District VIII

by Adam LeBor

  Feher almost laughed. Decent. It was anything but. Perhaps he could claim asylum at the British embassy. Throw himself on Celeste’s mercy, rest his head on her capacious breasts and tell her everything he knew. Which was, it was now clear, way too much. And how was he going to tell Dorka, gorgeous, blonde Dorka, with her soft skin and slim, nimble fingers, that they could never meet again? He glanced at the river. The water was almost blue, flowing fast, carpeted with tiny waves, their peaks rippling silver in the blazing sunshine. Across the river, on the Buda embankment, a crane was poised over a half-demolished building, its wrecking ball dangling over the roof. ‘I will. How much time have I got?’

  ‘We are reasonable people. Think about it over the weekend. Spend some quality time with your wife, your son, enjoy their company...’ He paused, the implication unsaid. ‘You have until nine o’clock on Monday morning.’

  Feher glanced at the stone lions on pedestals that guarded the entrance to the bridge. Feher had grown up nearby in a large riverside apartment, had seen the bridge most days, but was still captivated by its grace and beauty. Every Hungarian schoolboy knew its story. The suspension bridge was the first permanent link between the then separate cities of Buda and Pest. Its designer, a nineteenth-century Scottish engineer called Adam Clark, had also built Hammersmith Bridge. But the Chain Bridge was his masterpiece. Clark had fallen in love with a Hungarian and eventually died in Hungary. On the Buda side, Clark had also built an oval-shaped tunnel under Castle Hill. When Feher had been very young, his father had told him with a straight face that each night the bridge was dismantled and put away in the tunnel for safekeeping. Feher had almost believed him.

  An hour ago, when his life had still been whole, Feher had been sitting at his desk in the Ministry of Justice, pondering his conversation with Celeste Johnson, but nevertheless looking forward to the late summer weekend. He had planned to spend it with his wife and their six-year-old son at his newly acquired holiday apartment at Balatonfured, overlooking Lake Balaton itself. The flat was worth around 30 million forints, or a hundred thousand euros. He had bought it from the local municipality for less than half that, plus three Nokia boxes for the relevant local officials and politicians.

  Feher was in trouble, he knew, but he still had his job and his salary, a BMW saloon here and the Porsche garaged in Vienna, a duplex apartment in District V, and the bank accounts in Zurich and the Cayman Islands. He had encountered difficulties before. They were inevitable in the life he had chosen. It was impossible to have clean hands. But kez kezet mos, hand washes hand, as the saying went. What mattered were allies, one’s roof. He had the support of the minister. He would find a way through. Perhaps via the kis kapu, or, if not, with the help of more Nokia boxes. There was always a way, in Hungary.

  Then the call had come from reception, informing Feher that he had a visitor, waiting for him in the VIP entrance at the side of the ministry building. That was a signal: the visitor was authorised. Authorised and bad news, Feher immediately understood. The visitor was tall and loose-limbed, his head shaved so close it almost shone. He had deep-set blue eyes and wore a black T-shirt that showed his well-muscled physique, shiny black track pants with a white stripe down the side and wraparound mirrored sunglasses. He introduced himself as Antal. No surname. Another bad sign. Followed by two others: they did not shake hands and Feher still had not seen his eyes. Antal had led him along the embankment for a couple of blocks downriver from the Ministry of Justice, to the bench.

  ‘What happens if I agree?’ asked Feher. He wiped his forehead. The shadow from the nearby plane trees gave meagre shelter and the breeze, a slow, erratic gust of warm air, gave no relief. Across the river the wrecking ball began to swing.

  ‘Your family will be looked after. Your wife will receive your salary in an off-shore account. They will be safe. You have our word on that.’ Antal paused, dug around in his mouth with a wooden toothpick. ‘You pack a bag when you come to work on Monday. Toothbrush, soap, T-shirts, the essentials. Then you make the call. We will ensure you are comfortable. There will be family visits, even conjugal ones. You will be away for a while and we don’t want you to have to get divorced.’

  Feher looked to his right. A few yards from where they sat, rows of metal shoes were lined up by the river’s edge; men’s boots, women’s high heels and children’s sandals. Just over seventy years ago, in the winter of 1944, this had been a place of terror. The Arrow Cross, the Hungarian Nazis, had lined up Jews here, tied them together to save bullets, then shot them into the freezing water. The victims were forced to take off their shoes before they were killed. The footwear later fetched a good price on the wartime black market.

