Accomplices

By K.C. Frederick

Set in a central European country about five years after the fall of communism, K.C. Frederick’s third novel, Accomplices, moves with a fevered urgency reminiscent of Graham Greene. As the nation confronts unprecedented changes, the protagonist, Stivan, must put his own life together. A man who’s become accustomed to thinking of himself as a failure and a victim, he’s driven by a crippling loneliness to seek a relationship with his former nurse. In re-opening this connection, though, Stivan gets a good deal more than he bargained for. Anya, whom he’s considered an icon of solidity, has recently had serious problems of her own and things are further complicated when he agrees to shelter her brother, Leni, who is on the run from his gangster boss in Paris.
 
When Stivan discovers that the priest he’s working for is involved in illegal activities, he’s faced with more dangerous obstacles. In a landscape that is constantly shifting, Stivan and Anya are determined to believe in a future even as they come to recognize how their personal lives are inescapably entwined with the uncertainties of a larger world, where enemies are hard to tell from friends, and the unlikeliest people may turn out to be accomplices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504023931

K.C. Frederick

K.C. Frederick lives in the Boston area with his wife. Born in Detroit, he's taught at Michigan, Cornell, and the University of Massachusettes at Boston. His novel, Inland, won the L.L. Winship PEN New England Prize for Fiction in 2007.

Book preview

The women are naked. Stivan watches intently as the shorter, dark-haired one lowers her head to the blonde’s white shoulder. The blonde’s eyes are closed, her lips are curved into a dreamy smile. Gently, delicately, she runs her fingers down her partner’s back, a pianist teasing exquisite sounds out of an instrument given to her as a gift, though the only music to be heard is the deep, languorous sighing of a cello, punctuated by the women’s urgent whispered moans. Watching the slow underwater movement of their bodies, Stivan is excited. His hand moves toward his belt and he’s already preparing to close his eyes, knowing that in the darkness of his fantasy the women’s declarations will become more ardent, their hunger all-consuming.

As he’s reaching for his handkerchief a knock on the door startles him into an awareness of his surroundings: the darkened room, the musty smell, the general air of disorder. I haven’t done anything, he reminds himself, I’m not guilty of anything. Even his zipper is intact. He remains in his chair, listening. Above the cries coming from the screen the knock sounds again: it’s not the loud accusatory hammering of a policeman; instead, there’s an irritating patience to the sound, as if the knocker is prepared to wait in the corridor forever. He doesn’t have to answer, Stivan reminds himself. How would anyone know if he’s at home or not? Though more than likely it’s just one of his fellow tenants at the door. They all know he’s here most of the time. Feeling defeated, he remembers stories from the old days about rooms being bugged, hidden cameras observing people’s most private activities.

I’ll be right there, he shouts, getting up heavily and turning off the TV. He checks himself in the streaked mirror to make sure nothing’s undone: as he pats his hair into place a pale, bloated stranger stares back at him and Stivan turns away. I’m coming, he calls, noting that the visitor has patiently refrained from knocking again.

Who is it? he calls at the door and in answer he hears the muffled voice of Pirok. Stivan’s heart sinks: a nosy bore. Only now does he realize that as he’d come here from his chair he’d actually been hoping it was someone else, though who that would be he couldn’t possibly say. He opens the door a few inches. He has no intention of letting the man get inside.

Excuse me, his visitor begins with a wheedling deference, though he’s pushed himself closer to Stivan than is necessary, as if he’s about to deliver a whispered secret. Pirok, a small man with pale skin and the features of a rodent, is wearing his bus driver’s uniform. Stivan has never felt comfortable in his presence. Now his fellow tenant stands there with the anticipatory smile of someone about to tell a joke. Did you hear, he says after a pause, anything about our friend the so-called professor?

Stivan holds his post at the door. Fleetingly he glances toward his zipper, and is reassured. No, he responds at last, trying for a minimal politeness, I haven’t heard a thing.

It seems, Pirok says with a lisp, some kind of appeal in his eyes, that old Szmigdal made a lot of noise last night. He was shouting, I heard, saying crazy things … like someone who was drunk. And then he just disappeared. Though he obviously relishes telling this bit of gossip, there’s a trace of alarm in his voice.

