by Adam LeBor
His mother did not eat, just drank the coffee she had made herself and watched Balthazar work his way through the food. He looked up to see her eyes on him, put his fork down and held her right hand for a moment. There were patterns on the lower part of her four fingers, a rough, uneven dark blue above the knuckles, as though there had once been letters there that were later inked out. There was a story there, he knew, had done for years. But he and his mother were rarely alone, and he could never ask when relatives were around. Now there were just the two of them. ‘Who was he, Anyu?’
Marta looked down at her hand resting on his and shook her head. ‘Nobody, fiam. There is only your father. There was only ever your father.’
Balthazar traced the patterns on her skin. ‘I don’t see L, A, C, I there.’ He peered closer, looked up at her, his voice mischievous. ‘Maybe a J? Was there a Jozsi? Or maybe it’s a T, for Tomi.’ He frowned, looked closer. ‘Actually, it looks like it was an S. Simon? Szilard? Solomon?’
Marta snatched her right hand back, placed her left on top of it as if to hide her fingers. ‘Stop. It was a long time ago and doesn’t matter any more.’
He sat back, surprised at the vehemence in her voice, looked up to see his mother staring at him. ‘Tazikam,’ she said, swallowed hard, then paused. He watched in amazement as she wiped her eye.
‘Anyu,’ he asked, ‘why are you crying? We’ll fix it with Dad. He actually nodded at me in the courtyard the other day. He saw me from the balcony.’
Marta said, ‘I’m so proud of you, son. Not just what you did on Sunday with the terrorist.’ She looked around. ‘Of everything. You’ve made a life for yourself. Broken the cycle. I always wanted you to be out of the family business.’
‘So why are you crying?’
Marta looked down at the table, then out of the window. Balthazar waited. He knew all the signs of an impending confession: the nervous agitation, the inability to meet his eye. It built and built, the pressure rising until it could no longer be contained. He stayed silent.
Marta said, ‘I should have told you years ago. But your father and his brothers would not let me.’
‘What?’ asked Balthazar, although his sixth sense already knew the answer.
Marta wiped her eyes as Balthazar passed her a piece of kitchen paper. He still had not said anything, but just waited for the story to come out, as he knew it would. She blew her nose and started talking. ‘I didn’t want her to go. I said it wasn’t right. She was so young and beautiful, to be there without a chaperone.’
He knew immediately what Marta was talking about. ‘Neither did I. But she was so excited. I should have gone with her. But Dad would not let me. I should have disobeyed him.’
‘I know. But you were sixteen. And that would have brought severe consequences. It’s not your fault.’
‘So whose fault is it?’
Marta closed her eyes and shook her head before she spoke. ‘All of ours. All of theirs. It was a birthday party. A very fancy occasion. All the politicians and businesspeople were there. He was a very powerful man. He wanted her there, to sing for him, he said. He’d seen her sing in a bar once, he said. It had to be her. It was hard to say no. In those days, twenty years ago, it was the same people in control. They said there had been a change of system but they still ran everything. We said no, she was too young. Our people don’t do that, let young girls out on their own. They threatened us with the police, with all sorts of authorities. We had no choice, so we let her go. And he promised us, all he wanted was for her to sing. Just that, and then he would put her in a taxi.’
‘But I thought a couple of the guys who played with Melchior were supposed to be there as well, to look after her.’
‘That was the plan, Tazikam, but they never showed up. I don’t know why.’ Marta stood up, started clearing Balthazar’s plate away.
He took her hand, ‘Please, sit down, Anyu. Tell me what happened.’
Marta sniffed. ‘I know what you know: they found her in the swimming pool, face-down. She was always scared of water. I remember when we all went to Lake Balaton that summer, to Siofok, she wouldn’t go in the water, even though it barely comes up to your knees on the shore.
‘There’s something else.’ Marta took a deep breath. ‘There’s a reason you two were so close, why you loved being together, loved each other so much.’
‘Which is?’
