When the Summer Was Ours

by Roxanne Veletzos

  “Oh. But I thought we were going to see a picture show after this. Remember?”

  Bianca shot her a pained look. “I’ve changed my mind. I think I just want to go home.”

  “Bianca, look, I’m trying here. I know you’re disappointed about having to drop your lessons for a while, but believe me, it’s for the better, for now. Besides, it will give us a chance to spend a little more time together, and you know how much I’ve wanted this, for so long.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “So we have that chance now. Besides,” she joked, “don’t tell me that you really prefer Ana Ivanov’s company over mine.”

  Another look. “Ana is brilliant.”

  For weeks now, Eva had been trying to pull Bianca out of her funk, to no avail. It was as though a light had gone out in her eyes ever since she and Eduard announced that she would have to take a break from working with Ana. They’d tried a couple of other tutors, conservatory students who were either only marginally more skilled than Bianca or found themselves intimidated into quitting by week’s end. Bianca seemed intent on returning to the good graces of Ana Ivanov at any cost. Russian pig of a husband or not, Ana, as she’d said, was brilliant.

  “All right, well, if you’re not hungry, then slide the beautiful pie over here. I’ll finish it, and then we’ll go see the picture show as we planned, young lady. It’s not debatable.”

  “Whatever,” said Bianca. “I guess I’ll have to practice later tonight. Hopefully the neighbors won’t mind.”

  They went to a small theater house on Buda for an old black-and-white Charlie Chaplin comedy, but as Eva expected, Bianca hardly cracked a smile through the whole thing. As they streamed out of the theater two hours later, Eva couldn’t help feeling irritated. Not only had she changed her work schedule to spend more time with Bianca, but money was tight for indulgences such as restaurant outings and picture shows. She wished Bianca could make an effort to at least meet her halfway.

  “You know, Bianca, sooner or later you’ve got to talk to me. I’m a good listener, I really am, but I can’t crawl inside your head. I want us to be closer, but you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to talk to me.”

  She shot a look to Bianca, but Bianca wasn’t listening. Not exactly tuning her out, but intent on something else, something across the river as they turned from the winding lanes onto the passageway to Margit Bridge.

  “Look.”

  On Pest, from the depth of the buildings, there was a flash of brightness. A quick burst, flaming and disappearing.

  “What on earth,” said Eva, then from behind them came a swell of joyful jubilation. A stream of pedestrians moved in their direction toward the bridge with arms linked, some singing, waving small Hungarian flags.

  “Sir, what’s happening?” Eva asked, catching the arm of a man as he passed by. “What’s going on in Pest?”

  “We’re joining the students!” The man beamed at Eva. “We’re going over to support the students in Parliament Square. Didn’t you hear about the demonstration?”

  She did. She had heard about it leaving the hospital earlier, around one o’clock. Some university students had organized a protest in support of Poland, which had, just three days earlier, announced its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. At the time she thought it would last no more than an hour before they would be forced to disperse.

  “Come with us. Join us!” said the man, handing Eva and Bianca tricolor ribbons to pin to their coats, and Eva had no time to answer or consider, for Bianca was already dashing ahead as if heading into battle, and Eva had to hurry to not lose sight of her.

  On the other side of the bridge, more people, not just students, but men and women and children in the thousands were marching on the banks of the Danube. She held on tightly to Bianca’s hand, and they were carried along with the crowd, passing intersections where trolleys lay abandoned on their tracks. Traffic, Eva realized, had stopped almost completely. Only a thin trickle of cars managed to get through. People were waving and cheering from balconies, pouring streamers over the crowd, chanting Ruszkik haza. Ruszkik haza. Russians, go home. A boy was cutting the sickle-and-hammer emblem from the Hungarian flag with a Swiss Army knife. Then he waved the flag in the air, and another roar erupted, and Eva and Bianca, too, cheered and began chanting the slogans as Eva’s heart pounded in a way it hadn’t since her courier days of the siege: Russians, go home. Russians, go home.

  She looked down at her daughter and saw her smile.

