Our host shows us down a short dimly lit corridor. We pass through velvet drapes into an intimate dining room, the suggestion of wild game, cabbage, and apple infusing the air. The maitre d’ seats me first, giving me a chance to survey our surroundings while he guides Eva to her chair.
The candlelit room has a vaulted ceiling and walls playfully frescoed with giant flowers in muted tones, lush grapes on a tangle of vines, a satyr flashing a wicked grin. Very Bohemian. Eva was right, I think, leaning back in my chair, adjusting Mariska’s shawl. The arty accessory suits the setting.
The pendant on her long necklace clinks against her plate as Eva takes her seat.
“Lovely,” I say, eyeing the scrolly ornament on the chain. It reminds me of the neckpiece worn by the Italian woman in Gustav’s photograph. “Did you make it?”
“Yes, thanks. Tell me about your hand work.” She nods to the brightly-colored rings-within-rings design on the section of black silk resting on my shoulders. “Kandinsky?” she asks.
I laugh. “You and Iloana! That was her reaction, too.” I explain that Iloana is a member of my conversation group in Willow Grove. “They were flower clusters once, like these only bigger—” I lift an end of the shawl. “But the Magyars—” I scan the room, smile. “I guess Czechs too, tend to overdo the floral. So I decided to mix things up. Modernize. I picked the threads from the shoulder clusters then reworked them into rings. Not planned. It’s just what happened…organically.”
“I like it,” Eva says. “Imaginative. Fresh. Good for you.”
I fling my hands in the air. “Hallelujah. Another vote for the ‘gets what I’m trying to do’ side.” I look at her. “You’re not shocked at being in the slight minority, are you?”
Eva’s eyebrows arch as if to say, so what’s new?
“Seriously,” she says. “Filter out the cynics. Keep going.”
“I have ideas for redoing a couple of my mother’s embroidered pieces, but haven’t gotten up the nerve yet. The notion is really over-the-top offensive to certain folks I know. Reinterpreting her vision, her story. Tilos. Forbidden.”
“Reinterpret your mother’s story,” she repeats, thoughtfully. “Her suicide. Yes, I can understand wanting to rip out that memory.”
I blink. Eva does not mean to be insensitive. Her style is blunt like Vaclav’s. “It wasn’t suicide,” I say. “Didn’t you hear? A witness came forward, said she saw someone push her.”
The dark shadow and bold slashes of liner lent drama to Eva’s eyes even before the news. Now they resemble the wide-eyed expression of a hoot owl.
“Sorry, I-I didn’t hear.” Eva is clearly shaken. “Art Institute. My time abroad.” She gathers herself, takes a breath. “Murdered? But why would anyone want to kill your mother, a minister’s wife?”
I start to reply but our waiter announces his arrival with a cough. We order drinks—Eva, Pilsner; me, white wine. Before leaving, he recites the specials. Suddenly hungry, and happy to change subjects, we study our menus.
“It’s tempting,” I say, trying to keep a straight face, “but I’m going to pass on the roast seasoned pig knee with horseradish and mustard. Opt for the more exotic hot salad of lemon sole with mustard-seed vinegar dressing. You?”
“Something light,” she retorts wryly. “Maybe the old Czech platter. Smoked meat, pork roast, sausage, dumplings, sour cabbage.”
Our drinks arrive. I order first, then Eva. “Roast sirloin stroganoff Prague-style,” she’s decided.
We raise our glasses. “Egészségére, to your health!” Eva adds, “To free spirits.” I repeat the toast.
Eva sips her beer. “Did they know who might have done it?”
I taste my wine. “No. All these years, nothing.”
“Sorry…”
An uneasy silence follows. The wine is fruity and cold. On the wall opposite me is a playful fresco of a pair of lover-lions. The male lion wears a crown and holds his reclining female partner in an embrace between his paws. Her nipples are prominently displayed and she sports a white bow around her waist. They are lapping tongues, French kissing?
Eva notices where I am staring. “Painted by the restaurant’s owners. Aren’t they fun?”
I smile. “Yes, lover-ly. And how was your date with the baptismal font last night? Have you begun putting John the Baptist back together?”
