“Change of scenery,” said Emil. He settled into his desk and again took the pens and ink out of his pockets. He took out Grandfather’s still-unlit cigars and the notepad filled with scrib- blings about his dead case. Everything into the drawer. His eye kept wandering the desk for telephone messages from her he knew wouldn’t be there.
The chief stood in his doorway, hesitant, as if preparing to tell Emil to come to him, then realizing his mistake. He said something under his breath and lumbered forward. Emil leaned back in his chair to look up at him. “Chief?”
Moska reached into his jacket pocket and placed Emils Militia certificate on the desk. He left his index finger on it. “This is yours, Brod.”
Emil looked at the chief’s finger, at the green, glazed cover with the imprint of the hawk, its head turned aside as though trying to ignore something.
The chief was plainly uncomfortable having an invalid in the station. But the others, after a few minutes, were relieved to have a chance to express their self-loathing. Big Ferenc said it outright as he brought Emil a cup of coffee: “I must apologize for the way I’ve acted. It’s unforgivable. I can only try to repair what’s come before.” His tight, sympathetic smile and eloquence were unexpected, and Emil, stunned, accepted the coffee.
Stefan brought a potato casserole his wife had made, his limp a little more noticeable today. “Russian recipe, but filling.” It was the first time he had spoken to Emil. He smiled then, winking. “Now I’m not the only cripple.”
Brano Sev did not approach him directly, but gave him a knowing nod and smile from his desk. Leonek shot Emil a wide- eyed look of warning.
The holding cells were right beneath their feet, reached by a long walk down the corridor, deeper into the building, through an unmarked door and down metal stairs into the blackness. The air was humid and stank of sweat. The bare lightbulbs gave a hard, contrasty light. The walls became vertical steel bars, and in the gloom behind them Emil saw faces buried in shadow. Gaunt expressions, hungry. He thought again of refugees. Leonek looked positively regal beside them. Cornelius Yoskovich was at the end, on the right; his bald head hung below his shoulder blades. When Leonek tapped the bar with a knuckle, the man looked up quickly, then stood. He was tall, his grimy, sleeveless shirt too short, exposing his navel. “Are you letting me go?” He had a voice like a radio announcer, like someone speaking to a crowd.
“This is him,” Leonek said to Emil.
Yoskovich came to the bars and held them in his fists. His beard was coming in, and his eyes were desperate.
“Where’s your ax?” asked Emil.
“I told them.” He looked at Leonek. “I told you, didn’t I?”
“Tell me,” said Emil.
Yoskovich released the bars so he could open his hands to them. “I don’t know. Disappeared. Stolen, I guess.”
“When did it go missing?”
“I’ve been through all this.”
Emil turned to Leonek-slowly, because the motion shot hot threads up his spine. “Is there a reason he’s giving me trouble?”
“I-” began Yoskovich. “I didn’t know it was missing until the police came. I used the ax last week. Saturday. For wood.”
“Witnesses?”
Yoskovich shook his head and whispered, “Only my Alana.”
At first, Emil didn’t recognize the expression that covered his face. Then he did. He’d seen it on the train, on his way back from Helsinki, on the faces of German villagers following Germany’s new borders out of Poland: heavy eyes finding nothing to focus on, mouth hanging loosely open, wordless and useless. The expression of someone who once had something and now has nothing. The look of someone who is staring into the abyss and can find no reason to keep on going.
No, he hadn’t killed his girl. But he’d done something. Emil would bet his fresh Militia certificate on it.
Leonek, Stefan and Ferenc took him out for drinks. It was Fer- enc’s idea, but the big man didn’t know until they reached the bar that Emil couldn’t drink anything but water and some fruit juices. He couldn’t even drink the coffee Ferenc had brought earlier. The bartender unearthed tins of pineapple juice taken from a shipment, he said, of abandoned American army rations. Very expensive stuff. Ferenc bought three glasses of it, and Emil drank out of kindness. It was sticky, and tasted of the steel it had come in.
“Who did it?” asked Stefan. He’d found a bowl of pumpkin seeds on the bar and was shoving his fingers deep into them. “Your holes.”
“We know who,” said Leonek. “But our hands are tied.”
Emil nodded. “Smerdyakov.”
Stefan wasn’t surprised. “You did throttle him, after all.”
“But I didn’t.” He tried to lean back on his stool, but it was more painful than sitting straight, which was also becoming unbearable. He grabbed his cane and pointed with it. “Can we sit over there? My back.”
They moved to a low table near the splintery wood wall, where the chairs could support him, and for their patience Emil took out Grandfather’s cigars. Leonek at first was wary, but Emil assured him they had been bought, not rolled, by the old man. The cigars were rough on the throat, dry from sitting around for so long, but tasty. Soon their corner was thick with smoke. Stefan waved his cigar when he picked up the thread again: “You said you didn’t do what? Didn’t throttle Smerdyakov?”
“I only knocked him over.” Emil shrugged. “I was going to hit him, but all I got in were a few slaps. Then, he-I don’t know. He shook!’
“Shook?” asked Stefan.
“You mean a seizure,” offered Ferenc, puffing smoke.
Emil thought about that. “Maybe.”
“You don’t know your literature.” Ferenc leaned into the table. “The name Smerdyakov comes from Dostoyevsky. A fool stricken by the falling sickness. The Russians love their epileptics-turn them all into holy fools.” He rolled ash into a small saucer. “Nicknames don t come out of nowhere. They come from Karamazov.”
Emil remembered eyes rolling to whiteness, arms and chest trembling.
“Yes,” muttered Stefan, understanding now.
Understanding, Emil thought, made the experience no less disturbing.
The others became drunk surprisingly fast, and Emil, stone sober, watched their steady decline. Their words became weak and overlapped; their bodies slid deeper into their chairs. Stupid grins popped into their faces unannounced, and there were sudden, unpredictable silences. Leonek, distracted by his own thoughts, fell quiet and did not really recover. Emil asked about Chief Moska.
“What about him? Where’s he from? Why is he…”
“The goddamn way he is?” asked Ferenc.
Emil nodded.
Ferenc and Stefan looked at each other, as though waiting for the other to begin, and finally Ferenc blurted it out: “The old guy’s wife is leaving him. What else?”
Stefan puffed three quick times on his cigar. “Not everyone has the perfect marriage.” He nodded at Ferenc, who shrugged.
“You get what you put into it,” he explained. “The chief has no time to put into his.”
“And me?” asked Stefan. “What the hell don’t I put into mine?”
Emil felt the tension rise between them, and tried to redirect: “What about my drunk fool over here?”
Leonek, deep in his silence, didn’t stir.
“He’ll be a bachelor until the end,” said Stefan. “What woman would live with his mother?”
Leonek finally stirred. He looked up, blinking himself into focus, and smiled.
“That’s right, eh?” said Stefan, patting him on the arm. “Isn’t that right? The boy, the devoted son!”
Leonek’s smile slipped away again, and he faded.
“I’ll bet you’re not married,” said Ferenc.
Emil shook his head.
“But you want it. I can see that.”
