by Alison Booth
She gently pushed Anika in front of her and they continued up the staircase. Her response was automatic and Anika realised with startling clarity that Nyenye was an expert at concealment, even when there was no apparent need. She had never understood that about her before.
On reaching the second floor, Anika looked down on the man who was now standing on the carriageway below. He was going through his pockets as if he had forgotten something important, but it was only a handkerchief that he needed. Pulling it out, he blew his nose energetically, a loud trumpeting that echoed around the hard walls.
It took Nyenye a while to find the door key, though she had it in her hand only seconds before. ‘Come in.’ She was smiling now. ‘I’m guessing there’s a reason you wanted to walk me home, no? We’ll have a cup of tea while we talk.’
She double-locked the front door behind them and hooked the door chain into its slot before heading into the kitchen. While she was filling the kettle, Anika opened the door that led from the hallway into the living room.
‘Don’t turn on the light,’ Nyenye said quickly. ‘I can’t remember if I drew the curtains.’
By the borrowed light from the hall, Anika could see that the curtains were pulled across all the windows. The walls were crowded with paintings, as they had always been. Nyenye returned to the kitchen while Anika groped her way around the furniture to the fireplace. She looked to the right of the chimney breast, where Tomas’s painting used to hang, and ran her hand over the wallpaper. The Rocheteau had left a gap here, just as it had in her bedroom in Rozelle.
Anika blundered back to the hallway and followed Nyenye into the kitchen. Her heart filled with an emotion that she couldn’t immediately put her finger on. Shivering, she realised it was foreboding. If only she’d never seen that advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald all those months ago. If she’d tossed it into the wastepaper basket and given it no more thought, she wouldn’t need to ask Nyenye any questions.
‘It’s really lovely having you here.’ Nyenye gave her a quick hug.
Anika hoped she’d still be saying that at the end of her visit.
‘Something’s bothering you, no?’
Anika’s mouth opened as if it had a mind of its own, and she found herself saying, ‘Do you remember a man called Sebestyén Tinódi?’
‘Of course.’ Nyenye began to take cups and saucers out of one of the cupboards and had her back to Anika. ‘He was one of Tomas’s friends. A couple of years younger, I think.’ The cups clattered on to the table. ‘He worked in the Rákosi Metalworks at Csepel. We heard he escaped after the 1956 uprising.’
‘He died in the marshes near Andau.’
‘Did he? So many did. Poor Sebestyén. Why are you asking?’
‘The day I left, you said he gave the painting to Tomas.’
‘Did I? Maybe I got confused. There was so much happening at that time I must have misremembered.’
A cobweb of lies and concealments, that’s what a police state was. That’s what families became. Anika felt the air around her thickening, slowing down her reactions. It was the jetlag, she told herself, nothing more. Longing to throw open the kitchen window and let in a draught of cold air, she wondered who Nyenye had been hoping to protect by mentioning Sebestyén the day Anika left Hungary. Was it her granddaughter or herself? It was probably both of them. If she’d been stopped while leaving Hungary with the painting, she would have relayed Nyenye’s story.
She said, ‘I’d like to talk to you about Tomas.’
Nyenye plugged in the kettle and right away it began to vibrate. Nyenye had heard her words though, Anika could tell by the way she squared her shoulders.
I’d like to talk to you about Tomas, though? That’s not what she should have said, it was much too general. Quickly she added, ‘It’s Tomas’s painting I want to talk about.’ But Nyenye didn’t hear these words with that antiquated kettle of hers juddering away on the bench in front of her.
‘Ah, Tomas, my first born,’ she said sadly, once the kettle had switched itself off and she’d poured water into the teapot. ‘You never expect your child to die before you do, never.’ She turned to face Anika, a questioning look on her face. ‘Even though it happened all around us during the war years. In those days, people were dying everywhere: children, adults, soldiers, civilians. We grew to expect that there’d be no natural order to death. It could happen anywhere to anyone at any time. But a decade later the Revolution took us by surprise. I wasn’t prepared for it.’
