When the Summer Was Ours

by Roxanne Veletzos

  And Eduard. It would crush him. If he ever came back to find them gone, it would crush him. He would think their whole life a hoax.

  “I have a daughter,” she said with renewed resolution. “A daughter who loves him, whom he loves. A daughter who’s probably looking out the window right now for him to come up the road with suitcase in hand. I can’t take that away from him. Nor from her.”

  “I, too, could learn to love your daughter, given the chance,” he went on, undeterred. “All I ask for is the simple chance. Everything I’ve accomplished in this life, Eva, everything that I’ve done, I’ve dreamed of sharing with you someday. I stayed alive in that camp for you. All I ask is for the simple chance. So please say yes, Eva. Please.”

  Her hand traveled to her mouth to suppress a cry. Your daughter, my daughter, our daughter. Eduard’s daughter above all, above all. Bianca, whose name she couldn’t say, for if she did, she feared that she would reveal the one thing that would unravel them all.

  “It’s impossible.”

  “It is not,” Aleandro said. “I know you think it’s a crazy proposition, but I have contacts in New York, important contacts who can help, and I have plenty of money, if that’s what it takes to get you both out. It is not impossible if we wish it, and perhaps he would wish it, too, if it meant a better life for you and your daughter. So come with me, Eva, come with me to New York. Let me love you as I’ve yearned to do since the day that we met.”

  “I can’t, Aleandro.” She reached the last ounce of inner strength as tears streamed down her cheeks. “I can’t leave here, I can’t leave Budapest when there is still a possibility of his return. He is my husband.”

  Her words fell between them like a guillotine blade, silencing any further urgings or pleas. Turning away from him and those anguished eyes, Eva went into the front room, where she began collecting her things—her slip, her bra, her dress and stockings—and retreated into the bathroom, needing desperately this small distance.

  When she emerged, he was still there, still on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands, the long line of his body arched in a Rodin pose. He didn’t move as she walked past him to pick up her shoes near the bed or when she continued on to the door. Only when she reached the foyer did she hear his voice from the other room, broken but determined:

  “I will not say good-bye to you. I will not mourn you again.”

  A sob came from her throat as she walked out of the suite and closed the door against the room and all that it contained. Softly, she closed it against those last words to her.

  34

  HE SHOULD HAVE LEFT DAYS ago. And he had tried. More than once he’d called his travel agent back in New York to arrange for the next flight; he’d packed his bags, telephoned Rudolf to swear that he would be on the next plane. But each time, he ended up changing his mind. Everything was finished yet nothing was finished, and so he delayed one more day, one more weekend, even though Rudolf had tried to reason a dozen times that his visa would expire and there were bound to be all sorts of problems with his exit. He stayed because he knew that once he left, he would never see Eva again, and couldn’t bring himself to accept it. Not with the stain of her lipstick still on his pillow, with the sheets he wouldn’t let the maid change still imbued with her scent.

  After several days of sulking in the hotel room, he began wandering around town. Walking helped to clear his mind, and so he walked aimlessly—at first in the winding neighborhoods of Castle Hill, then venturing across one of the bridges into Pest, walking against the chill of late October, his collar raised, hands in his pockets. He walked past the dress shops on Váci utca, where he imagined Eva shopped in a time when the windows were clean and the displays were arranged against backdrops of velvet; he walked through Heroes’ Square, where bullet-ridden monuments spoke of the revolution; he walked along the Danube banks, where the muddy, gray sky seeped into the river and the cry of the seagulls mirrored his grief. He rode streetcars. Endless streetcars in no specific direction, his eyes pinned constantly on the window, subconsciously searching for her. He wasn’t so naive as to think that he would spot her in a city of two million people, but he couldn’t help looking anyway, with the hopeless desperation of a sentenced man praying for some last-minute reprieve.

