He crossed a leg over his knee with some effort, then gripped his raised ankle. “Yes, maybe, in part. But I’ve spent a lot of time here over the years, and I always have friends to see. A very special one recently got out of the camps, thank God. This soil is in my heart,” he said, touching his nose. “You should see the miles of paperwork I had to fill out in order to come here. Then the checks at the border, the soldiers who went through my luggage. They kept half the gifts I brought! I’ll never see them again.” He frowned. “You probably don’t see it in the newspaper, but the East Berliners are running through the border like mad. Nobody can stop them. There’s not enough room in the refugee camps.”
“They just pick up and leave their homes?”
“They’re desperate, Ferenc.” He leaned closer. “You know what happens when I walk down the streets here? People follow me.”
“State security?”
“No- investors. They want to buy French francs. They can smell it on me.” He paused. “And do you know, Comrade, what Western money smells like?”
I shook my head.
“Soap,” he said. “It’s the smell of a clean body washed with Western deodorant soap.”
I settled back, remembering the excuse for a bath I’d put myself through that morning, in the sink, and all those weeks in the dacha. “You’re not a communist after all.”
He smiled. “I’m a communist all right. I just haven’t seen an ounce of real communism since crossing the Iron Curtain.”
There was commotion in the kitchen; someone had won a hand. But it was a weak enthusiasm. They were getting tired.
“Georgi tells me you’re having trouble writing,” he said.
I was surprised Georgi considered it important enough to mention. “It’s just not coming.”
“But no ideas? Nothing at all?”
“A couple things, maybe.”
He gave a fatigued smile. “You’ve heard, though, haven’t you, that plot is dead?
“Is it?”
“I read it in l’Humanite, some editorial. Plot is a capitalist construct made to give lives a false sense of totality, so they can be valued like a wheel of Brie, then bought and sold.” He grinned. “Luckily, I’m a poet. It doesn’t affect me.”
Vera and Karel appeared, and when she kissed my cheeks, I thought I heard her whisper, Call me, but wasn’t sure. When she pulled away she smiled conspiratorially. Karel shook my hand. The others gave quiet greetings on their ways out, and I knew then that Georgi had told them all about Magda and me. I was too tired to be bothered by it. They filed by the sofa, asking why they never saw me these days, telling me to give them calls. Their requests for a call were entirely different from Vera’s. They told Louis they would see him again, and, with an elegant bow, he said that this was undoubtedly true. And then, after what seemed like forever, they were gone. Georgi settled on the other corner of the sofa, and the three of us were silent for a while. Georgi laughed once, but when we looked at him he shook his head.
“Alors,” said Louis. He leaned into a standing position.
Georgi stood as well. “Staying?”
I shrugged.
“Tomorrow, then.”
Once they were in their rooms, I got another glass of wine, lit a cigarette, and stretched out on the sofa. Vera was behind my lids. Almost a year before, at a Christmas gathering, on that same sofa, she lay on top of me and kissed me deeply. I could feel the weight of her slight body, her narrow hips, her small breasts against me. It was a wonderful kiss; I hadn’t had one like that from Magda in a long time. Ever since then she had watched me when we were all together, and it had taken a long time to rid her stare of the heat that spread along my neck and cheeks. Now, though, her suspicions about Magda’s and my problems had been verified. I rolled over.
13
Georgi woke me by shaking my shoulder. “Telephone.” He was in a thick beige robe that had his initials GR, on the breast. “Your oaf.” I knew then that it was Stefan.
“Magda said to try for you there. You’re no longer sleeping at home?”
“What’s going on?”
“Come see me at Josef Maneck’s apartment. Here’s the address.”
I yawned. “What is this, Stefan? The man killed himself.”
“Just get over here, okay?”
Georgi was frying eggs when I came into the kitchen. “Is the oaf requesting your presence?”
“Shut up, Georgi.” I sat at the table and started filing the playing cards back into their boxes. The empty wine bottles still lined the counter, and every surface was stained by red circles. There was a sour stink in the air. Georgi brought over two plates.
“Want coffee?”
I nodded.
“Then make it yourself, I’m going back to bed.”
I put some water on to boil and searched for the grounds.
“What do you think of Louis?”
There were enough grounds for a few cups. “He’s all right.”
“He told me that things here are looking pretty bad.”
“In what way?”
“Says this won’t last. This thaw.”
“What does he know? He’s a tourist.”
“No, he’s lived here before, and he’s visited a lot.”
“Well, then, he’s a foreigner.”
“Not really-his last name’s Rostek. His grandfather’s one of us, from one of those purges, you know, in the ’teens-if you could afford it, you went to Paris. His opa could afford it.” Georgi brought his empty plate to the sink. “I worry too much in the mornings.”
The water was boiling, so I added the grounds. The froth ran over, hissing on the burner. “Don’t worry so much,” I told him. “And don’t listen to foreigners. They mean well, but they know nothing about our lives.”
He considered that a moment, then got two cups out of the cabinet. “Give me one of those, will you?”
Josef Maneck’s apartment was in the old town, a three-room, high-ceilinged place that had been his father’s. Now it was no one’s. The old furniture was still here, dusty chairs and cabinets and trinkets collected over too long a life. On the walls were faded portraits in ornate frames, and a few empty frames stuffed recklessly behind the sofa.
Stefan was sitting on Maneck’s sunken mattress, reading a book. He showed me the cover-a state edition of poetry by someone I vaguely remembered-before throwing it on the dirty, knotted rug. “Josef liked his verse,” said Stefan. “Pretty uplifting stuff for a suicidal drunk.”
“Someone gave it to him. How long have you been here?”
“I spent the night.”
He leaned forward with his hands on the bed and lifted his weight with a grunt. He passed me on his way to the living room and took a notepad off the coffee table. The top page had been ripped out, but Stefan had rubbed a pencil all over the second page. Not all the scribbled letters were recovered.
A-TO-IN
K-R-5
2-2.-0
“Antonin,” said Stefan. “The rest, I don’t know-address and phone number, maybe. But I’m sure about the name.”
