The O. Henry Prize Stories 2011 (11 page)

He’d seen exhausted doctors trying to save patients from a
burning hospital, carrying them into the snow only to realize they had nothing—a blanket, a sheet, even a shirt—to keep them from freezing. He’d come across the most beautiful girl, eighteen or nineteen, in one of the ruined homes filled with those too wounded to go on, staring up, whispering from the mass of bodies, injured, starving, gripped by typhus, and as he leaned in to hear what she wanted to say—“Shoot me, please shoot me”—he noticed both her legs had been torn away.

And all that time László had been tormented by Tíbor Kálmán’s villa—it was like the place was imagining him rather than the other way around—it sometimes appeared in place of what he was running from, and László had to stop himself from leaping into a burning apartment, a metro tunnel, or a garden under shelling, thinking: this is it, finally, I’ve made it.

After a while, László began to feel protected by the villa, as if the new life it promised was his true life, and the one he was living now only an alias, false, as if there was no one really inside, and that anything that happened was therefore not really happening to him. This is what helped László survive when he was press-ganged, along with a number of other boys and young men fleeing west, into the Vannay Battalion, and ended up doing the very thing he’d hoped to avoid: fighting for the Nazis. He would have liked to remember when it happened, but there were no dates then, the end of December, the beginning of January, sometime during those hundred days of a siege that never did end for him, being hauled out of the cellar where he was hiding by Vannay’s men, him and the rest, given a gun and told what the Russians looked like, and from there the black minutes, schoolboy comrades falling around him, Vannay making radio announcements to the Soviets that they would take no prisoners, and the Soviets responding to this as Vannay had hoped, likewise killing every one of them they captured, which Vannay was only too pleased to tell László and the others, knowing it would make them fight with that much more desperation. And then the breakout attempt of
February through Russian lines, German and Hungarian soldiers cut down in the streets as they tried to escape the gutted capital to make it to the forests and then west to where the rest of Hitler’s armies were stationed, running headlong into rockets, tank fire, snipers stationed in buildings along the routes the Soviets knew they would take, drowning in sewers where the water level rose with each body that climbed down the ladder until it was up to their noses, pitch-black, screaming panic. So few of them made it. Three percent, the historians would say. And the rest, the thousands, killed along Széna Square and Lövöház Street and Széll Kálmán Square, piled into doorways, ground up by tanks, swearing, pleading, sobbing, unable to fire off even the last bullet they’d saved for themselves.

But László was not there. He’d gone over to the other side by then, turning on the boys he was fighting with, aged sixteen and seventeen, shooting them dead as they stared at him dumbstruck, and then saw, over his shoulder, the approaching Russians. He thought he saw a last glimmer of envy in the boys’ eyes, regret at not having thought of it first, before what light there was forever went out, and László turned, feeling something fade inside him as well, his voice cracking at the edges, soft and unwavering as radio silence. “Death to the fascists,” he shouted, and was rewarded with bits of red ribbon the Russians tied around his arm, and a hat they placed on his head, before sending him back into battle.

It was László’s decoration as a “war hero” by the Soviets that finally brought him to Tíbor Kálmán’s villa late in 1945, to the place where it seemed all his misfortune and redemption were concentrated, where he might be absolved of his guilt for having claimed the place someone better—anyone at all—might have taken, someone worthy of survival, like that legless girl in the makeshift infirmary, for he had done what she asked that day, scrounging among the soldiers crammed wounded or dying or dead into that corridor, found a revolver, and embraced her with one arm
while with the other pressed the barrel to her temple. If only he’d gotten to the villa in time, he told himself. If only he’d chosen the one other option he had: death. He knew now it was preferable to what he’d done to save himself, though it was too late by then, betrayal had become László’s vocation, and the woman who met him that November day in the doorway of the villa sensed it, with the tired look of someone who has outlasted her interest in life and can’t understand why she’s being provoked by those who insist on living. She introduced herself as Tíbor’s daughter-in-law, Karola, wary enough of László and his uniform to give only the answer he wanted and not a drop more, keeping her voice to a perfect monotone, without a single nuance he might have fastened onto had he been seeking something other than forgiveness.

