Kolia (11 page)

SCHAEFFER

ON THE TELEPHONE,
Schaeffer hardly seemed surprised. Kolia wanted clear and concise answers to his questions, but the director wouldn't shut up. He was one of those pretentiously effusive types. It was plain as day where the melodrama and cloying sentimentality of his film had come from. Kolia did manage, nonetheless, to get two answers out of him: Iosif had used a firearm to kill himself, and no, he hadn't missed.

“It's hard to miss when you've got a cannon stuck in your mouth,” Kolia offered.

The director fell silent. Kolia asked if Iosif had killed himself in Bucharest.

“Yes.”

He had found Iosif's body on returning to the room where the two of them had been crashing with a mutual friend who had spent the night with a prostitute. Iosif was lying on the floor naked. Schaeffer described how the pool of blood had reached the ornate lion's paws of their dilapidated sofa. Iosif had burnt all his papers in the kitchen sink. All that remained were ashes and a few matches strewn about the floor. He had also disposed of his army uniform, which was never located. In fact, he had done such a thorough job that no one but Schaeffer and the other roommate could have formally identified him. They both cleared out before the police arrived.

But before he left, Schaeffer made a sketch of Iosif's face on a sheet of paper he ripped from a notebook. Once it was done, he ran down the stairs to the ground floor, made a phone call, and then fled.

Kolia wanted to see the sketch.

“I lost it.”

“I don't believe you.”

“No, really.”

“Why would you draw the face of a dead man?”

“It was the only way of remembering him. I would have taken a photograph to keep him alive, so to speak, but I didn't have a camera. To me, portraits of dead people are soothing. I wanted to keep an image of Iosif like that.”

“Even with a huge hole in the back of his head and a sea of blood as a backdrop?”

“Yes, even like that.”

“Mr. Schaeffer, I loved him more than my own father.”

“I know, but . . .”

“Thank you . . .”

“You can call me Hans-Jürgen.”

“Thank you, Hans.”

He called Tanya back. He asked her if she could arrange the appropriate documents to leave Russia and spend a week in Romania, as soon as possible.

It took two weeks for Tanya's influence to make itself felt, but the documents she finally produced proved that the rules of any political system can be circumvented with a little imagination. Kolia felt obligated to thank Tanya somehow, and spent an hour with her on the sofa — and on the clock — doing exactly that. Her daughter was spending the night with her fiancé again.

Masha, on the other hand, had adopted a tomcat whose prodigious bladder was making their cohabitation difficult.

HEADING WEST

AFTER A RUDIMENTARY
security check, he stepped into the international departures zone as if he were walking through an open door. He sat down on a bench in the waiting area and watched the procession of tall young women walking arm in arm with their nouveau riche boyfriends. His fingers were just itching to have some fun, but he restrained himself. He pulled a newspaper from his knapsack and hid behind the day's headlines.

The plane stunk of kerosene and stale urine, but he had come to love takeoffs, when the whole plane shuddered and the stewardesses held themselves stiffly in their seats with well-practised composure. He slept on and off during the flight — not much, but deeply.

Kolia stepped onto Romanian soil at 10 p.m. on July 20, 1995. It was 31 degrees Celsius in Bucharest. A young woman thrust a glossy pamphlet at him. It was written in English, and apart from the words
InterContinental Hotel
and
Casino
, the text was incomprehensible. He dropped it on the ground, which was already covered with them.

He hailed a taxi and handed the driver the address of his hotel, which he had written on a piece of paper. It was a good distance from the city centre. The driver spoke to him in English, and Kolia answered in Russian. Kolia could see the man's unease in the rear-view mirror. He switched to French and the driver's mood brightened immediately — he switched off the meter. The ride was free.

“Why have you come to Bucharest?”

“To visit a sick friend.”

“A Romanian?”

“No.”

Kolia did his best to put on a smile.

“My name is Mihail.”

“Kolia.”

“Are you French or Russian?”

“Russian.”

“Your hotel used to belong to the Party. It was a pretty chic place in the '70s. But now . . . well, it's okay.”

“It'll do.”

“If you need a cab, call me.”

As they crossed the city, Mihail gave Kolia a history lesson. He knew Bucharest like the back of his hand, even in the dark. He dropped him off in front of the Hotel Casă Cotorgeanu and handed him a box of matches with his phone number scribbled on it. The hotel looked like a bunker. The beige tower had been built in the same constructivist style that characterized much of Bucharest's recent architecture. It was all too familiar. He checked in at the front desk, headed straight up to his room, and jumped in the shower. When Kolia turned on the faucets, the water was rust coloured, and he waited until it ran clear. There was no soap, so he made do with a bottle of shampoo. Toilet paper was provided, but he noticed that the roll was almost at its end. He'd need a lot more than that if he wound up contracting a bug from the not-so-pristine water he was bathing himself in. He kept his mouth shut.

