by Michele Lang
I tasted the metal of blood in my mouth, and I shuddered as I chewed on a lump of sugar to dull the bitterness of it. “Ah, I understand. You are only a messenger,” I muttered, only realizing I had spoken aloud when the man turned and of his own volition met my gaze.
“We are all messengers,” he said, and for the first time, the stranger smiled.
I took a deep breath and allowed myself the luxury of doing what I had learned never to do: speak honestly. “You may not live to see your message delivered.”
His lips trembled with emotion as he played with the brim of his hat. “That is no matter. What matters is only that the message is received. Ah, you are a holy messenger to me, indeed, miss.”
“Do not fear . . . we will help you, sir. We will.”
Bathory interrupted our interchange with a low hiss, and I saw that I had exhausted his patience. He spoke in Hungarian, to hide the import of his rebuke from our supplicant. “You are my messenger, Magdalena Lazarus,” he said, baring his fangs to make his point. “But you are only my messenger. Remember your place!”
I had learned to tolerate his periodic rages, understanding them for the symptoms of panic they were. Bathory, now landless nobility, desperately missed his portion of earth, swallowed up by Romania and the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Without the comfort of his native soil, my poor count could not cope with the massive dislocations of history.
As for me, such chaos was my native state. That is why he relied on me, and why, no matter how much I angered him with my naïveté and rebelliousness, he kept me in his service. But we both knew I did not belong to him, no matter how much we both wished it were so. “I do not know my place, dear count. And that is why you love me.”
With an effort, Count Bathory recovered himself, reverting to speaking German for the benefit of our visitor. “Magdalena Lazarus. You are stuffed like a goose with romantic notions and sentimental paradox. When you know what you are willing to die for, you will know what to live for. It is that simple.”
Bathory’s thin shoulders knotted together and he slouched, staring sullenly into the middle distance. “And unless you figure that out, Magda, your nonsense will get us all killed someday.”
My face burned like fire. Given the fact that Bathory hovered in the undead shadows of a vampire’s existence, his comment shouldn’t have cut as deeply as it did. But what can I say? Twenty was young to carry the burdens I bore, but Bathory had no way of knowing my age or my burdens—I worked too hard to hide the secrets of my life from him.
I cleared my throat, smoothed my periwinkle silk skirt against the tops of my thighs. “Well, I haven’t failed you yet, have I?”
I looked him full in the eye, and defied the hooded menace of his ancient gaze. He pursed his lips, studied me coolly as if I were a brood mare or a blood slave. “This man, unwillingly or not, brings war to our doorstep, make no mistake,” he said. “Ready or not, I am afraid you will soon receive an education on how to die.”
“So be it,” I said. Part of me wanted to die: after all, to die and return was my heritage as a Lazarus witch. I wanted to choose the time and place of my death, too, but who gets to decree one’s end like that? Even the most illustrious citizens of Budapest had to accept the mystery of death.
The man surprised us both by interrupting. “Forgive me for entangling you in my affairs. In the end, they will be yours, too, alas.”
“It is too late already, dear sir,” Bathory said. “We are here caught between Hitler and Stalin, a precarious passage indeed.”
I inclined my head in deference to our visitor and dared a smile. “You bring us adventure as well as danger, Mr. Ziyad Juhuri. And that is good business for us, and good life experience for me.”
I expected Bathory to jump on me again for opening my big mouth, but instead he looked past me. His eyebrows shot up, and he half stood and bowed to a shadow in the corner behind me, near the archway that led to the staircase. I blinked hard, shocked. Who could arrest Bathory’s attention so and bring him to his feet?
A distracted smile played along his thin, curved lips. “My. Oh, my. Is that your sister in the archway, Magda? Why, she is lovely. No wonder you have kept her hidden away from me.”
My heart pounded, and the knowledge that Bathory could hear the syncopated rhythm of my distress made it even harder to disguise. I stood up so fast I knocked my chair over, for at this time of night my sister was in mortal danger at the Café Istanbul.
