Triptych

by Margit Liesche

  This is Mariska’s first day back at work. I comment on this, asking about Zsófi.

  “She is making a delivery. While she is gone, Magda has come over to make certain I do not overdo.” Mariska grins playfully at her friend.

  Magda Bankuti is a tall, solidly built woman whose fashion sense leans to polo shirts, cotton twill skirts and white tennis shoes. “A golfer in another life,” Eva and I like to joke. She is in her seventies, a jovial woman with a hearty laugh. As we speak, she is joyless in bemoaning the dreary and apathetic landscape she encountered during her visit to Budapest three years ago. The building where she lived—where Eva and her parents had also lived—had been rebuilt. “But in ‘the Russian way,’” she says. “Plain, functional, gray.

  “Everyone everywhere carries with him a black cloud,” she concludes. Her face visibly brightens. Her voice turns teasing. “But no dark clouds for you. We hear you will have someone special there with you.”

  The two women smile knowingly at one another. Gustav’s surprise concurrent trip has provided distraction enough for one day. I ignore them.

  “Is Eva home?” I ask. “I’d love to pop in, say good-bye.”

  Mrs. Bankuti’s dark eyes are suddenly forlorn. “Eva is off to New York. Back in a week. We hope.”

  “But the baptismal font. She’s restoring John the Baptist’s hand.”

  Mrs. B’s finger works a dark strand near her temple. “New York has big emergency. A dignitary from Rome is coming to speak at St. Patrick’s Cathedral next week and a major statue has been vandalized. In front, near the altar. St. Patrick himself, I think Eva said.”

  “Oh my. Disaster indeed.” I look at Mariska, then Mrs Bankuti. “Auntie Mariska, Mrs. B., why didn’t you tell me about Eva’s name. That she changed it. Irina only just told me.”

  “Eva has a marked surname,” Mrs. B says quietly.

  “Marked surname?”

  “Her parents were freedom fighters.”

  “Freedom fighters?”

  “Yes, they gave their lives. To us—to many Hungarians—they are heroes. To others, enemies of the people. And Eva is their flesh and blood. So Eva change her name. Her papers when she arrive in Toronto were—are—in the name of Fekete.”

  “But Eva told me her parents were never rebel fighters. Her father had been exiled.”

  Mrs. B’s eyes meet mine. “It is the story she tells because it is best for people not to know. Only few know the truth. Mariska, Zsófi, Tibor, myself, your mother. Now you.”

  Why hadn’t Eva been willing to tell me the truth herself?

  I look into the women’s faces. Think again of the hardships they—Eva—endured under Soviet Communism. How their very survival depended on the web of lies and deceit they wove around themselves. The level of trust it would take to break open the cocoon, face life honestly.

  A complex knot.

  I feel compelled to press further. “Thirty years have passed. Eva is in America. Has her citizenship. Surely now it would be safe. Why not switch back to Benedek? I would think she’d want to carry on the family name. Especially as her parents were martyrs for the cause.”

  “Eva, she does not want to bear the risk that there could be a tie to her past. In case…” Mariska halts abruptly, the pink coloring seeping from her cheeks.

  “In case what?” I ask.

  Both women’s eyes shift and they glance sideways at one another.

  “Oh, c’mon. You don’t really believe the AVO—sorry KGB—has it out for descendents of ’56 freedom fighters. That they’re skulking around on U.S. soil, determined to hunt them down, harm them, along with anyone who has ever sheltered them, do you?”

  Dead air follows and I think to myself, What am I getting into, going to a place with an arm of terror that has the power to reach across nearly 5,000 miles, even after thirty years?

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Budapest, 1986

  Before I’d left Chicago, Mrs. Karinthy had gone over procedures for obtaining a visa. At our connection in Frankfurt I asked for an application form. A sharp-featured blonde clerk with a crisp German-accent said simply, “Not possible.” I am exhausted after my nine-hour flight. What if I am similarly rejected at the Budapest airport?