She started crying again, looked up and down, stretched out her hand, placed his fingers on hers, traced the patterns inked on her knuckles. ‘My clever boy. His name was Sandor. Sanyi. We fell in love. Sanyikam, my sweet Sanyi.’ She looked into the distance for a moment, lost in the memories. ‘He was a few years older than me. That didn’t matter. But he was a gadje and my parents forbade me to ever see him again.’ She looked down at the table. ‘We used to meet in secret. Until my father and your father paid him a visit one night. After that he moved away, left Budapest for a while. Sandor never knew, but I was pregnant. My parents wanted me to have an abortion but I refused. So they sent me to the countryside. I came back and we gave the baby to some cousins who were having trouble conceiving. It was all hushed up and then your father married me, instead.’
Balthazar’s mind was racing – and then he understood. His heart thumped as he spoke. ‘So Virag was not my distant cousin.’
Marta blew her nose, her face still wet with tears. She shook her head. ‘No, she wasn’t. That’s why we made it difficult for you to meet her. I’m so sorry, fiam. Virag was your half-sister.’
Balthazar stood up and walked over to the kitchen. He stared down into the inner courtyard, could not speak for several seconds. A weight bore down on his chest. His knees felt weak. Virag. His favourite cousin, an ice cream cone in her hand on Mikszath Kalman Square. Virag, his half-sister. The shock of the news triggered other unwelcome memories. For a moment he was back on Rakoczi Way, Mahmoud Hejazi’s body jerking underneath his shoe, sliding across the tarmac as the sniper’s bullet hit, the blood oozing from his side. Balthazar started to shake, closed his eyes and held on to the edge of the sink, his breath shallow and ragged. He opened his eyes, inhaled slowly several times, brought himself back under control, turned to see his mother staring at him.
‘Fiam, are you OK? I didn’t want to upset you. Come here. Sit down – you look pale.’
‘I’m fine, Anyu. Just give me a minute. It’s a lot to process.’ Balthazar kept staring into the courtyard. Every building, every flat, every brick in Budapest had a story to tell, Eva neni had once told him. But none like this, surely. Part of him wanted to scream, to shout, upend the table and hurl the plates across the room. But that would only frighten his mother, which would achieve nothing. Instead he asked: ‘Tell me how she died.’
‘You already know. She drowned, fiam. She fell in the swimming pool. In the deep end. There was nobody around. She couldn’t swim.’
Balthazar thought before he answered, questions flying around his head. ‘She was at the party to sing. So what was she doing near the swimming pool when she couldn’t swim and was scared of the water?’
‘She was running. She slipped.’
‘Running from who? Why?’
‘We don’t know.’
Balthazar sat back down, took his mother’s hand. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’
Marta looked down at the table. ‘She comes to me sometimes. When I am asleep. In my dreams. She told me to tell you.’ Marta looked at Balthazar. ‘And because it’s time.’
‘I told Sandor Takacs I wanted to re-open the case. This morning.’
‘So you see. She was right.’ Marta paused for a moment, wiped her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, fiam.’
‘So am I. I loved Virag, but I thought she was my cousin. We were so close. Now I know why. I remember, after she died, I asked whose house it was, where she had been. You and Dad would never tell me. But you are right. It’s time. You can tell me now. Where was she?’
‘In Pal Dezeffy’s house. She sang for him. Then she was
running. Then she drowned. That’s what I know.’
Balthazar sat back, breathed out long and slow. Somehow this was not a surprise. Hungary in the 1990s had been ruled by the same dynasties as during the 1970s and 1980s – foremost among them the Dezeffys. They certainly were powerful enough to threaten a Gypsy family with the full weight of state if they did not do as they were told. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘Because I knew that as soon as you knew, you would start investigating. Even when you were a child, you were always asking questions: who, why, when, what happened, what might happen. And you could not ask questions about this. Not then. And then you became a policeman. By then he was the prime minister, the most powerful man in the country. We were worried that you would start investigating. It would have been dangerous. Not just for you, for all of us. You know the family business, what we do. We loved Virag and we mourned her. But she was gone and we were still here. Family first, Tazikam.’
‘First before me? Before the truth? Even if I am part of that family? Although maybe I’m not any more. My father has disowned me.’