But when I turned and saw the figure framed in the archway near Bathory’s customary table, I realized matters were even worse than if my sister had come. No, it wasn’t my sister. At least my sister Gisele was also a witch and had her own magic to protect her.
I licked my suddenly dry lips and forced myself to speak the truth. “Ah, no. That is my best friend, Count Bathory, from my girlhood days in Tokaj. Her name is Eva Farkas, and she is a silly and reckless girl, without even a drop of magic in her.”
A girl with a talent for waltzing into danger with a smile dimpling her rounded cheeks and sparkling in her powder blue eyes. If I got her out of this alive, I was going to kill her.
Ziyad sighed. “Such beautiful girls, wandering alone by night. Both of you hurt the eyes to see.”
Bathory laughed, the sound a dry, husky rustle of dead leaves. “Budapest is full of beautiful girls, sir. But beware, my friend . . . they are dangerous. Every last one.”
2
I marched out of the café with my head high, but I was trembling so badly I stumbled on the cobblestones. Eva trailed behind me like a shadow. The mist from the Danube had risen in the night, and it obscured our feet as I stalked to the tram stop around the corner from the opera house on Adrássy Street.
We stopped beneath a streetlamp, the mist-wreathed lamplight glowing like a huge, hovering firefly. I caught my breath with some difficulty, my fear and anger still gathered around me like a second, darker mist.
Eva smiled her infuriatingly unflappable smile. “It took skill to get us out of there alive, Magduska. Seriously. We should be deader than ducks right this minute.”
“Eva, the danger was only to you. I’m under Bathory’s protection, while you are an unknown, mortal woman. No magic.”
She made a face and crossed her arms. “And what of it? You say ‘no magic’ as if I am the odd one! This is a ‘no magic’ world, Magduska.”
“It doesn’t matter about the world, darling. You wandered alone into a nest of vampires at three A.M.” My voice caught in my throat and I swallowed hard to get past the fury and the guilt choking me.
I kept my voice low, even outside. Vampires have excellent hearing, as sharp as bats, and even all the way down Andrássy Street I feared Bathory could overhear us if he were determined to do so. “I love you, darling. I don’t want Bathory to eat you up alive, turn you into something dreadful. Better no magic than that.”
She shrugged and rolled her eyes at me. “Ah, Magda, don’t be so stupid. You work for a blessed vampire, my dear. What do you think? It’s a nunnery in there? How many times have I told you it is madness to work for such a creature? But do you listen?”
She gave me a pointed look, a sign that she herself was on the verge of losing her composure. Her lips trembled as she adjusted her unfashionable yet inexplicably adorable gray cloche on her head. “I came running so fast I almost lost my hat in the gutter. And this is the thanks!”
Words rumbled out of me, low and heavy, like thunder rolling off Lake Balaton before a spring storm. “I can handle myself. You don’t understand. Bathory looks so harmless, like your uncle Lazlo after three glasses of Tokaj wine. But you have no protection against him! And if I lost you to him, it would be my fault. I couldn’t bear it.”
Eva’s features grew soft in the filtered light of the streetlamp. “I don’t have your magic, it is true. My wits and my smile will have to do.”
I cleared my throat, and when I spoke again, my voice was low, soft, a half-apologetic caress. “If I didn’t work for Bathory, the
three of us would be starving in the street. Gisele makes a pauper’s wage sewing, and the florist pays you in flowers, for pity’s sake.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of endangering my girls through my very efforts to keep a roof over their heads. All this talk of poverty and danger sent a sudden spike of hunger shooting through my stomach. My head spun, and I covered my face with my hands. When Bathory worked late like this, I cheated and ate rumballs for dinner while he held court. The Istanbul rumballs were the best in Budapest, but they did not make for a fortifying meal.
“What’s the matter with you?” Eva asked, not unkindly. She stood close to me and rubbed my back. “Please don’t be sick. I couldn’t bear it, not both of you sisters knocked flat. Come home and I will bake you a potato.”
The import of her words sank in slowly. “Both? Is that why you came charging in there? By the Witch of Ein Dor, it’s Gisele, isn’t it. She’s that bad.”