‘How did it happen?’ Anika made her voice gentle. She was relieved that Nyenye hadn’t heard her say that it was Tomas’s painting that she wanted to talk about. His death had been like a taboo topic until now. Anika had only ever heard a brief account from her parents about how Tomas died. Shot in the massacre at Kossuth Square was all they’d told her.
‘It began with a demonstration,’ Nyenye said. ‘Tomas and Tabilla were so excited before the march. I told them not to go but Tabilla was insistent.’
Her voice when she mentioned Tabilla’s name was harsh and she took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Everything would change, people thought. Everyone was shouting Russians go home. And on that first day people even managed to pull down the huge bronze statue of Stalin. That was quite something. It was a massive bronze thing. They left only his boots in place, and someone stuck into one of those boots the Hungarian flag. It had a hole in the middle where the Soviet hammer and sickle emblem had been cut out.’
Nyenye distractedly reached for the teapot but she seemed to have forgotten why, and her hand dropped to her side again. She said, ‘Then the Soviet tanks arrived and there was a curfew.’
‘You sit down. I’ll pour the tea.’ Anika put a cup of tea on the table in front of Nyenye but she ignored it.
‘Nobody understood what the Soviet strategy was, especially when the curfew was lifted on the third day. That was when thousands of people gathered in front of Parliament, Tomas and Tabilla among them.’ She stared at the cupboards but Anika knew it was not them that she was seeing. ‘Then suddenly, with no warning, the shooting started. And that was the day Tomas died.’
‘I’m so sorry, Nyenye.’
‘What I have trouble understanding,’ Nyenye continued, her voice hoarse, ‘is why Tomas died before me. And why him rather than somebody else. There were thousands of demonstrators in Kossuth Square. But a random shot got him, before he’d had a chance at life, before he and Tabilla had a chance to start a family. It seemed so unjust. We never got over it, your grandfather and I. One day we had two sons and the next day we had one. Afterwards, all those memories kept flooding back, of when Tomas was a young boy and a teenager and marrying Tabilla, and the realisation that there was to be no future.’
‘Was Tabilla wounded?’ There had been something in Nyenye’s voice when she mentioned Tabilla’s name that Anika didn’t understand.
‘No, she wasn’t. We heard about the shelling on the news and from the shop we could hear all the firing going on. Not long after it stopped, Tabilla came running to us. She was wet with rain and there was blood on her clothes. She said that Tomas’s body had been taken away with the others on the back of a truck. She’d tried to get on to it so she could see where they were taking Tomas but they dragged her off.’ There were tears pouring down Nyenye’s face but she seemed oblivious to them as they plopped on to her blouse, darkening the fabric.
‘I’ll never forget that moment when Tabilla told us. “Tomas died in the arcade of the Agricultural Ministry,” she said. Then a minute after, she said, her voice as strident as could be, “I’m leaving Hungary. There’s nothing left for me now and already they’re hunting down people who were fighting yesterday. They took photos, you see.” In a way I hated Tabilla at that moment. Hated her for telling us the news and then going away again, looking after her own skin. She managed to get over the border into Austri
a, and there was a refugee camp on the other side. We heard from her once she got there and later when she arrived in Sydney.’
‘And you found Tomas’s body in the end?’ After handing Nyenye the worn tea towel to dry her eyes with, Anika put an arm around her shoulders and thought of Tabilla’s decision to get out. It had been the right thing to do. If she’d been picked up by the AVO her life would have been over. But Anika could see how her flight might have looked like abandonment to Nyenye. Her kind-hearted and loving grandmother had a tough streak and probably resented that Tabilla had survived but not Tomas. Anika wondered if this was one reason why Tabilla hadn’t wanted the painting when she’d tried to give it to her. It was too tied up with unresolved issues with her mother-in-law.
