dead life with clandestine passion.
But adultery would’ve been easy. I could have walked in on her in another man’s embrace, shouted and wept, and been done with it. This was something more, a parallel life, no doubt Lena’s real life, and I never even noticed that it was right there, right next to me.
After forty years, I’d just learned that my life’s role had been the pitiful one. I was the dumb but harmless mouse, the one who never raised a question, who never noticed that my wife was a spy.
It was really too much to take. It felt as if every few minutes my life, and my world, changed. I wished it would stop. I wished that something, anything, would remain as I remembered it.
“Emil?”
I blinked. Ferenc was frowning at me as he turned onto a main road. I said, “What?”
“You’re not listening.”
“Sorry. What’s the topic?”
Bernard cut in. “He was telling you how much of a hero he was during the revolution.”
“Not a hero,” said Ferenc, shaking his head. “Just what happened.”
“You’re making yourself out to be a hero. Admit it.” “Shut up, Bernard.”
Sarospatak traces its official history back to 1201, when it was granted town status by the Hungarian monarch King Emeric. It grew during the Middle Ages as a stop on the trading route to Poland. In the early fifteenth century, Ferenc told me, King Sigis-mund declared it a free royal town, and in 1460 King Matthias granted it the right to its own market. With the Reformation it became an academic center, and in the mid-1600s the famous educator Jan Comenius taught there. Ferenc told me all this as we crossed the city limits, adding that the famous Rakoczi family, which had owned the town’s castle, took a major part in the revolution against the Habsburgs. “They call Patak‘the Athens on the Bodrog’because we’ve got a history of education and revolution here.”
“In that order,” said Bernard.
But on the outskirts, before reaching the muddy Bodrog River, there was no sign of the First City’s glorious past. The remaining Habsburg buildings were crumbling from years of neglect, and the pedestrians bundled against the cold seemed insecure and confused under the gray sky.
By eleven thirty, we crossed Bodrog Bridge. On a hill to our left, the Red Tower of Rakoczi Castle rose high, looking out over the entire city.
Ferenc and his friends’base of operations was a small third-floor apartment in the center, just off Comenius Street. I spotted the window, because a sheet hung from it with the words NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC FORUM painted in blue. The stairwell stank of mildew-some pipes had frozen and burst a month ago and still hadn’t been fixed-and Ferenc had to hit the door with his shoulder because it was bloated with moisture. I expected a little more from the cradle of our revolution.
Inside were five mismatched tables and seven mismatched chairs that had been borrowed from sympathizers. Today two young women and a young man watched a small television and manned two telephones, one of which had a lead that went out the window into a neighboring apartment. “Where the hell is everybody?” Ferenc asked them.
“It’s Christmas,” said one of the girls, a striking blonde. “I’m not staying here all day either.”
Christmas? I thought.
Ferenc turned to me. “See? Is it any wonder those bastards in the Capital make more headway than us?” To the girl: “Aliz, you think the Galicia Committee’s taking off for Christmas?”
Aliz shrugged, then looked at the television, where, from a hospital bed, Rosta Gorski told a reporter that his injuries wouldn’t stop his mission to restore democracy to our beleaguered country. “It’s no secret my assailant is connected to the Ministry-his wife was an agent. This only strengthens my resolve.”
I found a chair and settled into it.
Ferenc sat with his workers and went through papers. Bernard put a hand on my shoulder. “That’s the guy, huh?”
I nodded.
“He’s calling you a Ministry agent.”
I nodded again as he pulled up a chair beside me and began whispering.
“This is what we’ll do,” he said, as if he’d been thinking about it a long time. “We go back to the Capital together. You and me. I’ve got my Militia Walther. We’ll find a way through the roadblocks, then I’ll track down Michalec’s address. He’s got to be living somewhere. We’ll get him to admit to everything on tape and play it on the radio from Patak.” He sounded excited by the idea. He was a lot like his father-in-law.
I was about to thank him but tell him no when the young man at the other table, who had sideburns down to his jawline, looked up from some papers at the television. “Hey. Guys. Look.”
All of us did as he asked and were surprised to see washed-out video footage of Tomiak and Ilona Pankov sitting at a long table, arms crossed over their chests, in a concrete-walled room.
“Turn it up,” I said.
TWENTY-NINE
Hours before it was broadcast, before the last tapes had been recorded and edited to make sure none of the judges or lawyers would be seen in the final cut, Gavra was given a set of infantry fatigues. While the court delivered its verdict, he changed in the corridor, watched by his guard and Andras Todescu, who looked haggard and scared in his expensive suit. “So you’re going to do it,” said Todescu.
Gavra buttoned his pants.
“It must be done,” said Todescu. “Yes. It must.” Then he gazed through the open doorway. The prosecutor was listing the couple’s crimes.
Gavra didn’t want to see. He buttoned the jacket and walked farther down the corridor, peering into other, empty rooms. The guard didn’t bother following.
His stomach still hurt, but it was the cold that bothered him. He couldn’t manage Brano’s mathematics in this chill. Escape paths, contingency plans, spatial relations, even past and future-they were all just beyond his reach. Then he heard the scuffle.
Todescu, pressed back against the opposite wall, stared at two soldiers dragging Ilona Pankov out of the room. Her hands were bound behind her back, but she tried to kick the soldiers, breaking the heel of her shoe. She stumbled. Tomiak Pankov followed; he didn’t fight.
He walked patiently between his guards, loudly humming a song. Gavra’s mind betrayed him by singing the words to the tune. Arise ye workers from your slumbers.
Arise ye prisoners of want.
For reason in revolt now thunders,
And at last ends the age of cant.
He tried to silence his head but couldn’t. The song refused to leave as they were led toward him.
Then Michalec appeared, confused. In his hand was a bulky video camera. He ran, gasping, past the couple, almost knocking into Ilona Pankov, and grabbed Gavra’s arm. “You’re not supposed to be here. Come on.”
He rushed Gavra to the end of the corridor, then out a steel door into a freezing stone courtyard with high walls that stank of mold. Against one wall, three soldiers with Kalashnikovs stood smoking nervously. They looked up as Michalec shouted, “Now. Now! Other side.” He waved to a corner of the courtyard; they shuffled over stiffly. “Lose the smokes.” They tossed them to the ground. He set the camera on the stones, took the Kalashnikov from one of them, and handed it to Gavra, looking him in the eyes. “You’re going to stand in that corner over there. No fanfare, okay? They’ll come in through that door and you just do it. Okay?”
Gavra nodded dumbly, hearing: Away with all your superstitions.
Servile masses arise, arise! We’ll change henceforth the old tradition,
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
“Those guys,” said Michalec, jerking his head at the other corner, where the soldiers stood rigidly. “They’ll shoot you if you try anything. So don’t. Now go.” He pointed at the empty corner, then picked up the video camera and walked to the wall, not far from the steel door. He propped the camera on his shoulder, looked through the