He pulled on a clean pair of black jeans and a crisp white shirt, rolling the sleeves up to his elbows.

With his hair still wet and his stomach grumbling, he sought out the hotel restaurant. Despite the late hour, it was still open. The dining room was located in a huge ballroom which had been stripped of all embellishment and felt more like a gymnasium. There were large round tables scattered here and there with no apparent logic.

“Room number?” a young woman asked gruffly in English.

“Pardon?” Kolia responded in French.

He had decided not to risk speaking Russian for the rest of his stay.

“Your room number,” the waitress said again, this time in French and much more warmly.

Mihail had mentioned the contempt he had for freeloading locals who hung around restaurants like the plague.

“Room 18.”

“Bon appétit, monsieur,” she said, gesturing towards the buffet.

He helped himself to a few juiceless slices of tomato, a thick slice of ham, a bread roll, and some cubes of cheese. He poured a cup of tea and looked around the room. The ceiling was at least five metres high. There were huge square-paned windows that must have taken hours to clean. The mottled concrete floor undoubtedly took a beating when local big shots started pelting it with plates and glasses, after one too many. There were about a dozen customers scattered here and there — mostly businessmen from Ukraine and Bulgaria, and an American. Not one woman. Kolia ate in silence in the light of a faux candle that was baking a fly to the tablecloth.

The next day, he got up at daybreak and caught the first taxi he could flag. Once it reached the centre of the city, he got out and started looking for the address that Schaeffer had given him. The building, if it was still there, was located only a few streets away from the Piaţa Revoluţiei, where the December Revolution had taken place six years earlier. He stopped at a currency exchange, and then continued past the stately Casă Monteoru, until he found the address he was looking for. The building was framed by two massive trees and looked like it had been plucked out of Paris in the 1800s, but it no longer offered accommodation. It was a beauty salon. Facials, hair removal, Swedish massage, and permanent makeup. He decided not to go in, but took a picture, without really knowing why, and then turned around and headed back the way he came.

The city was submerged in a humid smog that made the simple act of walking onerous. He flagged a passing taxi and returned to the hotel. He called Schaeffer. When the German heard what had become of the sleazy hotel where he and Iosif had lived, he burst out laughing. Kolia asked him for the name of the cemetery where Iosif was buried. Schaeffer's laughter exploded out of the receiver again, he choked on his cigarette and started coughing uncontrollably. He took a moment to get his breath back and swore in German. Kolia waited patiently for his response. The call was costing him the equivalent of a restaurant meal.

“Kolia, you're looking for a mass grave.”

BAR ABSINTH

THROUGHOUT KOLIA'S CHILDHOOD,
bodies had disappeared into the ground without ceremony. Sometimes, in the summer, when the permafrost thawed, animals would unearth a femur or a skull.

He called Mihail at eleven o'clock. The cab driver arrived less than thirty minutes later. Kolia laid out his problem in the taxi.

“That's what I thought when I first saw you,” said Mihail. “He's looking for a dead man.”

“He died in '55.”

“Everybody in Bucharest is looking for someone who just up and vanished into thin air one day. It's the normal state of affairs.”

“Yeah, but the person I'm looking for died without a name.”

“Without a name?”

“He burned all his papers before . . .”

“Before what?”

“Before he died.”

“And after that? Nineteen fifty-five isn't exactly yesterday.”

“I know. There's a good chance he was buried in a mass grave.”

Mihail suggested they meet again that night at a pub called the Absinth. He patted Kolia on the shoulder.

“I can't pick you up tonight, but I'll meet you there. We can talk about it then. Do you want me to drop you somewhere?”

“Is there a bookstore café close to that bar . . . the Absinth, right?”

Mihail dropped him off in front of a bookstore that occupied the entire ground floor of a
fin de siè
cle
house that had somehow escaped the beige and granite steamroller of communism. Inside, the store boasted row upon row of literary classics, which had gradually been revisited since the collapse of the Eastern bloc, and translated into Romanian. In one corner, he came across a small selection of French newspapers. He picked up the previous day's
Libération
and a guidebook to Bucharest that was written in French, and paid for them. He found a table at the café across the street and ordered lunch. Making sure to order enough coffee and mineral water to keep the owner happy, he made himself at home for the rest of the afternoon. Around seven o'clock, he ordered a plate of beef stroganoff to see him through to the next morning. It didn't taste like much, but it filled him up.

Towards nine o'clock, he walked over to the Absinth Bar, which took up two storeys of a converted apartment building. He hesitated. The place looked strange. The guidebook called it “semi-goth/semi-punk,” but said it was one of the most sought-out bars in Bucharest. He waited until nine o'clock sharp before going inside.

