Untraceable

CHAPTER 20

This was their third hour together.

The pastor spoke, Kalitin half listened, uttering banalities as needed. Travniček was blathering about some theological nonsense. He never did answer the question about what happened to his face. But Kalitin no longer cared.

The desire to mock the pastor was long gone. The acute fear, the euphoria of possible salvation, were replaced by a dreary, enervating, conscious horror.

That horror used to appear sometimes in the early years of his defection. Kalitin could not fall asleep, worried that there was no place on earth to hide. He would get in the car, drive down twisting forest roads, imagining a pack of hounds on his tracks. The horror weakened with time and then vanished. Kalitin thought he had been cured, had deceived his curse. He couldn’t understand why it had returned now, when he was so vulnerable. Where did that fateful precision come from?

“As a youth, I could not understand why God allows help for the unrighteous,” Travniček was saying, and Kalitin listened, hoping to lose himself in the flow of words. It was getting dark. In five hours or so he could go back to the house. Kalitin hoped they had not shown up yet. But as soon as he imagined the path, they appeared: hiding behind bushes and trees, waiting beyond the turn in the road. Gray, faceless.

“My father was a Nazi,” Travniček continued, and Kalitin nodded wearily. “Not a fellow traveler. A real Nazi. He was arrested after the war and quickly released. His friends helped. So he held on to his convictions until his death. When I told him I was going to be a priest, he replied: at least, you won’t marry a Jewess. The dean of this church,” Travniček gestured at the vaults, “also helped criminals.”

Kalitin was waiting for Travniček to say something about the house on the hill. He was ready to say he knew nothing about it.

Travniček sighed.

“You asked about my face,” he said, and Kalitin knew he was in for a piteous story of how God failed to heal his faithful servant yet also helps villains. The story was transparent and petty, and Kalitin felt a sense of relief.

“It’s a long story,” Travniček said. “I’ll just tell you the end, otherwise even the whole night wouldn’t be enough. As I told you, they watched me for a very long time.” Kalitin felt shivers from the way the priest said “they.”

“It all began because I let young people meet at the church, to talk. That’s when they started a case against me. They were in no hurry, they tried various methods. Essentially, over the years I got used to them. But then it all changed.”

Travniček took a long pause. Kalitin found himself listening attentively.

“A parishioner started recording my sermons,” he continued. “He didn’t tell me about it. He let his friends make copies. They passed them on to others. Suddenly those cassettes multiplied, distributed on their own. Like an epidemic. Like a fire. Both believers and nonbelievers listened to them. At home. In church groups. In clubs. The police found them in searches, customs officers—in packages and luggage. The recordings were sent over the Wall. They were broadcast on Western radio. Day after day. It was very strange hearing my voice on the radio. I didn’t understand. I was never a good orator. I just preached as usual. But apparently people heard something in them that I could not. The true Word of God.”

Travniček stroked his lips with his fingers.

“I was frightened,” he said softly and firmly. “Newspapers in the West began writing about me. Calling me a martyr. Even a ‘true saint.’” Travniček spoke the last words in a half whisper. “Blasphemy!”

Kalitin found he understood the pastor. He had been called the “hope of science” at a party meeting, appointed to honorable presidiums. He just waited for them to end so that he could get back to his lab. The horror was easing, as if the eccentric pastor’s story had chased away the killers’ wandering shadows.

“They, of course, got really worried. Decided that I was making the recordings. They called me in for a chat. I tried to explain that I had nothing to do with it. Of course, they didn’t believe me. Who would? It was essentially a miracle. A real miracle.”

Weakling, Kalitin thought with pleasure. A little pressure, and he gave in. Kalitin liked the idea that his own fear was much more justified.

“They came to the church,” Travniček said. “They wanted to find where I had the machinery. Which parishioners were helping. They couldn’t find a thing. Yet the recordings kept appearing. New ones. People were converting. Going to churches. Many people. Hundreds. Thousands.”

Kalitin sensed that this story would have a double bottom, that it was leading where he didn’t want to go—but the words had him in their power.

“They brought in experts,” Travniček said. “Scientists. The town had an institute where they developed audio equipment. Eavesdropping devices among them. They studied the tapes. Their suggestion was to get some agents in civilian clothes inside the church during the sermon. The agents had special whistles, almost beyond human hearing, that the tape would record. Their orders were to blow the whistles every thirty seconds. They intended to get the cassette with the sermon. By comparing the times and volume of the whistles, which would also be recorded, they would be able to determine who had a tape recorder and where. Their photographer took pictures from the choir balcony. I saw the photographs later. In them, the church was divided up by marker lines like a chessboard. The agents were numbered. An invisible net.”