  About a week later, his tram broke down in the center of town, and after waiting nearly an hour for the next one, he gave up and visited a coffee shop—a tiny, musty place with Turkish rugs on the walls and wicker chairs in need of a good polish. He needed to warm up and study his map, and when his waiter brought him a watery cup of coffee, he asked him to point out where in the maze of streets he was exactly.

  “Köszönöm,” Aleandro said after the waiter had sat down next to him and given him a detailed explanation of the city as though he were a tour guide, and it made him smile to say it. It was the first word that Rudolf had spoken to him in the camp. In America, the two of them only spoke English now, but he’d missed this language, missed the roughness and sweetness of it, and so he said it again: “Köszönöm.”

  “Is my honor,” replied the waiter, a jolly man with a sprouting of wild grayish hair, flushing with pleasure that he could show off his English, and Aleandro realized the man recognized him somehow, perhaps from one of the billboards for the gallery opening. “This sector, beautiful,” he went on, tapping the map. “Operaház here.”

  He redirected his eyes to the map and felt a flash of warmth spread alongside his spine. He was no more than five, six blocks away from the opera house on Andrássy út. Right near Eva’s old childhood home.

  Pointless. Pointless to go there, he told himself. There was nothing that he would find. Eva had mentioned in the restaurant that her father had died during the war—surely others, not Eva, lived there now. But he couldn’t resist the urge to glimpse her childhood home, the home to which he’d sent his letter, the home where upon her return after their summer together he had been in her heart. Already he was on his feet, muttering an apology for leaving the coffee intact (guiltily, for he knew such extravagances were rare in Budapest) and placed several bank notes on the table.

  He was not in a hurry. There was no reason to hurry, and he strolled leisurely, taking in the lavish flats of the opera district, the shell-shaped glass awnings, the intricacies of gargoyles and baroque motifs—astonished that these had been everyday sights for Eva, but sobered at the same time by the realization that he’d been mad to ever aspire to her. That even now, despite his success and money, she was still out of his league. He had nearly turned—perhaps this was enough torment for one day—when the sound of a violin came from a corner park no more than a block away.

  He stopped and listened a minute longer. It was a classical melody, something Beethoven or Mozart, something he was accustomed to hearing in his gallery openings or in expensive restaurant lobbies in New York. It was good, too, the sounds crisp, the notes precise, and he couldn’t help walking in its direction and entering the gardens.

  On a dark green bench, seated on the backrest as if on a stage, violin tucked under her chin, he noticed a young woman. A girl, really, in her very early teens if he had to guess, wearing a red coat, her chestnut hair pinned in a smooth ponytail.

  A moment longer, he stood and listened, observing her. Her eyes were closed; she seemed in another world, and something in the way she held the violin, the way in which her eyebrows rose and knitted at the dips and escalations, seared him with melancholy for his Sopron days. Then the bow stilled and her eyes flickered open and she saw him. She let the bow drop to her side, the violin still under her chin.

  “You play extremely well,” Aleandro said, going closer. “I’m sorry, I was just walking by and I couldn’t help hearing.”

  “I know,” replied the girl, slightly annoyed, clipped. It reminded him of how he felt when he painted on the stoop in New York, when someone interrupted him. So he took no offense to it and smiled.

  “Well, it’s good to be aware of one’s talents. Please don’t mind me. But I
’d love to keep hearing it.”

  “Well, what do I get for it? I’m not a free show, you know.”

  He laughed, scrounged in his pockets, but he’d left all of his money on the table at the café, and all he could give her was some loose change, which he thought would be insulting. “I’ll tell you what. I will play a tune for you first, and if it pleases you, you can then play something else for me. Only if you don’t mind me borrowing your violin, of course.”

  He had her attention now, although she still regarded him suspiciously. She had remarkable eyes—the rich, prismatic color of turning leaves—a bit like Rudolf’s but possessing none of the mildness or glint of humor. Her eyes were intense, a bit feral and somehow mocking. They frightened him a little and also seared him to the core.

  “You play?” she said, resting the violin in her lap. “And what do you play exactly?”

  “I used to play gypsy tunes. May I?”

