by Ailsa Kay
But there’s no getting around it.
Because he was there, when he was there. Because he is the witness, and he is the murdered. A connection not of blood but of circumstance. Not of love but of debt. To what? To the dead. To the dead, Tibor. You owe it not to Janos who lived but to Janos who died. It’s not his fault. Whether you tell or whether you run, you’ll carry that snapshot of the boy in your head for the rest of your life, along with the fleshy thunk of an axe. No posturing now, no pretend. This is your soul speaking.
“Shut up,” Tibor says.
Midnight. Gabor’s not at the front desk, and Tibor feels strangely deserted. But wait, there he is. Out of uniform, chatting up the good-looking bartender. That seems wrong, out of character. Seriously precise Gabor shouldn’t have a personal life. Most definitely, he shouldn’t flirt.
Gabor leans one elbow on the bar. “Edward says I can indeed apply for positions elsewhere. If my English is strong enough and if my performance is virtually flawless.”
She swipes her cloth over the ring Gabor’s water glass has left on the counter. “I can’t imagine leaving.”
“You see, that’s the problem with us. Lack of imagination.”
She shakes her head. “The problem is the forint and the fucking taxes. Do you really think they’ll be hiring foreigners in Germany? In England? Have you read the paper lately? We might be at the bottom of the shitter, but it’s the same shitter.”
“No, you will not dash my dreams with your determined pessimism, Eva. I will get out of this particular toilet, you watch.”
“Right. Send me a postcard.”
“I will find the meaning of life, you just wait. I’ll go to India, to Tibet, but I’ll find it.”
So stiff-necked Gabor is a dreamer. Hilarious.
“Mind if I join you?”
The look on their faces—kids caught smoking dope behind the bleachers. Almost funny except that it makes him, Tibor, the party-busting grown-up.
Gabor stands. Nods to the girl. “Good evening, sir,” to Tibor.
“Would you like something to drink, sir?”
Would he be there if he didn’t? “Gin martini?”
“Persze.”
Persze, it’s a lousy martini. He should’ve known better. Cheap gin, lukewarm. Whatever. He sits at the window, the only customer. The girl swabs the counter again. She cleans glasses. She’s busy, busy. A notably North American training they must get here. Never stand idle. Always look like you love your job. Fucking Soviet, really. Well, and how is he any different? Glad-handing his way through conferences, smarming up to editors and more important researchers. And what great “networking” he’d done on this trip. Nearly vomited on his own conference paper. Had clung to his old friends, failing to approach anyone of any importance whatsoever. Well, that’s it. He’d tried. But here was the truth. Even if he did the right thing, testified, whatever, what would it gain him? He would still die alone, having achieved nothing. His mother would be the only one at his funeral.
Halfway through the martini, Tibor realizes that he’s no longer scared, even though he should be. Out of sheer habit, his mind has veered back to its favourite topic: his own ridiculous incapacity. It’s thoughts like these that drove him out on that ill-timed run in the first place.
“Slow night,” he says, approaching the girl who has already put that bright smile on her face in readiness for his order. He eases onto a bar stool. “How do you like working here?” Dumb question, but he’s not feeling flirty, just lonely.
“It’s all right.” She looks wary. Because she thinks he might come onto her, make things difficult? Her eyes slide toward the front desk.
“I promise I’m not coming onto you. I’m just so tired of my own company. You know?”
“Persze. I could call my friend. She is always up for a drink.”
A pause.
The girl says it so neatly. Like slipping a beer mat under his drink. Which she also does.
“Um.” He’s blushing.
She reaches into her pocket, pulls out her phone.
“No. I mean, no thank you. I’m fine.”
I’m fine?
She shrugs, drops the phone back into her pocket. Picks up a glass. Polishes. Looks up, smiles a smile not of the customer-service variety and not at him, but someone behind him. Tibor turns, half expecting the connubial friend, a bright-faced teenager in teetering, hopeful heels, and he’s about to say, “I really don’t…”
It’s Ferenc.
With the pressed uniform.