Marta looked down, traced the patches of faded blue ink on her knuckles for several seconds, then reached across the table and gripped Balthazar’s hand. ‘He loves you. He just wanted… different things for you.’
Balthazar smiled, his fingers still entwined with his mother’s. ‘And you, Anyu, what do you want?’
‘Go to work, fiam. He is not powerful any more. Find out what happened to my daughter. To your sister.’
*
Balthazar sat on his balcony and watched his mother get into Fat Vik’s black 7-series BMW. The car drove quickly up Dob Street, towards the Grand Boulevard, back to Jozsef Street and District VIII. His conversation with his mother spun around his head. The air felt thick, hard to breathe. The sky had turned dark grey, heavy black clouds on slow manoeuvres over the city before they unleashed the brewing storm. He glanced down at Klauzal Square. The dope-smoking teenagers, the young mothers with their toddlers, had gone. A sudden gust of wind buffeted the trees, sending their leaves spinning outwards, making the Bubi bicycles wobble on their stand.
To his surprise, he did not feel much more grief or pain about Virag. He had loved her as much as he had loved anyone. Of course it was a shock to learn that she was his half-sister, not his third cousin. What was harder to process was the knowledge that his parents had not told him the truth, had concealed a secret for twenty years. On one level Balthazar could see the logic: a few telephone calls from Pal Dezeffy could have destroyed their lives, sent his father to prison, seen the family home taken from them. But now Pal was down, if not out, and he had a chance to start probing. He glanced down at the news magazines on the small coffee table: 168 Hours and HVG, the Hungarian version of The Economist. Both were full of articles about the migrant crisis, the death of Mahmoud Hejazi, the ongoing chaos at Keleti, and extensive coverage of Hungary’s new prime minister. Balthazar picked up HVG: the cover showed a playground merry-go-round. Pal sat on the far side, a small Louis Vuitton suitcase at his feet, looking disconsolate. Reka Bardossy sat on the front side, a much larger Louis Vuitton suitcase by her legs, expensive rings on her fingers, a large diamond necklace around her neck, smiling widely.
Did Virag really come to his mother at night, in her dreams? Perhaps she did. Maybe there was a reason that Balthazar had recently been thinking so much about her, had taken her photograph to be framed and then placed it in the centre of his bookshelves. As long as someone was remembered they were never truly dead. Virag was not forgotten. For a moment Balthazar thought of Alex, his eager innocence, his zest for life and new experiences. Now Balthazar too was trapped in a web of lies. Should he tell him about Virag, that Alex had once had an aunt who had died, and he was going to find out who was responsible? Alex was quite capable of handling that knowledge, but he would then quickly ask how Balthazar knew, would learn that his family had deceived his father – and him – for years and become angry, none of which would help an already difficult relationship. But if Balthazar did not tell his son what he had learned, then he too would be guilty of deceit. Whatever Balthazar decided, for now he just needed to communicate with him. He quickly tapped out a text message that he loved him, missed him and would see him on the weekend. The reply came within a minute: ‘Love u too Dad’ with a stream of emojis of smiling faces and hearts.
Balthazar sat back and smiled for a moment. In all the chaos of his family life, at least there was one simple constant: his son. He looked down again at the cartoon of Reka grinning on the merry-go-round. Now was his chance to find out what had happened to Virag, and finally get justice. He took out his telephone and tapped out the number Reka Bardossy had given him. She answered his call herself. ‘Detective Kovacs, a pleasure to hear from you. Have you made your decision?’
‘I have. My answer is yes.’
‘Thank you, I’m very happy to hear that.’
‘When do I start?’
‘Now, please.’
‘What does Sanyi bacsi say?’
He could feel Reka smiling down the line. ‘Sanyi bacsi says Godspeed and get to work. You are released from all other current duties and cases. I’ll send a courier with your warrant immediately, and also a copy to your telephone.’
A few seconds after Balthazar ended the call, his handset rang. He looked down and pressed the green button.
Anastasia Ferenczy said, ‘I need to see you.’
‘When?’
