by Ailsa Kay
Detective Roth snorts. Rev just keeps his eyes on me. I don’t know about this one. He’s thinking. And I don’t know what he’s thinking. And that’s unusual, I have to say.
“By eight-fifteen, I said fuckit. Fuckit, I don’t have it. But I told Gombas I have it. And I need this break. And what the hell, I read it. I remember what it said, basically, which is not very much. And so I said to my wife, who was on her knees pulling files out of the filing cabinet and crying, I said, ‘Get me your diary.’ ‘What?’ ‘JUST GET IT.’ She started keeping a diary when she was sixteen. It was a gift from her grandmother. Kato wrote in it a little, but she never filled it. Women and their diaries, right. They always think they have secrets to spill into it, and then it turns out they don’t. It was old paper. Not that old, but old. That rough, cheap paper and brittle. It would do. I sat her down in my chair at my desk, and I gave her a pencil and I told her to write. ‘November 8, 1956. Dear Gyula.’ And I told her to keep the writing really small and tight together, like you know you’re going to run out of paper. ‘When you put your arms around my waist that day you jumped from the tank, I knew it was love. I knew it was you that I loved, my sweet rebel.’
“I talked and my wife wrote until her wrist hurt. We had to cover five pages, one page for each day, which brought us to November 15, and to be honest I couldn’t say I read it so carefully to know what each page said exactly. Not exactly. But this Zsofi woman, she complained about the cold, and she complained about her leg, and she said she didn’t feel so good, and she missed him, and whatever. Love. Love, love. And do you really love me, or did you leave me here to die? I embellished to fill in the gaps with some ‘I want you, Gyula. I want you to hold me like you used to, to fill me, to call me your Zsofika.’ I mean, it’s a love letter. They’re all the same. We rolled it up, tied that ribbon around it.
“I will be honest with you now. I was nervous. I mean, this is Gyula Farkas we’re talking about here. But I got debts to pay, and if I could do Farkas a favour—well, money flows a lot easier when you’re connected, right? He shows up at nine on the dot. I offer him a drink. No, thank you. A glass of water? Coffee? No and no. Anything? Just the letter. We’re standing in the living room. Kato offers him a chair, but he doesn’t sit. So she has to stand up again. The whole time standing there, he doesn’t look around the room, doesn’t look anywhere, just straight ahead to the patio doors, but at this time of night, they’re just mirrors so really, he’s only seeing himself and the room. Kato’s getting uncomfortable, the way she does. I go to my office to get the letter. I hear her trying to make small talk about the house, and how he must have loved growing up here, so pretty, such a pretty neighbourhood, the house is pretty too, and the garden is pretty, and that tree outside is big and pretty. I get back with the letter. He hasn’t even taken his overcoat off. Well, and Kato didn’t ask to take it. Damn that woman. I give him the letter, all rolled up and tied exactly like the first one. He notices the ribbon. I notice him noticing, but he says nothing. He slides the letter into the breast pocket of his overcoat like it’s a cigar. He touches a handkerchief to his lip.
“‘And you said you found it in the cellar,’ he says. He’s so courteous. I don’t know why I didn’t expect that—tall, skinny, and courteous. When you see his photos in the paper, they don’t show how tall he is. And soft-spoken, that was the other surprising thing. ‘If it’s all right with you, I’d like to take a look.’
“He knows the way downstairs, obviously, but he lets me lead the way. My guys had taken down the door, so from the foot of the stairs, he can see right through to the rock fall, the pushed-aside table, the pile of old cans.
“‘It was in there,’ I point and respectfully stand aside. ‘By the table.’
“Gyula Farkas picks his way past me over construction rubble and, gripping what was left of the door frame, steps inside. I watch from where I’m standing at the foot of the stairs and then, as I’m watching, Gyula Farkas drops to his knees. Just drops. At first I think maybe he’s having a heart attack or something, and I go to help him, but then I realize he’s not. In his fine suit and overcoat, he’s on the dirt floor and he’s bending forward, putting his hands to the rock fall almost like he’s a Muslim, praying into it.