“Not yet. But this—” She holds up the adornment. This time I can see it’s actually an abstract heart made of oxidized wire. “It’s the material I’ll use in restoring the hand.”
I shift in my seat. “I know about Zsófi now. About what the AVO men did to her. So many horrific stories. Yours, too, Eva.” I hesitate. “Your parents died in ’56. Were they freedom fighters?”
The rim of Eva’s glass is at her lips. She swallows and beer goes down the wrong pipe. A coughing jag follows. Recovering, she holds a hand to her throat, blinks, sets down her glass. “My parents? No. The building collapsed.”
“I know. Sorry. So many people got caught up in the cause. I just thought maybe…”
“No,” she repeats. “My father was a singer. He performed at a small theater and on the radio. He was very popular. Then, for no reason, he was exiled to the country. He was there three years. He’d only been allowed to return to Budapest days before the uprising. Never would he risk getting involved in anything to call attention to himself. Discretion was the way for my mother as well.” Eva tastes her beer. A sad smile. “She was always home. Her pleasure, she always said, was looking after me.”
I finger the stem of my wineglass. “Were you, um, home when it happened?”
“No, at a friend’s.” I look up. Eva smiles tentatively. “It was horrible, yes, and my heart broke to lose them. Someone above was looking out for me. The friend, a classmate…her sister was also in our school…her parents insisted I stay with them.” Eva smoothed the tablecloth with her hand. “Well, not stay exactly. They paid a guide and we escaped in the second wave, it would later be called. In our group, there was one girl, about my age. She was alone. Now that was horrible.”
“Alone?”
Eva nods, stares at the amber liquid in her glass. “She had a note pinned to her jacket: ‘Look after our Dórika—we stay to fight to the last’.”
“Oh how awful.”
Eva shrugs. “It was an awful time. But a couple made her part of their family.”
“And you eventually got to Toronto. Then landed with the Bankutis.”
“A beautiful miracle. They had lived in our apartment building in Budapest. And like me, they’d left with the second wave of refugees. When I heard through the Hungarian grapevine they were in Chicago, I wrote. They invited me to visit. The visits snowballed and, well, you know the rest.”
While she has been talking, Eva has been running her pendant back and forth along its chain. The shape belatedly reminds me of the locket my mother had been holding when she died. I’d left it in Willow Grove. Perhaps it is time to show it around again, see if something comes to light this time.
The lover lions intrude upon my vision again. “I met someone,” I say. Eva pulls a face and I laugh. “No complications like with Vaclav. He’s nice. Well, at first impression anyway. And Zsófi’s a big fan. She’s been trying to set us up. Matchmaker stuff. He went to the Art Institute too. A photographer. Gustav Szigeti. Know him?”
“No…”
“Not surprising. He’s older.” I sip my wine mentally calculating the years the two had been at the institute. “You would have crossed over one year, in sixty-five. Ah, but he attended night classes, was part-time. Worked as a door-to-door salesman during the day, to practice his English. Grit—” I smile. “Anyway, he’s very talented. You should see his work. He has a show opening night after next. At the German Cultural Center.”
“Wish I could go. Too busy.”
I laugh. “Tell that to Zsó
fi. Believe me, I tried. I’m surprised she didn’t try setting you up with him. Well, too late,” I tease. “I’m meeting him tomorrow to preview his work. I’ll let you know. Oh, and did I mention his bod? Poster boy for an older Hungarian.” I wag my eyebrows.
“Hungarian?”
“What else? Zsófi knew him when they were kids. He’s a couple of years younger, but they went to the same school. Kati was her teacher back then.” I hesitate. “I’ll bet she taught Gustav too.”
“Kati Katona?”
“My mother’s twin sister. My aunt.”
Eva’s voice is very soft. “Traitor.”
“What?”
“I was a student at her school in ’56. She was a party member. Everyone knew. Maybe that’s what your mother discovered in Hungary. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to live.”
“Eva, please. She was pushed. I told you—”
“Yes, of course. Sorry.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see our waiter arriving with our food. I lower my voice. “Kati, a traitor? She betrayed someone?”
