“Then why stay?”
“I’m a New Yorker. I can take care of myself.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I turn my coffee cup in its saucer, the ceramic so hot it burns my fingertips. “Are you happy here?”
He bites his lower lip as he thinks. “I get up in the morning. I make art. I learn things. I see friends. We talk and drink.”
A routine that plods forward, more or less the same day to day, week to week. “So, yes, you’re happy,” I say.
“I don’t know a better definition.” He sighs, and it turns into a laugh. “We could have done all this—coffee, breakfast—in Buenos Aires, you know. Skipped that whole middle part.”
“Guess so.”
When we finish, I try to pay, but Terrance won’t let me. As the two of us are standing on the sidewalk in front of the café, he tightens the collar of his jacket. “Going to be warmer today,” he says.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“We should do this again.”
“Maybe dinner,” I say. “Next week.”
“Or—there’s a gallery show tonight,” he repeats. “You should come.”
I nod. “Okay.
“I’ll text you the address.”
“Okay.”
* * *
Making plans for later. That’s how one does it, I guess. How one sets the foundation for where one will be tonight, and thus tomorrow, and thus a pattern and a normal life. I walk to a main street where I can catch a tram to the Pesht side. But the day is, as he predicted, warmer than yesterday, so I decide to walk instead.
I’ll meet him at the gallery show. Maybe meet this Marta, too. On the bridge, I have to shield my eyes with my hand because the sun is so bright today. It reflects off the river, making its choppy blueness as bright as the sky. Maybe I’ll surprise him by inviting Marta out with us afterward. But probably not.
The bridge between Buda and Pesht is longer than it appears, but I don’t regret my decision to walk. Plenty to think about. We’ll slip away from the show, find a little place where there’s music, order two of the cheapest things on the menu.
But look at me, lost in imagination. As if someone in my position could afford to lower her tactical awareness for even the length of a stroll. Turns out, I’m not alone on the bridge. Despite the early hour and morning chill, there’s a figure thirty or forty paces behind me. A tall man with good posture in an overcoat, gray hair clipped short, giving him the bearing of a military man out of uniform. Even from this distance, I’d recognize Brent anywhere.
Thirty-Seven
The pedestrian part of the bridge ends at an overpass that serves as both an informal skate park and homeless camp. I linger there, waiting for the figure to catch up. When he does, he simply keeps going past me, and I fall into step beside him. Not even old acquaintances, the two of us, just two pedestrians headed the same direction at the same time.
Makeshift shelters of plastic tarp and wooden crates are coming to life around us. It’s mostly Europeans, but a few Arab and North African refugees who’ve managed to avoid the cops and fascist patrols. Breakfast is being made and water for tea boiled over cans of gelled fuel burning blue.
“Well, congratulations,” Brent says. “I mean that. Really.”
“For what?”
“You not only survive, kid. You come out golden.”
Anger, misdirected or not, crawls out. “Who put the CIA onto me? Was it your team?”
“We’re the ones who warned you,” he whispers. “At the hotel. The phone call.”
I thrust my hands into my pockets. “No offense, but I don’t want to see you again. I’m done, okay? Completely. I’ve paid enough.”
“Sure. No problem.” But he concedes this too easily, which is why I’m not surprised when the next part slips out of his mouth: “Although…”
“What?” I hiss.
“We have information you might be interested in. About your father.”
I close my eyes. “Is he alive?”
“We hear you spent some time in the Ore Mountains, at a lab there. Were you responsible for what happened to that psychiatrist, Dr. Simon?”
“What about my father, Brent?”
“I’m using Paul now. And answer the question.”
We near the end of the camp, and both of us start up a stairway to the street level. “Well, Paul. Dr. Simon is the one responsible for what happened to Dr. Simon.”
“Maybe you can pass the message on, then, to whoever killed her. The world is forever grateful.”
“Goddammit. Tell me about my father.”
