“And one that he could brag about.”
“He’d love that.”
Deciding to follow Marta’s plan to submit the letter to Joszef, Dora spent the rest of the day filling out the necessary paperwork.
After work, she accompanied Marta to a KISZ rally where they were slated to speak about their jobs with the postal agency. KISZ was the Hungarian Young Communist League for children under the age of eighteen. Marta was not a staunch communist, by any means. She liked one of the chaperones, so insisted on going to the meetings and dragging Dora along too. Dora rarely saw the advantages of arguing with Marta, whose loyalty knew no obstacles. Once Marta pledged herself to an idea, a plan, or a person, there was no moving her.
On the way to the rally, Marta asked if she could drop something off to her cousin at the Ministry of Interior. Dora conceded, though it was her least favorite place in the entire city. Something seemed so unnatural about the building. Dora always felt a subtle terror next to it, but couldn’t quite figure out why. She never knew when Ivan would pop out of its doors either, and she typically tried to avoid him in public, unless he summoned her. She had to endure his constant scrutiny enough at home.
Dora decided to wander over to the alley next to the building. She leaned against the wall, enjoying the cover it gave her. She heard a soft tapping. It came from beneath her, from the top of a small, barred window at her feet. Dora squatted down to inspect the window—maybe it was cracking from the cold. She could only see the top of it, the bottom half sunk below the ground, into the ministry’s basement.
Steam clung to the glass, and Dora realized she must be peering into some sort of locker room or laundry facility. As she looked closer, she could make out a shape—a white circle, a dimly lit light fixture, surely. It must have been hanging next to an air vent, which caused it to hit the glass. She squinted, focusing her eyes on the circle, until its dimensions began to materialize.
It wasn’t a light. It was a face, with eyes. Sunken in and murky gray, the eyes floated in space. They didn’t register Dora. They stared back vacantly, as if they were watching a boring movie. Dora froze. She didn’t breathe as she looked into them, like someone looking at a terrible accident. She was waiting. But for what? The eyes didn’t blink; they didn’t look away. The body—if there was one—was lost in the heavy steam of the room. Dora heard Marta calling her name from far away.
She wanted to go toward her friend’s voice, but her legs refused to budge. She tried to take a step backward, but fell instead. She managed to scoot herself away from the window, the pebbles of asphalt digging into her hands. The eyes continued gazing out at her, with the same bleak expression. She felt a familiar sense of panic grip her body, halting her breath altogether. Sweat sprung onto her forehead and underneath her arms. Without warning, the eyes disappeared as if they were never there, the steam completely overcoming the window. Dora shot up and fled the alley, practically colliding with Marta on her way out.
“What is it, Dora?” Marta’s smile instantly dropped the second she saw her friend.
“What?”
“Your face, it’s the color of the sidewalk,” Marta said.
“I’m just thirsty,” Dora said, determined to forget what just happened. “I just need some water.”
“Come on, you don’t look well. I’ll take you inside for some water.” Marta grabbed Dora’s hand, but only managed to reach her fingers, causing Dora to nearly fall over.
“No, thank you. I’ll get some at the rally.” The thought of entering the ministry terrified her.
“Okay … are you sure you want to go though?”
“Yes!” Dora needed a distraction as soon as possible.
Peering at her friend for only a few seconds, Marta shrugged. “Okay, let’s go then, but I’m going to keep my arm around you.”
As they walked, Dora fixed her gaze straight ahead, high above ground level. She resolved to never inquire about the ministry’s basement where those eyes lived or—Dora shuddered at the realization—died.
Mike a Korvinközből
January 22, 1965
Dear Uncle Lanci,
Sometimes I think a more than sparse number of women walk through the streets all day with heinous perceptions about themselves. They are incompatible with who they want to be. They walk along on Nagymező or Erzsébet út, and who they so desire to become walks by them. She’s kilos lighter or monstrously breasted. How do I know this? Because I think Hedvig is one of them, and I know that I successfully combated it with just a mere compliment.