  Feher asked, ‘How long is a while?’

  Antal flicked the toothpick away. ‘Normally, not very long. A few months. Then you could come back to work. But the problem is, the Brits and the Americans are making a lot of noise. Facilitating terrorism, fake passports.’ He paused for a moment. ‘It’s very bad timing, your mistake.’

  I didn’t make a mistake, Feher wanted to shout. I just did what the minister told me to. Even as he formulated the thought, he realised its stupidity. His mistake had been to take the job in the ministry instead of the one at his father’s law firm. A memory flashed through his mind: he was six years old, and his father held him up to the lion’s mouth, told him to put his hand in. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t bite,’ his father had said, laughing. The lion’s mouth was empty. The sculptor had forgotten to include a tongue. In his shame, he had jumped into the Danube and drowned, the story went. Feher never knew if it was true or not. But at least he’d had enough sense to put an insurance policy in place in case of a day like this.

  Antal continued talking. ‘Especially now. You’ve seen the news, the terror attacks in London and Paris.’ Across the river, the wrecking ball smashed into the top of the building. The tiles shattered and the roof collapsed. ‘Unfortunately we will have to make an example of you.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘You’ll probably get ten years.’

  Feher’s stomach twisted. ‘ Ten?’

  Antal smiled. ‘Maybe eight. But you’ll be out in three or four.’

  Feher felt his eyes well up. He forced himself to control his emotions. ‘My job. My career?’

  ‘Ask your father. He might need a clerk.’

  Feher swallowed hard stared at the Danube. A plastic bag was caught in the current. It floated, drifted sideways, floated back, seemed to fight for a while, then suddenly disappeared, pulled under. ‘And if say no?’

  Antal stood up and walked over to the Holocaust memorial. He knelt down and ran his forefinger down one of the iron shoes. Feher tasted his lunch rising in his gut, felt the acid flush of pure fear. The shoe, he saw, was child-sized.

  SEVEN

  Balthazar’s flat, Dob Street, 6.05 p.m.

  The voice sounded distant at first: tinny, muffled, as though his ears were jammed with cotton wool. Fragments of words and disjointed sounds spilled back and forth, slowly coming nearer, morphing into fragments of sentences. A woman, speaking English, fluently, but with an accent. He turned on his back, half-opened his eyes. He sensed sudden movements on his left side – rapid, small gestures. The sounds stopped.

  Balthazar fully opened his eyes. Where was the talking woman? And where was he? On his back on a bed. There was a long, narrow, damp patch on the peeling ceiling in the shape of Austria. So he was at home, at least. He was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. He couldn’t remember getting undressed. Someone was asking how he was, could she bring him anything? Another female. This voice he knew very well and could immediately identify. One that set off several emotions at once. What was she doing here? The question had barely formed in his mind when several kinds of pain attacked. A sharp ache in his ribs when he breathed in and out. The dull throb of his shoulders and thighs, where the attackers’ blows had connected. The pulsing of the scraped skin on his knuckles. The sharper ache in his jaw. Most of all, th
e iron bar inside his head.

  He glanced to his left. She was sitting up next to him, crosslegged, a thin silver computer on her lap. There was no sound, but moving images flickered on the screen, sending coloured shapes across the room. The curtains were mostly drawn. His mouth felt like it had been sucked dry by a vacuum cleaner. He tried to sit up. Starbursts of pain erupted across his body, the iron bar jolted around his head again, and the room slid back and forth.

  A hand reached for his arm, rested there, fingers warm against his skin. ‘Tazi. Don’t. You need to rest.’

  He stayed sitting up, closed his eyes for a moment, wincing as the iron bar slid back into place. He opened his eyes and the room slowly steadied. ‘What time is it?’

  She put her laptop aside and picked up a pillow. ‘Sit forward.’ Balthazar did as she bade. She slid the pillow behind his back then looked at her watch. ‘Just after six o’clock. In the evening.’

