Triptych

by Margit Liesche

  The air conditioner unit sputters, winds down, groans to a halt.

  “Besides,” Zsófi says into the sudden quiet, “dating, it interests me no more. My life is here.” She throws out her arm in an expansive gesture, then nods to the ceiling. “With Mariska.”

  Understandable. Zsófi’s suffering at the hands of the bastards of the AVO has left her terribly wounded.

  The shelves have all been straightened, but one volume on a freestanding bookcase near the counter has broken rank. She walks over and with a gentle shove, returns the rogue to the lineup.

  “Gustav’s a nice man,” she says. “Talented.”

  “Can’t argue with that.” I dig blindly for a negative. “Reminds me of my father.”

  Zsófi sputters, unable to suppress a giggle. “With that build?”

  I want to smile but it is impossible. The too-familiar specter of my father kneeling at my dead mother’s side of the bed intercedes. My father’s pain over my mother’s death was unrelenting. Two years after her passing, shortly after my high school graduation, he too was gone.

  “Do you really think it’s possible to die of a broken heart, Zsófi? To love someone so much that you grieve yourself into ill health? Death?”

  Zsófi’s eyes soften. “I think so, yes. Last night, well, I could not speak of it. There is something else to tell. About my parents—”

  Her father was at his wife’s bedside when she passed. It was only then that Mrs. Ittzés revealed a hint of what had happened while she’d been held captive by the AVO, the words escaping between her dying breaths. “I made to stand, one foot, hours each day.”

  “Have you tried this?” Zsófi asks. “I try. Just ten minutes and the pain it is unbearable.” She pauses. Her voice drops to a mere whisper. “My father, he say the look of terror on mother’s face when she tell this, he never can forget. After, his will to live is gone. A man who never before has taken a drink, now he cannot stop. Then, January 1956, he die also. Maybe alcohol it played a part but, yes, his heart it was broke.”

  Zsófi looks at me. “This I have learned about grief,” she says, measuring her words. “It never really goes away. It is like stone tossed into a pond. First, the waters they are very disturbed. Then, in time, they quiet again. But stone, it has dropped to the bottom. Always to be there. Part of the pond. Part of your life.” She sighs. “Sometimes, with some people, the stone it is so heavy, in the end it pulls them under.”

  I enfold her in my arms. “Oh Zsófi, I’m sorry about your mother, your parents.”

  “And I am sorry, too,” she says softly, “for the pieces gone from your heart.” A pause, then, “Ildikó, I am thinking Gustav he has not yet shared this. He lost loved ones also. A girlfriend. He blames himself.” Her voice is a bare whisper. “No monk, but he has guarded his heart ever since.”

  Bells toll from the steeple of the Lutheran church down the street. The pealing bells strike for the fifth and final time.

  The church bells have drowned out the door bells. Irina Marinova is in the store, walking toward us, the flared skirt of her dress swishing gracefully above her ankles. She is carrying a bulging mesh tote like a miniature fisherman’s net.

  We hug, exchanging greetings like it’s been months and not just days.

  “Here, let me take this,” I say relieving her of the brimming bag.

  “Careful. I bring borscht. Sure to bring back strength. How is she?”

  Irina’s face is flushed from the heat. Her lower lip pushes out and she blows air upwards, trying to cool down. Her dark hair is smoothed into her usual bun. The exception: wisps of fine hairs along her forehead that dance in the rushing stream of air.

  Zsófi and Irina kiss one another, first on one cheek then the other.

  “Our Mariska is excellent. Already the picture of health even without your borscht,” Zsófi teases. “Would you like to go up?”

  We have been expecting Irina. The threesome is having dinner together this evening, an occasion I would have enjoyed myself. But Zsófi had only announced the plan after I had committed to Eva.

  Irina is pawing around in the side pocket of her shoulder bag. “Of course I am anxious to see Mariska, judge her well-being for myself—” She glances at Zsófi and grins, exposing her chipped front tooth. “But first…” She begins rummaging again. “Ildikó I bring something for you as well. From your library class. Ahhh…” A note emerges. “Here.”