Stivan knows from earlier encounters that the bus driver doesn’t believe—or at least he pretends not to believe—that old Szmigdal was ever really a professor. But what bothers Pirok even more is their fellow tenant’s work on the Searchlight Commission, a group committed to investigating people’s ties to the old communist regime. Nobody pays attention to the commission, Stivan wants to say. It irritates him that his neighbor seems so obsessed with the old man. What do you mean disappeared? he asks, praying the answer will be brief.

Pirok holds his place at the door like a salesman determined to be admitted. The old lady on four says she hasn’t heard him return. He cackles. Maybe some of those enemies he’s always talking about have finally got to him. What do you think?

A sudden heaviness oppresses Stivan. He has a fleeting memory of the women on TV. Why should he be expected to have an opinion about the professor? This is none of his business.

I wondered if you’d heard anything, Pirok persists.

No, no, Stivan shakes his head more emphatically than he has to. All at once he’s aware of a trembling in his clenched fists. I’m sorry, he says with a tight smile, I have to go. But thanks for letting me know about this. He can barely contain the mysterious anger that’s overtaken him. I’ll be sure to let you know if I hear anything.

Very good, Pirok answers quietly. He’s actually backed off a bit, his shoulders tensed. Did I scare him? Stivan wonders. Pirok tries one last gambit. It’s a little arrogant, don’t you think, to try to pass judgment on people that way?

I’m sorry, Stivan says, aware that what he’s about to say sounds like something he’s heard on TV, I have something on the stove.

When the man is gone Stivan continues to stand beside the door, restless and full of rage. Really, there’s no reason to feel so angry about little Pirok but for a moment he thought he might just pick the man up and shake him. He looks at the door. The evening’s peace has been shattered, he’s in no mood to return to the TV. Passing a mirror, he catches another glimpse of himself. He has to lose weight, start to become more physically active. After all, he wasn’t always this way. Unconsciously, he looks toward the window framing the twilight in which the ancient city shivers in expectation of spring. The warm weather will be here soon and then he’ll start walking.

The resolution bolsters him, gives him the sense that he’s already taken a step in that direction. What was the weather report for tomorrow? It’s too bad he can’t get started right away. The air in his apartment suddenly seems unbearably stale and when he opens a window the slice of breeze on his hand is invigorating: if it weren’t already night he’d be tempted to go out for a walk. He sees himself moving purposefully through the dark streets but contents himself with the fantasy. Now, though, he’s at a loss about his next move. It seems a shame to waste this burst of resolve—he certainly isn’t going to turn the TV back on. Then he has a sudden inspiration: he can pick up where he left off in The River Flows. Instead of watching the biography of a film star or a millionaire, he’ll devote the evening to this classic work, really let himself sink into the dense nineteenth-century world of vivid characters and urgent events. One of his schoolteachers—Mr. Shmitz, he remembers, a little man who was always taking off his glasses to clean them—once told the class that if the human race were to be destroyed and the world turned into a desert, the great buildings leveled, all libraries and museums vaporized, an alien space traveler who came upon a single copy of The River Flows would be able to reconstruct the life and character of their country entirely from this book. The sweep of the remembered statement excites Stivan, making him impatient to resume his reading. A breeze brings the chill of the evening into the room and he realizes that a hot chocolate would be a perfect accompaniment to the experience.

In the cramped kitchen, though, he discovers that he’s run out of milk. He should have remembered. But the store is only a few blocks away, across the park. Here’s his chance to get a little exercise. Could this be fate? The walk will do him good, it will be the first step in his new program of activity.

Clad in his overcoat, Stivan enters the tiny elevator. Two men are already inside. What the hell else could we expect? one of them says as the door opens; but they suddenly go quiet, acknowledging Stivan’s presence with curt nods. Stivan, who recognizes the taller of the two as a fellow tenant, nods back. All three descend in the stuffy, enclosed space that smells increasingly of garlic. The men look straight ahead. Could they have been talking about the professor, Stivan wonders, or the shots fired at the prime minister? When they arrive at the lobby and the others step away quickly from Stivan they resume their conversation. Who do they think they’re kidding? he hears the tall one mutter in a voice thick with anger. Foreigners everywhere, the other declares. Just two more people who are upset and angry, Stivan realizes. But why did they feel the need to hide their conversation from him? He’s no foreigner. The encounter leaves him with a residue of irritation.

