Triptych (27 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

Mariska's shawl wrapped snug around my shoulders, I leave Gustav at the hotel entrance. The shawl is made of the thinnest of silks, but the sun at its zenith beats down on the black fabric and bakes my skin.

I wrap the triangular cloth around my hips, tying the ends on one side. No sooner is the knot secured than I have the sensation of eyes boring into the back of my neck. Were I some heroine in a Hollywood spy thriller, I might release the knot, pull the shawl over my head, and duck into an alleyway, giving my tail the slip, but this was no Tinseltown movie.

Stepping off the pedestrian path, I look casually around as if awaiting the arrival of a friend. I observe a number of men in suits, many wearing hats, strolling or otherwise idly passing the time. Bingo. There he is. My personal KGB detail, leaning against a tree, reading a folded newspaper, the brim of his hat casting his face in shadow. He has changed his suit, today's is gray, but his slight height and build are familiar.

I am unaware of the tour guide, umbrella aloft, walking backwards aiming straight for me. She is oblivious as well, until the collision.

“Oh my dear, so sorry,” she gushes in a refined British accent, spinning to face me. “Leading my ducklings. Wasn't looking.”

She is referring to the nearby small knot of elderly ladies and gents properly clad in khaki and white attire. They patiently wait, hints of pale-skin and white hair peering out from under an array of floppy hats.

“No damages, no worries,” I say.

Her attention has shifted to a couple lagging behind. They stand sideways to us, facing the river. The man, skinny and knob-kneed in Bermudas and high black socks, holds a long-lensed camera poised to take a shot. The head and shoulders of his companion, a woman in a loose linen shift and Oxford walking shoes, are concealed by a frilly white umbrella, sheltering her from the sun.

The guide beckons to the strays, and I glance back at my mark beneath the tree. Still absorbed in his newspaper.

Gyöngyi is waiting on the Danube steps. She is dressed in work clothes, a mint green skirt and matching short sleeve jacket worn over a white shell. Next to her, a string bag holds paper wrapped parcels. From behind her aviator sunglasses, she watches a passing boat. A warm gentle breeze off the river catches wisps of frizzed blonde tendrils.

“Ildikó, hi,” she says, smiling and transferring the bag across her lap to the opposite side. She pats the now empty space beside her. “Come, sit.”

I slip my hands beneath Mariska's shawl, flouncing it out behind me as I drop down. Sunlight winks off a crystal bead on my tank top.

“This is nice design,” Gyöngyi says, observing the added adornment. A slight smile. “Freedom of expression.”

I smile as well. “Thank you, yes. My own creation.”

Gyöngyi removes two bottled drinks and two wrapped parcels. “Sandwich?”

“I missed breakfast. I'd love one.”

Sliced sausage, chunks of red and yellow sweet peppers, between black bread. “Leftovers from last night,” she explains.

The bread is dense and hearty; the meat and peppers, sweet and spicy. “Delicious.”

Gyöngyi is staring out across the river again. She swallows a bite of sandwich then sips her bottled drink. “Last night, after you leave with Sándor, Lilla confesses something to Oszkár. You must understand he—we—did not know.” She looks over, but cannot hold my eye. Her gaze returns to the river. “In ‘65, just before your mother is leaving, she and Lilla meet to say good-bye. Edit at first is timid, holding something back, but Lilla can see Edit is excited, nearly bursting to confide in someone. Lilla tells her it is okay, she can keep a secret.”

Gyöngyi sips from the bottle. “Your
anya
tells her that she has made an important discovery. Lilla would like to know more, but this is all Edit will say. She needs first to confirm a final piece of what she has uncovered, and she cannot do this until after she returns to America. If her suspicions are correct, she will know the complete truth of Kati and get word to Lilla and, of course, family.”

“Did my mother say where she got the information? From Anikó?”

Gyöngyi's nod is barely perceptible. “You must understand,” she says, “My uncle, Lilla, they are taking big chance to help you, but after they hear the truth how your mother she has died, that you have idea somehow Kati lives—” She shakes her head sadly. “They know they must help. You are family.”

She reaches for my hand, and I cover hers with both of mine.

“I know what it is like to lose a mother at a young age,” she adds a moment later.

