Budapest Noir

by Vilmos Kondor

  During the eulogies, he passed his eyes over the elite who were on hand. A couple of them seemed to have fallen asleep. General Schamburg-Bogulski, head of the Polish delegation, undoubtedly nodded off, jerking up his head at one point, giving a quick, confused look around before deftly suppressing a yawn. Horthy sat there with an unruffled expression; at most, he would sometimes fiddle with the handle of his sword. Gömbös’s widow, sons, and two siblings cried quietly as his mother stared glassy-eyed at the coffin.

  After the eulogies, there came Siegfried’s Funeral March from Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, conducted by Erno Dohnányi. Gordon was practically counting the measures to determine when the music would end. Once the final notes fell silent, the procession got under way, with Raffay in the lead.

  Gordon escaped from the Parliament building in time to see the next act. A soldier held a simple wooden cross up high, and behind him six black horses pulled the hearse, followed by thirteen more carriages. The last two were perhaps the most notable: one held the wreath sent by Il Duce—Mussolini—and the other, a wreath of a thousand roses from the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel III. The pallbearers now also appeared, carrying on their shoulders the coffin, which was draped with the national flag and topped off with Gömbös’s combat helmet and sword. By now, Horthy had removed the calpac from his head and was waiting on the steps to take the lead in the procession, behind three peasants donning sheepskin waistcoats. Gordon found this especially appealing. The man in the center, an older fellow with a white mustache, was carrying a silver tray and on that a little box containing soil from the village of Murga, so the prime minister could rest in the earth of his hometown. Gordon looked at his watch. It was already past eleven-thirty. The funeral procession would take a while, but there was nothing to be done. Turcsányi wanted an article compiled from interviews with the ambassadors, and Gordon would not find a better occasion than this. He buttoned his jacket and turned up his collar, sighing as he adjusted his hat. He started off with the mourners toward Kerepesi Cemetery.

  The man from the foreign ministry kept his promise—by the time the procession reached Blaha Lujza Square, Gordon had already completed both interviews. He stepped out of the crowd and headed toward the Oktogon. With the trams out of service, he had to walk, but this didn’t bother him at all. Indeed, he went by foot all the way to the Circle, where, in keeping with his habit, he looked up at the balcony door. It was closed. The old man was once again bumming about. Gordon sat down on a bench and began writing in his notebook. He hadn’t been able to take notes during the procession, so it was now that he set down on paper those hackneyed phrases the ambassadors had rattled off. He could have conjured up the article from his head without any interviews at all; he’d known exactly what they would say. The U.S. ambassador, John Flournoy Montgomery, clearly disapproved of all the fuss—this much, Gordon could see on his face—but naturally he, too, chose his words diplomatically: Gömbös had been a European leader, his death was a great loss, Hungary had to look to the future, and so on.

  When Gordon finished, he screwed the cap back on his fountain pen and, looking at the trees, once again fell to thinking about the dead girl, who was distracting him more and more. A while back, he’d heard talk around town about women chosen out of catalogs. Whoever was behind the girl’s death was out of Csuli’s weight class. Five hundred pengős for a woman? No matter how gorgeous she was, this was a ton of money. Csuli and his gang, including the likes of Józsi Laboráns, were lucky to make ten to fifteen pengős a day with their women. These were low-class characters who spent their money on drinks, cards, or horseracing as soon as they made it. The girls quickly withered and were sold to some hovel off in the provinces, unless of course some venereal disease did them in first.

  Five hundred pengős was a big and thoroughly considered investment. Anyone who spent that much for a girl served important clients. And no doubt he didn’t send the gals to bed down customers in some shady servant’s room in some shady neighborhood like Terézváros. Gordon would have been lying to himself had he denied that there was anything unusual about this particular girl. But one thing was certain: no matter what he might find out about her, if he found anything at all, it would not be pleasant. And in all probability, he couldn’t write about it. Even if he were to find the other girls who served this high-class clientele, not a single paper would be willing to publish the article. And yet . . .

  “It’s as if I was just looking at your dad,” said Mór, plopping down beside Gordon and placing a basket of apples in front of him.

  “Apple jam again, Opa?”

  “Indeed!” proclaimed the old man. “Just look at how lovely they are. Eighteen fillérs a kilo. I didn’t waste any time in buying five kilos.”

  “So you’re giving it another try.”

  “I certainly am.”

  “It can’t turn out bad. True, everyone says you can’t make jam out of apples, but applesauce is the best-case scenario.”

  “You see, son. This is the challenge here.”

  “Remember when you cooked up that jam from some wild berries you found on a hill across the river?”

  Mór shuddered, then gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “Don’t you worry, son. Not even then did anything bad happen to me.”

  “Opa, for three days you didn’t even come out of the bathroom.”

  “Well now . . . but it was tasty.”

  “As long as we’re on the subject, Opa, how hard of a punch to the belly does it take to kill someone?”