‘Now, please. I’m outside.’
FIFTEEN
555.hu office, 1.00 p.m.
‘This is very sudden and leaves a large hole in our newsroom,’ said Roland Horvath, his pale, jowly face pursed in a frown. ‘And you are supposed to give me thirty days’ notice. I won’t hold you to that, but two or three days, rather than a few hours, would have been useful. Not to mention polite.’ He fixed his beady eyes on Eniko. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’
Fairly sure, she thought. I’m human so I have some doubts about making a massive career change out of the blue on the basis of one conversation with no prior planning, but anyway I’m not going to discuss that with you and Kriszta Matyas. Even though you have a point. Leaving the same day as actually resigning was bad manners, although not unusual at news organisations where plans and stories were confidential. But there was nothing to be done about it. So Eniko smiled brightly and said, ‘Absolutely. It’s an amazing opportunity.’
‘At least there will be someone in the PM’s office to take our calls,’ said Roland. His frown faded as he asked, ‘You will take our calls?’
‘Of course. What a question!’
Roland still looked puzzled. ‘Is this because of our talk this morning about your coverage? I hope not. Because I am sure we could find a way to make things work here, Eniko. You own the migrant story. You have done amazing work. Traffic is up, revenue is up, advertisers are clamouring to get on the site. You’ve spread our name around the world.’ He leaned forward, smiling now, his voice conciliatory. ‘Eniko, this is a rough-and-tumble business. It’s fast-paced, pressurised, and we have to take snap decisions. We demand XYZ, you give us ABC instead. Creative tension is the lifeblood of every newsroom. You know that. You’re the most experienced reporter here. Rows, arguments, disagreements, that’s in the nature of our business. And, yes, sometimes voices are raised. We are all passionate, creative people, aren’t we?’ he asked, turning to Kriszta, who nodded, her face a blank mask. ‘It’s all sortable,’ Roland continued. ‘There’s no need to leave.’
Eniko, Roland and Kriszta were sitting around the small table in his office, as they had done that morning. But now a very different conversation was unfolding. Roland had looked shocked when Eniko told him that she had accepted a job with Reka Bardossy and wanted to leave immediately. Kriszta had remained stony-faced, but Eniko was sure she had seen a flash of pleasure in her eyes at the news.
Eniko said, ‘Of course, there’s no need. But this is what I want,
really. Roland, honestly, it’s not because of editorial or personnel issues. And thank you for the kind words, it’s nice to feel appreciated. It’s been an amazing opportunity and a real privilege working here. I’ve learned a lot, and I’m really happy my work has boosted the website. But my mind is made up.’ She paused. ‘I’ve accepted the position. It’s official now. The announcement will be made in an hour or so. But of course I wanted to give you both a heads-up first.’
‘Thank you,’ said Kriszta, not sounding thankful at all. ‘It’s a natural progression from your recent work, some might say,’ she continued, a thin smile on her face.
Eniko started to reply, to justify herself, then stopped. Kriszta was a talentless sycophant, like a party functionary of old, implementing the latest ideological reversal or advance, a loyal trooper in what was called the ‘Parrot Commando’, following orders from on high. There was no point arguing with her. The only aim now was to exit as smoothly and rapidly as possible. There would be enough time to ponder whether her new post was a darker or lighter shade of grey. Whether or not Reka’s words about serving her country at a time of crisis were sincere, somewhat to Eniko’s surprise, they had struck a chord. Either way, one thing was certain: her new job was on the other side.
Roland frowned, turned to Kriszta, ‘This is the second time today you have raised these concerns, Kriszta,’ he said sharply. ‘All Eniko’s copy passed through your desk before it was published. You are the news editor. If you didn’t like what she was filing, then why didn’t you do your job and edit it?’
Eniko watched, amazed at Roland’s unprecedented defence of her. Kriszta seemed equally shocked. ‘I… er, yes,’ she stuttered, turned to look at Eniko, even tried to smile again, ‘of course, you did amazing work. We are grateful. There will always be a place for you here, if you ever change your mind. And we are sorry to see you go. Very sorry.’
