Victory Square (16 page)

The size of the crowd was shocking. It filled the entirety of Victory Square, swelling up against the Central Committee steps—also guarded by a line of soldiers—and bold teenagers scrambled up the two statues: the Socialist Realist couple in the center, holding up a concrete torch, and the bronze Lenin in front of the steps, reaching out for the future.

Gavra told me later that, standing in that crowd, he suffered a quick bout of amnesia. He forgot about the deaths of Yuri Kolev and Lebed Putonski, and the safety of the old American couple. Even Lena’s death slipped his mind. Most importantly, he forgot who he was, and that his job was to make sure things like this didn’t happen. He forgot he was supposed to be fighting all these young, enthusiastic, angry people.

Like many of the soldiers that ringed the crowd, he was aware of the magnitude of this moment. Crowds this size were never seen outside official Party holidays and Tomiak Pankov’s birthday parade. But today they had come, on their own, a few days before Christmas. It was as if history had split from the hours and days that formed it. Time was snapping in half.

A roar blew out from the warm, steaming center of the crowd. Gavra pushed on, knocking past shoulders and wild, grinning faces to reach the sound. Then he looked up at the Central Committee Building and found its cause: A few men had come out onto the high balcony to peer down at the demonstration. From this distance they were hard to make out, but Gavra thought he recognized Andras Todescu, Tomiak Pankov’s personal advisor. Todescu and a couple of men in blue work clothes were setting up a microphone in the center of the balcony. Another one carried a video camera with lines running inside.

It was the beginning of the end.

•

/
woke
without having fallen asleep. My face was buried in my pillow, wet not from tears, because it would be a while before I could manage those, but from the cold sweat of sickness. The sheets and duvet were soaked as well, and from the living room I could hear the tinny horns that always preceded official announcements on television.

I sat up feeling dizzy. I was naked but couldn’t remember undressing. Katja had brought me home, so I guessed she’d done it, and I was overwhelmed by a sudden, deep embarrassment. I don’t know why. I reached for the medicine bottle on my bedside table and swallowed two more Captopril.

Through my closed window came voices, so I put on a robe and opened it. Yes—chants, many streets away. Then Katja’s voice from the living room: “Emil? You up?” She sounded scared.

“Yes.”

“Come look at this.”

I stumbled through the door and found her on the couch, face bathed in the blue glow, mesmerized. I sat next to her.

It all unfolded on television.

A camera moved across a crowd that filled Victory Square, but without sound, so we couldn’t hear what they were chanting. Their fists were raised high.

“So many people,” said Katja.

“Yeah.”

Then the camera turned to our Great Leader, Comrade General Secretary and President Tomiak Pankov, stepping out onto the Central Committee balcony, a hand waved in salutation. The old man’s heavy eyes were so familiar. Behind him appeared Ilona Pankov, his wife, the first deputy prime minister and chairwoman of the Academy of Sciences. She always stood near him. Tomiak Pankov’s bald head was covered in a tall black Astrakhan hat, and his fur-lined coat was buttoned to his neck. Even with the poor-quality video feed you could see his breaths in the cold air.

He began to speak, giving comradely salutations to the Party faithful filling the square, then said, “The news is filled these days with lies coming out of Sarospatak, where hooligans and warmongers, supported by the American CIA, have been attempting to undermine our great workers’state.”

It went on for a few minutes, and from the crowd we heard cheers. But then, when he said, “The anti-communist forces are betraying your heritage,” something else came from the crowd—loud, with abandon: boos and catcalls.

It was the first time we’d ever heard such a sound at a Party rally.

The technicians fixed the situation by piping in some prerecorded applause, but it was too late. Across the country, at the same moment, people in their homes heard the sound of Pankov being jeered. There was no way to make them forget it.

He went on. I saw apprehension in Ilona Pankov’s face, but her husband appeared oblivious, saying that he was instituting changes “to raise the monthly food rations and increase the wages of factory workers in our great land.”