When I looked into her face, I saw the flash of tears in her eyes, and knew it was even worse than I feared. “I know you told me never to disturb you at work. This Bathory—he’s deadly to regular girls. I know. But Gisi’s never been worse . . . I couldn’t wait any longer for you to come home, so I ran nearly all the way.”
I started walking, then half running down Andrássy Street; the knowledge that Gisele suffered alone, vulnerable, in our apartment on Dohány Street forced my trembling, aching legs to move. The run across the Seventh District seemed unbearably long.
Eva clattered after me, even as she tucked her wayward blond curls behind her ears. “Slow down, Magda! You know I wouldn’t leave her alone unless she was all right.”
A sob stuck in my throat, and I smacked Eva in the shoulder, my patience all but at an end. “She might have started up again for all we know. And here we dawdle, just talking.”
Eva slowed down, her sides heaving. “We’re not dawdling, idiot, I can’t keep up with you. Will you listen for once?”
I slowed to a fast walk, and Eva struggled to keep up with my longer legs. “Gisele’s the one who insisted I fetch you home right away. But she told me to tell you, ‘Don’t hurry, and don’t worry.’ ”
I imagined my little Gisi crumpled on the floor, eaten alive with fever, her hand to her forehead as she proclaimed herself just fine. My sweet little martyr.
My footfalls grew gentle on the pavement; Eva was right, I needed to save my strength. Every breath I took burned in my chest. “What’s wrong with her? I can’t stand these fits any longer! Maybe the doctor . . .” My voice trailed off. We both knew no doctor could cure Gisele of what ailed her.
Eva caught up, gave me a one-armed hard little hug, and she reached up high to smooth the damp tendrils of hair that had gotten into my eyes. “If any soul can help your sister it’s you, Magduska. And you know it better than I do.”
We stood facing each other in the mist, Andrássy Street magically silent in the night. I tried to apologize, but that was not one of my gifts. “The man in there with Bathory scared the soul out of me,” I said instead. “And what do you know, he has no magic either.”
“Ridiculous,” Eva said, but she still spat to avert the evil eye. “The whole world’s getting ready for another great war, and you blame some wretched stranger. You don’t need a Tarot deck to see it!”
She relented when she saw the expression on my face. “But you can see us through anything, you know.”
“You give me more powers than I have, Eva girl.”
“Do I? What about the bullies on the bridge? Remember?”
It was summer in Tokaj, the northern town where Eva’s family and mine came from. We were nine. A group of little toughs had cornered us on the bridge planning, I guess, to throw us over the side, into the Tisza river.
Eva finished my thought for me. “There were five of them, only three of us. And their leader was the size of a bear. We should have been the ones in the river, but you threw them over one by one.”
She paused for emphasis, as if she were telling the tale to a stranger. “And you didn’t even use your hands to fling them over the side. They threw rocks and called you a Jew witch, but they couldn’t touch you.”
I unclasped my handbag and took out one of the pink handkerchiefs that Gisele had embroidered for me. I swiped at my nose and shook my head. “This is different. Worse.”
“Well, you’ll just have to get a bigger magic wand, that’s all.” That was Eva’s way, to make a fine joke out of everything. “You’re the eldest, and you swore an oath on your head when your mother died, to look after us.”
That oath hung over my head like a sword. My beautiful Eva . . . how bitter to reflect back upon that oath I swore so long ago, to know how badly I failed you. But on that night, my anger felt righteous and it emboldened me. “I will see you two through everything, you know that.”
But I recalled the terrible scenes overrunning Ziyad Juhuri’s mind, and my conviction wavered. “I just don’t know how.”
Eva took my right hand in her left, and we walked along like schoolgirls in the night. “You don’t need to figure out everything in advance. Not when you are an expert in making magic out of nothing.”
“But Gisele . . .”
“You’ll figure something out. The witchy things you do can cure her better than any pills or medicines could. And that’s a good thing, because your witchy stuff is free.”
I sent my witch’s sight down the long curve of the street, searching for the Horthyite thugs that sometimes roamed late at night, looking for Jews or Communists to rough up. Nothing. My footfalls sped up again, and Eva ran to keep up with me.