  It took twice the time to reach their home on Andrássy, where she’d practically had to drag Bianca away from the crowd as it continued on toward Heroes’ Square, where some had whispered in the crowd that they planned to topple Stalin’s statue.

  “You want to go home now? Are you serious? Mama, you can be such a coward!” Bianca protested as Eva pulled her through the entrance of their building and held her hand firmly, going up the steps. Bianca’s cheeks were burning, and her eyes shone brightly with an almost manic quality that alarmed Eva. Truth was that she, too, was emboldened, intoxicated with the energy of the crowd, with the prospect of freedom, but it was getting dark, and she was fearful that things would boil out of control. Above all, she was fearful Bianca would slip away from her in the frenzy.

  “What about your violin?” she tried reasoning. “Didn’t you say you wanted to practice?”

  “The violin? Now? Oh, Mama! Don’t you see what this is? This is a revolution! Who cares about playing violin in the middle of a revolution?”

  Even as Eva unlocked the front door, fixing Bianca with a stern look, she couldn’t deny the truth: despite what her daughter thought of her, they had much more in common than she would ever know.

  * * *

  Thankfully, Eduard was already home from the hospital, listening to the radio in the living room, still in his coat and surgeon’s garb. He shot up from the sofa when he saw them, and Bianca flew into his arms. “Papa! You’re here! Oh, I’m so happy you’re home early!”

  He held her closely, caressing her dark head, even though his eyes were on Eva. “Oh, Eva, come here,” he said, then pulled her into their hug. He kissed her cheek, smoothed a strand of hair away from her face. “Eva, I was worried. Where have you two been?”

  “At a boring picture show,” Bianca explained, her face still buried in Eduard’s coat. “Can you believe what’s happening, Papa? Isn’t it wonderful? And to think we missed half of the excitement watching some clown trip over his feet!”

  For once Eva didn’t mind the jab, didn’t mind at all because Eduard was here, and they were all together, on the cusp of something monumental. Dora then rushed in from the kitchen, dinner forgotten, and they all stood in their living room, embracing and smiling with tears.

  “Ruszkik haza,” repeated Eva in Eduard’s ear, and he pulled her closer and kissed her cheek again.

  * * *

  The day’s events were indeed monumental, unfolding with such speed that they couldn’t adjust their minds to it as they took in the evolving news on Radio Free Europe. By eight o’clock, the peaceful demonstration had mushroomed into a full revolt, and violence erupted throughout the city. The AVO, the Hungarian Secret Police, had fired at the crowd in front of the radio station where protestors had gathered.

  Then, by morning, after a sleepless night during which Eva and Eduard watched the activity on Andrássy from their window, the Soviet tanks arrived. People began throwing Molotov cocktails at the convoys, raising weapons of their own. Within hours, the casualties climbed up.

  Eduard, despite Eva’s protests, went to the hospital early morning, and Eva stayed behind to help Dora keep an eye on Bianca, who was in her room, banging things around.

  “Well, if I’m to be held hostage,” she said, poking her head through the door, “then I might as well rearrange my room. This, for example,” she said, holding in her palm a crystal rabbit that had belonged to Eva as a child, “this might as well be the Kovaks family mascot! Well, it’s taking up too much room.”
Then she hurled it across the floor.

  Something snapped in Eva. She rushed to Bianca’s door and dragged her out by the hand. “Come here. Come here, Bianca.” She pulled her into her own room, past Dora’s stunned look, where, from her armoire, she extracted her nursing uniform from the Hospital in the Rock, packed in an old leather hatbox. It was still covered in blood—she’d never washed it all these years, not only because she didn’t think she’d ever use it again, but because it was a reminder of that time.

  “This was my nurse’s uniform in the war,” she said, removing the bloodstained item from the box and shaking it in front of Bianca. “Look at it. This is what I wore every day. I’ve seen people die. I held their hands as they died. I saw children younger than you brought in with wounds that would make your blood curdle. I helped your father once extract a bullet from a man’s heart. So do me a favor, Bianca. Do not ever refer to me as a coward.” She had to pause for a breath. “Now if you really want to help me and your father, pipe down. And stay inside.”