Then it sank in. The canned applause was turned up to cover the rising tide of resentment from the square below him that even his microphone caught, and Pankov looked down with a stunned expression. “I promise r-raises across the b-board,” he stuttered.

Then his mouth fell open, and he took a step back from the microphone.

The picture disappeared, replaced by a red screen. At the bottom, in white letters, we were told that there were technical difficulties. We were asked to be patient.

•

Gavra had
met Tomiak Pankov only once, in 1985, when General Brano Sev brought him along to one of the Great Leader’s many hunting retreats up in the Carpathians. They joined his entourage of sycophants, and the old man related jokes he’d recently heard from King Hussein of Jordan. The jokes were funny, but Pankov didn’t deliver them well, so the laughter all around him was forced. The president didn’t seem to notice.

Despite that, Gavra was struck by how personable the man was. He knew Gavra’s name and had personally asked Brano to bring him along as a reward for some recent work he’d completed with distinction. They all dressed in brown hunting clothes shipped in from London and went out to track deer. They had little luck, the deer by now used to the marauding group of Party faithful toting shotguns, so Andras Todescu, Pankov’s personal advisor, stepped away from the crowd and spoke into a radio. A few minutes later, three stout bucks went galloping past, and Pankov raised his shotgun, shouting, “This one’s mine!” He shot and missed. “Damn,” he muttered and started to run. Everyone followed, and Todescu again spoke into his radio.

Over the next hill they saw another deer—the woods were suddenly alive with game—and again Pankov aimed and shot wildly.

From that distance, Gavra knew he’d miss. Amazingly, though, the deer stumbled a moment and fell.

“Got that bastard!” shouted Pankov.

“Superb,” said Brano, winking at Gavra.

“Magnificent,” said Todescu.

Knowing what was expected of him, Gavra also offered congratulations, but he saw what had happened. The deer had fallen toward the hunters, as if shot from the opposite direction, and as they approached the shivering animal Gavra scanned the trees. Up on the high branches of a pine, hidden by camouflaged clothing, a Ministry sharpshooter lowered a long, laser-sighted sniper’s rifle.

This is what he remembered as he stood in the cold, staring up at Tomiak Pankov talking to the crowd. He couldn’t hear anything the old man said, because the air was saturated with angry noise. “Death to Pankov!” shouted some; others, “Patak murderer!” and “Down with the tyrant!”

That memory was the only thing he could dredge up to explain why Pankov had been stupid enough to call this rally just after the killings in Sarospatak. Tomiak Pankov had for decades allowed himself to be tricked by his subordinates. They helped him believe that he was a world-class hunter and magnificent jokester. It was no surprise they could also convince him that his people loved and feared him.

His assistants certainly knew better, though. Why would Andras Todescu advise him to speak on television? Had the years of devotion finally dulled the sycophants’wits as well?

People jostled into him, and he pushed back. The amnesia slid away, and the exhilaration of the crowd lost its effect. He instead noticed the warm stink of so many bodies in the same place, then he saw what I saw on television: Pankov stopping in midsentence. Pankov stepping back from the microphone, confused.

The crowd roared and pressed forward. Ahead, on the Central Committee steps, soldiers struggled to hold them back, but Gavra saw one, then five, then twenty people breaking through their lines. He looked up—the terrace was empty. He was suddenly very frightened.

He turned and started pushing through people. Fights broke out between burly workers still in their factory garb and students in layers of sweater. The factory workers got in a few good punches before being overwhelmed, the students swarming and bringing them down. Gavra fought only to get through the crowd that became tighter and firmer with each step. If he wanted to survive, he had to get home. Now.

When he finally reached Yalta Boulevard again, the soldiers were no longer in their perfect line. They were grouped on one side as the captain ran back and forth, yelling at them to keep their positions. But they had seen everything. And now, hundreds of people were swarming the Central Committee steps, kicking against the massive front doors. Then everyone looked up.

