I’m not sure at first if I should answer, but then it seems that there have been too many secrets around me, and I don’t want this to continue. “I’m a militiawoman.”
Istvan inhales, bobbing impressed eyebrows. “I’d never have guessed.”
“Why not?”
He answers as if he’s standing behind a podium. “From my experience you can tell the Militia type pretty quickly. They walk like they’re being watched all the time. They give off this silent-but-judging aura they want everyone to notice. As if what’s going on in their heads is for them, and only them, to know about.”
“Isn’t everyone like that?”
“You’re not.”
I smile, lean closer. “Then tell me what I’m like.”
He peers at me over the rim of his glass, his eyes twinkling-he likes this. “Well, you’re average height, so you don’t stand out that way. You’re not overly muscled, which would also stand out on a woman. But you’re fit. That could mean any sort of job.”
“You’re just describing my body.”
“Have to start somewhere. So…you do have a habit of taking in a place when you enter. Like this bar. When we came in, you immediately looked to your left and right, to see what was on either side of the door. Usually people look ahead, to where they want to end up. But you’re careful.” He shrugs. “I suppose that’s the training.”
I sip my rak? and wait for more.
“You know how you look,” he says. “In that way you’re self-conscious. But not in the way most militiamen are. You’re self-conscious the way beautiful women are. They know that when they enter a room, eyes will turn to them. They know that because of this they have some power.”
“You’re embarrassing me.”
“I’m just telling you what I see. When we were on the plane and I started to speak with you, you acted as if I were asking for your phone number. Because you’re used to this. So you went out of your way to ignore me, even though I was sitting next to you.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, because at that moment I really am.
“I’m not offended; it’s a common thing. It’s how beautiful women protect themselves. Why should they have to lose their anonymity just because of the way they look? It’s unfair, so you have to fight it.” He looks down at my empty glass. “You want another?”
“Water,” I say, and he orders this from the bartender, as well as another rak? for himself. Then he measures me with his eyes.
“Now that you tell me you’re a militiawoman, it starts to make me wonder. In France I’ve run into a couple of policewomen, but they tend to shape themselves into men. Short haircuts, a kind of forced machismo. Partly so that the public will take them seriously; partly so their co-workers will stop trying to kiss them. But your fingernails-you keep them painted and long. Your hair is well cared for. And you use makeup.”
I instinctively touch my cheek.
“You must have a difficult time in the Militia office. What department?”
“I’m a homicide inspector.”
He takes another breath, very affected. “Now, that’s interesting. What made you want to track down murderers?”
No one has ever asked me that before, so I don’t have a pat answer ready. I’ve only been asked, by my worried family, why I’d want to work with Militia oafs-and by my frustrated husband, why I’d want to risk my life. But homicide in particular?
It’s the same reason I’m here in Istanbul.
I say, “Some years ago, my fiance was murdered.”
“Did they catch his killer?”
I shake my head.
“So you do this in order to avenge him.”
“Perhaps.”
He drinks his rak? and considers that. “What about the abstract stuff?”
“What?”
“The state-defending the order of the state and all that?”
“Of course. That, too.”
“But not really.”
I pause, then shake my head.
He takes another sip. “What if he was caught? The murderer, I mean. Let’s say you caught him and he was sent to some work camp. Let’s say he’s sent to dig the Canal. What would you do?”
“I’d be happy.”
“But would you want to leave your job?”
“I don’t follow.”
He smiles. “It’s simple, Katja. If he’s the reason you wanted to become a homicide inspector, and you took care of that reason, would you still want to be a homicide inspector?”
I can feel myself flushing, because I don’t like this question. It sounds too much like a question Aron might pose. If you left the Militia, would you then have my baby? But I know the answer to this what-if. “I don’t know how to be anything else,” I say, though I’m not sure he believes me. I’m not sure I believe myself.
Peter
1968
He rubbed his eyes and gazed out the dirty window at the passing countryside, rubbing the scratches on the back of his hand. Flat fields had given way to rolling hills under an overcast late-morning sky. Across from him in the compartment was a fat farmer’s wife, not unlike his own mother, her babushka tied tightly under her chin. She ate pumpkin seeds and tried not to stare at the blood soaked into the upturned collar of his army jacket.
He’d slept the whole way from Prague, then been woken in Sarisske by a Czech border guard, who, though he noticed the blood, was too intimidated by the uniform to comment. Peter handed over Stanislav Klym’s documents with a serious expression and accepted them back just as morbidly. It was in Sarisske that this woman had joined him.
He hadn’t thought about the blood when he plunged the knife into Stanislav Klym’s neck. He had simply followed what he knew was the inevitable next step. He pushed it through the skin, and when it hit resistance the neck slid back against his knee. The soldier’s eyes and mouth snapped open, but without voice. Just the wet rasping of impossible breaths. His fingers came up, clawing Peter’s hands, and his legs kicked. Then Peter let go of the knife and fell back, climbing backward up to the window. It took a minute, maybe two, for the soldier to die. He writhed on the ground as a black pool grew in front of him and dribbled down the steps.
The train slowed and pulled into Velky Saris. On the platform, the men who guarded the border of Peter’s new home gathered and approached the train.
He’d stared at the dead soldier a long time, squatting until the balls of his feet burned. He’d wanted to cry but calmed himself by putting his mind elsewhere, into an oral examination he had taken months and another life ago, where he had mistaken the structure of the sonata allegro form-the first theme, followed by a transition into the second theme in a new key. This theme is developed, and then comes the recapitulation-a repeat of the first theme. Then the second theme returns, but in the original key, and is followed by the coda.
How could he have gotten this wrong?
He’d stood when he thought he could do so without falling. Then, despite the chill, he undressed.
“Papers.”
He looked up at a young guard in a smart blue uniform with the national symbol of the hawk on its shoulder. The guard bowed his head to the woman as he took her passport. “How are the cows, Irina?”