Eva matches my tone. “Ildikó, it is quite possible that what was being said about her was wrong. The times, the system we lived under. It was impossible to know who or what to believe. Everyone had something to hide. Everyone lied. It was expected. Yes, let’s leave it at that. What I heard was a lie.”
Chapter Fourteen
In my bedroom, getting dressed before going to view Gustav’s photographs, I round the foot of my four poster bed. My toe catches the basket piled high with Adriatic blue thread. Vaclav’s dream piece. I am righting the basket when I glimpse my streaked blonde hair in the long pedestal mirror across from me. Ildikó’s nightmare. This is not my sort of weather, I grumble, walking to the mirror, corralling the frizzed locks, coiling them into a French twist, clipping it.
In the glass, I pick up the reflection of Mariska’s shawl, strewn across the desk chair. In the midst of the cascading border of floral clusters, my Kandinsky circles. What had Vaclav said, seeing the needle work experiment: “I think you are layered, like those circles. Complex, bright, bold, full with many gifts.”
Well, I am not full with his baby, I think, regarding my figure in the mirror, smoothing my flat stomach, savoring the rich feel of the crushed silk fabric of my white vintage skirt. I had unearthed the treasure at a flea market several years ago. The white cotton tank top I am wearing with it is contemporary, but the assortment of antique black and crystal beads I had adhered to its front adds a stylish Old World look. I adjust the top’s straps then tie a black sash loosely around my waist, tugging the knot, letting the long fringed ends cascade down the skirt’s side.
I assess the effect. Eva’s funky touch rubbing off on me?
The bedroom door is partly open, and I can hear the telephone ringing in the living room. Zsófi picks up. I listen, but catch only a series of muffled responses.
“Ildikó,” she calls from the living room. “Telephone. A gentleman.” Her tone is sing-songy, mischievous.
“Who is it?”
I suspect Gustav. In old school fashion, he had wanted to pick me up. I had demurred. He’d persisted. I’d protested. “The German Cultural Center is not far. I can walk over.” Will walk over. In flat walking sandals.
At last, he relented and the tug of war had ended. At least I’d thought it had.
A knocking on my door. I am slipping the backing of my earring onto its post. I turn. Zsófi is in the doorway, hands folded primly before her.
“It is no gentleman.” Her lips purse disapprovingly. “It is Vaclav.”
Soon after my arrival, Zsófi had sensed something was troubling me besides my concern for Mariska. Teamed up together in the store for hours, she eventually wheedled the truth from me. I had tried not to paint Vaclav in a bad light. He’d been an extraordinary lover; I’d had the affection and attention I craved. Developing as an artist, learning more about myself through the work and through him, had been cherries on the sundae. Besides, I had known all along the affair was what it was. An affair. Zsófi viewed the relationship through lioness eyes. Vaclav had cheated on his wife and had led astray a friend who was like a sister.
Silent seconds pass while my fingers remain pinched to my ear. I let go, flick the silver disk suspended from my lobe, watch it swing freely. “Would you mind taking a message please, Zsófi?”
The chirping notes of the tune she begins whistling recede into the living room.
Zsófi is at my door again, quickly. She rolls her eyes. “That one he is not shy. The message: ‘Tell Ildikó, good news. Because of the showing she arrange for me at the library, I have wonderful new commission. I should like to speak with her about it. Ask her, when may I see her? And please to tell her I very miss her.’
“He make me repeat this, in his exact words: I very miss her. He is waiting.”
Not, I very love you, the broken English turn-of-phrase that had been my opium for seven months. Instead, like with the floral clusters in Mariska’s shawl there’s been an alteration. But what did it mean? Code? Different on the surface; same underlying message?
I take a deep breath. What does it matter? Love? Miss him? Not options.
Vaclav is a rock in the pond of my life.
I ask Zsófi to tell Vaclav not to call again.
At 5:30 p.m., I arrive at the German Cultural Center, an imposing sandstone structure on a busy commercial block. I press an intercom button. The door buzzes and an elevator whisks me to the fourth floor. A zaftig young woman with rosy cheeks, a pert nose, and a thick blonde plait greets me.
