“But you,” I said, “you’re very familiar with such things. You can find out?”
Petru Salva tugged the end of his jacket. “Of course, Comrades. I imagine I’m the only one in the Capital who can. I will make inquiries.”
“It’s much appreciated.”
“We all do our part.” He smiled. “The times require it.”
“The times do,” I said.
We did not get our answer until Thursday, and on Tuesday I suggested we help Leonek. “Another set of eyes is what I need,” Leonek told us. “I can’t see straight anymore.” He handed over a thick stack of pages.
They were interviews with Russian soldiers conducted in mid-1946. The questions were simple- Where were you on-? Where was Comrade Private-? When? The answers were direct. The bar, Comrade. Asleep, Comrade. Fishing in the Tisa, Comrade. After a while I couldn’t see straight either. Nothing pointed to anything; these were good boys who fished and slept and drank. Yet Sergei’s questions continued, as if he were filling in pieces of an outline, but could not find its shape.
Sergei had been an impressive militiaman. It wasn’t easy to trust a Russian, but with him it was possible. He was earnest and straightforward with everyone. He had a simple view of justice from which he never deviated. When the girls turned up dead in that synagogue, it crushed him. It was a Russian crime, and only a Russian could set things right-he told us all that. He went off on his own, feverishly plowing through interviews, then Leonek and I were on the foggy bank of the Tisa, and he was dead.
Emil drifted to sleep over his stack. I went back to reading. Buying cigarettes, Comrade. Fishing in the Tisa, Comrade. The Russian boys were all doing the same thing, day after day. Asleep, Comrade. The same things, no complications. The same words. The answers began to look as if they had been scripted. The bar, Comrade. Scripted and agreed upon and practiced until they were rote.
I handed Leonek the pages. “They’re all lying.”
“Of course they are.” Something crossed his face when he looked at me.
“What?”
“Nothing. Listen-I need to get to Zindel Grubin, Chasya’s brother. They’re ignoring my prison interview request. Do you think you could get me into Ozaliko? Moska would never help me. But maybe he’d help you.”
“Try him yourself. Moska’s not hiding anything from you. He even told me that.”
The look crossed his face again. Something like disappointment, or shame. “Forget it.”
My phone rang.
“Ferenc?” The line was staticky.
“Yes?”
“Ferenc, this is Kliment.”
I realized there had never been a need for me to struggle through Russian with him. “Good to hear from you. Tell me.”
“Without a hitch, Ferenc. She’s with her father now. There were a lot of tears.”
“You get all the money?”
“No broken knees. But it looked like she needed it more than I.”
I couldn’t quit smiling-not that day, or the next, as we continued our haggard reading of Sergei’s interviews.
19
Petru Salva called Thursday morning. Perhaps for our benefit, he had attached his Party pin to his lapel and dusted his portrait of Mihai. He held the shoe-cleaned now, and polished-by the heel and the toe as he spoke. “The inquiries have been made, Comrade Inspectors. The verdict is in. Notice this, please.” He turned the toe to face us. “The corners of the leather are uneven. Very sloppy. And this.” He raised it so we could see the bottom of the heel. “Nine nails to hold the heel in place. Wear this shoe for six months, it will fall off. Guaranteed.”
“But where is it from?” asked Emil.
Salva placed the shoe on the counter. “There is a cobbler in the Fifth District. A friend of mine. He has had much experience touring the provinces in order to nationalize the means of shoe production. But provincial cobblers are a notoriously uncooperative bunch, if you get my meaning.” He was smiling again. “My friend has seen this work before-once you see such terrible work, you don’t forget it.”
“Where?” Emil repeated.
Salva’s smile spread. “There were hundreds of possibilities. You see, each village is like a little pompous ego. But my friend-”
“The village,” I said.
His smile went away.
Drebin was an hour out of town, its sign half-buried in the long grass, just past an enthusiastic billboard that said in large red letters: THE PARTY’S POLICIES EXPRESS THE INTERESTS OF THE WORKING CLASS AND THE WHOLE WORKING NATION!
It had once been a farming village, then, after collectivization, a tractor factory was built in one of the fallow fields and workers were moved from the Capital to run it. The blocks constructed to house them-two identical concrete towers-overlooked the tin-roofed village homes and Orthodox church. Earlier that day, a rain had turned the white walls gray. Along the main street lay all the stores-bakery, bar, grocer’s, butcher, post office, and cobbler. The tiny cobbler’s workshop was filled with leatherworking tools hanging from hooks. Scraps of leather covered the floor, and the old cobbler sat at a wide wooden table covered with finished shoes. He took off his glasses and smiled toothlessly. “Morning.”
“Morning.”
“What size?” he said, looking at the shoe in my hand.
“We haven’t come for that,” said Emil.
“Repair, then? Here.” He reached for the shoe, and I let him have it. He replaced his glasses as he turned it over. “My work,” he muttered, then tapped the heel on the table and examined it again. “What’s the trouble, then?”
We pulled out our Militia certificates. “Can you tell us who you made that shoe for?”
The cobbler chewed the inside of his mouth.
“We’re trying to identify a dead man,” I said. “He was found in the Capital, but his shoe was from here.”
The cobbler went to a low shelf where some cheap notebooks lay. “In the Capital, huh? Size forty-one,” he muttered, then opened a notebook on the table.
Emil eyed a hand-drawn poster with the shape of a cow’s hide, like the tanner’s sign in the Canal District. I read the labeled sections over his shoulder- the back, the bend, belly, side and double shoulder.
“Oh Lord,” said the cobbler. He was shaking his head over his notebook. He checked the shoe again, then went back to the page. His face had lost its color. “Oh poor Beatrice.”
“A woman?” I asked.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. “Beatrice is the boy’s mother. Antonin,” he said. “Antonin Kullmann. That’s whose shoe this is.”
20
He didn’t trust us to deliver the news properly, so he closed his shop and led us. He would only say that Antonin was a good man who lived in the Capital but still remembered where he came from. He would never trust one of those overpriced cobblers. Then he fell to muttering, shaking his head and sucking on his gums. People paused to watch us pass, and a few greeted the cobbler, but he didn’t hear them. The housing blocks watched over us as we turned onto a dirt road lined with face-high metal fences. We stepped around puddles like lakes. The cobbler entered the fifth gate on the left and kept moving up the front steps. “Beatrice!” he called, then
