actually in the mountains, you see, passing over submerged peaks and valleys. And it’s dangerous-all shipping must take on a river pilot, that’s the rule of the Danube Commission. Going downstream, the pilot boards at Moldova Veche, on the Roumanian shore across from Golubac. If you’re headed the other way, the ship station is at Kladovo, but the Iron Gates, just north of there, are no longer the problem they used to be. After the Great War, Austrian engineers dug the Dezvrin ship canal, about two and a half kilometers in length, to bypass the rapids. But, even with the canal, the current is so strong that the engineers had to build a section of railway on the road above the canal, in order to use a towing engine that pulls traffic upstream by means of a cable.”
“So, then,” Serebin said, staring down at his notes, which made no sense at all.
Ferenczy rose abruptly, sat next to Serebin on the couch, and took his pad and pencil. “Here is Golubac,” he said, writing 1046 next to the name. A specific kilometer? Of course. He probably knew it meter by meter. With some amazement, Serebin watched as a river pilot emerged from the persona of a middle-aged French fop. Ferenczy drew with a firm hand, using dashes down the center of the river to show the border, printing Dunav on the Serbian side, Dunarea on the Roumanian, for the river changed languages along with its depths and channels. The pilot drew teardrop-shaped rocks, an island, a road. “Here is Babakai rock,” he said. “In 1788, the Austrians stretched a chain across here to trap the Turkish navy. It’s a red rock, you can’t miss it.” At 1030, the Stenka ridge, three kilometers to 1027. In the middle, another rock. Next came Klissura. “Greek word,” Ferenczy said. “Means, ah, crevice. Very narrow, maybe too deep.” And down and down, here it curved, then curved back again, the river Czerna joined at 954, then the course twisted violently south, ten kilometers northwest of the Iron Gates. “After this,” Ferenczy said, “the ship canal.”
He handed the paper back to Serebin and returned to his chair.
“Can we do it?” Serebin said.
“Maybe.”
Serebin imagined the river at night, rushing water, dark cliffs above, a tugboat fighting the current as sailors hung off the side and tried to fix an iron hook on a sunken barge below the surface.
He ran his finger up the drawing and back down, pausing at the Babakai rock. “The Austrian chain,” he said. “Did it work?”
“No,” Ferenczy said. “Betrayed,” he added. “You have to remember where you are.”
Serebin returned to Paris the following day, arriving at the Winchester a little after five o’clock. There was a spectre standing in the doorway of the pharmacy next to the hotel. Some poor clochard, a shapeless figure in a ragged coat, just visible in the early evening light. The spectre stepped forward and called out to him in a stage whisper. “Serebin.”
Serebin squinted at the man as he approached. He looked, face starved and narrow and white, like a martyred saint in a Spanish painting-a saint with his beard shaved off. “Kubalsky? Serge?”
It was. He nodded, sorrowfully, in reply, understanding all too well why Serebin wasn’t sure.
They walked together through the lobby, the night clerk watching them from behind his desk. He might, Serebin thought, report what he’d seen, but that was the way things were, lately, and nothing to be done about it.
Climbing the stairs at Kubalsky’s side, Serebin noticed that he now walked with a limp, and, the way Serebin put it to himself, that he reeked of flight. Of mold and mildew, of dried sweat. In the room, Kubalsky sat heavily in a chair by the desk, Serebin gave him a cigarette and lit it for him. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, exhaled long plumes of smoke that swirled and drifted about his face, a creature whose body ran on smoke instead of blood. And for that moment, Serebin thought, he became once again what he’d been all his life-The Journalist. For the gossip papers, the timber news, the mining gazette, writing a paragraph and counting the words, showing up at an office to see about his check.
After a long silence, Kubalsky said “Christ,” quietly, almost to himself, then, “Don’t worry, Ilya, I can’t stay here.”
“I’m not worried.”
“An hour, maybe. No more.”
Kubalsky started to go to sleep, cigarette still smoldering between his fingers. “Serge,” Serebin said. “Can you tell me where you’ve been?”