“I think to myself, I shouldn’t be here. My house, why shouldn’t I, right? But that’s what I think, and before I know it, I’m turning away so I’m surprised when he says, ‘Was this rubble here? When you opened the door, I mean. Was it already here?’”
“‘Sure. Yes. That door there led to a tunnel, right? Well, the tunnel must’ve caved in. Could’ve happened any time, but I think it happened a long time ago. Look there.’ And I pointed to the table. ‘See how it was pushed by the rock. See how dusty it all is. If it was new, the dust would look disturbed. The letter too. It hasn’t moved in…well, years.’
“As I’m talking, he’s nodding. We’re like two construction professionals down here, just talking business.
“‘And this door, was it locked from the outside?’
“‘If it was open, my men wouldn’t have had to drill it out.’
“He’s still facing the spill of earth and rock while he’s talking to me. It takes him a while to stand, and when he does, he comes back through the door and right past me to a cellar wall we already cleared. He runs his hands over the brick, looking for something I guess, but seems he doesn’t find it because then he’s heading up the stairs, leaning pretty heavy on the banister.
“He says thank you as he leaves. He says this has meant a lot, seeing this place again, and the letter. He says, ‘I may have misjudged you, Mr. Bekes.’ He says, ‘I know you’ll keep this private matter between us.’ He says, ‘I’ll be in touch.’
“And really, that’s all I wanted, was a ‘be in touch’ with Gyula ‘Gombas’ Farkas. That’s all I wanted, and I got it. I fucking got it. The car’s pulling out of the driveway, headlights swoop white over the entrance hall, and I’m just about busting. ‘Did you hear that?’ I say to Kato. ‘Did you hear that?’
“Kato doesn’t really understand about these things, or why her husband is suddenly doing some kind of crazy dance around the house, but she’s happy, you know. For me. Time to celebrate. So I tell her, don’t wait up, and I call a buddy of mine, and I say, ‘Drinks are on me,’ and I’m out the door.”
Rev says, “Could you excuse us for a minute, please?” And they leave me with my lawyer. Is he trying to make me nervous? Trying to throw me somehow? Hard to say, but I haven’t even got to the best part, the part that clears me, so they better come back.
INTERROGATION, Scene Three.
Everyone takes his position as before.
“Do I keep talking?”
“Sure. Keep talking.”
They switch the machine on again.
“So did I party? Yes, I did. From one club to the next. And I smoked a little dope and I drank a lot of beer. I was at it hard for must’ve been four hours and then I’m sitting with these gorgeous blondes from Sweden when my phone buzzes in my pants. It’s my buddy, on his way home. Poor asshole doesn’t have my stamina and he’s got a wife who’ll hang him by the balls from a Christmas tree. And he says to me ‘Laci, I don’t know what you did, but Gombas is looking for you. Two dudes. At least one is packing. They’re on their way to Akacfa.’
“Jesus fuck.
“Jesus fucking Christ, fucking Kato, why did I trust her to write it, Jesus fuck, probably spelled it all wrong.
“So I’m standing up now, getting ready to sprint, and then I thought, No. No, then what? Then they keep coming after me. Better to just tell the truth. I lost the fucking letter. I remember what was in it, but I lost it. I’ll find it, but you have to give me a day or two. And I was thinking, There goes my favour from Gombas. If I could just delay them. And then it hits me. I must have taken the letter to Maria’s. Did I do that? Sure. Sure I must have. Which means it likely fell out of my coat pocket when we were fucking. Sure, I fuck with my coat on. Don’t you w
hen you’re in a hurry? So if I call Maria, tell her to find the letter . . . No, no time. All this, I’m thinking to myself at lightning speed, detectives. Because if those boys are on the hunt, then I’m the fucking duck and there’s no time to lose. And then I thought, I need a decoy. And then I had my idea: Janos. That’s my brother’s Canadian friend, Janos Hagy. That’s right, the guy who owns this incriminating Toronto Maple Leafs jacket. Can you see where this is going now? Okay, so the thing about Janos is that he’s a little smarter than Csaba, and he thinks I walk on water. He is ambitious, though, I give him that. Wants to be my right-hand man, so he’d do anything for me. People always say we look alike. Like twins, almost. So I call him up. I say, ‘How fast can you be here?’ Like I figured, he was just happy to be asked.”