The night is chilly but at least it isn’t the fierce cold of winter and he’s comfortable in his overcoat. He crosses the street and enters the park, walking briskly. Before he’s reached the mid-point, though, he slows his pace, already a little winded, and he notices a couple dozen people gathered around a speaker under a streetlight. Who could they be? There are so many groups these days. Curious, Stivan moves close enough to hear the man intone, Our blessed Lord! Most likely he’s come upon one of Father Pius’s bands. The cross, the way of the cross, the speaker continues passionately in a higher key. Stivan, who’s come to a stop, listens.

We will all be called to account, the man cries. Even at this distance the harsh, chopping motion of his hands lends force to what he says. We will all be called to account.

There’s a pause and everything is still, as if not only the speaker but the park itself—its trees and bushes and open spaces—is holding its breath. Stivan is as silent as the speaker’s rapt listeners. Then the voice thunders, There are those in high places, in the highest offices in the land. There are people who sit so high—and I mean deputies, cabinet members, even the prime minister … The speaker’s pause is punctuated by shouts of approval, people who sit so high they believe they can ignore God and his purposes. And yet we know that in ancient days God smote down evildoers. Oh, high office, even kingship didn’t protect them. Crazy, Stivan thinks, these people are crazy. The hair on the back of his neck bristles and he takes a step away from where he’s been standing. He reminds himself that, after all, he’s out walking in the real world when he could have stayed inside, he’s planning to do some serious reading tonight, he’s taking the initiative, he isn’t surrendering his will in order to follow a man so clearly mad as Pius, cheering one of his apostles’ joyful fantasies about violence against the country’s leaders. And yet as the approving roar of the crowd reaches him, Stivan wonders what it would be like to believe so passionately.

It seems a century ago that he looked up from his desk at the library in response to a stranger’s question. The speaker was a striking young woman with short hair whose head was turned toward the street where even in the depths of the old building he could hear the muffled shouts of a demonstration and she’d asked him, How can you just stay inside and let history pass you by? It was the first time he’d seen Zoria but he knew that if he didn’t respond right away he wouldn’t see her again. Surprising himself, he walked out from behind the counter and asked, Why don’t we go to see what’s happening, then? He, who’d been so accustomed to just watching things. How unaccountable that act was. Because his coming out from behind the counter was the first step in a series of episodes that unhinged his life—made him a new man, he believed—and it happened at the same time that great changes were being set in motion in the country, convulsions that led people to think of biblical events. In retrospect it even seemed that his meeting Zoria had caused the demonstrations to start and the war in the mountains to go badly, the rumored victories of the rebels shocking the nation until, combined with the daily revelations of governmental corruption and worse, there was a sense of free fall and one day people awakened to realize that the old system, once all-powerful, was now impotent. This sudden turnabout took the breath away, it was as close as people in these times were likely to get to a miracle.

Or a dazed dream. The period following the government’s mass resignation was a time of continuous carnival when trolleys were stopped by throngs that were dancing in the streets and the passengers joyfully left the cars to join the dancers; sequin-studded rock musicians performed at thanksgiving masses celebrated in the old cathedral while bald priests looked on, smiling; it wasn’t unusual to be embraced and kissed by strangers on streetcorners; and people eagerly turned to newspapers and TV for daily proclamations about a new world in which the citizens’ sleep would be untroubled by nightmares. Stivan’s own life changed dramatically too. He quit his job, he and Zoria had a few months together that were unlike anything he’d known before; but then the carnival suddenly ended for him, and after a time he wouldn’t be the only one to shake his head, wondering what had really happened. Now, ages later, there are other dissatisfactions in the land, so that late at night the TV screen is haunted by the image of Father Pius detailing how his Christian Legion will lead the people back to the virtuous life of an even earlier time; and others preach about money, eternal youth or the impending arrival of alien saviors; while on the evening news reporters try not to look bored as the camera shows another blood-spattered limousine with an expensively-dressed corpse in the back seat.

