“This is nice design,” Gyöngyi says, observing the added adornment. A slight smile. “Freedom of expression.”
I smile as well. “Thank you, yes. My own creation.”
Gyöngyi removes two bottled drinks and two wrapped parcels. “Sandwich?”
“I missed breakfast. I’d love one.”
Sliced sausage, chunks of red and yellow sweet peppers, between black bread. “Leftovers from last night,” she explains.
The bread is dense and hearty; the meat and peppers, sweet and spicy. “Delicious.”
Gyöngyi is staring out across the river again. She swallows a bite of sandwich then sips her bottled drink. “Last night, after you leave with Sándor, Lilla confesses something to Oszkár. You must understand he—we—did not know.” She looks over, but cannot hold my eye. Her gaze returns to the river. “In ‘65, just before your mother is leaving, she and Lilla meet to say good-bye. Edit at first is timid, holding something back, but Lilla can see Edit is excited, nearly bursting to confide in someone. Lilla tells her it is okay, she can keep a secret.”
Gyöngyi sips from the bottle. “Your anya tells her that she has made an important discovery. Lilla would like to know more, but this is all Edit will say. She needs first to confirm a final piece of what she has uncovered, and she cannot do this until after she returns to America. If her suspicions are correct, she will know the complete truth of Kati and get word to Lilla and, of course, family.”
“Did my mother say where she got the information? From Anikó?”
Gyöngyi’s nod is barely perceptible. “You must understand,” she says, “My uncle, Lilla, they are taking big chance to help you, but after they hear the truth how your mother she has died, that you have idea somehow Kati lives—” She shakes her head sadly. “They know they must help. You are family.”
She reaches for my hand, and I cover hers with both of mine.
“I know what it is like to lose a mother at a young age,” she adds a moment later.
“Of course you do,” I reply. She was fifteen when her mother died in a tragic automobile accident.
There are other people on the steps, but no one close enough to overhear our conversation. Nonetheless, she whispers. “My uncle and Lilla, they have traced Anikó Hadjok. Last night, Lilla she went to see her. Anikó confide to Lilla that she had located the secret documents Attila had hoped to find. By then, Attila was gone, but she take a look anyway. The papers revealed the prison in which Kati was held. Kozma Utca, and the papers told of her death, pneumonia.”
Gyöngyi’s sandwich has just a small corner missing, but she returns it to the stiff paper wrapping, refolding it as she talks. “Kozma Utca was like Hell itself. My grandfather, Oszkár, he witnessed this. No heat, nighttime no bulb, piss pot in one corner, slop pail in another. No animal should have to live like this, he say. Now we know our Kati was in that terrible place, at the mercy of the beasts until she died. Maybe, in the end, the answer to her prayers.”
“And Anikó told my mother this.”
My eyes well up. Gyöngyi touches my elbow gently. I expect she is moved by emotion as well and will wrap an arm around me. Instead she merely nods and says evenly, “For many years now, we have mourned Kati and what she must have suffered. Many of those taken were lost, no papers, no identity, and we believed this is what happened. We would never know the truth. The ugly rumors would never be put to rest. Now, because of you, we find Anikó, we find what happened.”
I use the heel of my hand to wipe away my tears. “But your grandfather, grandmother, they never saw her again. Her body. Did she…” I sniffle. “Did Anikó tell Lilla where Kati was laid to rest?”
“The papers did not tell where she was buried. If she was buried.”
My vision blurs again. A dot bobbles in the clear fluid. Would I never be free of the image of a head floating in the Danube?
“Uncle Oszkár speculates Kati is buried on the prison grounds.”
I look at Gyöngyi. She shrugs. “Kozma Utca was where revolution leaders like Imre Nagy, Pal Maléter and Miklos Gimes, were executed. It is rumored they are no longer there,” she adds in an undertone. “That Nagy, Maléter, and Gimes are buried in decoy graves. Some say in the UJ Kozmteto, New Public Cemetery, across the road from Kozma Utca. Buried not by Communists, but by their comrades, sometime after ’58.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In ’58, there was a show trial. Nagy, Maléter, and Gimes were hanged, then buried in the prison yard. It is said that years later, secret exhumations and reburials were managed, the new graves marked by wooden grave posts with false names. This, it is hoped, will keep the martyrs of the Communist dictatorship safe until the day they will be given a heroes’ burial ceremony, as they deserve.”
