Triptych (29 page)

Chapter Twenty-nine

Gyöngyi must get back to her office. I opt to walk back to the hotel where I will make arrangements to travel to the farm village in western Hungary, along the Austrian border. I will make the trip, probably by train, on my own as Gyöngyi is unable to take time off from work. It was clear she feels badly, but I also sensed more than just professional commitments holding her back. She was uncomfortable spending too much time with her American relative.

Gyöngyi has left me the nosegay. I clutch it awkwardly while I remove the city map from my purse. Republic Square is within walking distance. Replacing the map, I glimpse Kati's photo pressed against the bag's interior. The portrait is turned away from me. But her face, that death mask, is now catalogued in my mind, like the ghoulish images of the bloodied lifeless bodies strung from the trees that I had seen as a child in the pages of
Life
magazine.

Leaving the busy and bustling Rakoczi ut, I turn down a side street then turn again onto narrow Legszesz
utca. Farther along the block, the notorious Budapest Communist Party Headquarters building is obvious from the row of red hammer and sickle flags jutting on poles from the building's façade. The square sits directly across the street.

Loose gravel paths crisscross large grassy plots abundant with maple and poplar trees. I stroll a short distance following a column of vivid-hued flowers and take a seat on a vacant park bench. A man in a blue suit carrying a metal briefcase passes, gravel crunching as he walks.

Looking left, I have an unobstructed view of the Headquarters Building, a gray institutional structure with an understated and unwelcoming entrance. Even the tall windows at street level have bars on them, warning people away. My gaze rises the four stories above, demarcated by rows of square windows. Well-suited to its functionary occupants.

I turn back to the verdant landscape before me. My mother had always said green was healing for the eyes. What about the heart?

The American midwest and Central Europe have similar climates. Closing my eyes, I picture the square in late October, the trees bare, the ground a damp blanket of brownish-black, the sky, a dismal gray. My mother's depiction of the palace of the Twilight Kingdom, a black square, materializes.

In the storybook version of the rowboat sequence, the palace surroundings were rendered to look fantastical.
Forests of trees laden with precious jewels, whimsical boats crossing a mirror-smooth lake, a splendid, festively lit palace awaiting the boats and their passengers on the far side
. A grand illusion, for in reality this was not a happy scene. Twilight had claimed the princesses, locking them away from their true selves. The spell also kept the king and his subjects frozen in time. Like the people of Hungary. Caught in a sort of twilight zone, waiting to be returned to their normal lives, the world they once knew, a world not dominated by a shadowy outside force.

My mother's version depicts a singular rowboat with a fair-haired damsel (herself, I believe) being rowed by a prince across a monotone blue body of water marred by a dark spot. The boats' destination (Gustav's version which I am now nearly convinced is correct), not a palace, but the black block of AVO Headquarters. The most evil of places.

She had followed the standard storyline in that the prow of the boat was lifted up out of the water because someone not visible was seated in the back. But who? The spook who had followed my mother, like the stealth agent I suspect is shadowing me; like the agents my Hungarian family fears have ways of knowing all the details of their lives? Is that it? In my mother's dark vision of the story, in place of the honorable gardener boy a sinister KGB agent sits in back?

I shift position on the hard park bench, keeping my eyes closed, concentrating.

In an early scene in the storybook, a lovely fairy queen speaks to Peter in a dream. “You must go to the king's castle,” she says. “If you succeed where others have failed, you shall get your wish.”

My mother had woven a bit of pink thread into the back interior of the boat, near the rower's foot. Princess pink. An enticement? Had she hoped I would follow her?

The gardener boy had achieved the special role of Liberator. Invisible, he pursued the princesses and solved the king's puzzle of where they went and how they wore out their shoes. This entitled him to get his wish to marry Elise. Unwilling to betray his true love and her secret, he stood ready to drink the poisoned wine offered by Elise's sisters. Elise intervenes. With this single act of love the enchantment ended. The princesses, the king, and all of the kingdom were at last free.

Eyes closed, I whisper under my breath, “Mom, I'm here, not invisible, not a mighty force, not a princess, but your little girl, all grown up. Here, in this shadowy place, following in your steps.”

