When the Summer Was Ours

by Roxanne Veletzos

  It wasn’t until after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which had opened the borders of the Iron Curtain countries, that the idea of returning to Sopron had come to her. It had not been a rash decision. She’d thought it through for many months, vacillating.

  Then, after the diagnosis, she began to give it serious consideration.

  What would she leave behind, after all? By then, she’d been retired for five years. Bianca had been constantly on the road, and Tamara had met a widowed architect and spent more and more time with his circle of friends, a fact that made Eva happy. And Eduard. At some point, she’d grown accustomed to her existence without him, without his gentle, soft-spoken voice, his calming presence. She’d long come to know what it was like to wake up alone, to take her dinners at the table they shared for more than two decades while conversing with him in her thoughts. So last fall, she’d finally sold her flat in Vienna and she’d bought Dora’s cottage from the Hungarian government with the money. It had cost less than she expected, and she’d been happy to still have a modest sum to put in the bank.

  Now she watched her favorite fisherman, Pálos, pull his canoe in at the edge of the water and lift his fish in a heavy metal bucket, which he began to carry toward her.

  “Good fishing day?” Eva smiled from under her huge straw hat, bending the edge of it against the sun.

  “It always is when you come down here, Miss Eva. You must be my good-luck charm.”

  She laughed. “More like an ancient relic dug up from petrified ground. Well, come on, show me. Let’s see what you got. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.”

  She knew it would make Pálos happy to hear that. Truth was, since yesterday, she hadn’t had much of an appetite. Yet she refused to think about it, refused to think this was the beginning of the downturn she’d been warned about back in Vienna, when she’d decided against treatment. Well, she knew just enough from her years of experience what was in store with that sort of treatment, and she had chosen life.

  Life to be lived on her own terms, as she always had. There was beauty after all in the exercise of acceptance. There was beauty in returning to one’s roots, in planting flowers, in fixing one’s cottage, in a warm cup of tea sipped at sunset, in watching fishermen fish. Her remaining time, whether it was a month or a couple of years, would be spent in peace, in beauty.

  “You sure you don’t want me to bring this to the cottage for you in my truck?” Pálos asked, his smile flashing brilliantly in a way that stirred a blurred recollection. “I’d hate to have it stink up your car. I’m happy to drive it over for you.”

  “As usual, I’ve come prepared,” Eva explained, brandishing the huge Tupperware box. “And I don’t mind the smell, really. It reminds me of the old days when I lived here. But thank you, Pálos. I’ll see you again next week.”

  * * *

  A half hour later, Eva pulled up in town at the post office, double-parking her car as she marveled at how much the town had changed in just over eighteen months since Hungary rejoined the Western world. Suddenly, there were tourists everywhere. Mostly they were from neighboring countries like Romania and Poland, which had also witnessed the crumbling of the Soviet Bloc with great jubilation. But there were Austrians, too, and once she’d heard French. The town was on the verge of a renaissance, and each time she caught a glimpse of it, she was gripped with both happiness and regret that she wouldn’t see it bloom fully.

  Today, there was nothing from Bianca—not that she heard much from Bianca when she was touring—so she collected her handful of bills and penny papers, and made her way back to the beat-up Ford she’d bought through a local ad, eager to get home to unload the fish.

  Just as she opened the door, she saw from the corner of her eye a strange figure. A tall man, elderly, yet firm in his walk. He came directly toward her. He raised his hand in a gesture of hello, his face a play of shadows underneath the straw fedora hat. A foreigner needing directions, Eva thought, someone not from this town, given the crisp white suit and the flash of an expensive watch. Then he took off his hat.

  Behind her, some kids scampered by, their voices no more than a distant, incongruous humming. She watched the man approach her, scrunching his hat in his hand, and her heart drummed and turned, and turned again too rapidly. God, she was too old for this sort of emotion. The car door was thankfully there to support her, and she grasped it tightly with her hand. She blinked. It couldn’t be. Blinked again. It was.

  But she had expected that she’d see him again, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she dreamed that he would come one day just like this, walking up that old familiar road of their youth with his hat in hand? Even in Vienna, after she’d reunited with Eduard and understood that in his gift to them he’d let her go for good, hadn’t she still deep down believed this moment would come?

  Here he was, and she couldn’t think of a thing to say. She couldn’t even utter his name.

  It was him who spoke first.

  “Eva. It’s you. Is it really you?”

  The question caused a strange reaction in her. She bent down to the driver’s seat and grabbed her own hat, a misshapen, inelegant thing she shoved firmly onto her head. The desire to hide her face from him was unbearable. She hadn’t even taken the time to gather her hair this morning in the usual bun, and it had been weeks since she’d done anything else to her face besides washing it with soap and water.

  He smiled, as if amused by this gesture, and she, too, felt a thin thread of shock at how time had a way of carving a beautiful face into pieces that were no longer congruent, how his still-perfect teeth seemed displaced in his thinning, bluish lips. Then he did something she couldn’t have ever expected. He came closer and removed her hat, tossed it into the street, across the stream of traffic.

  “Let me look at you. God, let me just look at you. How beautiful you still are.”

