Under Budapest

by Ailsa Kay

  Thank God the hotel is close. If they had to travel, it wouldn’t work. Imagine the two of them in her little Toyota on their way to an illicit hotel rendezvous. What radio station would they listen to? Classic rock? Country? It’s too painful to imagine. As it is, the hotel appears at the other end of the park, at the end of their walk, as though they have summoned it.

  They don’t speak in the elevator. They don’t speak when they get to their room on the seventeenth floor looking out to the north of the city. As she had in Montreal, Rafaela goes into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar as she takes her clothes off, turns the shower on. “Tibor. Aren’t you coming?”

  Metal slide of the shower curtain rings on their rod, grate of thin plastic curtain against his arm and thigh. She stands, eyes closed, head back under the streaming water. Begonias bloom through clouds of steam.

  After this encounter, they agree to meet next at Tibor’s apart­ment.

  Tibor lives on the second floor of a multiply divided Vic­torian mansion on a leafy street south of Dupont. South is better than north of Dupont, and it’s still an easy commute to suburban York University, where he teaches.

  Upstairs is a graduate student in physics at University of Toronto, in and out at all times of the day. Downstairs is a writer—not the literary but the technical type and she is almost always home. He doesn’t really know either of these neighbours, and they don’t really know him and probably wouldn’t notice who made their way up the shared walkway lined with bushes that needed clipping. But even so, Tibor feels self-conscious. Sex in the middle of the day. The floor creaks and sound travels via radiators and God knows what other conduits. Plus, there’s one elderly Portuguese lady, across the street, still dressed in mourning though no doubt her husband has been gone for years, maybe decades. And she’s always on her front veranda, not reading, not doing anything, just sitting and watching the street. She would now know this about him. That he is having sex. And so what? For once his self-consciousness doesn’t impinge because at the thought of Rafaela Tibor feels, just barely, at the base of his throat, the very edge of happiness, paper thin and hopeful.

  . . .

  Four years ago, Tibor and Daniel were still friends and somehow they’d both landed back in Toronto. Tibor hadn’t left the province, had gone to Queen’s for his master’s degree, and then returned to the University of Toronto for the Ph.D. He was just finishing his dissertation on nationalism and modernism in post-war Hungary, a study of treaties and boundaries, the politics of geographic and territorial identity. Daniel hadn’t completed the Ph.D. in political economy and government at Harvard, but as he explained over a tumbler of Jameson’s, he’d never really wanted to be a scholar. He wanted the real world, all its messy, ego-driven scrapping, its material stakes. And Toronto. He’d had enough of America, frankly. He’d brought his fiancée home with him, a woman he’d met in Boston, and they were expecting a child. Life. Tibor would like her, an academic type, just like him. Rafaela. Yes, great name.

  In the over-warm bar, all gleaming wood and glass, Daniel talked with the same confidence as always, dismissing anything that clearly didn’t count. And Tibor, as always and against his own will, believed him. It wasn’t just the timbre of Daniel’s voice that pulled him in, nor his casual name-dropping—he’d had drinks with men whose books were described as “seminal”—it was simply and undeniably Daniel’s intelligence. With Daniel, it was as though everything accelerated: the heat of whisky in the throat, the throb of the crowded room, the flash of the waitress’s belly ring, the clamour of dishes from the kitchen, the snow outside that pressed against the glass, the bar humid and dark. Between them, conversation rapid-fire, not tumultuous or aggressive, but seeking, sparking, connecting in new and unpredictable combinations. It made Tibor’s heart race, and not figuratively. Pounding excitement. Whether the topic was Argentinian economic policy or Big Brother, Daniel formulated. He fulminated. Ideas shot to the surface and scattered, phosphorescent. Talk was crucial. It was urgent, and important things hinged on words traded just like this, over a varnished table in the steam-pressure of a clamorous bar on a winter night between intellectuals of similar, if not identical, left-leaning political stripe.

  As they left, Daniel, feeling for the keys in the pocket of his expensive-looking grey parka, turned to Tibor: “Dissertation sounds really good, man. Really interesting. I’d like to hear more about it sometime.”

