“Why do you think I didn’t invite you?”
I watched his face carefully, trying to read anything from it. I read confusion, maybe a little surprise, but I wasn’t sure. He went in.
“You guys come in all types,” said Vlaicu.
“About Antonin,” I said. “Is there any way we can get in touch with his friends? Some you know?”
“I didn’t know his friends. I have a feeling he didn’t have any. Not the easiest guy to get along with.”
“No one?”
He rubbed his beard. “Might try a Nestor-Antonin mentioned him last time we talked.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know his last name, but when he and Zoia moved to the Capital they roomed with this Nestor. An overeccentric painter, Antonin told me. He was released from a work camp last summer-that’s all I know.” He looked at the sidewalk again, rubbing his arms. “I need another drink.”
27
Stefan was at the drinks table with Magda, while Lena entertained three officials in a corner, one hand fluttering over her head in an imitation of something mysterious. Emil went to save her. Stefan and Magda didn’t seem to be talking when I approached them, and I turned this over in my head throughout the rest of the night, trying to ascertain any meaning, but finding nothing. Stefan told me he had been watching Antonin’s apartment, but without luck-no one had approached it. “What about you?”
“I’ve got Antonin’s ex-wife’s name. She changed it to Sofia, and married a clerk named Mathew Eiers.”
“You got that from the records?”
I nodded at Vlaicu at the end of the table, filling up a glass with wine. He noticed me looking and wandered off.
Magda whispered in my ear: “Can we go?”
“In a little while.”
“We should talk.”
“Later,” I said.
I tried to give each painting a good look. I took my time, cradling my drink, and examined the brushstrokes. I knew Moska did a little painting, but I’d never tried it, and I was always impressed by that much attention to detail. In writing, it was simple to change a word here and there. With painting, each little mistake seemed unfixable. I told this to Vlaicu, and he shrugged. “You paint over it. It’s the same thing.” He’d regained his easy drunkenness. “Painting’s a breeze. Writing is too literal. Everyone knows exactly what you’re saying, so if you make a mistake, everyone sees it.”
Stefan and Magda kept their distance from one another. Magda chained herself to the drinks and smiled and nodded at the old men who ogled her. Stefan lingered around Emil and Lena, getting more drunk himself, pointing with his cigarette hand at the paintings and laughing. Vlaicu asked him what he thought.
“Of this?” He pointed at a picture of workmen pouring tar for a highway.
Vlaicu shrugged.
“It’s the most useless thing I’ve ever seen. How can you live with yourself?”
Vlaicu smiled thinly. “Lay into it, Comrade.”
So Stefan did. He called it empty and redundant. “Why not use a camera? Save you time. But don’t make other people look at it; they look at this dirt every day.”
“Maybe that’s my point,” said Vlaicu.
“Your point? Paint a pile of dog crap next. We see it daily on the sidewalk, you know.”
“Don’t you think labor has meaning?”
“It’s to get a job done-that’s its meaning.” Then he leaned forward and, in a whisper high enough for a few of us to hear, said, “You’ve sold your soul, Comrade Vlaicu.”
No one expected the artist to swing. His fist caught Stefan’s jaw, then they were on the ground, tangled, throwing punches as best they could. I pulled Stefan off, and some officials took Vlaicu into their protection.
Outside, I noticed how drunk Magda was. She was laughing about the fight, leaning on Lena’s elbow, then she started to cry. Lena patted her head like a mother. Stefan said nothing as he stumbled back into the darkness, and the rest of us piled into Emil’s car.
Surprisingly, Agnes was on the sofa, snoring. Pavel, dozing beside her, woke up and trotted over. “He needs to pee,” I said. Magda wandered off to the bedroom. I carried Agnes to her bed, then took Pavel downstairs. He crapped on the front steps, and I wondered what a painting of that would really look like.
Magda lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
“You said you wanted to talk.”
She shook her head. “Stefan,” she said, but could hardly get the word out.
“What about him?”
“He told me days ago. When you were at Georgi’s. That he told you.”
I sat on the edge of the mattress. “He hasn’t told me everything. Are you going to tell me?”
She tried to look at me, but her eyes crossed and uncrossed, so she returned to the ceiling, then shut them. “It was a long time ago, Ferenc. You were gone. I couldn’t-”
But I was standing up again and leaving. If she wasn’t going to be honest about the present, about everything, then I didn’t want to hear.
28
Her hangover lasted all Sunday, and she stayed in bed, the lights out and the blinds drawn. I brought water and lunch, but whatever she took in she immediately threw up.
“Don’t tell me she drank last night,” said Agnes over breakfast.
“Sometimes it happens.”
“Maybe I should start drinking.”
“Maybe you should take Pavel out for a walk.”
Magda was able to get a small dinner to stay down, and as she ate in the dark room she asked what she had said last night. “I don’t remember at all. But we spoke.”
“You didn’t say anything, really.”
“I said something.”
“Do you want to say something now?”
She considered it, frowning through the pain. “We should talk, yes, but I can’t. Not in this state.”
“Have you figured out what you want?”
She looked at me, her expression still painful. “I wish I knew, Ferenc. God, you don’t know how much I wish that.”
I pulled the blanket to her chin.
Agnes was rolling a ball across the living room floor for Pavel to bring back, but the dog was uninterested. She stood up, retrieved it from the corner, and came back to try again. “I think we need a new dog. Pavel just isn’t working out.”
I sat on the sofa. “What kind of dog would work out?”
“Something larger, that’s for sure. Pavel can’t keep up when I run.”
“Maybe we could make some wheels for him.”
“Wheels and an engine.”
“Tell me about school. Is it going better this year?”
She nodded into her chest. “Better than last year, yeah. I learned about cosmonauts.”
“Cosmo what? ”