We were just meandering through the streets (the endless nights in my bedroom begged us to venture outward) when Hedvig suddenly looked at me like she was preparing shits and, elongating her arm toward another woman says, “She’s so attractive. Isn’t she so attractive?” First up, her question forced me to peel my eyes away from her, which no one particularly takes pleasure in. I couldn’t ignore her question, Uncle Lanci, since then I would be an insensitive bratwurst.
Well, I said a big no to the urge to say, “Yes! She is one sexy specimen!”
This urge resonated immensely due to my rebellious persona. But I don’t have the brain of a monkey. I am aware of what a remark would do to Hedvig. In plus, Hedvig is wonderfully beautiful. So, I told her so and said this woman was not as pretty.
The rest of the night we continued gleeful. She even said to me, “Mike, I know you switched the radio in my car. You are a clever genius.”
Okay, I’m not real here. She refrained from using those precise words, but that’s what I imagined she meant when she said, “Mike, have you heard of Radio Free Europe? I frequently listen to it in my car after I discovered it a few days proceeding.”
I put on the most maximum smile possible and asked her if she liked it. She said yes one million times strong. I informed her how your station is the sole one to play The Beatles and The Rolling Stones so she could withstand how important your station is. She brought forth politics into the situation, saying that your station talks too much about it. I agree one hundred percent. Now how does that make you feel, Uncle Lanci? Anyway, I stored the information away that I was the one who put your station on Hedvig’s radio. I would rather not be the robber to her feelings of discovery.
After I departed from Hedvig, I decided to pass time with my petite sister Adrienne. I accompanied her to her KISZ meeting, the communist youth group our father—who we simultaneous love and hate—forces us to attend.
There, Adrienne performed a feat that made me so proud to call her my sister. At the initiation of the meeting, they dispelled a video about, you wouldn’t believe, your very radio show. A narrator with a much less pleasurable voice than yours began telling those moldable children that your programming would eventually place them in jail! Listening to your program would cause them to initiate an armed uprising that would be crucified, it said. These statements could not be placed any further away from reality! It’s quite evident not one Hungarian possesses enough faith to try another revolution after 1956 was found faced up on its back. What a heap of dog shit.
Next, a boy, eight or nine years old, stood before us on the screen. He looked like a giant. He read a poem about what Hungarian children can achieve if they listen to their mom. Anyone who follows his mom can be viewed as a good person. Just like we listen to our moms, we listen to our mom government, additionally. This smelled of prime bullshit. I almost scrunched my face into a complete ball of absolute wincing. Adrienne spied me next to her with a monstrous wince on my face. We stood in the back, rest certain. Suddenly, Adrienne, who I honestly had no idea she even had such courageous tendons, galloped to the front most portion of the room, grabbed a radio out of her coat pocket, and began putting on your station!
Only God could plan such perfection, because the song that came upon the radio was “Twist and Shout!” All the children began laughing and dancing. How joyous it felt to be present in their petite rebellion. Adrienne screamed about grooviness as she sprinted throughout th
e bunches of these miniscule grown-ups.
I expect these meetings will not take place for a while now. The bureaucrats will have to recover from their embarrassment. They failed to even flinch as this took place. They just sat cold and absorbed. I wonder, with regards to them. Do they lack any passion with regards to their work? Are they frightened? Or, I speculate, they are feeling smudges of agreement with even people like Adrienne, and that’s just enough to shut their mouths from spouting upward. That would be enough for me. It is enough for me. Does it not wow you when someone with so few years does something one hundred percent profound? More profound than you could do? Adrienne stood before three hundred people and unleashed the subject the regime considered despicable.
Following her performance, I praised her until she turned the pigment of a peach. If I could just achieve the same bravery as she. She begged me that I deny telling our father the story of her great feat. Why does she insist on destroying my heart with these petite requests? Did she sincerely believe that I, her most loyal follower, would report her misdeeds to our father? It doesn’t take a genius to know he would collapse into worry the instant he heard his sweet child decided to challenge what he himself could not. I informed her I would never commit such a crime.