  I switch Irina’s satchel to my other hand, take the lined school paper, ripped from a spiral notebook, its torn edges rough and curled.

  I smile. We miss you, teecher. Hurry home. The simple message was written by Ioana, another of Irina’s distant relatives, which is how it got into Irina’s hand, but nearly the entire group has also added their signatures.

  I am touched that they have thought to write to me. I ask Irina to let the ladies know I’ll be back soon and that I miss them too.

  “Would you like me to carry this upstairs for you?” I ask next.

  She refuses and is already on the first step, Zsófi in the lead, when the doorbells jingle again.

  This time it’s Eva. She’s wearing another white t-shirt with diPietro Studios across the front and beat up, frayed jeans. Yesterday Tibor and I had teased her about the wide metallic “Margit girdle” she’d worn. Today another belt with colored metal strips hammered into tan leather gives the oversized shirt some shape.

  She takes a few steps inside. “Just popping by to let you know I’m running a little late. Need to shower and change.” Sensing a presence on the stairs, thinking it is probably Zsófi, Eva glances over with an expectant smile. Her smile fades.

  She turns back to me. “Why don’t you come to our place in a half hour? That okay? If I’m not ready, Mrs. B will happily keep you entertained.” She winks.

  “Perfect,” I say. “I need to finish locking up anyway. I’m going to have to find something else to wear, too.”

  “Keep the shawl.” She smiles and exits the store.

  The door shuts. I turn toward the back, surprised to see that Irina hasn’t moved; on her face a quizzical expression.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Oh nothing.” She turns to take the stairs. “Thought I recognized that woman.” She shakes her head. “Must be mistaken.”

  ***

  Budapest, 30 October 1956

  They emerged from a side street. Republic Square, the largest in Budapest, was directly ahead. A late fall scene of bushes, benches, skinny naked trees and grass, brown and indistinguishable from the dirt beneath.

  The Party Headquarters Building was to their left. There was no sound of gunfire. Just shouting and yelling, intermittent agonized screams.

  Two men began dragging something resembling a large sack of potatoes from the building toward the center of the square.

  Her mother turned. Évike recoiled under her stern look. “You stay here. No, go over there, in that doorway.” She pointed to the stoop of one of the buildings directly behind them. “You’ll be safe. I must find out what is going on. Josef will want to know…”

  Évike clutched her mother’s hand. “Please, I must to go with you. I’m afraid.”

  Évike’s mother held both her daughter’s hands, looked her in the eye. “You are my brave shadow. I am very proud of you. Something important is going on. I need to go. But I need you to stay here. Wait for me.”

  Her mother proud of her? Évike felt flattered. She also felt a wave of panic. She swallowed, nodded. “Okay. But you’ll be quick?”

  Évike clamped her arms across her middle watching her mother take off in a trot. She glanced over her shoulder at the abandoned building, the uninviting barren doorway. Stay there by herself? Was it really safe? What about stray bullets? She might be shot. Or, her mother might be shot. Draped over with a flag. Dusted with lime.

  She turned back
to the vast square. Her mother had disappeared.

  Groups of men and women with rifles, some carrying the tricolor, were scattered throughout the park. Near the square’s center, four tanks flying the Hungarian flags formed a line, their main guns directed at the four-storied headquarters building. It was quiet now. The occasional shout, but no screams.

  Stand alone? Her mother asked too much of her. She started for the headquarters building where she thought her mother had been heading. Windows had been blown out. Large irregular holes peppered its facade. Évike ventured closer. Bodies on either side of the entrance lay sprawled among torn pages and documents that had been hurled down from the windows. Like snow angels in a field of white. Except they were no angels. They must be AVO.

  The face of a woman on the ground near the building, her arms and legs contorted, head twisted at an odd angle, looked familiar. Curious, Évike stepped closer. Glazed brown eyes stared blankly at the sky.

