342.”
While Brano filled it out the militiaman eyed him, the only sound the pen tip scratching paper. Brano passed it over and watched him read. The hawk on his blue Militia shoulder patch was dirty. Then Brano handed over his internal passport, and the militiaman’s lip twitched at the sight of the Ministry hawk on the red cover.
“Uh, it says here you work at the Pidkora factory.”
“That’s true.”
“But your passport-”
“Former employer. 1 haven’t had a chance to change my documents.”
The militiaman cleared his throat. “Well, Comrade Sev, it’s good to have visitors in Bobrka. I’m Captain Tadeusz Rasko.” He stuck out his hand and Brano took it, rising imperceptibly. “How long will you be with us?”
“A week, I think. But my foreman is very flexible.”
“Very good,” he said. “So you’re here for a vacation?”
“I’ve worked hard this year.”
“I imagine.”
“What do you imagine?”
The captain’s mouth chewed air for a moment. “Just that you’ve worked hard, Comrade Sev.”
Brano nodded at his passport on the desk. “Can you stamp that, then?”
“Of course.” It took another minute of desperate searching to come up with the proper stamp, then more to find the inkpad. But Captain Rasko did finally place the small purple entry stamp on a clean page.
Brano walked farther out of town and then up the dirt road leading into the hills that surrounded Bobrka. He passed old women he barely recognized from previous visits on his way to the windswept fields spotted by patches of snow. He tugged his hat lower and slipped his hands into his pockets against the cold. There were a few houses up here, one freshly painted, but he stopped at the low two-bedroom that needed a paint job more than any other.
The front door was open before he’d reached the steps, and tall, thin Klara looked down on him, smiling. The spot on her forehead was very black, fresh.
“Mother said you’d be by.”
“That was a good guess on her part.”
He kissed her cheeks and held her briefly before she drew him inside, where the warmth encouraged him to strip off his coat and hat. There were more food smells here, pork and cabbage, and when she noticed him sniffing she asked if he was hungry. He was not. “But you’re so thin, Brano.”
“I’m fat enough.”
Klara began chain-smoking in the living room, while the fingers of her free hand pinched the fabric of her long brown skirt. He asked about her life, and she told an abbreviated story of the three years since they’d last talked, her dark eyebrows bobbing. While living with Lucjan’s parents, they had built this little house (which, during his last visit, before he left for West Berlin, had been nothing more than a concrete foundation) and moved in two years ago. “You’ve seen the outside, right? We got the paint from the factory in Sanok. Never use that stuff. It’s just like chalk, washes away.”
“I’ll remember.”
Lucjan was still working at the petroleum cooperative in a number of capacities, though these days his work was mostly administrative. “He’s immensely talented. He could do the work with his eyes shut.”
“He always seemed talented,” Brano lied.
“Lucjan’s been making his own vodka in the basement. You’ll like it. It’s fruity.” She wrinkled her nose when she said that.
Then she asked, and he told her the same vague things about his life that he had told his mother.
“A factory, huh?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
“But why?” she asked.
“What?”
“You told us you’d left the Ministry, but you never said why. Did you finally get disillusioned?”
He looked at her a moment, wondering if he could work his way through that lie as well. No, not with Klara. “I was fired.”
“Fired?” She straightened.
“Yes. I was working in Vienna, and a colleague double-crossed me. He sent in a report claiming that I had tried to sabotage his work. Can I have a cigarette?”
She handed one over and lit another for herself. “Well? Did you?”
“Of course not. I’d never sabotage the Ministry.”
Klara seemed amused, as if this were something she could not quite believe. “You were accused of sabotage and were then given a job in a factory.”
“If I didn’t have allies, I’d be in a work camp now. Not everyone in the Ministry believes this man.”
“Who is this man?”
He stared at the glowing tip of his cigarette. “Someone who wanted to get ahead and didn’t care who he ruined on the way up.”
“And…”
“And?”
“And did he get ahead?”
Brano nodded as he crushed his unfinished cigarette in the ashtray. “It’s an imperfect world.”
“And now you’ve come here.”
“A little vacation.”
“But here,” she said. “Why here? ”
He wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “It’s home.”
“You realize that everyone in town knows about you.”
“What about me?”
“What you do for a living.”
“What I did for a living.”
“It doesn’t matter to them. No one here trusts you.”
“I don’t see why they shouldn’t trust me. My job was only about uncovering the truth.”
She flicked ash off her cigarette. “Come on, Brano. They don’t want to end up another Tibor Kraus.”
“Who?”
“You know. That man from Dukla, the butcher.”
“I don’t know him.”
Klara sighed. “It was in The Spark. He’d been using one of those machines for making meat pies. What are they called?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, he adjusted the gears so it made them with an ounce less dough. Then he sold the extra dough on the side. Made some money.”
“He was caught?”
She nodded.
“Good.”
“He was executed, Brano. Because of meat pies.” She waited, but he didn’t say a thing. “This is what I mean about the villagers here. You scare them. You know you do. Hell, what you did to Father is almost a legend.”
“I helped him.”
“You’re the only one who believes that, but it doesn’t matter. You know what they think, and that’s why you never visit. It’s not relaxing to be in a place you’re not welcome.”
“So I’m not welcome here?”
“In this house, yes. But in Bobrka…” She waved the smoldering cigarette in a circular motion and let go of her skirt. “Who knows?” She stood up. “We’ll see you tonight?”
When he walked back into the village, the eyes that fell upon him had a different effect than they’d had an hour before. He had known he was not welcome, but Klara saying it aloud had made the idea flesh. A mutt behind a