Eva’s laughter pealed like a bell in the gloom, and I could feel how cold her fingers were, even through her thin cotton gloves. I squeezed her chubby fingers, caressed her little hand with both of mine. “You’re a silly, reckless girl . . . and I love you with all my heart.”
Eva laughed again, but her mirth sounded brittle and false. “That’s your bad luck, girl. Easier to love nobody and only have your own skin to save.”
I stopped walking to consider her words. “I wish I could do as you say. But I can’t help loving you, or Gisele, either.”
She smoothed her blond curls back behind her ears, her eyes sparkling again with tears. “Ah, you are always so earnest. I was joking, joking!”
With the encroaching dawn, the mist grew luminous, and that meant no matter what else the stranger had told Bathory after my departure, my boss had gone off to his rooms to avoid the sun and to sleep. The knowledge we had survived the night gave me a surge of strength.
“We have to get out of Budapest, Evuska,” I said.
“But go where, my darling? War is coming everywhere.”
I sighed, knowing she was right. We were foxes hunted by hounds. “Paris, maybe. Let’s set Gisele to rights, and then we’ll see.”
We finally arrived at the little flat where the three of us lived, on the third floor of our apartment building on Dohány Street, near the Great Synagogue. I had visions of finding Gisele sprawled across the kitchen floor dead, but no. Instead, my little sister Gisele rocked on my dead mother’s favorite chair, sewing away at her mending as if her life depended on it.
My gifts do not include foreknowing, seeing a flicker of the future played out before its time. But something dark in my Gisele’s unusually serene expression sent a chill into my flesh.
The girl loved almond horns. She loved pickles. Gisele’s dearest joy was sunning herself in the front window of our flat on Dohány Street. A rosy-cheeked child like her, no more than sixteen. To see such an evil overshadow those beloved features meant something precious had died. Been murdered.
I made no sound, yet she started and looked at me and Eva, eyes unseeing. Gisele looked through me, to the hot darkness in the landing behind me, as I stood in the doorway, stupefied.
The darkness overspread her face like water closing over her head. Her gaze finally connected with mine, and tears began coursing down her cheeks, faster and faster
.
“Little star,” I whispered, though it seemed she couldn’t hear me. “It’s Magda. You are all right. Hush, my sweetheart, hush.” And I ran to her side and pulled her down to the floor next to me, held her close.
She trembled in my arms like a little trapped bird. I stroked the long, tumbling black hair, and I muttered fierce, sweet endearments into her ear, listening to my own words as if another person were speaking them.
Finally my voice trailed away, I held her close and we rocked together on the floor; I was no longer sure who was comforting whom, for my heart was filled with a melancholy so huge it threatened to bury me. We Hungarians are renowned for a romantic malaise that makes the world so achingly beautiful and so ineffably sad we immerse ourselves in its unbearable beauty—before we jump off the roof or swallow the cyanide.
“The ovens,” she said. And the eerie calmness of her voice frightened me worse than the chills and the tears had before. There was a certainty in her tone, a matter-of-fact, mechanical tension. As if she was automatically reciting the story of the world’s demise, a thousand years after the last living mortal had been slaughtered.
She began to explain the future, as mildly and precisely as a businessman dictating a memo to a stenographer. The lightning strikes of Hitler’s army. The bloodthirstiness of the werewolves and demons, unleashed by the Nazis on helpless human mortals in violation of every cosmic law.
The factories of death. Systematic murder: of children, mothers, old men, innocent people. Warehouses filled with confiscated shoes. Dolls. Human hair.
The tidal wave of blood overwhelming the continent of Europe; indeed, the entire world. “It’s the Final Solution,” she whispered. “Our existence is the problem.”
In the end I could not bear it. My beloved little sister was in a trance, and she didn’t understand all the horror she transmitted from a far-off vantage point. I knew she didn’t know. I shook her by the shoulders so hard that her teeth rattled and her head whipped backward, I slapped at her cheeks until she stopped her recitation and suddenly burst into a blessedly ordinary storm of bitter tears.