  It was just after midnight, and the snow was rushing down, tumbling under streetlights, pulsing in dark. They paused, face to face, shoulders hunched. And Tibor knew that his best friend was lying. Daniel didn’t want to hear more about the dissertation. Daniel didn’t give a shit about post-war Hungary. Daniel was being polite.

  So then why, given that, did Tibor respond as if he’d detected nothing. “Great, great. Well, why don’t we grab a drink next Thursday?”

  Daniel, keys in hand, had already taken one step away. He sucked his breath through his teeth, grimaced. “Oh. Well, I’m not sure about next Thursday. But sometime soon, for sure.” And then he took one step back toward Tibor to clasp him in a firm, manly hug. “Really good seeing you again.”

  “You too.” Tibor clapped his friend’s back. “Good to have you back.”

  They separated with a “See you soon,” and Tibor pulled his toque out of his pocket, snugged it over his head, and trudged the twenty minutes home through five-centimetre drifts, feeling like he’d just been shit on.

  Yet, two weeks later, Tibor held a tiny plastic birdie upended over his racket and inhaled, focusing. He pulled his racket back gently and swung it forward: tap. The trick is to contain the energy in the swing, contain it and release it in the tap, which ought to be unhesitating, direct. Only a small surface of the racket meets hard red rubber. All the energy of the elbow and shoulder, all the packed tension of the poised legs, the slight gravity of the falling bird must be concentrated exactly there in the racket’s tap.

  He’d sent Daniel an email: “Up for a game?” No risk, no pressure in that kind of invitation. They used to play tennis together, back in the day. Badminton was almost as good and easier to get court time. At first, Daniel had demurred—Bad­minton? Really?—but with a bit of cajoling, he’d agreed. For old time’s sake.

  Now the two men faced each other on the badminton court, Daniel in baggy blue athletic shorts and a faded red T, Tibor in dandyish white from top to bottom. Daniel, bouncing on the balls of his feet, launched the first verbal challenge, swaying in a parody of a sportsman on the ready: “Show me what you got, Rolly.” Still pals. Still boys. The years apart meant nothing between old friends.

  Tibor served. Daniel caught the shuttle on the edge of his racket, belted it back. Tibor tapped. Daniel crashed to the other end of the court, went wide, and missed completely.

  In badminton, to Daniel’s disadvantage, the technique is different than tennis. The whole game, in fact, is different—the psychology as well as the physical technique. He managed to return at least half of Tibor’s serves, sometimes managed to smash one by him, but it was obvious this was Tibor’s game.

  Tibor, as the experienced player, kept score. He called it out with every point. Four–One. Five–Two. Seven–Two. Eight–Four.

  Daniel stomped. He sprawled a second too late every time, every actual contact the result of heroic leap and flail. There was no plan, no attempt at navigation, just dash and smash, smash and dash. But Tibor felt the quivering flight of the shuttle in his own sternum. He flew with it. He was winning. He felt the win in his abdomen, a glowing absolute. He was unbeatable. He was victory, personified, the victor.

  Daniel chased after the bird that Tibor sent high curving over the net, arm extended ahead of him. His shoes pounded the floorboards. He caught the white plastic tail of the thing and managed to knock it back into the air. It snagged in the net.

  Nine–Four.

  Tibor served again and Daniel watched it. The bird flew low and even this time, just barely over the net, straight for him
. Not so fast, really. Not so fast he couldn’t reach it, smash it, pound it into the net or back into Tibor’s smug grin. But fast enough that his brain couldn’t decide: left or right, backhand or forward? Defensively, half knowing this was about to go wrong, he crimped left, right arm moving into backhand. Not fast enough. The bird smashed into his forehead.

  “Fuck.” He bellowed. “Fuck.” His hand to his head. He’d already sent his racket flying, skittering across the varnished wood floor. “What the fuck was that for?”

  Daniel’s face was purple, almost, with exercise and fury, staring at him. Tibor approached the net, his racket dangling loosely from his right hand. “What did I do?”

