enough. And they will.”
“My kind?”
“Apparatchiks.”
Brano looked at his mother, but she was focused on pushing food around her plate; Lucjan, finished with the butter, had begun sucking on a glass of vodka. Brano said, “This time you speak of. You think it’s near?”
“Nearer than you think.”
“I suppose you learned this from your Good Book. Revelations. Fire in the sky and all that.” He said, “Don’t choose faith over facts, Klara. It’ll always get you into trouble.”
“You pompous bastard.” She pointed her fork at him. “What about Father Wieslowski? Huh? Was it a mistake of faith that got him thrown into prison and then murdered by his guards? And where are they keeping Father Wolek?”
Wieslowski was an old story, an easy one to dredge out whenever some Christian had run out of arguments. Wolek was one of his associates, arrested last June. “Socialism is a demanding mistress,” he told her. “And fragile. These so-called fathers were nothing more than hooligans undermining the foundations of our culture.”
“Did you just say, our culture?” She let out a rough laugh. “Read your history books, Brano. Christianity is the foundation of European civilization.”
“I have read them,” he said calmly. “European civilization survived despite-not because of-Christianity. There’s a reason why the height of Catholic power is called the Dark Ages. Because facts were given less credit than faith.”
Klara fell quiet a moment. Lucjan shoveled food into his mouth. Mother stared intently at her glass. Brano kept his eyes on his sister. They had never been particularly close as children; fourteen years’ difference and the sudden disappearance of their father had pushed her further away. Adulthood had done nothing to lessen this distance. Each sibling, in each town, had followed a different track, had built up his own values and hatreds, had formed his own language. Brano didn’t understand her-he knew this-but there was no sense backing down from her stupidity.
Quietly, she said, “You’ve got more faith than anyone at this table, you know that?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re the most religious person I know. Your faith in your beloved Ministry.”
“You saw my work as a religion?”
“At least in ours we have salvation.”
“Of a kind.”
“And we’re never alone. I don’t think you can say that about yours, Brano. The religion of the apparatchik only gives you paperwork and a bad conscience.”
“You could turn it around,” he said after a moment. “Maybe I’m not religious at all, and neither are you. Maybe you’re all apparatchiks for God.”
Klara looked at him, but before she could answer, Lucjan slapped a big hand on Brano’s back. “Apparatchiks for God?” He was laughing a laugh that sounded like desperation. “That’s good! I like it!”
Through the fresh flood of pain in his back, he understood: No matter how upset he made Klara, Brano wouldn’t have to deal with it at the end of the night; Lucjan would.
He said, “Doesn’t matter. I’m not in the Ministry anymore, and we’re just sharing our opinions. Right?”
Mother picked up her glass. “That’s the smartest thing anyone’s said this evening.”
Klara, red-faced, shoved her fork into her potatoes. “Just as long as no one arrests me for my opinions.”
13 FEBRUARY 1967, MONDAY
His back ached when he finally rose at noon; his ribs were tender, and his head still throbbed. A dark bruise had grown around his left eye. Mother was not in a good state, either. Her pale eyelids had swollen so that she peered at him through slits when he asked where Zygmunt Nubsch, the bread man, lived. “Why on earth do you want to know that?”
“I need to talk to him about something.”
“About this?” she asked, and touched a finger to his injured eye.
He walked to Zygmunt’s home, which was just across the street from the graveyard. Passersby flicked their gazes over his beaten face, but no one spoke to him. He paused at Zygmunt’s front gate and glanced back at the lines of stones, a jumble of styles, some clumsy and eroded, others fresh slabs with fine edges. A group of them were low and simple in the long grass, with Cyrillic names etched below five-pointed stars: Russian soldiers fallen during the liberation of their country from the fascists. He stomped through snow to the front door and knocked.
After a minute, a squat woman looked up at him, pulling a length of gray behind her ear.
“Ewa Nubsch?”
Though she peered at his bruises, she didn’t recognize his face, but his accent-measured and purposeful, from the Capital-gave her pause. She placed a shriveled hand on her breast. “Yes?”
“I’ve come to speak with Zygmunt. Is he in?”
She shook her head. “He’s working. You can speak to him this evening.”
“Perhaps I could ask you a couple questions, Comrade Nubsch.”
“I’m very busy now, Comrade Sev.”
“This is rather important.”
“But-” she said, then lowered her hand. “Come in.”
The Nubsch house was tidy and proper. A small television in the corner overlooked a sparse living room covered with lace doilies and table runners. Ten paperbacks were on display behind a glass-doored cabinet, and an electric coil-and-fan by the kitchen door kept the place very warm.
“Something to drink?”
“If you’re drinking.”
She hesitated again. “Coffee?”
“Perfect.”
She limped off to the kitchen and ran water for a while, and he heard the pop and hiss of the gas stove being lit. Then she was in the doorway again, wiping her hands on a white towel. “Something to eat?”
“No, thank you,” he said, and settled in a chair. She ranged farther into the room but didn’t sit down. He said, “Do you mind if I ask a personal question?”
She shook her head with two tight jerks.
“Where did you get that limp?”
Ewa Nubsch looked down at her right leg, as if she had never noticed it before. She took a breath. “Well, you know, I’m not a young woman anymore.”
“Neither of us is young.”
She rocked her head from side to side. “I twisted the ankle in one of those badger holes in the fields. I should have been watching better.”
Brano looked at his palms, then placed them on his knees. “You know, Comrade Nubsch, there’s a rumor going around that I wanted to verify. About the thirty-first of January, a Tuesday night. Zygmunt lost a hand of cards.”
Ewa blinked at him.
“People lose at cards all the time; it’s seldom notable. But the story is that Zygmunt made a very rash wager. The same kind of wager Tomasz Sakiewicz made last year. But Tomasz was lucky enough to win his bet.”
She glanced into the kitchen, and by the time she turned back, she had found something to say. “There are a lot of rumors in Bobrka, Comrade Sev. I wouldn’t believe them all if I were you.” She gave him a half-smile and limped off.
He followed her into the kitchen. It was small, but the space had been used economically. She poured the steaming water into a filter that dripped black coffee into a glass pot.
“Comrade Nubsch, we both know the story is true. I don’t really care about gambling, but I do wonder why
