak. The reply comes from here.” He pointed at a small speaker grille. “When a message comes in, you do the same thing. Pick it up, press, and talk. But remember that when you press the speaking button you cannot hear what the central office is saying.” He turned it on by flicking a switch. A red light glowed and we heard static. He pressed the button, silencing the static. “Central, this is a test. Can you hear me?”

When he released the button, a garbled woman’s voice said, This is Central, Sev. We hear you fine.

“Who’s that?” asked Stefan.

“Regina Haliniak. She’s new.”

“A new girl,” he said, smiling at the rest of us. “Cute?”

Brano looked at him, expressionless, and switched off the radio. And I stared at Stefan, disturbed that, with Magda, he could even joke about a voice on a radio.

When we got back to the office, there were two notes on my desk: one from the lab, saying that they had clear prints from five different people in Antonin’s apartment-I could pick them up whenever I wanted; the second was from Moska, asking to see me in his office.

“Ferenc, you were looking for the Kullmann woman?”

“I’m going over today. But her name is different now.”

“Yes, yes. I know. Sofia Eiers.”

“How did you know?”

“Because she’s just been reported dead, Ferenc, and the only names I learn are those that don’t matter anymore.”