Yalta Boulevard (9 page)

“What’s that?” asked Rasko.

Brano read aloud: “16
October 1966: Maria eats liver with potatoes on Mondays. She’s done it three weeks running, so that is a rule of thumb. She does it for strength, maybe, because on Monday afternoons Wiktor comes to visit and she has to clean the house afterward, before Krysztof returns
.” He looked up. “Who are Maria and Krysztof?”

“The Rzepkas. Married. Live a couple streets away. Are all the pages like this?”

They were. The subjects changed, but the project did not. Jakob Bieniek had been keeping track of his neighbors with an unsettling eye for detail. He noted Lubomir Winieckim’s suspiciously brief grieving period after his wife Alina’s death, and before he’d been seen kissing the very pregnant Krystyna Knippelberg.

“I never realized he was actually crazy,” said Rasko.

Brano pulled out page after page of questionable activities—the Szybalskis, the Gargases, the Lisiewiczes. There was a method here, each sheet focused solely on one person, each comment preceded by a date. But the pages weren’t filed alphabetically; they were erratic, the excitement of a hermit’s secret knowledge leaving no time for order.

The disturbing sense of a missed fate swelled again. Not only did he share the reclusive nature of this dead man, the same face, too, but they shared the same profession. They were watchers and, each in his own way, judges.

“Some of this may be of use to you,” he said.

“Dirty laundry, that’s all it is.”

“I mean for the case. Jakob could have been blackmailing someone.”

“Of course!”

Brano placed a stack on the desk. “Why don’t you go into town and ask around for information? The townspeople won’t talk to me.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“And I’ll let you know if I find anything useful.”

Once Rasko was gone, Brano settled on the floor, legs crossed. He started through the pages, sometimes pausing on a familiar name, reading a line here and there, but continuing until, a little after noon, he found what he was looking for.

SOROKA, JAN

28 January 1967: A surprise. Jan Soroka walks in the main square as if he’s been here all his life. We all know (see K. Knippelberg—11 September 1966) he left his wife in the Capital, and now, 5 months later, he walks through Bóbrka, smiling like a fool at everyone. When I passed him I remained silent to hide my surprise. I don’t know if he noticed …

30 January 1967: Overheard at the bar: The gambler Pavel Jast said Soroka’s been with a mistress these past months. A Dijana Franković, from Szuha. I never thought Soroka was that kind of man, but if nothing else my studies have shown me you don’t know who anyone is, ever …

3 February 1967: Another surprise. Jan’s wife and boy have arrived, everyone in his parents’ house. What is this? I’m beginning to doubt the story of the mistress. Jan and Lia are not, as you’d expect, fighting. Through their window they look in love. I’d find their reunion union touching if the suspicion of something larger wasn’t getting to me. Jan drove his father’s car to the train station today. A green Volga GAZ-21 was parked outside as well. I don’t know whose it was, but the plates were from Uzhorod …

6 February 1967: When Jan isn’t hiding inside his parents’ house, he walks the western road out of town and smokes in the fields. From my car I saw him talking to a cow. Insane? It’s possible. Perhaps I will speak with him. Perhaps I will not.

Brano got the Trabant from his mother’s house and drove through Bóbrka, easily, as if he had nowhere to go. Just before the church he noticed the low gate and cream-colored two-story house, the tiled roof that needed repairs, the empty yard.

He turned around at the bus stop on the other side of the church and drove westward out of town, into the fields. Split-rail fences, half blown over by old storms, lined the northern side of the road, and occasional clusters of blank-faced cows appeared, a few stopping their meals to look at him. Then he spotted a figure coming over a low hill to the south, beyond the cows, where the earth rose into the base of a mountain. The figure was approaching the road, but Brano did not slow down. He continued over a second hill and, once out of sight, turned the car around and waited. He looked at his wristwatch, counting the minutes, then drove back slowly.

The man that walked alongside the road glanced back at him. Faint features, thinner than in his photo. Brano stopped beside him and rolled down his window. “Would you like a ride back into town?”

Jan Soroka’s surprise was evident in the quick growth of the eyes, the tension in the lips. Jan looked at the empty path ahead of him, considering it.

“A long walk back,” said Brano. “Come on.”

Jan’s shoulders relaxed, as if he’d gotten rid of some weight. The bump in his long neck jumped when he spoke. “Thanks.” He had a high voice.

They drove for a minute without speaking. Jan seemed content to gaze out the window as if admiring the landscape.

“I’m Brano Sev, Iwona’s son. Aren’t you Jan Soroka?”

Jan continued looking out the window. “I think we each know who the other is, Major Sev.”

Brano felt momentarily as he had when his steering wheel had fallen into his lap in 1961. He feared he might swerve off the road.

“Why is that, Jan? Why would we know each other?”

Jan Soroka finally turned from the window, his eyes still damp from the cold winds. “Bóbrka is small. There’s a whole communications network for each new visitor.”

“They don’t have a lot more to talk about.”

“Exactly what I mean.”

The village was coming into view. “Where have you been, Jan?”

“Just wandering. I do that a lot. To think.”

“I don’t mean now. I mean these last five months.”

Red fingers grew into his pale cheeks. “Haven’t you heard? I got involved with a crazy girl in another small town. I suppose I wanted a little excitement. But I love my wife, Comrade Major. I love my boy.”

“Dijana Franković,” said Brano.

Jan Soroka watched a collapsed barn pass.

