Triptych (13 page)

Beside me, Gustav is gesturing to another form in the panel. “That boat though is a puzzle. The prow is up out of the water.”

We are standing so close I am aware of the sinewy muscle in his upper arm. The sensation is not unpleasant, but the notion of being attracted to another man so soon scares me. I inch sideways a little.

“It's tipped from the weight of an invisible man sitting on the floor in back,” I say. It's Gustav's turn to look bewildered. In spite of myself, I have to smile. “He's tailing the princess because he's in love with her, hopes to solve a riddle, save her from an evil spell.”

I blink. Blink again. Maybe not so invisible!

Earlier, my focus had been on the fair-haired princess. Now the vessel has my attention. At the boat's center, the rowing prince faces the back of the boat which is low, nearly taking on water. The prince's feet are thrust out, wedged into the darkness of the boat's interior, as if he's pressing into it to give him more thrust. Off the tip of his shoes I now see blush-colored threads, identical to the princess pink my mother used for a flower in the embroidered linen piece I'd designed as a child. Deliberate? Another hurried mistake?

Gustav leans forward, closing the gap I had created between us. I feel his weight against my bare shoulder. I step aside once again.

Gustav turns. “What's wrong?”

What's wrong?
The stranger beside me knows more about my mother's triptych than I do.

My finger taps the glass over the gray rectangle, the speck of brown, and the blotch of pale pink thread. “Nothing's wrong.” I reply. “I'd planned to unstitch these. I suspect they're mistakes. She was in a hurry, didn't have time to fix them.”

“You'd unstitch your mother's handiwork?”

I look up, expecting judgment, but his eyes are kind. “It's what I do.”

“Reinvent another person's creation?”

I curse my karma with men. A sharp retort is on the tip of my tongue when, behind us, the doorbells jingle. Finally, Zsófi. A brown paper bag rests in the crook of one arm. She doesn't immediately see Gustav. She concentrates on closing the door with her free hand, stepping back so her full skirt won't get caught as it shuts.

Zsófi is fifty. Her once-auburn hair has faded to apricot, pulled into a knot at the nape of her neck. Wiry bangs and loose strands frame her face. As she turns, her eyebrows shoot up, then waggle playfully.

“Gustav.” She beams, fine lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes. “Ahh, you have come for your special order? Sorry, but it is not yet arrived.”

Zsófi sets the bag on the counter, then shoves the bridge of her new horn-rimmed glasses so they sit properly on her nose. The collection of thin silver bracelets at her wrist rattles. Gustav returns to the other side of the counter.

“Mr. Szigeti has brought something for Mariska,” I say. “Look.”

“
Szép
, lovely!” Zsófi exclaims. “Mariska will soon be ready for her lunch. I'll take it up. It is like a magazine advertisement. Have you preserved this in photograph, Gustav?” Turning to me: “Gustav is famous photographer, did you know?”

I shake my head. “No, we just met.”

Across from me, Gustav's face has turned pink, a shade not unlike the threads at the back of the boat. “Not famous, please, Zsófi. I am the neighborhood portrait photographer. Passports, babies…”

Zsófi wags her head side to side, her drop earrings swinging decisively. “He is shy. Gustav's work, it has appeared in big magazines. He photographs beautiful models, has gallery shows, wins many awards. He is also a preservationist. Many years now, he is taking photographs of Chicago neighborhoods. The changing people, changing architecture. To make a book.” She nods to the art book section. “We will carry copies.”

Smiling broadly, Zsófi walks away, pauses, looks back. “Maybe you will want to turn your lens on another landmark …our Ildikó?”

Gustav salutes her good naturedly, then squares his fingers to make a frame, looks through it, points it at me.

“I have an appointment. Maybe we could have coffee sometime?” He looks up at the churning ceiling fan. “
Iced
coffee?”

“Sorry.” And, surprising myself, recent breakup be damned, I meant it. “I'm needed here.”

Zsófi is standing near the doorway to the stairs leading to the upstairs flat. “Not every hour. You have been with us three days and you have not left this building. You work too much. A few hours someplace special is deserved.” She looks pointedly in Gustav's direction. “What about the Art Institute? There is that textile exhibit. Ildikó is a needlework artisan. The beauty of the art would do much to refresh her spirit. Maybe that is good reason for taking time off…Gustav?” she says with an expectant smile.

