Triptych

by Margit Liesche

  “I’ve come to talk with Eva. Is she around?”

  “At lunch now. But she…all of them…will be back soon.”

  No sooner have the words left his mouth than a side door clatters open, followed by a cacophony of voices. Eva is the only woman in the crew. The men, dressed in jeans and white t-shirts with diPietro Studios in black lettering across the front, disperse to their various work stations. Tibor and I are still standing in the aisle near the Baptismal font. Eva sees us. She looks momentarily startled, then the corners of her mouth curl. “Ildikó.” She strides in our direction.

  I smile. “Hello Eva. You look wonderful.”

  It’s true. She looks much younger than her forty-one years. Her jet black hair is cut in a sleek bob with thick bangs and is streaked with burgundy. Dark eye shadow and bold slashes of liner set off her ebony brown eyes. Very dramatic. To her jeans (acid-washed with frayed openings at the knees) and company t-shirt like the men’s, she’s added a wide, black-mesh metallic belt, worn low over the hips.

  “Margit’s iron girdle?” Tibor stares at the belt, suppressing a grin.

  Eva laughs. I’m lost. Then I remember. In attending church with Zsófi and Mariska, I learned some of the eccentric back-stories of the Hungarian saints. In the thirteenth century, at the height of the Mongol onslaught on Hungary, King Béla IV’s wife was pregnant. She made a vow to offer the child still in her womb (Margit) to God’s service, if only Hungary were saved from extinction. Hungary prevailed, and when she was twelve, Margit joined the Dominican Order. Later, rejecting two royal suitors, Margit pledged a solemn vow and embarked upon an arduous life of contemplation and penance, mortifying her flesh to atone for the sins of others, subjecting herself to frequent whippings and wearing shoes spiked with nails as well as an iron girdle around her waist.

  Tibor excuses himself. Eva is anxious to get back to work. She nods to the showpiece baptismal font, made entirely of white plaster.

  “It’s the original, from 1910. Three coats of paint since. Whites and beige. I’m taking it back to the pure plaster and I’m on deadline to complete the stripping this week. It’s slower going than I expected.”

  She picks up the work gloves lying at the font’s base. The base, about five feet square with three narrow stepped-back risers, supports an immense octagonal basin. A two-foot high statue of the figures of St. John the Baptist baptizing Jesus rises from the basin’s carved plaster lid.

  Straightening up, Eva notices where I am staring. Her voice is soft, an eerie undertone in the vast space. “Even Christ sought atonement.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Eva shrugs, slipping on the gloves. “I just find it assuring to think that even the sinless man, the Son of God, believed He needed redemption.”

  “Redemption? But wasn’t He doing it simply to lead the way?”

  Eva does not reply. Wood, steel and plastic precision tools, like dentist’s instruments, lay in orderly fashion on a ledge along the base. She sits and removes a fine steel wool pad from a plastic tub. Sunlight seeping through stained glass casts jewel-toned blotches of ruby, sapphire, and emerald on a section near her foot, transforming her paint-splotched sneakers into dazzling art. Vaclav’s shoe memorial to Jan Palach, the dissident Prague martyr, flashes to mind. I turn to the source of the light show.

  Nine Hungarian saints are depicted in the patterned windows. It is Margit’s backlit figure which casts the rich array of colors.

  A discarded crown, symbol of her renouncement of noble birth, rests at Margit’s feet; in her hand, the cross of her chosen vocation. Her other hand clutches a calla lily—symbol of innocence, my mother’s wedding flower. Margit’s pledge to a life of willing self-punishment and deprivation…

  Floggings? Self-mutilation? To atone for the sins of others? It does not compute. A loving God would expect such extreme sacrifice? A nun’s raw bleeding flesh could somehow move God to forgive my mother’s killer? Disgusted, I turn back.

  An elegant carved-leaf detail circles the basin’s lip and rows of leaves spill down at intervals around the circumference of the base. Eva has unscrewed the lid from a can, releasing a pungent, turpentine smell. I watch her dip the pad into the pasty substance and begin lightly scouring a flat unadorned area on the side of the basin.