“So Kati could be in an unmarked grave, a falsified grave…” I stop short of watery grave.
“Anywhere, or nowhere.” The breeze blows a long strand of hair across Gyöngyi’s face. She lifts it away, tucks it behind her ear. “Kati was taken on the eve of the uprising. The next day, complete chaos. Who can say what went on inside the prison walls? Would anyone care? Later, during the days of freedom, end of October, early November, prison doors were flung open to release political prisoners. When they had word this was happening, my grandfather, Oszkár, started to look in every prison. No record of Kati. No Kati.”
No Kati. What Sandor had said last night when he’d left me at the hotel.
“She never came home,” Gyöngyi says. “They had to accept she was gone. Even now, after what Anikó has told us, there is nothing to do but to remember her as we have done always.
“But now Anikó has agreed to meet us. She has something she would like to reveal just to you.”
My breath catches. “When?”
Gyöngyi consults a cheap-looking watch face on an expandable band. “In one half hour. Oh, and one more thing,” she adds softly. “Your anya, when she meet with Lilla, she has the locket, the same locket you show to Lilla last night—” Her gaze flicks to my neck. “And that you wear now.”
***
The Budapest Metro has three lines. We will meet Anikó on the Millennium Underground, Gyöngyi informs me as we pack up and start for the line’s origination point at Vörösmarty tér, in the city center.
The Millennium Underground railway, she explains as we walk, was inaugurated in 1896, part of celebrations commemorating the 1000th anniversary of when the early Hungarians, the Magyar tribes, settled in the Carpathian Basin. The first subway on the European Continent, it runs under Budapest’s longest avenue.
We arrive at Vörösmarty tér and at a sign saying a földalatti, we descend a set of stairs. Gyöngyi purchases tickets from a machine. We wait on the platform until a boxy yellow train appears. The doors part, and we stand aside while passengers disembark.
We enter the car. Gyöngyi and I find seats in the empty row along the back wall.
Bells chime and the doors close with a whoosh. There are only a few passengers. The train starts with a lurch. Out the window are pristine white brick walls and the high sheen on polished floors of the station.
“Gyöngyi, I’m puzzled by something,” I say. “Anikó said Kati was held at Kozma Utca. Attila said she was being held inside the Budapest Communist Party Headquarters building. It’s where he worked. Wouldn’t he know?”
Gyöngyi hesitates and I regret even asking the question. The country was ruled by terror, rumor and mistrust. How could anyone know anything for certain?
“He may have believed the stories.”
“Stories?”
Gyöngyi nods. “That there was a secret underground network of passages and prison cells beneath the party headquarters building. It was believed that hundreds of civilians and freedom fighters were being held there, many of them tortured. But thirty October, the day of the siege, freedom fighters conducted a search. No s
ign of any underground prison. Crews came in, drilled and dug, day and night. Crowds gathered, stood watch, certain the cells would be found. On the fourth of November, the Soviet forces returned and the digging had to stop. There were more urgent matters to worry about.”
The underground tunnel leading from a prison to the Danube and used for the AVO’s convenient disposal of bodies, Tibor had told me about, long ago, when he’d first arrived in Chicago. Another of the tragic rumors, then?
The chimes ring and a canned female voice proclaims we have arrived at Deák tér. Two passengers stand, preparing to get off.
“This time of day not many people use this train,” Gyöngyi says. “Of course it is different during commute times, but for now we have our privacy.”
I nod. Just three others are at the other end the car. I notice a plain-looking lady in a severe brown suit, but no sign of my man in gray.