It’s hard to believe that five years have really passed since the accident, the shape of time has changed so completely. In dreams afterwards he would find himself lying in a box beneath the earth, startlingly awake yet powerless to move, listening to the dim sounds from above: laughter, gunshots, prayer. He was desperate to get out but his arms were pinned to his sides, his chest heaving ineffectually against a marble darkness broken only by the faintest pinprick of light. How long had he actually spent fighting for his life, then gradually recovering his faculties? When had it been that he’d been pronounced physically and mentally fit, sent home by the doctors who, for all their science, had failed to detect that something had been implanted in him after that accident? Failed to see that, like a character in a fairy tale, he’d been left with a terrible vulnerability he couldn’t identify?

Stivan watches the silhouette of the gesticulating speaker. He realizes that during his reverie he’s unconsciously moved even further away from the group. Standing on the grass near a thin-leaved tree in the darkness, he reminds himself that he ought to be moving. He left the apartment to get some milk, after all. And yet he seems to have become mesmerized, standing there, listening to the distant chant of the speaker and his audience’s passionate exclamations of assent.

All at once Stivan comes alert, aware that a man is moving toward him. For a lunatic instant he can believe it’s professor Szmigdal, come to seek his protection from the bus driver. But of course it isn’t the professor, he can see that clearly, and if isn’t the professor, who can it be? Stivan’s quickening pulse carries to his brain all the stories from TV about the increasing crime in the city. A descent into barbarism, some commentators have called it, the breakdown of any sense of decency and order. Recognizing that he’s on the verge of giving way to panic, he braces himself, unconsciously clenching his fists. Really, though, the approaching figure might just be one of Pius’s pilgrims, coming to hand him a pamphlet. Nevertheless, there’s something erratic about the stranger’s movements, dangerously erratic, it seems to Stivan, and just now the presence of the zealots nearby seems comforting. He takes a deep breath and tries to reassure himself. Would someone dare attack him so close to the congregation of believers? More likely, this is just some panhandler who’ll ask him for money. He can spare a coin or two, he calculates. Still, he holds himself ready for anything as the figure draws closer.

Amen, the believers shout and the man comes to a stop just a few feet away. Clearly, he thinks he has some business with Stivan. In the dark the stranger’s face isn’t visible but he seems to be studying Stivan and for a few moments he’s silent. Maybe he isn’t going to say anything, Stivan thinks hopefully, he could be a foreigner. These consoling thoughts are dispelled, though, when he hears the accusing rasp of the man’s voice. You’re one of Holy Pius’s boys, aren’t you?

No, Stivan shakes his head in explanation, relieved to be able to dismiss this ridiculous misinterpretation. He smiles at the man in spite of the threatening tone of his question. In the darkness, though, it’s doubtful the other can see his expression.

I’ve been watching you people. The stranger flicks his head in the direction of the crowd. All you little praying Jesuses. There’s venom in his words. All you do is to go around kissing that fat greaseball’s ass and sticking money into his pants, don’t you? Well, it pisses me off.

You’re making a mistake, Stivan protests, moving away slightly toward a more lighted area, only to discover that his retreat is blocked by the tree at his back. The man has followed him and in the better light Stivan guesses him to be at least ten years younger than he is and, to judge from his movements, possibly drunk. He’s wearing a military coat, the collar pulled up high so that it brushes against his cheeks and his long hair. Stivan wishes he were back in the apartment.

Listen, Jesus-man, the stranger says after a while, you think your prayers are going to save this country? The silence that follows is full of menace. No, the man answers his own question at last, nothing’s going to save this country. Then he turns away and mutters, I was there, I was in the mountains, I saw it. A veteran, Stivan thinks, and that doesn’t reassure him. But the man is silent now. Possibly memories of the war in the mountains will distract him.