  “Zsófi asked me to invite you to dinner tonight,” I say to the accompaniment of the steady, muted scuffing noise.

  The pad pauses. Eva asks about Mariska. I give her the news.

  “I have a date tonight—” A dramatic eye roll, a sideways nod to the font. “—with this. It would have been wonderful to see her. Zsófi too. And of course spend time with you.” She smiles. “How long has it been?”

  “The two of us?” I think for a moment. “Got it. The concert. August twenty-fifth—”

  “Nineteen sixty-eight.” Eva puts down the pad, selects a tool like a fine ice pick device. “Lincoln Park.”

  The date, a Sunday, was the start of the turbulent Democratic National Convention week. Plans for organized anti-Vietnam war protests during the convention had been in place for months. Eva and I were against the war, of course, and when we heard about a rally in Lincoln Park where MC-5 and other local bands would be playing, we headed over there.

  Late that night, in the park, as the mass of people continued to expand, more bands turned up. Eva and I, early arrivals, managed to get close enough to the stage to catch the occasional glimpse of the musicians. As the night wore on, we’d also gotten squeezed in tighter and tighter until finally we were like sardines fin to fin in a can. Hungry. Danced out. Weary from being jounced every which way on the whim of those packed around us. Tired of getting our toes smashed, of nearly losing our tube tops, our hearing all but gone, our throats and lungs sore from breathing air thick with smoke and from singing, Eva and I had decided to call it a night.

  We began shoving and elbowing our way through the maze of bodies. Progress nearly impossible, finally, Eva, eyes wild, the stress in her voice obvious, shouted, “We need to find a way out NOW!”

  At the start of the evening, Eva had said she wasn’t one for tight crowds. Still, she hadn’t shown any signs of being bothered until then. Reading the panic in her eyes, I hurriedly panned the mass surrounding us for an opening. In that moment, the lyrics being sung on the stage penetrated.

  “Eva, listen,” I said, nodding my head in the direction of the band’s Jimi Hendrix imitator, belting out “All Along the Watchtower.” Leaning into her, I shout-sang, “Got to get out of here…too much confusion…puh-leez, some relief.”

  Realizing the irony, she laughed at my play on words, her expression visibly relaxing, and I laughed with her as we continued inching along.

  At the start of the evening, a strong uniformed presence had been evident, mainly on the edge of the gathering. Nearing the perimeter, I froze at hearing Eva’s strained whisper. “Look!”

  A moment earlier, Eva’s complexion had been rosy with the heat. Now the look of terror in her eyes had returned, and she was completely white.

  We faced a phalanx of men in blue helmets strapped under their chins, nightsticks strapped to their hips. A few officers began filtering into the throng. One officer eyed us suspiciously as we began walking again. Unnerved and unable to avoid brushing against him as we passed, I stumbled, accidentally stepping on his boot. An elbow hit home hard in my ribs. I yelped.

  Next to me, Eva saw what happened. “Disznó,” she said under her breath.

  I glanced over. She’d called him a pig.

  The band abruptly stopped playing. Looking back toward the stage, we saw a flatbed truck moving in to be used as an alternate stage, blocked by a uniformed brigade.

  From the multitude, a chorus of voices rang out, “Stop the war! Stop the war!”

  Fists, many with fingers parted in the familiar peace sign, pumped the air. The uniforms broke rank. Sticks flashed in th
e glow from the headlamps of the truck. Concert goers scattered. Those caught, struggled.

  I looked at Eva. A burst of light illuminated the expression of disbelief and horror on her face. The light bounced and a paddy wagon ground to a halt maybe twenty yards away. From somewhere behind us came a scream. I whipped around. An officer was clubbing a resisting protestor. Another policeman, grabbing the fallen young man’s foot, began dragging him across the grass, his curly mop of hair bouncing and flopping wildly as he squirmed and kicked with the opposite foot.

  A jeep, covered in barbed wire, carrying National Guard reinforcements, peeled onto a grassy mound beside the paddy wagon. Near the stage, the driver of the truck laid on the horn. Eva, pulling me now, found an opening. We bolted from the scene, eventually ducking into a dark alleyway.