He stops when we reach the top of the stairs and looks around, surveying the empty sidewalk. “We want to know about the program Dr. Simon was running. What she did. Who else was there.”
“I took a hard drive when I left. I was going to release it to the press.”
“Mind if we take a look first?”
“My father. Tell me, and I’ll give it to you.”
He inhales and leans back against the railing, pretending to mull the idea over. “You been to the Dohány Street Synagogue yet? Really something. You feel this connection, you know?”
“Do we have a deal?”
“Sabbath services. Tonight. You should check it out.”
He pushes off just as a tram slows to a stop, then disappears inside it.
* * *
A Budapest cop in uniform and two security men in leather jackets and black yarmulkes preside over the steel gate before the synagogue. I hang out in the little park outside the entrance, watching the tourists consulting guidebooks and taking duckface-peace-sign selfies beside the Holocaust memorial. Only when services are about to start do I approach.
The security guys—lean and very thorough—usher me through the metal detector and search my backpack. The duplicate I’d made of the hard drive gets extra scrutiny, and why not? Six terabytes of human suffering. But I tell them it’s for work, and after consultation, they let me in with it. A sparse crowd for tonight’s service, men in the center section, women and children off on either side. I take a seat midway toward the front, two rows away from anyone else.
The place isn’t particularly ancient by European standards, but it’s weighted down with the compressed history of the twentieth century, all of it bad. This had been the center of the Jewish ghetto during World War II, and then the Soviets came, used it as a stable. But the synagogue had been restored, cyan and gold frescoes brought back to life, the minarets out front cleaned and gilded.
The congregation is a mix of locals and visitors, with the Orthodox seeming to prefer the front, where they greet one another, Gut Shabbos, and chat amiably until the service starts. A woman in a good Burberry trench sidles into the pew next to me, and I know before even looking up that it’s Mazal. She is the only woman with brown skin in the synagogue, and people turn and look. A few children even point before having their hands slapped down by their mothers. Mazal shows no reaction.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to services—the wedding of one of my father’s friends, maybe, or someone’s bar mitzvah. Mazal and I follow the lead of the congregation, standing when they stand, sitting when they sit.
“Do you have it?” Mazal whispers.
I push the backpack toward her. She lifts the flap and takes a peek inside.
“Your turn,” I whisper back. “My father, what’s happening?”
“Relax. He’s safe, or that’s what we think.”
“Where?”
“In Qatar. With the Al-Saqqaf family. A guest of the sheikh.”
That name, it’s familiar. I squeeze my eyes shut and work my memory. “I—know him,” I whisper. “I was there once. At his house. Eid.”
Breaking the Eid fast, the sheikh straddling the lamb, running a knife across its throat.
The congregation suddenly stands, and Mazal and I follow suit.
“A guest? You’re sure?” I say quietly.
“When we got him out of Uruguay, we took him by pla
ne to Recife, Brazil, hooked him up with new papers. Last we saw, he was getting off a plane in Doha and was met by a car registered to Al-Saqqaf. It appeared—consensual.”
I wait until a prayer starts, the congregation calling out in unison, before speaking.
“Do you have intelligence on the sheikh?”
“A whole filing cabinet. He’s old-school, hates politics, hates the Islamic radicals more. He’s safe there, your father.”
I close my eyes, feel the desert sun on my face. “I need to get in touch with him,” I whisper.
“That’s up to you,” Mazal whispers back. “As you can imagine, the Al-Saqqafs don’t answer phone calls from Mossad. Maybe your new friend can help.”
“New friend?”
“Dragoslava Zoric. The sheikh and her father did business together, once upon a time.” Mazal hefts the backpack into her lap. “You were right, by the way.”
“About what?”
“About the Zorics closing up shop. We confirmed it. Resources can now be directed elsewhere.”
“You’re not hunting them anymore?”
“As I said, resources have been directed elsewhere. We no longer consider them an active threat.” She rises, slips the backpack over her shoulder.
