Once black subsumed my vision, I spidered in a horizontal trajectory forward. I had to go through a mess of metal tunnels. That’s the junction when my head attached to something hard. I got very proximal to the hard thing and realized it was a door. And it was cemented. My head sinking with my heart, I moved myself backward when some delicious thinking told me I should just try my keys on these doors anyway. Miraculously, they just rippled through the lock and opened it! I commenced spidering through the tunnel, opening every door that blocked me with the same key. Finally, I peered a long tunnel, and at the end of it was a light. I spidered to it, and it turned about to be a row of air vents. Through them were rows of horrendous capsules.
Inside some, prisoners slumbered in balls embracing their knees. Like petite, stricken rodents, they tried to comfort themselves with their own bodies. Others spread out in their cots as if asking someone to come and occupy them and pinch them away to another place for the evening. But as I kept spidering, I noticed more and more prisoners awoken. I assembled the fantasy that they were longing for the music we played every Thursday.
I passed admist the lone guard as he leaned over his chair absorbed by whatever materials he was pursuing. It resembled the naked women portfolios I indulge in at times. At first, I resonated zero noise, but then my knee ripped a weak point in the metal and a loud creaking emitted throughout the capsules. I made a screech—my very first one I had ever made in my quest to find Eszter—and the guard’s head shot up from his reading material.
The guard pounced up and down the capsules, and I heard him grunt and mutter to himself as he walked by the vent I peered out from. It would be no usefulness leaping backward and making noise. I decided to wait until the guard rested again.
I still had one more capsule to look into, and I was sure it was Eszter’s. So, in miniscule, I would not halt my quest. I heard a petite talking sound from that area too. I failed to formulate what she said precisely, but I thought I heard it singing. So with zero percent doubt in my mind, I decided that was Eszter’s ghostful voice wafting through the vent. Going forth, I soon discovered her. She sagged against the cornermost wall, her hair a nest of gray sticking to her head and the wall behind her. Her eyes flashed wide as she jostled with something in her hands. She also sung to the thing in her hand, in a petite voice, sometimes even speaking with it. It appeared dead and gray. I comprehended, then, it was a rat! A dead rat!
She embraced the thing and commenced lunging it in fits against the wall. She threw it, and it’d fall without life atop the ground. She embraced it up and repeated the same process over and over. She sang a range of curses, her voice expanding to more loudness. Like a wild person, she screamed at the rat until she disassembled its insides against the wall. Next, she paraded her wrists into the wall, her hands smushing against the bricks. She was bloody from it all, and I couldn’t tell if its origins were her or the rat.
When she terminated her anger, she picked up the rat again and pressured it against her chin. I could not comprehend her words, but she was talking with love. In that moment she appeared without age. She was in her own universe where she sets the rules. She could have been three or twenty-three or even a hundred and three. Innocence is determined, I believe, as the one hundred percent belief in everything. That’s exactly how Eszter looked. But knowing who she was, and what she had been through, this was all very disgusting. She was inciting momentous horror within me.
But I ventured down there to conclude a job. So pursuing my lips against the vent I whispered, “Eszter ….” Just her body absorbed her name, and she put herself into a less tight wad around the petite rat. I think I was calling her back to the world of people aware.
She stood up like a snail, but what occurred next was the opposite that. With one hundred percent forcefulness, she lunged herself at the vent and began banging on it and screaming. I was in there hiding, but she knew I was there. She persisted screaming, her bloody fingers poking through the holes in the vent.
I heard her hiss, “Uncle Lanci, is that you?” She said your name an ad nauseam number of times, which utterly muddles me, Uncle Lanci. Why is this woman who gropes beneath the Ministry of Interior so possessed with a DJ of a rock music program? As far as I am cornered, you have quite a high level of explaining to do, and I am waiting for it.
Eszter continuously tried her extreme hardest to dislodge me from the shaft. Not one guard rushed to her aid (as normal). Soon her screams dampened. She now whispered your real name, Uncle Lanci, which was more chilly than her screaming.