  I am woozy with fatigue and worry and feel little concern over the next “not possible,” a seat selection for the short inter-Europe flight. Then I am relegated to the very rear of the plane and my misery grows. My seat is on the left side, designated “non-smoking,” while the right is for smokers. Are they kidding? I am soon enveloped in a gray blue haze. By the time the “No Smoking” and “Fasten Seatbelts” signs light up over Ferihegy airport, my clothes reek of tobacco and my lungs are toxic.

  When the plane stops taxiing, we passengers descend onto the tarmac. With a silent fanfare I take my first steps on hallowed motherland.

  The bustling arrivals hall is a vast gray space with a high-ceiling, flourescent lighting, and shiny floors. My mind feels muddled, a combination of jet lag and smoke asphyxiation, but I make a beeline for the visa application window. I get in line behind a Brit with an extra form. I fill it out as the queue inches forward.

  A young, olive-skinned clerk with dark eyes, wavy black hair, and a blank expression nods, and I slide the form, my passport and twenty dollars across the counter. He opens my passport. One thick dark eyebrow lifts. His gaze shifts to my face then back to the document.

  “Are you related to Gabor Palmay?” he asks. “He was my classmate.”

  A trick question? Intended to point a finger at Gabor Palmay, punish him for having an American relative?

  I swallow. “I know no Gabor Palmay,” I answer stiffly.

  In truth, the name was on a family tree I had seen once long ago. It is not an unusual name, and I have never met any of my Hungarian relatives.

  The young clerk eyes me evenly. With a resigned shrug, he shoves the documents through a curtain where I had seen the Brit’s paperwork disappear moments before.

  I proceed to a cordoned off area where I have been directed to wait along with twenty others. A half hour or so later, names are called out, mine among them. I have my visa.

  Another official looks in my eyes, taps keys on his computer, and within minutes, I am directed to move along.

  The pounding of my heart reaches a crescendo as a third custom’s agent comes up alongside me. “You have nothing to declare,” he says in heavily-accented English. “Why do you not just go through here?”

  He gestures toward an exit closed off by wide, swinging doors with opaque glass panels. I push through them, passing into a throng of family, friends and uniformed drivers awaiting arrivals.

  Outside, the late afternoon air is like Chicago, humid and warm. I pause at the turn-around drive, looking for a taxi.

  I am booked into the Duna-Intercontinental Hotel. Opened in 1969, it sits on the site of the former Duna Hotel. This is meaningful to me because my mother, fearing the unwelcome scrutiny her first visit had imposed on her relatives, had taken a room at the old Duna in ’65. Significant also, the old Duna was where foreign journalists stayed during the ’56 revolution, determinedly and courageously sending out their reports to world capitals around the globe. Strong inspiration for getting the story I’m after.

  The taxi passes through suburbs with tall, concrete slab apartment buildings and industrial pockets of squat, monotone structures until at last we are driving along broad streets and large open squares into what appears to be the center of the city. It is late afternoon on a Saturday. Women carrying string bags stuffed with food items and other goods, and men in blue suits and white shirts, stroll the sidewalks.

  At the unassuming entrance to the Duna-Intercontinental Hotel, a doorman with a dark full mustache, a green uniform, and a visored cap opens the taxi door, and takes my bags from the trunk.

  The lobby is spacious and gra
nd with a sprawling seating area fitted with sofas and high-backed chairs. I step up to a long reception desk, hand over my passport to the English-speaking clerk.

  ***

  In my room, the porter heaves Irina’s bag onto an open luggage rack. Skirting the king-sized bed, he gives a brisk tug to a cord of the heavy drape covering the far wall. The material retreats in pleats, revealing a floor-to-ceiling window and glass sliding door leading to a narrow balcony. I glimpse billowing gray and white clouds against blue sky.

