Triptych

by Margit Liesche

  With a backward glance at the woman perched on the second floor, Évike dashed after her mother.

  Jenõ’s black eyes drilled the mother as they approached. “What are you doing here?” His eyes flicked nervously left and right. “This is a main route for Soviet tanks entering the city.” He nodded in the direction of a burnt-out tank. “Well, trying to enter. That one will make a good barricade for the next skirmish.”

  “Nagy has called a cease-fire,” her mother said, barely able to hide her sarcasm. “Haven’t you heard?”

  Jenõ smiled wryly. Then his expression hardened. “For us only one alternative. Win or fall. We have confidence in Nagy, sure. But we will lay down our weapons only to regular Hungarian troops, and we will put ourselves at the disposal of the new government only if it really is a Hungarian government.”

  Her mother nodded then asked about her husband. Jenõ had not heard anything about Miklós.

  “We could use his help,” Jenõ said, his fingers combing back his long black locks. “We’re short on weapons and experience. These kids, though, we’re lucky. They’re inventive, tireless.”

  Évike and her mother followed his gaze to a side street jutting off the square. Two boys were positioning overturned brown soup plates just beyond the cobblestone entry.

  “We’ve run out of high explosive charges to place beneath them,” Jenõ explained, “but the tank drivers won’t know that, and we hope that they haven’t heard of the silk trick.”

  “The silk trick?” the mother asked.

  A short distance from the boys aligning the plates, another team was spreading out a vast blanket of shiny fabric. Jenõ nodded to them. “A scout has reported a fleet of tanks is heading this way. When we know they’re close, the boys will soak the silk with oil. That’s when our petrol bombers exercise their throwing arms. If they don’t score a hit, we’ll try luring them into one of the alleyways. Once in, they can’t get out and we got ’em.”

  “What about her?” Évike asked, pointing to the perched woman.

  Jenõ smiled, but it quickly faded. He smoothed Évike’s dark hair. “She’s determined to help us. If you’ve heard her story, you know it is right that we let her.”

  “And us?” her mother asked brightly.

  Jenõ wagged his head. “Absolutely, no. I could never face Miklós again if anything happens to you…or his daughter.”

  All at once, the sound of an enormous explosion in the near distance. Then another. The ground shook and Évike screamed. Across the square, the buildings were hidden by smoke. Then, a piercing whistle, followed by another explosion, close to the truck.

  A blast of air knocked Évike sideways. Falling, she glimpsed the shelled-out shop. The woman was out of her chair, kneeling, the rifle directed at the approaching tanks. Évike watched, waiting for her to fire.

  “Come,” her mother said sharply, yanking her up by the arm.

  “That way.” Jenõ pointed to the nearby side street, then dashed in the direction of the truck, calling back over his shoulder, “Don’t stop.”

  They were running up a slight incline. Évike felt a stitch in her side. Her mother was panting. “Mother, not so fast. It hurts.” The mother released Évike’s hand. Her foot dipped sideways on a cobblestone, twisting her ankle. Sobs welled up in her throat, but Évike dammed the tears. The pain would stop. Will it away. Never cry.

  Her mother knelt and pressed lightly around her ankle. It was tender to the touch. Évike sniffled, shutting her eyes hard.

  Her mother looked up. “Can you walk?” Before Évike could answer, she said, “You must.” The words left her mouth as a series of explosions erupted behind them.

  Évike, leaning heavily on her mother’s arm, hobbled hurriedly at her side. They had not gone far when a voice from a window above them called out, “Faster.”

  Évike and her mother glanced up. Gun barrels protruded from the windows of buildings on either side of the street. “Tank coming. Go, fast…or get in a doorway.”

  The narrow passage curved slightly. “Not possible,” the mother assured her daughter leading Évike around a building, following the bend in the street. “A tank would never come in here.”

  “It will when the right bait is set.”

  The voice from a doorway startled Évike. She gripped her mother’s arm with force. Her mother turned to her, eyes narrowed. Then, the smallest of smiles. “It’s okay.”

  A woman in a thick grubby jacket and pants crammed into boots signaled them from a recessed doorway. “Duck in here with me.”

