Triptych

by Margit Liesche

  About twenty middle-school-age girls—clearly on an organized outing of some sort—are leaving the Palace of Art.

  “Anikó was a classmate of my mother’s. Wouldn’t she have known how to reach my mother’s parents? Or Rózsa, her sister? Why didn’t Anikó contact them, tell them about Kati’s fate at the hands of the AVO?”

  Heat reflects off the gray and white stone pavement we are crossing. Gyöngyi fans her face with the nosegay she purchased from Anikó then hands it to me while she removes her jacket.

  “Many questions. Good questions.” She secures the jacket in the saddle of her shoulder bag, reclaims the tiny bouquet. “Anikó worked inside the Headquarters Building, among AVO men. She had to be careful. Already, once, she barely escaped with her life. Put yourself in her place.”

  I thought Gyöngyi was being overly sympathetic toward Anikó. How much peril would there actually have been in getting word to the family? Surely Anikó knew they would be beside themselves with worry over what had happened to Kati. Where was her compassion?

  “I know what I would have done.”

  Gyöngyi seems surprised by the certainty in my voice. “Anikó’s life has not been so easy. She was ‘saved’ from the headquarters’ siege only to be sent back there again. When she became too old for scrubbing floors and toilets she was let go with a meager pension. With no family to help care for her, a Russian mafia with a flower business was her only hope. He hires old women like Anikó. People see them, feel sorry, buy. Anikó gets little of the money. The boss he is mean and keeps most of it. If she would like extra money, sometimes she is used as a spy. Who would suspect an old woman?”

  I shake my head. “How does she do it? Live like that?”

  Gyöngyi shrugs. “Anikó has been through the Second World War and the Stalin aftermath; the uprising and its consequences. Like so many Hungarians, when she gets up in the morning, no matter what the day holds, no matter what she has to face—as long as it is free from the horrors she has seen and endured—she can do it.”

  We pause just short of the tall column. In front is a prominent, raised stone block. “The Hungarian War Memorial,” Gyongyi says.

  A dedication on a plaque near the cenotaph is written in Hungarian. Gyöngyi reads the inscription to me in English: “To the memory of the heroes who gave their lives for the freedom of our people and our national independence.”

  I would always remember the grim figures from ’56—the cost for what amounted to five days of freedom—made vivid to me by the Life magazine article, of long ago. More than 2,500 revolutionaries dead. More than 26,000 arrested, most of them convicted. Over 500 death sentences, while the majority of the rest got sentences of at least five years. Many of those executed and imprisoned being young men and women.

  Gyöngyi looks at me. “Here is where we come to remember Kati.”

  We stand quietly. I close my eyes, recalling the image of Kati in my mother’s family photo. A white dress with a flowery pattern. Hair pulled back with barrettes. Striking aristocratic cheekbones. A beautiful young woman with promise written all over her face.

  I reach in my purse for a tissue. My finger touches the edge of Kati’s prison photo. It is not the time or place, but I know now I will destroy the memento. Let the past—at least the dark past connected to her too short life and tragic death—end. Except…

  “Gyöngyi.” I blot my eyes. “I don’t want to ask this but I have to.” I wait until she looks over. “The speculation about Kati being a collaborator. I think it’s been established that it can’t be true, but my mother, she told Lilla there was unfinished business. That she had suspicions she needed to put to rest—” My words fade.

  The stems of the nosegay are wrapped in paper, fixed with a rubber band. Gyöngyi untangles the fastener. “Here,” she says handing me the creased paper. “From Anikó.”

  The paper is thick but pliable. I pull it taut. The printing is Hungarian. I hold it out to Gyöngyi, look at her questioningly.

  “A village on the Hungarian border,” she says. “Below that, a person’s name.”

  “What does it mean?” Even as I ask the question, I hear the vague voice of my mother, just returned from her second visit home, on the eve of her death. She is describing going to the countryside, a farmer’s son.

