“School must be going well,” said Leonek.
“Demonstrators,” I told him. “They were in Victory Square today.”
“How about that.” He turned in his seat to face them. “This is something, isn’t it?”
I shrugged.
“Remember how it used to be? No one would think to demonstrate. And look at them now!” His face pulsed as he considered it. “God, I wish I was young.”
“You are young.”
“We’re both young,” he said. “We should be out there too, standing next to them.”
It was good to see him pleased by this thought. “You going to make up a sign?”
“Why not?”
“What would it say?”
He put his chin in his palms, elbows on the table-he really did look young. “I don’t know. Isn’t that amazing? I’ve got no idea. What about you?”
“I’m not the demonstrating kind.”
“What does that mean?”
He was waiting, eyes big. “I have a wife and a daughter,” I said. “If I get thrown into jail, how would they fare? I don’t want my girl to grow up fatherless.”
He opened his mouth-something was ready to pop out-but then he shut it. He said, “Maybe that’s why I should do something. No one depends on me anymore.”
“Maybe.” But then I remembered what men like Mikhail Kaminski and Brano Sev would use to keep demonstrators from forcing Russian tanks to roll down our streets: interrogations, informers, secret police, and prison camps.
19
I drove us through the busy evening streets, stopping for busses and trams and bicycles, until we were back among the unfinished towers of the Ninth District. We parked half in a ditch, and I worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it out later on. Claudia was outside with her chickens again-she stopped to give me a severe nod. She was still waiting for me to pick up her drunkard brother, and no doubt Magda had been filling her head with advice to pester me. But this time she chose silence.
Agnes opened the door. She wore a knee-length dress I had never seen before, with a pattern of purple- and-yellow flowers. She stood on her toes to kiss my lowered cheek. “Do you remember Leonek?” I said. “Leonek, Agnes.”
Leonek kissed her hand, and, over his head, she winked at me.
“Where’s your mother?” I asked.
She nodded toward the kitchen, then Pavel trotted in from the bedroom and gave Leonek two high barks.
Magda’s hair hung over her face as she brushed a plate of chicken bones into the trash can. When she looked up at me, I could hardly see her through the strands. She brushed them away with her wrist and smiled. It was the first time we’d really seen each other for a while, and momentarily it was as if nothing bad had ever passed between us in the provinces.
Then it came back to me: Stefan, his choking breaths beating out of him as he writhed over her breasts, her clean smooth belly, her face.
“You’re late,” she said.
“How was the train?”
“Well, it got me here.”
I went to a cabinet for the wine as she washed the plate off in the sink and set it with other dishes on a towel. “You know Leonek, right?”
“Sure, yeah. I don’t remember the last time I saw him. A year ago?”
“His mother died recently. So he might be a little strange.”
“I see.”
“Come on, then.”
Leonek stood up stiffly when we came out, Agnes folded on the sofa beside him. He kissed Magda’s hand with purpose. It reminded me, if I needed the reminder, that Magda was really quite beautiful; she could still stop a man in his tracks.
20
The silence hung over us as we dug into the bean soup, then the paprika chicken, forks and knives scraping plates, glasses pressing to lips, quiet gulps, water and red wine. I saw Agnes place a sliver of chicken in her lap, glance to the side and toss it to Pavel, who silently gobbled it. When she looked up again I gave her a sharp shake of the head. Magda glanced at Leonek, who was focused on his food, then looked at me. I smiled, but she didn’t. I said the most benign thing that came to mind: “A Frenchman told me recently that plot is dead.”
“What?” Magda asked, leaning forward as if she hadn’t heard.
“Plot. He says that no one’s doing it anymore.”
She grinned. “In the West maybe. Was that Georgi’s poet?”
“It was.”
Leonek looked up. “What are you talking about?”
“Literature,” I said.
“Oh.” He nodded at his plate.
Magda tried. She told us about the hour-long line she’d stood in, waiting for beef, but when she reached the front, all that was left was chicken.
While she spoke, Stefan’s pale flesh came to me again, and I couldn’t muster any comment. Neither could Leonek.
But her stamina was high. She launched into a description of her factory. “Textiles, we even make the Militia uniforms. Well, the shirts at least. Lydia works opposite me on the line, and she makes jokes about undermining quotas every time she leaves for a cigarette. You should meet her sometime, she’s hilarious. I’ll set you up.”
Leonek smiled politely but said nothing. I leaned down and scratched the mosquito bite on my ankle.
Magda watched him return to his plate; it was almost empty. “Would you like some more?”
“Thank you, no,” he said through a mouthful. “It’s very good.”
“I told you it would be,” I said. At the end of the table, Agnes was bent toward the floor, feeding Pavel, but I no longer felt like reprimanding her.
Magda refilled our wineglasses, then turned to me with round eyes and tilted her head in Leonek’s direction.
“Are you on a case now?” I asked.
His tongue searched behind his lower lip. “The city’s pretty quiet. Except for those students, maybe.”
I couldn’t see Agnes at all; she had vanished behind the edge of the table.
“Students?” asked Magda.
I shrugged. “Demonstrators.”
“Oh.”
“Otherwise,” said Leonek, “not many homicides.”
Magda spoke again, but slowly. “On the way home today, I saw two men in front of the cinema. I’ve never seen them before. They were pretty destitute. They had long coats, both of them, and through the flaps I could see their old prison shirts. Striped, you know?”
Leonek seemed to wake a little.
