Under Budapest

by Ailsa Kay

  Tibor prickles with sweat, his chest so tight he can hardly lift his arm to turn the page. Fear is all in the head. Master your fear. “This creates a curious quandary. In a state where complicity was demanded and rewarded, where so many ordinary and otherwise decent people turned information on others for the sake of their own safety, the archive must not be vengeful.”

  He’s breathing too fast. So fast, he can’t catch his breath. The room is breathing, its walls swelling and shrinking, and swelling. Tibor staggers away from the podium, pushing through the heavy side door, gasping for air. Outside the classroom, he sinks onto a bench in the hall. He leans forward, presses his right hand to his heart. Just breathe. But it hurts to breathe with a three-pronged fork stuck in his lung. Maybe he’s dying. Dying of cowardice—is that possible? A woman with a neat ponytail and turtleneck, one of the conference organizers, has followed him out. Ilona. That’s her name. Ilona crouches worriedly at his side and puts a hand on his back. “Are you all right?”

  He sees his academic career, his entire future, crumbling. From fear. From bad timing and bad luck. “Food poisoning.” He grimaces.

  Kind Ilona calls him a cab. Passively, he takes her arm as she leads him to the door. She puts him in the cab and gives the driver the name of his hotel, pays his fare. Huddled into the backseat, breathing like an asthmatic, Tibor screws his eyes shut, trying to block out the humiliation.

  “I don’t understand. There was a mugging at the conference?”

  Tibor’s mother hasn’t left the hotel yet. Dressed and coiffed, she’d just finished her breakfast—delivered by room service; apparently, she was getting the hang of this hotel lifestyle—and was in her room, watching TV, when he knocked. He meant to sound competently unperturbed, and he concealed the actual, horrifying event for her sake, but obviously he’s not being clear. He has decided to report it. Tell someone about it, get it off his chest. It is the only way to get over the shakes that assaulted him this morning.

  “Not at the conference, Mom. When I went for a run this morning.”

  “So you witnessed a mugging before you went to the con­ference?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Thank God it wasn’t you, Tibor, out there before dawn by yourself. This isn’t Toronto. You know they found a head on Gellert Hegy this morning? Just a head. It was on the news. But where was the mugging? Was anybody hurt?”

  “Oh, not far from here. It was just a little scuffle.”

  “Not far from here? Did you tell the people at the front desk? Maybe we should change hotels.”

  “No, no. I mean, it wasn’t that close. And you’re right, it was stupid of me to be out jogging in the dark.”

  His mother’s eyes have gone back to the TV: an advertise­ment for the new right-wing political party, Jobbik. “Hungary for Hungarians” is the party line. Twenty years after the end of Soviet communism and somehow this rhetoric is gaining traction. It’s the economic downturn, after a too-short period of optimism. It’s knowing that the too-high taxes, which more than 70 per cent of the population avoids by working at an official minimum wage and receiving the rest under the table, end up in the pockets of corrupt politicians. The story has just broken: money that was supposed to pay to modernize Budapest’s transit system, its buses and its highways, had landed in someone’s pocket. This has nothing to do with Jews or with the Roma, but Jobbik’s propaganda suggests that they are the ones ruining Hungary.

  “They think it was an organized crime, the head on Gellert.”

  Not an organized crime, Mom.

  “But they don’t know who it belongs to. His poor family.” She tsks. “But I suppose if it’s an organized crime he was probably a murderer too, or a drug dealer.”

  “Probably.”

  “So. He got what he deserved.” Decisively, she changes the channel.

  Tibor feels a cautious relief. If they’ve found the head already, then he is off the hook, isn’t he? It’s too late to save the boy, after all. And he has no need to play the hero. No, his first impulse was the right one: stay out of it. So, maybe he’ll go back to the conference this afternoon. Or he could use his food poisoning as a reasonable excuse to take the day off, go to the baths, as he planned to do yesterday. Today would be men’s day at the Rudas. But the Rudas is at the foot of Gellert. There would be police. Reporters. But why should he worry? No one knew he was up there, witnessing. A long, hot steam followed by a cold plunge, a soak. His mother is still talking.

