Kill the King by Eric Samson Page A

just
fucking can’t.
    Tyler
hesitated. Struggling for his gun now could ruin his chances of
escape. It was better if he waited for Marko to be relaxed and
vulnerable again. He moved his hand away and clumsily lit one of
Marko’s cigars. He could barely keep it from falling out of his
mouth, drunk as he was.
    “Back in the
homeland I made my fortune in hashish and tobacco smuggled in from
Turkey, but before I could invest in that business I was a
moneylender. The state bank was shit, you see, and we were
forbidden to own foreign currency. . .especially from an enemy
capitalist, imperialist state. Having that kind of money—”
    Marko
accidentally knocked over the whiskey bottle while talking with his
hands. He bent over to look at the mess and grumbled what Tyler
suspected to be profane expressions in his native tongue. He let
out a gloomy, dismayed sigh before continuing with his story.
    “Having that
kind of money could earn you a long sentence of forced labour.
Because of the danger, it became a very precious commodity. Having
even a few Francs hidden somewhere in your house could save you
when the police broke through your door in the middle of the night.
To have a lot, that gave you power.”
     
    Marko grabbed
the last cigar from the humidor and struck a match. He let the fire
linger in his hand for a little while before lighting up. Drunk as
he was, he was still lucid enough to keep talking.
    “When I was a
young man, I worked as an errand boy for a local criminal who
forged passports for defectors. They all paid him in foreign money.
He was cruel and paranoid and he would beat me when he had too much
to drink. For a long time, I did not hate him. We were all afraid
of the police taking us away some day. This was an ordinary way of
life back then. There was no reason to hate him for being just as
afraid as I was. I forgave the blood. ”
    Fifty years in
the Block. That’s what I’m looking at. I have to kill you, Marko.
Do you know what it’s like in there? Could you ever understand?
    “He had taken
in a young orphan girl as his ward. Her parents were arrested for proliferating political material that undermined the
government’s reputation. She lived in his house and did all of
his cooking and cleaning. She had long dark hair and grey eyes. Her
name was Rozafa.”
    I am not your
son. You are not my father. How could you be? No father should make
his son do the things that I’ve done for you. I lost my soul in the
Block. . .where were you when I was locked away? Where were you,
Marko? Where were you when I needed you the most?
    “He beat her
all the time. I would look the other way whenever he did so. I
accepted it as something that I could not change. . .but then one
night he raped her, and I could forgive the blood no longer. I
demanded vengeance from every god and devil that I could name. I
was furious! I went to the police to demand that he be arrested. I
suppose I should not have been surprised when they told me to fuck
off. Crime that did not implicate subversion of the state was of no
importance to them. So then, what else could I do? I denounced him,
and they took him away in the middle of the night. No one ever saw
him again.”
    “ Forgive the
blood.” You might forgive me. . .but what makes you think you
deserve my forgiveness?
    Tyler slowly
reached for his gun. Marko shoved Tyler back in his seat and
stumbled back to his chair. His face was flush and his breathing
sounded heavier and more laboured.
    “Let me finish,
my boy! You see, the police were in such a hurry to arrest him that
they did not bother to search his house for anything other than
evidence of material for forgery. They didn’t know that he had
foreign money stashed in his house. . . but I did. That same
night, Rozafa and I rummaged through every corner of the house and
recovered fifty thousand Deutschmarks. It was more than
enough for us to run away and start a new life somewhere free.”
    Tyler was too
drunk to remember where