  His eyes on hers. All she could see were those eyes. They bore the same expression she’d grown accustomed to glimpsing in magazine articles over the years. Filled with unrest. They were unchanged.

  “That was my favorite hat,” she said.

  “It doesn’t do you justice,” he said, drinking in every contour and recess of her face. “You’re better off without it. Plus, we can buy you another. If you care to join me for lunch.”

  She laughed despite her tears, their joint tears. “What brings you here, Aleandro? Are you visiting?”

  “Visiting? Not exactly.” A long silence. He cleared his throat. “Your daughter… I suppose you could say that your daughter sent me here. Not exactly, not directly. But she peppered the road here with bread crumbs, you might say.”

  “You met my daughter, Bianca? In New York? At one of her concerts?” She felt confused and slightly panicked. How had Bianca found him? For years, she’d been following the papers, and was very familiar with accounts of his deep seclusion, the rumors of his supposed demise. Yet here he was, smiling in her face, asking her to lunch as if this town were the French Riviera.

  “No, I didn’t actually speak to Bianca.”

  “I don’t understand. Then how did you know I was here?”

  At this, he reached inside his knapsack and extracted the sketchbook. It trembled slightly in his withered hands. “Does this look familiar to you?”

  A flash of heat bloomed beneath her skin, and she drew back from him abruptly. “I see. Well, since you’ve come all this way, perhaps you might tell me exactly what my daughter has told you. About me.”

  He cleared his throat. “Like I said, we never actually spoke. She wrote to me; she sent me a letter along with the sketchbook via Hans, my best friend’s son. She said she felt it was important to return it to its rightful owner. It was a nice letter. Also, it just happened to mention that you’d come back to Sopron last year. Alone.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Is that all? Isn’t that enough? Well, it was enough for me to jump on the first flight out of New York, catch the train from Marseille to Vienna, rent a car, and drive strai
ght through. I thought I’d come into town to get a room, change, before I went out to look for you. But here you are. Here you really are. The gods have taken pity!

  “Ah,” he said, holding up a hand to bar her objections. “Nothing could have kept me from coming. Once I knew where to find you, once I knew that you were on your own, that you’ve been on your own for five years, I would have paddled across the ocean to get here.” He grinned as though he were a boy. “Although I have to say that I’m starving. So can we go have lunch, then?”

  “Oh, Aleandro.” Her eyes blurred with tears. He did not know. Did not know why she was here; it was plain on his face in the way he was looking at her with such unvarnished happiness. She shook her head, not knowing what to say, and he lifted his hand and cupped her cheek, held it there. It felt like a slap, the mere contact of it making her jolt, yet she couldn’t help leaning into his palm. Like before.

  “Aleandro, why?” she whispered. “Why couldn’t you leave this alone? I mean, look at me. Look at us. Perhaps we’d have been better off with just our memories.”

  “Yes, it will make for a nice, lengthy conversation over lunch. We have much catching up.”

  It made her laugh. “You are incorrigible. And undeterred.”

  “Stubborn as a mule. As always. Now,” he said, turning to scan the street behind them, “let’s see what culinary adventures await. I hear the Hungarian fare has much improved. I hear they now serve French fries with goulash. Surely a welcome delight for the tourists.”

  * * *

  They found a sidewalk kiosk, the only thing open at two in the afternoon, and sat on a plastic bench with Coca-Cola bottles and some soggy cheese pastries between them. The sun was hot; they were both perspiring, but neither one of them really minded the heat, nor the flies buzzing around their paper plates folded into the shape of tiny boats. The town was quiet, for while much had changed, the afternoon siesta was still strictly observed.

  “We must stop meeting like this,” Aleandro commented, taking a final bite of his strudel, dusting off the powdered sugar from his hands. “Last time, at least there was some wine involved. Ah, what I wouldn’t give for a glass of wine, to celebrate.”

  “Celebrate?”

  “Yes, celebrate. You and me finding each other.” He smiled. “Yes?”

  She looked at him, at the gusto with which he picked at the last phyllo crumbs and popped them into his mouth, unaware of the white dusting on the tip of his nose, at the way his eyes sparkled in the sun.

  She’d never felt happier—or more miserable. It would always be like this with him, a few joyful moments crammed into the folds of their larger reality. Of her life, his life.

  “Aleandro, I have to tell you that I won’t be here for the long term.”

  “No? So where are you thinking of going? If you want to travel, now that the borders are open we can go anyplace you want.” He crossed his hands at the back of his neck and tilted his face to the sun. “I rather like the idea. Of traveling with you.”

  From her lips, there was only a sigh. He wasn’t going to make this easy. She didn’t want to tell him, dreaded having to tell him, but she could see now that there was no other way. She stood from the bench, came to sit next to him, took his bony, sugary hand, and squeezed it between hers.

  “There is something that you should know, Aleandro. Something important.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve remarried. Who is he? Because this time I don’t intend to handle things as peaceably.”