  She reached for a bottle of mineral water, handed it to him. He thanked her, steadily drank without opening his mouth too wide, leaned back and touched his nose. Lightning shot through his face. The bone was bruised, the cartilage extremely tender, but at least it was not broken. A memory flashed through his mind:

  He is twelve years old, in the courtyard of the building on Jozsef Street, where he grew up. His first pair of boxing gloves feel heavy on his hands. His cousin, Rudi, two years older, heavier, faster, in front of him, relatives standing around him, his mother watching anxiously from the window.

  He tries to remember what his father has taught him: hands up, head tucked in, feet moving together, jab left to get your range, follow with a right cross, keep moving to the side, stay out of the line of attack. But Rudy is a whirlwind, fists flying, dancing around him. An explosion of pain in his nose, blood pouring out, anger displacing pain.

  Now he advances, arms pistoning forward, tight, controlled. Suddenly Rudi is reeling backwards, his lip split, his mouth bleeding. The two boys are circling each other when Balthazar’s father steps in, holds his son’s hand up, the relatives cheer.

  He glances up at the window on the third floor. She is watching, a flicker of a smile on her face, as she brushes her long, black hair from her face.

  Then the day flooded back to him: Republic Square, the missing dead man, the confrontation with the Gendarmes, his meeting with Sandor Takacs, the food for the African family; most of all, the fight.

  He looked at her. ‘How long was I asleep?’

  ‘More than three hours.’

  ‘You have been here all this time?’

  She nodded, a half-smile flickering uncertainly on her face. ‘Someone had to keep an eye on you.’

  Now he remembered. The football-playing boys and Samuel helping to carry him into the MigSzol office. A female doctor examining him, shining a light into his eyes. Pupils that took a while to dilate properly, but did, eventually. Two words: ‘mild concussion.’ His right hand checking his pockets when he came round: telephone, wallet, the edge of the SIM card in his ticket pocket. Everything still in its place. Whatever this was, it was not a robbery. He sank back onto his pillow, trying to process everything that had happened. He glanced at Eniko, her hair loose and falling around her face in the soft light, sitting on what used to be her side of the bed.

  Balthazar asked, ‘What have you been doing all that time?’

  Eniko glanced to her left for a second before she answered. ‘Working.’

  ‘On what?’

  She looked down at her computer screen, still flickering. ‘The usual. Keleti. Migration.’

  Balthazar knew that look, the sudden reluctance to make eye contact. He touched his jaw, the pain driving away his suspicion as he remembered the blow. A left hook, hard and fast enough to take him down, but not enough to break his jaw. He’d seen it coming, dodged some of the punch, but not all. He opened his mouth wide now, fresh pain shooting around his head, closed it slowly. Bruised, sore, very sore, definitely, but no bones rattled and everything worked. He gingerly ran his finger along his teeth, top and bottom. None were loose. The punch was well-judged, he understood. It could have been much harder, in which case he would be in hospital, unable to speak or chew, his jaw held together with wire.

  Balthazar glanced at her screen, which was moving again. ‘What are you watching?’

  Eniko’s fingers moved across the keyboard. ‘You, at Keleti.’

  Once he was down and out they could have done some serious damage, he knew. A stomp kick or two to the head would have put him in a coma, might even have killed him. But once he was on the floor the attackers had all fled. There were gradations of beatings. Despite the pain, his headache and the bruising, this ranked low to moderate, with no serious damage. He would be sore and stiff for several days but it would fade. But the beating came with a message: we can do this, and much worse. So away.

  He glanced at Eniko. Her appraising look was shot through with a kind of admiration. ‘You lasted quite a while, considering how outnumbered you were. And you went down fighting.’

  ‘Thanks. You can get into Keleti’s CCTV?’

  She laughed. ‘Probably. But I don’t need to. It’s all on YouTube. You are famous,’ she said, as she passed him the laptop. ‘One of the migrants must have filmed it and uploaded it.’

  He watched the footage. It was blurred and shaky, but still managed to capture the fight. He watched himself breaking out, surrounded, his arms and legs flailing before he was engulfed again. She was right. Considering the odds, he had defended himself well. He imagined showing the clip to his father, until he remembered that his father refused to acknowledge his oldest son’s existence. For a moment he was back inside the mêlée, could still smell that rank stink, of sweat and sour milk. He watched the footage again, froze the screen about halfway through the film. A man’s face, laughing. This time he was not wearing a ski mask. It was easy to see the knife scar under his right eye.