  “It is the special something that Anikó wanted you to know.”

  I feel uneasy.

  “After the revolt,” she continues, “when Anikó returned as scrub woman in the Headquarters Building, one day she was in the basement. There she saw the janitor, a friend, tossing files into the furnace. It was a miracle, or fate, or perhaps Kati’s spirit guiding the way. Anikó checked hurriedly through the stack. Kati’s folder was there. Her previous inspection of it was interrupted, remember? Now she looks more closely. Inside was the charge: Conspiracy to subvert the people’s democratic state.”

  I frown. “Attila said Kati was arrested for teaching Hungarian history in the home.”

  Gyöngyi nods. “Layman’s translation.

  “Anikó went on to read personal notes made by the AVO commandant. In them, he wrote Kati was turned in by an eleven-year-old female student. An interesting coincidence perhaps, as the girl’s parents were under watch because of their association with certain Petőfi Circle members.

  “According to the commandant’s note,” Gyöngyi continues, “the questioning of this student, Kati’s accuser, was assigned to a female interrogator.”

  “Interrogator? The AVO bullied a child, wanted her to squeal on her parents?”

  Gyöngyi shrugs. “This kind of thing it happened. But instead—and this is very interesting—the student turned the tables, made an accusation against her teacher.”

  “Kati. A false accusation.”

  “Yes. Even the commandant saw through this. He made a note saying he was quite certain the student was lying to deflect attention from her parents.”

  I shake my head. “And on this flimsy accusation, the AVO arrests Kati? She dies? Her family suffers not knowing her whereabouts. Her reputation—the family’s—is forever soiled. This clears the Katona name, doesn’t it?”

  Gyöngyi allows a small sad smile.

  Ironically, the covey of girls I had observed earlier has joined us at the cenotaph. They are keeping a respectful distance, but Gyöngyi clearly is no longer comfortable. We turn and she links her arm in mine, leading us away from the memorial. Her other hand holds the flowers clutched to her shoulder bag.

  Stem of diamond, branch of gold, twig of silver…the proof is out. The kingdom—the Katona family—is released from the spell.

  Almost.

  “What happened to the girl?” I ask when we have cleared the crowds.

  Gyöngyi shrugs. “The interrogator questioned her thoroughly, but the child showed unusual strength. Never wavered from her accusation, even embellishing it. According to the girl in this supposed secret class, which our family will vouch never existed, Miss Katona instructed her students that democracy is better than Communism. That one day, Communism in Hungary will be no more, and there will be plentiful food and material goods—not just for party members but for everyone. And that everyone will be free to practice religion just like her sister, who is married to a minister, in America.”

  My voice is incredulous. “A child brought this up?” I take a breath. “Anything else?”

  “The commandant wrote simply, ‘Will pursue.’”

  “And Kati was arrested.”

  “Yes. The girl’s parents were eventually arrested as well, following the uprising. Apparently the mother was convinced—” Gyöngyi’s wry tone makes no bones about what this means. “—to enlighten her interrogator as to what happened to the child, who by then was missing. Sent out with a courier, according to the file notes.”

  A wave of tourists conversing in German comes toward us, parts, passing us on both si
des.

  “Is that it? That was the extent of her file? What about Kati’s side of the story?”

  “Apparently this was not important enough, or perhaps desirable, to keep in the record,” Gyöngyi explains. “There was an entry concerning the farmer who acted as guide, escorting the child, along with a group of fleeing Hungarians, across the border. The AVO pursued this enemy of the people. Executed him.

  “Anikó did not save the papers from incineration, but two things got locked away in her memory—the names of the village and the farmer who helped the girl. Your mother’s visit helped to unlock the information and Anikó shared it with her. Now, this is what she has also given to you, on the paper.”

  I grasp the locket. “The girl. Is it her in here?”

  “Anikó would not know this. There was no picture of the child in the file. A student. That is all we know.”

  “The student? Her parents? They weren’t named in the file?”