For a few moments the stranger remains lost in himself and Stivan smells the damp earth. Spring, he reminds himself, has already begun—all he has to do is to wait and everything will be green. This incident too, however it turns out, will be over before long, and with every second that time draws nearer. But now the man turns toward him and declares, more loudly this time, Fire and flood and hurricanes are coming, that’s what’s coming. He isn’t drunk, Stivan guesses, but he might be crazy. And earthquakes, the man goes on. They’re going to bring everything down. He shakes his head. Ah, yes, he says, almost philosophically, ah, yes indeed, your precious cathedral is going to be nothing more than a pile of rubble. After a brief silence he resumes in a kind of singsong, Oh, Lord, Lord, all the priests are going to be buried underneath the pile, all those priests and the archbishop too, turned into stinking corpses. He laughs humorlessly and Stivan tries to find some comfort in believing that the man’s quarrel is with the clergy. It ought to be clear to him that Stivan isn’t a priest. I don’t even believe, he wants to protest.

But then the stranger raises his hand, pointing at Stivan. Plague is going to rise up out of the sewers, he declares, his words reeking of anger. Everything is going to Hell, he continues, and your pitiful prayers aren’t going to be able to stop it, any of it. He pauses, as if for breath. God damn it, your prayers never stopped anything, not a scratch, your prayers are as empty as the wind.

Please, Stivan says, his insides clenching. I’m not one of those people.

Oh, the man shakes his head almost playfully, You think you can fool me? He tilts his head as if he’s puzzled. Even in the half-light, though, the gesture suggests canniness, the detective who’s cleverer than the criminal he’s pursuing. No, no, he insists quickly, almost reassuringly. I know you’re one of them. He nods as though agreeing with himself. Then suddenly he’s shouting. And you hypocritical fuckers think you can tell the rest of us what to do.

The man has moved closer and Stivan continues backing away until he can feel the thick trunk of the tree against his spine. He stands there frozen, calculating what kind of damage this mysterious accuser could do to him. He’s younger, in better physical condition, and there’s a frightening intensity about him. No doubt, he could hurt Stivan badly if he wanted to. Stivan is suddenly overwhelmed: his terror melts into despair. This, he recognizes, is what my life has come to. It’s both frightening and absurd. Yet out of the pit of fear there comes another impulse and he suddenly thrusts his hands at the man’s shoulders, pushing him away. Get the Hell away from me, he yells, advancing on the surprised intruder, who’s been knocked backward toward an island of light. He pushes him again, more forcefully this time. Surprisingly, though the attacker has retreated and Stivan now has a perfect opportunity to flee, at least to some point where he’s closer to Pius’s flock, he feels no desire to do so. Instead he stands there, prepared for anything, his fists clenched in expectation that the stranger might attack him. His stomach churns with dread, rage pulses through his heart. At the same time he marvels at how light the man felt when he flung him away. As if he were made of paper.

Intent, determined, Stivan watches the stranger back even further away, his eyes fixed on Stivan, like a courtier taking his leave of a monarch. Perplexingly, though Stivan expects him to retaliate, he shows no inclination to spring forward. He stays where he is, a few feet away, in a slight crouch, his head lowered now: he seems to have shrunk. For a few seconds both of them hear the speaker not far away as he exclaims, This nation will be restored. The stranger remains there, unmoving. Stivan, breathing heavily from the exertion, watches him. He has the fleeting notion that the man might simply walk away without another word. But after a time he moves a few steps closer, warily, even respectfully. Oh, he says at last, his words just audible, now I understand. I know who you are now. His head is nodding. You’re not one of Pius’s army at all, no sir. A note of awe has entered his voice. Oh, my God, why didn’t I see it before? You’re him, aren’t you? He pauses, as if to gather breath before declaring, You’re the mighty Beelzebub. He nods, his head dipping, his voice dropped to a whisper. Of course you’re watching them and they don’t even know it. His laugh is a little nervous. I won’t tell, oh, no, I won’t tell. Well, then, he says, raising his hands as if to show he’s unarmed, I’ll go along quietly now. Stivan has a chance to see the man clearly for a moment: framed by long, dirty blond hair, his gaunt face has the pinched, hopeless quality of a dog that’s been starved and beaten for no other reason than its master’s sadistic pleasure.

