Ferenc Kolyeszar. Do you aspire to it?”
I sank back into my chair. “Of course I do. Don’t you?”
“Of course I aspire to the perfect Ferenc Kolyeszar,” she said, smiling, then shook her head. “No, I don’t aspire anymore. I used to believe all that. I used to think there was an ideal Vera Pecsok who was the perfect wife. I worked on it a long time. But the closer I got in action-because it’s only through your actions that you can become anything-the less happy I was. The less like myself I felt. So either the perfect Vera was not the perfect wife, or there was no perfect Vera.” She shrugged. “I prefer believing there’s no perfect Vera, and that with each new action I become someone slightly different.”
I tugged my lip. “So why are you teaching this? If you don’t believe it.”
“Because they let me,” she said as she took out a cigarette. I lit it. “I used to teach six classes, now they’ve whittled me down to two, and seem to have forgotten I’m teaching under quota. Plato’s forms are safe. Because, as I said, behind every socialist state lies utopia-that’s the similarity I was talking about. And that utopia is what we’re all aspiring to. Right?”
We drank our coffee in silence for a while. She had me thinking of that, too: Was there an ideal Ferenc that I should be trying to become? An ideal husband and father, an ideal militiaman? A great writer?
She said, “When I was studying in Zurich, a professor of mine had a theory about women in wartime. He said that, in times of war and revolution, when their men cannot protect them, women see their lives stripped bare. They understand, with utter clarity, that they are alone, as we all are. Most women also see that this life, with this man, is not what they wanted. It’s just something they stumbled upon. And only in the clarity of this vision do they find the strength to change their lives. So they leave.”
I watched her thinking about this. “Is that true? Do women leave their men in wartime?”
She raised her shoulders. “It happens.”
“A professor told you this?”
“A professor, yes. He was also my lover.”
“Oh.”
“So why did you call me, Ferenc?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Of course you are. That I don’t know is the oldest, and worst, excuse.”
“I guess I wanted this. To talk to you. We never do.”
She placed the sugar spoon into her empty cup. “Talk isn’t what I want from you. Don’t try to make me into something I’m not. Okay?”
“But you’re not anything,” I said. “You told me that.”
She touched a red nail to the back of my hand. “You’re a fast learner. Did you know Karel’s going to Yugoslavia on Saturday?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“A Writers’ Union trip. A representative of our men of letters. He’s very proud.”
“He should be.”
“And I’ll be alone for a whole week.”
The conversation didn’t go much further because she was not very interested in it, and maybe I wasn’t either, so I went home and waited for my family. Agnes showed up first, but she didn’t feel like talking either. She’d had a bad day, and all I could get out of her was that she would prefer to remain in her room for the rest of her life. Magda’s mood was no better, and when after dinner I tried to talk to her it was no use. None of the women in my life wanted to talk that day. I told Magda that I’d had coffee with Vera, but it didn’t faze her. She didn’t know about the Christmas kiss or the more recent one, and I didn’t know if knowing about them would have made any difference.
35
Emil was in the office, waiting with a slip of paper. “Results,” he said, smiling.
The previous night a militiaman in the Second District had spotted Nestor Velcea near Antonin’s apartment, but had been unable to catch him.
“How did he know about Velcea?”
“I filed a bulletin on him,” said Emil.
“Oh.” My secret was no longer a secret.
We drove over to the Second District station, and the switchboard operator used the new radios to call for Laszlo, the militiaman who had seen Nestor. Emil and I waited on the stiff corridor benches, listening to the heels of secretaries rattle the floor.
“It’s no longer who,” said Emil. “It’s why. ”
I nodded at my rings, twisting them. “That’s right. Any ideas?”
“Art and art. How much further can you take it?”
“A particularly grisly murder and two less grisly ones. An evil painter and two people who knew him. And the artist Nestor Velcea, a work camp prisoner who’s killing them.”
“Yeah,” he said. He was staring at his own hands, too.
Laszlo was gray on the sides and seemed too old to be walking the streets with the young men. And he was. He had recognized Nestor right away from Emil’s description, but had been foolish enough to shout before he was close. “That guy didn’t even think about it,” he said, grunting. “He was gone before I finished saying his name. Even with that limp he can move.”
It was a wasted trip for us, and so was the subsequent visit to Antonin’s apartment. There was nothing to suggest Nestor had returned to it-perhaps Laszlo had scared him on his way there. We spent the afternoon canvassing the neighborhood, but no one remembered the limping man short one finger. Back at the station I was relieved to find neither Sev nor Kaminski nor Woznica. But I did find Leonek in another of his ecstatic moods.
“They’re letting him go! Didn’t I tell you they would?”
I settled behind my desk. “Who?”
“Aren’t you listening? Zindel Grubin, that’s who!” He rapped his knuckles on my desk. “They’ll lock you up and kill you, but they don’t want your funeral unattended. You’re still coming, right?”
“Sunday, is it?”
“You can pick me up.”
After the others had left, Stefan arrived. I told him about our misadventures, and he nodded thoughtfully. Then he sat down to finish some paperwork.
I could have walked over and hit him again-it was a thought that still ran around in my head-but when you learn something over time the anger dissolves into the days, so that in the end you’re too tired; the anxiety has dulled you. He also seemed tired, and I wondered if the guilt was keeping him from sleep. We’d had such affection for each other for so many years that there had to have been guilt. Or if there was no guilt, just a low burning hatred of me that he sublimated through the exertion of sleeping with my wife.
My inaction haunted me more than the infidelity. I knew how I was supposed to react: I was supposed to rage into a violent destruction until everyone around me was stunned. I’d seen enough husbands who had done that, men I’d put behind bars. I’d sympathized with them, and always thought I might do the same. But like Mathew Eiers, I did nothing.
Was this a reflection of my love for Magda? If I couldn’t become irrational and brutal about this, then where did I draw the line? Because of my size, I’d seldom had to use my strength. The threat was always enough. But this was something that could not be assuaged by a threat.
No: I couldn’t become violent because in the end it didn’t matter. Magda and I had been growing apart for a long time, and this was just the uglier side of what already existed. The only thing that truly angered me was her nonchalance. She was sleeping with my oldest friend, and when Agnes became aware of it-as she no doubt would-what would it do to her?
Stefan lounged at his desk sleepily, and I finally began to gather some strength to brutalize him. He was helping to chip away at my family, and for that there was no forgiving him.
