hissing wind to meet Jan Soroka.
He suddenly remembered what Klara had said, the pink anger filling her cheeks: The religion of the apparatchik only gives you paperwork and a bad conscience.
This wasn’t far from the truth.
Jan was crouched, looking at something on the ground. “Hello!” called Brano, and Jan glanced back over his shoulder. He didn’t stop what he was doing: using a stick to slowly pick apart a high, encrusted anthill. Brano squatted beside him. “Going to destroy that thing?”
“I’ve always hated ants,” said Jan. “When I was a child, a whole army attacked me. I’m a lover of nature in general, but not these things. Whenever I get the chance, I kill them.”
He brushed the stick through the base of the hill, quickly, and the tower collapsed, releasing a flood of confused black spots that spilled onto a patch of snow.
Brano said, “Ants in winter. That’s strange.”
“Yeah,” said Jan.
Then the two men began walking along the edge of the mountain in silence, until Jan said, “How’s that case of yours coming?”
“Which one?”
“That dead man. Bieniek?”
“Yes, Jakob Bieniek.”
“Any leads?”
“The Nubsches killed him.”
Jan, for once, looked surprised. “So it wasn’t you after all. But I’m not sure the village will believe a nice old couple like Zygmunt and Ewa sliced him up.”
“It doesn’t matter what Bobrka believes.”
“It might. From the look of your face, you could probably use some allies around here.”
Brano touched his sore eye. “You’re right about that.”
“But why did they do it?”
“The Nubsches? A bet.”
“Cucumber?”
“Pavel Jast got them to do it.”
“And why did he do it?”
“I have no idea.”
They stopped beside a boulder, where Jan took out a cigarette. Brano cupped his hands around the match to keep it alight. Jan took a drag and handed it to Brano. “My father knew you didn’t kill Jakob-he had Pavel fingered from the beginning.”
“Why?”
“My father’s got intuition.”
“Well, he’s a lucky man. I just stumble through the facts as I see them.”
“What about your father?” asked Jan as he took the cigarette back.
“My father?”
“Is he dead?”
“He was a farmer,” said Brano, “and when the Germans came, the Wehrmacht forced him into service. He built antitank obstacles. All through the war he did this in a factory up in Rzeszow. By the end of the war, he was managing the factory, and by late ’forty-five, he was back to farming.”
“But he left the country, didn’t he?”
“He had to. His name was put down as a collaborator. If he’d stayed he would have been arrested.”
“Arrested?”
“Yes.”
Jan handed the cigarette over. “By whom?”
“By me.”
They didn’t talk for a while, and despite the lingering memory of that trip to Bobrka back in ’45 to arrest the man he instead handed forged papers and ordered to emigrate westward, Brano found it a peculiarly peaceful moment. He never learned what had become of Andrezej Fedor Sev; the few times he’d tried to look into it he’d come up with nothing. Perhaps he never made it out of the country, or he died in one of the many displaced persons camps of postwar Germany. He simply didn’t know, and when he reflected on it, he found he didn’t care. That man was part of another life.
Jan took out another cigarette and offered him one. They smoked and watched the cows standing in patches of snow. Brano said, “Either you had an affair with Dijana Frankovic in Szuha, or you went to Vienna and left your family behind-it really doesn’t matter. But why would you leave at all? Lia’s a beautiful woman, she seems like a good mother.”
Jan tapped his ash and thought a second before answering. “Did you know that when I was sixteen years old I met Mihai?”
“Nineteen-fifty,” said Brano. “You were a Red Pioneer.”
“You guys really do know everything, don’t you?” He took a drag. “Well, I was excited. I’d never been much for the Pioneers, but every now and then we’d do something interesting. This time we met the most powerful man in the country. And I, like any other kid, idolized Mihai.”
“A lot of people still do.”
“So I’m told-no one seems to idolize Tomiak Pankov. Anyway, we went to Victory Square, to the Central Committee building and his office on the third floor. You been there?”
Brano nodded.
“It was impressive. All that red satin, the paintings, that enormous desk. I remember a silver ink bottle-it had the hawk etched in it. It was a beautiful thing. And then I saw Mihai himself. You met him a lot, I guess.”
“A few times.”
“Well, the photos and newsreels never really showed how short he was, did they? He was a head shorter than me. This was a shock, I can tell you.”
“That he was short?”
“Not just that he was short. He had a cold at the time, and whenever he breathed you could hear how hard it was for him. I was a kid, you know, and I couldn’t imagine how such a great man could be like this-short, snot- nosed, no better than the guy who sells vegetables in the market. And this was the head of our country?”
“Well, you were young.”
“I was. But I don’t think that reaction ever really left me. I got older, I married Lia-to me she was the most gorgeous woman in the Capital-but I was still a stupid teenager up here,” he said, tapping his skull. “I didn’t realize she’d catch colds, that she’d be lazy in the mornings and not make coffee. She’d be short-tempered and shout at me about things that weren’t my fault; she’d be completely unreasonable sometimes. And no amount of expectation can prepare you for a child. Everything shifts and becomes a little dirtier. Your wife’s body begins to fall apart.”
“You’re brutal, Jan.”
“To be fair, I’m sure she had similar complaints about me. I was unreasonable all the time; I got fatter, lazier; I stopped talking to her.”
“And so you left.”
“At first I just had affairs. An afternoon, sometimes a whole night. And I saw some of what I was missing. I suppose I wanted to get out on my own and learn what life with another woman was like.”
“Until you became disillusioned with the new woman.”
Jan shrugged.
The cigarette was strong, and Brano’s head buzzed as he wondered if it would have been this way had he stayed with his Dijana. “Did you ever actually know her?”
“Who?”
“The real Dijana Frankovic. In Vienna.”
Jan smiled. “I only knew the one in Szuha.”
Brano was smiling as well. He tossed his cigarette into the grass and felt, for the moment, that time had slowed. For the moment, there was no one in the Capital waiting for results, no press of minutes.
