“Well, well, well, we found you.” Dmitry smirked and walked toward me.
I wondered what I looked like, covered in blood and still crying. I didn’t care, really. “I’ve been here the whole time.”
“You think that we didn’t know that? How stupid could you be?” Dmitry lifted his gun and pointed it at me.
“What happened to the others? His friends?”
“We took care of them,” Dmitry laughed.
“Then it’s time for someone to take care of you,” I said. I felt weightless, like I was floating in a lake on a warm summer day. My mind drifted away from my body. I watched the scene unfold from outside myself, as if I was in the corner of the basement, like that dead deer. I, too, felt nothing—not fear, not sadness, not a burst of adrenaline. I only witnessed the motions of someone following a clear, calculated trajectory.
I saw her unlock the safety on her gun. I saw her stop crying. I saw a flash of wild determination go off in her eyes. I saw her knuckles turn white. I heard a loud, horrifying crack. I watched the soldier fall forward, dead. She didn’t even look at him.
She turned the gun on Boldiszar, pointing it at his head. She took a deep breath, muttered something to herself, and fired again.
She didn’t think. She ran.
She ran until her feet carried her, of all places, home.
Mike a Korvinközből
January 24, 1965
Dear Uncle Lanci,
To explain all that happened in recent is immense. I will try, so read strong. First, I awoke on rigorous concrete—the bottommost floor of a room so bright it erased seeing from my eyes. I reminisced that someone had stepped on my head, sat on it, potentially shit on it, and then conceded, Oh, why not? and thrust the nearest rock at my skeleton.
The room in front of me appeared to be in the Ministry of Interior. I knew because I had cleansed it before. You can just speculate how enormous my fury blew when I learned that I somehow had landed myself at work. And, Uncle Lanci, this room was filled with police!
I instantaneously asked a policeman in the upmost proximity to me what was occurring. These were the first words that spewed from my mouth (after some un-premeditated spewing of other contents).
He went on his knee so our eyes conjoined, took both my arms, and thrust me upward. He managed, by some force of God, to sling me onto a chair.
“You,” he said. “You are in trouble. You are at the police station.”
A police station inside the ministry. I did not know. How did I end up there, I wondered, which you coincidentally may be pondering as well? I asked the police just that, and he informed me I should snuff it and sit down. They were still calculating the sum of the accusatories against me. I know, Uncle Lanci. I was upmost confused too. I reinstated to him that I did not do one lick of a bad thing when he beckoned his comrade over, Moris. Moris appeared with a petite slice of smile on the outskirts of his mouth.
Usurping me to the proceeding room, Moris never abandoned that petite smile on his face. I realized all of the sudden I had entered the exact room I cleansed as my profession at night time. Naturally, as the leading expert on this very room, I felt compelled to inform Moris of its most compelling components. I enlightened him concerning the delectable cigars perched under the desk beside us. As I gave him some tips, Moris loosened his clamp on my arm. Tenderously, Moris led me into the back door of the room—the one that had always been locked admist my cleaning.
That’s when it overcame me that I had aggravated the government, and now they were punishing me for it. So, there I existed, Uncle Lanci, like a petite baby or something that is one hundred percent helpless. We (me and Moris) went down a staircase until we stared at a row of jail capsules. My heart swallowed me, Uncle Lanci. I fostered zero notion of the existence of a prison below where I cleansed. I was utterly jolted by this. Do you reminisce when I described to you the sound from below? The one that projected Andras and I outward from the building in one hundred percent fear? I think I discovered from which those sounds came … it was this prison basement. But, I thought those fat bureaucrats looked outside of the city for prisons after the revolution. Hurrying my brain through these realizations was ushering me toward insanity. My thoughts revolved at an expedient rate, and I couldn’t put a hitch in them. I was a hamster.