But Ferenc is not in uniform. He’s wearing a soft grey sweater under a suit jacket. Soft-sweatered Ferenc nods at Tibor. Does the nod mean he’s recognized him? That he is watching him? That Sarkady knows where to find him, that he can find him at any time and take him out at gunpoint or…“I’ll wait outside,” Ferenc says.
The bar girl smiles again, that not-for-sale smile, that flattered, smitten, girl-with-a-crush smile. The madam is dating a cop? The cop? His cop?
I need to be somewhere else.
“Mr. Roland?”
Knock-knock.
Is it night? Knock-knock. No, he can see a crack of white daylight between the curtains. Is he hungover? No, just foggy. It’s 8:13. It’s not sleeping in if you’re on holiday.
KNOCK-KNOCK. “Tibor Roland?”
He sits.
“Detective Sarkady here. We’ve just got a few questions for you.”
Fuck.
Tibor stumbles, fumbles, finds his pants. Where’d he put that card with Gyula’s phone number.
“I’m calling my lawyer,” he shouts, punching the numbers in. “I won’t speak to you without my lawyer.” What does it matter Gyula’s not a lawyer. He’s Hungarian and he’s rich. Through the door, he hears mumbling.
“Gyula?” Tibor whispers into the phone. “Gyula, they want me to answer some questions.”
“We don’t want to waste your time, Dr. Roland.” Doctor. How do they know this? he thinks. “It’ll just take a minute.”
“No. No, they’re here. At the door.”
“You can ask your lawyer to meet us at the station.”
He whispers into the phone, “No, of my fucking room. Detective Sarkady. I don’t know who else.”
“Your evidence is important to our case, Dr. Roland. We just want to go over some of the details.”
“They want you to meet them…us…at the station. Okay. Right. No, I won’t. Okay. You’ll have your lawyer pick me up? Really? That’s just…Thank you.”
“I will meet you with my lawyer at the station,” Tibor calls.
Silence.
No mumbling. No knocking. Just breathing, which is his, and a pounding, which is his heart.
Gone?
Or waiting?
“I think they left.”
He puts the phone down. He pads to the door. An innocuous white business card pushed underneath.
The peephole shows an empty, concave hallscape. He puts his ear to the door. Only the echoey hum of empty, ventilated architecture. Fourteen floors of empty halls, fourteen empty flights of concrete stairs, an elevator shaft, also empty. The brisk, purposeless airing of room after empty February room, and Tibor might just be the only man left alive up here. This is irrational but seems nonetheless real.
He picks up the business card. Detective Tamas Sarkady. Organized Crime Unit.
Fuck.
Tibor allows himself one full minute of hating Janos. Then he showers. Shaves. Brush the teeth, make the face nice. Take the elevator to your mother’s floor and knock on her door, and make up some story. “Protect your mother from this,” was Gyula’s advice. And he would.
His mother opens the door before he’s finished his knock. “I didn’t know what to say, Tibor. He said, ‘Are you Tibor Roland’s mother?’ I said yes.”
Fuck. Persze.
“He said, ‘Is this you?’ He had your camera, Tibor. He showed me my picture, and he said, ‘Is this you?’ What am I going to say? No, it’s not
me? Obviously, it’s me. He said, ‘Is this your son’s camera?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Does he own a camera like this?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Did he go to a party on Wednesday night?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Do you, or does anyone you know, own a black Mercedes-Benz?’ I said, ‘I wish.’”
She’d opened the door already talking. She led him into the room, talking. They had his camera? They showed his mother? Oh God, not Rafaela. “Tibor, is this about the mugging? I didn’t know what to say. Are you in trouble? They wouldn’t tell me. Interrogating me. That’s what it felt like. They always come in pairs. Why? They wouldn’t explain a thing.” Her fingers grip her bandaged sore wrist, which Tibor had so tenderly wrapped for her. He takes her good hand. He leads her to the chair. He takes the bed.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s nothing to worry about, I promise.”
He should take better care of his mother. He keeps losing her, running away and spraining her, and now this. Why is his love so clenched?
