“I don’t imagine you were nice to the guy whose blood is on your shirt.” He smiled. “I tell you, it’s going to be good to have him around again. This city’s become a goddamn bore.”
I went to dress.
Georgi found a shirt that barely fit me. “You hear Karel’s back in town?”
“Yeah, I talked to him.”
“Did he show you those awful photos? That’s what I mean about this city. A goddamned bore.”
At least Georgi could still make me smile.
73
I paused outside the door and listened. From down the stairs came Claudia’s high, irritating voice squealing at someone over the phone, so I leaned closer, but heard nothing.
I let myself in quietly, then moved to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. No hurry. In the icebox lay a leg of cold chicken from last night. I took a few bites, which only increased my hunger. Each time I made a noise, I stopped and listened for a reaction that didn’t come. So I left the chicken on the counter and stood next to the open bedroom door. I heard it then: the high rasp of labored, wet breaths. She was just as I had left her, tied at the ankles, wrists behind her, large mouth open in her sleep. There was a strong smell of urine-a dark spot had spread on the sheets. The last rays of evening sun through the windows glimmered on the curve of her stomach and her eyelids where old mascara had run from the edges: She had been crying. She looked beautiful.
I ran warm water over a hand towel in the bathroom and began to clean her. She woke with a start, then saw it was me. “What time is it?” she croaked.
“You wet yourself.”
“My wrists hurt.”
“Hold on.”
I finished cleaning her and took off my pants. The smell was still strong, but what I saw and what I smelled came together and filled me with desire. I entered her slowly. She was dry at first, but soon wasn’t, though at one point she shifted beneath me and repeated, “My wrists hurt.”
Afterward, I cleaned her again and untied the rope. Her hands were purple when she took them out from behind her and started rubbing them. I kissed them before she went to the bathroom.
When she finished her shower, she dressed and ate the rest of the chicken, then watched me as I sat listening to the radio. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost five.”
“Five?” She sat in the chair. “What the hell were you doing all this time?”
“I had some work to do.”
She looked at the floor. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”
“Did you call out for help?”
“I would have once it got dark.”
“I’m glad I didn’t leave you that long.”
She got up and turned off the radio. “You’re a real bastard.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
She went into the bedroom and closed the door.
I waited a while before following. It says something about me that I could not understand. I could not see that I’d done anything wrong that day.
She was sitting on a dry corner of the bed, crying. She had opened the window to air it out; the room was becoming cold. I stood over her and watched her shoulders tremble. If she had been Magda, I would have embraced her. But she wasn’t.
“I can’t believe this,” she said through her sobs.
“What?”
“Myself.” She uncovered her swollen eyes and looked at my knees. “I can’t believe what I’ve done to myself.”
“You didn’t do it. I tied you up.”
“I feel so humiliated.”
I touched her shoulder then, and she shrugged me off.
“You know,” she said very quietly, so that I had to lean closer to hear, “my mother always said to me: Vera, you’re just like your father. You never know how good you have it.”
I followed her into the living room, where she found her purse and the small bag with her change of clothes. “Let’s talk about this,” I said halfheartedly.
“I can’t.”
I opened the door for her. “Where are you going?”
“My sister’s.” She stopped and looked up at me, as if deciding whether or not to kiss me. She decided against it.
74
I changed the sheets and closed the window, then made myself a drink. I browsed my old book, finding the passage that Emil had been affected by. But it did not affect me. My own writing bored me.
I still could not see what I’d done. I knew I should, but the fact that I couldn’t did not trouble me. Every feeling was beyond my reach. I had given in to the recklessness that Vera claimed was all she had left, but the problem with recklessness is that there are other people in the world. They lie in the path of your recklessness, and you inevitably run them down. I understood this later. But on the sofa, gazing into the murkiness of my empty wineglass, I only understood that I had continued a game that Vera had started-a game she had first learned in Switzerland; and as for Malik, I had shown him the inevitable result of his own recklessness.
Once I was drunk I settled deeper into the sofa, closed my eyes, and tried to think over the case. Antonin Kullmann had used the state security apparatus to get rid of Nestor Velcea, then stole his paintings. Zoia became aware of the scheme and left Antonin in disgust. Yes-and Josef Maneck was caught between turning Antonin in and keeping his own prestige. The tension had turned him into an alcoholic.
Nestor, when he was arrested, had been waiting for a foreigner in a train station: Louis Rostek. Louis tried in vain to get him out. Then, years later, he figured out what had happened. So he went to the camp and told Nestor, then returned again after the Amnesty, when he told me of that most glorious of human desires: revenge.
And tomorrow Louis would return.
My first impulse was to call Emil, but there was a possibility of gunplay, and I didn’t want him hurt.
“Hello?”
“It’s me, Leon.”
“Oh. Hello, Ferenc.”
“Look, I need your help tomorrow morning. Can you meet me at the central train station at ten?”
“What is it?”
“We’re going to get Nestor.”
He paused. “Ten o’clock?”
“Don’t be late.”
75
