Victory Square

29 DECEMBER 1989- 20 MARCH 1990
THIRTY-NINE

The fact is that no one knew what to do with me. Brano had gotten my passport, through Ludwig, from the Austrian Interior Ministry, so it wasn’t fake, but it wasn’t quite authentic either. In his rush to put it together, Ludwig had skipped many of the required signatures. This was a favor to Brano he would always regret, because it left a black mark on his record that was hard to live down.

After two days of hospital observation, the Italians gave me a fresh supply of prescriptions and transferred me to a federal holding cell outside Venice, solely for illegal immigrants. It was a modern, concrete place with an always damp courtyard, much more comfortable than prisons back home. My cellmate was a Congolese worker named Tabu Bel, a big man with very black skin, who had been working summers in Italy and Austria, taking the money back home at the end of the season. This was his seventh year of migrant labor, and he’d finally been caught. He wasn’t dismayed by his situation. In German, he said, “Life is full of decisions.” He shrugged his thick shoulders. “No reason to regret them once you’ve made them.”

I told him that was easier said than done, and he asked me why an old white man was in jail with him. I told him, and that’s how the conversation ended.

On Friday, a visitor from our embassy in Rome arrived on the train and took a walk with me in the wet courtyard. Natan Jovovich was a small man, hair slicked off to the side to cover a bald patch, and he wore a fine Italian suit. I, on the other hand, wore the prison’s white jumper. “Mr. Brod,” he said, hands clasped behind his back as he walked. “You’ve put the government in a strange position.”

“The government put me in a strange position.”

He nodded; he’d been briefed on the story I’d given the Italian detectives. He, like them, didn’t believe a word of it. “Be that as it may, you’ve killed a representative of our government. If we brought you back, under the current laws you’d be executed for treason. By all appearances, you’re a counterrevolutionary fighting against the people’s democracy.”

I don’t think he caught the irony in what he’d said-”people’s democracy” was what Pankov had called his government. “So,” I said, “what’s the problem?”

“The problem, Mr. Brod, is that we don’t want to start our democracy by executing people. It’s the old way. Not our way.”

Again, thinking of Pankov, the irony was apparent, but I didn’t bother mentioning it. I said, “What you mean is, you don’t want my testimony made public.”

He sniffed. “Hardly.”

“You’ve been given some instructions, I bet. From the Capital.”

“We’re going to set you free.”

I stopped, and it took him a moment to realize I was no longer walking beside him. He looked back. I said, “What?”

“We’re going to set you free. We don’t want to make an issue out of this. I’ve got your passport-we took it from your Friendship Street apartment-a six-month Swiss visa, and a little money to get you started.”

“Wait,” I said, holding up a hand to silence him. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

He sighed, then glanced around at the high courtyard walls. I don’t think Jovovich had been inside many prisons. “When you have friends in high places, these kinds of things do happen.”

I started to ask who my friends might be, but the answer was obvious. “Ferenc.”

Jovovich nodded. “Mr. Kolyeszar was adamant about this. It was a condition of his little revolutionaries taking part in the elections as peaceful participants.” He came a step closer. “There’s Italian paperwork to deal with, but you should be out in the next couple of days.”

I wasn’t sure what to think, or feel. I squinted at him. “Conditions?”

“Of course,” he said. “We ask the same thing the Italians and the Austrians ask.”

“What’s that?”

“That you never set foot in our country again.”

My legs stopped working, so I settled on the cold gravel and shut my eyes.

Jovovich approached. “Are you okay?”

“I can’t do this.”

“Why not?”

I wondered if he really was that dense.

“Listen,” he said. “The alternative is that you stay here, in this prison, for the rest of your life. You’ll be in legal limbo. The Italians won’t try you, because we’ve asked them not to. We won’t take you. And the Austrians refuse to accept that passport of yours.” He squatted beside me, gravel crunching. “It’s up to you, Mr. Brod.”