“Laszlo Cseke, Laszlo Cseke,” she said. She is calling you by your other name, Uncle Lanci. Should I call you that? I can’t say I like it very much ….
Anyway, I snapped my eyes down. I wanted to make pretend this was not occurring. That’s when I heard a soft tinkering. The sound of porcelain hitting metal regurgitated toward me. I opened my eyes to see Eszter aspiring to bite forth into the shaft. Perhaps she mistook herself to be the rat she embraced to breasts just a few minutes prior.
I am a sensitive being, and I could no longer refuse my soul the desire to simply comfort Eszter. I commenced speaking to her. Aware the fault resided within me that she began this mania anyway, I tried my best to flex my voice to softness. I pretended to be you. I told her she would be okay. I said that one day upcoming she would be able to flee this capsule and go somewhere, anywhere, she imagined to go. She commenced conversing with me, but you.
Addressing me by Uncle Lanci, Laszlo, and sometimes Mr. Cseke, she inquired why I left her with nothing when she endowed on you so much. I attempted to fabricate an answer, but I am a miniscule liar. All I could say was “I’m sorry,” which I sincerest was. She posited her mouth up next to the vent and I could even detect her breath from the tiny space I beheld. No way would I unravel my identity to Eszter in that instance. I squinted with my brain the very hardest I could imagine to understand her. She uttered something along these lines:
“You say you’re sorry, then get me out of here. Come back into the country. Proceed to get me and we can leave on this envoy together.”
Oh, how I was foaming with desire to leap forth and confirm her will to leave on the envoy. Inside me, a voice instructed me to decline Eszter on this. Wait, wait, wait, it said. I agreed with it, from my fear or rationale, I cannot say.
I harbored zero ideas of how to evict myself from that situation though. With Eszter continuously submerging her face into the vent, I just did not know how to send her away. I mumbled forth again my sincerest sorries. I really was, for disturbing her like that. I uttered the phrase so many times, my throat became tense-filled. By the tenth “I am sorry,” Eszter backed from the vent and settled again on her bed. Forgetful of the rat, she lay by herself now. Still mustering words, she remained in conversation, though I’m not one hundred percent positive with who. Maybe you, Uncle Lanci?
I backward scooted away from her. I propelled my butt across the shaft, the tunnels, and the doors and upward toward Andras. I solely desired to escape from all this situation promptly. To be forthright, Uncle Lanci, I am not certain if I will muster the courage again to return to the capsule where Eszter resides. Her demeanor is more frightening than I could ever possibly explain to you. So, if you would please spare me from this pain of finding her and simply tell me how to get on these envoys, I would give you all the money even I have saved and more. I aggressively wait your reply to me as if it was the crux that connected me to better parts of myself. It’s the notion that soon I will be gone from this place in a world of my deciding! Please adhere to my request soon.
If you can’t respond in earnest to my letters as I wish you would, could you simply at least play “She Loves You.” I am striving to see sweet Anika again. I’m make believing she is here, with me now, and I want to dance gently with her.
Sincerely,
Mike a Korvinközből
Desire is fuelled by all, but fulfillment. —Ernő Osvát
Dora Turján
Februar
y 11, 1965
Detached and disoriented, Dora wandered through the night, a habit she had recently developed as her mind refused, more and more, to rest. She always kept Mike’s letters with her buried deep in her pocket—she had yet to hand them over to Joszef. Amazed at the speed of the city surrounding her, Dora felt out of sync with its energy—its trams, buses, and people—in perpetual motion. But the crunching of her feet against the hard, crusty snow eased Dora’s mind, allowing her thoughts to focus on the perfunctory rhythm of her walking, and nothing more. That is, until she heard her name being called out, cutting through that particularly cold night. Turning around, she saw her father, out of breath and sweating.
Ivan cursed as he stepped into a berm of warm dog poop lining the sidewalk. “I’m glad I found you. I need to tell you something,” he said as he scraped his boot against the battered curb.
