The Woman in the Fifth (39 page)

Best

Doug

I put my head in my hands, and actually felt appalled at what had befallen my ex-wife. Yes, the '
Let him have it
' comment did rankle. But I still feared for her now.

I signed off the computer and decided to hop a cab to the rue Linné. The traffic was light. We made it there in less than twenty minutes. I checked my watch: 4.58 p.m. I walked up and down outside her doorway for two minutes, then took in a deep steadying breath and punched in the code.

The door clicked open. I entered the building. I scanned the courtyard. Nothing different. But when I turned toward the concierge's lodge I saw the man with whom I had scuffled yesterday. He was sitting in his chair and staring out at me. But he also seemed to be looking right through me. So I walked over to his window and tapped three times on it. No response from him. His face was blank – as if he was in some sort of catatonic state. I tapped again on the window. Nothing. I opened the door. I put my hand on his shoulder. His flesh was warm to the touch – but still no recognition that someone was now shaking him, trying to rouse him from his stupor. I shouted, 'Can you hear me?' His eyes remained frozen, his body immobile. I felt a chill run through me. I backed away from the lodge, spooked.
Get out . . . get out now
. But when I tried the main door in the courtyard, it was locked. I must have spent five minutes struggling to open it.
You can't open it, because you can't leave.
I looked for other ways out. There were none. I stared up the staircase leading to Margit's apartment.
You have no choice now. You have to go up there.

On the way up to her apartment, I tried knocking on every other door en route. Not one answer. Had I ever heard any neighbors before? Had I ever been cognizant of other life in this place? Had I . . . ?

As I approached her floor, her door opened. She stood there in her usual black lace nightgown, a sardonic smile on her lips.

'What did I tell you about not coming here other than at our agreed time?'

Her voice was calm, quiet. Her smile grew. I approached her, saying nothing. I grabbed her and kissed her fully on the lips.

'You taste real,' I said.

'Do I?' she said, pulling me inside the apartment. She took my hand and stuck it between her legs. 'And do I feel real?'

I pushed a finger inside her. She groaned.

'It seems so,' I said, putting my free hand through her hair and kissing her neck.

'But there's one big difference between us, Harry.'

'What's that?'

With one sudden movement, she pushed me off her. As I stumbled, I saw the flash of a cut-throat razor in her spare hand. It headed toward me, slicing me lightly across the hand.

'Fuck,' I screamed as blood began to pour from the wound.

'The difference is . . .'

She took the razor and slashed her throat. I screamed again . . . but then stood there, dumbfounded, as nothing happened.

'You get it, Harry?' she asked.

Now she took the razor and sliced her left wrist, cutting deep into the skin. Again, not a single sign of injury.

'The difference is: you bleed, and I don't.'

'S
O WHAT DO
you want to know?' she asked.

'Everything,' I said.

'
Everything?
' she said after a sharp laugh. 'As if that would explain—'

'Are you dead?'

'Have another drink, Harry.'

She pushed a bottle of Scotch toward me.

'Fuck your Scotch,' I said. 'Are you dead?'

We were sitting on her sofa. It was a few minutes after her razor attack. My hand was now bandaged. She insisted on dressing the wound and wrapping it in gauze moments after cutting her own throat. I was in such shock – both from the pain of the sliced hand and her bloodless suicide – that I allowed her to lead me to the sofa and pour me a steadying whisky (I downed it in one go) and play nurse on the hand she had cut with such swift deftness.

'How's the pain?' she asked, pouring me a second whisky and handing me the glass.

'It hurts,' I said, throwing back the whisky, and not thinking too much about how the alcohol would deaden the effects of the antibiotics I was taking.

'I don't think any of the tendons were damaged,' she said, taking my hand and checking its mobility.

'That's wonderful news. Are you dead?'

She refilled my glass. I drank.

'What did the police tell you?' she asked.

'That you slashed Dupré to death and left a note:
For Judit and Zoltan
. Is that true?'

'It is.'

'And then you fled to Hungary and hunted down Bodo and Lovas.'

'That is correct.'