  “Whatever.” Breathing hard, Daniel bent, hands on his knees. And Tibor felt it in his throat first, the fizz of laughter, a nervous involuntary reaction. A tickling all the way to the back of his eyes. Tibor thought the last thing he must do now is laugh. He told himself sternly the last thing he should do is laugh. He. Must. Not. Laugh.

  Daniel must have heard the sniff, first, a larger snuffle. Then a noise like a hiccup. Still in a half-crouch, Daniel slowly turned his head toward Tibor.

  Tibor just the other side of the net held his hand clamped over his mouth, but suddenly unable to contain it, he loosed a breathy, high-octave wail of laughter. Tibor held his stomach and staggered backward. “I’m sorry.” He gasped, waving his hand in either apology or denial, trying to distance himself from his own behaviour. “I’m sorry.”

  Daniel straightened. Other players around them were looking now, their attention caught by Tibor. They exchanged querying looks. They shrugged. It was a joke nobody got except Tibor, who had just seen his old friend unmanned for the very first time. For the first time in their whole friendship, he’d won. And the laughter wasn’t because Daniel looked like a sore loser, a boy who’d lost his ball, but because of the sheer ungodly delight of being better.

  “Okay, you know what? Fuck you.” Daniel turned and left Tibor standing there, still laughing.

  Months later, Tibor heard about the wedding. He’d considered calling to wish his old friend congratulations. He’d even gone so far as to dial the number and let it ring. But then he decided the call would only draw attention to their drifting apart. And to the fact that Tibor hadn’t been invited to the event. Better to let it go. Let him call first. He didn’t. So fuck him.

  . . .

  Why does she come to him? Almost every week for four months, she arrives with hair dishevelled or tidy, satchel slung over her shoulder, sometimes bearing a baguette and cups of takeout coffee, sometimes a bottle of wine, once a half a joint. She is usually on her way to or from the university library, just four blocks from his place. She might not have an academic position, but she refuses, she says, to let go of her research. He once joked that if he lived anywhere else in the city, she’d have lost interest in him long ago. As the realtors say, “Location, location, location.”

  She’d chortled with that full-throated, unchaste giggle. But hadn’t denied it.

  It is amazing, being with her. Maybe the most amazing experience of his life. So Tibor tries not to ask himself questions like Why did she come? Or What about Daniel? Daniel is irrelevant. The fact that they are both in some way attached to Daniel, well, that’s just coincidence. Happenstance. No, Daniel is random. But Tibor and Rafaela—Tibor and Rafaela—together in these enclosed and perfect hours, they are what matter. Hours outside of history, he tells himself. An entirely separate place and time. And though he knows it is completely delusional, that’s how it feels.

  “Okay, your top ten dictators.”

  She rolls onto her back. “As a believer in democracy, I have to call your question invalid. Illogical. Immoral even.”

  “So top one. Come on. Everyone has a favourite dictator.”

  “Stalin.”

  “Why?”

  “He invented the five-year plan, a phrase now used uniron­ically by every major and rinky-dink business in America, never mind life coaches and Oprah addicts. He created a nation of surveillance, the most insidious and powerful form of governance deployed by government, also the basis of great reality TV. And even now, he survives as both revered dead leader and kitschy collectible.”

  “Good answer.”

  “Who’s yours?”

  “Oh, I hate them all equally. I believe in individual liberty.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Really? But I fuck so superbly.”

  “God, you sound like Daniel sometimes.”

  Blam. Doors and windows slam in sudden vacuum. World goes cold as Siberia. They both feel it.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Tibor shakes his head. “It’s okay. I mean, I know you’re married. If anything, it’s kind of strange you never talk about him. Or your daughter.”

  “No,” Rafaela says, her hands curled into fists, holding the sheet to her chin. “It’s separate. It’s the only way it works.”

  He loves her more. He loves her more and more.