Watching him, Dora thought about how it seemed people were always trying to scrape something off of themselves in this city. When they stepped outside, they peeled back their identities to become stern and subdued citizens. The second they entered the underground clubs, they tore off their public selves, discarding them like raggedy, old jackets, becoming rowdy, impatient, and in sync with the rock music. Dora wondered, through all of these layers, did she even know who she was? Or anyone else, for that matter?
Ivan gave up on cleaning his shoe and sighed, defeated. “We have to talk about your mom.”
“Mom …?” Her dad had just brought up Eszter for the first time in nine years. She couldn’t believe it. Did he know Dora had just learned about Eszter? No, he wouldn’t … he couldn’t …. Dora lost her balance on the snow. She fell into Ivan, grabbing his arms to save her from crashing onto the sidewalk.
“I thought you should know something.” Ivan helped Dora up and pulled her cap down around her ears.
“You told me we couldn’t have anything to do with her,” Dora said. Ivan made her promise that the day after they took Eszter away, saying she committed a crime for the Freedom Fighters so egregious it put Dora and Ivan in grave danger. They couldn’t associate with her anymore, not with the regime rounding up anyone involved in the revolution, throwing them in jail, shipping them off to work camps in Russia, or killing them. Dora understood that forgetting about Eszter, at least for the time being, would be the only safe route.
Ivan carefully displaced the snow on a bench, motioning for Dora to sit down. “Things are different now.”
“How so?” Dora refused to sit. She wanted her dad to just give her the information and leave. She was not his mom or wife. She would never be that, and yet she felt him searching for the comfort a child could never provide.
“They’re having a hearing to determine if she will remain in prison or if her crime is worthy of something … else,” Ivan said, growing quieter as his voice tripped over his tears. “Your mom’s chances of being deemed innocent are slim. They will either confine her to a labor camp or sentence her to death.”
Dora closed her eyes and pictured the woman described in Ferenc’s letters. Her mom had no life at all. How could she possibly lose more of it? In Eszter’s state, she wouldn’t stand a chance against any judge.
Ivan placed his hand on Dora’s shoulder and squeezed it, perhaps a little too firmly. The best way to secure their sanity, and return things to normal, was some sort of jail sentence for Eszter. Death, however, would shatter them.
“Is there anything we can do?”
“I made sure to file the appropriate paperwork and extend deliberations as long as possible. However, a new police chief is being sworn in. He wants to rid us of the past, especially the people who committed crimes like your mom’s.”
“What was her crime?”
“You know I can’t share that information with you.”
“Except you’ll tell me that she might be sentenced to death?” Dora felt an old, and nearly forgotten, frustration mounting inside of her. Even at twenty-six, Ivan denied her knowledge of Eszter’s specific crime, though Dora now knew it had something to do with a murder, based on Ferenc’s letters.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have told you any of this.” Ivan stood up, trembling and nearly falling back onto the bench. Dora grabbed his shoulders and steadied him. She wondered if her father had the strength to even get home.
Just as he ambled out of sight, Dora noticed that Ivan forgot his briefcase. It was a brown, worn thing, its leather straps shedding ugly strings. She didn’t feel like calling out after Ivan, and decided instead to carry it home for him. As she bent down to pick it up, she spied a folder sticking out from the rest. Faintly written on its label was the word Eszter.
Dora slid the folder out of its rightful place, wondering if she was about to make a serious mistake. The first document contained a simple profile of Eszter—her age, weight, how many children she had. The sight of Dora’s name gave her pause, reminding her that, yes, she was Eszter’s daughter, a fact she had tried to ignore for too long. She quickly turned to the next document, a memo written in the aftermath of the revolution.
Eszter Turján and Laszlo Cseke: Escape Routes and Prospects
This report is an accounting of the events of October 24, 1956.
We searched for Laszlo Cseke, co-founder of Realitás, but failed to locate him. We discovered a note written to him from his colleague, Eszter Turján. In the note she divulged a code. We assume that this code assisted Cseke in his escape from Hungary.