Travniček looked around the church vault. Kalitin thought: that must be what the pastor meant when he spoke of creativity in the name of evil. Kalitin was amused once again: such big words for a banal case of acoustic surveillance, and not of the highest quality, incidentally! He automatically took the story as yet another puzzle and began thinking if there could be a chemical solution to the problem: radioactive markers, for example, or a marking spray. His normal thinking process reinvigorated him somewhat; he felt even more clearly that Travniček was playing a game with him.

“The scientists were sure they would succeed,” said the pastor. “However, it turned out that the whistles were not recorded on the cassette. The sermon was easy to hear. ‘The effect of church acoustics.’ That was the conclusion of the report.”

He must think that God had helped him, thought Kalitin. He liked his own skepticism; but he sensed that he was protecting himself, guarding against hearing faith through the words. For a moment he thought that the pastor and the killers were part of an absurd dream, a series of damned dreams that flowed into one another.

“So they changed tactics,” Travniček continued sadly. “I was living in the parish house. One morning someone was at the door. I thought it would be them. But it was a messenger from the bakery. He had brought twenty cakes. I thought it was a joke. I had several friends quite capable of that. It was my address, my name, and the purchase was paid for. I gave the cakes to poor families. Happy that they would have a celebration. But then…”

Travniček stopped talking.

Kalitin waited.

“The next morning they delivered rakes. Ten packs. I grew suspicious. I wanted to send them back, but the deliveryman was gone.” Travniček reached into his cassock and pulled out an old, worn notebook. “I always carry it with me. As a reminder.”

He leafed through the pages, pointing:

“Dog cages. Fish food. Bicycles. Pumps. Three loads of coal. Sneakers. Hair dye. Mattresses. Axes. Suspenders. Shoe polish. Tape recorders. Televisions. Washing machines. Basins. Hats. Picture frames. Needles. Nails. Tables. Umbrellas. Potted seedlings. Couches. Gas lawn mowers. Milking equipment. Ship models in bottles. Hay. Pots and pans.”

Kalitin felt the heavy weight of the listed objects.

Travniček continued. “No one would take the things back. The house turned into a warehouse. I couldn’t give it all away—what if someone demanded it be returned? The rumor was that I had lost my mind. Become a hoarder. But I continued giving my sermons. They made a radiant path through the madness.”

“Torture by abundance,” Kalitin said. He had never heard of it, but he believed it unequivocally.

“Yes,” Travniček said. “Then they started answering advertisements in my name. If something very large was for sale, for instance, a motorboat or grand piano. People would deliver the goods. Have arguments. One beat me up. I knew that they were doing it all. But it still seemed inexplicable, supernatural; who was I for them to expend so much effort, so much money?”

Kalitin imagined the fat, clumsy priest trying to explain things to the boat seller. It wasn’t funny.

“Thank you for listening so kindly,” Travniček said. “I think they had calculated very carefully. Anyone would break, think it was God’s will. God’s damnation. I wanted to run away. Drop everything and run.”

Kalitin shuddered.

“But they knew that,” Travniček said. “Next, they delivered chickens. Cages of chickens. They were left at the doorstep, and I couldn’t leave them to die. There was chicken feed among earlier shipments. Then they sent tropical fish in tanks. Parrots. White lab mice.”

Kalitin fell back into the past. White mice—so many had died on the Island, dozens, hundreds of thousands, no one kept count, they incinerated the bodies and that was it.

Travniček’s artless tale induced a strange stupor. His vision became multidimensional, he could see the killers’ gray shadows in the distance, himself surrounded by church walls, and the past affairs of the Island.

“They kept dying anyway. I couldn’t take care of them all,” Travniček said bitterly. “Dying. I could find homes for the fish, chickens, and parrots. But hundreds of mice? So when they sent me dummies instead of animals, I was pleased. They didn’t need to be fed.”

“Dummies?” Kalitin echoed.

“Yes, dummies,” Travniček confirmed. “Plastic. The kind in store windows. Naked. Female.”

Kalitin thought of what he never thought about, what he had left back on the Island. Dummies.