  Évike’s pulse had been racing. Now, tucked in the narrow space beside the freedom fighter, the frenetic thumping in her chest accelerated until her ears pounded with the pulsing noise.

  A sudden grinding and crunching of cogs biting cobblestone, growing ever louder, penetrated her besieged eardrums.

  The woman’s pale blue eyes bulged with excitement. “Yup, the boys have one on the run.” The dirty blonde hair framing her face was completely wild, and Évike thought she looked quite mad.

  The freedom fighter was holding something. Évike gazed at the woman’s hands expecting to see a grenade. Instead she saw an open jar of plum jam.

  “A powerful weapon.” She cackled softly. Another sign of madness? “My partner across the way—” she nodded—“has one too.”

  “Jam girls,” her mother said with quiet awe.

  The freedom fighter motioned to her counterpart across the street. Évike and her mother glimpsed long frizzy red hair. “Dóra?” They exclaimed in unison.

  “Dóra? Nah, that’s…” The woman hesitated. She squinted at them. “No point in naming names, now is there?”

  A horrible rumbling. The tank was closing in. Évike’s heart stepped up its jackhammering. She covered her ears. The main gun of the tank inched menacingly into view at the edge of the building at the slight curve in the road.

  The woman next to them was counting under her breath. “Now,” she yelled to her partner across the way.

  The two women bolted from the doorways. They reached the edge of the building. Crouching, the women rounded the corner, disappeared.

  Évike removed her hands from her ears. “What are they doing?”

  “The bravest of acts. Let’s go see. Hop on.” The mother squatted so Évike could climb on her back. She trotted, Évike bouncing on her back, until they reached a door near the corner.

  Inside, the passageway was dark but her mother found the stairwell. She was stronger than Évike could have imagined, or was it the excitement of the moment? They were up the stairs in no time.

  A young female freedom fighter held the stick end of a broom pointed out the open window. She spun around. “What?”

  Évike thought she now understood what was happening. The tank commander, believing he was seeing snipers’ guns, had nosed the tank into position, preparing to fire on the rebels. Only instead they’d been lured into a tight, dead-end street.

  “Please, my daughter wants to…Needs to see this.”

  The rebel was only a few years older than Évike. She looked at the mother in the same way Évike had eyed the freedom fighter in the doorway earlier. Like she was crazy. But without a word, the young rebel turned and resumed her position.

  Évike slipped off her mother’s back. They peered out. Below, the two women who’d been hiding in the doorways, having scrambled unseen up the back of the tank, were clambering off again. In front, the tank’s narrow window was thick with brown jam. The wipers turned on, succeeding only in creating a thick sticky smear before giving out. The turret spun, the main gun firing wildly. The staccato noise—a sudden vision of the tanks in Parliament Square—sent Évike flying to the floor.

  “The hatch is opening.” Her mother’s voice was barely audible.

  Quiet. Then the punishing sound of a nearby explosion.

  “A rebel-l
aunched petrol bomb hits home,” her mother yelped, diving to the floor next to her daughter. The building rocked. Rocked again with another blast. Quiet. Hammering gunfire. Quiet.

  “Come,” her mother said, helping Évike up, crouching so her daughter could mount her back. “We’ve seen enough.”

  Chapter Ten

  Chicago, 1986

  At five-thirty, I am climbing the stairs to the apartment above Duna Utca. It is after hours and the store is closed. In the corridor is the faint smell of must mixed with the slight aroma of paprika and beef. The musty smell grows fainter until at the top of the steps, I open the door.

  The upstairs flat with its high ceiling and tall windows is large and airy and feminine. The lamp shades dangle fringe and Hungarian bric-a-brac and framed photographs clutter every flat surface. Over the white fireplace, the mantle supports porcelain ballet dancers in various graceful positions.

  The dancers—and the décor, in part—are courtesy of Irina Marinova, the antiques store owner in Willow Grove. A onetime dancer in prestigious companies in Russia, London and Toronto, she had also taught at a private Toronto ballet school. But by 1961, Irina seized an opportunity to start a second, non-ballerina chapter, in Chicago. Her parents had owned an antiques business. Old things were in her blood, she liked to say, and began the deliberate search for the right location for establishing a store.