Dora turned to the next page to see a note in her mom’s handwriting sitting, undisturbed, on top of a stack of papers. Dora hadn’t been this close to anything so reminiscent of her mom as she knew her (not that sliver of a person she saw in the ministry’s basement) in years. She lifted the note with caution, as if it was a shard of glass that could slip and cut her at any moment.
Laszlo, I am leaving now. I have to complete a mission. If I don’t come back or something happens and our position is compromised, there is hope. You can escape to Munich. Covert envoys go there weekly. Say you found out from me. They’ll know what that means. There is a code you must follow to find the envoys. The code is our favorite one. It’s the lullaby I sang to you sometimes at night. It’s the one I made you memorize. I never told you what it meant because I always wanted you here, for me. Just use it and listen to the midnight broadcast of Radio Free Europe. It will be clear where to go. But if you decide to do this, please do everything you can to find me and take me with you. I know that if the situation forces you to go, you will be in dire circumstances and so will I. Please, know that I love you. I always have, and I always will.
So there really was a code. Dora had a hard time believing it still existed, yet at the same time, a part of her hoped it did. And she knew her mom had been having an affair. She just knew it. Still, it hurt to see more proof that their family hadn’t been enough for Eszter. Her heart and mind belonged somewhere else. Laszlo’s betrayal must have hit her hard if she could still focus on it, through her madness. The memo gave Dora a light with which to shine on the past, and she wanted to see more. Dora reached for another memo.
Eszter Turján - Class Three Threat
Eszter Turján regularly corresponds with Radio Free Europe. She harbors knowledge of a code played to reveal coordinates of an escape route. We have yet to possess knowledge of this code, and all efforts must be taken to extract it from Eszter. We thereby recommend enacting punitive measures that will force her to provide us with said information. These measures can include, but are not limited to, putting high degrees of pressure on her back through weight presses, cutting off her toenails and eyelashes, as well as keeping her in a bright room to prevent her from sleeping.
At the bottom of the letter Dora noticed a number of signatures, including one that belonged to Ivan. Once again, Dora felt the shift happen, her world transforming to reveal a side of her father she didn’t know existed. Could he really be that cold and unfeeling to sign an order promoting the torture of his wife? Dora knew he probably didn’
t have much of a choice, with his singular focus to protect Dora and prove they had nothing to do with Eszter’s crimes, whatever those were. She hated her dad for his bureaucratic heartlessness and how he continuously tucked away his emotions in the folds of procedure and law. She saw now that beneath those folds, anger and sadness grew like a mold, uncontrolled and infectious, turning her dad into a fragile shell of who he once was and causing him to turn on a wife he still loved.
Dora knew he had never quite abandoned his love for Eszter. Sometimes when Eszter walked into the room, Ivan’s eyes would stay on her for an extra minute, long after the two of them said hello. Dora would watch as Ivan took in Eszter, following the steep curves of her hips to her slender waist, and up to her eyes, so sharp they could cut you. Eszter, too caught up in her own world, never stopped to see the faint outlines of compassion and desire etched onto Ivan’s face in those moments.
*
The next few days tumbled by in a series of enlarged silences and awkward pleasantries between Dora and Ivan. Anytime Eszter’s name began to surface, Dora focused the conversation on something else, reverting to her well-developed habit of avoiding anything related to Eszter. Dora spent a considerable length of time going over the reasons why Ivan would consciously decide to tell her about her mom’s trial. She considered that he wanted her to take some sort of action, and that while he could never ask for it, he could inform Dora about the situation and hope she would rise to the occasion. But, Ivan wouldn’t ever want Dora to do that sort of work, not after relentlessly shielding her from the underground world for all of these years. She also wondered whether her dad was planning on executing some sort of plan that would endanger him and this was his way of letting Dora know why he, too, may disappear one day. That theory seemed a bit far-fetched, given Ivan’s insistence that they remain within the government’s good graces. The only conclusion could be that Ivan truly had a lapse in judgment, a momentary breakdown that, unfortunately, Dora witnessed. That theory was confirmed when Ivan eventually apologized for his behavior and told Dora, without one hint of pain or sadness, that there really wasn’t much they could do, safely at least.
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