The Confession

45

I could only hold off thinking of him for moments, and in between those moments I imagined him in a cold concrete cell, suffering the light of a bare, dusty bulb hanging from the ceiling, then facing interrogators with complicated electrical equipment that attached to the tenderest parts of Georgi’s body. Clubs striking his legs; heat and cold on his flesh.

At the station, Leonek stopped me on his way out to say that Kliment was “a mensch, a real mensch.” He had agreed to track down Boris Olonov. But I couldn’t share his excitement. On my desk was a message from Ozaliko informing me that I had an appointment with Lev Urlovsky at ten the next morning. I folded the message into my pocket and sat down. I tried to focus on this artist who had returned from the camps to kill his old roommates and an art curator. But it didn’t work, and when Kaminski and Sev strolled in and began talking by Sev’s desk my distraction gained material form. Kaminski wandered over. “Hello, Ferenc. Did you give my wishes to Magda and Agnes?”

“Sure.”

“Are you working hard?”

I looked at him.

“I believe we had a deal, Comrade Kolyeszar.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m working hard.”

“Good to hear.” He returned to Sev and bent over the desk and read something Sev was pointing at, but I couldn’t quite see them anymore. I could hear him laughing, saying Good good, but could no longer make out his features.

I took the tram home. It seemed unbelievable that the other riders could chat and smile or simply doze in their seats. I wanted to shake them out of their ignorance-didn’t they know what was going on, at that very moment, on Yalta Boulevard? But they knew. They knew that they could be next. I could be next.

I took a bath, sinking into the murky, cooling water, thinking still of electricity. Agnes knocked on the door. “You going to be in there forever?”

“Just until I’m clean.”

She knocked again. “I don’t know if I can wait that long.”

So I toweled off and went to the bedroom to lie down. She bolted past me and slammed the bathroom door shut.

Magda came once and settled on the edge of the bed. “Was it awful?”

“Of course it was.”

“Did he seem…I don’t know. In good spirits?”

I turned my head, the pillow crackling in my ears, and looked at her. “What do you mean, good spirits? ”

“You know what I mean. It’s Georgi we’re talking about.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “No good spirits today.”

She got up to finish dinner.

We didn’t tell Agnes, because there was no need yet. She talked about the rope-climbing exercise that she and Daniela had apparently excelled at. The Pioneer chief-a man with the unlikely name of Hals Haling-brought them to the head of the class as examples of the female ideal of fitness, then awarded them with lengths of knotted rope.

“I suppose you were proud,” said Magda, trying to smile.

“You’d suppose, wouldn’t you?” Agnes said into her plate. “I mean, it’s all kind of stupid in the end, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Climbing ropes. All we did was climb up so we could come back down. What’s the point in that?”

I managed a smile of my own. “That’s pretty perceptive, Agi.”

She nodded formally at me. “Thank you, Daddy.”

“You can take it further, though, can’t you?”

She shrugged.

“Why get out of bed each day when you’re just going to get back in at night?”

“Well, that’s certainly a reason not to make the bed in the morning,” she said, making a face at Magda.

“Or why,” I continued, “should you eat a meal when you’re just going to crap it out later?”

“ Ferenc, ” warned Magda.

Agnes was grinning. “That’s a good question, Daddy. And why should I study French when I’m just going to forget it anyway?”

“ That, ” I said, “is a different issue altogether. You really need a course in logic, sweetheart.”

But the levity only lasted until we’d cleaned up the plates and headed into the living room. Agnes insisted on listening to the Americans, and we heard a report on Bulgarian work camps. An emigrant described slave labor and casual killings in hushed tones that made us lean close to hear. The commentator apologized for his guest’s too-quiet voice, but explained that, while in a camp, a guard had crushed his windpipe with a boot. Then the radio whined like a sick animal, and I turned it off.