work.”
Now I was impressed.
Milos shoved a thumb over his shoulder at the wall of black drawers. “Don’t mess them up.”
Comrade Malik Woznica, his brief file told us, was forty-eight years old and married to Svetla Levin (daughter of a Russian tailor who had moved here with the Red Army). He had been suffering from an unknown neurological disease for the last decade. The doctor’s report offered no answers, but speculated that the cause might be found in a mining town where Comrade Woznica had spent two years as Party boss before developing his condition. The water in that region, said the doctor, was known to have been contaminated by mercury, and the town was almost famous-in the medical community, at least-for its cancer rates. As for Comrade Woznica, only morphine seemed to help the condition. I wondered aloud if Woznica was hooked on his medication.
Emil shut the file. “The way he was jerking around, I’d say he hasn’t touched it for a long time.”
“Maybe she took his prescription with her. For herself.”
“Or to sell. But she couldn’t move in the first place.”
“Give me the name of that doctor, will you?”
Back at the station, I called Dr. Sergius Brandt’s office at Unity Medical, but his secretary curtly informed me that the doctor was out of town. “When will he be back?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’d like an appointment.”
I listened to static while she, I assumed, examined his schedule. Emil was on his own telephone, checking in with Lena. He was smiling.
“Two weeks.”
“What?”
“The doctor will be able to see you in two weeks. Wednesday the twenty-first.”
“This is official business,” I told her. “I’m not a patient, I’m a Militia inspector.”
“Comrade Doctor Brandt is a busy man.”
“So am I. I’ll be there at noon. Tomorrow.”
Before she could protest, I hung up.
4
Agnes showed off her athletic uniform that evening. They’d just arrived at school for the Pioneers’ new fitness campaign. Like the students I’d seen in the street: white short-sleeved shirt and shorts that stopped just above the knee. “Aren’t those a little revealing?” I asked. She modeled in the living room to a Prague Symphony rendition of Mahler, her milky legs goose-stepping. “Where are your glasses?”
No question could faze her. She demonstrated the new, scientific exercises-sharp bows from the waist, arms out, bent, forward, down. When she stopped finally, her face was as red as the Pioneer scarf.
We went in to help Magda with dinner, but she was already plating it. While we ate, Agnes went through the eleven-point Pioneer pledge she was supposed to memorize: “ One: We the Red Pioneers honor our socialist motherland by wearing this red scarf. Two: We the Red Pioneers value learning as it advances the wisdom of our motherland. Three: We the Red Pioneers respect our parents-”
“That’s a good one,” I said.
“Shh,” Agnes warned. “You’ll throw me off. Four: We the Red Pioneers love peace and the Soviet Union, and hate all warmongers. Five…”
She stumbled over number seven, the one about loving and respecting work and all working people, but otherwise did a fine job. It was impressive enough to provoke a smile from Magda.
“You coming tonight?” I asked her.
“What tonight?”
“Georgi’s party.”
She gave an exaggerated expression of anguish, as if she’d forgotten, then shook her head. “I’ll stay here. I don’t want to leave Agnes alone.”
“I’m fine by myself,” she muttered through a mouthful.
“She’s old enough. Come on, you’ll enjoy it.”
She raised her eyebrows at me: no contradictions in front of the child. “Really. I’d rather spend some time with my daughter.” She turned to her daughter. “We’ll do something nice. Girls’ night.”
Agnes shrugged and went back to her plate.
5
In addition to the same ten from my last visit, there were twenty more crammed into that small apartment. Georgi had painted a red banner that hung over the kitchen door: ARTISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
“You like?” he asked me, his drunkenness clear from the first glance.
“It’s clever,” I lied.
Georgi stumbled through to the kitchen. Someone had opened the window over the sink to cut through the smoke and humidity of so many sweating bodies, and a brandy was shoved into my hand. I noticed Vera-the hard stare and red lips playing on the edge of her glass made her unavoidable-then the others, squeezed tight: pairs and threesomes in heated conversations and lonely drinkers peering around in anticipation or nodding off.
“Did your Frenchman make it out all right?”
Georgi leaned close, looking baffled. I repeated myself. “Ah! Louis sent word from Paris! Come, come!”
I followed him back to the living room, pushing past faces that said Ferenc so good to and Where have you been hiding and I’ve been wanting to talk, until we had reached the bedroom. There was a young couple on his small bed, half-dressed. The girl tugged her bra strap up to her shoulder; the boy blushed. I didn’t know them, and neither, apparently, did Georgi. “Who did you come with?”
There was some confusion as they buttoned their clothes and tried to manage an answer. “We just…well, everyone knew about…it was… no one, okay?” The boy, a Gypsyish southerner, finally stood straight. “Is there a problem with us being here?”
Georgi gave me a sidelong glance. “I don’t like my bed being soiled by other people’s fluids.”
They were edging along the wall toward the door. The girl’s lipstick was smeared to her chin. “No need to get all heated up,” said the boy.
“I’m not heated,” said Georgi. “It’s just my friend here. He’s a little protective. He keeps breaking people into little pieces. I don’t know what to do about it.”
Both of them looked up at me, and when I laid my hand over my rings and cracked my knuckles, they bolted.
Louis had sent a picture postcard of Notre Dame, with a question mark and an exclamation point scratched beneath it. My dear Comrade! Here in the bourgeois capital looking for ways to take back my surplus value. Thoughts of my days with you warm me in this cold place. Please look into coming to Paris, where I can show you the hospitality you’ve shown me.
The scribbled Louis at the bottom was illegible.
“He’s got your sense of humor,” I said.
Georgi put it back in his bureau. “You going to the Union meeting on Friday?”
“The Writer’s Union?”
“What else?”
“Haven’t been to one of those in years.”
He squeezed my knee. “That’s because you’re a sweetheart. You stopped going when they kicked me out.”
I shrugged. “Coincidence.”