  The porter leaves, and I step out onto the balcony. The Danube flows directly past the hotel. It is not especially blue, but broad and majestic and unquestionably very beautiful. A walkway along the river’s edge is alive with pedestrians strolling in either direction. Across the river on the Buda side stands the breathtaking architecture of Castle Hill with its medieval monuments, including a walled fortress and the sprawling Royal Palace. The cliff face in front of it is alarmingly steep, obvious even from this distance. Still, in spite of the supposedly unassailable hill, the castle was destroyed time and again; first by the Turks in the 16th century, then during the 1848-49 revolt against the Hapsburg rule, and finally during WWII. Rebuilt and renovated as often as it was knocked down and ruined, the now enormous Royal Palace is no longer the royal seat but instead houses the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest History Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in its vast wings.

  A long, drawn out whistle draws my gaze to a tug boat chugging upstream, pushing two barges. The tug nears the elegant twin-towered Chain Bridge, linking Buda to the Pest half of the city where I am staying. Cars, buses, and a trolley cross the bridge. I stare. The view my mother might have enjoyed.

  An ache stirs in my heart and I turn back inside.

  I hurriedly unpack, tossing items, including Mariska’s shawl, into the drawers of a chest-high bureau and draping them on hangers in the small built-in closet. The mystery locket is secured around my neck. I had decided to leave the prayer book behind, worried a hard-nosed Communist customs agent might confiscate the religious item, or note Attila’s name written inside. My other talisman, my mother’s daisy piece, gets wrapped around Kati’s picture and tucked into my skirt’s pocket.

  ***

  I pause before a maitre d’ in formal dark suit and tie. Behind him is a large pillared dining room overlooking the Danube.

  A few minutes later, I sip my dry white wine and dine on cucumber salad, then the chicken paprikás, rich with sour cream and strongly spiced with paprika, served over nokedli, small dumplings. Nearly as delicious as my mother’s.

  From outside comes the long, drawn-out blast of a ship’s horn. It would be sacrilege to go to bed without first paying homage to the Danube.

  I head north from the hotel entrance, the river on my left. Swarms of people stroll past me in both directions. Outside the neighboring Forum Hotel, candlelit tables, hemmed in by flower boxes, spill out onto the walkway.

  I admire the reclining lion statues guarding the Chain Bridge. Between them, square, compact Russian cars inch bumper to bumper across the broad roadway. Alongside, a crush of people snake along a pedestrian passage.

  Tomorrow morning, I, too, will cross the Chain Bridge to the Buda side where Mariska has made arrangements for me to meet my deceased cousin’s daughter, Gyöngyi. What will she be like? Will she be able to answer my questions? Can I discover what happened to Kati? Did something my mother uncover here cause her death? Was Attila killed to keep him from telling me?

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Sunday morning, I am awakened by the long, drawn-out call of a passing tug.

  I join the pedestrians crowding the riverside walkway. Now and then I catch an eye, nod and smile. On such a glorious day, ambling alongside the beautiful Danube, a magnificent palace cresting a hilltop on the opposite side, how could I not spark a smile or two in return? Yet I don’t. By the time I reach the Chain Bridge what Mariska, Irina and Mrs. Bankuti had tried to explain has sunk in. This is not midwest America, land of the carefree.

  I cross the bridge. On the Buda side a pair of large stone lions identical to the duo in Pest, greet me. Across the busy intersection, a funicular climbs the steep, tree lined slope. Armed with the city map provided by the hotel, I take a path through a narrow park to a wide staircase, leading up to the Royal Palace grounds.

  I negotiate a courtyard boxed in by neo-Baroque buildings and proceed through an arched passageway. I walk, surveying the majestic main wing of the palace fronted with ornamental fountains and cheerful garden patches. Along the cobbled street beyond, a sobering scene. Gray buildings, their plaster facades staccatoed with bullet holes, in some places the plaster almost entirely shot away. In the final days of the ’56 Revolution, some of the heaviest fighting took place in and around the Buda Hills, the pockmarked walls remaining as testament.

