someone asked why my marriage was crumbling, my answers would have been just as ludicrous. Such things cannot be paraphrased.
I rolled over and forced my face into his pillow. It smelled like him, or I imagined it did. Dirty. The smell of the east, as the Frenchman had said. We stink, and we mutilate one another. The clothes we wear and the words we speak are just masks. We take our revenge because we can’t let the past go. Because in the past we were no better-we ate each other like wild, starving dogs.
Maybe it was then. Maybe later, after I drifted off and woke from uncomfortable dreams about a genius painter who becomes, by way of betrayal, a mad killer. Sometime in that restless night the storyteller in me put it together. Antonin’s rise to fame with the help of Josef Maneck, nearly simultaneous with Nestor’s demise. Nestor, the eccentric who wouldn’t even sign his work. And the things Stefan had fretted over: Josef’s sudden conversion to alcoholism because, as Martin had said, he couldn’t live with himself, and Antonin’s shift into the banality of state art. Then I knew it. I knew, with utter clarity, why Nestor Velcea had killed Josef, Antonin, and Zoia. I knew it in a flash, like a vision from God. It was art. It was all about art.
52
I washed in Stefan’s grime-laden tub, dried off with his mildewed towel, used his toothbrush on my teeth, and drank coffee from his cup. I looked out his window at the gray blocks he saw every morning and paused at the same door he opened each day.
At home I pulled out my dress uniform. All inspectors had one, but only brought it out for celebrations or funerals. I was mildly astonished that mine still fit. Magda and Agnes wore identical black dresses, bought from the same sale. Magda had told Agnes about Stefan, and she seemed to be taking it well. On the drive she asked if dying hurt.
“Depends on how you die,” I said.
She shifted in the backseat, looking out the window. “I think when I die, I want it to hurt a lot.”
Magda looked at me. I said, “Why on earth would you want that?”
“Because. That way I know I’m dying. I don’t want it to be a surprise.”
I looked at her in the rearview and wondered if I should be worried.
With the pleasant exception of Kaminski, everyone was there, in uniform, both Moska and Sev with little rows of medals on their chests. It was as if our office had lost its walls and desks, then grown crabgrass and tombstones. A ring of trees separated us from the city, and Lena, in an impressive black gown, toyed with a leaf. Beside Moska stood his wife Angela, a tall, thin woman with a round face that seemed unable to smile.
She was a good woman, everyone agreed, but she seldom spoke to any of us. Agnes and Magda shook hands with everyone, Magda a little shamefully-she hadn’t seen most of them in a long time-and Agnes boldly. Agnes gave Leonek a big hug, which surprised Magda. She pulled Agnes back, blushing, and said, “Hello again, Leonek.”
Leonek left a hand on Agnes’s shoulder and smiled back.
Emil’s uniform looked too big for him, but it was better pressed than anyone’s. I assumed Lena had taken care of that. “Can I take your husband away a moment?” I asked her.
She smiled and let go of his arm.
We’d made it to a fresh grave not yet covered with grass before he said, “What is it?”
“Nestor Velcea. I know what he’s doing.”
“Then please, for Christ’s sake, tell me.”
I took a breath, then spoke it aloud for the first time. “Antonin Kullmann turned in Nestor so that he could steal his work. All of it. Antonin signed his name on the paintings, and Josef Maneck, the curator, showed them. The guilt turned Maneck into a drunk, and when Zoia learned of it she left Antonin.”
He patted his schoolboy hair. “It’s a stretch.”
“Not entirely. Take a look at the early Kullmann paintings and compare them with the newer ones. Even Stefan saw the difference. Kullmann ran out of Nestor’s paintings and had to make his own finally. I’d been trying to figure out why Nestor had mutilated Antonin, had put him through such pain. It’s because he took his whole life away. He took everything. And I’ll bet that if we look into it, we’ll find that Antonin had been supporting Josef’s lifestyle, in order to keep him quiet about it all.”
“It’s too simple,” said Emil. “How could this kind of thing remain secret?”
“Nestor never showed his work. No one knew it.”
“Somebody must have known.”
“Zoia did. Because they all lived together. Maybe someone else did, too, but this at least gets us moving.”
“But why did he kill Stefan?”
“That, I don’t know,”
He shook his head. “Good job, Ferenc. Really. I wish I’d come up with it.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you a thing or two before this is over.”
Georgi brought Vera. I shook Georgi’s hand and gave Vera a hug as my family loitered with the others. “What are you doing here?”
The corners of her lips twitched into a sneer. “You don’t think I remember Stefan? I knew him.”
“Years ago, and you only met a couple times.”
“I didn’t want Georgi to be all alone. He needs a shoulder. By the way, the uniform suits you.”
Vera and Georgi greeted my family. Occasionally during the ceremony I shot glances back at both women standing beside one another, Magda erect beside Vera’s slouch. Beneath my fear I noticed how different they were-their looks, their characters, the way they made love. I was their only shared attribute.
We stood stiffly during the reading, and now and then I caught Sev’s gaze wandering over to evaluate my grief. The casket was open, and Stefan’s uniform was too tight on him, pulling around the belly. Magda was surprisingly dry-eyed, while Agnes clutched her hand and gaped. We were all surprisingly dry-eyed. All except Leonek, who wept quietly.
53
The guys invited me out for drinks, but I looked back at Magda and Agnes and declined. We drove in silence, and silence reigned at home. Agnes turned on the radio, then sat with Pavel on the floor, while Magda prepared dinner. I watched Agnes for a long time, but thought only of Stefan.
Agnes bored of Pavel and found a newspaper crossword puzzle to work on. Pavel climbed into my lap. There was a documentary on the radio-not American, but ours-on the history of the nation and the ethnic diversity that made it an ideal home for socialism.
I scratched Pavel’s ear absently.
Stefan could no longer ease his pain by confessing to me, and I could not sit him down and forgive him. I pressed my eyelids, remembering moments of our childhood in Pocspetri, and later, after Daria left him. I’d distanced myself from him, and with his mother’s death Stefan’s life was empty of almost everything, except regret.
Magda wanted to know if I preferred potatoes or fried cornmeal. I looked at her a while before answering.
“It’s a simple question, Ferenc.”
“Cornmeal. Yes, cornmeal.”
She returned to the kitchen. No wonder he had jumped at the chance to be with her again. He had nothing else.
The radio told me that Comrade General Secretary Mihai wanted us to revel in our history, to learn from it the possibilities for our future.
Agnes scribbled letters into boxes.