I had no idea Zsófi could be so assertive. From the determined look on her face, I'd wager she would let the Jell-O heart melt before she'd leave without getting the answer she wants.

Chapter Nine

After lunch, Zsófi sends me on an errand. She's learned from Mrs. Bankuti that Eva has come home to work on the statues at St. Elizabeth's, part of the restoration work going on there. Zsófi would like Eva to join us for dinner, thinks it will help to cheer Mariska.

I am cheered at the prospect as well. It has been a while since I've seen Eva. We first met in 1966, the year after my mother died. She had dropped by
Duna Utca
while I was also in the store following up on my mother's last trip into Chicago. I had been wrapped up in where my mother actually went that fateful morning, and it was only later that I would learn more about Eva and how she had come to live with the Bankutis.

Mariska and
Zsófi always thought the match between
Eva and their beloved neighbors
was the result of some sort of divine intervention. Eva's parents had died in the '56 revolution. Afterwards, she was taken in by family friends. Eventually, Eva with her adopted family, escaped to Toronto. When Eva was in her teens she visited the
Bankutis, also acquaintances of her deceased parents
. That snowballed into more visits. Finally, as Auntie Mariska told it, “Magda
—
well, you know how loving and generous she is
—
she and György recognized right away Eva, she has talent. They think of our Art Institute.” The
Bankutis
invited Eva to live with them, then generously footed her tuition through the Institute's art school.

Eva is four years older than me, and while I was graduating from high school, she was completing her degree at the Art Institute. An apprenticeship in Italy followed and she stayed on in Pietrasanta for the next fifteen years, returning to the States periodically to visit
the Bankutis.

During the summers when she was home and I was working at Duna Utca, we'd get together now and then, go out to dinner, maybe see a movie. Most recently, our paths crossed a few years ago when Eva accepted a job offer with a large Chicago-based company specializing in church renovation and design. I had attended the party the Bankutis threw to celebrate her homecoming. Not that she is actually in Chicago much. Eva's skills as a restoration artist are in high demand all across the country.

It is only three blocks to St. Elizabeth's, but by the time I reach the grand veranda which runs the entire width of the church, my aerated top is damp, pasted to my back and underarms. Above me, spires and the tall steeple of the Gothic cathedral soar heavenward. Discreetly, I wag the hem of my shirt to cool myself as I go up the steps and through the wide wooden doors.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light. I am in the vestiblue at the back. Before me, the doors to the majestic nave are propped open, allowing a panoramic view of the ornately carved, white Italian marble altar. I was raised a Lutheran and in my adult years I have not practiced any religion, but I have attended Mass with Mariska and Zsófi at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church several times. And each time, the grandeur of this holy sanctuary and its Gothic design impresses me anew.

Evidence of the renovation is everywhere. Sections of scaffolding have been erected throughout and many of the wooden pews are covered with drop cloths. I pan the nave, seeing an abundance of statues, but no sign of Eva or anybody else. Where are the workers? Ahh, it's the tail end of the lunch hour. Fumes from paint and varnish permeate the air, and it's my guess the craftsmen found a place to escape them.

Soaring, pointed arches pull my attention to the vaulted ceiling. Glorious plaster reliefs, embellished with gold leaf flourishes, are striking against a backdrop of deep blue, the shade so familiar that for an instant it as if I am looking into Vaclav's eyes. His announcement—
Manka, she is with baby
—loops through my brain for the millionth time since our final rendezvous. I feel a pain so sharp in my chest that my hand leaps to cover it.

Lovemaking without emotional entanglement. I'd had no other expectations from Vaclav. I am not in love with him. Yet I had come to love his company, had looked forward to our scavangings. Is that it? What's behind this fierce pain? I'm lonely, afraid to admit I'd like someone besides Edmundo to come home to? Constancy? True love?

Approaching footsteps. I wrest my gaze from the dome. It's not Eva I see, but Tibor. Tibor Varga.

He recognizes me in the same instant. “Il-di-ko!” he booms. Tibor's voice is deep, melodic. He draws my name out, emphasizing the syllables as if he is singing it.