  A hand-painted sign on a stone-faced building draws me to the café where I am to meet Gyöngyi. Through the open door, I see a charming place, crowded with small tables and shelves lined with antiques. I turn back to the street scene. Along the mortar-shelled wall, a small man in a blue suit with a bald head and a graying mustache listlessly twists a brown felt hat in his hands, now and then pausing to smooth the rim. A heavyset man accompanied by a pregnant woman pushes a stroller with a chubby-cheeked child gnawing on a biscuit. An organized tour led by a female guide holding aloft a closed umbrella leads her charges, touristy-types, carrying cameras, about fifteen of them. They are trailed by the “sweeper,” another woman guide identifiable by a billowing lightweight raincoat. The coat is elegant as is her loosely-tied abstract Pucci-print scarf and oversized sunglasses. She reminds me of someone. I chuckle. Ingrid Bergman, the hood of her cloak pulled up over her head, in the opening scene of Gaslight.

  A young woman with a wild mane of bottle-blonde hair pauses near the restaurant entrance. She is wearing aviator sunglasses, but cups a hand over them as she peers in my direction. I am the only single. Her head tips to one side, as if she is assessing me. It must be Gyöngyi. I wave tentatively and rise as she strides over.

  “Gyöngyi?”

  She nods, smiles shyly. “Yes.”

  Our embrace is awkward but heartfelt.

  “It is very nice at last to meet you,” Gyöngyi says in halting English, her gaze locked on my face.

  “I’ve been looking forward to this moment for so long, too.”

  Gyöngyi is ten years my junior. She takes the seat opposite me and removes her sunglasses. I see a likeness to my aunt Rózsa, who would be Gyöngyi’s grandmother, and whose picture my mother had kept on prominent display in the parsonage living rooms, straight noses and brown eyes.

  “Mariska explained that you work, and it may be difficult for us to get together during the day,” I say. “I hope we can meet for dinner a couple of nights. I’d like to get to know you, know more about the family here. Will this be possible?”

  “Of course. I would like this very much too.”

  “What do you do?” Gyöngyi looks puzzled by the question. “What’s your job?”

  She shrugs. “Nothing so interesting. Ledgers. General office duties, at photocopy business.” She selects her words carefully. “But you, Ildikó, you have come long way. Why? What is so interesting here for you?”

  Is she kidding? I study her face, but it is a complete blank. She waits.

  I realize it’s very possible she does not know why I am here. Mariska would not have gone into detail on the telephone.

  My time is limited. I decide to lay my cards on the table.

  In a hushed voice, I recount the revelations that had surfaced in the weeks leading up to my visit. How for so many years my mother had been left to wonder what happened to Kati, then on her first return trip, in 1961, how she learned the truth: Kati had been taken by AVO. How, on the eve of leaving the States for her second visit in 1965, she had uncovered a clue vital to solving t
he disappearance of Kati. The clue connecting her to an old friend in Budapest.

  “Gyöngyi,” I am whispering now. “My mother was pushed before a speeding train. We—her Chicago friends and I—believe this happened because of what she uncovered here. She died before she could share the information. I’m here to retrace her steps. It’s been twenty years but, well, I know the lead that she was following, the name of this friend.” I read the horror in Gyöngyi’s eyes. “What?”

  “Murder,” she whispers.

  I nod. “Shocking, isn’t it? There was an investigation, nothing came of it, no one wanted to talk about it.”

  Her spine straightens. I sense someone coming up behind me. Our waiter.

  A young man with dark hair and wolfish features, clad in a white shirt and black tie, politely hands us menus.

  He leaves and Gyöngyi lowers her gaze, at once preoccupied with the offerings.

  “Gyöngyi, I need your help.”

  She does not look up.

  I lean forward on the table, keeping my voice hushed. “My mother had said she was shadowed when she was here. Mariska and Zsófi thought the same thing might happen to me. But it’s 1986. Hungary is the most progressive of the Russian satellite countries. Things are changing, right? Surely we don’t have to worry about eavesdroppers or being followed.”

  She looks up. Her gaze flits over the diners around us before she slips her forearms on the table, whispers, “Things are better, yes. Still, to be with an American is sure to win attention. What you are speaking about. You…I must be cautious.”

  I turn away, take a breath. I hold up the menu, smile. “Safe enough?”

  We spend a few minutes going over our choices, Gyöngyi patiently correcting my Hungarian when I brave reading a couple of them aloud.