  “…meeting him for coffee. But if you want to come along, I’m sure he’d love to meet you.”

  “No, no, thank you. I’ll just head back to the conference. After I speak with the police, I mean.”

  “I don’t know how we’ll recognize each other. After fifty-three years. I told him I’d wear a maple leaf pin on my lapel. But did you get a good look at the man? Even in the dark? All right then, have a good time at your conference. And I’m glad your presentation went well. You’ve always been so good at public speaking.”

  He’s backing out the door as she talks, her eyes again fixed on the TV. The door clicks behind him, and he’s free. Two more minutes and his gym bag is packed—toiletries, a hotel towel, flip-flops. The wind’s picking up, gusting along the river, blowing dust up each narrow street. Who else, on his holiday, has the implausible misfortune to witness a hit. A hit? It was the vocabulary of American cop shows, not his. He hops on the streetcar.

  The swarms of police he’d expected at the foot of Gellert are not there. There’s no yellow tape either, at least not at the bottom of the stairs to the white saint. Maybe the investigation is complete. Maybe they found the rest of the body. At the Rudas, he pays his entrance fee to a surly cashier in the booth, proceeds into the change room, which is mostly empty. A good time of day to be here. He breathes deeply of the humid, sulphur-misted air and feels softly, amply justified. What if the police needed him to identify a criminal? Or testify? He’d spend his entire trip sitting in stuffy police stations, giving evidence. Witnessing the murder was an accident, not his fault, and certainly not his responsibility. Drug deals go wrong every day, according to the news and TV police dramas. They’d have suspects in cells by nightfall. This is not some British murder mystery, just ordinary life among a criminal underclass.

  The water in the central octagonal pool is 24 degrees Celsius. Naked, he sinks into it. Four large men on the other side of the pool chat in low voices. Their bellies rise, an archipelago above the water. Mumbles amplify and resound under the stone dome. Sinking deeper, Tibor rests the back of his head against the stone lip. He lets his arms go soft. They float. His legs bend, his penis happily coddled. He looks up at the fist-sized holes in the dome through which light beams in. Too bad they don’t allow cameras in here.

  He straightens. Waves crest the lip.

  My camera.

  He had it in his hand, then he put it in his pocket after the statue. But did it come down the hill with him? There was no reason to think it hadn’t. But what if. What if it was still there? What if his slim-as-a-cigarette-case Canon camera was still up on Gellert under the butting rock where he’d squatted? An ordinary person’s camera—with its innocent pictures of frozen waterfalls, fall colour, wildlife, of his mother on her seventy-sixth birthday, of Rafaela’s orgasm (she didn’t know about that), of the party houses with Peter. The camera might be still up there.

  Holy. Fuck. FuckFuckFuck.

  “The nearest police station?” The front desk clerk handily withdraws a map from the stack on the counter. He marks the location on the map and then painfully slowly, he traces the route in ballpoint from the hotel to the X. “I hope everything is all right, sir.” He pushes the map across the counter. Tibor speaks fluent Hungarian, but the clerk speaks English back to him.

  “Fine, thank you”—Tibor glances at the man’s nametag — “Gabor. No worries.” He taps the map on the counter, the way confident men do. He’s halfway out the door before he realizes he’s still got his gym bag. He can’t repor
t a murder while carrying a hotel towel and flip-flops. Maybe the inquisitive Gabor will hold it for him. He turns back to the desk.

  “Tibor. What perfect timing.”

  His mother is crossing the lobby, towing behind her an elderly gentleman in an expensive-looking overcoat, a wool fedora in his hand.

  “Tibor, this is Uncle Gyula. You remember I told you about Gyula. We’re just on our way out for a little coffee.”

  Not for the life of him. “Yes, yes, of course.” Tibor extends his hand to the old man. Tall and distinguished. Thick head of grey hair. Was he some kind of cousin? “Very good to finally meet you, Uncle Gyula.”