  “Stop it.” She was laughing, and she leaned into him, put her head on the lapel of his jacket, felt the rising and falling of his chest. Closed her eyes. “I have… I suffer from what you might call an incurable illness. The reason why I came here is because my time, you see, is quite precious. Dramatic, I know, the way I made that sound, because in fact, the end… well, it won’t be right away. It’s still early, and I feel fine, but even with treatment, not a whole lot would change. Prolong, I’m assured, but not change. And I didn’t want to spoil the good moments. I wanted to go on my own. That’s why I came here. To enjoy the good, while I can. You understand?”

  He didn’t cry out, didn’t wrench his hand from hers, but when she looked into his eyes she saw they’d gone dark. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you. But you rather forced my hand.” Silence. “Please say something.”

  He spoke finally. “I knew it had to be something like this, Eva. I knew from Bianca’s letter. Something she said. That you left the sketchbook with her because it was the only thing of value you could bequeath to her. Those were her exact words. It could have meant anything, but somehow, I knew. There would be only one reason that you would come here. One reason only why you’d part with our sketchbook. So, you see, I’m not shocked.”

  She yanked her hand away. “So why did you still come, then?” She felt angry suddenly, exposed, vulnerable. “If you know me at all, then you would have figured out that I didn’t want to be found. That when I sold everything back in Vienna and came here, it was because I didn’t want anyone’s fussing, anyone’s pity. Especially not yours.”

  “Pity? Dear Lord, Eva, of all the things that this tired old heart of mine is capable of feeling for you, I assure you, pity isn’t one of them. Let me explain something to you,” he said and stood, and despite her resistance, he pulled her into his arms. “Let me explain in case you’re thinking of sending me away again. Only three days ago, I wanted to end it all. It had all become too much. I saw no beauty in anything any longer, not even in my art, and, God, I was so demoralized for such a long time. But then in the course of one evening, everything changed. Just like that, with one letter, it all changed.

  “You want to know why I’m here? Well, I’ll tell you the truth. I’m here because since I lost you, Eva, all of thirty-four years ago, I’ve been half a person. I tried to be more, and perhaps for a little while, when Rudolf was still alive, I was. But after losing him, after losing both of you, there was so little left, and no success or money in the world could fill the void. So do not think that I’m here out of pity, nor out of some misplaced romanticized notion. I am here because it is myself I’m trying to save.”

  Then they were weeping fully, both of them, and it occurred to her what a spectacle they must be, two old people standing in the middle of the busiest street in town, sobbing like little children.

  “So you’ve come so we can say good-bye again? How many times must you and I say good-bye?”

  “No, I’m not here to say good-bye. Not this time, my love. Because just like you, I’ve come home. I’ve come home to stay.”

  40

  THROUGHOUT THE REST OF THAT scorching, dry summer, which would leave Hungary in a drought for a decade, Eva and Aleandro saw each other every day. Aleandro continued to lodge at the inn downtown, giving Eva the privacy she needed. After so many years of not seeing each other, after so many years of solitude, they both needed to be (at least for a few hours each day) what they were in their prior lives. In the afternoon, they took walks down by the water and went into town for supper once in a while, although most of the time Aleandro cooked for her in the tiny kitchen of Dora’s cottage, where on a cassette player he would play Nina Simone’s “I Put a Spell on You,” and Frank Sinatra’s melancholic songs in which their own lives were sung and revisited—every pain and joy and triumph and downfall relived.

  It was blissful and quiet, the smell of fried fish, wine, and candles making Eva forget that she might not see the hillsides covered in green the next year, or that they’d lived apart for thirty-four long years. There were silences, too, many silences when they sat out on the porch with blankets and watched the sunset, and it was in those moments when Eva felt they could continue like this, growing old together—he with the aching bones in his hands, which he rubbed endlessly, she with her waves of fatigue, which came more often. The two of them, just watching the sunset on the whitewashed, sunbathed porch.

  And yet one thing still stood between them. One thing she could
no longer hide from him, for she was growing too weak for secrets, and the reasons for keeping it had long slipped away. So, one morning at the end of August, Eva grabbed the scrapbook of family photographs she’d made for Bianca and hadn’t had the chance to send yet, and placed it inside a picnic basket alongside a bottle of wine and some cucumber sandwiches she’d prepared the night before.

  He came at half past noon as he did every day in the silver convertible Bug he’d rented at the train station in Vienna, and she jumped in, covering her head with a scarf. He leaned in and kissed her lips lightly, in the way he always did, as though she were made of porcelain. “And what shall we do today?” he asked while smiling, his eyes deep and dark, vivid in the stark morning light. “What is the queen of my heart in the mood for this afternoon?”

  It was the usual thing he would say to her, but today was a different day, a day unlike the ones before, so she turned to him brazenly. “For starters, your queen would for once like a proper kiss.”

  She leaned over the steering wheel and kissed him in the way she wanted to be kissed, with a full open mouth, as she had kissed him once when she was young. “For a second thing, I thought we’d take a drive. Down to the pond. You know where. Our old spot by the pier.”

  “Are you sure?” he said, flushed under his straw fedora hat, taking a moment to regain his voice. “Are you sure not someplace new? We could drive down to Lake Fertö, to Burgenland. There is a beautiful little winery with a charming café right on the water that I think you would love. Do you remember how we once almost went to Burgenland together?”