The sound of crunching gravel alerts me to someone coming down the path from my right. I open my eyes.

“Ildikó, I thought it might be you. What are you doing here?” It's Gustav.

“I might ask the same of you.”

“I asked first. Mind if I join you?” I scoot to the side; he sits.

“I was with my cousin's daughter, Gyöngyi. At Heroes' Square. Thought I'd come here, visit another set of ghosts.”

The comment, meant to be taken lightly, has the opposite effect. Gustav turns from me to stare at the grassy park, straight ahead.

“Ghosts,” he says his voice sounding far away. “I've been sitting over there—” He gestures in the general direction of the square's center. “Came to finally say goodbye to those who fought and died here.”

I recall the moment in his flat when he'd told me about being in this park taking photos of the fighting. The point blank killings of possibly guiltless people by his countrymen, the innocent face of a young boy lying dead next to him. Unfathomable scenes that had cut him to the core, made him realize he could never be a photojournalist.

“You said in Chicago, you needed to face some demons. Make peace with them. Being here, is it helping?”

He looks at me again, forces a faint smile, nods. “Some. But acceptance, I think, is the better term. It has been an important revelation. Opened me up. Coming here has also made me more aware than ever of the value in getting things right. ”

He looks over, holding my gaze and, for a moment our surroundings, the culture of secrecy, our own private secrets, fall away.

A couple walks past, arguing loudly. The intimate moment is broken.

“That black block in my mother's embroidery—” I say. “You may be partially right. A headquarters building, yes, but not AVO's. I think we're looking at what she intended. Budapest Communist Party Headquarters.”

Gustav leans forward, looking around me, to get a better look. “Hmmm, maybe.”

I share the highlights of my encounter with Anikó, what she found here at this building, including the accusation by Kati's student and the student's subsequent escape.

“Anikó gave this to my mother,” I say pulling the note from my purse. “I'm certain this village is where she went searching. A farmer in that village helped the girl flee across the border near there. He was executed. But I'm hopeful a relative or someone else in the village can tell me whatever it was that my mother learned there. I suspect whatever she uncovered—or perhaps someone she met—is involved in her death.”

Gustav takes the note, reads it.

“Also, I have a photo in this locket I'm wearing.” I hold up the heart. “I think it might be this very same student who escaped.” I shrug. “Although no one has been able to identify her. Whoever she is, she's important.”

Gustav is pale, like he has just encountered one of those personal demons.

“What?” I ask. “What is it?”

A moment passes. “
Kopháza.
The village where I crossed,” he says in a hoarse whisper.

Where his university chums, his girlfriend, lost their lives. “Oh…”

We sit without speaking. Finally Gustav says, “And you are planning to go there?” His voice still does not sound normal.

“Tomorrow, if I can arrange it.”

Gustav looks apprehensive. “With your cousin?”

My answer is firm. Quick. “Alone.”

“I must come with you.”

“No,” I repeat. “I'm thirty-seven years old. It's my family, my business. Besides, your uncle. How is he?”

One shoulder lifts. “As well as can be expected. He's in
Péterfy Sándor Utca
Hospital, a few blocks from here. I was heading there. Will you come? He would like to meet you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I told him you were here.”

I look at him quizzically.

“He knew Mariska and Zsófi.”

Gustav's uncle is in his last days. Mariska and Zsófi would never forgive me if I did not pay my respects.

The nosegay is resting on the bench beside me. I pick it up. “These could use a patient.”

Gustav and I enter
Péterfy Sándor Utca
Hospital through the front entrance. The sparsely furnished lobby is quiet, but for the scuffing of our shoes on the marble floor. Off to one side, a scattering of occupants in stiff-looking chairs doze, read, or quietly converse. A doctor in a starched coat stands near a reception counter speaking in a hushed tone to an elderly woman beside him. Rocking on his heels, he rubs the end of the stethoscope hanging from his neck as he talks.