His eyes opened. “Here and there,” he said. “Down every rathole in the Balkans. It’s crowded, I should warn you, in case you’re thinking of trying it, you keep running into the same people.”
“You know, we thought you were…”
“Yes, I thought so too. In that alley behind the theatre. One of them got a hand on me, like a steel claw, but I hit him. Imagine that, but I did. He didn’t like it, roared like a bull. Then shot at me as I ran away. I don’t think either of us believed how hard I hit him. Nothing quite like fear, Ilya, really, nothing like it.”
“Organy?” It meant the men who worked for the organs of state security, the NKVD.
“They were.”
“Why, Serge?”
“Why not?”
That was, Serebin thought, glib, and ingenuous, but until a better two-word history of the USSR came along, it would do. Nonetheless, Serebin waited for the rest.
“All right,” Kubalsky sighed, resignation heavy in his voice. “Sometime last year, June maybe, they showed up, one day, the way they do, and informed me that I had to talk to them. Or else. So, no choice-with these people you don’t argue. All you can do is make sure you’re never, ah, productive, so I wasn’t. Still, there they were.
“Then, one day in November, they told me to call you and get you out of the IRU ceremony. They didn’t say why, they don’t, just ‘Here’s what we want.’ But that evening, after the bombing, one of them came to my room. He wanted to know about the Turkish authorities-had they contacted me, had they contacted anyone else? Particularly, what kind of authority? The Istanbul police? The Emniyet? If the Emniyet, who? What rank? I didn’t know a thing and I told him so. Well, he said, get in touch when it happens, because it will. Now, for some reason he was alone. It’s never like that, you know, there’s always two of them, they watch each other. But this one was alone, and he talked-the kind of talk that follows a triumph. He told me how the thing had been done; a man at the window, a signal when Goldbark went to look at his delivery, wasn’t it all too clever for words.
“After he left, I began to suffer, there’s no other word for it. I walked the streets for hours, drank up whatever money I had in my pocket, tried to calm down, but I couldn’t. I was stuck midway between anguish and fury and I just couldn’t get free. The next day, when it didn’t go away, I understood that I had to make it go away. I mean, Goldbark had always been kind to me, to everyone, and then, I had to ask myself what came next-what else would they want? Then I realized that I had to talk to somebody, and the only person that made sense was you. Now, why they wanted you out of there I don’t know, don’t want to know-I surely don’t believe it was because you were their special friend, I know you and them far too well for that. So, I tried to meet with you, secretly, and apparently I did something wrong, because they showed up at the movie theatre. Not the ones I usually saw, others, the big ones in the baggy suits.
“Anyhow, I got away, and I hid for a time in the city, but I figured I couldn’t do that forever, so I sold whatever I owned, maybe even a few things I didn’t own, and I ran. Up into Bulgaria, Salonika, you name it. Finally, I had some luck, met an emigre Pole who worked on a train and got a ride to Paris in a freight car. I took a chance on the IRU office on the rue Daru, and found Boris Ulzhen, who told me where you were. I should add that he asked me no questions at all, whatever that means, just acted like it was all in a day’s work. Which, come to think of it, it probably is, by now.”
Serebin went looking for his vodka. Maybe a third of a bottle left. He poured two glasses and gave one to Kubalsky.
“Thank you,” Kubalsky said. “Of course I need money.”
For a moment, Serebin had a vision of his grandfather. He was laughing, which was typical of him, he did it all the time, though Serebin had been too young when he died to realize how much that meant. In this vision, he was laughing at his grandson. Think it’s a blessing? Yes? Ha, you’ll see, my dear, you’ll see.
He saw. Rummaging in the top drawer of his bureau, then remembering to include what he had in his pocket. Still, it was a blessing, that night anyhow, to have something he could give Kubalsky. “Could be more, tomorrow,” he said, handing over the money.
From Kubalsky, an indulgent smile. No tomorrow.
“And so, what next?”
