The Confession

32

In the morning, I sent Emil out to see if he could find any files on Nestor Velcea, Antonin and Zoia’s old roommate, then looked up as Leonek rushed in, ecstatic, his grin larger than any I’d seen in a long time. “He’s dead! I can’t believe it-what luck!”

“Who?” I asked.

“The old man! The girl’s grandfather!”

Tevel Grubin, grandfather of Chasya Grubin, one of Sergei’s dead girls. One of two family members still in the Capital. “I don’t see how that’s great news, Leonek.”

He tapped his head with an index finger. “Think, man, think! There’s only one family member around to go to the funeral-the one I need to interview. Zindel, Chasya’s brother. He’ll be let out of prison-there’s no reason they would refuse him!”

“They don’t need a reason, Leon.”

“They’ve got to let him. I’ll lodge a complaint if they don’t.”

“That always does the trick.”

“Don’t be ironic, Ferenc. Can you come with me?”

“To the funeral?”

He tilted his head. “I need you there. Just your presence. I’d ask Emil or Stefan, but they couldn’t intimidate a fly.”

As I agreed to it, my phone rang.

“It’s been signed out,” said Emil.

“What do you mean it’s been signed out?”

“Day before yesterday someone signed out Nestor’s file. Guess who.”

“Tell me.”

“Brano Sev.”

I waited for Emil to return, and in the meantime told Stefan about the file. I went out of my way to be brusque with him, but he didn’t seem to notice. So we watched Brano Sev at his own desk, his back to us as he went through more files. This was how we always saw Brano Sev: a man at a desk with files. The times when he left his desk to do the more heinous acts that state security required, for us he was simply gone. He did not share his cases with us, though we knew that he was aware of everything we worked on.

Emil arrived flush from the cold. “Did you get it?”

“I was waiting for you.”

“For me? Why?”

I looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”

Like every other time anyone approached his desk, Sev instinctively closed the file in front of him. “Ferenc.”

I started to lean on his desk, but changed my mind. “I need to look at a file you’ve got. Nestor Velcea.”

For the first time in my life I saw Brano Sev’s face form an expression of surprise. “Why are you interested in Nestor Velcea?”

“His name came up in an interview, I just want to see if there’s anything to learn.”

Sev turned to his wide file drawer, hesitated, then opened it. It was stuffed tight with files and papers, and when he found the Velcea file he had to use both hands to keep from pulling out the ones around it. He kept hold of it as I held the other side. “Do me a favor, will you?”

“Sure, Brano.”

He licked his thin lips. “Tell me if there’s anything useful to your case.”

When I nodded he let it go.

I opened the file on Stefan’s desk, and he took over, passing us things he thought were of interest. A photograph from before his incarceration-a blond young man with curls around his ears, good-looking. His data sheet said little. He had been born in the Capital in 1919, which made him thirty-seven now-my age. His profession was marked by the word various. Painting was listed under “ PASTIMES,” along with reactionary political interests.

There wasn’t much else. His family had been transferred south after the war, which perhaps explained why Nestor never had regular work. He didn’t have the residence papers to allow him a job assignment in the Capital. But he had stayed nonetheless, to work on his painting and eke out a living.

His decade in the Vatrina Work Camp, number 480, from 1946 to 1956 was just a line on his resume-the details would be in a file at the camp itself. Behind the work camp fingerprint card with its ten swirls of black ink, Stefan noticed a sheet, just a brief description added after the Amnesty, in September. A physical description gathered from an informer named “Napoleon”: Limping due to damage to right leg, loping walk. Damage to left hand-small finger missing. I looked at them looking back at me, then grabbed the fingerprint card from my desk, the prints taken from Antonin’s apartment. They matched Nestor’s.

We had the name of our murderer.

When I took Nestor’s file back to Sev, he closed another file on his desk. “Tell me,” I said. “Why is state security interested in the file of an artist?”

Brano Sev slid Nestor’s file between the others in the drawer. “Just a routine check on amnestied prisoners. We do this sometimes.” But he didn’t look at me when he said that. He only looked at me when he said, “And you? Anything of interest in his file?”

Knowledge was not something Brano Sev deserved from anyone-if he could lie, so could I. “No,” I said. “Nothing.”