The nosegay is resting on the bench beside me. I pick it up. “These could use a patient.”
Gustav and I enter Péterfy Sándor Utca Hospital through the front entrance. The sparsely furnished lobby is quiet, but for the scuffing of our shoes on the marble floor. Off to one side, a scattering of occupants in stiff-looking chairs doze, read, or quietly converse. A doctor in a starched coat stands near a reception counter speaking in a hushed tone to an elderly woman beside him. Rocking on his heels, he rubs the end of the stethoscope hanging from his neck as he talks.
Gustav leads me down an interior corridor. Two attendants pass us, pushing a gurney with a patient connected to a drip. The air stirs and I am aware of the faint but unmistakable odor of ammonia and stale urine, common to every hospital I have ever visited.
On the way over, Gustav told me that during the Uprising the Péterfy Hospital was one of the main hospitals where rebel fighters—also some AVO personnel and Soviet soldiers—were brought for emergency treatment. In ’56 it was one of the most up-to-date facilities in the city and had approximately a thousand beds.
We start down the corridor again. “This was one of the major nerve centers of the underground resistance,” he says. “Beneath this main level are many underground corridors and rooms. People who had lost their homes, or maybe could not return to them due to dangerous conditions, were sheltered here. Others who might not have proper identity documents—perhaps because they had been freed from prison, for example—found refuge as well. There was a publishing center manned by revolutionaries too.”
“Here? Really?”
“Uh-huh, they published an underground newspaper called Élünk, ‘We Live.’ They also churned out anti-Soviet leaflets.”
My first impression of Gustav’s uncle, Ferenc Szigeti, is skin pale as wax.
He is resting, his eyes closed, his sallow face deeply etched with lines, his wispy white hair, while not unkempt, seems to have been combed by a distracted hand. Perhaps sensing our presence, he stirs. His eyelids flutter, open. He manages a weak smile. “Gustav…”
“Helló Uncle.” Gustav goes to the end of the bed, and cranks a handle. The bed frame inches up until his uncle is reclining in a more upright position. Moving to the opposite side of the bed, Gustav pours water from a pitcher into a cup. He holds the straw to his uncle’s mouth. Ferenc takes a few sips.
Gustav returns the cup to the bedside table. “Uncle, I have brought Ildikó.”
Uncle Ferenc turns and manages a small smile. “Wonderful that you come,” he says in a frail voice. “Sorry, my English is not so good.”
I am instantly charmed by his courtly manner. I grin. “My Hungarian is hopeless.” I reach across the bed with the flowers. “But I’ll let these speak for me. Good cheer and good health.”
Gustav has filled a spare tumbler with water. He shoves the nosegay inside. “Gustav tells me that you knew Mariska and Zsófi,” I add.
“Yes. Long ago, we live in same apartment building.”
“Did you by chance also know my aunt and uncle, Oszkár and Rózsa Szabo? My aunt was Rózsa Katona before she married.”
Furrows form across Uncle Ferenc’s forehead. Though diminished by age and illness, the Baryshnikov resemblance is there, especially in the patrician nose. His eyes? Hazel, like Gustav’s.
“The names are not familiar,” Uncle Ferenc says at last.
Small talk has never been my forte. I grope for another topic. “It’s been many years. You must be glad to have Gustav back.”
Uncle Ferenc turns slightly to face Gustav then looks back at me. “I never thought I would see him again. He left terrible baggage behind. Why come back to pick it up now?”
Gustav gently rubs his uncle’s shoulder, so thin it protrudes like a bony fist from his hospital gown. “I love you. I had to come. You are my family.”
Ferenc fixes me with a soulful stare. “It is a wonder that he has come, in spite of what he believed about me. The worst.” Ferenc swallows. His tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth, making a sticky sound.
Gustav holds the cup of water near his uncle, placing the straw at his mouth. While his uncle drinks, he looks at me. “I would like to explain, if you do not mind.”
“Of course, please.”