‘Your grandfather and I found where they’d laid the coffins on the ground at the cemetery,’ Nyenye continued. ‘They weren’t labelled. No one had a clue who was in which box. I lost count of the number I opened before I found my son. The gravedigger dug a hole that wasn’t long enough. Your grandfather got really angry then and he grabbed a spade to make it longer. We buried Tomas that evening.’
She dabbed at her face with the tea towel and blew her nose on it before continuing. ‘Later, much later, I decided that Tabilla was absolutely right to get away before the AVO could come for her. Do you know that for months after she’d gone, I kept hoping we might get a letter from her saying she was pregnant with Tomas’s child? But that never happened.’ She sighed deeply. ‘And you know we didn’t dare take his personal papers to the authorities for a long, long time. We were afraid of what they’d do to us.’
‘I’m so sorry, Nyenye.’
Nyenye batted away Anika’s words as if they irritated her, and continued speaking, her voice a monotone. ‘Your father was too young to remember much about that time, although sometimes I think he might have blocked it all out. For months afterwards, he would wake up at night screaming but he never could remember what he was dreaming about. I could guess though. Who wasn’t scarred by all that?’
Absent-mindedly, Nyenye began to pleat the edge of the tea towel, as if that were what she needed to focus on. After a minute or so she looked intently at Anika. ‘You’ve got a lot of Tomas about you,’ she said. ‘Not in appearance so much as the occasional expression and the way you sometimes hold your head.’
Anika liked that: it made her feel more connected to the uncle she’d never met. She said, ‘In the photos of the two of them, I think my father looks a bit like Tomas.’
‘He does, though he doesn’t have the same facial expressions.’
Nyenye appeared drained. Now was not the time to raise any more questions, Anika judged, but she didn’t want to leave her grandmother yet. She made some fresh tea and after a while Nyenye asked Anika about her job and her course. She seemed to listen attentively to the answers, though Anika knew they were becoming less and less coherent, for her diurnal clock was protesting and the temptation to lay her head on the table was almost too strong to resist.
‘I’m exhausted, my darling, and you look tired too,’ Nyenye said at last. ‘You’ve got dark smudges under your eyes and you’re starting to repeat things. The thing is, jet travel is unnatural, no? It doesn’t give you time to adjust. You get into an aluminium canister and twenty-four hours later you’re dumped on the other side of the world. No wonder your body complains. It must be like being in one of those metal capsules the drapery shop used to have, that whisked your money through a tube to the cashier and then back again with the correct change. If only flying were as easy as that! But it’s brought you back to us for a visit and I’m certainly not objecting.’
At the front door they embraced warmly. ‘Walk fast, my love,’ Nyenye said. ‘I’ve kept you out too late with my talking.’
After Anika took her leave, she heard the rattle of the chain as Nyenye secured the door and the click of the barrel bolts at the top and the bottom. There’d better not be a fire, she thought: Nyenye had pulled up the drawbridge for the night and only a battering ram could break down her defences.
On the way home, Anika began to feel uncomfortable. Maybe her grandmother’s nervousness was affecting her. The streets were empty, silent. There weren’t enough streetlights and the moon had vanished behind a thin layer of cloud. In the bar on the corner the old men were still sitting, now avidly watching a televised football game. The light from the television flickered across their faces and they didn’t seem to notice that the volume was turned up too loud.
In her parents’ street, Anika suddenly heard footsteps behind her, making her jump; hard shoe leather clicking down on the pavement like some tap-dancing routine. She quickened her pace and the tapping sped up too. Pulses pounding, she turned to see a tall figure coming fast her way on the other side of the street. The collar of his bulky overcoat was turned up and a woollen hat was pulled down low over his ears. She walked faster and turned again when the tapping changed tone. The man had rounded a corner into a side street and, by the time she reached the double doors into her parents’ block, she could no longer hear him.