Each room on the main floor had its own look. The first was painted red and held two long tables where couples with pitch black hair were kissing languorously. The second room was lilac-coloured and not as gloomy, the music was muted, almost serene. It was empty. The third was a stark open space, at the far end of which Kolia found a set of stairs leading down to the basement. And, apparently, that was the place to be. It was packed.

Kolia found himself in the middle of a throng of red-eyed kids — well on their way to getting drunk or stoned — who were barely lit by the handful of hanging lamps suspended from the low ceiling. The waitresses sported a variety of glam rock hairdos and turned out, in fact, to be young men. He spotted Mihail sitting in a corner with someone who
was
a woman.

“Let's go back upstairs. Follow us,” Mihail said, before Kolia could sit down.

They found a table in the lilac room. The waiter had a pierced nose and took Kolia's order in French. He returned a minute later with their drinks and closed the door behind him as he left.

Mihail introduced the woman as Cristina. She worked for the city and had authorization to access the police archives. She told Kolia in Russian that she could search the death registry year by year. The three of them continued their conversation, alternating among Romanian, French, and Russian.

Kolia was fascinated by the way she had tied her hair into a low bun that looked like two fists pressed together. She was a brunette, no more than thirty-five. And from what he could see of her face in the subdued light of the lilac room, she was very attractive. But it was clear that Mihail had his eye on her, and Kolia didn't give it a second thought.

He stayed and drank with them until his stomach told him he'd had enough. Mihail offered to give Kolia a ride back to the hotel, reassuring him that his driving skills were not in the least impaired. “I hold my liquor like a Russian!”

Outside the bar, Cristina pulled a notepad from her dark canvas handbag and took down the address of the hotel where Iosif had committed suicide, the year it happened, and Kolia's room number so she could call him the next day. It was one o'clock in the morning and he was drunk and dead tired.

Mihail drove past the World Trade Center of Bucharest three times before Kolia politely pointed it out to him and Mihail finally found the route back to the hotel.

AN UNMARKED GRAVE

OVER THE TELEPHONE THE
next morning, Cristina told him that the grave was located in a suburb of Bucharest. Several unclaimed bodies of students killed during the demonstrations in Revolution Square in 1989 had also been buried there.

He was too late for breakfast in the ballroom and too early for lunch. He was to meet Cristina and Mihail in front of the hotel at half past one. He decided to go for a walk to kill some time. The hotel was in the middle of an industrial zone, it hadn't been designed with pedestrians in mind. He returned to his room to shave. He hadn't taken his razor out since he left Moscow. He looked scruffy, brutish. His beard had grown in coarse and threatened to envelop his entire face. But when he looked in the mirror he saw someone else, as if he were seeing himself for the first time. He backed up, took a good look at his reflection, and stuffed the shaving cream and razor back in his knapsack. He went down to have something to eat. When he walked into the ballroom, he didn't think twice about the way he looked, and the waitress didn't ask him for his room number.

Mihail was waiting for him in the car without Cristina. He opened up the passenger door for Kolia, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“She couldn't make it. She's got a five-year-old kid, you know. Mircea. He came home from school sick. She sends her apologies. I've got the address.”

There was cigarette ash everywhere and burn marks in the upholstery.

They headed out of the city. Kolia didn't say a word, and Mihail respected his silence.

Cristina hadn't said whether or not the site had been dug up before the December revolution, but that was unlikely. It was in an open field where nothing had been built. Just a field full of wildflowers and weeds. The kind that are found everywhere with names no one can remember.

Mihail stopped the car at the end of a dirt road that led into the site. He left the motor running.

“Fifteen minutes. Is that enough?”

Kolia nodded.

“See you in a bit. This place depresses me. I lost too many friends in the Square that day. You understand . . . I'll be back.”

Kolia got out of the car. Mihail flicked his cigarette to the ground and stuck his head out the window.

“You know, your friend was no choirboy.”

“Neither am I.”

Mihail flashed him a broad grin, and then backed the car up slowly all the way to the highway.

Kolia rolled down his sleeves to avoid getting scratched by the brush. He came to a small rise and sat down, folding his legs beneath him. Looking at the expanse of the clearing before him, he wondered how many were lying down there with Iosif. He knew there was no longer anyone there, but still he wondered how many. His shoes were covered in mud. There was an insect crawling up the leg of his pants. His unbuttoned shirt billowed in the wind. He took a good look at the world around him. It was all so ordinary.

He was alone. In his own way, he said his goodbyes to Iosif, which doesn't belong to the story. That night he returned to Moscow with the address of a new friend in his pocket and a feeling he wasn't entirely sure he was comfortable with. Somehow he felt lighter.