Tibor tells her everything, the whole story from start to finish. He has to stop once, to get a glass of water. He pours them each one from the bathroom tap, noticing that she’s used the hotel-provided shower cap. He always wondered who used the shower caps. He explains that he’d overheard a murder; he doesn’t explain that they chopped the body into pieces. He tells her about the hole in the hill, and the dropped head. She only once interrupts him: “A hole? What kind of hole?”
“Deep, that’s all he said. Deep enough that no one would ever find the body.”
A hole in the surface of Gellert Hegy? A hole—or a tunnel with an entrance as steep and deep as a well.
“And Gyula’s lawyer will be here in just a few minutes,” he says. “We’re going to the National Police first, to report Detective Sarkady. And then to the embassy—we’ll pick up your passport, tell them what’s happened. It’ll be all over soon. Then, Gyula says, his lawyer will drive us to the airport.”
“Gyula?”
“That’s right.”
“You told Gyula?”
“Yes. I thought he’d know what to do.”
She puts down her glass. Her good hand is trembling. “Gyula lies.”
“What are you talking about?”
“And Gyula drives a very nice car. A very expensive car. Not a Mercedes, but very expensive.”
And?
“His son’s a policeman. Did I tell you that? And Gyula’s an engineer. I don’t even know if he finished his degree. How does an engineer make that much money?”
Tibor hears the snap, snap, snap of his calm coming undone.
“Mom.”
“A policeman earns nothing in this country. Next to nothing. That’s why they are all corrupt.”
“Mom.”
“Why wouldn’t he accept a bribe? What keeps a man honest if he earns nothing and the politicians take his nothing and they give nothing in return?”
“Mom, Gyula’s your friend.”
“I haven’t talked to the man in fifty years, Tibor.”
“Right. But he’s your friend. Mom, stop.” She’s pulling clothes out of drawers and tossing them onto the bed. She uses hotel drawers, Tibor thinks.
“Get my suitcase. You cannot go to the National Police. Why should you? Did you ask to be a witness?”
“Mom, stop.”
“Did you know this boy? He’s probably a drug dealer. An addict. A waste. And now he’s dead, okay? Why do you have to risk your life? No, Tibor. It’s time to go. And don’t talk to anyone. Don’t speak to anyone.”
“Mom. It’s not 1956.”
“Yes, it is.” She turns on him. “It is. It is always 1956. People do terrible things. You think they won’t, but they do. They spy and they lie, and they will tie a man by his ankles and they will light him on fire and they will watch as he burns. They will watch. Why don’t you listen to me, Tibor? You never listen to me.”
Agnes halts on the word. Sees her adult son in front of her. Shocked. Worried. Frightened. Has she lost her marbles?
“I am being irrational.”
Tentative relief. She hadn’t asked him about the naked gasping woman or how his head ended up between her naked thighs. That wasn’t very nice to see. But the policeman only showed it to humiliate her. The peasant. The peasant who is after her son. Her son. Why has she come back?
“But I still do not trust Gyula.”
Relief, gone. Worry, back.
“He always lied, but now it’s different. He’s damaged. Damaged all the way through.”
“I really don’t think, Mom…”
“All right, fine. Maybe I am being irrational. However, I am your mother, and I want to leave this country right now because it makes me irrational. And I want you to come with me because I am old and I am afraid to go alone. Especially with my sprained wrist. So.”
So what are you going to do now, Tibor Roland? her look says.
“We still have to get your passport.”
“I found it.”
“You found it?”
“I forgot. I put it in my zipper pocket. Ta-da.”
He could strangle her. He might.
“What are you waiting for? Get packed. It’s still early. We can be gone before they think to look.”
The train to Vienna rattles and clanks. Graffiti obscures the view, which is nothing to write home about. Towers of panel apartments give way to squat little houses in smushed little yards. Dogs chained to fence posts. Dull factories. Duller, treeless landscape. Two hours and they’d be crossing the border. Another, and they’d be in Vienna.
I am not afraid, Tibor thinks, trying it on for size.
Aha? says his soul.
