Victory Square

TWENTY-SIX

I woke at eight thirty to the noise of a family performing their Sunday morning routine. Even during the heady days of the revolution, this was something that didn’t change in the Kolyeszar household. Magda made sure it didn’t. She’d woken first and made coffee-real coffee some black marketeer had gotten hold of over the border in Hungary-and fried slices of pork, which had always been plentiful in that region. She toasted bread in the same pan and stacked it on a plate. The Kolyeszars always ate plenty of apples from their orchards, and each meal had some version of the fruit. She spooned out apple marmalade she’d jarred last spring, and Sanja sat in a highchair eating applesauce. By then Ferenc and Bernard had also risen, tiptoeing past my sleeping form on the couch, and Ferenc had sent his son-in-law down to the cooperative offices where the new regional paper, Liberation, was delivered in boxes to be taken for free. I’d just finished a quick shower when Bernard came through the front door clutching two copies.

“Morning,” I said drowsily. Everything ached.

He shook himself off. “Cold as hell out there.”

I popped two more Captopril, then found everyone at the kitchen table, reading parts of the newspaper. Ferenc, unsurprisingly, took it upon himself to read out loud the most important articles. “Looks like the fighting’s over everywhere except the Capital by now. Damned terrorists.”

I nodded politely; Bernard said, “They’ll only stop when they see the Pankovs’cold, dead bodies.”

Bernard was like that. He could surprise you with insight you’d only be convinced of hours later.

“Dead?” said Magda. She put another slice of bread on my plate. “Let’s hope it doesn’t lead to that.”

“Question is, where are they?” said Ferenc.

“In Libya,” said Agota, who now had Sanja on her knee. I was struck by how quiet the child was; I had yet to hear her cry. “That’s what everyone thinks. They’re building up an army to come and take back the country.”

“Let them try it,” said Ferenc.

While they speculated, I half-read an article on the looting of Yalta Boulevard 36, which I’d witnessed when I was looking for Gisele Sully. The boxes had been full of secret files where the Ministry kept track of its various informants and agents, and the whole following page was filled with names from those lists. The paper wanted to expose those who had been clandestinely working for the old regime, so that their neighbors would know what kind of people they lived near.

As I scanned the small-print list (there must’ve been at least five hundred names), I imagined that all across the country sudden break-ins were occurring that morning, and fathers and mothers were being dragged out into the street to be beaten and marked with signs that said COLLABORATOR.

Then I stopped on a name in the fifth column. The list wasn’t alphabetical-in their eagerness to make it public, they didn’t have time for such niceties. So the B name was in the middle column, near the bottom, and I had to squint and bring the paper close to my eyes to read it, reread it, think, and read it again.

Across the table, Ferenc gasped aloud and looked at me. He’d found it, too.

BROD, LENA. MAJOR

I met Ferenc’s heavy eyes. Then, under his gaze, I set down the paper, went to the living room, found my cigarettes and coat, and walked out the front door. I sat on the stoop and began to smoke, but my lungs rejected it. I didn’t care. I kept going, sucking in the poison and coughing and feeling the ache of my laboring heart. Fe-renc appeared in his coat and sat beside me. He finally took the damned thing away from me and flicked it out into the crabgrass.

“Did you know?”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe it.”

He sighed audibly and patted my knee, then got up and lit a cigarette of his own. He waited a moment before speaking, because he didn’t know what effect his words might have on me. “I believe it,” he said. “She left the country twice a year. She had family money. It all adds up.”

“Her father made a deal with the government,” I explained, not wanting to see it.

“Yes,” said Ferenc, “and then her father died. So they made a deal with her. She gets to keep the money and can leave the country whenever she likes, but only if she cooperates with them.”

Later, when I had a chance to cool down, I would see that it made perfect sense, but I wasn’t ready yet. I wasn’t ready to concede that for forty years my wife had lied to me. “You don’t understand, Ferenc. She hated Pankov. She hated the Ministry. To be honest, she hated this country. She only stayed because of me. No.” I shook my head. “They can put anything in those files. Or in the paper. Someone made a mistake or pulled a trick.” I pointed a finger at him. “It’s Michalec. He puts out a warrant for my arrest, then slanders my wife on top of it. So no one will help me.”

Ferenc looked at me. I wasn’t even convincing myself.

Still, I prattled on about Michalec and how he was a conniving son of a bitch. It wasn’t enough for him to kill people; he had to rub shit all over their reputations.

Ferenc told me quietly that Michalec had no control over what was printed in Liberation. It was a Sarospatak paper, and the list had been taken directly from the army clerks who had produced it. He wouldn’t help me with my self-delusion, and I hated him for it. He rubbed my knee.

“Come on, old man. Finish breakfast, then I’ll show you the operation. Show you what really matters.”