“Of course you do,” I reply. She was fifteen when her mother died in a tragic automobile accident.

There are other people on the steps, but no one close enough to overhear our conversation. Nonetheless, she whispers. “My uncle and Lilla, they have traced Anikó Hadjok. Last night, Lilla she went to see her. Anikó confide to Lilla that she had located the secret documents Attila had hoped to find. By then, Attila was gone, but she take a look anyway. The papers revealed the prison in which Kati was held. Kozma Utca, and the papers told of her death, pneumonia.”

Gyöngyi's sandwich has just a small corner missing, but she returns it to the stiff paper wrapping, refolding it as she talks. “
Kozma Utca
was like Hell itself. My grandfather, Oszkár, he witnessed this. No heat, nighttime no bulb, piss pot in one corner, slop pail in another. No animal should have to live like this, he say. Now we know our Kati was in that terrible place, at the mercy of the beasts until she died. Maybe, in the end, the answer to her prayers.”

“And Anikó told my mother this.”

My eyes well up. Gyöngyi touches my elbow gently. I expect she is moved by emotion as well and will wrap an arm around me. Instead she merely nods and says evenly, “For many years now, we have mourned Kati and what she must have suffered. Many of those taken were lost, no papers, no identity, and we believed this is what happened. We would never know the truth. The ugly rumors would never be put to rest. Now, because of you, we find Anikó, we find what happened.”

I use the heel of my hand to wipe away my tears. “But your grandfather, grandmother, they never saw her again. Her body. Did she…” I sniffle. “Did Anikó tell Lilla where Kati was laid to rest?”

“The papers did not tell where she was buried.
If
she was buried.”

My vision blurs again. A dot bobbles in the clear fluid. Would I never be free of the image of a head floating in the Danube?

“Uncle Oszkár speculates Kati is buried on the prison grounds.”

I look at Gyöngyi. She shrugs. “
Kozma Utca
was where revolution leaders like Imre Nagy, Pal Maléter and Miklos Gimes, were executed. It is rumored they are no longer there,” she adds in an undertone. “That Nagy, Maléter, and Gimes are buried in decoy graves. Some say in the
UJ Kozmteto
, New Public Cemetery, across the road from
Kozma Utca
. Buried not by Communists, but by their comrades, sometime after '58.”

“I don't understand.”

“In '58, there was a show trial. Nagy, Maléter, and Gimes were hanged, then buried in the prison yard. It is said that years later, secret exhumations and reburials were managed, the new graves marked by wooden grave posts with false names. This, it is hoped, will keep the martyrs of the Communist dictatorship safe until the day they will be given a heroes' burial ceremony, as they deserve.”

“So Kati could be in an unmarked grave, a falsified grave…” I stop short of
watery grave
.

“Anywhere, or nowhere.” The breeze blows a long strand of hair across Gyöngyi's face. She lifts it away, tucks it behind her ear. “Kati was taken on the eve of the uprising. The next day, complete chaos. Who can say what went on inside the prison walls? Would anyone care? Later, during the days of freedom, end of October, early November, prison doors were flung open to release political prisoners. When they had word this was happening, my grandfather, Oszkár, started to look in every prison. No record of Kati. No Kati.”

No Kati
. What Sandor had said last night when he'd left me at the hotel.

“She never came home,” Gyöngyi says. “They had to accept she was gone. Even now, after what Anikó has told us, there is nothing to do but to remember her as we have done always.

“But now Anikó has agreed to meet us. She has something she would like to reveal just to you.”

My breath catches. “When?”

Gyöngyi consults a cheap-looking watch face on an expandable band. “In one half hour. Oh, and one more thing,” she adds softly. “Your
anya
, when she meet with Lilla, she has the locket, the same locket you show to Lilla last night—” Her gaze flicks to my neck. “And that you wear now.”

***

The Budapest Metro has three lines. We will meet Anikó on the Millennium Underground, Gyöngyi informs me as we pack up and start for the line's origination point at Vörösmarty tér, in the city center.

The Millennium Underground railway, she explains as we walk, was inaugurated in 1896, part of celebrations commemorating the 1000th anniversary of when the early Hungarians, the Magyar tribes, settled in the Carpathian Basin. The first subway on the European Continent, it runs under Budapest's longest avenue.