  After Mariska and Zsófi purchased Duna Utca, the three women met at a Chamber of Commerce Women in Business mixer. They had all fled devastation, and knew only too well what it was like to begin again with nothing. Mariska and Zsófi had poured all their resources into Duna Utca; Irina who’d been madly “collecting,” had an apartment overflowing with inventory and no store. Many of the pieces surrounding me are original “Irina’s.”

  It’s still hot outside and at the tall open windows, gauze curtains hang limp. Behind the closed swinging door, Zsófi is singing in the kitchen. “I like to be in A-mer-ica. Okay by én in A-mer-ica. Minden free in America.”

  A lid clangs. The singing stops.

  The kitchen door bursts open, releasing a fresh wave of paprika-spiced air. Zsófi leads with her shoulder then pivots, her focus on the china tureen balanced in her grip. She looks up, greeting me with a smile.

  “Just in time,” she says. “Gulyásleves.”

  The rich soup, made from beef, onion, potatoes, carrots, laced with paprika and caraway seeds, is traditional Hungarian. “Divine,” I reply.

  Behind me I hear the shuffling of slippers on the hard wood flooring. I turn.

  “Auntie Mariksa.”

  Her arms open. I press into her pillow softness, breathe the scent of lilacs, then hold her at arm’s length for a moment, taking in her pleasant round face. Yes, much improved. Blue eyes dancing, cheeks baby pink.

  “Ildikó, come,” she says. “Let’s have a little bor, wine.”

  Zsófi switches on a large square fan propped in one of the windows. “Yes, sit, please. I have just the thing. Egri Bikavér,” she adds over her shoulder, refusing my offer to help and vanishing into the kitchen.

  The table is freshly dressed in crocheted lace and set with ivory china.

  I assist Mariska with her chair then take the seat beside her. “Really? It’s okay?”

  Mariska pats my hand. “Doctor’s orders. A glass of red wine is good medicine.”

  Zsófi appears with the Egri Bikavér, or Bull’s Blood, a full-bodied red. The cork has been pulled. “Will you do the honors?”

  She hands me the bottle. I am aware of the smell of onions and paprika, the sway of her ruby drop earrings.

  Mariska has the head of the table. She begins ladling the hearty soup and I fill wine goblets as Zsófi takes the seat opposite mine.

  “Zsófi, I’ve always admired your earrings,” I say. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you without them. I’ve never thought to ask, is there a story behind them?”

  Zsófi’s hand moves to her ear. “My mother’s. Her wedding gift from my father.”

  Zsófi’s tone becomes wistful, recalling how her parents had once been wealthy aristocrats. Then came the years immediately following WWII—the very worst time in Budapest, especially for those refusing to join the Communist party. The Ittzés were banished from their grand home with nothing but what they could carry and sent to a small village in central Hungary for “reeducation.” Assigned to meager quarters in a farmer’s house, Zsófi’s father, once a banker, now struggled with the hard labor of a field hand while Mrs. Ittzés did domestic chores for the farmer’s wife. Zsófi, age fourteen, often assisted her mother.

  The grim years passed slowly, then one day Zsófi’s mother, while on an errand in the village, mentioned casually to a shopkeeper that Zsófi was not doing well in her Russian language class. “Why do they force the Russian language on our Hungarian children anyway?” she observed. That night, Mrs. Ittzés was taken away. A month later, she returned a sickly, broken woman. Fearing a repeat visit from the secret police, she refused to speak about what had happened. She died shortly after Zsófi enrolled in university in Budapest.

  “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry,” I say.

  Zsófi lowers her gaze, staring deep into her glass. “This Bull’s Blood…” She sniffs delicately. “Igen jó, very good.” She lifts her glass. “To better times.”

  Mariska and I clink glasses with her, repeating the toast.

  “If I may…” Mariska begins politely. “There is more to the story involving the earrings. Zsófi and I left Hungary together, you remember?”