“Tiiiiiii-boooooorrrrr, hulllllooooo.” My own tune echoes flatly through the cavernous interior.

He smiles, displaying prominent, capped front teeth, snowy-white against a dark, careworn complexion. Tibor is the janitor at St. Elizabeth's. He wears his usual short-sleeve white cotton shirt, pen protruding from the pocket, and dark slacks—clothing more befitting the mechanical engineer he was training to become at the Technical University in Budapest before the uprising. His straight posture and deliberate steps also suggest the student he once was, although now he is fifty-two.

We hug, then separate. I can't remember when I last saw Tibor, but it's been months.

Tibor, his hands on my shoulders, holds me at arms' length, studying me. “
Gyönyörű
, beautiful,” he says. The smile fades and the expression lines around his mouth and eyes go slack.

There can be no mistaking the horrors Tibor has seen and known. It is in his eyes. Eyes so sad, you want to look away. But I stare deep.“
Gyönyörű
.”

Tibor's hands drop from my shoulders. I glimpse gnarled fingertips.

“And how is Mariska?” he asks.

I recap what I'd told Gustav earlier. Everything I say is positive, yet Tibor looks skeptical, but then he always does. His hairline is receding, and he has a high forehead accented with dark brows, inverted Vs fixed in a quizzical expression.

“She's fine,” I repeat.

“Good. It is good to know. I have been worried.”

Tibor and Mariska have known one another for a long time. Before the Soviets took control, his family and Mariska had attended the same church in Budapest. My parents helped to reunite them in 1957 after Tibor, or Tibi then, had come to our parsonage with the disturbing news of Kati's disappearance. It was years before I would learn Tibor had not also been a freedom fighter like I'd thought. A student, he had participated in revolutionary debates at the university and he was already interned at the camp before the fighting began. He had been lucky. In the final days of the revolution, dissidents storming the labor camp released him, and he escaped Hungary shortly afterward.

The day after his arrival, we had driven Tibor to
Duna Utca
in the city. Among Mariska's many bookstore
customers was a Hungarian-American who owned a small tool and manufacturing company on the West side. Mariska invited Tibor to stay with her and Zsófi until introductions were made and the factory owner had hired him.

“I've come to talk with Eva. Is she around?”

“At lunch now. But she…all of them…will be back soon.”

No sooner have the words left his mouth than a side door clatters open, followed by a cacophony of voices. Eva is the only woman in the crew. The men, dressed in jeans and white t-shirts with diPietro Studios in black lettering across the front, disperse to their various work stations. Tibor and I are still standing in the aisle near the Baptismal font. Eva sees us. She looks momentarily startled, then the corners of her mouth curl. “Ildikó.” She strides in our direction.

I smile. “Hello Eva. You look wonderful.”

It's true. She looks much younger than her forty-one years. Her jet black hair is cut in a sleek bob with thick bangs and is streaked with burgundy. Dark eye shadow and bold slashes of liner set off her ebony brown eyes. Very dramatic. To her jeans (acid-washed with frayed openings at the knees) and company t-shirt like the men's, she's added a wide, black-mesh metallic belt, worn low over the hips.

“Margit's iron girdle?” Tibor stares at the belt, suppressing a grin.

Eva laughs. I'm lost. Then I remember. In attending church with Zsófi and Mariska, I learned some of the eccentric back-stories of the Hungarian saints. In the thirteenth century, at the height of the Mongol onslaught on Hungary, King Béla IV's wife was pregnant. She made a vow to offer the child still in her womb (Margit) to God's service, if
only Hungary were saved from extinction. Hungary prevailed, and when she was twelve, Margit joined the Dominican Order. Later, rejecting two royal suitors, Margit pledged a solemn vow and embarked upon an arduous life of contemplation and penance, mortifying her flesh to atone for the sins of others, subjecting herself to frequent whippings and wearing shoes spiked with nails as well as an iron girdle around her waist.

Tibor excuses himself. Eva is anxious to get back to work. She nods to the showpiece baptismal font, made entirely of white plaster.

“It's the original, from 1910. Three coats of paint since. Whites and beige. I'm taking it back to the pure plaster and I'm on deadline to complete the stripping this week. It's slower going than I expected.”

