Victory Square

TWELVE

I couldn’t move. The red screen had been followed by a report on agricultural yields and then a replay of the 28 April parade in honor of Tomiak Pankov’s seventy-first birthday. Katja finally got up to turn it off. “Use the remote,” I said.

“What remote?”

“What?” My ears were humming.

“What remote?”

“The television’s remote controlled.”

“Tell me where it is, and I’ll use it.”

Of course, I didn’t know. It was Lena who watched television, not me, and she’d hidden the little box somewhere only she knew. I started to cry, then stopped myself.

We heard more voices from the street. Katja opened the window and leaned out to look. She said, “Come see.”

I didn’t want to see anything. I pulled my robe tighter and stared at the black television screen.

She said, “The street’s full of people.”

“Good for them.” Through the open window, I could hear their chants- Ole, ole, the dictator has fled! — as if they were at a soccer game.

“I hope Aron’s all right.”

“What?”

She’d told me this before, but I’d missed it. After Lena’s murder, she called her husband again and told him to meet her at my apartment, so she could give him the pass for the roadblocks. She reminded me of this, but without annoyance. I, on the other hand, was annoyed by everything she said. It was eight-Aron’s shift had ended at five-and there was still no sign of him.

I got up but didn’t join her at the window. Instead, I went to the kitchen and examined the cabinet where we kept our alcohol. Where I kept my alcohol. I took down a bottle of vodka and filled a shot glass. I didn’t put the bottle away. The shot went down and was followed by another. It was the only way I could think of to get rid of the pain that stiffened every muscle in me.

I heard a gunshot. A long-barreled rifle. Katja jumped back from the window and looked at me standing in my robe, the glass in my fist.

“What was that?” I said.

“It wasn’t a Karpat.”

Another shot, and a few screams from the street. Katja stood to the side of the window and slowly tilted her head to look out. I turned off the lights and joined her. Down in the street, the crowd was panicking, splitting down the middle and running to the sidewalks for cover. The shots came from above us, and at one point I saw a muzzle flash from a rooftop on the other side of Friendship Street.

Then silence. The marchers were squeezed into doorways, while in the darkness on the other rooftop we saw a shadow, hunched, running across to other roofs.

For just an instant, I stopped thinking about Lena. “What was that?”

“Ministry, I bet.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Not even they would…” I didn’t finish the thought, because someone started banging on my door.

“Aron,” said Katja. She flipped on the light and hurried to the door but found Gavra standing in the corridor beside a small, heavyset man with dark skin. He looked like a Gypsy, and his battered suitcase convinced me he was. Katja was stunned to see them. “Gavra. Karel.”

I’d never met Karel before, but Katja had. The two men had come over to Katja and Aron’s for dinner a few times.

Gavra nodded at me as he came in. “You mind, Emil? We need a place to spend the night.”

“Of course.” I shook Karel Wollenchak’s damp hand. “Emil,” I said, and he smiled bashfully as he set down his suitcase.

It struck me, during the following minutes, that the apartment had never been so full of people. My detectives had visited on their own, often to discuss cases, but never as a group. Lena would have liked this-she liked being among people.

As I poured shots for everyone and went to dress, my mood shifted. I wondered if the last sober years of Lena’s life had been full of boredom. I wondered if, because of my natural inclination toward solitude, she’d spent her last years miserable. And then I was convinced of it.

The feeling only intensified when Aron arrived a half hour later. I knew him well. He was flustered and chubby, also dragging a suitcase he’d hurried back home to fill. On the drive to my apartment he’d run into problems. “Mihai Boulevard is impassible. Completely. It’s thick with people. Then the car gave out near the Georgian Bridge, and I had to walk the rest of the way.”

Gavra flipped back and forth between the two television stations, which were still broadcasting prerecorded Party celebrations. Then he went to the radio and found a newscaster who was as panicked as the rest of us.

“At this moment there’s a crowd-I can see them from my window-trying to break into the station. There must be, I don’t know, five hundred people down there. They’re shouting, Let us in! Let us in! It’s… to tell the truth, I’m scared. I don’t know what they want, but after what happened in Victory Square, anything’s pos-sible. I’ll remain on the air as long as I can, all the way to the end.”