From the roof of the Central Committee, a fat helicopter began to rise. It was heavy, lurching in the air, but it managed to gain altitude, then swung around and started to move eastward.

The crowd saw it, too, and the cheer that went up was deafening. Singing erupted; Gavra recognized the tune—the pre-Soviet na-tional anthem, which had been banned these last forty years.

Look! Look! The hawk is flying low.
From the Carpat to the steppes, he marks his territory.
The borders are ringed with fire!

Gavra ran back to the Hotel Metropol. The doorman grabbed his arm. “What happened?”

“It’s over,” Gavra said, gasping. “It’s all finished.”

The doorman wasn’t sure what he was referring to. “The demonstration?”

Gavra pushed past him and got to his Citroen. “Everything.”

He sped the whole way, passing Militia cars that were too busy listening to radio reports to bother ticketing him. People began running from their televisions into the streets. Near his block, the streetlamps were out, and in his headlights people filled the road. He had to slow down. They were jubilant, patting his roof and shouting, “The tyrant is gone!” Someone threw red wine on his windshield, and he turned on the wipers. He made it to Block 183, on the edge of the Eighth District, where he shared his apartment with his close friend Karel Wollenchak. Near the front door, one of the neighborhood drunks, a hairy man named Mujo, noticed him. He stood up, clutching a bottle of
rakija,
and said to his fat friend, “Hey, Haso! Look who’s here!”

Haso stood as well. There were three other drunks with them, and they all came to meet him. Mujo said, “You get the news, comrade?”

Gavra’s stomach hurt, but he didn’t panic—it was all about math, spatial relations, escape paths. “I saw it all, Mujo.”

“You couldn’t keep them down?” said Haso.

“It’s over, comrade,” said Mujo.

Gavra, unlike some others, had never made a secret of his employer. It was sometimes useful. Once, he’d helped an old woman living below him get a gall bladder operation at Pasha Medical, the private Ministry hospital. But at a time like this, no one would remember his generosity.

“Enjoy your drink,” he said, pushing past them, but one of the drunks grabbed his shoulder.

“Hey,” said a slurred voice.

Gavra snatched the hand and quickly turned, twisting the arm high so it hurt. The drunk moaned.

“Hold on,” said Mujo.

“Just keep your hands off me,” said Gavra. He released the man and continued into the building.

The foyer was empty, but there were more neighbors on the stairwell, all men, clutching bottles of cheap liquor. Everyone knew him, but they didn’t say a word, preferring to lean back against the wall and watch him pass. When he reached the third floor, a wet dollop of spit struck the back of his neck. He didn’t slow down.

Karel was peering out the window when he came in, while on the television a news commentator reported on crop yields. “Listen to that,” said Karel. “This year’s was the highest wheat yield in history. What do you think of that?”

“We’ve got to go.”

Karel, he could see, was hysterical. His dark, fleshy cheeks were perspiring heavily. “We can stay, you know. They’re going to show a repeat of last April’s birthday parade. That’s always a treat.”

Gavra grabbed his friend’s shoulders. “Listen, Karel. We can’t stay here; it’s dangerous, and it’ll only get worse. Pack a bag right now, and we’ll leave.”

“What should I pack?”

“Clothes. Money. And your documents. Now
go.”

While Karel went through his wardrobe, singing to himself, Gavra crouched in the bathroom, where he kept a Makarov pistol and thirty rounds of 9mm ammunition hidden under the drain, wrapped in a plastic bag. Then he went through his extensive record collection and picked out a few things to save. The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, and Elton John. He threw them into Karel’s suitcase.

“What about my records?” said Karel.

“Do you need them?”

“Wow.” Karel almost laughed. “I really don’t.”

The men were still in the stairwell, but they had shifted up closer to the third floor, so Gavra and Karel had to push through them. Karel, toting his suitcase, said hello a few times, but no one answered. Karel wasn’t a member of the Ministry for State Security, but his guilt was by association. Someone behind them said, “The faggots are running!”