I reward myself with a very long drink of water to give them time to put it together. Yes, they’re putting it together.
“Mystery solved, detectives. This is why you found me at four a.m. in a murderer’s jacket and a murderer’s shoes. Janos was happy to help. Pretend to be Laci Bekes for an hour? Shit, the kid nearly wet himself. Now, I recognize this wasn’t the finest moment of my life, setting up an innocent to take my beating, but honest to God I just wanted to buy myself some time. Time to find the fucking original letter and work out some major butt-licking apology. Who’d have thought a guy like Gombas would give a shit. I mean, it’s a love letter. From fifty years ago. Which means that twat has got to be seventy years old by now. As I say, I’m not proud. I’m not at all proud of what I did.”
I look at my feet, give them a good penitent and troubled stare.
“I told Janos what he had to say to pretend he was me, and I left. Found my loser brother waiting for me halfway down the street, mad as anything because I always choose Janos over him or some shit like that, because I never take him seriously, never let him in on the business. I shook him off. Told him to go home and cry to his mother. Should have been a bit nicer, I suppose, or I wouldn’t be sitting here right now, taking his fall.”
You see how it all comes together.
There needs to be a pause, don’t you think, after a realization like that? Do you taste it? Move on.
“You want to catch yourself a gypsy-murderer, you look for a Canadian kid named Janos Hagy, staying with his grandma in the Thirteenth District. I can give you the address. And when you find him, you’ll find he’s wearing a good quality brown leather coat, and in that coat pocket, you’ll find both my wallet and my goddamn car keys.”
These detectives will have questions. Sure. I don’t think we’re done here. They might want to check out my cellar. See if the creepy room is real. Let them. I’ve got nothing to hide. And if Gombas is after my ass, this as good a place to be as any. And besides, my lawyer tells me an unidentified head was found on Gellert early this morning. Who the hell drops a head on Gellert? Gombas, that’s who. So do these boys want to take me seriously? You bet. They want to believe Laci Bekes now. Yes, oh yes, they do.
After Budapest
Two weeks ago, he looked her up on Facebook and there she was: smiling radiant, Daniel’s face next to hers, his arm outreaching, holding the camera, retarded kid nowhere in sight. How did some people manage to look so happy? He thought he was over her, but when he saw her there, Daniel’s face mostly overwhelmed by her hair, he felt a blip of something and, in nearly the same moment, irritation. You idiot, Tibor. All those little fantasies about bumping into her, and how happy she’d be to see him. How they’d go for a walk, or sit side by side on some ordinary city bench somewhere, and he’d tell her everything that had happened in Budapest—the murder he’d witnessed, the cops who’d tried to frame him, his mother’s sudden irrational fear of her old boyfriend. To Rafaela, he could confess, finally, how terrified he’d been. And her forehead would wrinkle in concern, and her eyes would look on him with forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness. Not because he deserves it, necessarily, but because he suffered, is suffering. Because he needs it.
The phone rings. He answers.
“Tibor. What are you doing?” Never how with his mother, always what.
Reflexively, he closes Facebook. “Working. I’m working, Mom.”
Outside his window, a fat grey squirrel travels an improbably thin branch. Tibor toggles up and down his lecture, a couple of pages, all crap. And not nearly enough crap to fill the two bloody hours alone behind that podium.
“Good. When you finish, you can come for dinner. I want to show you my pictures from Budapest. I made a slide show. With music.”
“That sounds great, but I’m at a rather crucial point in this lecture. I thought I might push through.”
“I don’t know how you can work at night. I always think the best ideas come when the mind is relaxed, awake. You’d be better to work in the morning, after a good night’s sleep.”
That’s a laugh; he hasn’t slept since Budapest. “I like working at night. No distractions.”
“I don’t want to distract you, Tibor.”
And now it’s raining. The squirrel huddles under its tail. Last thing he wants to do is make the trek to North York to see a slide show of Budapest. He was there, for fucksake. “How about tomorrow? I’ll come for lunch. I’ll bring you korozot from the deli.”
She pauses before replying. Just so he’ll hear how selfish he’s being.
