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Authors: Olen Steinhauer
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conversation, so she asked about the dead Ministry officer, and I told her about Kolev. She showed more surprise than I would’ve expected, lowering her hands from her face in shock. “You’re saying he was murdered?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Why did you run the tests? That colonel told you not to bother.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“You think he did it? Romek?”
“Maybe. But I don’t really know.”
She went back to her face, and I peered around for cigarettes but couldn’t find any. I looked back at my wife. It wasn’t just the stupidity that left me feeling calm. It was a kind of detachment. As I would a week later in Italy, I was thinking about something else, something to take me away from the moment, because the moment was frightening. I was remembering how thankful I was for the Afghan War.
All our life together, Lena had been an alcoholic. No—
drunk
is the better word. We twice separated because of her drinking, and her drinking led to two miscarriages and many, many hospital visits. Then, in 1983, Lena woke from another of her brief comas, this time triggered by a bottle of black-market
rakija
that had been mixed with methanol. The nurse smiled at her and laid a copy of the day’s
Spark
on her bedside table. After a couple of hours, she was finally able to focus enough to take in the front-page story about the Soviet troops who had been killed in the mujahideen’s most recent offensive in the Panjshir Valley.
Maybe it was the poison in her bloodstream, lingering even after the stomach pump of bad Serbian brandy—whatever it was, it had a lasting effect. On the third floor of Unity Medical, she cried uncontrollably.
Never the weeping sort, Lena nonetheless let forth at times with the hysterical weeping of the unbalanced; it was a sound that always troubled me. There in Unity Medical, though, it was as if someone else were crying, someone who understood exactly why she was crying, understood that if she’d had her wits about her, she would have been crying like this ever since she first picked up a bottle, sometime during her first disastrous marriage more than forty years ago.
She showed me the newspaper, and though I didn’t understand, I never admitted it. I didn’t want to undermine the vow she’d just made in a fit of emotion: As long as men were blown up in obscure corners of the world, she, Lena Brod, would not touch another drop of alcohol.
Now it was 1989, and she was seventy-two. A dry seventy-two. Her hands no longer shook, and when I returned home I no longer opened the door with apprehension, wondering about her unpredictable moods. In the winter of our lives she had given me something not unlike spring, and I was thankful.
Thankful for the floundering Soviet war in the deserts of Afghanistan, only recently ended, and for the cretin who added methanol to his batch so he could sell more of his black-market
ra-kija
to the alcoholics of our country.
Lena was staring at me, the light in the mirror shining against the large spectacles she’d slipped on to see me better. “What is it? You worried?”
“Not anymore,” I said. It’s amazing how the human mind can comfort itself.
FIVE
•
“Shell wonder,
” said Lebed Putonski.
Gavra pulled the beige Stop & Drop curtains shut, then parted them with a finger. He peered out at the parking lot and beyond the line of trees, to where headlights sped through the darkness. “Who?”
Putonski had trouble turning on the bed to face Gavra, because his arms were above his head, tied to the bedpost with a leather belt. “Maureen. She’ll come over and wonder why I’m not home. She’ll go to the school. She’ll worry—she’s that kind. Then she’ll call the police.”
“The school will say you’re with your cousin.”
“She’ll panic.”
“She won’t.”
It took Putonski a moment to realize this was true. “What’re you going to do with me?”
Gavra dropped the curtains. “I’m not
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Why did you run the tests? That colonel told you not to bother.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“You think he did it? Romek?”
“Maybe. But I don’t really know.”
She went back to her face, and I peered around for cigarettes but couldn’t find any. I looked back at my wife. It wasn’t just the stupidity that left me feeling calm. It was a kind of detachment. As I would a week later in Italy, I was thinking about something else, something to take me away from the moment, because the moment was frightening. I was remembering how thankful I was for the Afghan War.
All our life together, Lena had been an alcoholic. No—
drunk
is the better word. We twice separated because of her drinking, and her drinking led to two miscarriages and many, many hospital visits. Then, in 1983, Lena woke from another of her brief comas, this time triggered by a bottle of black-market
rakija
that had been mixed with methanol. The nurse smiled at her and laid a copy of the day’s
Spark
on her bedside table. After a couple of hours, she was finally able to focus enough to take in the front-page story about the Soviet troops who had been killed in the mujahideen’s most recent offensive in the Panjshir Valley.
Maybe it was the poison in her bloodstream, lingering even after the stomach pump of bad Serbian brandy—whatever it was, it had a lasting effect. On the third floor of Unity Medical, she cried uncontrollably.
Never the weeping sort, Lena nonetheless let forth at times with the hysterical weeping of the unbalanced; it was a sound that always troubled me. There in Unity Medical, though, it was as if someone else were crying, someone who understood exactly why she was crying, understood that if she’d had her wits about her, she would have been crying like this ever since she first picked up a bottle, sometime during her first disastrous marriage more than forty years ago.
She showed me the newspaper, and though I didn’t understand, I never admitted it. I didn’t want to undermine the vow she’d just made in a fit of emotion: As long as men were blown up in obscure corners of the world, she, Lena Brod, would not touch another drop of alcohol.
Now it was 1989, and she was seventy-two. A dry seventy-two. Her hands no longer shook, and when I returned home I no longer opened the door with apprehension, wondering about her unpredictable moods. In the winter of our lives she had given me something not unlike spring, and I was thankful.
Thankful for the floundering Soviet war in the deserts of Afghanistan, only recently ended, and for the cretin who added methanol to his batch so he could sell more of his black-market
ra-kija
to the alcoholics of our country.
Lena was staring at me, the light in the mirror shining against the large spectacles she’d slipped on to see me better. “What is it? You worried?”
“Not anymore,” I said. It’s amazing how the human mind can comfort itself.
FIVE
•
“Shell wonder,
” said Lebed Putonski.
Gavra pulled the beige Stop & Drop curtains shut, then parted them with a finger. He peered out at the parking lot and beyond the line of trees, to where headlights sped through the darkness. “Who?”
Putonski had trouble turning on the bed to face Gavra, because his arms were above his head, tied to the bedpost with a leather belt. “Maureen. She’ll come over and wonder why I’m not home. She’ll go to the school. She’ll worry—she’s that kind. Then she’ll call the police.”
“The school will say you’re with your cousin.”
“She’ll panic.”
“She won’t.”
It took Putonski a moment to realize this was true. “What’re you going to do with me?”
Gavra dropped the curtains. “I’m not
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