Gustav leads me down an interior corridor. Two attendants pass us, pushing a gurney with a patient connected to a drip. The air stirs and I am aware of the faint but unmistakable odor of ammonia and stale urine, common to every hospital I have ever visited.

On the way over, Gustav told me that during the Uprising the Péterfy Hospital was one of the main hospitals where rebel fighters—also some AVO personnel and Soviet soldiers—were brought for emergency treatment. In '56 it was one of the most up-to-date facilities in the city and had approximately a thousand beds.

We start down the corridor again. “This was one of the major nerve centers of the underground resistance,” he says. “Beneath this main level are many underground corridors and rooms. People who had lost their homes, or maybe could not return to them due to dangerous conditions, were sheltered here. Others who might not have proper identity documents—perhaps because they had been freed from prison, for example—found refuge as well. There was a publishing center manned by revolutionaries too.”

“Here? Really?”

“Uh-huh, they published an underground newspaper called
Élünk,
‘We Live.' They also churned out anti-Soviet leaflets.”

My first impression of Gustav's uncle, Ferenc Szigeti, is skin pale as wax.

He is resting, his eyes closed, his sallow face deeply etched with lines, his wispy white hair, while not unkempt, seems to have been combed by a distracted hand. Perhaps sensing our presence, he stirs. His eyelids flutter, open. He manages a weak smile. “Gustav…”

“Helló Uncle.” Gustav goes to the end of the bed, and cranks a handle. The bed frame inches up until his uncle is reclining in a more upright position. Moving to the opposite side of the bed, Gustav pours water from a pitcher into a cup. He holds the straw to his uncle's mouth. Ferenc takes a few sips.

Gustav returns the cup to the bedside table. “Uncle, I have brought Ildikó.”

Uncle Ferenc turns and manages a small smile. “Wonderful that you come,” he says in a frail voice. “Sorry, my English is not so good.”

I am instantly charmed by his courtly manner. I grin. “My Hungarian is hopeless.” I reach across the bed with the flowers. “But I'll let these speak for me. Good cheer and good health.”

Gustav has filled a spare tumbler with water. He shoves the nosegay inside. “Gustav tells me that you knew Mariska and Zsófi,” I add.

“Yes. Long ago, we live in same apartment building.”

“Did you by chance also know my aunt and uncle, Oszkár and Rózsa Szabo? My aunt was Rózsa Katona before she married.”

Furrows form across Uncle Ferenc's forehead. Though diminished by age and illness, the Baryshnikov resemblance is there, especially in the patrician nose. His eyes? Hazel, like Gustav's.

“The names are not familiar,” Uncle Ferenc says at last.

Small talk has never been my forte. I grope for another topic. “It's been many years. You must be glad to have Gustav back.”

Uncle Ferenc turns slightly to face Gustav then looks back at me. “I never thought I would see him again. He left terrible baggage behind. Why come back to pick it up now?”

Gustav gently rubs his uncle's shoulder, so thin it protrudes like a bony fist from his hospital gown. “I love you. I had to come. You are my family.”

Ferenc fixes me with a soulful stare. “It is a wonder that he has come, in spite of what he believed about me. The worst.” Ferenc swallows. His tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth, making a sticky sound.

Gustav holds the cup of water near his uncle, placing the straw at his mouth. While his uncle drinks, he looks at me. “I would like to explain, if you do not mind.”

“Of course, please.”

“You remember I told you my friends were gunned down while we made our escape.” I nod. “After the AVO officers leave, I rush to my friends, hoping for a miracle. That they are alive, I can help. Márton had a small breath of life left. With it, he whispered Uncle Ferenc's name.”

My mouth opens in surprise.

“I thought my uncle had betrayed us. Now, when I return, speak with him about this, I discover something I did not imagine. He was part of the resistance and he ran couriers to help get people fearing for their lives, out.”

The straw flips away from Uncle Ferenc's lips. “Here. I work here. Downstairs.”

“Shhh, Uncle.” Gustav speaks just above a whisper. “It is true. No one had ever told me this. Now I realize Márton was trying to make me understand. There had been a mole, my uncle was in danger. I should have tried to warn him.”