A woman with a weathered complexion, wearing a patterned scarf, peasant blouse and long dark skirt, climbs aboard. She is thin, but big-boned, her once tall frame stooped with age. Her head turns in the direction opposite us as if assessing her seating options. Looking our way next, she focuses on the empty seats all around us, and squinting first at Gyöngyi, then me, seems satisfied she is in the right place. Her mouth is down-turned, her lower lip collapsed against a toothless gum, and she trundles slowly, as if in pain. The bells chime and the doors close. The woman is holding a basket of lavender and white nosegays crooked in her elbow, her red-blotched wrinkled hand clenched at her mid-section. She wobbles as the train starts with a jolt and I nearly jump from my seat to help her, but her free hand grabs a pole and she steadies herself.
Gyöngyi makes a show of removing her wallet from her shoulder bag. The elderly woman, noticing, begins shuffling toward us again.
“Anikó?” I whisper.
“Uh-huh,” Gyöngyi replies. “The flowers. Anikó.”
“Ahh,” I say. Gyöngyi has never met my mother’s long ago friend, but there had been discussions last night to arrange our meeting. The flowers are the sign.
Anikó. It’s shocking to see her in the flesh. She would be close to my mother’s age. Mariska’s too. And while I might once have said Mariska looked older than her years, Anikó looks noticeably ground down.
I think of the elderly Chinese couple in Gustav’s photo at his gallery show. How taken I was with them. Their faces had also been deeply-lined and their smiles betrayed imperfect teeth. Yet they appeared younger than their years. Alive. Vibrant. Glimpsing Anikó’s impassive, worn expression, I sense she is anything but at peace.
Above her socks, her legs are thick and swollen, the skin scarred with red bites. My heart aches for this woman.…her age, her condition, the heat.
Anikó holds out a bouquet, quoting a price. While Gyöngyi fumbles with her wallet, Anikó, peering around, awkwardly surrenders to the empty seat beside Gyöngyi.
Anikó leans forward and regards me. She has dark eyes, rimmed in dark circles.
Gyöngyi holds out some forints. Anikó, taking the currency, speaks in a low monotone, her Hungarian emphatic.
Acting the tourist, I stare across the car, studying the railway route map while keeping an ear tuned, trying to keep up with what Anikó is saying. Between the noise from the tracks and her hushed tone it is not easy. I get the general drift.
At the Headquarters Building, under Attila’s direction, Anikó had been trying to locate Kati’s AVO dossier. One day while cleaning the commandant’s office, she discovered his file cabinet had been left unlocked. She was very nervous, but flipped through the materials inside, finally coming upon Kati’s folder. She had barely started reading the contents when an AVO lieutenant rushed in. It was the day of the siege by Hungarian insurgents.
The Millenium Underground has eleven stations and the route is just under three miles. Stops are frequent. At each stop, bells chime and the station is announced. We arrive at Bajcsy-Zsilinszky ut. Anikó arranges posies in her basket while Gyöngyi and I silently watch the shift in passengers, willing any newcomers away with dagger eyes. The moment the train is underway again, Anikó takes up her story.
“I am at the open drawer, shaking, head to foot. The AVO man is totally preoccupied and does not question what I am doing. ‘We must leave immediately,’ he says, herding me, along with two Hungarian Army conscripts in uniform, down a passage. The men walk with drawn guns. At a door, the AVO lieutenant peers outside, waves us to follow. I obey. Me, the cleaning lady, is banded with the enemy. Only it does not seem like the enemy. They want to protect me. Themselves, too, of course. We are at the side of the building. In front, bullets pop, scream, shatter. My blood is pulsing so hard it is like I have no sense of what I am doing, who I am, as we rush across an alleyway, enter the neighboring building.”
Anikó pauses. The bells chime and the programmed voice announces the next station. It is a long name and I am only half-listening. I am anxiously waiting for Anikó to continue, but instead she fusses with the bouquets in her basket.
Chimes, doors closing, and we’re off again. I glimpse a polished wooden bench and an elongated sign reading Vörösmarty utca as we pull out of the station.
“We go to the basement, huddle in a corner. Soon, there is a pounding of footsteps on the stairs. From the sound, the AVO lieutenant feels sure we are outnumbered. I should feel happy. There are shouts, and I know these are Hungarians who come, but will they see the AVO uniform, shoot the lot of us?
“The AVO lieutenant cries, ‘Megadjuk magun kat, we surrender.’ And the three men with me, put down their guns.