“What happened in Victory Square?” said Aron.

Gavra told us everything he had seen.

“Pankov ran away?” said Katja.

“It was the presidential helicopter.”

“We saw snipers,” I said.

“Snipers?” Karel looked frightened; his euphoria had long since faded.

Gavra related what the army captain had told him, about support from the rooftops. “They’re Ministry sharpshooters.”

By then we’d all taken seats in the living room. I’d left out the vodka bottle, adding the scotch as well. Aron shifted in his seat; I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking about how right he’d been these last six months.

I didn’t know what Gavra was thinking, but he later told me. He was working over his next steps. He knew that if he and Karel could make it to Hungary, they could go wherever they wanted-but the truth was, he wasn’t finished here. He couldn’t leave until he understood why he’d been sent to America to protect an old emigre.

Katja admitted to us that, despite her fear, and despite the danger of snipers, she was relieved. “I mean, we’ve all been waiting for this, haven’t we?” She wasn’t so different from Lena.

We nodded our agreement-even Gavra, whose job was to protect Pankov’s government-but none of us spoke, as if my living room were bugged.

“So we should be out there,” she said. “It’s logical. If all of us go out-if everyone goes out on the streets-then events will go our way. But if we stay in, things could still go back to the way they were. That’s why they’re shooting out there. They want us to stay inside.”

She was right, of course, but the fact was that I didn’t give a damn about any of this. Only hours ago I’d watched my wife die. I didn’t care who ran the country, or if a revolution was stomped into submission with firing squads. I didn’t care about anything.

Ferenc wrote in his most famous book, The Confession, that all married people live a second, fantasy life in which they’re no longer chained by marital ties. A make-believe world where you live alone but are never lonely. I think he was obsessed by this idea, because it became the focal point of his later book, The Cat and the Czar, which excited the French so much.

Though I understood what he was getting at, I’d never lived that fantasy life myself. Instead, when I thought about being without Lena, my stunted imagination made it into a homicide case. I could only imagine her being murdered, and then the rage that would follow.

I know why I did this-because I’m a man, and men want to believe in a primal, violent part of themselves. A force that, if let free, is unstoppable. A force that demands respect.

In that fantasy, it was all about me. My grief, my destitution, and my anger. So much self-righteous anger, and an unbearable desire for revenge.

The reality, at least that night, was different. All I wanted to do was crawl under my bed and shut off the world. I wanted everyone to go home.

By midnight, most of us were drunk. I know I was. I’d insisted that Katja and Aron stay, because we still heard sporadic gunfire outside. Gavra sometimes came to me and tried to whisper in my ear about what he’d learned during his travels, but I wasn’t listening. I was listening, instead, to the radio. Around eleven, the frightened commentator disappeared. His voice rose to a shrill pitch as he told us the invaders had reached the studio, then his microphone cut off. We never learned what happened to him.

After five minutes’silence, a confused group of excited young men took over. They called themselves Free Radio Galicia, harking back to the old name for the largest part of our country, and they gave out information about the progress of the marchers, telling everyone to do what Katja had suggested: go out and join the struggle. Power in numbers, they kept saying. You must go outside.

Karel, who’d been nursing his scotch a long time in silence, suddenly looked up. “Gavra.”

“Yeah?” He was standing by the window again, looking out into darkness.

“I forgot because of all the commotion-someone called for you. At home. Around seven or so.”

“Who was it?”

“Brano Something.”

The rest of us woke up and turned to stare at him. Gavra said, “Brano Sev?”

“Yeah. That’s it.” He paused, licking his lips. “Do all of you know this guy?”

Our surprise was interrupted by the radio. A deep, heavy voice, older than the voices we’d heard so far, identified himself as General Igor Stapenov of the People’s Army, in charge of the Capital and its surrounding counties. “I’ve come here to tell you that my men are with you. We are with the Revolution. Down with the tyrant, and up with the people!” Then, with just as much urgency: “We are still looking for Tomiak and Ilona Pankov. We’ve issued a military arrest warrant, and the charge is crimes against humanity. If you have any information at all, please call…”

Katja laughed out loud. I didn’t know what to do.

It was midnight. The telephone rang.