  Balthazar handed the laptop back to Eniko, turned sideways, swung his legs over the bed, exhaled hard.

  Eniko put her computer aside, looked alarmed. ‘Tazi. What are you doing? Tell me what you want. I’ll bring it. The doctor said you have to rest.’

  He smiled. ‘Doctors say all sorts of things.’

  Eniko pulled a face. He crouched down, picked up a pair of grey jogging pants, and carefully inserted one leg, then the other. The walls wobbled and a wave of nausea hit him. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The room stabilised and he slowly walked into the tiny galley kitchen. He needed to clear his head, think for a moment. Without Eniko distracting him. He glanced down into the sink, took out a plate and a cup, turned on the cold tap, let it run for several seconds, then stuck his head under the water.

  Balthazar lived in a two-bedroom flat on Dob Street, in the heart of the city’s old Jewish quarter in District VII, overlooking Klauzal Square. The main bedroom was his, and a narrow space, once the maid’s accommodation, had a single bed for the rare occasions when Sarah allowed Alex to stay overnight. The walls and window were still the same faded white as when he moved in. The parquet floor was dulled and loose in places. The kitchen and bathroom pre-dated the change of system in 1990. The heavy, dark wooden sofa and chairs pre-dated the Second World War. The only furniture he had added were the shelves that covered one wall and were filled with books.

  He shivered as the blast of icy water woke him. The landline rang. There were three handsets: in the bedroom, the kitchen and a third in the lounge. Only two people he knew used the landline: his brother, Gaspar, and Sandor Takacs. He took the call. ‘Is she looking after you, , my older

  brother?’ asked a gravelly voice. There was no point asking Gaspar how he knew. Gaspar’s network of informants and contacts ranged far and wide across District VIII and its environs. It certainly included Keleti Station.

  Balthazar picked up a crumpled tea towel and sniffed it. It smelled stale but would do for now. He rubbed his hair as he spoke. ‘Yes, she is, ocsim, my little brother.’


  ‘Not as well as my girls would. That one is too skinny. And too smart for you. Are you back together now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then let me send Judit over, I know she likes you...’

  Balthazar laughed, interrupted Gaspar. ‘No and no thanks.’

  ‘But you are coming over later? Or shall I send someone to get you?’

  ‘Yes, I am. No need to send anyone, ocsim. I’il see you later. Let me get myself together.’

  Gaspar hung up. Balthazar tried to straighten out the torrent of thoughts running through his head. The first priority was to divide the emotional from the practical. The sight of Eniko was stirring up a surprising amount of feelings he thought were at least buried, even if they had not dissipated. Reading about her date with Tamas Nemeth was one thing. Waking up to find Eniko sitting on his bed on a late summer afternoon was quite another. Balthazar had retreated into himself after the break-up with Sarah. The divorce had been surprisingly swift and hassle-free, at least on the legal side. She had moved out and moved in with Amanda. They had sold their flat and split the proceeds. He had used his share to put a deposit on the Dob Street apartment. Balthazar paid her 70,000 forints a month for Alex, a quarter of his take-home salary. Her salary from Central European University was three times his policeman’s pay. He had offered more but Sarah was not interested in his money. But she was very interested in micro-managing his relationship with his son. Nonetheless, Alex knew his father loved him and even if he could not see him every day, they spoke and texted all the time.

  But the break-up had also hit Balthazar hard on other levels. No man likes being left by his wife – but it’s a double blow when she leaves him for a woman. What had he done wrong that his wife no longer wanted to sleep, not just with him, but with any man? Balthazar knew he was attractive to women. His dark good looks, muscled torso and ability to handle himself were combined with a sharp and perceptive intelligence. Once the word was out that he was single again the invitations to lunch, coffee and art exhibitions started coming in, several from single friends of Sarah. He said no to all of them, at least at first. The split had battered his sexual confidence. After several months of celibacy he had had a couple of brief flings, but there had been nobody with relationship potential until Eniko had come along. Slowly, he began to trust her, to open up. After a couple of weeks there was an extra toothbrush in the bathroom, women’s underwear next to his, floral smells, a kitchen where meals were produced. It felt right.