  “What did the police say?”

  Right. He’d forgotten. He’s holding his gym bag on the counter, in the other hand, the map, the X clearly marked. Beside him, Gabor-the-clerk pretends to be checking something on the computer.

  “I haven’t got there yet.”

  “Gyula says it’s becoming more and more common. And you absolutely should not be running around by yourself at all hours of the night.”

  “It’s true. There are many thefts these days, sir,” Gabor-the-clerk tunes in—in English, despite having now overheard the entire party speaking Hungarian. “We tell all our guests to lock their valuables in the safe provided in your room.”

  “Thank you, Gabor,” Tibor says tightly. “But I was not robbed.”

  “No, thank God,” his mother jumps in. “But he witnessed a mugging.”

  Gabor frowns at this news, as if now even more worried for Tibor’s safety. “I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Where was this?”

  “He said it wasn’t very far from here.”

  Tibor feels a snapping inside his head—the minute popping of blood vessels. “But not in the immediate vicinity,” he reassures the anxious Gabor. Then, clapping a hand on the bag assertively: “Could you please hold this for me until I get back?”

  “Certainly, sir. And, sir, at night, the underpasses are to be avoided at all costs.”

  Avoided at all costs? Who says that?

  “Tibor, you’re not taking that to the conference are you? It looks like an old gym bag.”

  “It is an old gym bag, Mom. I went to the Rudas.”

  “That’s good, Tibor. You need to relax. I’m sure Gyula would be happy to come with you to the police station, if you’d like.”

  The quiet man seems as embarrassed as Tibor, but he nevertheless politely repeats the offer. “If you’d like my help, of course. But I was telling your mother that, by the sounds of it, what you witnessed was a fairly commonplace theft. The police probably won’t be interested in your statement.”

  And what does Gabor have to say to that? Nothing, apparently. But perhaps only because his head is below the counter, stowing the bag.

  “Here’s my number, in any case.” Uncle Gyula scrawls it on the back of a hotel card.

  “Great. Thanks. Nice meeting you.” And before anyone can open their mouths again, he steps into the revolving door.

  The police station on Pauler Utca is both intimidating and dull. Winter coats smell of cigarettes and salami and slush. Complainants press at the desk, and officers loll back in rolling chairs, stupefied. Tired. No one has clean boots. Boots leak melting water onto the floor. Ceilings leak. Pipes rattle and radiators fail. Tibor notices these commonplace things and he thinks, It’s all so ordinary. People are robbed, kids are stabbed with kitchen knives, apples are wrinkled and potatoes rot, and politicians steal your last bite. Better not to expect too much. That’s what the faces say. When he asks where he might report a murder, the woman at the desk looks at him like she’s not prepared to believe anything. She frowns. She points him back with the end of her pen.

  The officer seems unimpressed with Tibor’s account. “No,” Tibor corrects him, “I didn’t discover it. I was there, I witnessed…I overheard the murder. No, I’m not exactly sure about the time. Around five this morning. I was jogging.”

  The police officer, young and smooth-faced, gives Tibor his hardest look. “It’s now”—he checks his watch—“nearly four. You waited for some reason?”

  “I know it looks bad, but I was booked to make a presentation first thing this morning.” This was true. “And I was terrified, quite frankly. I heard a man being murdered, for God’s sake.”

  The officer nods, maybe sympathetically, but it’s hard to tell. Maybe he doesn’t believe a word Tibor says. Maybe he’s jealous. Wishes it was him. Knows he’d have done the braver thing and beat the shit out of those murdering cowards.

  “Where exactly were you jogging?”

  “I took the path to the left, the one that goes along the face of the hill, overlooking the river.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes, why? The paths are not safe. Why would you go up there?”

  The police officer, whose name is Ferenc, strokes the front of his immaculate blue shirt. His mother likely pressed it for him this morning while he was jacking off in the shower. You get what you deserve—this is what Ferenc’s look tells Tibor.

