The Confession

74

I changed the sheets and closed the window, then made myself a drink. I browsed my old book, finding the passage that Emil had been affected by. But it did not affect me. My own writing bored me.

I still could not see what I’d done. I knew I should, but the fact that I couldn’t did not trouble me. Every feeling was beyond my reach. I had given in to the recklessness that Vera claimed was all she had left, but the problem with recklessness is that there are other people in the world. They lie in the path of your recklessness, and you inevitably run them down. I understood this later. But on the sofa, gazing into the murkiness of my empty wineglass, I only understood that I had continued a game that Vera had started-a game she had first learned in Switzerland; and as for Malik, I had shown him the inevitable result of his own recklessness.

Once I was drunk I settled deeper into the sofa, closed my eyes, and tried to think over the case. Antonin Kullmann had used the state security apparatus to get rid of Nestor Velcea, then stole his paintings. Zoia became aware of the scheme and left Antonin in disgust. Yes-and Josef Maneck was caught between turning Antonin in and keeping his own prestige. The tension had turned him into an alcoholic.

Nestor, when he was arrested, had been waiting for a foreigner in a train station: Louis Rostek. Louis tried in vain to get him out. Then, years later, he figured out what had happened. So he went to the camp and told Nestor, then returned again after the Amnesty, when he told me of that most glorious of human desires: revenge.

And tomorrow Louis would return.

My first impulse was to call Emil, but there was a possibility of gunplay, and I didn’t want him hurt.

“Hello?”

“It’s me, Leon.”

“Oh. Hello, Ferenc.”

“Look, I need your help tomorrow morning. Can you meet me at the central train station at ten?”

“What is it?”

“We’re going to get Nestor.”

He paused. “Ten o’clock?”

“Don’t be late.”