'They also showed me Hungarian police reports. They said you mutilated both men before killing them.'

'That is also correct.'

'You cut off their fingers and gouged out their eyes?'

'I didn't gouge out Lovas's eyes because I didn't have enough time. But yes, I did cut off all their fingers and I did blind Bodo before cutting his throat—'

'You're insane.'

'I
was
insane. Insane with grief. With rage. With an absolute need for revenge. I thought if I killed the men who killed the most important people in my life, somehow the fury that consumed me would cease.'

'But you just didn't kill them. You butchered them.'

'That is also correct. I butchered them in a completely premeditated way . . . and with great malice aforethought. I was determined to make them pay for what they did to me.'

'But to cut off their fingers?'

'Dupré didn't suffer that fate. I stabbed him repeatedly in the stomach and arms and made him look me in the face – so he could hear me tell him how he destroyed my life – before I plunged the knife into his heart and then cut his throat.'

'And then you left a note and took a shower and left all your clothes behind.'

'They did get very bloody during the attack. But yes, I had planned it all out. And yes, after administering the coup de grâce I used his bathroom to shower. I left the note. I made myself some coffee, as I had some time to kill before the first train left at five twenty-three . . . funny how I can still remember all such exact details. I reached the Gare du Nord forty minutes later. I collected my bag and bought my ticket and boarded the train. I splurged on a first-class couchette – so I had a compartment to myself. I remember giving the porter my passport and a large tip and telling him I didn't want to be woken up at the German or Austrian borders. Then I took off my clothes and got into the couchette and slept soundly for the next eight hours, by which time we were somewhere near Stuttgart—'

'You slept soundly after murdering a man?'

'I had been up all night. I was tired. And the adrenalin rush . . . well, it did exhaust me.'

'Did you feel better after killing Dupré?'

'A crazed numbness best describes it. Ever since I had decided on this course of action, I had been operating like an automaton.
You do this, you do that, you go here, you go there.
It was all carefully plotted out in my mind. Point by point.'

'Including your own suicide?'

'That wasn't part of the plan.'

'So you
are
dead?'

'I'll get to that – but only after I tell you about Bodo and Lovas.'

'I don't want to hear about how you tortured them.'

'Yes, you do – and you have no choice but to listen.

Otherwise you won't find out what you want to know.'

I reached for the Scotch, poured myself two fingers, and threw it back.

'Tell me then,' I said.

'Some weeks before I set my plan in motion, I contacted a friend in Budapest – a man who, like my father, was part of the entire samizdat newspaper brigade that operated for a time in the fifties. He was now in his seventies . . . and had done time in prison for his crimes of talking back to the State. He had been "rehabilitated" – though he'd also been tortured so badly during his "re-education" that he could no longer walk. I had made one journey back to Budapest in 1974, right after I had become a French citizen. I had a need to see it again, I suppose, as an adult – and had taken tea with this gentleman at his apartment. We couldn't talk openly – he was certain the place was bugged – but he did ask me if I'd push him out in his wheelchair in a nearby park. Once we were outside, I asked him if he could find the whereabouts of the men who executed my father in front of me. He said, "
It's a small country . . . everybody can be found. But are you sure you want to find them?
"

'I said, "
Not now. But one day, perhaps . . .
" He told me that when that day arrived, I should inform him by mail that "
I would like to meet up with our friends
", and he would take care of the rest.

'So, six years later, when I decided to
régler les comptes
, I sent him a letter. He wrote back, saying, "
Our friends are alive and well and living in Budapest
." I made my plans, deposited my bag at the Gare de l'Est, and cut Henri Dupré's throat. When I arrived in Hungary I went directly to this gentleman's apartment. He was now a very old man, very infirm. But he smiled when he saw me and told me he'd like to head out to the park. Once I had wheeled him outside, he handed me a piece of paper and said, "Here are their addresses. Is there anything else you need?" I told him, "
A gun
." He said, "
No problem
." When we went back to his apartment, he sent me rummaging around an attic storage room for a shotgun that his father used for hunting back when Charles I was our King. He even provided me with a saw to shorten the barrel. As I left the apartment – with the gun in my bag – he pulled me toward him and whispered in my ear, "
I hope you kill them slowly
." Then he sent me on my way.