“This was wise. The intruders appear. They are armed rebels. The leader has a Tommy gun slung on a leather strap and grenades dangling from his belt. He orders us to remain where we are. I try to explain I am not one of them, but he ignores me. His men take our weapons, leave. We stay put. Where else can we go?”
“After a while, the leader returns. We expect the worst. But he is alone. He has brought workers’ clothes for the men, and tells them to change. I am in my cleaning dress and apron. He gives me his coat. Then he orders us to grab some of the pots and pans stored there in the basement. He leads us outside. Around us, insurgents are emptying buildings of furnishings and goods. Search parties, their weapons drawn, duck in and out of doorways. I shake, but help to load the goods into the back of a waiting truck, like I am told. He gets into the front of the truck with his driver. The three men and I climb in the back with the load.”
Chimes, an announcement for the Kodály körönd stop. My patience is tested as we watch the ebb and flow of passengers.
“We are leaving the alley,” Anikó continues. “The truck stops. Of course we expect we will be thrown off, hung from the nearest tree, like the many we see in the park. Instead, the leader jumps from the cab and runs to a woman and girl. He hugs them, then hurries them into the front with the driver. The truck starts as he climbs back in.”
“After we are out of the danger zone, the truck stops again. I am let off, the others drive away.”
“The AVO man? The others?” I ask.
Anikó leans sideways and whispers to Gyöngyi.
“Anikó does not know,” Gyöngyi says softly. “But she knows—we all know—Republic Square is a black mark. Yes, it is true, the AVO were brutal. Sadistic. It was their perversions that brought about the revolution. Still, the mob justice by Hungarian patriots that day is difficult to defend. Terrible enough, but these atrocities played into the hand of the regime. What joy they felt having the unspeakable photographs circulate all around the world.”
Gyöngyi sighs. “Thankfully, there are more stories like Anikó’s. Not everyone at Republic Square that day went mad. In truth, the majority of revolutionaries had nothing to do with such brutality. Most Hungarians stayed true to their humanity. Saved lives, tried to stop the gruesome butchery. Like the man who helped Anikó and the two Army conscripts, but
these accounts are not so well known.”
We approach Bajza utca. The doors open, but no passenger activity. Meanwhile, Anikó is once again whispering feverishly to Gyöngyi. The train moves and Gyöngyi holds up a hand. Anikó pauses and Gyöngyi, turning to me, explains that Anikó must get off at the next stop. First she must tell Gyöngyi what she has come here to share with me, and she has asked that Gyöngyi convey the information after she is gone. “Please I will tell all shortly.”
Anikó talks rapidly to Gyöngyi. I try, but it is impossible to grasp anything. The train slows, and I anticipate the chimes. Anikó appears to have finished.
“Wait,” I say hurriedly removing the locket, opening it. “Ask her, does she recognize the little girl?”
Gyöngyi discreetly passes the locket to Anikó. Tucking it into a nosegay, she lifts the bouquet to her face and examines the contents closely.
Chimes. Bajza utca, says the canned voice. Brakes screech as she hands off the nosegay, along with the locket, to Gyöngyi.
Anikó stands. Her dark eyes filled with regret, she shakes her head. “Nem ismerem, not familiar.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Gyöngyi and I get off at the next stop, Hősök tere, Heroes’ Square. We are at the end of Avenue of the People’s Republic, a wide boulevard lined with trees and a wealth of handsome apartment buildings, cafes, and diplomat offices. Two of Budapest’s major museums, the Museum of Fine Arts on the left, and the Palace of Art on the right, frame the vast open plaza.
We walk the length of the plaza, approaching the Millennium Monument on the far end. The monument is composed of several parts, a soaring 120 foot Corinthian column its centerpiece. Massive equestrian statues representing the seven Magyar chiefs who conquered the Carpathian Basin encircle the column’s base. Looking up, I see Archangel Gabriel holding St. Stephen’s Crown. Two semi-circular colonnades with statues of Hungarian kings and heroes, flank the column.
Pockets of tourists and some locals are gathered near the enormous sculpted monument. I look for my “friend” in the gray suit. Don’t see him, but that doesn’t mean much.
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