“You remember I told you my friends were gunned down while we made our escape.” I nod. “After the AVO officers leave, I rush to my friends, hoping for a miracle. That they are alive, I can help. Márton had a small breath of life left. With it, he whispered Uncle Ferenc’s name.”
My mouth opens in surprise.
“I thought my uncle had betrayed us. Now, when I return, speak with him about this, I discover something I did not imagine. He was part of the resistance and he ran couriers to help get people fearing for their lives, out.”
The straw flips away from Uncle Ferenc’s lips. “Here. I work here. Downstairs.”
“Shhh, Uncle.” Gustav speaks just above a whisper. “It is true. No one had ever told me this. Now I realize Márton was trying to make me understand. There had been a mole, my uncle was in danger. I should have tried to warn him.”
I found my voice. My hushed voice. “So you, Ferenc, arranged Gustav’s passage?”
Ferenc nods and attempts to lift a skeletal hand, striped with ropey blue veins. Immediately, it drops again to the pristine white bedding. “Gustav, many others, they were not meant for Hungary in those times. I understand this. Me, I can never leave. This is where I belong, but this does not mean I cannot help those that want to escape.”
I am moved that Gustav, believing his uncle was responsible for the death of his friends, still loved him enough to want to be with him at the end.
I begin to understand why Mariska and Zsófi place such trust in him. “So,” I say, “Mariska and Zsófi. Did you find a courier for them?”
Uncle Ferenc nods, begins to smile. His face suddenly tightens with pain.
“Uncle—”
The lines in Uncle Ferenc’s face relax. “Strange. I escape this place, dodge a sure death, only to return here to die.”
I reach for his arm, touch it lightly.
“Things here have gotten better, though, since ’56 haven’t they? My cousin has hopes they will improve even more, soon.”
“Yes, after the uprising the situation had to adjust. The world was watching, and the regime it needed to keep the remaining people here. So the soft Kádár Communist system was born.”
A bitter chortle escapes Gustav. “Your apartment, Uncle. Shall I tell the story?” Ferenc nods. He begins. “Just after the Revolution, my uncle moved from the building where Mariska and Zsófi had lived. He had made a deal to buy a nicer apartment from a friend who was leaving the country. One day, the captain of the KGB knocks on his door. ‘We like you, Ferenc, you’re a good guy,’ the captain says, ‘but you are not a Party member. We want your apartment.”
Gustav notes my look of disbelief. “True. And with that, a Party official moves in and my uncle is shuffled off to another apartment. Definitely less desirable and less than half the value. Still, this is generous. Before the Revolution, a black car would have come, picked my uncle up and off to Siberia he would go. Yes, clearly better conditions than before the Revolution.”
An attendant enters pushing a cart with covered trays of food. A bland but distinctive smell, like over-boiled vegetables, accompanies her. “Vége a Látogatásnak,” she announces.
“Visiting hours are over,” Gustav translates.
Chapter Thirty
I book my train for Kopháza then head for the hotel restaurant.
“Mr. Szegeti’s table, kérem, please.”
“Igen,” the maitre d’ replies, seizing a menu. “This way.”
The sun has just rolled down behind Buda. Across the Danube, the Palace is a dark silhouette towering above the darkening historic landscape. Expans
ive lengths of clouds, like pulled cotton candy, reflect the sinking sun, their pale yellow edges turning peach as we emerge onto the terrace. Scattered fragments of conversation, mainly in German and Hungarian, tease my ears as we weave among the cloth-covered tables.
We pause at the table where Gustav waits, looking out on the Danube. He quickly rises while the maitre d’ assists me with my chair.
“Ahh, the work in progress,” Gustav says.
The evening is balmy. I slip the shawl from my shoulders. “Yes, and the threads are coming together.” I tell him about the arrangements I’ve made for the following afternoon.
“You sure you would not like company?…” Gustav begins. Then shaking his head he quickly backs off, murmuring, “No, you’ll be fine—alone.”
“Yes, and you have your uncle to think of. I’m glad I got to meet him.” I look over Gustav’s shoulder, my attention deflected by the slight, bald man in a gray suit seated a few tables away. A tall glass of beer rests in front of him. My KGB man?
