The Confession

46

There were only a few white hairs left on his head, but a plume of them rose out of his blue prison collar. He had big eyes, one smaller than the other, and long fingers with darker hairs covering them. He looked exactly as I remembered him from last summer. He placed his hands on the table and waited.

“Lev Urlovsky?”

He nodded. No smile, no sound.

“Do you remember me?”

He nodded again. “Ferenc Kolyeszar. You and your friend Leonek Terzian found me out.”

“Not me. I only came on the case when they went to get you.”

“You’re modest.”

“Still no regrets?”

“Nothing that keeps me awake.”

“Vassily was your son.”

He moved his hands together until the thumbs touched, then dragged them apart. “ Was, yes. Until he decided to join the regime that took away my life.”

“Part of your life. You were at the camps for-how many? Five years?”

“Seven.”

“Seven, okay. But you were free again-it was over.”

He chewed the inside of his mouth, looking at his hands. “Inspector, if you think my life was given back just because they let me walk around this beautiful city, then you’re more stupid than even you look. Just because it’s another day doesn’t mean that yesterday never happened.”

It was an elegant way to put it, but he’d had a long time to think over his reasons for bludgeoning his son to death, and maybe only elegance could justify it. “I’m here to ask about someone else. Someone you were in Vatrina with.”

He leaned forward, just a little.

“Nestor Velcea. Does the name ring a bell?”

He leaned back again. “The Romanian.”

“Romanian?”

“He sat in with the other Romanians when there was time-there wasn’t much time. Very tight, those Romanians.”

“But you knew him?”

“Sure I did. He had nothing against Slavs. I had nothing against Romanians. We all had the same enemy.”

“The state.”

He closed his eyes as he nodded.

I opened my notepad on the table. “You were friends?”

“Not hard to be friends when you’re treated as we were.”

“You talked.”

“When we weren’t too exhausted and beaten.”

“So tell me about him.”

Urlovsky opened his nostrils and took a deep breath. I wondered how old he was-sixty? Sixty-five? Or was he one of those who returned from the camps looking twenty years older than they were? “He used to draw on the wall. With a piece of coal. Anything you asked for. He had fantastic hands, at least until they took off that finger.” He touched the pinkie on his left hand.

“Who took it off?”

“The guards, of course. First time he did a sketch on the wall. They took him in the yard and cut the thing off. But that didn’t stop him.” He smiled. “That Romanian was something.”

“I’ve heard he was a great artist.”

“Talent, yes. So much talent. But he was worse than me.”

“Worse than you?”

He tilted his head. “ Worse is the wrong word. He was stronger, that’s what he was. He could sustain his hatred in a way most of us couldn’t.”

“His anger against the state.”

“The state, sure. But not really.”

“Then who, really?”

“The bastards who put him there.”

“State security.”

“Them, too.”

I looked down at my empty page and sighed. “Tell me, then, who Nestor Velcea was angry with.”

“Who shouldn’t he be angry with?”

The guards would allow me to beat him if I wanted, but I didn’t think it would work. He had been through a lot worse than I could give him, and had held on to all his rage. “Josef Maneck? Was that someone?”

“Might have been.”

“How about Antonin Kullmann?”

He looked me in the face, as if judging me. Then he nodded, big eyes holding onto me. “These names, they do ring a bell.”

“Why did he hate them?”

He frowned, as if reassessing his judgment. “Why do you think? They put him in there.”

“He was sure about this?”

Urlovsky leaned back. “Not at first, no. A lot of us only figure it out later. For me, it took almost a year before I realized who did it. My ex-wife. You know why? Do you know why?”

I said I didn’t.

“She wanted the dacha-that’s why. I told her it was in my family before we were married, and it would stay in my family. I spent my summers in that dacha as a child. But she wanted to vacation in the countryside, so she made a phone call to Yalta Boulevard.” He shook his head and smiled. “A crafty bitch, that one.”

“Why didn’t you kill her instead?”

“She was already a bitch; I couldn’t do anything about it. But my son, I could stop him from becoming one. I’m his father.”

“Let’s get back to Nestor. Why was he turned in?”

He pursed his lips. “That boy was talented, and he knew it. It made him vain. He thought they’d done it out of jealousy.” Urlovsky turned his palms to the ceiling. “I don’t know, maybe he’s right. But it takes a bold man to suggest that.”

“Your wife did it for a house.”

“You can live in a house. A house is security. What’s art? Each time Nestor made his pictures on the wall, one of us used a wet rag to clean it so the guards wouldn’t see.” He patted the table. “It’s pretty stuff, art, but it just wipes away.”