“I wish I could help you,” she said. “But Tíbor is dead.”

László stood there with his military decorations and wondered why he’d come, given that the war was over, and with it his reason for seeking out Tíbor. “He’s dead,” Karola said again. “He was dead when we returned here from Budapest.” And she pointed at the hole left by the bomb in the roof above the dining room, covered with a number of tarps inexpertly sewn together. She told him the story in a manner so offhand it was clear she was still in shock: Tíbor Kálmán had lost both hands when a Russian shell landed on the villa. He’d raised his arms to protect his wife, Ildikó, from the collapse of the ceiling, and a beautiful chandelier of Murano glass sheared off both hands at the wrist, though it hardly mattered to Tíbor by then because both he and Ildikó were dead, crushed by the weight of plaster, bricks, and several tons of antique furniture they’d stored in the attic overhead. Karola stood for a moment, as if waiting for László to respond, and when he didn’t she said, “Anyhow,” and he could see the effort it was costing her to repress a sneer as she scanned the medals on his chest, “you don’t seem to be doing too badly.”

There was something else, something other than scorn, in the
way she said this, a quiet acknowledgment of what he’d come for, and at the same time, a dismissal of the explanation he wanted so badly to make. “Vannay sent out radio messages to the Soviets,” he whispered, and immediately regretted it, as if even now, in attempting to make amends, he was still looking out for himself. “They weren’t taking any prisoners. I had to make them a sign of good faith,” he said. “I was only eighteen!”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, and he noticed that even while talking to him she was gazing elsewhere—at the orchard, the flight of birds, a fence fallen to its side—unable to keep her eyes on anything for long.

“I killed two boys,” he said. “I wanted to show that I had switched sides …”

“I don’t know anything about what you’re saying.”

“You do!” he shouted. “I was supposed to have come here. Tíbor was waiting for me, for boys like me. And I couldn’t get across the Russian lines!”

She shrugged. “We couldn’t make it either. We were trapped inside Budapest. There were many people who suffered.”

“I was part of Vannay’s battalion. It was during the breakout. And when I saw the Russians coming I killed two of the boys I was fighting with.” He was shaking. He no longer had any control over what he was saying.

“Then you are not welcome in my house,” said Karola, and for the first time since she’d opened the door, László felt her gaze rest on him, and he realized, too, that she’d been looking away not because she was disinterested in him, but because her eyes had seen too much, absorbed too much, images impossible for her to contain, which made her look elsewhere for fear of passing them on. He felt ashamed then for not being able to do what she did, keep it to himself, or expend it by shifting his gaze to where it would do no harm—the air, the fields, the sky.

“Then you do not deserve to come in here,” she hissed, and slammed the door in his face.

…

And so began László’s persecution of Tíbor Kálmán’s family, using every opportunity his status in the party gave him—making false claims, denying them meaningful jobs, padding the files on Karola, her husband Boldizsár, their children István, Adél, Anikó, citing their attendance at mass, their political support for the Smallholders Party in the elections of 1945, their open criticism of the Soviet occupation and its control of the police, factories, transit system, everything. But at the time there were so many people like this the Soviets couldn’t make them disappear fast enough. It wasn’t until he saw what was happening to the members of the resistance, old trade union leaders, those who’d been outspoken communists prior to the arrival of the Red Army—who had paved the way for it but made the mistake of expecting Marxism in its wake—only when all of them were being arrested, sentenced in show trials, and murdered did László realize that the most dangerous thing of all, the most grievous of crimes, next to being a Nazi, was to have actively fought against Hitler in the name of communism. These men and women had had the courage to oppose the state, been brave enough to think for themselves, even at the cost of their lives. And it was because of this, exactly this, that the Soviets got rid of them. They were not the kind of citizens the Kremlin wanted, any more than Hitler had wanted them. Picking off the most loyal had the added benefit of amplifying the fear, of making everyone feel equally vulnerable, because if loyalties didn’t matter, if the liquidation of men and women appeared random, then survival had nothing to do with you and everything to do with grace, which arrived from the state, as mysterious and medieval as the favor of God.