  “Anikó did not remember.”

  This rings false. But the note Anikó has passed on to me is inside my shoulder purse. I pat its leather flap. “The farmer’s relatives or someone in the village may be able to tell us.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Gyöngyi must get back to her office. I opt to walk back to the hotel where I will make arrangements to travel to the farm village in western Hungary, along the Austrian border. I will make the trip, probably by train, on my own as Gyöngyi is unable to take time off from work. It was clear she feels badly, but I also sensed more than just professional commitments holding her back. She was uncomfortable spending too much time with her American relative.

  Gyöngyi has left me the nosegay. I clutch it awkwardly while I remove the city map from my purse. Republic Square is within walking distance. Replacing the map, I glimpse Kati’s photo pressed against the bag’s interior. The portrait is turned away from me. But her face, that death mask, is now catalogued in my mind, like the ghoulish images of the bloodied lifeless bodies strung from the trees that I had seen as a child in the pages of Life magazine.

  Leaving the busy and bustling Rakoczi ut, I turn down a side street then turn again onto narrow Legszesz utca. Farther along the block, the notorious Budapest Communist Party Headquarters building is obvious from the row of red hammer and sickle flags jutting on poles from the building’s façade. The square sits directly across the street.

  Loose gravel paths crisscross large grassy plots abundant with maple and poplar trees. I stroll a short distance following a column of vivid-hued flowers and take a seat on a vacant park bench. A man in a blue suit carrying a metal briefcase passes, gravel crunching as he walks.

  Looking left, I have an unobstructed view of the Headquarters Building, a gray institutional structure with an understated and unwelcoming entrance. Even the tall windows at street level have bars on them, warning people away. My gaze rises the four stories above, demarcated by rows of square windows. Well-suited to its functionary occupants.

  I turn back to the verdant landscape before me. My mother had always said green was healing for the eyes. What about the heart?

  The American midwest and Central Europe have similar climates. Closing my eyes, I picture the square in late October, the trees bare, the ground a damp blanket of brownish-black, the sky, a dismal gray. My mother’s depiction of the palace of the Twilight Kingdom, a black square, materializes.

  In the storybook version of the rowboat sequence, the palace surroundings were rendered to look fantastical. Forests of trees laden with precious jewels, whimsical boats crossing a mirror-smooth lake, a splendid, festively lit palace awaiting the boats and their passengers on the far side. A grand illusion, for in reality this was not a happy scene. Twilight had claimed the princesses, locking them away from their true selves. The spell also kept the king and his subjects frozen in time. Like the people of Hungary. Caught in a sort of twilight zone, waiting to be returned to their normal lives, the world they once knew, a world not dominated by a shadowy outside force.

  My mother’s version depicts a singular rowboat with a fair-haired damsel (herself, I believe) being rowed by a prince across a monotone blue body of water marred by a dark spot. The boats’ destination (Gustav’s version which I am now nearly convinced is correct), not a palace, but the black block of AVO Headquarters. The most evil of places.

  She had followed the standard storyline in that the prow of the boat was lifted up out of the water because someone not visible was seated in the back. But who? The spook who had followed my mother, like the stealth agent I suspect is shadowing me; like the agents my Hungarian family fears have ways of knowing all the details of their lives? Is that it? In my mother’s dark vision of the story, in place of the honorable gardener boy a sinister KGB agent sits in back?

  I shift position on the hard park bench, keeping my eyes closed, concentrating.

  In an early scene in the storybook, a lovely fairy queen speaks to Peter in a dream. “You must go to the king’s castle,” she says. “If you succeed where others have failed, you shall get your wish.”

  My mother had woven a bit of pink thread into the back interior of the boat, near the rower’s foot. Princess pink. An enticement? Had she hoped I would follow her?