  Bianca was silent. She was silent, and for the first time in her life, she did something Eva thought she’d never do. She took her mother’s hand in hers and brought it to her cheek. Then she swiveled on her heels and exited the room.

  Still holding her soiled uniform, Eva raised it to her chin, inhaling its stale, musty scent. It seemed a lifetime ago when she’d worn it yet she was deluged suddenly with vivid memories of that time in the bunker—and how amid all that suffering and danger and uncertainty about her own future, she’d found her true strength. It had shaped her into who she was today. She had once been part of something larger than ordinary life, and she’d fought to make a difference in a troubled world.

  And that was precisely when the idea came to her.

  * * *

  At eight o’clock, when Eduard got home, Eva drew him a bath and sat on the ledge next to him, listening to accounts of what had been happening all day in the streets. Saint John’s, where both Eva and Eduard worked, was overflowing; ambulances shrieked endlessly around intersections and squares, around burning buildings, unable to attend to the wounded quickly enough. As they carried the stretchers toward the Red Cross cars, some of the medics had been shot at by rooftop snipers or Soviet soldiers who roamed the city with rifles pointed through the open roofs of their trucks. There was no shelter anywhere for the freedom fighters, Eduard confessed grimly, no way to protect them, to come to their aid.

  “But there can be,” Eva said, handing him a bar of soap from the sink. “There can be, if we put our heads together.”

  “How?” Eduard said in a defeated voice, staring blankly at the leaky faucet.

  “Well, I was just thinking today. Just thinking, mind you, that as chief surgeon at Saint John’s, you have certain privileges. Power. People respect you. People would follow your lead. They would band around you no matter the risk. And because of that, Eduard, I thought… why not reopen the Hospital in the Rock? Not officially, you know. But you can arrange to have supplies smuggled through the underground passages, just like during the war. And you can get others to join in the efforts clandestinely. No one has to know. That hospital hasn’t been used in eleven years, and no one would know.”

  It took Eduard only a minute to ponder this proposition. “Eva, you might just be the wisest person I’ve ever met.” Reaching for a towel, he crawled out of the tub, splashing Eva with a few droplets as he dried his head. “This is brilliant. You are brilliant!”

  “Well, not as brilliant as Ana Ivanov.” Eva laughed, but the comment was lost on Eduard, who, grabbing his robe from the back of the door, was already headed to his study, leaving behind a trail of wet steps.

  A second later, he was on the phone, making one call after another, his voice revived, buoyant, and Eva listened with a renewed energy of her own. She and Eduard were at their best in times of crisis. Crisis, survival, bound them. And they would do it again.

  28

  FOR TEN DAYS AND NIGHTS, as the clashing continued, thousands of freedom fighters—some wounded, some simply seeking a place to rest—poured into the Hospital in the Rock. Eva took a leave from her regular job in the maternity ward on account of her daughter’s health, the only thing she could think of to justify the absence, and she and the others worked in the cave around the clock, much as they had in the days of the siege. To Eva, it was like stepping back in time. Everything was eerily similar: the wounded, the lack of space, the relentless efforts of the medics, even Tamara. Tamara, whom Eva had only seen a handful of times in the past decade at some colleague’s dinner party or another. Tamara, who had changed so little, still lithe and quick on her feet, still scanning the evolving situations with the acuity of a hawk. Still looking at Eduard, she realized with a sudden shock, the same way, and he at her with a casual ease, which made her wonder if perhaps Tamara had remained a part of his life all these years, and whether he had kept this from her.

  But just as before, there was no time to dwell on personal matters, for graver things were taking place aboveground.

  Just a few short weeks since Eva and Bianca had marched in the demonstration, the Soviets amassed a full army that waited at the Romanian border to quell the uprising. One rainy morning in early November, all hope that Hungary would wrench itself from Soviet control was dashed. The Russian armada crushed the revolution with unusual brutality in a matter of hours, setting an example for the rest of the Eastern European countries under their control. By sundown it was all over.

  In the stunned despair that blanketed the city, Eva and Eduard cried leaving the hospital that day. They cried as many others did in the streets for the twenty-five hundred people who had lost their lives for a dream of freedom that would not be.