Stivan watches the man disappear into the darkness. He realizes that he’s trembling, yet he feels strangely elated. He listens as the little group in the distance begins the Lord’s Prayer. They’ve been completely oblivious to his encounter with the attacker. Stivan sighs, breathes in a deep draught of the night air and turns to leave the park, buoyed by a surprising sense of accomplishment. He did the right thing in pushing the intruder away. As he moves toward the brightness of the street, his hands still burn from the contact with the crazed veteran. Yet his step is quicker, more decisive, he feels as if he’s returning from an important mission that he’s brought off successfully, he feels better than he’s felt in months. It’s only when he’s on the walk in front of his building that he realizes he forgot to buy the milk and the sudden deflation makes him stop. No, he decides after a moment, he’s not going back there to get the milk. It’s his decision, he tells himself, but it feels like a defeat.

Inside the dimly lit lobby, he steps across the worn carpeting, its original maroon shaded toward brown over who knows how many years, and the warmth of the interior makes him light-headed. He was out walking, after all, and it isn’t every day that he’s called upon to push away a crazed assailant. Once again he feels the strange thrill he’d experienced when the man said he was Beelzebub. He smiles to himself: it must have been pretty dark in that park.

Back in his apartment, he takes off his overcoat and surveys the scene, the cramped space, shabby furniture, the desk jammed into the corner where he does his translations, the general air of disorder. It’s hard to believe that he left this same place a half hour ago. He’d certainly appreciate a cup of hot chocolate now. And he has no milk. Well, he’ll simply have to make the best of it.

There on the little table beside the chair is The River Flows. The book is the important thing; he doesn’t need hot chocolate to resume his reading. Determined, he sits down and picks up the thick volume, opening to the place where he left his marker weeks ago. The novel tells the story of three brothers who respond in different ways to the occupation of their country by a foreign oppressor, a condition the nation has known all too often: one brother courageously rebels and spends the rest of his life in melancholy but honorable exile; another, like Joseph in the Old Testament, goes to work for the conquerors and rises to a position of eminence, believing that this is the best way of helping his people; the last brother remains in the countryside, working his farm, but holding back a portion of his spirit, a citizen, he tells his wife, of a homeland that I create every day when I awaken and to which I return each night in my dreams.

Stivan has always felt a special sympathy for the third brother. In his own life, it seems to him, he too has spent most of his time holding something back, keeping something in reserve. But he wasn’t saving himself for the afterlife or for liberation, it had simply come to be habit with him. His wife, his child, his friends—he’d kept something back from all of them, as if waiting for some transcendent moment. And then it came and he squandered it, or, to put it more precisely, it was taken away from him. Stivan looks down at the page but the world of the exiled brother who weeps beside another river hundreds of miles away as he remembers the river in his homeland has faded and the words beneath him might be written in a language he can’t understand.

In the days that now seem so long ago, when Stivan suddenly quit his job in the library, he had no idea what he was going to do next. The past was behind him now: his work was no longer satisfying, his marriage was a failure, the larger world seemed hopeless and closed; but the events of those days had liberated him, had changed all that. What he had, he told himself, was his freedom, though even then he saw it as a freedom from things rather than a freedom to do things.

One appetite that this new freedom released was a hunger to travel, which affected him the way the scent of alcohol teases the drinker trying to reform. He was suddenly aroused by the sight of maps in store windows, thrilled by the jigsaw puzzle of irregular shapes of different colors that fitted so neatly together. He and Zoria talked endlessly of travels, they sometimes drew maps on each other’s bodies during lovemaking, greedily combining their pleasures. Afterwards he’d remember the delicate feel of her finger tracing a shape on his stomach. What country is it? she’d whisper, exciting him, though even then he didn’t know if it was the touch of her flesh that stirred him or the shape she was drawing in his mind. At last they got down to serious planning. Stivan was coming from the travel agent’s when he stepped into the Grand Boulevard, his head filled with the future, and time was erased.

Later he’d learn the name of the driver who struck him, an old man then (Stivan saw his picture: wrinkled skin, slits for eyes, an ancient sea-turtle) and, incredibly, a man still alive today. Elden Samor had left his mountain village to fight in the emperor’s army early in the century, a thin youth in a pale blue uniform who shook with fright in the trenches as he flinched from the continual pounding