but they’re willing to send him in with a terrible cover. We want to know what’s going on.
We?
Myself, and the Comrade Lieutenant General.
I see.
Don’t misjudge him, said Cerny. What he did to you was what he thought he had to do.
He wanted me in prison.
Colonel Cerny shook the newspaper at him. Well, when Josef Lochert reported that you’d attacked him and tried to sabotage the operation… what did you expect him to think?
Thank you again, by the way, said Brano. For keeping me out of prison.
You know I’d do much more for you. He stood up and looked through the glass at the factory that reached beyond his line of sight. Maybe this isn’t much better. He stuck out a hand, and Brano took it. So? Have I put something bright into an otherwise dull day?
You’ve put something bright into an otherwise dull life.
Cerny tossed him the Kurier. Enjoy the read. That stuff is no good for my bladder.
Brano accepted the gift of a small roll from his waitress and drove through the mountains to the other side, passing Turka and then moving farther north beyond the Carpathian hills. Giraltovce and Svidnik glided past, and after dark he reached Dukla. There was a new billboard outside town, briefly lit by his headlights: General Secretary Tomiak Pankov, bald head shining above a blue suit, stood smiling, arms out, while around him a ring of twenty children danced. Beneath: THE SOCIALIST WORLD IS THE WORLD OF PEACE.
With children dancing in his head, Brano drove north into the forest.
He could not see the drilling machinery in the dark, but he knew it was there, among the pines. As he emerged into the sparse, rolling terrain that led to the village, he had an overwhelming urge to turn back. A couple of houses appeared on the left-new, unfamiliar homes-but the graveyard on the right brought on the subtle push of nostalgia he’d been waiting for. He took a left at the crossroad and drove into the center of Bobrka.
It seemed that everything was already known to him in this town of less than four hundred; everything was tactile. The lit windows with their rough lace curtains, the tire-mangled road, the sharp grass springing up in his headlights, the fogged windows of the village’s one bar and the old man shivering outside in the cold with a beer in his hand, watching Brano’s Trabant roll past. Otherwise, the village was deserted. The bus stop was dark, though the yellow church with its statue of the Virgin Mary was lit by a floodlight. He followed the right-hand bend in the road, passing the small state store his mother ran, continuing without looking at the prim homes leading up to hers.
Brano was genuinely surprised to see the house as it had always been, small and remote from the road. After the dynamism of the Capital, he was in a place that lived as if nothing had changed in the last fifty years.
He parked in the gravel, took out his suitcase and briefcase, and paused at the gate. He took breaths of cold air until the red tint in his cheeks began to fade.
The kitchen light glowed from around the side of the house, so he walked through shrubs to the kitchen door. Whitewashed by the thin lace curtain, she was still heavy, her thick elbows on the table, staring at the playing cards laid out before her. She jumped at his knock.
As Iwona Sev approached the door she squinted, and he leaned close to the glass to help her out. Then her head slid back, eyes filling with light before the smile came. She pulled the door open and shouted, “Brani!”
He kissed her, then came into the kitchen, which had also never heard of progress. Wood-burning stove, gas lamp, a pail of fat in the corner. She held his face by the chin and turned it in the light. “You’re thin, thin. Are you all right? Is everything okay?”
He noticed that on her forehead, between her eyes, was a smear of soot. He kissed her cheeks again. “I’m just taking a vacation. It’s all right to stay here?”
“How can you even ask? It’s not every day I have my son here. Or every year, for that matter.” She tried to take his suitcase, but he wouldn’t let her. “Get those to your room and I’ll make something to eat. You must be hungry.”
He tilted his head from side to side.
“Of course you are. I’ll heat some soup.”
“You’ve got a spot,” he said, touching his own forehead.
She opened her mouth, blushing. “Oh yes, yes.” She wiped the spot with a thumb and looked at her dirty print. “If I had an electric stove, I’d be a lot cleaner.”
It could not really be called “his” room anymore. All personal effects-the toy oxcart with the broken wheel, the rotary board game, and even the set of French metal skiers with little metal skis and sleds-had been removed long ago, and his younger sister, Klara, had taken her possessions to her own home on the outskirts of Bobrka. A group of framed photographs hung on the wall in a loose pastiche of half-forgotten faces. Uncles and distant cousins who were killed in the war, and their wives, who had remarried or stuck out the following years in solitude. A group shot of his mother’s family from the ’teens, faces serious, as befitted the weight of such a sitting. Brano was also there, at two, and at six years old, with curls that made him look uncomfortably like a girl; Klara as a nine-year-old had the same intense features she had carried into adulthood. In the center, a larger portrait of his father-his Tati- stood sentry over the others. It had been taken during the war, a young man’s face with too many worry lines sprouting from his eyes. His mouth was open, revealing the chipped front tooth Brano always imagined when he tried to remember the face of Andrezej Fedor Sev.
He sat on the edge of the bed, gazing at that tooth. The man was probably dead now, one tiny fraction of the endless stream of refugees who made their way west after the war. But this man had been ordered to leave, by his son, on a frigid October night.
Brano wiped his palms dry on his knees.
It was not his room anymore. It had become a home for guests. A guest room, and he was a guest. He put the suitcase into the wardrobe.
Her forehead was clean and the cards cleared away. She was heating pork stew in an iron pot and toasting bread. He asked her about the store. “Well, you know. Eugen is a good boy, but I don’t need him. I could do all the work myself. It’s a small place. But the State wants two employees, and who am I to argue?”
“You could bring it up at a council meeting.”
“Do you think that would help?”
“The State can’t know things unless it’s told.”
She hummed beneath her breath and stirred the fragrant soup. She added a spoonful of fat from the pail and let it cook a little more before ladling it into a bowl and collecting the toast. She poured him a glass of brandy and seemed pleased just to watch him eat.
He told her a few necessary details about the Pidkora factory and spent more time describing new construction in the Capital and everything that was changing. “The metro was a fantastic success.”
“That’s a good thing,” she said.
“When you travel you see the entire cross-section of the city-Gypsies and workers and university professors riding side by side.”
“And Politburo men?”
“Mother.”
“I’m only asking.”
He finished eating and sipped the warm brandy. She poured herself one and refilled his.
“And what about your personal life, Brani? Do you have friends? Any women you’d like your mother to meet?”
He hesitated. “No, no women.”
“You’re not so young anymore.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“And when you reach a certain age you’ll kick yourself for not having a wife.”
“It’s possible.”
“Maybe we can find you a nice girl around here.”
“No. Mother, don’t try that.”
“If you’re not going to be sensible, then I’ll have to be sensible for you.”