  Fighting for breath, our hearts pounding, we took cover behind a cluster of garbage cans, huddled close amid spilled waste on pavement smelling of urine and vomit, and for the first few minutes dared not speak above a whisper.

  “Jeeps strung with barbed wire in Lincoln Park,” Eva said in a heated low voice. “Never could I imagine this. We are in America. What next? Tanks rolling through the streets?”

  Feeling the trembling of her shoulder against mine, I remembered. Eva had been a young girl living in Budapest during the Hungarian revolution. Her family’s apartment building had been demolished by shelling, her parents crushed in the debris.

  “We’re not in Budapest. It will be okay.” I placed a reassuring hand on her arm.

  Her arm jerked free. Eyes wild, flashing with sudden rage. “Not okay. Barbarians. That poor young man. Didn’t you see? His head was bleeding. They kept shoving him, dragging him like a scared dog to the paddy wagon.” She spit on the ground. “No better than the Communist pigs at home. Hunting down dissidents. Beating them, chucking them away. Not human. They will pay.”

  I shrugged. “We can hope. We’re not in Budapest, Eva, and they’re not Communists. This is still Chicago. They were cops. More likely, the Daley machine will simply sweep this night under the carpet.”

  The next day, Eva boarded her scheduled flight back to Italy.

  Now, eighteen years later, seated on the font’s base, Eva is jabbing with a sharp pick. A small pebble of plaster flies off, landing at my feet.

  Eva grabs the abrasive pad and, using its pointed square edge, buffs the spot. “Look. More residue from that stubborn first layer of paint.” She shakes her head. “I’ll never finish in time.”

  I look closely. A minute strip of beige paint is evident along the leaf embellishment. I also see tiny gold flecks.

  “Gold leaf?”

  “Yes. Twenty-four karat. Once the stripping’s done, I’ll re-prime and apply fresh paint. Ivory with a glazing that will make it look antiqued. The rolled leaf motifs—” She points with the pad. “I’ll highlight with beads of gold leaf. We have a photograph of the original finish. A diPietro family member was the artist. It’ll look as good as new when I finish.” She sighs. “If I finish.”

  “You will. And if half of what Mariska says about your talents is true, I have no doubt it will look better than the original.” My gaze returns to the statues on the lid. “John’s arm is missing. You’ll mend that, too?”

  The two figures are posed in the traditional manner. Christ kneeling in the Jordan River, John holding a pitcher aloft over Christ’s head, preparing to anoint Him with holy water. Only no pitcher, no arm, just a black wire protruding from John’s shoulder.

  Eva smiles. “Right down to the fingernails. It’s more intricate work than this—” A nod to the basin. “I’ll make a new form from wire, replaster and sculpt in the details, but not here. Back at the studio.”

  “I better let you get to it. Zsófi and Mariska will be disappointed you can’t make it. Another time?”

  “Sure.”

  My gaze lingers on the wire protruding from John’s shoulder socket. “Wish mending Zsófi’s hand was so simple. Mariska told me about the secret police, what they did. She…they’ve…never filled in why she’d been tortured.”

  Eva’s dark eyes narrow. “And you want the sordid details? What the AVO is capable of doing to innocent people? To women?”

  Her words reverberate loudly, the sudden show of passion not unlike the angry explosion I witnessed in the alley so long ago.

  I place a hand on her shoulder, squeeze.

  The steel wool pad begins its shuffing sound again. “You must ask Mariska. Zsófi. It is not my place to tell.”

  ***

  Budapest, 28 October 1956

  Along Bartok Bela ut, a pageant of pamphlets and leaflets, posted on surfaces everywhere, greeted them.

  Her mother clapped mitten-covered hands, nearly dancing for joy. “Truth has competition,” she said. “Isn’t it wonderful? For ten years a solo voice has hogged the stage. Now we have a full choir!”

  It was late afternoon, cool but clear, and somewhat oddly, they appeared to have the street to themselves. Évike smiled, flitting freely with her mother from one lamppost, one building front, to the next, eyeballing the variety of free newspapers plastered everywhere. They nailed copies of Truth alongside sheets printed by the police, the Army, and factory workers, observing their calls for order, national unity, and defense.