  Startled by a nasty laugh, Évike turned. She faced a grizzled old man with an angry pink scar that started above his temple, slashed down his cheek before curving, like the letter ‘J,’ to hook the corner of his mouth.

  “Tried to escape,” he said with a grin that puffed out the raw wound, threatening to burst the seam open. “Jumped.”

  “Tormentors!” “Child killers!” “Beasts!”

  The cries came from somewhere in the square. Évike ran toward the voices. Mother, where are you? She circled thirty or forty bodies lying almost in a line. Rebel fighters who’d tried to get inside, she guessed, avoiding looking at faces.

  “Suffer like you made my poor Andras suffer!” “Butcher!” The voices again.

  A clutch of people had gathered around a tree near the edge of the square. She approached and felt suddenly weak. An AVO man stood propped on a box. He had been strung by his neck and arms to a tree. His form was slumped and lifeless, his face bleeding so badly—the white matter, cartilage?—his features were unrecognizable.

  On the ground, another man. His shirt was ripped into shreds. A document rested on his bloodied bare chest. A man in a long leather coat and newsboy’s cap pointed at the dead AVO man and laughed sadistically. He began kicking the blood-splattered body. A woman behind him waited her turn. Steeping aside, the leather coated man stomped upon an AVO cap nearby. Another man urged the woman on. She kicked relentlessly.

  Évike fled, running in what she thought was the direction of the abandoned building where she’d been told to wait. From the corner of her eye, she saw another angry mob near another tree. A woman leaned in to spit on a mangled corpse hung head down, his face and torso beaten and bloody.

  Évike veered blindly away, only to nearly collide with another hanging corpse. This one had a gaping wound in his chest, as if someone had tried to cut his heart out. Blood was everywhere.

  Bent forward, gagging, heaving, she tasted sour bile, spicy sausage, her sickness a gray-white chunky heap against brown.

  Again Évike ran. Loud arguing. A familiar voice. She stopped. Mother?

  A captured woman, her face completely white, was being forced out of the Headquarters Building at gunpoint. The woman looked haggard, her lip was split open. She glanced left and right. Another woman—the red hair? Dóra? Yes, Dóra!—appeared from nowhere and pounded her with a broom. The captive recoiled, someone shoved her. She fell down and curled up into a ball. Dóra slammed the wooden end of thebroom over and over into the woman’s back.

  “Dóra!” Évike cried. “No-ooo….”

  Someone behind Évike gripped her by the shoulders. Évike kicked, screamed.

  “Stop!”

  Mother? Évike turned. Yes!

  She threw her arms around her mother, burst into tears, wailed, “Mother…Dóra.…”

  Her mother cradled Évike’s head against her bosom. She whispered, stroking Évike’s hair, “I know.” Évike quivered, tried to choke back her sobs. She drew in her mother’s smell, pressed her skull into a bony chest. She longed to sink inside.

  “The baby, D-Dórika, is dead.”

  Évike’s weeping stopped. Had she heard right?

  Then, “Come, we should leave now.”

  Évike’s feet felt planted in the dirt. Her mother tugged her hand. “Come….”

  A truck pulled out of an alleyway near them. It was the Army vehicle they’d seen earlier on Rákóczi ut. In back, three men and a woman in civilian clothes, a pile of pots and pans.

  “No tricolor armbands,” the mother said, tentatively. “A-AVO?” She started to turn, Évike suspected to summon help.

  The truck screeched to a halt. The passenger door flew open.

  At first, Évike did not recognize the man who jumped out with a Tommy gun slung over his shoulder on a leather strap and four grenades dangling from his belt. He was coatless, and he was covered from head to foot in dust and grime.

  Her mother cried, “Miklós!” at the same moment it registered with Évike. Her father! She thought she would burst from the joy and relief welling inside her.

  Miklós hurriedly hugged his wife, then his daughter, before hustling them into the cab of the truck.

  Évike sat squeezed in next to the heavyset driver. He shoved the gear stick and popped the clutch. They began moving even as her mother was still climbing in, saying, “But Miklós, in back. AVO?”