“Funny, I used to know a Dijana Franković.”

“Not so funny. It’s a common enough name in the Serb villages.”

“But I didn’t know her here,” said Brano. “I knew her in Vienna.” He looked over in time to see Soroka turning his head fully away. “And besides, Szuha isn’t a Serb village.”

“I was misinformed.”

“You were. I’m not a major anymore, either.”

“No?”

“I work in a factory, assembling tractors.”

“Oh?” Jan didn’t look like he believed that.

“Have you heard about Jakob Bieniek?”

“Bieniek?”

“Turned up dead last night.”

“Dead?”

“In the woods. I’m helping Captain Rasko investigate it. If you hear of anything important …”

“Of course,” he said, turning back to the window. “Of course I will.”

Brano took him to his house without asking for directions. He said nothing more because there were stages to go through in this kind of situation. What he had told Pavel Jast was true—he believed Soroka’s plan was to take his family west. This could happen at any moment, but if Jan were planning to leave tonight, he couldn’t have maintained his calm. He would have sweated and shook like so many men Brano had quizzed in the past.

The only risk was that, if he pressed, Soroka would panic and flee come nightfall, leaving Brano with nothing to give Cerny—nothing to assure his return to Yalta.

He lunched with his mother and her assistant, Eugen, a thin boy of about seventeen who tapped his foot continuously. They had bread and cheese and salami from the store’s stock. Then he returned to Bieniek’s. He came across a single entry for Lia Soroka:

4 February 1967: She and the boy cross the street and buy food for the house. She’s much too elegant for this town, or for that fool who ran off with a peasant slut. What is this loyalty she feels? What ties her to a man like that? I could never do such a thing to her. Even after all these years, I’ve never been unfaithful to Janica.

There were two pages on Brano’s mother, and a sense of decorum made him lay the sheets to the side, unread, on the floor. But after learning more on people he did not know or care about, the decorum left him and he found himself reading of visits
SEV, IWONA
made, weekly, to Juliusz, the doctor. Bieniek speculated on the “carnal interests” of the doctor, whose wife spent much of her time in Krosno.

Brano’s palms were sweating as he put down the pages, and he felt the beginnings of a headache.

It was already dark, the cold was seeping into the house, and he had so little to go on. But there was one thing that, in his growing impatience, he felt he could look into right now. One person might know the name of Soroka’s contact, who drove a green Volga GAZ-21 with Uzhorod plates.

Pavel Jast’s house was on the edge of the woods, separated from the next house by a field marked by ruts and pits that, in the darkness, Brano had to be careful to avoid. The house was small, with two very bright windows. The murmur of muted voices rolled toward him.

He approached from the back, along the tree line. The windows were fogged over by the breaths of many men, creating a diffused glow. He squatted beneath a window and rose slowly until he could just make out the forms. Men around a table. A voice said, “Cucumber—you’re dead!”

Laughter followed, and a few moans. Pavel Jast said, “That’s fifty-two koronas …
and
that lousy mule!”

Brano used the tip of his finger to rub a corner of the window clean. Five men sat at a table with faceup cards. Jast; Mother’s assistant, the hyperactive Eugen; Zygmunt; Juliusz; and a fat man he didn’t recognize. Jast collected the cards spread over the table and began to shuffle them like a satisfied pro. Eugen was smiling, drunk, and Juliusz was serene. Zygmunt looked sick; perhaps he was the one who had just lost fifty-two koronas and a mule. Yes—Jast set down the cards and leaned over to kiss Zygmunt’s cheek. Zygmunt pushed him away.

The fat man he didn’t recognize sucked on a cigarette and put it out in his vodka, then laughed. Behind Jast’s large right ear was the German ballpoint pen with its naked woman.

He crept back across the field, tripping once, and made his way back home. Mother was asleep, so he drank headache powder with water, then took a glass of Lucjan’s vodka to bed. He rolled his face into the pillow, closing his eyes, but not even his brother-in-law’s concoction could help him sleep.

11 FEBRUARY 1967, SATURDAY
•

Mother was
already awake. She crouched beside his bed, touching him lightly on the wrist. “Brani?” He opened his eyes to her large features close up and felt momentarily like a child.

“Yes, Mama?”

“Brani, there’s someone here to see you.”

“Who?”

“That captain,” she whispered.

“It’s okay. He just needs my help.”

She pressed her dry lips together and stood up as Captain Rasko appeared in the bedroom doorway, hat in his hands.

The blanket fell from Brano’s thin, pale chest when he reached to the foot of the bed for the shirt he’d folded the night before. “Good morning, Comrade Captain. Can you give me a minute?”

Rasko nodded and left. Mother still looked concerned.

“What is it?”

She glanced back at the doorway. “He asked if you were planning to leave. I said you weren’t. You aren’t, are you?”

“No.” He finished dressing and put a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you let me talk with him alone.”

She went to her bedroom.

Rasko, in a chair, was still holding his hat as Brano sat on the sofa. His hair looked dirty. “What is it, Captain?”

“This is difficult, Comrade Sev.”

“Then do it quickly. That’ll make it easier.”

“You see,” he began, shifting his feet, “I went through the evidence Juliusz gave us. In that bag. The handkerchiefs found on Jakob Bieniek.”

“The ones used to silence him.”

“Right.” He passed his hat to the coffee table. “Well, there was something inside the handkerchief. The one that was inside his mouth.”