  The look lingered, an eyebrow quirking as her gaze traveled slowly from his hat down to his shoes. Then her glossed lips curled in indifference, and she handed him the violin, moving over to the far end of the bench, where she hopped back onto the backrest and rested her chin on her hand. “Try not to botch up the strings. I just had it tuned up.”

  “Yes, boss,” he said, something American that was clearly lost in translation, and after thinking about it for a moment, he dove into an old favorite tune that his father used to play, something that he listened to on a vinyl he’d bought in an East Village secondhand shop called The Sounds of Gypsy Rhapsody. But to listen and to play were very different things, and, faltering the notes more than once, he stopped and handed the violin back to her.

  “I’m sorry, it’s been a very long time.”

  “It’s not bad,” she replied. “How do you know that music?”

  “I used to live in Sopron. A long time ago. I used to play that song once when I was about your age. In the taverns.”

  “My mother is from Sopron. Well, not exactly, but she used to spend quite a bit of time there when she was little.”

  “Really?” he said, delighted. “And did your mother like gypsy music?”

  There was a scoff. “Hardly. My mother only listens to opera. All that melodrama and vocal bravado. It seems ridiculous to me. True music is in the instruments.” She pulled from her coat pocket a loose, shriveled cigarette, which she sparked with a silver lighter. Blowing a ring of smoke into the air, she held it up as if in explanation. “Fringe benefits. She tries to pretend she doesn’t smoke, but I know where she stashes them.”

  “How old are you?” he couldn’t help asking.

  “Old enough not to get caught,” she said and blew another circle. “I’m Bianca, by the way. Bianca Kovaks.” There was a tiny flick of her wrist, the limp cigarette going around in a circle. “Yours truly.”

  “And where do you live, Bianca?”

  “Why, do you plan on turning me in? My mom would hardly care, believe me. She works all the time.”

  “I plan on doing nothing of the sort.”

  “Well, over there.” She waved in the general direction of Andrássy, with its glorious Parisian flats, of which she clearly thought very little, chewing on a short, bright red fingernail. “I live with my mother and my grandmother. Well, sort of my grandmother. My nanna. She, on the other hand, would break my bones.”

  He had to draw in a breath, the blood swimming in his temples, where he pressed his fingers into the shallow flesh. “And where is your father, Bianca?”

  “He’s away.” Bianca took one last deep drag of her cigarette and stomped it out on the bench, then crushed it with the heel of her galosh for good measure and shot him another penetrating look. “Well, you don’t look like much of a Russian crony, certainly not knowing that sort of music, so I will tell you.” Leaning in halfway across the bench, she whispered: “We will soon join him in Vienna. Vienna is where I will soon live.”

  “Vienna?” He looked at the girl more closely for a trace of semblance, but there really wasn’t one. This girl looked nothing like Eva, possessed none of her soft-edged, angelic features, but he was convinced that this was her daughter.

  “Yes, you know, the birthplace of the great composers?” She rolled her eyes at him. “If you are from Sopron, you would know Vienna. Have you not heard of it?”

  “Of course I have. Of course. But… what if it wasn’t Vienna?” He was venturing into forbidden territory, he knew, but how could he help himself? This was Eva’s daughter. He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t bring himself to believe it. “What if… what if, let’s just suppose, it was… someplace else? Someplace like America? New York, for instance?”

  The girl sneered. She picked up the cigarette butt from the bench and hurled it into the grass across the narrow path, scattering a group of pigeons. “No, my father would never go to America. America sold us out. They did it during the war, and they did it again last year, during the revolution. Don’t you read the papers? America only cares about America, and he would never agree to live there.”

  “But what if you were to live there just with your mother? New York is a beautiful place. A place of musicians.”

  Now she looked at him as if she considered slashing his throat. Lifted the violin from the bench where she’d set it between them and shot him another murderous look as she slammed it inside her case. She hopped down from the bench, and without further word, she began walking away, the dark swoop of her sleek ponytail swinging behind her.