“We are technically closed.” She leads me down a hushed corridor.
The gallery space is completely black and white, except for the polished hardwood flooring. Track lighting illuminates photographs mounted along the fixed walls and on the portable walls standing in the room’s middle.
I’d expected more elaborate compositions showcasing costumes representative of Chicago’s ethnic mosaic, but the portraits focus as much on the individual as the native attire.
Gustav, in jeans and an open-collar white shirt, is talking to a young man with a dark ponytail at the other end of the gallery.
A “tsk” from my guide. She’s glaring at the portrait of the Italian lady resting against the wall near Gustav’s foot. “They still have another piece to mount.” She checks her watch then calls, “Yoo-hoo,” to get the men’s attention.
Gustav looks over. I wave shyly. He smiles and gestures to the Italian lady. “Just a couple more minutes,” he says.
The conversation between the two men resumes. Beside me, a second exasperated “tsk.”
“I have a few more things to do,” my guide says, the blonde plait bouncing as she turns to leave. “We close in fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes?” My voice is incredulous. “I was invited for a private preview.”
She hesitates. “Sorry.”
She is the center’s marketing and events person. Today technically is her day off, but final preparations for the opening had pulled her in. Now, with the hanging of the last portrait, her duties are done. Tomorrow will be a hellish day.
“I need to get out of here, get some rest before I have to return.” She squints in Gustav’s direction. “That is, if the artist and the art committee would like this gala to actually take place. Good to meet you.”
With another whisk of her thick plait, she takes her exit.
Cool air blasts from an air conditioning vent above. I adjust Mariska’s shawl on my shoulders and drift to the center walls. The photographs are all matted in white and mounted in simple black frames with the subject’s country of origin annotated at the bottom. I almost regret having passed on attending the next night, but thankfully the show will be up for several weeks. I stop at an arresting image.
An African American woman, originally from Senegal, in No
rth Africa, with flawless dark skin, full lips, a perfect nose, and a calm unlined expression, stares sideways, away from the camera, slender chin-length cornrows framing her face. Around her neck, oversized beads rest atop a tribal hatch-print robe. Another length of small cylindrical beads, strung together with what look like white Life Savers, winds about her head in a complicated manner to form an elegant hairpiece. My gaze skips from the headpiece to her eyes. I rethink my initial appraisal. The woman is not serene. What is her story?
A few images later, I cannot resist an elderly woman with a flat nose and sunken smile. Around her head a thick band woven in a traditional design supports a fluff of feathers. The woman hails from the Luzon Islands in the Philippines and her delicate frame and obvious sweetness are a stark contrast to the woman I pause before next.
A sturdy-looking elderly Uzbeki, from Uzbekistan in Central Asia, with a round, weathered face, stares unabashedly into the camera lens, her slightly open down-curved mouth exposing a wide gap in her top teeth. A print scarf is tied like a turban around her head. In the V-neckline of her dress is a diamond-pattern inlay made of a discordant flowery print. The mismatched designs are jarring to me, but the woman wears them with undeniable dignity. Her stout frame firmly planted, she looks out through fleshy narrow eyes as if daring the viewer—or any sort of trouble—to take her on.
Gustav comes up beside me.
“Survivor,” I comment. “You should add survivor to her descriptor.”
“Yes.”
“I’m in awe. Your work is amazing.”
A slight bow of his head. “Thank you. I thought you might be disappointed.”
“No, my only disappointment is your gatekeeper.”
He apologizes for the abbreviated showing. “I should like to make this up to you. Dinner perhaps?”
I hesitate, then, “Yes, that would be nice.”
Gustav’s helper has left. We approach the wall where they’d been working, veer right.
“When did you discover you had this talent?” I ask.
Gustav shrugs. “In Budapest. I was sixteen. My uncle had a big job with a company making camera lenses. He also liked taking photographs for fun. Nature, people, landscapes. Sometimes he took me along on outings. I got hooked, he began teaching me. Then, the camera.” A nostalgic smile. “Not many people could have them but my uncle he often went to East Germany on business. He bought a very simple one, giving it to me on my birthday.
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