'I checked into a hotel. I went to an apothecary – they still had such things in Budapest – and bought a cut-throat razor. I went to another shop and bought tape. I took the
métro
over to the Buda Hills where Lovas had his flat. I found it, no problem. I even rang the intercom and put on a funny voice and asked him if the woman of the house was in. "
She died five years ago. Who is this?
" I said I was a member of the local Party committee for Senior Activities, and apologized for the mistake. Then I went over to Bodo's flat in some ugly modern block in Pest. This time there was no intercom. But he answered the door himself: a hunched man around seventy in a dressing gown and wheezing while he smoked a cigarette. Of course he didn't recognize me. "
What do you want?
" Is the woman of the house in? "
She left years ago
." I said, "
I'm from the Party committee on Pensioners and we want to see . . .
" and I spun some lie about looking into the needs of the elderly. "
Well, the woman you want isn't here . . . but if you want to talk about the needs of the elderly . . . you can come in now and hear an earful.
"

'Now, I hadn't expected to carry out my plan so quickly – but I did have everything I needed with me, so I let him usher me into his small, depressing flat. Crap furniture, crap wallpaper, a nasty little kitchen, brimming ashtrays, empty bottles of cheap booze.

'"
So who are you again?
" he asked.

'I told him my name.

'"
Kadar . . . like our Party chairman?
" he asked me.

'"
No . . . Kadar like Miklos Kadar. You remember Miklos Kadar, don't you?
"

'"
I'm an old man. So many people have come and gone in my life
."

'"
Yes, but Miklos Kadar must hold a special place in your memory . . . as you executed him in front of his daughter
."

'By this point we were seated in his little bed-sitting room. I opened the bag. I pulled out the shotgun. He gasped, but I put my finger to my lips and he didn't say another word.

'"
Surely you must remember his little girl, Margit? You ordered one of your police stooges to keep her eyes open while you lynched him two meters from where she stood
."

'At that point, he started to feign ignorance. "
I don't know what you're talking about . . . I don't remember such things
." I hit him on the side of the head with the gun and told him that if he didn't tell me the truth I'd shoot him on the spot. That's when he started to cry, to plead, to say how sorry he was, how he was "
only following orders
". . . Yes, he actually used that expression.

'I told him, "
My mother and I were whisked out of the country afterward and even paid a pittance of a recompense by the government, because they were ashamed of what had happened. So please do not tell me you were only following orders. The cop who held me, he was only following orders – because you barked at him on several occasions when he let me shut my eyes.
You,
sir, wanted a seven-year-old girl to witness her father's death. You wanted that scene burned on my memory forever. You succeeded. I've spent the ensuing decades trying to wipe that image away – but it simply will never leave me . . . a trauma which you inflicted on me out of sheer malice and cruelty
—"

'"
You're right, you're right
," he cried. "
I was so wrong. But they were terrible times and
—"

'That's when I hit him again on the head and ordered him to sit down at his kitchen table. The fool complied. When I told him to lay his hands flat down on the table, he didn't resist . . . even though he could have made a break for it when I had to put down the gun to start taping him. I used three rolls of tape – making certain he couldn't move his arms and couldn't get out of the chair.

'When I had finished I said, "
You dare to tell me
, '
They were terrible times.' You were one of the perpetrators of those
terrible times.
You were an essential part of a repressive regime – against which men like my father had the courage to raise their voice. And how did you respond to his criticisms of your tyrannical methods? You strung him up in front of his daughter and forced her to watch him jerk and twist as he slowly strangled to death. How can you justify such a thing? How?
"

'He didn't answer. He just sat there weeping. Much later, I was certain the reason why he didn't put up a fight when I started taping him down was not just because of the gun within reach of me. It was also because part of him knew he merited this . . . that what he had done was so monstrous he deserved a terrible retribution.'

'But what you did to him . . . that
wasn't
monstrous?'