  The corners of fliers with student demands protruded from beneath some notices. They had been brushed over with strokes of paste preparing a place for newspapers, like Truth, with “hard” news, but also for posters with lighter fare. Évike giggled at a caricature of Communist Party General Secretary Rakosi departing with his suitcases labeled “Lies” and “Promises.”

  An artist had created a mock memorial card with an illustration of the fallen Stalin statue, inviting people to its funeral. “Clever,” her mother said smiling. “And clever, too, that the Stalin boots have found a practical use.”

  At last a pleasant recollection. Évike and her mother, accompanied by Josef, had gone to the site where the hated statue had once stood to witness what was left—the two enormous boots still on their pedestal of pink marble, now filled with bouquets of Hungarian flags.

  Throughout Budapest, only food shops remained open for business. Coming upon a cluster of closed shops, they observed the many smashed windows with goods inside that had not been touched.

  “Tempting, isn’t it,” her mother said. “I could have a new blouse or—” they paused before a children’s store, “you could have a decent pair of shoes.” At a bakery displaying cakes, there were signs that rats or other varmints had been nibbling on them. “Better let a few cakes spoil than set an example of what might appear to be looting,” the mother commented.

  In front of the bakery, an unguarded open suitcase with many hundred-forint notes and a sign asked for donations for the wounded or homeless. Next door, at a partially destroyed florist’s shop, this time the goods had been taken. Just ahead was Móricz Zsigmond körtér. The square was largely destroyed. All around huge piles of debris and gaping buildings were smashed Russian tanks. Placed reverently on a long row of flag-covered bodies were the flowers from the shop.

  The quiet, the lack of human contact, was eerie but Évike’s mother insisted they continue on to the square. “We need to learn what has happened, what has gone on here. I will write a report for Josef to publish.”

  Évike saw several white mounds. She knew what they were and quickly looked away. The Russian dead who were not removed by retreating forces lay where they had been killed, their identities lost beneath a coating of lime dust.

  Her mother paused. “Russkies.” A heavy sigh. “In death, their faces, sprinkled with lime, well…they look almost serene. Like snow-white statues.”

  Évike shivered and continued to avert her eyes as they walked a little farther.

  The sun was low in the sky. Évike hooded her eyes with her hand and looked up. Her heart stopped. A tank
had blown in the second floor of the shop at the end of the row. In the huge gaping hole, sat a gaunt woman with uncombed white-streaked black hair, a rifle across her knees.

  “Mother, look,” she whispered.

  “Hello,” her mother called to the seated woman.

  The woman remained stone-faced.

  Her mother walked to the building, stopping just below the black hole above. “Why don’t you come down?” The shop door was open. She took a tentative step inside. “I’ll come up to help…”

  “Don’t.” The word held so much venom it stopped her mother cold.

  “Okay,” she said retreating, “but is there someone else I could bring here for you?”

  A ray of dull sunlight struck the woman’s lined face, painting her sallow skin a deeper shade of sickly yellow. Her cheeks looked sucked-in. “I wait for no one but the Russians. They took everything…everyone…I ever cared for. In 1916 they killed my husband, a prisoner of war in Russia. This morning, my son fell two blocks from here. That—” she aimed the rifle at the floor, “was my millinery shop and this—” she waved the weapon in a circle, “was my home. There is nothing left for them to take from me.”

  Évike jumped at the sound of a truck approaching full-speed. Both she and her mother whipped around, then breathed sighs of relief. The truck’s antenna brandished a tricolor flag. The vehicle screeched to a halt near the flower shop. A small contingent of teenagers, in ragtag clothes with tricolor armbands, leaped off. They began lifting flag shrouded corpses onto the truck. More boys with rifles hopped down from the back of the vehicle and began fanning out into the square. A thin, wiry older student, a Tommy gun clutched in one hand, climbed down from the truck’s cab. He started to wave at the seated woman. His hand froze. At the same moment, a barely audible, “Jenõ Toth!” escaped her mother’s lips.