PART V
Budapest, January 1990
Chapter 26
Anika’s time in Budapest was flashing by; it was like flicking over the pages of a calendar that had already been lived through and looking for the entry that said talk in private to Nyenye. She spent a riotous New Year’s Eve with Miklos and their old friends, when they saw out the old year – an amazing one for Hungarians everywhere and they drank to that again and again – and welcomed in the new.
After Anika and Miklos got home, she made her New Year’s resolutions. In private, of course; she thought there was something lovely about finding a sheet of blank paper and thinking you could start afresh just because the clocks had rung midnight. Discover the truth, she wrote down carefully on her little list: try to see the good in people; try to forgive; try to pay Tabilla back quickly the money borrowed for the air ticket.
When she had finished, Miklos burst into her room with two glasses of brandy and she hid the list in a book on the bedside table. They sat on her bed like they used to when they were young and sneaking an illicit drink, while he told her about the wonderful Irma and the thesis he’d nearly completed.
‘I’d love to meet her,’ Anika said.
‘Next time you visit. Irma’s so busy.’
While he carried on enumerating Irma’s many virtues, Anika remembered Nyenye’s tone of voice when she spoke of Irma the other night. It had been the same as when she’d mentioned Tabilla. Both women were outsiders, both were apparently viewed with some suspicion. Anika wondered if Nyenye might have felt burned by her boy falling too passionately for Tabilla, and now here was Miklos falling for Irma in a similar way. Yet Nyenye wasn’t suspicious of Mama, or if she had been, that had vanished long before Anika began forming memories.
‘And what about you, Anika?’ Miklos said, once he’d finished cataloguing the wonders of Irma. ‘What’s preoccupying you?’
‘Am I preoccupied?’
‘You’ve seemed distracted ever since you got here. Is it that damned painting of Tomas’s? It wasn’t your fault it got stolen. Our parents should never have given you such a valuable painting to take out.’
‘No one knew it was valuable. Papa said he’d never liked it much.’
Taking a swig of brandy, she started to tell him that the Rocheteau was almost certainly looted art and that she was scared Tomas and their grandparents were somehow implicated in it.
‘How could they have been?’
‘By receiving stolen goods that they knew were taken by the Nazis.’
‘They wouldn’t have known if the painting was looted, Anika. How could they have?’
‘But shouldn’t we try to find out? I can’t bear living with this uncertainty. I’m going to ask Nyenye. In a way that’s why I’m here. As soon as I heard that it might be looted I fel
t I had to come and find out.’
‘Well, don’t let anyone know that’s why you’re here.’ Miklos’s tone was rather tetchy. ‘They all think you came because you missed us. You’ve no idea how much they’ve been looking forward to seeing you.’
‘I’ve been looking forward to seeing you too, of course I have. Don’t deliberately misinterpret me.’
Anika wondered if he was trying to deflect her. He’d never been one to take things seriously enough. This made him charming most of the time but now she decided it also made him exasperating. She put the brandy glass on her bedside table. The last thing she wanted was to become even more befuddled than she’d been when they got home from their celebrations. Miklos was silent. When she glanced at him, he was frowning at the carpet, as if those worn threads were annoying him.
‘That painting of Tomas’s isn’t the only thing that’s worrying me, Miklos. There’s Nyenye’s paintings. Everyone’s always so secretive about them.’
‘Everyone’s secretive about all that stuff from the past. You are too. You’re as paranoid as the rest of them. I wouldn’t worry about it. Asking Nyenye about the provenance of Tomas’s painting is hardly going to help.’
‘I haven’t even told her that it’s been stolen.’
‘Didn’t Papa tell her?’
‘No. He said I should wait a while. She doesn’t know yet.’
‘I wouldn’t bother her about it. Just get on with your life, Anika.’
She glared at him but he didn’t notice. He was probably thinking about Irma again. The trouble with you, my darling brother, is that you always want to take the easy way out. You should get a coat of arms with a couple of ostriches on it, with their heads buried deep in the sand.