She looked like Hedvig did when I presumed she was about to have little shits. Adrienne’s face became like a scrunched up orange and she requested I accompany her to the kitchen tonight to discourse something with Father. She possessed an announcement. I speculated that she would discuss her plans to leave KISZ, forage into the world on her own, just like I did when I was her age (that’s twelve).
Instead she inquired from both of us, at the same time, where her mom went. She looked so old then. I wanted to halt her from talking so I could never view her wearing the pain of an older person. She pointed to her breasts, which closely invoked vomit in me, and demanded who would be there to explain them to her. Is it possible Adrienne could ravage my heart times two? My father delivered the answer he discoursed with us ad nauseam: She moved away when Adrienne was three. Things altered, Father told her.
Adrienne insisted he inform her where our mom was placed. I interpreted my father at that juncture as so guilty for failing Adrienne on this monumental level. He would never be able to bestow upon her the love a mom could. Neither of us would be able to accomplish that.
At times, I discover Adrienne conversing with herself in a mirror. She carries on a complete conversation with her reflection. To say that I am not tempted to eavesdrop for even a short period of time would be an understatement. I spy on her. Usually she perches on the counter of the bathroom and stares at her reflection. She touches her mirror self’s eyes, and bangs, and lips. That’s all while she is conversing, of course. She says a line, then says a response. It’s a back and forth exchange, with someone on the other end telling her masses of very loving things.
One time, I remember, she offered to herself a story about how she felt when she received an outstanding score on a test. For this mirror story, the teacher had paraded examples from Adrienne’s writing across the class. When she peered sideways, she spied the boy she liked grimacing. But, only two days later, he proposed they meet behind the bathroom. When she followed his proposition, he kissed her. After, they both departed in the opposite direction. She never spoke to him again. She’s twelve, so this disgusts me a little, but I keep listening. They never met again, but she loves him, she says.
I know who she fabricates to be encountering in those bathroom settings. It’s Mom. She’s trying so aggressively to make a relationship. It’s just … Mom doesn’t sound right when Adrienne pretends. She sounds like a little girl, and I hope Adrienne’s imagination is strong enough, and I hope she stays young enough, so she doesn’t suffer the same realization that our mom is no longer our mom.
I couldn’t forget these bathroom scenes now that Adrienne peered into Father and I in the kitchen asking of our mom. What was I supposed to say? I reclined in the corner of the kitchen when Father completely dissipated and confessed he heard she could be wandering in Munich. I could kick him at that moment. Why would he deliver this information to his daughter? She cannot leave now to seek Mom. She is twelve, and we all knew Father would not depart the country for that.
Adrienne’s eyes engulfed her face. I strove to hug her but I barred myself from nearing her. This was her obtrusion to deal with on her own. She begged Father that we impart on a family vacation there. He looked at me, and then he informed Adrienne that we lacked the money to travel internationally. Adrienne’s eyes downcast and she appeared to be swallowing the information in massive chunks.
She asked if Father ever communicated with Mom. I never even ventured toward this topic. But, there Adrienne went, acting braver than I’ll ever accomplish. I could see my father wincing in his side. Adrienne’s words stabbed into his heart, and mine as well. He refrained from putting forth an answer to Adrienne’s question. He explained that she left, slipping out away at night time. She did not secretly go. She departed after we talked for months about it. It was a choice we would need to accept because we would never accomplish changing it, he mandated.
What I knew Father was attempting to arrive at is that he refused to allow Mom to become another one of our famous statistics. Suicide—a popular way to go in this country. It was 1956 and I had reached the age of eighteen when she prepared to leave us, and I witnessed the depressive state she occupied. At night time, she cried, and I heard through the walls. At day time, she said very small amounts of words to me.
At the present moment, I grasp her explanations for leaving. You might not remember how aggravating it becomes when you are told for hundreds of times that you cannot grow into who you desire to be. Instead, you fabricate that your job makes sense and that your life is adequate. Mom worked the night time duties in a factory that produced footwear. During the day time, she would sleep while Father journeyed off to his work. They saw each other on Sundays, but what could they talk about when they sparsely participated in activities together? I always stored up data to talk to my mom about, when she was awake, which was only for three hours before I retired for the night in my bed.