Moris and I trumped through the premises, and each tiny capsule constrained someone either whimpering in a corner, flunged on a bed, or producing a massive shit on the petite toilet. I was shitting inside myself, really, enormous lumps of fear. Without saying one single phrase to me, Moris pointed to my future habitat, a capsule at the end, the size of a singular bed.
The capsule bore the appearance of the fairytale prisons. It donned zero windows. I heard a cockroach skidding along the floor. I screeched into Moris’ petite ear and begged him why I was in jail, but Moris elected silence. He made that he was drinking alcohol.
I would be one hundred percent baboonish if I didn’t admit I drank too far last night. I just harbored nothing as to what I committed that would force me to jail. Have you ever undergone a night like that, Uncle Lanci? Moris smacked closed the metal door of my capsule and left me.
Firstly and naturally, I plumped on my toilet so as to consider the transpiring of events from the night previous. I mustered up some concurrences. I reminisced about encountering a becoming woman named Anika. Oh, Uncle Lanci, she resembled the most delectable palacsinta ever consumed. Her height matched that of mine (okay, not so tall) and her voice never existed above an almost-whisper. So I had to bend forth toward her to listen. I desired to become aware of what I uttered to this Anika. Or, best, what she uttered back at me.
Reminiscing atop last night felt like yanking Adrienne’s hair out of the drain, with the floods of shampoo kissing it. The more I pulled up, the more ferocious the severity of the situation appeared. I started to realize what I had committed went deeper maybe than I could ever untangle. What could it be, Uncle Lanci?
I plumped onto the ground, the thud happening louder than I predicted. Soreness engulfed certain respectable areas of my body, and I’m ascertaining that one of the ignoble policemen graced me with these pains. The darkness of the capsule sucked on to my eyes, and it took a handful of time to perceive what was transpiring before me.
What I did end down seeing, Uncle Lanci, was more capsules standing across from where I sat. And then, sitting right behind those, more capsules. Did your parents ever institute a half mirror in their bathroom, next to the big, wide mirror? When I was a child, I would sit on the counter and glimpse into the half mirror. If I put the mirrors at the perfect angle, it would result in millions of me. I just continued on and on and on. It was glorious. That sensation usurped me in those cells. I proceeded to envision the millions of unlucky prisoners stationed here before me, who glanced outward and felt as I felt at that junction. They would reside in these capsules for the duration of their existences.
That is the junction when I heard a strange muttering in the stall adjoining to mine. Someone was uttering something along these stanzas:
“They’ll do it to you. They did it to me. No trial, nothing. Just stranded here and stranded there.”
I said, “Um, hello” (trying to maintain the highest amount of humility). I asked the voice questions about its origins, peppering it with “who are you,” etc. We proceeded to enter into a forthright conversation, which I will try to recreate for you here, Uncle Lanci, with my presiding commentary:
“I’m solely a person in jail who will not get the delivery of justice,” the voice said. It belonged to a female, I gesticulated from the supple contours of her tone. I think she reached the age of at least my mom’s.
“I am bemuddled by the procedures here,” I told her. “Will I survive?”
“I know what I did,” the woman voice said. At this point, I pondered the potential that she was unhearing. I also pondered maybe she had surrendered to psychosis.
“I do not know how long I’ve lived here, but
I am certain I will remain,” she said.
This was someone who evaporated from her mind how to converse. She stored up her time conversing with herself or the wall. Never under-esteem the power of isolation. I persevered to unlock her phrases, so that they could further me toward freedom.
“It’s been nine years,” her voice took on the most calm warmth that had emitted from her yet. It was so strange, Uncle Lanci. “The day the secret police arrived at my doorstep, I endeavored to become nothing.”
I surmised she was telling me her story and she wouldn’t halt.
“That’s all I aspired for. To melt into the nothingness and become it, without ever seeing the disaster I made. When I did it, when I melted, that’s the junction in time they came for me. I lost my weight in resistance when my husband realized I was nothing, and he threw me at them.”