  One day, as they sit side by side in Tibor’s queen-sized bed, sharing a sandwich, Rafaela chews, swallows, and then tries to answer his question. “I love my life with my husband. I love my family. Do I still love him? The man I supposedly fell in love with—though I hate that phrase—the man I found so fascinating four years ago that I couldn’t bear the thought of him not finding me equally fascinating? I don’t even know if the question makes sense. The love isn’t about him, anymore, but what we have, and who we are together.” She looks at him. “I’m not going to leave him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  It is October already. The leaves have turned and the old locust outside his bedroom pixillates yellow, tossing light against the walls and making the air glow. Maybe that is what he is asking. And he thinks, I love you. I love you so much I can hardly bear being with you, but he says, “So why do you come here and make love to me every Thursday?” And he tries very hard not to sound petulant, or insecure, or wounded.

  She wipes the crumbs from her mouth with a napkin. “I love your calm,” she says.

  “A sexy, passionate calm?”

  “I know how that sounds, but it’s praise, believe me.” Rafaela pauses. She pauses for a long time, long enough for Tibor to finish half of his sandwich.

  “I feel clear when I’m with you,” she says. “I can be just who I am, just ordinary and uncomplicated and unattached. The way I remember being, before Daniel and Evie.” She’d been staring out the window as she talked. Now she looks at him. “Well, and you’re irresistibly sexy.” She adds this last bit matter-of-factly, as though stating an obvious truth; but Tibor is conscious, sitting up in bed and eating the other half-sandwich, that his stomach has two very slight, soft rolls and that he is likely getting crumbs in the creases.

  It has nothing to do with him. That’s what she is saying. The best thing about Tibor is that he isn’t Daniel. Isn’t complicated or passionate or dizzying or infuriating or larger than life. Tibor has no mystery.

  Rafaela stands. With two rapid actions of wrist and fingers that Tibor can never quite catch, she pulls her hair into its scrunchie. This is the signal that their time is over.

  “The traffic was unbelievable today. I don’t know why I drive.” She leans over to kiss him goodbye. “See you next week.”

  . . .

  It was bound to happen, and so it does. Saturday afternoon, he sees Daniel at the Summerhill LCBO. He spots him among the New World Wines, under the vaulted, church-like ceilings of the converted train station, now racked and gleaming with bottles, elegantly lit. The sight of his once best friend, so unexpected and so present, stops him dead. He isn’t prepared. He’d prepared for it every day for a while, and then stopped. Now there he is. Daniel holds on to his daughter’s hand, his left shoulder stooped to reach her. What is her name? Evie. Father and daughter face the wall of bottles together. She wears a purple corduroy dress with striped wool tights, her straight hair tied up in two pigtails, and as her
father browses the Argentinian selections, Evie turns her face in Tibor’s direction. She chews on the foot of a blond Barbie, drooling over her hand and into the sodden pink ruffle of Barbie’s dress. She stares at Tibor with small, squinted blue eyes that make him think: mongoloid. The kid has Down syndrome?

  They stand like that for what feels like minutes, staring at each other, the retarded girl and Tibor. And Tibor thinks, So that’s why. That’s why Rafaela comes to him. And then he thinks, Maybe Daniel got what he deserved. And then he just thinks, Jesus, I didn’t know.

  She breaks the stare, butts her head against her father’s hip. Daniel holds a bottle in front of her: “What do you think, Malbec or Cabernet?” She guffaws like it’s the best joke in the world and he smiles. “All right, then. Malbec it is.” Bottle in his right hand, holding fast to his daughter with his left, Daniel manoeuvres the two of them delicately, doggedly sideways down the aisle just as Rafaela emerges from behind the cheese display with a bottle of white, smiling at her family.

  “Good timing,” Daniel greets her.

  Clutching his own bottle to his chest, Tibor turns to avoid them. Too late. Daniel’s voice: “Rolly? My God, it’s been ages.”

  Gellert Hegy

  Long before the revolution of October 1956, the rumours were that the Soviets were tunnelling. Their tunnels spread with the speed of rhizomes, under the surface of Budapest. The rumours spread the same way, sprouting and multiplying, their source untraceable.