The Confession

62

Driving to Vera’s block that evening was instinct. It didn’t occur to me to go home. By now my desire for her was its own separate thing that turned the wheel and applied the brake like another, more sure Ferenc, to whom I had not yet been introduced.

I knocked on the door. Her voice came from the other side, but it wasn’t directed at me. It was quieter, as if for someone else in the apartment. Then I figured it out, but too late. The door opened and Karel stared back at me.

His surprise was evident in his thick brows and the big, flaccid mouth peeking out from his beard. He’d gotten fat as his poetic success increased, but he had never lost his youthful inability to hide his emotions. Then he smiled and glanced back at Vera, who looked stuck to the sofa. “How about this! Ferenc Kolyeszar, what a surprise!”

Outside of Georgi’s parties, he and I never talked, but he had always been one of the many who made halfhearted promises to meet for dinner or drinks. He waved me in. Vera stood up and gave me her cheeks to kiss politely.

“I was just telling Vera about Yugoslavia. What people! Incredible.”

“That’s why I came over,” I said. “Georgi told me you were back, and I wanted to hear all about it.” I noticed a plate of food on the coffee table. “I should have called, though, and it’s late. How about tomorrow?”

“Nonsense,” said Karel. He pushed me toward the sofa, and Vera moved over to give me plenty of space. “I have photos! You better believe I’ve got photos. Vodka?”

I forced a smile and nodded, and he disappeared into the kitchen.

Vera and I communicated with our eyes. Wide, round, surprised eyes. Half shrugs.

Karel asked about Magda and Agnes, and I said they were out in the provinces for a little while, staying with Magda’s parents. He winked at me. “Be sure and behave yourself!”

He had more photos than anyone I’d ever known. A heavy stack of black-and-whites of drab, gray-clad poets and professors standing stiffly for group portraits against blank walls or beside tables covered with books. He had some underexposed shots of Belgrade and Zagreb, and overexposed ones of Roman ruins in Dubrovnik and the beaches of Split, leading to the Adriatic. And he had stories that went on for too long. He laughed a lot and rubbed the back of his neck. The experience had invigorated him. He was a national emissary brought in to exemplify the best our little country could produce in a man of letters, and this was the role he felt most comfortable in. He said this without modesty, then followed with, “Those Serbs eat up stuff like that. Next we’ll send them our country’s finest garbageman, and they’ll build a statue to him.”

The stories became duller as the night wore on, and as he was relating an anecdote about Tito’s brand of cigarettes, I finally gave a yawn and thanked him for the enthralling description of our socialist friends. When we shook hands, he said, “This was great, Ferenc. You should come over more often.”

I kissed Vera’s cheeks again as Karel smiled radiantly at us.

The apartment was stuffy, so I opened the windows, which only made it cold. I closed them and poured myself a brandy, then turned on the radio. For once, it was not set to the Americans, just an easy Austrian waltz. I had a copy of Karel’s first book of verse, published five years ago, and settled on the sofa with it. His lines were as dull as his stories, loose rhyming statements about the open-ended quality of life, the ambiguities that make it a pleasure despite the hardships. They were optimistic poems, and I wondered if he could write such happy drivel if he knew what I had been doing to his wife, or what that Swiss philosophy professor had done to her before their marriage.

I woke to a dim room. Then I heard what had woken me: a knock at the door. Although a large part of me knew, I grabbed my pistol. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” she whispered.

I set the pistol on a table. We didn’t embrace when she came in. She looked cold.

“I thought he’d be gone a few more days,” she said. “That was weird.”

“A drink?”

We sipped our wine in the kitchen. “I told him I needed to stay with a girlfriend tonight. His head is too far in the clouds for him to be suspicious.” She looked at me. “Is that all right?”

I put my arms around her and kissed her deeply on the mouth.

The climbing rope that Agnes had been awarded was knotted every foot-and-a-half so that the Pioneers could use their feet to climb up into trees. I found it rolled up beneath her bed and brought it to the bedroom.

I told Vera to take off her clothes. She looked at the rope suspiciously, but seemed to like not being the only one to give orders. Once she was naked, she lay back and I tied a knot around one of her ankles, then around the other, so that she could spread them a couple feet, but no farther.

“What are you-”

“Quiet,” I said. I tied the other end to her wrists, so that when she brought her hands to her face she was forced to bend her knees. She did this once. When she pulled her hands away, her smile was dreamy.

I did not take off my clothes. Instead, I unbuttoned my trousers and aroused myself in front of her. She watched me, the smile fading into a heavy-lidded gaze as her hands moved slowly up and down, her knees bending and unbending, sliding the knotted rope between her legs. I watched her as she watched me, but although I wanted to badly, I did not touch her.

She came very quickly, but quietly, her face convulsing as if in pain, mouth falling open.

I took off my clothes and lifted her by the rope, so that her feet and hands, red from constriction, wavered above her thin body. Then I lowered her to the bed and finished inside her.

I began to untie her wrists, but she shook her head, eyes closed. “Not yet.”

So I lay beside her and drew my finger over her damp body, over the rough fibers of rope, over the knots. It was a long time before we slept.