He stands as a woman joins him, and they kiss before taking their seats.
Gustav turns toward the diversion. “Do you know them?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Back to your uncle. He loves you. It’s so clear in his face when he looks at you, and how hard it must have been for you to make the decision to return, knowing…believing…the role he’d played in your friends’ deaths.”
“It is a gift to have this second chance. I shudder to think of how different my memory of him would be if I had not come.”
A waiter pauses at our table, lights the decorative candle, and asks what we would like to drink. I defer to Gustav who orders two glasses of red from the wine country around Eger.
“Fate moves in mysterious ways,” Gustav says when the waiter has left. “I had wrestled for years with why I lived, why I was saved. Was there a purpose? Was it random? No answers magically appeared. So I decided I will bury the past in a box.”
“The shadow box?”
Gustav nods. “But the people and places inside were determined. Getting under my skin every time I took the photo out, held it, studying it, remembering. Now, with it gone, with coming home, I feel at peace.”
Home. Like my mother, he had called Budapest home.
Our wine arrives. The waiter waits for our order. Again, I let Gustav decide.
Beyond the two softly curved hills of Buda, the colors have faded from the sky and dusk has fallen over the river, now a broad steel-gray ribbon. While he questions the waiter about menu items, I watch the parade of pedestrians strolling on the walkway in front of us.
Large potted plants, strung with tiny white lights define the outdoor dining area. I am admiring them, listening to Gustav and the waiter discuss fogas, a perch-like fish purportedly only found in Hungary’s Lake Balaton, when a slippery fish of another sort slides by. It is the woman in the billowing trench coat, a Pucci scarf jutting forward, hiding her face. The same woman I noticed while lunching with Gyöngyi on Castle Hill and that I pegged as the “sweep” guide for a passing tour group. But now I am quite sure the trajectory of her path began from behind the tall ornamental potted plant in the far corner. Ideal for spying on us.
As quick as the woman appeared, I lose her in the crush of evening strollers.
The sighting brings to mind the supposedly damning accusation by the student found in the commandant’s file: ‘Miss Katona has a sister in America,’ a twin sister, my mother. Was that why I was being tailed?
I jump, hearing Gustav’s voice. “I ordered white wine to have with our meal,” he is saying. “Okay?”
Turning, I am surprised to see that the waiter has already left. I smile. “Perfect.”
“Your thoughts are elsewhere this evening. On tomorrow?”
I chuckle. “Yeah, wondering if they’ll come along.”
Gustav looks at me with confusion.
“My followers.” I describe the man and woman I’d seen on numerous occasions since arriving. “They must be KGB.”
Gustav has brought his glass to his mouth. His eyebrows lift. He returns the glass to the table without drinking. “Ildikó, you must be careful.”
His hand rests between us on the table. I rub it lightly. “Don’t worry.”
A boat adorned with lights cruises past. The strains of an orchestra playing Strauss drift romantically across the soft night air.
I place an elbow on the table, cupping my chin in my palm, watching a couple with a baby carriage drift by. A mental picture of Vaclav and Manka pushing a stroller injects itself into the scene.
I break through my thoughts and repeat, “There’s nothing to worry about. It’s not as if they’re trying to be sneaky, catch me unawares. They want me to know they’re there.”
Gustav reaches across the table, takes my hand. “Do not underestimate their tactics. Remember, this is not the land of the free.”
I turn my hand over, under his, and we thread our fingers together.
Gustav leans toward me. “Earlier today in the park I mention something in me has opened up—my heart, Ildikó. I want to trust again, be trusted, be with someone I feel at ease with, who I can talk openly with at length, be honest with. Feel needed.”
Behind Gustav, our waiter clears his throat. “Tessék. Jó etudgyat. Here it is.”
Our appetizer has arrived. But Gustav’s gaze refuses to leave mine. I stare into the hazel eyes and feel a wave of emotion move through me, part loneliness perhaps, part yearning. Love?
Gustav squeezes my hand lightly and lets go.