  “It was not for nothing,” Eva tried consoling Eduard. “At least we did our part. And I’m so proud of you, Eduard. I’m so proud of you for your courage.”

  Eduard would not be comforted. “The West,” he said. “The West stood by and did nothing. They did not send help; they turned their eyes the other way.” A sheen of drizzle had gathered onto his red scarf and the shoulders of his overworn coat, into the stubble of his unshaven cheeks. She reached up and swiped the wetness from his brow, but he seemed utterly unaware. “We are alone, Eva. This illusion, that we are still part of the larger world, has died today.” He paused, swallowing hard. “Well, at least we still have our family. We have each other. And whatever comes now, we will have to endure.”

  “Yes,” Eva agreed, “we will endure.” And she couldn’t help being reminded of what Tamara had said to her once, in the last days of the siege. They couldn’t bend fate to their will, but they would endure. They had no other choice.

  That night, their family indeed felt as though there was nothing beyond the small universe they shared. As they embraced Bianca and Dora, who’d spent most of those days in the basement shelter of their apartment while Eduard and Eva toiled in the hospital, not a tear was spared. But in those tears, there was love; there was a future. Wherever this next path would lead, whatever chapter would open, they were not alone.

  “It was not for nothing,” Eva repeated to Eduard later that night, resting her head on his chest in their bed.

  Eduard was already asleep, so she shifted her head onto her own pillow. But in the darkness, she wondered. She wondered how true those words really were.

  * * *

  No more than a week later, there was an early-morning knock. Eduard was still sleeping, still exhausted from the work at the hospital, and Eva went to answer the door. It was Tamara.

  “Tamara. Hello! Is everything all right?” Eva was less surprised to see her here at half past seven than by the way she looked. Her dark cropped hair was lank and plastered behind her ears, her eyes deeply shadowed. From underneath the coat, the edge of a flannel slip peeked out, and Eva wondered if she’d somehow left the house forgetting to change.

  Eva herself hadn’t taken much time with her appearance since the return from the hospital, for she, too, was p
reoccupied with other things. Bianca seemed withdrawn, frightened from the gunfire, and refused to sleep alone in the dark. Most nights she either curled into bed with Dora, or dozed on the sofa between her and Eduard. Eva loved this new closeness, though she’d be lying if she said Bianca’s sudden neediness didn’t concern her a little.

  “Is he here?” Tamara’s gaze shot past Eva as she walked inside without so much as an invitation, taking in the sofa strewn with blankets and the coffee table where they’d left their tea mugs the night before. “Please say that he is.”

  “Yes, he’s still sleeping; they all are,” Eva replied, filled now with annoyance. The casual exchange between Tamara and Eduard in the hospital was still on her mind, and she’d been waiting for the right time to bring it up with Eduard. And now this early-morning intrusion. Turning away from Tamara, she tied her robe and brushed the hair out of her face. “So what’s happening, Tamara? What is it that you want?”

  “I must speak to him. I must speak to you both. Please, Eva, go wake him. Go now.”

  “Can’t this wait? As I said, he’s still sleeping. Perhaps you might like some coffee. It will give us a chance to talk.”

  “Eva, please.”

  Trying her best not to lose her temper, Eva turned and marched into the bedroom. She shook Eduard, who was snoring softly, his head buried under the blanket.

  “Eduard, Tamara’s here.”

  He groaned, turned the other way.

  “Eduard, it seems important. What do you want me to do?”

  Another groan. Finally, he sat up at the edge of the bed with his hands planted on his thighs. “Can’t you tell her to come back later? Tell her I’ve a headache and cannot get out of bed. Then come back and get in here with me for a couple more hours. Dear Lord, it’s not even light out.”

  Eva did not have the chance to agree wholeheartedly, nor to take comfort in the fact that Eduard seemed not in the least interested in Tamara’s presence, for a moment later, Eduard threw the covers off and slipped his feet into his moccasin slippers. “Well, if she’s here, we might as well find out what it’s about. Maybe it’s to do with the hospital.” Then he grabbed his robe and shuffled toward the door as Eva followed suit, hoping that the exchange with Tamara would not ruin her day.