Don’t give me aha. I’m not pretending.
So why are we escaping?
This is not escape.
Tell that to your mother.
In the seat opposite, in the compartment they share with two faceless American backpackers, Agnes lets the winter fields slide by her eyes. There’s nothing underneath that earth but more earth. The bones are old. They’re dust. But now she knows the tunnels exist. And if the tunnels exist, then it’s possible that Zsofi escaped. And if Zsofi escaped, then she, Agnes, did not kill her.
Two hours to Austria.
How long can she hold this reprieve, whole as a stone, before she can’t?
Now or Never
Tuesday, October 16, 1956
“I found someone who’ll take us for 350 forints.”
“I might love your navel more than your right knee.”
“If we catch the train for Sopron, we can jump off before the station.”
“I thought I loved your right knee best, that scar, but now I’m reconsidering. In light of this splendid, neglected navel.”
“It’s cold, Gyula, and you’re not listening.”
“But I am. I’m listening to your stomach. It’s rumbling.”
“I’ve been skipping lunch to save the money. You know that.”
“Poor, hungry belly.” He kisses it.
“Listen to me. If we’re really going to do this, we have to be ready.”
“What is there to get ready?”
“Our things. Our clothes. Do you have any shoes other than those ones?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re not very sturdy. I thought I’d leave these ones for Zsofi—look how thin the soles are—and I’d take her old school shoes. She hates them.”
“We have only two hours together, Agi. Why are we talking about shoes?”
“Because we have to be ready.”
“I know that.” His palms cup her cheeks. “And I’m ready. I’m ready to follow you to Mars, if you want. But until then, we’re here. Can we just be here?” His lips on her ear loose goosebumps all the way down to her hip.
Margit Island teems with lovers just like them. Half hidden in the treed autumn park nearly evening, they speak just above a whisper. If Agi ad
ded up all the minutes of conversations with Gyula, how many would be whispered? Their entire courtship murmured on an island in a river.
“Soon we won’t have to lie,” she whispers.
“Well then what on earth will we do for fun?”
“Whatever ordinary people do, in an ordinary place. Do you think I’ll be able to take a teacher’s diploma in Canada? Or maybe they’ll take my Hungarian qualification?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure it’ll work out.”
“You’ll find work. I’m sure you will. You’ll have to learn English—well, we both will—but your cousin Balazs will help us, right? Did you write to him?”
“Agi, please stop talking.” His voice at her ear drops straight through her. His hand slides over the rough wool of her skirt to the small of her back. In two hours she will walk back to her family’s dark apartment on Visegradi in a dense part of Pest while he heads in the other direction, over the bridge to Buda, to the gardens and steep climb of Rozsadomb, where all the party officials live, including his father. He’ll study for a couple of hours before sleep or hunch over the little shortwave radio that bears news, sometimes, from the outside. When they leave this stupid country, they’ll have whole nights together. She’ll wrap her legs around him and, finally, she’ll take him inside her.
“Your neck,” he says.
He names every part of her and she loves it, the words parting skin from touch. She bristles. He brushes.
“Under your collarbone.”
Agi hadn’t expected love to be so literal, didn’t expect she’d need so bluntly, feel fat with kisses and greedy for more. This is a surprise. Also, how terrifying every evening to let him go. Because he’s careless. This has always been true, but for the last two weeks he’s been listening to that shortwave radio every night, meeting with friends from the university, and their talk is getting more daring. Maybe it’s because he’s still a student while she’s been teaching high school for two years, but he sometimes seems unbearably naive. He and his friends, they say they want the right to learn English. They want to stand up against the suppression of free thought at the universities. They want all Stalinist professors fired. Just last week, Gyula visited the British Legation to watch Western films. He came to her elated, full of talk: capitalist modernity and cars and ease. Yet just the week before, one of his friends had been arrested for doing exactly the same thing. A few days ago, he deliberately missed a meeting of the Communist Youth Organization and was fined fifty forints. The money is one thing, but the next time could be much more serious, and then what? He has no right to be so careless, now that she loves him.