  The gardener boy had achieved the special role of Liberator. Invisible, he pursued the princesses and solved the king’s puzzle of where they went and how they wore out their shoes. This entitled him to get his wish to marry Elise. Unwilling to betray his true love and her secret, he stood ready to drink the poisoned wine offered by Elise’s sisters. Elise intervenes. With this single act of love the enchantment ended. The princesses, the king, and all of the kingdom were at last free.

  Eyes closed, I whisper under my breath, “Mom, I’m here, not invisible, not a mighty force, not a princess, but your little girl, all grown up. Here, in this shadowy place, following in your steps.”

  The sound of crunching gravel alerts me to someone coming down the path from my right. I open my eyes.

  “Ildikó, I thought it might be you. What are you doing here?” It’s Gustav.

  “I might ask the same of you.”

  “I asked first. Mind if I join you?” I scoot to the side; he sits.

  “I was with my cousin’s daughter, Gyöngyi. At Heroes’ Square. Thought I’d come here, visit another set of ghosts.”

  The comment, meant to be taken lightly, has the opposite effect. Gustav turns from me to stare at the grassy park, straight ahead.

  “Ghosts,” he says his voice sounding far away. “I’ve been sitting over there—” He gestures in the general direction of the square’s center. “Came to finally say goodbye to those who fought and died here.”

  I recall the moment in his flat when he’d told me about being in this park taking photos of the fighting. The point blank killings of possibly guiltless people by his countrymen, the innocent face of a young boy lying dead next to him. Unfathomable scenes that had cut him to the core, made him realize he could never be a photojournalist.

  “You said in Chicago, you needed to face some demons. Make peace with them. Being here, is it helping?”

  He looks at me again, forces a faint smile, nods. “Some. But acceptance, I think, is the better term. It has been an important revelation. Opened me up. Coming here has also made me more aware than ever of the value in getting things right. ”

  He looks over, holding my gaze and, for a moment our surroundings, the culture of secrecy, our own private secrets, fall away.

  A couple walks past, arguing loudly. The intimate moment is broken.

  “That black block in my mother’s embroidery—” I say. “You may be partially right. A headquarters building, yes, but not AVO’s. I think we’re looking at what she intended. Budapest Communist Party Headquarters.”

  Gustav leans forward, looking around me, to get a better look. “Hmmm, maybe.”

  I share the hi
ghlights of my encounter with Anikó, what she found here at this building, including the accusation by Kati’s student and the student’s subsequent escape.

  “Anikó gave this to my mother,” I say pulling the note from my purse. “I’m certain this village is where she went searching. A farmer in that village helped the girl flee across the border near there. He was executed. But I’m hopeful a relative or someone else in the village can tell me whatever it was that my mother learned there. I suspect whatever she uncovered—or perhaps someone she met—is involved in her death.”

  Gustav takes the note, reads it.

  “Also, I have a photo in this locket I’m wearing.” I hold up the heart. “I think it might be this very same student who escaped.” I shrug. “Although no one has been able to identify her. Whoever she is, she’s important.”

  Gustav is pale, like he has just encountered one of those personal demons.

  “What?” I ask. “What is it?”

  A moment passes. “Kopháza. The village where I crossed,” he says in a hoarse whisper.

  Where his university chums, his girlfriend, lost their lives. “Oh…”

  We sit without speaking. Finally Gustav says, “And you are planning to go there?” His voice still does not sound normal.

  “Tomorrow, if I can arrange it.”

  Gustav looks apprehensive. “With your cousin?”

  My answer is firm. Quick. “Alone.”

  “I must come with you.”

  “No,” I repeat. “I’m thirty-seven years old. It’s my family, my business. Besides, your uncle. How is he?”

  One shoulder lifts. “As well as can be expected. He’s in Péterfy Sándor Utca Hospital, a few blocks from here. I was heading there. Will you come? He would like to meet you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I told him you were here.”

  I look at him quizzically.

  “He knew Mariska and Zsófi.”

  Gustav’s uncle is in his last days. Mariska and Zsófi would never forgive me if I did not pay my respects.