“Don’t leave,” I hiss. “We’re not finished.”
Mazal gives my forearm a squeeze. “Once again, the state of Israel thanks you for your efforts.”
She’s gone a moment later, slipping down the aisle and out the back. I look down at her seat and see she left something behind.
It’s a book of matches: El Gran Castillo, Sarajevo, says the cover.
* * *
I stay through the end of services, sitting and standing along with everyone else, drinking the sweet white wine that was handed out in paper cups—the first intoxicant I’ve had since my last dose of Theta—hoping it’ll help me feel it, hoping I’ll feel the rabbi’s words in a language I don’t understand bring me the same peace they seem to bring everyone else here.
When it’s over, the worshippers file out, and a woman who’d sat near the front pauses in the aisle beside me. She’s herding her two children toward the door, but she stops for some reason and waits for me to look at her.
“Beszélsz magyarul?” she says.
“Csak egy kicsit,” I say apologetically.
She switches to slow English. “You are visitor here or are you alive in Budapest?” I sort out her words—are you alive in Budapest. “Yes.” I nod. “I live in Budapest.”
“Not so many young people, but we are trying,” she says. “We have classes. In evenings of Wednesdays. If you are interested about this.”
She tells her kids to stop fighting as she digs through an enormous handbag and pulls out a brochure. “Sometimes in the world, we lose—sorry, my English—our selfs, our spirits, you know? Who we are on the innards. This world is very—difficult. Am I saying what makes sense?”
“Yes, I understand perfectly.” I take the brochure, tuck it into my jacket. “I’ll think about it. Thank you.”
In a moment, I’m one of only three or four others left in the temple, others who need the extra time with God. For reasons I can’t explain, I kneel and fold my hands. This is how you’re supposed to do it, I think, how one prays.
No names, no images of who this message is going out to—nothing in a beard, no human-shaped anything. That would make it too easy to not believe. So just hope, then, that there’s something there to catch it. I can’t sort through the thoughts well enough to put them into words, so I just let the mess roll out of me, bits of data, stillborn ideas, half images, prethoughts. Loyalty. Father. Running. Tired. Happiness. This.
I wipe my eyes on my sleeve, reach to my backpack for a tissue, but remember Mazal took it. Blood rushes to my head as I stand, so I have to sit until the dizziness passes. Had something heard me? Had the message found an ear? No reply. No blinking light. No indication I’d done anything more than ejaculate madness from my mind out into the world.
On the way out, I check my phone. An address from Terrance, followed by, C U at 22:00.
I sigh, standing at the entrance to the Metro, looking at his message, and seeing instead, R U alive in Budapest?
* * *
The gallery is out by the university, adjacent to a park, where there are stalls and food carts serving beer and delicious things I can’t pronounce yet. Budapest’s young set. Its smart set. Its knows-about-art set. I somehow make it through the crowd into the gallery, sliding sideways between knots of people who know one another. I find myself at the wall, next to a black-and-white photo taped to cardboard matting. Title, Platinum Print Number 8. Artist, Marta Nagy. The subject, Terrance, nude, reading in a chair. There’s nothing sexual about the photo, just matter-of-fact. He is, though, dazzling in his nakedness, the position of the lamp over his right shoulder draping light over half his face, over his collarbone, catching the end of his penis where it rests against his left thigh, and the light continuing all the way down to the ridges of his left foot, which is pointed, finishing the diagonal started by the lamp. This is how I remember him in our best moments together. And it’s obviously how Marta remembers him, too.
I spot Terrance near the back, arms raised with four beer bottles as he pushes through the crowd toward a woman with blue hair smoking a cigarette. Just as I’m about to turn away, he sees me and grins, motions for me to come over.
When I get there, Marta is holding court, explaining in English how tricky platinum is to work with. Terrance is nodding along in agreement. That platinum, such a pain in the ass. I fold my arms over my chest and look down, wishing I hadn’t come. Then Terrance is saying, “Everyone, everyone, this is my friend Marike.”