“Goose liver on toast,” he says eyeing the plate with our starter dish. Seeing my expression, he laughs. “Delicious. Here, try.”
I take a tentative bite. He was wrong. “Delicious.” I lie.
Gustav finishes his crunchy wafer. “Once more, we have been talking about me. What about you, Ildikó. What do you want?”
“Big question.” I smile, sip my wine. “But what the heck. This might sound a little woo woo—” The puzzled look on Gustav’s face makes me laugh. “You know, a little…paranormal.”
“Ahh.”
“Well, I believe my mother, her spirit, whatever, led me here. She wanted me to see this beautiful city, full of woe. My friend in Willow Grove, Irina, likes to say, ‘If you are proud of where you come from, you will always know where you’re going, and you’ll take pride in everything you do.’ Now I know where I come from. I’ve met my relatives, have a fuller picture of my mother, understand better where she came from, what shaped her, why she called this place home. Why she longed for home.
“In America, my mother was out of her element. She could never be at ease, but she could never come back here to live either. It wasn’t the same place where she grew up. Besides, she couldn’t leave her family in the U.S.
“I don’t think I realized it before, but I’d venture to guess Mariska and Zsófi’s Duna Utca was where she felt most at ease, accepted.” I pause. “Maybe home is the people you’re with.”
Gustav’s hand covers mine again. “Yes. Go on.”
“When she died, I kept asking myself why did she have to leave so soon. Before I could know her as an adult. See her as a person, not just mother. Tell her that I was proud of her, not ashamed.
“Before coming here, I didn’t really understand how brave she was. I mean, I knew she faced danger and hardship in China, brought four children into the world, kept them alive under primitive wartime conditions. But those pieces of her life were stories to me. I didn’t know her. Do you understand? I didn’t have a connection, now following in her steps I’ve found one.
“Unanswered questions raised about the disappearance of Kati haunted her.” I pause to look at Gustav. “Without acceptance, the hole kept getting reopened over and over. And there it is. The link. That deconstructed piece of the heart. Something I’m familiar with, intimately, because
of my mother’s death. Accident? Suicide? Murder? What happened?”
Gustav rubs my hand.
“Another connection. She left something for me. The triptych. To help lead me, and tomorrow when I go to the countryside, discover the identity of the child in this locket.” I hadn’t realized it, but I’d been holding the heart, squeezing it while I talked. I look down at it. “Tomorrow I will be a step closer to solving the riddle.”
“Ildikó, wherever she is, your mother she must already know of your love. You are showing great determination to push yourself to do this in her memory.”
“But I’m doing it more for myself, really, aren’t I? I can’t get her back. What else can I do, other than to try and make amends? I imagine that in completing what she set out to do, she’ll forgive me. Then maybe I can forgive myself.”
We sit quietly for a moment, sipping our wine and gazing at the lights along Buda hill, tiny jewels glistening across the darkened Palace grounds. To our right, lights dot the rails along the Chain Bridge, creating graceful arcs along its towers. The structure strong, breathtaking.
“Yes, I’ve come to love this city,” I say. “I’m proud my lineage is rooted here. It’s different for me than for you or my mother. To you, this is home. You’re trapped between two worlds.” Like the princesses. “I was born in the States. The people who have had the greatest impact on me are alive. Mariska, Zsófi, Irina, the immigrants in my conversation groups.” Vaclav. “They live at Duna Utca in Chicago and in Willow Grove. My home.” I smile, saying the word.
“So maybe home is a feeling of where you belong. It’s people who love you, accept you. It’s the place where I’m coming into myself, at thirty-seven. Unfurling—” I lift a corner of Mariska’s shawl, display the abstract irregular rings amidst the floral pattern. “Reinventing myself.”
Gustav chuckles. “Modern Illie. Adventurous Illie. Much of what I admire about you. But, if you will not mind, I must make a distinction between your mother and me. Yes, I have lived in two worlds, but I am not trapped between them. Like you, I know where I belong. The people, person, I was meant to be with all along.”
Triptych Page 29