“Persze. And don’t worry about the korozot, we’ll just have the chicken paprikas I made for tonight. I can reheat it in the microwave.”
Tibor looks at the huddled squirrel. He looks at his unwritten lecture. Persze, he shuts down his computer. “Chicken paprikas? Why didn’t you say so?”
The house smells like paprikas cooking. Like lemon furniture polish and old cushions. Like his mother and like rain because once every day, sometimes twice if there was company, and no matter what the weather she’d open the front windows wide to air out the house.
“Hallo,” he calls out. He drips on the hallway rug with his bag of korozot.
“I’m in here.”
He follows the voice down the short parquet hallway to the kitchen, where his mother sits at the kitchen table, already set with green oval plastic placemats, white paper napkins in the blue plastic holder, green cut-glass tumblers, watching the news on TV. She looks up with a smile and holds out her hands for his face to kiss.
“It’s pouring out there. Your hair looks nice.”
He puts the korozot in the fridge. There is no need to present it to her. She knows he’s brought it as he always does, and she will find it there tomorrow morning and it will be nice. It will be nice for her to sit in her yellow kitchen and eat the Hungarian korozot that she hasn’t requested and that her good son has brought without expecting thanks. She waves her hand at the compliment, her eyes now focused again on the television news.
Two teenagers were shot last night. The suspect is described as black, average height, wearing a black head scarf. They show the parking lot where it happened, the TV lights glaring on the slick asphalt, a tarp that you know covers a body, a club at the end of a strip mall. Now, the day after, the story is focused on the police and the family. The family believes the police don’t do enough. The police are increasingly worried about gangs in Scarborough. The mayor looks worried too.
Tibor spoons the rich, creamy stew out of the pot onto two plates placed ready beside the stove. In the oven is his favourite potato casserole. The bread is sliced and in a basket on the table. Beside the bread, a small bowl of minced peppers.
There’s a comfort in the habits, he has to admit, in the not needing to be asked to serve the stew or to check the oven for the potatoes.
“Jo etvagyat,” she says.
As usual, there’s little conversation while they eat. The TV news continues. He comments that paprikas is the perfect meal for a cold day, and his favourite potatoes are even more delicious than usual. They eat and they mop the last of the creamy sauce with their bread and they watch the news together. And then, a Hungarian accent. A middle-aged man, wide
forehead crimped in two deep horizontal lines: “I am asking the Canadian government for help to solve my son’s murder.”
The father pleads, heart broken, as the camera fixes on his face, which now fills the screen.
The reporter takes over. “Hagy’s son’s head was found in a park in Budapest, more than a month ago. The body has still not been recovered. Hungarian police believe the murder to be linked to the city’s organized crime, but they will not say how. Here in Ottawa, a spokesperson from the Prime Minister’s Office says Canadian officials are watching the case but will not intercede in the investigation.” Flash to the father, standing empty-handed in what must be his son’s bedroom, before a poster of red Formula 1 Ferraris. “No news is sad news for a father who should be celebrating his son’s twenty-first birthday today.”
At the table, the silence thickens. Reporters keep reporting. Iran. Afghanistan. People interviewed express anger, outrage, grief—the usual. And it’s horrid that it’s usual, but the world is not small, as people insist. It’s huge. It has too many people and too many wars, too many disasters, and compassion only stretches so far. The bad news continues for approximately four minutes before the local weather.
“Rain! Expected to turn to freezing rain tomorrow!” There really is no Schadenfreude like a weather forecaster’s. “Wet snow later in the week, turning to flurries by weekend. Don’t pack away those boots just yet, folks.”
Tibor’s mother clicks off the TV and turns her face toward her son, clearly expecting he should have something to say. Tibor stands, takes the dishes off the table. He runs the dishes under hot water before putting them in the dishwasher.
“I think we should contact him, Tibor.”
We? He presses start and is rewarded with the soft roar of pressured water. Tibor dries his hands on the faded floral towel. He feels more tired than he has ever felt, more tired than he thought it was possible for a human to feel. He hasn’t slept since Budapest. Days just keep blurring into dusk, then into dawn. Last night, after finally drifting off at one, he woke at two, finally gave up at four, turned on his computer, and tried to work.
