fence barked maniacally at him, and in the eyes of passersby he saw not only a lack of welcome but actual hostility. The old women were musing over how to fit him into their wood-burning ovens, and the men were wondering where on his body a shotgun blast would best end his untrustworthy existence.
The bar in the center was only large enough for three small tables and a short counter. One table was taken up by two old men playing cards on either side of a half-full bottle of rye vodka, and behind the bar a young man with a monobrow beneath his ashy mark bent over a case of Zywiec, counting bottles. Brano waited until he stood up. The recognition flickered and then steadied in the bartender’s eyes. “A beer?”
“Sure,” said Brano.
He removed a warm Zywiec from the box, uncapped it, and slid it over, then returned to his counting.
“And a paper?”
The man looked up. “What?”
“Do you have a copy of The Spark? ”
The bartender took a coffee-stained copy of the day’s paper from behind the counter. “Anything else?”
The two older men took a break in their game to watch Brano sit on a stool by the lace curtains, sip his beer, and begin to read.
On the front page, General Secretary Tomiak Pankov looked back at him from behind a podium in a slender suit, his bald head ringed by a thin patch of gray, talking of peace. When Pankov took power a decade ago, his first preoccupied year had been spent purging the Politburo and security apparatus of anyone too loyal to his dead predecessor, Mihai. Brano had survived that purge by sticking close to Colonel Cerny, whose ability at sidestepping the hammer was almost famous. Once his power was secured, Pankov became what he’d always been, a Party bureaucrat who made speeches on industrial levels and agricultural output; he focused on the numbers. But after a heart attack in early 1965, his focus changed, and he reinvented himself as an enlightened man of peace. The Spark reported that twenty-six nations had been present at the most recent international summit, called “The Doves of Peace”-Pankov was not known for his original titles.
Brano glanced up from the paper and peered out the window; Pavel Jast had arrived.
Comrade Colonel Cerny had given him the name of his contact, shown him a photograph, and added, An idiot, a gambler, and a drunk, but useful. That seemed about right. He could read those characteristics in the swagger Pavel Jast shared with all small-town informants, as if the entire People’s Army were marching behind them and would back up any stupid thing they did. So Brano returned to the paper as the fat man burst in, muttered something indecipherable to the two old men, then clapped a hand on the counter and demanded a vodka. He held the muddy glass to his lips as he rotated, leaning back to survey the tiny space. In the translucent window- reflection, Brano saw Pavel Jast’s eyes settle on him. Jast produced a cigarette and winked at the two old men before approaching.
“Hey, you. Comrade. Got a light?” He winked a second time in the old men’s direction.
From his pocket Brano took a book of matches marked HOTEL METROPOL and handed it to Jast without looking away from the window.
The first match faltered, but the second hissed and sparked until the cigarette was lit. Jast exhaled smoke and the stink of earlier vodkas, and Brano’s eyes watered as he accepted the matches back. But this was a different book of matches, white and blank. Jast said, “From the Capital, eh? Aren’t you Iwona’s boy?”
Brano drank some more beer, then laid a few koronas on the counter. He turned to Jast for the first time and saw the red web of punished veins beneath his flaccid cheeks and nose. “I am,” he said.
Another wink at the old men, who seemed unsure they liked the performance. The bartender ignored everyone. Jast grunted, the shot glass pressing into his chin. “Well, you’re not in the Capital anymore, comrade.”
“I didn’t notice,” said Brano, and only after he left did it occur to anyone in the bar that this had been a joke.
On the way back to his mother’s house, he clutched the matchbook in his pocket, turning it over and opening and shutting it while he watched faces along the road. Zygmunt, the old man who delivered his mother’s bread, seemed to be avoiding his gaze, but Captain Rasko acknowledged him as he stood in the mud with a young woman whose puffy lips made her look like the victim of abuse. He hadn’t expected to come across Lia Soroka out in the open, but he managed the surprise by nodding back at Rasko and at Jan Soroka’s unsmiling wife.
He didn’t take out the matchbook until he had passed his mother’s front door. He flipped it open and read the sweat-smeared pencil scrawl inside the cover:
Klara brought a large dish of pork cabbage rolls, and Lucjan ducked his head as he followed her in with his vodka, sealed in a used liter-sized soda bottle. Lucjan was nearly two heads taller than Brano, ruddy in the face, his wide shoulders stretching the back of his shirt, but his handshake had almost no strength at all. Mother took the vodka from him and disappeared with Klara into the kitchen.
Lucjan tried to smile. “Klara says you’re on vacation.”
“That’s true.”
“You don’t know how long?”
“A week, probably. Just long enough to get some rest.”
“Must be nice, having that kind of relationship with your manager. He doesn’t care?”
“He’s a good friend.”
“Known him a long time?”
“Are you always so curious?”
Lucjan let out a nervous laugh, then settled on the sofa and began to roll a cigarette, his big fingers fumbling with the thin paper. Brano watched. “She told me you’re doing well at the cooperative.”
“Klara’s an optimist.”
“But you’re doing administrative work. That’s a good sign.”
He licked the paper and sealed the cigarette. “What about you? You’re not used to working a factory job, are you?”
“Not so different. There are orders, and I follow them. 1 do all right.”
“That’s the answer I’d give, too.” He offered the damp cigarette, but Brano shook his head.
Klara had known Lucjan Witaszewski all her life, and perhaps this explained the unimpressive choice she’d made at the age of seventeen. Brano had been working in the Capital for four years when the wedding invitation arrived in his mailbox. But that was 1948, and in the Capital there had been no end to the work. In almost every alley hid another criminal, the detritus all wars produce, and on top of that, there had been a new man in the Militia office named Emil Brod who had to be followed and examined and, finally, accepted.
So he had mailed his response the next day: He could not come, but he wished them every happiness in their new, shared life, and had every hope that unity like theirs would be the backbone of their new, great society.
Klara had never replied.
Now, nearly two decades later, she placed two glasses of vodka on the coffee table and ran her fingers through her husband’s hair. “What’s the subject?”
“Work,” said Lucjan.
“Just as long as it’s not politics. Now drink.”
Both men did as they were told, and Brano admitted that Lucjan’s apricot vodka was rather good. Lucjan shrugged his thanks.
They went to the kitchen table while Mother dished everything out. “No ceremonies here,” she said. “Just eat.” Brano followed the order, but Klara bowed her head-a quick prayer-before lifting her fork.
Conversation lingered on work as Lucjan revealed an unexpected excitement, describing the new drilling rig that had been delivered. “The Austrians know what they’re doing, I can tell you that. They sent over the Trauzl-a cable rotary rig on wheels. A real beauty!”
Brano noted that the factories in Uzhorod were pumping out record numbers of tractors and industrial machines. Klara wasn’t impressed. “These production records don’t do anything for Bobrka. You can see it yourself. Now that it’s winter, we’re hibernating, like always. Go out after dark, and Bobrka’s a ghost town. I suppose the Capital never gets like that.”
“It doesn’t,” said Brano.
“Makes you wonder what goes on behind the windows,” Klara said. “They’re still living their lives.”