I scarcely comprehended the breadth of her words. I understood though, which meant the more improved part of her brain had spoken. When I peppered her as to the explication of why her husband gave her to the police, she informed me he pretended for too long she was someone else. But, in truthfully, she never altered her state. Not even for one hour. He finally saw her for herself, which was nothing. This is what she endeavored, however, if you reminisce. I was following in a circle with her, but she was leading.
I asked her how it is she became a person who created amends with her stay in that petite capsule.
She said, “I am secured when no one else can view me. I belong where no one else lurks. To yield pleasure from others would only be taking because I have furnished them with nothing. I inhabit this planet of capsules, where I can grow nothing. I can be nothing.”
Not in one single moment did her husband or daughter approach her in jail, she said. She said the people who accustomed to thinking about her no longer foster her in their heads. They adapted into busy people whose brains contain sparse room for the person underground who has no one, is nothing.
It was that junction that saved me. That junction when I informed myself that I am mandated to reemerge from beneath this surface so that I can be in Adrienne’s life. I became aware of who I was, and it determined who I would become. I will become only the most superior deliverer of everything Adrienne wanted. That’s precisely what I desired. In my immediacy to commence my life, I peppered the woman voice with questions regarding my fate.
“Are we stationed here forever?” I asked her belovingly.
Drifting toward me was the most brutal inhaling and exhaling that has ever corrupted my ears. She was laughing. But this laugh was composed of one hundred percent vinegar, the honey joy completely depleted from it. I predicted she was trying to elevate herself above me with her laughing. But, she could not deceive me. I knew how hollow her inwards must be.
“No,” she said through the horrid effluence of icy, shrill laughter. “You, not forever.”
At the very outskirts of hope, I was thrilled she responded to me.
“They will fail to obtain you for a long amount of time. Those in your capsule revolve in and out. No point in staying.”
Oh! Was that the news my petite heart pounded for? Oh, I became so immediately enamored in those words. How is it I placed my trust in this woman, you are wondering, Uncle Lanci? Because, if I didn’t, I would have assumed I would sludge away my life in that capsule forever. It would be a life without life. Adrienne would transform her heart into the hardened pavement that is mine. So, I informed the woman voice I elected to believe her.
“You’ll remain for a day, maybe twice,” she informed me. “Night helps.”
“Why does night help?” I inquired.
You cannot even envision what night is for the woman, Uncle Lanci. She informed me that at night, she hears your radio station playing from the ground above her.
I realized I was conversing with the person whose maneuverings sent Andras and I flittering away like petite babies from the ministry. At this junction, Uncle Lanci, everything appeared before me, and then it started to choke me. I became powerful and meek simultaneously.
“It’s my radio show … the one you listen to,” she said.
“Oh, our radio show. We all own it,” I told her, instantly taking back in my mind the communist sounds of that genius line.
“No, you mistook me. It was my show,” she said.
Isn’t that obscure, Uncle Lanci, she could be saying this when I was quite aware of you taking the role of voice on Radio Free Europe?
I informed her of my bemuddlement and that you, Uncle Lanci, were the DJ of Radio Free Europe. Not her. Maybe she would heed the authoritarian notes of my declaration.
She said further: “Your Uncle Lanci is Laszlo Cseke, and he subsumed the role after everything happened, after what I did transported me here. And it transported him to Munich.”
She harrumphed. It resembled a thud, but it came from her interior. She is aware of your existence, Uncle Lanci! What a nebulous connection I had formed between myself and you. But, then she said something that incited me into more bemuddlement. She said:
“Laszlo is the reason I am in here.”
If you are viewing these words, you may choke back on the piece of sandwich you are undoubtedly devouring. So when you surely hark up a piece of that sandwich, understand I tell you this because now you must tell me what you can. Are you really responsible for this person? Please explain to me what is happening, if you can make that possible.
I wanted to learn more of her, but another word failed to emit from her lips that night, and I soon fell asleep to the tinkering of my brain as it made out all the possibilities, hopes, and horrors my life would now assume. At some junction (my capsule was minus windows, so timing is murky), the guards altered and the new ones skid through. I had sunk asleep, and now they awoke me.
