I move on to the last cell and slide open the hatch over the window. Inside is a single figure, this one a male, stretched shirtless on a cot. His face is turned against the wall, but I can see a bushy beard on the side of his face, brown turning to gray. The man’s hair is shaggy, as if uncut for months. He looks like a picture of a prisoner of war from a textbook, the victim of some atrocity. The man turns onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. His rib cage is in full view, like a skeleton’s.
He notices the hatch covering his window is open and lifts his head to squint at it and see who’s there. Despite the beard, despite the loss of thirty pounds, despite the change of skin color from peach to gray, I see it’s my father.
Twenty-Five
I must be silhouetted in the window because he can’t seem to make out my face or at least he doesn’t recognize it. My hands go to my mouth, covering a soundless cry. He’s alive. Alive, but only just.
Then, footsteps on the stairs. I close the hatch over the window and look away, pressing my palms into my eyes, trying to catch my breath.
“You done?” It’s Emil from the end of the corridor.
“Yeah.”
“Hurry up. I want to head back to the city.”
“One second.”
When I’m sure Emil’s gone, I pull the gun from my pocket and weigh it. Could I hit them all before one of them gets a Kalashnikov? It’s not even a maybe. Of course I can’t.
I turn back to the hatch on my father’s door. I’m about to slam it open and beat on the window until he recognizes me when logic seizes control. Don’t, logic says. Think.
There’s no way to determine how he’ll react. There’s no way to shout explanations to him through the cell door without the men upstairs hearing. There’s no way to prevent it all from backfiring just as I’m within sight of the finish line.
I force myself to pull away, then climb the stairs back to the main floor.
“I’m ready,” I tell Emil.
“Were you crying?”
“Fuck you,” I say. “Let’s go.”
As I climb into the truck, I silently promise my dad and the women downstairs that I’ll be back for them. Then I make the same promise to Emil, and the rest of the men, too.
*
I stand over Roman in his bed with his own pistol raised and pointed at his head. He’s on his back, snoring like a fool, his chest rising and falling beneath the bandage around his ribs. Justice requires that I kill him. There’s no doubt that upon his brains exploding against the headboard, the clouds will part, birds will sing, and a chorus of Kladivo’s victims will deafen me with their collective sigh of gratitude and relief.
But I will not pull the trigger. Will not because it will neither free my dad nor free the women in the cells. He’s not the only man in this army of the wicked. Roman’s not even the only one named Kladivo. But I will pull the trigger someday soon, and that’s enough to get me through the next moment. I place his pistol back in his ankle holster and set the thing among the perfectly arranged bottles of cologne on his dresser. Then I pick up his clothes from the night before. Put his suit on a cedar hanger and hang it from the doorknob. Bundle up his shirt that smells of spilled liquor and put it in the laundry hamper.
Behold, Roman, how your mistress cares for you.
I return to the living room and the bottle of wine I opened when I got back to the apartment at seven-thirty this morning. It’s the good stuff, brownish red and tasting of rancid grape juice and dirt. But right now this isn’t about the taste. It’s about medicating. It’s about trying to unsee what I’ve seen, and escape the shivering shapes of those girls, those poor girls, those poor terrified girls.
“I thought you didn’t drink.”
I turn to see Roman standing at the end of the hallway, dressed in a bathrobe.
“Today seemed like a good day to start,” I say, aware of the slur in my words.
He nods. “How did it go last night? The pickup with Emil?”
“I didn’t know the cargo we were picking up was women.”
He nods indifferently. “I’d like a coffee.”
“What?”
He gestures toward the kitchen with his head. “I’d like a coffee. Make it for me.”
I look at him as I make my way into the kitchen. A Yale-educated monster in an expensive robe.
Roman follows, instructing me in the proper use of his espresso machine. That lever, not this one. Fill to this line, not that one. “It’s from goddamn Italy, so you’ve got to be gentle with her,” he says. Roman’s enjoying this, directing me in some petty domestic chore. He leans against the wall, watching his good little housekeeper-concubine.
I finish making it and push an espresso cup toward him across the counter. “They’re going to be auctioned, yes? The girls at the tábor?”
“I always use a saucer,” he says, gesturing with his cup. “For my coffee.”
I find the saucers in a cabinet and take one down for him.
He studies me for a while, sips his espresso, then studies me some more. “Who told you about the auction? Emil?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you wanted to learn the business,” he says. “So there it is—the business.”
“They were—children,” I stammer. “Kids, Roman.”
“Just the way life is. Some people are worth more than others.” He sets his cup and saucer on the counter and puts his hands deep in the pockets of his robe. “Good coffee, by the way. Machine can be a little tricky, but you did it right.”
“I’m glad.”
A moment passes, then Roman grabs the front of my shirt, shoves me against the wall. He pulls a long knife from the butcher block on the counter and holds the point in front of my nose. The blade doesn’t tremble or shake. He holds it dead steady. “You know what they had back in their villages, those girls? Fucking nothing. We put them in Versace, cut their hair.”
Kill him now. Kill him on principle. Hand to wrist. Knee to groin. Knife to throat. But instead I raise my hands in the air, abject surrender. “I get it, Roman! Please!”
The knife hangs there for a second, the tip of the blade a mere centimeter from my skin. Behind it is Roman’s twitching, furious face. Then he lets go of my shirt and catches me with a swift slap that sends me crashing with a yelp to the floor.
I feel a droplet of something wet form on my lip, then a drop of blood lands on the marble tile, red on white. It’s followed by a second drop and a third, making a tight little grouping on the tile that looks like bloody bullet holes on a target. Sweep his legs.
Roman sets the knife on the counter and kneels next to me. “You fooled my father into thinking you’re some tough little bitch. But I wonder, Sofia, I really wonder whether you’re hard enough for this business. Hard enough to do what it takes.”
I stay that way for a moment, on the floor, and focus on the blood. “I’m hard enough,” I say.
“Hard enough for what?”
“Hard enough to do what it takes.”
Twenty-Six