  The old man turned to Gordon and scrutinized his face. “So you’ve been to the coroner’s.”

  Gordon nodded.

  “Harder than hard,” said the old man. “It takes quite a blow to cause death that way.”

  “That’s what Pazár said, too.”

  “But you’ve also got to know where to hit, and how hard,” continued Mór.

  “You’re trying to say that if I take a swing at someone, say, a woman, then . . .”

  “What I’m trying to say, son, is that whoever did it has probably done it before. The chances of doing so by accident are quite small.”

  Gordon closed his notebook and put away his fountain pen.

  “Tell me, son,” said Mór, leaning back on the bench. “You know today’s world better than I do. What do you think of this fellow Darányi?”

  “What do I think, Opa? He’s a politician. Maybe he’ll be able to rein in the National Unity Party, maybe not.”

  “And if not?” The old man looked Gordon in the eye.

  “You know Krisztina was in Berlin this summer, right?” asked Gordon.

  “She was making some sort of drawings for the Olympics.”

  “You could say that. Well, she met a man called Günther, a longtime cop. A detective. This Günther was looking for a missing person. Don’t ask me how they met,” added Gordon in reply to the question in Mór’s eyes. “You can never tell with Krisztina. Anyway, this Günther took Krisztina for a walk in Berlin. He showed her how the Jew-bashing placards on Alexanderplatz had just been replaced by Olympic ones. Well, one of the top figures in this German leadership paid a visit to Gömbös in the sanatorium near Munich. His name is Rudolf Hess. Have you heard about him?”

  Mór shook his head.

  “He used to be Hitler’s deputy, and he edited Mein Kampf. This man conveyed Hitler’s personal best wishes to our prime minister. And as you may remember, at a National Unity Party meeting not too long ago, those on hand enthusiastically sang the Horst Wessel Song—the Nazi Party anthem, that is. And then there was the Földes surveillance affair.”

  “Which was what again, my boy?”

  “László Földes-Fiedler was tasked by the National Unity Party to put politicians under surveillance and prepare reports about them. Do you remember who stopped off in Budapest a couple of weeks back for a friendly chitchat? The German minister of foreign affair
s, Konstantin von Neurath, and Goebbels. The latter was even received by our own foreign minister. Of course, the visit was purely personal. And not quite two weeks ago our interior minister ordered a ban on public meetings.” Gordon was ratcheting up his temper as he spoke, and he just kept listing examples. “And Hitler’s speech at the end of September? That if Germany had colonies and raw materials, then it could allow itself the luxury of democracy? The luxury of democracy? Opa, democracy is not a luxury.”

  “For you, my boy, in America, it wasn’t. But here . . .”

  “What was Gömbös up to in Rome all the time? Hunting with Mussolini?”

  Mór stretched out his arms. “What are you getting at, my boy?”

  “What is the name of this square you live on?”

  The old man quietly replied: “Adolf Hitler Square. But Darányi will . . .”

  “Darányi will what, Opa? Do you think he can stand firm against the hawks in the National Unity Party? Opa, this country of ours would just as well stand by Stalin, too, if he promised we’d get Transylvania and the northern highlands back after losing them on account of the war. As for the British, why, they’re all talk; it doesn’t cost them a thing to support revisionism. But the Germans? People believe they’ll actually do it.”

  “My boy, it doesn’t matter who we side with,” said the old man softly. “Anything is better than the Communist rabble. Anything.”

  “Yes?” Gordon looked him in the eye.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “You weren’t here in 1919. You didn’t see what happened. Not only in Budapest, but where we’re from, in Keszthely.”

  Gordon didn’t reply. Mór’s last sentence floated between them. The old man sighed, stretched, and stood up. “I’ve got apple jam waiting for me,” he said, taking his basket and going into the building.

  Gordon hurried to the newsroom, typed his two articles in no time, and put them on Turcsányi’s desk. The wall clock read six-thirty. He didn’t have to hurry. He’d agreed to meet Krisztina for dinner at seven in the Abbázia.

  With the trams not running, the city seemed to have entered a state of suspended animation. At the New York Café, the curtains were drawn and noise barely filtered out. On the Grand Boulevard only a bicycle messenger appeared now and again while pedaling feverishly to get a film reel from one cinema to the next.

  The waiter in the Abbázia had Gordon sit down at his usual table. Only a few odd people were dawdling about in the coffeehouse. At the occupied tables, the conversations were hushed, and the waiters, having nothing better to do, sat on chairs by the kitchen and read newspapers or did crossword puzzles. Krisztina arrived a couple of minutes past seven. As always, Gordon noted with satisfaction that the men on hand turned their heads to look at her. Neither her outfit nor her expression was provocative, but she had a way of coming through a door that few women could match. Gordon pulled out her chair, and Krisztina nodded at a waiter (who, by now, was standing by the kitchen ready to leap) as she took off her hat and gloves. The lithe young man appeared beside them at once, as if he’d glided over on a film of water.