If he could, he would have run out of the church. But the killers’ shadows were waiting for him. And here the clever priest was mocking him. Dummies. Zakharyevsky once said: officially there aren’t any here and never were. Aren’t and never were, Kalitin repeated. Aren’t and never were.

“They were stacked up,” Travniček continued. “Pink. It had started snowing in the morning. They had eyes. Plastic blue eyes with lashes.”

Kalitin did not remember the eyes. The bodies had not been pink. White, gray, blue. Color sometimes returned afterward. On the morgue table.

“I should have guessed that it was a warning. I just brought them inside. Ten naked, plastic women in a priest’s house. I was afraid I would be photographed with them, that they had rented the apartment across the way. That would have been a fine photo.”

Women. They were not given women. Kalitin had asked: gender differences in the organism, he explained, different biochemistry. He needed to test. But the ones at the top did not want to hear it. Their half-hearted determination drove Kalitin crazy.

“Then it all stopped. That was even worse. Torture by absence. I had gotten used to the madness, began to find some strength in it. I lasted eleven days. On the twelfth I asked for death if God did not want to protect me. I broke. I stopped preaching. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me,” he chanted. “Job 6:4.”

Kalitin looked at the priest. He derived fierce pleasure from seeing his face.

“Here’s what I looked like then.” Travniček handed him a photo from the leather pocket in the notebook.

Kalitin was stunned. He could not have imagined the elegant and spiritual appearance of the former Travniček; thin, aristocratic, with a high forehead. Gentle, aloof, and at the same time willful. Handsome. Very handsome. Focused on a high, unearthly goal.

Women must have fallen for him in droves, Kalitin thought, trying to demean the image he had seen.

“I started drinking then,” Travniček said. “At home, naturally. There was always an open bottle in the cupboard. The source of the Word had dried up, and I sought another. I knew what was happening. The recordings, the cassettes, vanished; people stopped listening to them, as if the wind had died down. The storm was over. So I drank more. ‘Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.’” He spoke majestically.

Kalitin looked up again. Looked at the scaly mask. Now he could see the face behind it.

“Their wine is the poison of dragons,” Travniček said thoughtfully. “I took only one sip from the glass. The usual taste, the usual pinot gris, Grauburgunder. You know the one I mean. Then there was pain. In my whole body at once. It’s not surprising that the people who consider others saboteurs, who care about the purity of the race, come up with the idea of modifying pesticides.” Travniček named the substance.

Kalitin saw black. He knew it. Not Neophyte, but still an ultimate poison. The man was a living corpse. Nothing could save you from that substance, not pumping the stomach, not blood transfusions. There were no antidotes. Kalitin knew that as firmly as two times two equals four.

His mind, his solid rational world cracked. Through it was the unknown.

Apparently unaware of what was happening to Kalitin, he went on. “They told me I was an anomalous occurrence. I was supposed to die. And in fact, I did. My former self was dead. I gave sermons later. Ordinary words. No miracle in them. As for my face, the doctors said it was a hormonal reaction. That may be so. Physically. But it is a mark. God’s mark.”

Kalitin reeled.

Travniček’s face floated before his eyes. It changed rapidly: human, animal, stone, forest, snake, a multilayered, composite mask. All the dead creatures poisoned by Kalitin were resurrected in it. Horses. Goats. Dogs. Monkeys. Rats. Mice. People.

The last face to rise out of the vortex, from the depths, to flash and fade, was Vera’s.

Kalitin imagined that the resurrected souls sought to settle in him: there was no refuge for them except the body of their murderer. He felt his own face turn to stone, while Travniček’s became human again.

The pastor embraced him. Patted his head.

Kalitin could tell that the pastor was not lying. Travniček was the miracle that crossed out Kalitin’s destiny, rendered Neophyte meaningless, insignificant. It had aimed for absolute power over matter, and the absolute was destroyed. Kalitin tried to persuade himself that Neophyte would have killed the priest and saw that the irrationality of a miracle was higher than his thinking, plans, calculations.

He was conquered; he was filled with deathly hatred. Kalitin wanted to kill the priest; he had only one weapon at hand. Kalitin began whispering, telling the pastor the blackest and most evil things that had happened to him—his own life; pouring it into Travniček like poison. Kalitin could not pause, unstoppering all the secrets of the past as if they had been sealed in test tubes and ampoules, shouting without hearing what he was shouting, so that the wonderful pastor would swallow the poisonous revelation and die like the mice and dogs, apes and humans, Kazarnovsky and Vera—the death of creatures. Death without miracles.