We arrive at Vörösmarty tér and at a sign saying
a földalatti,
we descend a set of stairs. Gyöngyi purchases tickets from a machine. We wait on the platform until a boxy yellow train appears. The doors part, and we stand aside while passengers disembark.

We enter the car. Gyöngyi and I find seats in the empty row along the back wall.

Bells chime and the doors close with a whoosh. There are only a few passengers. The train starts with a lurch. Out the window are pristine white brick walls and the high sheen on polished floors of the station.

“Gyöngyi, I'm puzzled by something,” I say. “Anikó said Kati was held at
Kozma Utca
. Attila said she was being held inside the Budapest Communist Party Headquarters building. It's where he worked. Wouldn't he know?”

Gyöngyi hesitates and I regret even asking the question. The country was ruled by terror, rumor and mistrust. How could anyone know anything for certain?

“He may have believed the stories.”

“Stories?”

Gyöngyi nods. “That there was a secret underground network of passages and prison cells beneath the party headquarters building. It was believed that hundreds of civilians and freedom fighters were being held there, many of them tortured. But thirty October, the day of the siege, freedom fighters conducted a search. No sign of any underground prison. Crews came in, drilled and dug, day and night. Crowds gathered, stood watch, certain the cells would be found. On the fourth of November, the Soviet forces returned and the digging had to stop. There were more urgent matters to worry about.”

The underground tunnel leading from a prison to the Danube and used for the AVO's convenient disposal of bodies, Tibor had told me about, long ago, when he'd first arrived in Chicago. Another of the tragic rumors, then?

The chimes ring and a canned female voice proclaims we have arrived at Deák tér. Two passengers stand, preparing to get off.

“This time of day not many people use this train,” Gyöngyi says. “Of course it is different during commute times, but for now we have our privacy.”

I nod. Just three others are at the other end the car. I notice a plain-looking lady in a severe brown suit, but no sign of my man in gray.

A woman with a weathered complexion, wearing a patterned scarf, peasant blouse and long dark skirt, climbs aboard. She is thin, but big-boned, her once tall frame stooped with age. Her head turns in the direction opposite us as if assessing her seating options. Looking our way next, she focuses on the empty seats all around us, and squinting first at Gyöngyi, then me, seems satisfied she is in the right place. Her mouth is down-turned, her lower lip collapsed against a toothless gum, and she trundles slowly, as if in pain. The bells chime and the doors close. The woman is holding a basket of lavender and white nosegays crooked in her elbow, her red-blotched wrinkled hand clenched at her mid-section. She wobbles as the train starts with a jolt and I nearly jump from my seat to help her, but her free hand grabs a pole and she steadies herself.

Gyöngyi makes a show of removing her wallet from her shoulder bag. The elderly woman, noticing, begins shuffling toward us again.

“Anikó?” I whisper.

“Uh-huh,” Gyöngyi replies. “The flowers. Anikó.”

“Ahh,” I say. Gyöngyi has never met my mother's long ago friend, but there had been discussions last night to arrange our meeting. The flowers are the sign.

Anikó
.
It's shocking to see her in the flesh. She would be close to my mother's age. Mariska's too. And while I might once have said Mariska looked older than her years, Anikó looks noticeably ground down.

I think of the elderly Chinese couple in Gustav's photo at his gallery show. How taken I was with them. Their faces had also been deeply-lined and their smiles betrayed imperfect teeth. Yet they appeared younger than their years. Alive. Vibrant. Glimpsing Anikó's impassive, worn expression, I sense she is anything but at peace.

Above her socks, her legs are thick and swollen, the skin scarred with red bites. My heart aches for this woman.…her age, her condition, the heat.

Anikó holds out a bouquet, quoting a price. While Gyöngyi fumbles with her wallet, Anikó, peering around, awkwardly surrenders to the empty seat beside Gyöngyi.

Anikó leans forward and regards me. She has dark eyes, rimmed in dark circles.

Gyöngyi holds out some forints. Anikó, taking the currency, speaks in a low monotone, her Hungarian emphatic.