Yalta Boulevard by Olen Steinhauer Read Free Book Online Page B

head.
    Klara had known Lucjan Witaszewski all her life, and perhaps this explained the unimpressive choice she’d made at the age of seventeen. Brano had been working in the Capital for four years when the wedding invitation arrived in his mailbox. But that was 1948, and in the Capital there had been no end to the work. In almost every alley hid another criminal, the detritus all wars produce, and on top of that, there had been a new man in the Militia office named Emil Brod who had to be followed and examined and, finally, accepted.
    So he had mailed his response the next day: He could not come, but he wished them every happiness in their new, shared life, and had every hope that unity like theirs would be the backbone of their new, great society.
    Klara had never replied.
    Now, nearly two decades later, she placed two glasses of vodka on the coffee table and ran her fingers through her husband’s hair. “What’s the subject?”
    “Work,” said Lucjan.
    “Just as long as it’s not politics. Now drink.”
    Both men did as they were told, and Brano admitted that Lucjan’s apricot vodka was rather good. Lucjan shrugged his thanks.
    They went to the kitchen table while Mother dished everything out. “No ceremonies here,” she said. “Just eat.” Brano followed the order, but Klara bowed her head—a quick prayer—before lifting her fork.
    Conversation lingered on work as Lucjan revealed an unexpected excitement, describing the new drilling rig that had been delivered. “The Austrians know what they’re doing, I can tell you that. They sent over the Trauzl—a cable rotary rig on wheels. A real beauty!”
    Brano noted that the factories in Uzhorod were pumping out record numbers of tractors and industrial machines. Klara wasn’t impressed. “These production records don’t do anything for Bóbrka. You can see it yourself. Now that it’s winter, we’re hibernating, like always. Go out after dark, and Bóbrka’s a ghost town. I suppose the Capital never gets like that.”
    “It doesn’t,” said Brano.
    “Makes you wonder what goes on behind the windows,” Klara said. “They’re still living their lives.”
    “They’re eating their mothers’ meals,” said Mother.
    “And having more sex.”
    “ Lucjan ,” said Klara.
    Lucjan shook his head. “What they’re doing is playing cards. That’s what.”
    Mother frowned.
    “There’s a lot of gambling?” asked Brano.
    Lucjan’s face shriveled. Klara looked up.
    Brano opened his hands and gave a smile so small that it could be seen by no one. “I’m not going to arrest anyone for it. That’s not what I do.”
    Lucjan shrugged. “Everyone does it, right?”
    “I do it myself,” he lied.
    “But not like here, I hope,” said Mother.
    “Like here?”
    Lucjan looked at his plate. “It’s like in a lot of villages. These peasants run out of money, and the bets get a little strange. You know. I’ll bet my horse on this hand . That sort of thing.”
    “Not so strange,” said Brano. “The same as betting your watch.”
    “But what about your child?” Klara asked.
    Occasionally, Brano had heard of this sort of thing during his years in the Militia office in the Capital, though it happened more often in the countryside: men betting the life of a daughter, a wife, a mother. It was a repulsive element of the old world that socialism had not yet wiped clean. But he pretended it was news. “Child?”
    Klara went back to her plate, her face as red as the Comrade Lieutenant General’s, but not from drink.
    “Some guy,” said Lucjan. “An idiot. He was drunk, and he bet his little girl’s life on a hand of cards. Can you believe it?”
    “So what happened?”
    Lucjan smiled. “He won! Thank God.”
    The silence that followed felt long, and they each looked at him: first Lucjan, before facing his plate again, then Mother, who gave a fragile smile. Finally, Klara’s stoic gaze held him for a long time before returning to her food. It was a look