  Miklós yanked the door shut. “One is AVO. The woman, who knows. But the other two men are rank-and-file conscripts.” He paused, then continued, a huskiness in his voice. “Franciska, if I had not been accepted to university I might have been one of them. And it would come to this. Forced outside to be shot, dragged, beaten by my countrymen.”

  Franciska’s hand reached for his knee, patted it gently.

  Miklós’ gaze shifted in the direction of the driver, shifted back. Then shifted again, alighting on Évike. “Franciska,” he said, his tone incredulous, as if he were only now aware of his daughter’s presence. “What have you done? Why have you brought her here?”

  “Where else?” she hissed. “She is our daughter.”

  “Where else? You, our daughter…You must get out. Go to Vienna.”

  Inside the cab it was suddenly very still. Nothing but the grinding of gears, the pulsing of the truck’s engine.

  Franciska stared at her husband. She spoke softly, almost comfortingly. “It will soon be over. The Soviet troops are leaving, the AVO—” her voice faltered, “—stubborn bastards, they are being weeded out. Nagy is negotiating….”

  “Negotiating?” Miklós shook his head, emphasis to the bitterness in his tone. “A ruse, Franciska. To buy time to devise a return. This time with manpower and firepower to tear the heart out of Budapest. No, Franciska, it is already over. It is the end.”

  The end? Could it be? They were freedom fighters. What was he saying? The end?

  Évike looked at her mother, waiting for her to explode., to scream, “You are wrong. Not after what we have been through. All we have sacrificed. The people we have lost. Little Dórika.”

  Instead, her mother spoke so softly Évike had to strain to hear her above the engine noise. “Miklós, how do you know this?”

  Her father wiped a hand over his weary expression, then clutched his mouth. His hand fell away. “You must go.”

  A wave of dread washed through Évike. She slipped her hand though her mother’s and squeezed, meeting stiff, unyielding fingers.

  “Never. I will not leave.”

  Évike stared openly at her father, willing him to look at her. Because if he did so, he could not say what she feared was coming next.

  His face. Such sadness, such anguish. But his eyes remained locked with her mother’s. “Then we must make arrangements to have her taken out. Many of our comrades have already done this for their children.”

  Taken out? Was she a puppy too difficult to manage? She had learned her lessons. P
erformed to their expectations…outperformed. Yes, there was Gombóc, but she’d kept the incident to herself. They’d never know she’d had a moment of weakness. They shouldn’t…couldn’t…abandon her. Leave her on her own.

  She was nearly speechless with terror. “B-but Papa. M-Mother…”

  Évike’s fingers had remained threaded within her mother’s lifeless grip. Now the rigid fingers squeezed back. A chill raced up Évike’s arm.

  Her mother turned to her. “Be brave, my kis shadow. Your Papa is right. You must go. Do not worry. It will be all right. We will be coming to join you soon. Very soon. You will see.”

  Évike knew what her mother knew. It would not be all right. It would never be all right.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chicago, 1986

  Eva has made reservations at a Czech restaurant I’m not familiar with, the Blue Rooster. When she mentions the name, I laugh, explaining how Zsófi had not wanted me to be cooped up with two old hens.

  It is within walking distance. A whimsical rooster with a cockscomb of wild hair adorns the center of the ornately carved arched entry. Painted a striated dusty blue, he holds a bouquet of flowers in his beak in a welcoming gesture. Above the entrance, tall wood-framed windows are accented with flower boxes.

  “It looks transported from Europe,” I say, delighted.

  Eva tugs open the door. We cross a marble lobby and descend a short flight of stairs. Inside a small alcove, a maitre d’ clad in an embroidered black vest and white peasant shirt mans the reservations desk.

  In honor of the occasion, I had traded my short black number for a tiered black ruffle dress with spaghetti straps. Mariska’s shawl is draped over my shoulders.

  The maitre d’ comes around the desk, none too subtly eyeballing Eva’s evening wear: a floral print mini skirt and a strapless black bustier—less risqué than what Madonna might wear, but not by much.