eyepiece, and started shooting the courtyard, then focused on Gavra, who was gripping the Kalashnikov as if it were something he’d never seen before.
He was completely numb. It didn’t occur to him to just turn the gun on Michalec, and he would later hate himself for that.
The door opened, and there they were, stepping out into the cold dawn light, stunned.
Gavra couldn’t move. His hands were stuck. He couldn’t raise the gun or squeeze the trigger.
He didn’t have to.
The three soldiers in the opposite corner weren’t looking at Gavra. They were mesmerized by the Pankovs, who had started to run. Instinctively, one of them raised his Kalashnikov and pulled the trigger. That led the second one to do the same, and the third produced a pistol, stretched out his arm, and began firing, too. Loud snapping sounds filled the cold air. So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face!
The Internationale unites the human race.
Gavra shivered, watching the couple run along the wall, stumbling. Ilona Pankov squealed. Bloodstains erupted on the stones as they fell, and he thought for an instant that he was killing them. Then he realized he wasn’t, and that troubled him more than even murder. He raised his rifle and squeezed, the recoil shaking through him. The scent of cordite was heavy as he filled the now-dead bodies with more bullets, so that they began to tremble, as if still alive. That only encouraged him to keep on shooting.
Once his Kalashnikov had run out of bullets, Gavra dropped it and watched as Michalec, breathing heavily, ran his camera over to the bullet-riddled bodies. More people poured into the courtyard, gaping, until all he could see was a wall of backs. He stepped over the rifle and walked past them, back inside.
In the corridor, he ran into the witnesses. Harold gripped his arm. “Is it done? Is it over?”
Gavra nodded, and Beth kissed his cheeks. As if a switch had been turned, the old people began to weep and hug and thank him, calling him their savior. Then they hurried on to get their own look.
Andras Todescu was crouched in the corridor, no farther than where he’d been minutes before. He looked up at Gavra with a pleading expression, but Gavra went on, past the now-empty courtroom and the other classrooms until he was outside in the cold again, near the stone walls surrounding the barracks. He got on his knees in the dirt, but his sickness stayed in him.
Sometime later, maybe hours, he saw a man get into a jeep clutching a medical bag filled with video cassettes. Then soldiers came out carrying stretchers with two bodies covered in gray army blankets. They put them in a truck and roared off. A while after that, he looked up to see Jerzy Michalec staring down at him, hands in his coat pockets, not smiling. “Hell of a thing,” said the old man.
That’s when Gavra noticed Michalec had blood on his coat, as if he’d hugged the corpses. “We have a deal.”
“Of course, of course,” said Michalec, but like someone who didn’t know what he was saying.
“My friend.”
He nodded. “Right. Liguria metro station. Five minutes’walk from here. He’s waiting for you.”
Michalec told the guards to let Gavra out. Once past the barracks walls, the gate closing behind him, Gavra started to run. His knees were wobbly, but he could just manage a straight line that took him past apartment blocks and people walking with shopping bags. They didn’t know. Not yet. They had no idea.
Somewhere along that brief run, Gavra became convinced that his friend was dead. It was inevitable, the only logical conclusion to this day. So when he found Karel sitting nervously on a bench in the brown-walled station, he squeezed and kissed his friend fiercely. The three other commuters waiting for the metro turned to stare. That didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.
THIRTY
By now everyone in our country knows that tape, has memorized every nuance and impotent rebuttal from both of them. But as the edited video played on, the cameras never showed us the faces of the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the members of the tribunal, or the audience we sometimes heard gasp at statements. We saw the Pankovs, staring and accusing and pointing fingers at people we never saw. Then, after a while of this, the camera cut to another table, and we saw the witnesses, one after the other, their stories progressively more terrible and damning.
I can’t say what other people felt during that first viewing of the famous tape. While Gavra was reminded of the show trials of the late forties and early fifties, I was instead reminded of the various courtrooms I’d visited during my career, where I witnessed against murderers and other criminals. Those times, I’d been able to separate my emotions from the trial. Not with this one. To each accusation, I felt myself saying, Yes, yes. I had no love for the Pankovs. They were worse than the murderers I put away, because their crimes were vaster, and they were untouchable. Now, finally, they were being touched. During that first viewing, I didn’t think about the hypocrisy of the people who had arranged and run the trial. I didn’t care who had put them in the dock. I only cared that it was being done.
We all thought we knew what it would lead to. The unseen tribunal would announce its verdict, that the Pankovs were guilty of crimes against the nation, and they would be sentenced to life in one of the rank prisons where they had sent so many others. What really happened was a shock.
Toward the end, the unseen prosecutor said, “They not only deprived the people of heating, electricity, and foodstuffs, they also tyrannized the soul of the people. They not only killed children, young people, and adults in Sarospatak and the Capital; they allowed the Ministry members to wear military uniforms to create the impression among the people that the army was against them. They wanted to separate the people from the army. They used to fetch people from orphans’homes or from abroad whom they trained in special institutions to become murderers of their own people. They were so impertinent as to cut off oxygen lines in hospitals and to shoot people in their hospital beds! The Ministry hid food reserves on which the Capital could have survived for months, the whole of the Capital!”
“Who are they talking about?” muttered Ilona Pankov.
“You should have stayed in Libya!” shouted the prosecutor.
Ilona laughed. Mockingly, she said, “We don’t stay abroad!”
Tomiak agreed. “Of course not. This is our home.”
It went on. The charges were repeated, and I even said, “Yes,” aloud, my hands sweaty on my knees, my heart palpitating in my chest.
The president of the court asked if they wanted to appeal the ruling, and Tomiak Pankov crossed his arms and stared into space. Ilona placed her hands on the table and stifled a yawn.
“All right,” a voice said. “Proceed.”
I knew that voice, or I thought I did. Even now, I’m still not sure.
Four soldiers entered the frame carrying Kalashnikovs on their shoulders and frayed cords in their hands. They twisted the Pankovs’arms behind their backs and bound their hands together.
At first, Tomiak took it quietly, as if afraid to embarrass himself. When he was pulled into a standing position, he shouted for the last time, “I do not recognize the legitimacy of this court!”
Ilona, though, struggled. She spoke in bits. “Everyone has… the right to die as… they wish.” We could hear the hysteria in her voice. “Don’t tie us up! My children, you’re breaking my hands. It’s a shame, a… disgrace. I brought you all up like a mother,” she said, her voice sounding like what she thought their mothers might sound like. “Why are you doing this?”
“Whoever staged this coup,” said Tomiak, “can shoot anyone they want. The traitors will answer for their treason. The nation will live, and learn from your treachery. It is better to fight with glory than live as a slave.”
Beside his wife’s hysteria, Tomiak’s voice was so steady. Then the camera shifted, and in the light I could see that his eyes were wet, his cheeks as well. His wife, despite the rising pitch of her voice, had dry, hard red eyes.
The soldiers managed to move them out of the camera’s frame, and as they disappeared, we were left with Ilona Pankov’s choked voice. “If you want to kill us, kill us together. We will always be together.”