She picks up the work gloves lying at the font's base. The base, about five feet square with three narrow stepped-back risers, supports an immense octagonal basin. A two-foot high statue of the figures of St. John the Baptist baptizing Jesus rises from the basin's carved plaster lid.

Straightening up, Eva notices where I am staring. Her voice is soft, an eerie undertone in the vast space. “Even Christ sought atonement.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Eva shrugs, slipping on the gloves. “I just find it assuring to think that even the sinless man, the Son of God, believed He needed redemption.”

“Redemption? But wasn't He doing it simply to lead the way?”

Eva does not reply. Wood, steel and plastic precision tools, like dentist's instruments, lay in orderly fashion on a ledge along the base. She sits and removes a fine steel wool pad from a plastic tub. Sunlight seeping through stained glass casts jewel-toned blotches of ruby, sapphire, and emerald on a section near her foot, transforming her paint-splotched sneakers into dazzling art. Vaclav's shoe memorial to Jan Palach, the dissident Prague martyr, flashes to mind. I turn to the source of the light show.

Nine Hungarian saints are depicted in the patterned windows. It is Margit's backlit figure which casts the rich array of colors.

A discarded crown, symbol of her renouncement of noble birth, rests at Margit's feet; in her hand, the cross of her chosen vocation. Her other hand clutches a calla lily—symbol of innocence, my mother's wedding flower. Margit's pledge to a life of willing self-punishment and deprivation…

Floggings? Self-mutilation? To atone for the sins of others? It does not compute
.
A loving God would expect such extreme sacrifice? A nun's raw bleeding flesh could somehow move God to forgive my mother's killer? Disgusted, I turn back.

An elegant carved-leaf detail circles the basin's lip and rows of leaves spill down at intervals around the circumference of the base. Eva has unscrewed the lid from a can, releasing a pungent, turpentine smell. I watch her dip the pad into the pasty substance and begin lightly scouring a flat unadorned area on the side of the basin.

“Zsófi asked me to invite you to dinner tonight,” I say to the accompaniment of the steady, muted scuffing noise.

The pad pauses. Eva asks about Mariska. I give her the news.

“I have a date tonight—” A dramatic eye roll, a sideways nod to the font. “—with this. It would have been wonderful to see her. Zsófi too. And of course spend time with you.” She smiles. “How long has it been?”

“The two of us?” I think for a moment. “Got it. The concert. August twenty-fifth—”

“Nineteen sixty-eight.” Eva puts down the pad, selects a tool like a fine ice pick device. “Lincoln Park.”

The date, a Sunday, was the start of the turbulent Democratic National Convention week. Plans for organized anti-Vietnam war protests during the convention had been in place for months. Eva and I were against the war, of course, and when we heard about a rally in Lincoln Park where MC-5 and other local bands would be playing, we headed over there.

Late that night, in the park, as the mass of people continued to expand, more bands turned up. Eva and I, early arrivals, managed to get close enough to the stage to catch the occasional glimpse of the musicians. As the night wore on, we'd also gotten squeezed in tighter and tighter until finally we were like sardines fin to fin in a can. Hungry. Danced out. Weary from being jounced every which way on the whim of those packed around us. Tired of getting our toes smashed, of nearly losing our tube tops, our hearing all but gone, our throats and lungs sore from breathing air thick with smoke and from singing, Eva and I had decided to call it a night.

We began shoving and elbowing our way through the maze of bodies. Progress nearly impossible, finally, Eva, eyes wild, the stress in her voice obvious, shouted, “We need to find a way out NOW!”

At the start of the evening, Eva had said she wasn't one for tight crowds. Still, she hadn't shown any signs of being bothered until then. Reading the panic in her eyes, I hurriedly panned the mass surrounding us for an opening. In that moment, the lyrics being sung on the stage penetrated.

“Eva, listen,” I said, nodding my head in the direction of the band's Jimi Hendrix imitator, belting out “All Along the Watchtower.” Leaning into her, I shout-sang, “Got to get out of here…too much confusion…puh-leez, some relief.”

Realizing the irony, she laughed at my play on words, her expression visibly relaxing, and I laughed with her as we continued inching along.

At the start of the evening, a strong uniformed presence had been evident, mainly on the edge of the gathering. Nearing the perimeter, I froze at hearing Eva's strained whisper. “Look!”