László filed report after report to the Allied Control Commission, which was controlled by the Soviets, about the activities of Tíbor Kálmán and his family during the war: how they’d sheltered political refugees from Germany, how they’d helped young men escape being drafted by a government they despised, how they’d
drawn up false papers for all of these. “Conscientious objectors,” he called them, and it was this, finally, that elevated the Kálmáns above the common stream of citizens complaining about the occupation. It wore the family down—visits by police, seizure of property, arrests and brief imprisonments that were hints, preludes, to the sentences yet to come—and then, in a final blow, László managed to get them evicted from the villa, and to have himself, the war hero, the decorated veteran, the loyal subject of the party, installed in their place.

That was late in 1946, the letter from the state informing the Kálmáns that their villa was being “reallocated” to “a more suitable candidate.” In return, they would be given a cowshed in Csepel. The shed had held three cows and could easily fit six people, which meant that only one member of the family would have to sleep outside. And so the family finally left, driven beyond exasperation, beyond fear, beyond even the love of their country. Rumor was they escaped to the west, following their eldest son, who’d left the country six months earlier. In many ways, László was happy to have been part of their forced removal, and he was delighted to think of what it must be like for them out there, wherever they’d gone—not speaking the language, not making any money, not having their degrees and expertise recognized. At night, when he couldn’t sleep, it was helpful to know that in some way they were suffering at least a fraction of what he’d suffered during the siege, at a time when he should have been with them, in Tíbor’s care, being given a new identity and a new life.

But in the end, he had to admit, it was not the Kálmáns he’d been after, not really. It was the villa, the freedom to walk inside, to feel its mass around him.

He never forgot his first time crossing the threshold. There was the falling plaster, the bullet holes still in the walls, the water damage along the ceiling, the bits of furniture and possessions the family had left behind. There was the room where Tíbor Kálmán had died, its door nailed shut, the debris still inside as it had been
when the family returned from the siege. But more than this was the feeling László had, walking down the hall, entering the rooms, that he was not yet inside, that he was still searching for a point of entry. “Another step and I will be there,” he told himself, speaking into the emptiness of the home. And with the next movement, he said it again, “Another step and I will be inside.” Eventually, he would exit the villa, stand in the courtyard bewildered, then cross the threshold again, hoping this time to get it right, haunted by how he’d dreamed of the place, hoped for it, imagined being safe inside these rooms, when in reality he was facing bullets and starvation and disease in Budapest. And killing people.

At night, unable to sleep, he would shake off nightmares of the siege by fixing up the place—the water damage, the rotten studs and joists, the plastering, the paint, the careful work of reconstructing the villa—as if by restoring the building to what it was it might finally open up to him, truly open, and he’d step inside to the life he should have had.

After the third week, he ripped off the boards covering the door to the room where Tíbor died, and a day or two later, steeling himself, went inside, staring at the mounds of rubble, the debris strewn along the floor. The Kálmán family had already exhumed and buried the bodies, touching the rubble only as much as was needed to pull it apart. After that, the family kept the door nailed shut, László had thought, because they couldn’t bear to face the site where Tíbor and Ildikó died, but as he began to clear away the rubble, he discovered why they’d really left it as it was, for once the bricks and plaster and shattered beams and bits of glass were swept aside, he found the hole in the floor where Tíbor had kept his workshop, and inside, the stacks of messages he’d received during the war from the resistance, from places as far away as Cologne, and the equipment he’d used to forge identities, along with the lists of names and addresses under which Tíbor had hidden the refugees. László would use these lists to keep himself useful to the state, exposing identities one by one whenever he felt
the pressure to demonstrate his loyalty. In return, they let him keep the villa. The villa with its printing press, the one they knew nothing about, his escape.