He opened the door a little before nine, and I turned toward the water to hide my face. Once he was halfway down the street, I followed.
He moved slowly, his white hair and sunburned head bobbing over his heavy body, and tugged now and then at the lapels of his trench coat. His shortness was apparent when he passed others on the slowly filling street. He stopped at a newspaper kiosk and bought the day’s Spark, then scanned headlines, his pace slowing more until he turned into a cafe two streets east of his building.
I waited outside, holding down my thirst. I didn’t need the coffee-adrenaline kept me awake-but my mouth was parched, and I needed a bath.
He was in there for three-quarters of an hour, then returned to his apartment. When it was clear where he was heading, I stopped at a kiosk and bought cigarettes and a bottle of water. I moved my post to his side of the street, so that if he decided to look outside, he wouldn’t notice the big man who did not take his eyes off the front door.
It occurred to me as I waited that I did not have to hold my emotions at an arm’s length anymore. They were too far away to matter.
I was lucky. In less than two hours he was on the street again. He turned the west corner and began looking through his keys while standing beside a green Sachsenring P240, a new model I admired. Once he found his keys I had passed behind him and was getting into my skoda.
We drove westward, following the Tisa out of town, then north. There weren’t many others on the road, and I had to keep a good distance. We passed Uzhorod and moved into a long stretch that slid slowly up into the mountains. Pine trees popped up around us, and with one hand I took my map out of the glove compartment. The only major town along that road was Perechyn, but it wouldn’t appear for another hour and a half. We were the only ones on the road.
I imagined he was heading to the dacha where he had taken his wife to find out what all he could do to her. But I didn’t want him to arrive-I didn’t want to leave clues in an obvious place.
He was a slow, careful driver, so it was easy to change gear and close the distance between us. The road curved as we gained altitude, and trees kept us from seeing what lay around each turn. I pulled the sun visor low and tailgated him. In his mirror I could vaguely make out his nervous face checking for the reckless driver behind him, but I stayed close. Finally, he did what I wanted: He slowed, drew to the edge of the road, and stuck his hand out to wave me around. I took his offer, and as I passed turned my head in the other direction.
Shadows of trees hung over the road as I took the turns abruptly, wanting to give myself enough space. The road was narrower than in the plains, and now and then a warning sign told me that it could not accommodate two-way traffic. At one of these points I stopped and placed the car at an angle. I got out, opened the hood, and leaned underneath it.
I heard him come up behind me, apply brakes, then honk. I kept my head beneath the hood. A second honk. Then, the sound of his door opening and his heels crunching pebbles.
“Is there some trouble? Maybe if you’d slow down, you could-”
I straightened and faced him.
Sometimes when people are stunned, there is a hesitation before the actual recognition. For Malik Woznica there was no pause. I saw the shock, then the back of his head as he ran to his car.
But his legs were short. I caught his coat as he was pulling the door open and jerked him back, then kicked the door shut.
He was saying No, no, but there seemed no reason to reply. I pulled him, kicking, away from his car, turned him toward me, and punched him hard on the brow. His head buckled back, flesh trembling. I ignored the pain in my knuckles and gave him another one that knocked him out and sent blood dribbling down his face. I dragged him to my car, opened the trunk, and stuffed him inside. It was difficult getting his legs in, but after a couple tries I could fold them properly. I slammed the door shut. I jogged to his car and drove it off the edge of the road, into the trees, wiped off the wheel, gearshift and handles with my shirt, then returned to my own car and closed the hood. I turned it around and began driving south again.
71
Not everyone knows the history of the Canal District. It was originally attached to the southern bank, a waterlogged narrowing of the Tisa, and until the founding of the Hungarian principality in the ninth century, it was uninhabited. After the coronation of Saint Stephen I at the millennium, the Canal District itself was used as a base for collecting tolls from boat traffic along the Tisa. During that time the region suffered attacks from the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires, and in 1241 fell into the hands of the Mongolian-Tartian hordes under Batu Khan, who only left when their khan died. Anticipating another attack, King Bela IV donated large areas of the Carpathian basin to encourage the building of forts to protect from another eastern attack. That was when the Canal District was separated by a defensive canal from the southern bank of the Tisa, connected by only one stone bridge-the Bela Bridge. But this engineering feat also had the effect of flooding the buildings that had been there for the previous couple centuries, and the residents were forced to cut smaller canals into the island to control the water. As trade in the region increased, the Capital grew into a wealthy city that then fell to various nation-states-now an outpost of Transylvania, then a victim of Ottoman conquest, and until the Great War an insignificant piece of the Dual Monarchy of Vienna and Budapest. After that war our independence was finally gained, and now we acted as if we were a real nation, with a long and epic history-though in reality we were less than forty years old.
I crossed the Bela Bridge, which deposited me among rotting wooden scaffolding put up half a decade ago to shore up the buildings against sinking, then abandoned when money was funneled to other, more practical projects.
I parked in gravel, then took a breath. An unsure map of the Canal District appeared in my head, and I charted my way, trying to recall where the waters had blocked paths, and where haphazard repairs had recovered them. The gray sky was bright and cold. I looked around, then put my ear to the trunk. A heavy, wheezing breath. Another. I opened it and saw him lying there, scrunched up, his face blue, struggling for air. He was only half- awake, dazed and sick, and I realized a broken pipe must have leaked carbon monoxide into the trunk. He was heavy and limp over my shoulder. His feet splayed in front of me, and I used a hand to hold them together, to keep balance. Against my back, he coughed.
On the straight paths it was easy enough. I leaned to the right in order to accommodate his weight. But the insecure arched bridges gave me trouble. I had to reach out my free arm, grab railings, and watch where I stepped. In one square I caught sight of a prostitute limping home. She looked at me, I at her, then she nodded at my load.
“Too much fun,” I whispered.
She sneered. “Me too.”
I walked through flooded squares because there was no avoiding it, and by the time I reached Augustus II Square, I was cold and wet. But I wasn’t feeling much by then. I wasn’t feeling the soreness in my shoulder that would settle in by the next day, nor the confusion that would come afterward. For now, there was no confusion and no doubt.
My feet crunched broken glass. I dropped him on the soiled spot where Antonin had died, stretched my arms, then lit a cigarette and waited on the other side of the pool for him to come to.
He was the kind of fat that, in the end, gave him a false look of health. His face cleared up, shifting back to its sunburn, purple emerging on his brow and nose around the crusted blood where I had punched him. He muttered something, then fell quiet. He woke with his eyes first, looking at the walls, not remembering, then his gaze moved over the water. When I brought the cigarette to my lips, he scrambled back against the wall.
“W-w-”
“ What am I doing here? Is that what you’re trying to ask?”
He shut his mouth and nodded.
“You just come back from a trip, Malik? Looks like you’ve gotten some sun.”
He leaned forward on his hands and vomited.
I squatted in front of him. “I worked hard, you know. It was a real chore to get your wife out of the country
