Free The Bridge of Sighs by Olen Steinhauer

they camped out in hotels. General Secretary Mihai had been among them. They appeared again just behind the Red Army to set up the interim government, and with the 1946 elections had the remarkable good fortune of being voted immediately into power.
    They were called “thick” because when they returned from Moscow they were, almost without exception, so plump their own families had trouble recognizing them.
    In no time they were setting up tribunals, sentencing old comrades—primarily those who had chosen to stay in the country and fight the Nazis—to work camps and prisons, some to the firing squad. The Spark , the revived Party daily, gave notice of those old communists who no longer carried the torch, and would pay for their lack of enthusiasm. Finally the handsome Mihai—handsome despite the fresh rolls of fat—who before the war had styled himself as a partisan fighter against the monarchy before fleeing to Moscow, found himself with the title, first, of Prime Minister; then, in addition, General Secretary. His portrait began appearing everywhere.
    Grandfather was settling into his emotions, ignoring the passing city. Emil noticed the glint of tears on the old man’s cheeks.
    For Avram Brod, there were two events in history: the Russian Revolution and the Patriotic War, which resulted in his country’s proletarian liberation. In both these events he had been close enough to smell the dead, but too late to make a difference.

    “This is the problem with History,” he said after the tears had dried and they were turning back toward home. He had regained his liveliness, and kept turning to look at passing shop windows. “When you’re living in the midst of it, you don’t even realize. You’re preoccupied by money and food and the appointment you’re late for. But look around yourself, boy. We’re living through it now.”
    Emil slowed behind a delivery truck unloading heavy, unmarked steel barrels. The workers paused in their work to watch the Mercedes drive past.
    “What happened in ‘seventeen was just the start. There are so many of us now. Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, the Baltics and even the Czechs. It’s just the beginning. You may not believe it, but in ten years we’ll look back with nostalgia. We’ll forget how hard it was to get a little meat, or to repair the pipes. We’ll wonder how we were so lucky to live through these times. Helping to shape the great experiment.”
    He was out of words again, and turned to the window. They were back in the Fifth District, moving slowly through dark, narrow side streets.
    Emil concentrated on the functional details of driving. Shift, turn, accelerate.
    “You glorify so much,” said Grandmother. When Emil looked in the rearview, he saw a face obscured by shadows. “The Russians are pigs.”
    Emil kept his eyes on the road and the families wandering the cracked sidewalks. He’d seldom heard her contradict him like that. Finally, Grandfather’s voice came briskly: “Mara, you don’t know. I was in Russia. They fed me. They were good and true. I was the one who saw them in their own country.”
    Her voice was hard. “Don’t tell me what I don’t know.” She shifted in the darkness. “I’ve seen enough Russians to last me a lifetime.”
    Just before their building, in the reflection of a passing streetlight, Emil saw that she, too, had been crying.

    He watched the others work. Leonek Terzian leaned into his telephone on the other side of the room, mumbling and nodding. He stared back at Emil with an indecipherable expression as he wrote in his notepad. Big Ferenc, beneath the bulletin board, typed slowly. Stefan, still unshaven, spat pumpkin seed shells that missed his wastebasket, and the security inspector—still, remarkably, in leather—arranged stacks of files on the floor beside his desk, which faced the blank wall.
    This was manageable. This tenuous silence. Each person working on his own business.
    He read