  “A good evening to you, Mr. Editor, and to the fine young lady,” he said. “May I suggest something for tonight?” Gordon nodded. “Well, our veal cutlet is fresh and tender, and the roast beef with fried chopped onions is simply divine. I would recommend butter-braised peas with the veal, and as for the roast beef, a double serving of onions fried to a special crisp, as well as boiled or fried potatoes.” Gordon and Krisztina did not frequent the Abbázia for culinary pleasures. When they really wanted something delicious, they went to the Guinea Fowl, on Bástya Street, whose menu included fish and game broiled over coal ash. The Abbázia was close, pleasant, and comfortable, and their waiter always recommended the most acceptable dish of the day. He brought the menu under his arm only for show. He now took their order, which included coffee and a bottle of red wine.

  Gordon quickly told Krisztina the story about Göring’s appearance in the Parliament building and described the steel-helmeted storm troopers; Horthy on his horse; and the black-dressed, murmuring masses.

  “Did anything else interesting happen to you today?” she asked after taking a sip of her wine. “Did you talk with Csuli?”

  “I did,” said Gordon. “I certainly did.” And he caught her up on what he’d learned from Csuli.

  “So the old lech is a Communist,” said Krisztina, staring at her wineglass. “Then you were dealt a good hand.”

  “Not just any hand.”

  “Don’t tell me you want to track down what happened to that girl?”

  “I do.”

  Krisztina raised her eyes at Gordon and scrutinized his face. Gordon took out a cigarette and lit it.

  “Why?”

  “Because no one else is interested in her death.”

  “Not even the police?”

  “Them least of all.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s been almost six years that I’ve been working with the Evening, practically always with the police. I know when they’re investigating a case and when they’re not. This time they won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well now, that’s another question. Gellért used the funeral as his excuse for inaction, which might even be true.”

  “Might even be true?”

  “I don’t know what will happen, Krisztina. This whole thing is suspicious to you, too, not just me. And if what Csuli said is true, and I can find evidence of these elite hookers . . .”

  “You want to make the front page?”

  “Are you kidding? With this? It could never be published.”

  “Then what?”

  Gordon crushed out his cigarette as the waiter appeared and quietly set down their dinner. “Do you have some problem with me investigating this?”

  “Zsigmond, you’re a crime reporter. Not a detective, not a private eye. What do you know about investigations?”

  “Just enough to know where to begin.”

  “Where to begin? You’ve been running about for days now with no idea of where you’re going with this. Gellért would get further with his men. Why, even some detective from the provinces would.”

  “Are you trying to say I don’t know what I’m doing?”

  “What I’m trying to say,” said Krisztina, “is that while you’re used to digging into all sorts of affairs, here you suspect a murder. This is not like figuring out why some bank official shot himself in the head or why some clerk embezzled money from the glazier on the corner. Ask a couple of questions, and you’ve closed the case.”

  Gordon took a deep breath, held it in, and exhaled slowly. In lieu of a reply, he pulled his plate in front of him and proceeded to cut his veal with such force that the metal of the knife grated against the porcelain. Krisztina calmly saw to her own veal cutlet and didn’t say another word until they’d finished supper.

  “As you see it, I’m not qualified,” said Gordon, putting his fork and knife down on the table.

  “That’s not what I said,” replied Krisztina, looking him in the eye. “I just want you to watch out for yourself. If I know you, you won’t sit still until you turn up something, no matter what it is.”

  “What could happen to me?”

  “That’s just it. There’s no telling what you might get yourself into. Could you just think it over? Do you really need this?”

  Gordon raised his eyebrows and picked up his wineglass, but he didn’t drink; he just stared at the swirling, oily liquid. Krisztina watched him in silence, waiting patiently. “I’ve got to do something,” he finally said, so quietly that on a normal evening she wouldn’t even have heard him.

  “If not for the girl, then for yourself,” said Krisztina.

  “What did you say?” asked Gordon, leaning closer, for at that moment a large and noisy group walked in.

 
“Do what you must do,” came Krisztina’s strident reply.

  “I will. And if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get going now to Csuli.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No you won’t. It’s not your sort of neighborhood, and although I’ve got Csuli, I have no reason to trust him. Go on home, or drink another coffee, and get some work done. Develop a couple of pictures. Potter about in your darkroom.”

  “I was beginning to think you’d tell me what to do.”

  “I wouldn’t even try. But I’ll tell you what you won’t do. You won’t go with me.”

  Csuli was sitting in the Tick Bite, playing cards. The tavern was permeated by the smell of beer and food, with shrill laughter, and with someone playing a sped-up version of the latest hit, “Gloomy Sunday,” on the piano. Cigarette butts covered the floor, couples leaned against each other, drunks strutted about. Gordon walked up to Csuli.