  Tibor pushes on. He’d come here to give information, and so he would. “I went for a jog to get over the jet lag. I had not quite rounded the point when I heard voices. I stopped and hid because…well, I don’t know why I hid. Instinct, I guess.”

  “Go on.”

  “The kid kept insisting he knew nothing. Then they killed him. Well, one guy killed him. The other one seemed surprised. They didn’t seem very professional. They dropped the head.”

  “They dropped it?”

  “Yes. It got away on them. They joked about that. He’s a jumper, something like that.”

  Ferenc seems too young to be handling this kind of an investigation, but then maybe there are multiple officers on the case and this kid is only one of them. Still, shouldn’t there be a greater sense of urgency in the air, a driven, ambitious push and scramble? But Ferenc is a serious officer, and he writes down what Tibor tells him.

  “Okay, okay. Start from the beginning. You heard voices.”

  It’s as though he’s telling a story. And telling the story makes him feel like he’s doing something right. Not like a hero—not extraordinary or central—but like a good man, a man who knows that the truth is important, a man who does the thing that needs to be done if the good guys are going to win the day. Tibor tells Ferenc, as precisely as he can remember it, the morning’s exact sequence of events. He’ll have to wait for the right moment to raise the question of the camera.

  “Gombas? You’re sure that’s the name?”

  “Sure I’m sure. I mean, it’s not one you’d forget—Mr. Fungus Infection.”

  “Wait here, please.”

  Smooth-shirted Ferenc hurries off. Finally, a hurry. And he hasn’t even got to the part about how they dropped the body parts into a very deep hole. They’d want to know that, to locate the body.

  Tibor stands, stretches. The day is catching up with him, and the jet lag. He checks his watch: 4:45 p.m. There are no windows in this room where he’s waiting and it’s airless, fluorescent lit, paint flaking from walls no doubt poisoning everyone with lead. Outside, it would be getting dark.

  “My wife keeps saying we have to get rid of the dog. Because it shits in the house sometimes, you know. I tell her if she walked it instead of waiting for me to get home, it would stop shitting in the house, but she’s too lazy. Rather sell my fucking dog than put her coat on and walk it around the block.”

  The speaker’s standing just on the other side of the door—a police officer, presumably, with nothing to do on the day of a mafia murder investigation.

  “Power struggles, buddy. That’s what marriage is all about. Power fucking struggles.”

  At the sound of the second man’s voice, Tibor starts. A reedy voice, stumbly and nasally congested.

  “Don’t give in. He’s a beautiful dog. You don’t see dogs like that every day. And you raised him from a pup, trained him. No, a dog is like a friend. You don’t sell your friend
.”

  “Sure, I trained him. And he’s smart. Not his fault he can’t hold it for twelve hours. I mean, what does she expect? But I swear I’m gonna get home from work one day and he’ll be gone.”

  “So if she sells your dog, you sell her clothes. Bet she’s got some nice clothes, right, maybe her mother’s jewellery, sentimental stuff. That’s what you tell her. Tell her she better start walking that dog.”

  The door swings wide, and the men step inside.

  “I understand you have some information on the Gellert head,” says the murderer.

  Agnes hadn’t expected the streets to be so disorienting. New houses and structures fill places that used to be empty or replace buildings she remembers. It is the same city, with a new city laid over top of it. Street names have changed, and not a word of Russian to be seen. Gyula is proud. He drives her around in his luxury car, shows her the restored opera house, takes her past the Unicum factory to the new performing arts centre. He speaks as if it’s his own personal property, what it cost, how perfect the acoustics. Well, in a way, it is his. She’s not sure she understands the details, but it’s clear his company built part of it. He has three children, all still in Budapest. The eldest is just thirty-five. So his wife must be much younger, she thinks, a baby in 1956. She doesn’t ask. He says, “I lost my Judit two years ago. Cancer.” She thinks how similar and different he is, the new Gyula laid over top the old. This new Gyula doesn’t seem to notice her. As polite and charming as he is, the perfect tour guide, he doesn’t look at her. She doesn’t expect the looks they used to share, but there’s an odd vacuity as if he’s only just barely there.