I picked up the guards’ noises as they invaded her (the woman’s) capsule. They conversed with her like she was a petite baby, informing her of their power to compassion her. They’ll feed her, but I heard no food happening. They spit on her, because I heard fluid bursting forth from their teeth. At the height of their taunts to her, they asked her what she possessed for them and if they would like it.
They dragged her past my cell, and I closed my eyes pretending I slept so I didn’t have to be part of it. They went only three capsules down, and when I peered my head around the corner, I could tell they had entered the cell with the big window. Light flickered through the entrance of the capsule, and I wondered, for one miniscule second, if perhaps they were donning upon her the opportunity to look outside. And then the most worse noises that have ever entered my ear did so, no matter how persistent I had been to stop it the entirety of my life. Belts flipped outward and juggled to the floor. Boots skudded and skin skudded and things skudded … the sounds of forcefulness. Of horridness.
I heard a wheeze-full sigh, and a large thud encountered the wall. Another thud happened, but with another sound, you withstand … the sound that is similar to boots, after it rains, squishing against a wet floor. The noise proliferated the atmosphere. It labored forth for three minutes like someone trudging through a puddle and belaboring something against the wall simultaneously. I heard clinching, whimpering, wincering, groaning, and another thud.
In plus, there was more horror to the case. The same situation repeated itself. Three times. When I peered down at my legs I realized I had released a piss onto the ground. The guards left without even proliferating any heed to me. I thanked my luck for that. I determined to remain patient. I said zero words and tried with all my efforts to plunge my ears with nothingness.
I succumbed to sleep again with zero awareness of the time or my fate. But I knew the fate of the woman. I had ascertained more sureness of it than anything else. Her horrific life paced betwixt me in my sleep, stalking every bit of my dreams.
I neglected to sleep for long. Someone was talking to me. It was the woman voice. She inquired of me if I enjoyed “the show.” I yelled no, and then she exerted that inhaling-exhaling
laugh that incited absolute fear within me. She proceeded to say something I could not comprehend at that junction, but I think it was something about these lines: “It’s acceptable. I’m unneeding of your condolences.”
At this instance, my mind was one hundred percent bemuddled about what to say. It’s like the case when you encounter your mom, for the initial time, naked. I mean her real and evident nakedness, because now you have surpassed the age where her nakedness is an okay extension of you. It’s the age when her naked officially becomes the opposite of you. And you want to conceal your eyes away.
I sat there silenceful.
“How is it they could not do this?” the woman voice said. “They anticipate the power it fills them up with. But, the power they imagine is just that. Imagining. Not power, solely masturbation, because their actions have zero effect on me.”
She had evolved into someone so accustomed to the raping, that she transformed it into a lesson. That is when you know a person has exceeded to the lowest possible avenue … when they begin to glisten insights into horrifying situations and whittle them down to crystal logic, throwing off into the ocean any emotion. I waited to say a thing that would near rightful. I nimbly asked her how often they commit that crime against her.
“Each day,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But, why are you here? What is it?”
“Murder,” she said.
My mouth depleted all its juices from it. I felt scared and curious at the same time.
“How?” I said.
But she dragged her mind away from me instantly, because in total she responded, “It’s not about me. It’s not the fault of me. It was about him, and I was confused.”
Instantaneously, I longed to say something that would distract her from going off into the deepness. I rambled into the explication of Adrienne. You envision, Uncle Lanci, I endured to bring forth something happy toward her, and Adrienne was the initial thing I thought of. I informed her in regards to the sum of Adrienne’s imaginations, how monumental her intelligence is, how she incites laughter. I also went forth into Adrienne’s sadnesses so the woman voice would comprehend the reality and not subsume I am lying. The woman voice made no moves, no sounds. She listened as I even informed her of my plans for Munich, to discover our mom.
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