It takes my mind a second to realize he means me, then I look up and give a forced smile.
Marta smiles. “Carlo told me all about you.”
“I heard about you, too,” I say.
“Did you see the photo I made of him?”
“Yes. It’s great. Beautiful work.”
She rolls her eyes. “He’s beautiful. My work is okay, not great. But thank you. That was sweet.”
“Is it for sale?” I ask.
Terrance flashes me a look.
“For sale?” she says. “Well, I suppose everything is, no?”
Terrance clasps a hand on my shoulder. “Marta, excuse us. I have to talk to Marike about something.”
He takes my hand and leads me outside. Cigarette and weed smoke is thick here and we escape to a corner of the park.
“Hey,” he says. “Hey, are you all right?”
I pinch my eyes closed and nod. “Just—out of place.”
He takes my shoulders in his hands and squeezes gently. “I didn’t know she was showing that one.”
I pull away from him. “It’s fine. I’ve seen you naked before.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He sighs, lets his arms collapse to his side. “She’s cool. I like her. We slept together. But we’re friends now, that’s it.”
“Yeah. Cool. None of my business.”
He takes my hand and leads me to the sidewalk. We walk slowly between the park fence and the cars lining the curb. It’s deserted, thankfully. I remember his warning about the Jobbik militias.
“I got news today,” I say suddenly. “About my dad. He’s alive. Doing fine, apparently.”
“What? That’s great!”
I don’t reply for a long time. He touches my chin, turns my face toward his.
“I mean, you wanted that,” he says. “You wanted to find him.”
“Yeah. I did.”
We reach the corner where the street joins with a long boulevard that stretches into the distance. I start walking, and Terrance stays at my side.
I take his arm, slide my hand into his. “This feels like, I don’t know, a vacation,” I say quietly.
“What does?”
“All this. Normal life. How long does it last, do you think?”
He laces his finger
s between mine. “As long as you want. If you choose it.”
I feel my lips trembling as I try to smile. “They won’t stop, you know. Ever. Looking for us, I mean.”
He steps back, pulling our hands apart. “And I don’t care. I don’t. This is where I want to be. And you need to decide.”
I look at him but don’t answer.
Terrance gestures to the crowd behind us. “Look, I’m going back to the gallery, to see my friends, have a drink. You coming with? Because you’re welcome to. I want you to.”
I turn and look down the boulevard. It stretches into the distance, to a vanishing point a long way from here. “I think—I think I’m just tired,” I say.
He nods, closes his eyes. “Call me tomorrow, then,” he says. “Or whenever.”
I swallow hard. “Tell Marta I like her work. Really.”
Thirty-Eight
There was a war here, decades ago or yesterday, hard to tell. A gleaming office building of a modest, suburban size sits on one side of the street. Across from it, another building, a ring of rubble surrounding the foundation, baring the building’s interior, the apartments inside naked for all to see. Faded wallpaper—yellow plaid in one home, pink flowers in another—and pieces of furniture left as they were when the building was cleaved in two by artillery shells. A kitchen table beside an open refrigerator. A wrought-iron bed, tattered sheets still fluttering in the breeze.
Sarajevo Landscape #1. That’s what Terrance would call it. He would tell the driver to pull over and be out of the car a second later with his camera. He would squint at the scene, framing it just the right way, the way only he can. He would lift the camera to his eye, one or two disciplined frames, that’s it. He would shift positions, squint again, take two more shots. He would do all of this if he were here.
I left the morning after the gallery show, sliding an envelope with the key to the apartment under the store to Henri’s salon with a note asking him to water Nick and Imre’s plant. As for Terrance, I’ll catch up with him when I come back. If I come back. But I decided on the train to Belgrade—eight hours on a Communist-era local, the only kind they run to Belgrade—that going back is unlikely.
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