And so one day I awoke to Father towering above my bed. He rested his hand on top of my shoulder and informed me that my mom became sick. He said she concluded that she must leave to get better. She will go to a different country until she possesses the ability to return. In that moment, I speculated she would come back to Hungary sooner rather than in the distance. I informed Father.
My father hauled a big breath. Apparently, he had uttered wrong words to me. I failed to understand until that precise moment, that Mom actually was not going to return. Father said we must move onward, but I knew he still preserved his love for our mom like the jar of pickles on our shelves. His love would stay fresh forever because it was meant to be decayed in the first instance anyway. That’s how love was to him. Ruined before it was ever reached.
I didn’t want Adrienne to taste this kind of love, and neither did Father, so we reserved to help her move onward too. I thought we had done as superb a job as we could muster, but Adrienne grew old before we realized. And she stood in front of us, yet both of us had reserved no words for her.
But, how would you, Uncle Lanci, explain to a petite person who still has years until she is grown old, that her mom disappeared into the West because unlike me or my father, she never put faith in the fact that Hungary could get better? Was she incorrect in her disbelief of our country? And how is it, Uncle Lanci, that I explain all of these particulars to Adrienne, whose sole desire is for her mom to divulge the details of adolescence to her? I wonder if I should approach Hedvig and request her to discuss puberty with Adrienne.
So, here’s what I thought first to say: “Adrienne, you’ll understand when you just get older. Like I did.”
I resolved to accompany her to a walk. That made up plan one. I thought it smelled of shit too, Uncle Lanci. Don’t worry; I refused to do that absolutely
dumb thing to my petite Adrienne.
So, I reasoned I would say, “Adrienne. She persists to love you, but she is unable to return to Hungary.” Naturally, Adrienne would reply with, “Why?” Just like she insisted upon doing with Father. I could inform her that she had to get better with doctors from afar. They could not all possibly journey to Hungary, so she went there. I can see how this answer would tie me up in knots. I would refrain from lying to her at all costs, though.
Because Adrienne’s expression grasped my heart like a tourniquet, I decided to solve her problem. And, arriving at the thought, my problem as well. I could not bear it any longer, and so I informed Adrienne that I would find our mom and escort her back home. I do not want Adrienne to endure what I have been for years.
Do you ever get that sensation like you are yourself in one second, and then a moment later you are someone else? That sensation succumbs me ad nauseam. Especially when my mind traverses in reverse to when my mom would fix her hands on me and utter granules of special phrases of special love. Her appearances in my mind incite this disillusioning sensation where I can’t recognize my past. It has no correspondence to what I am today. The day she left was the day my entire existence severed in half, its two parts becoming one hundred percent disconnected from one another.
That’s why I am planning on going to Munich. To find her and reunite everything. For years, unbeknownst to my father and my petite sister Adrienne, I have been trying to go to the West. I even received a visa, valid for the whole of Europe, but it was cancelled without a surmountable number of motivations. I suspect it was because I dabbled in the revolution. I solely received a correspondence in the postage that said, “Tragically, your application cannot be filled at this intersection.” I know I have a long way to go until I surmise a way to get out of here.
When I announced this, my father proceeded to give me a scowl. If I was approximate to him he would have kicked me very persistently in the shin until I halted talking. I comprehend his actions. I would have uttered the same statement anyway. Father attempted to speak, but his voice shook like he had bumps in it. He inquired how I would perform this brave feat, and I told both of them, in the most adequate confidence I could mutter, that I had not refined the details yet, but I would. Adrienne is not so trusting to believe these words right off, but I think it gave her three percent of comfort. My father refused to utter even one more saying to us. I think his head is still fuming with the betrayal I enacted upon him. I spoke without requiring forethought, and now some part of Adrienne grows hope that I will return her to her mom.
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