  I nod. 1956. Zsófi would have been twenty then, a student at the Technical University in Budapest. Housing was scarce and she’d rented a room from a couple, sharing it with their two small children. My mother’s parents (my grandparents Katona) and her twin sister, Kati, plus my mother’s married sister, Rózsa, and her husband, Oszkár Szabo, all shared a flat in the same building. Mariska had also been there, assigned by Soviet bureaucrats to a tiny unit occupied by a widow and her adult son.

  “Before this I, with my édes husband Balint, we were onetime successful and had some privilege, too.”

  I nod, keenly aware of what happened to whatever wealth they once had. Mariska and Balint had been proprietors of a book and fine paper store. The Communists took over, relegating Balint to a lowly clerk job somewhere else. A few months later, Balint became ill and soon died.

  “After the store is taken, my Balint gone, they come for our apartment. ‘Why you need so big place when you all alone?’ they ask.” Mariksa shrugs. “Yes, what did I have? Peon waitress job in ugly restaurant.” She shakes her head and looks disgusted. “No sign announce this, but only party members come there.” Her eyes close as if blocking out the unpleasant recollection. A deep breath, her eyes open. “So it is no surprise then, in ’56, when Zsófi she decides it is no longer safe in Budapest, I decide I will leave with her.

  “It is winter. The trip across frozen countryside to cross the border we know it will be harsh. We wear heavy coats, good also for hiding jewels, which we both miraculously still have when we make it here. It is the jewels which allow us to buy the store.”

  Mariska has skipped over the many hardships endured during the journey, but I’ve heard them before.

  She gestures in Zsófi’s direction. “Those earrings, Zsófi offers to sell also, but in the end we cannot. They are too precious.”

  I look over at Zsófi and smile. “A keepsake to help keep your mother’s memory close. There’s nothing more special.” My mother had left me the Two Princesses triptych. Maybe it was the wine, but I am suddenly more curious than ever about why. And what was the meaning behind the panels? Kati was depicted in the first, not the second. She’d disappeared. Where had she gone? Were the secret police involved? I thought of what Gustav had recognized in the scene. A floating head, a bridge, the Danube, secret police headquarters building.

 
My thoughts adrift, I sip the smoky flavored burgundy liquid, unaware I’d been staring at Zsófi’s misshapen hand, peppered with round scars above the wrist, resting on the table.

  I look up. Zsófi has been watching me. As if reading my thoughts, she says, “You would like to know why this happen?” And before I can reply—“A friend from university escape over the border. I did not even know about this. They thought different. Thought they could get it out of me. In small room of AVO headquarters.”

  Zsófi fingers the stem of her glass. I reach across the table and gently squeeze her cupped hand.

  “That is not all. Zsófi?” Mariska waits. Zsófi nods. “They ravish her.” My breath catches. Mariska continues. “Still, she is one of the lucky ones. The AVO set her free. I make room for her in my space, care for her until she is strong again.”

  Zsófi licks her lips. “It is hard, thirty years afterward, to express the fear…the hatred we felt for the AVO. Sometimes I think I have buried my pain, humiliation, but then…no. I still feel it, even today.”

  My cheeks are damp. I dab them with the back of my hand.

  Zsófi stands abruptly, pushing back her chair. “We have dessert.”

  “Let me get it.” I stack the empty bowls and race for the kitchen before she can stop me. Seconds later, I’m back. The colorful, flower-festooned heart is just what the moment needs. I set the plate in front of Mariska. “Ta da!”

  My delivery is a little rough and the mold wiggles wildly. Mariska’s eyes grow wide, and she giggles with delight.

  “He is nice man, that Gustav,” Zsófi says to Mariska, watching while she doles out portions of tri-colored gelatin. “He has asked our Ildikó for a date.”

  “Asked is a stretch,” I retort. The two women burst into giggles. “Go ahead, laugh,” I say, straight-faced. “But be prepared. I may find a way to wiggle out of it.” I jerk the plate, the Jell-O dances.

  After dinner, in my antiques-stuffed room—salmon satin sofa, plush pale yellow armchair and ottoman, small writing desk—I sit on the floor, staring at what I brought from home. Vaclav’s gift, my Dream piece, the needlepoint beach scene dominated by an Adriatic blue sky, the shade a precise match to his eyes.