  “Wait!” He ran after her, caught up to her on the boulevard. “I’m sorry. It was just a question. I did not mean to upset you. Please don’t go.”

  She swirled toward him, strands of her hair loosened by the wind whipping around her face, which had turned crimson. “My father will come back for us! He will come back because he loves me and he promised me that he would, and I will live with him in Vienna! In Vienna, with my father, not anyplace else.” She drew back, aware of a few passersby, and pointed her varnished fingernail at him. “You, mister, should mind your own business.”

  Then she turned her back to him and stomped ahead, crossing the street at the next block, and he watched her disappear, precisely as he’d suspected, into the building with the Venus statues.

  He should have been devastated. Any reasonable person would have been, yet everything had long slipped beyond reason, and he couldn’t help but see it as a sign. To run into Eva’s daughter like this, to meet her for the first time as she played the violin in the park—the violin, of all instruments!—could only be a sign! Sure, it hadn’t been exactly an ideal exchange, but someday, somehow, she would come to like him. Not like her father, certainly not in the same way, but there were plenty of shiny distractions and indulgences in New York to melt her iciness—symphony orchestra seats, the best violin money could buy, and pretty pendants, things of that nature, which no girl of her age could resist. But of all those things, there was plenty of time to think about later. All that mattered was that he’d found Eva. Miraculously, he had found her, and everything seemed possible again.

  35

  IT WAS NEARLY DARK BY the time Aleandro realized that he was lost again. So absorbed he’d been in his thoughts for the past two hours, that he’d drifted away from Andrássy and now found himself trapped in a dizzying maze of backstreets. Luckily, at some point, he ended up in front of the same café he’d stopped in earlier and entered, hoping the kind waiter would still be there to offer directions to the bridge.

  The lights were turned down low, and the place, just as in the afternoon, was almost empty. Only one family hovered at a table near the kitchen curtain, a father, a mother, and their two boys blowing tiny bits of paper through straws at each other over empty plates. The adults talked contentedly, enjoying sips of some pale liquor.

  “Ah, friend, you back!” exclaimed the man, and when he rose to welcome him, Aleandro saw that it was in fact his waiter. He’d shed his apron, and he now sported a brown beret, giving him the aura of a poet. “This,
my family. Come, friend, say hello to family!”

  Aleandro smiled, inched closer, as a jumble of greetings met him, enthusiastically by the woman, half-heartedly by the boys, who kept on with their paper battle. “Come sit! You want drink? Slivovitz here, best in Budapest! I promise that!”

  “Thank you, I would love one, but I have no money to pay.”

  “You need not money. You pay sooner, remember?”

  He couldn’t say no; truly, he could use a shot of plum brandy, so he sat, pulling up a chair at the corner of the table. The shot did him wonders, warming him instantly, and he was grateful that the waiter refilled his glass again without him having to ask.

  “Nice boys,” said Aleandro, now in Hungarian, and winked at them, made a funny face to the younger one who kept staring at him.

  “Aurel, Béla,” said the waiter, pointing to each of his sons. “And this beauty here is Adda, my wife. I, Tamás. You have children in America?”

  Aleandro shook his head, staring at the nearly empty glass. Tamás, the name of one of his brothers. A sinking sensation accompanied the last sip of his brandy. “No, no family now. But I hope to, someday.”

  “Family everything, ah?” said Tamás the waiter, who kept insisting on English, even though it was evident they could have a much smoother conversation in Hungarian. “My boys, they give life. My life nothing without these boys.” He leaned over to one of them, grabbed his chin, and deposited a noisy kiss on his temple.

  “Aye, Papa!” squealed the boy, but Aleandro saw that he was smiling as he wrenched himself from his father’s grasp. And suddenly, everything crashed inside him—the name Tamás; the boys, with their childish naughtiness; the events of the afternoon; Eva, who was at home just a few blocks away, yet never farther from him. He had to grip the edge of the table for support.