by Ailsa Kay
Tibor feels something sliding from underneath him: the facts, the ground.
He has the strongest urge to run downstairs right now, seek out the company of someone, anyone. To call Peter. “Peter, you ass. You skeptical, ironic fuck. I’m being framed.”
Tibor lies awake, eyes open in the dark, trying to put things in order. This city is making him paranoid. It breeds anxiety. He has argued this in at least one academic paper. Why did people believe, in both 1956 and 1989, that the tunnels were under Communist Headquarters and not under 60 Andrassy Ut, where everyone knew political prisoners were held, tortured, and sometimes executed? Now 60 Andrassy is a museum that memorializes these horrors while, at the same time, refusing any responsibility for them. Appropriately, it’s called the Terror House and you can tour its cellar prisons. There are no tunnels.
Similarly, he might now ask himself, Why would a Hungarian mob boss order the death of a Canadian boy? More pertinent: why would this Csaba Bekes concoct such a story about Tibor and how did the police know he’d been at the squat in the first place?
Answer: the camera.
4.
Tibor sleeps, or hovers just above sleep. There’s an exam. He fails it. So they have to break him. First his foot. Then his hand. Then his knee. Then his elbow. He wakes when they get to the shoulder.
It’s 5:17 a.m.
Agnes is also awake. She’d watched the moon rise over the right shoulder of the parliament. She’d packed her suitcase. She’d tried to sleep. At four, she’d risen, showered, dressed. Now, she sits in the armchair, waiting for the sun. The parliament building is an Austrian girl’s fantasy, she thinks, a fairy castle for a princess. It was never so white. In 1956, it was as grey-black as everything else, coated in coal dust and diesel gas, and it was better that way, more truthful anyway, more like the rest of the city.
At six, she calls Tibor’s room.
“Tibor? Could you please take me to the Canadian Embassy this morning? My passport has been stolen.”
She’s pleased with the steadiness of her tone. Not a note of fear, not a tremor.
Tibor holds his hungover head in his palm, eyes closed. “Your passport? How?”
“I dropped my purse.” She’d explain it later, the cellar, Cica, the marchers in uniform who’d pulled her in.
“You didn’t put it in the safe?”
“I was trying to be safe.”
“No, Mom. The safe in the room. That’s what it’s there for.” Remember? What Gabor said?
“Tibor. Come here now, Tibor. I need your help.”
Fuck.
Click. She hangs up.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
Pants. Shirt. Shoes. Keycard.
Knock.
Unlock.
She looks like she’s on her way to the mall, for her mall-walking club.
He looks like he drank too much.
“Don’t look at me like that, Tibor. I know you have things to do. That’s why I thought we could go early. I did not lose it on purpose. It was stolen.” She will not cry.
He sits. Out of frustration and fatigue, not to prompt a longer conversation.
“It was a mob. The fascists, the Arrow-Cross, they were marching.”
“You were there? What were you doing there? ”
“I was minding my own business, and one of those fascists stole my passport. There were so many people.”
“Calm down, Mom. It’s okay.”
“I need to go to the Embassy. I need to go to the Canadian Embassy and then I need to go home.”
“Our flight’s not until the end of next week, Mom.”
“I know that, Tibor.” Why does he always assume she’s losing her marbles? When she loses her marbles, she will tell him. “I will get a new flight. I don’t want to stay. I want to go home. Today.”
What on earth is she on about? He’s the one in trouble, not her. “Fine. I need a shower first.”
“Persze.” But where had he been last night? Last night when she needed him?
Like a drill through the centre of his fucking forehead.
Tibor pictures how this will happen. They will go together to the Canadian Embassy: his addled, paranoid senior mother in her spotless Adidas shoes and pink velour track suit, and him, the addled, paranoid prof in his nostalgic Doc Martens and ski jacket. She will claim a fascist stole her passport while he insists that he is being framed by the Hungarian police for a murder that he witnessed. He can see it now: a disbelieving bureaucrat with perfectly aligned pens and eyes that barely flicker as he leans his polished head back to laugh—Hahahahaha—at the tourists. “You’ve been watching too much bad TV, my friend. Now go. Enjoy your holiday. Take your mother on a boat ride up the Danube. It’s a beautiful city, even in this shit-grey month.” And who could blame the guy? If it wasn’t happening to him, Tibor wouldn’t believe it either.
“I’m not losing my marbles,” says his mother.
In the lobby, Gabor calls them a cab. “Ten minutes,” he tells them. “However, as Hungarian taxis are quite prompt, it is best to wait near the door. Keep your hat on, as they say.”
They stand by the revolving door. Tibor reads his newspaper. Agnes looks out for the cab, wishing to be home. When will it ever be the right time? she wonders. There is no right time. If she starts talking over lunch, it will seem rehearsed and it will take too long. It shouldn’t be a conversation. She doesn’t want him chewing while she unravels her past. He would no doubt take it personally, consider it his history as well. Strictly speaking, he’d be right, but is she willing to give him that?
“Tibor, I told you what happened in 1956.”
He doesn’t glance up from his newspaper. “Yes?” he says. Turns the page.
What could be so preoccupying him? Agnes slaps the underside of the paper. “I’m talking to you, Tibor.” How familiar is that look on his face. It always makes her want to give him a little smack. “This is important.”
Another look. He wants to smack her back.
“But I didn’t tell you what happened to Zsofia.”
“Zsofia?”
“My sister.”
“Oh. Right.”
The taxi pulls up. He gives the cab driver the address, then settles back into the seat. She can feel, without looking at him, that he’s irritated.
“She fell in with the revolutionaries.”
He is studiously not reading his paper.
“She killed an AVO officer, a member of the secret police. And then she disappeared.”
“No. You didn’t tell me that. Why didn’t you tell me that?”
A good question. There is no answer, really. It just happened that way. Bad memories are not for sharing, especially with children. There’s enough talktalktalk in this world already. She’d tried to write it once, but she burned her efforts. She never wanted to be like some she knew, holding on to those bad memories as if to let them go might cause disintegration. She wanted to live, to be happy in the most ordinary way. She does her best to explain this to Tibor, who fixes her with a vexed, irritable stare. She wants to tell him what she is doing here, searching for evidence of an escape. She thought it might feel good to finally confess what she had done. To explain why she had to be here. Why she had to search. But this is Tibor and he never listens.
The rest of the ride they don’t speak. The car is loud. The seat vibrates. His mother sits, hands on her lap, weirdly slack without her purse. They get out of the cab in front of the Canadian Embassy and he says, “I’m sorry, Mom. That must have been awful.”
She shrugs. The way only a Hungarian can shrug. They enter together.
The process for reporting a stolen passport is standardized, they find out from the receptionist. “It’s happening more and more often these days,” she says. “You can’t be too careful.” She doesn’t say, The gypsies. She doesn’t say, You stupid old lady, carrying your passport in your purse.
When she sees Agnes’s maiden name on the form, she switches to Hungarian. Agnes
answers in English. She wants none of this girl’s presumptuous familiarity. In this embassy they are on Canadian soil. She will speak Canadian.
Tibor steers his mother to a chair in the waiting room and again approaches the receptionist. “I have a problem. I’m hoping you can help me.” He whispers, leaning as close to the woman’s ear as appropriateness allows.
His mother watches, questioningly. He gives her a reassuring, don’t-worry kind of smile. To the woman, he whispers, “I’d rather my mother not be privy to this problem.”
Her name is Manna. Manna stares, stolidly unresponsive. She’s thinking underage hookers, venereal disease. Not that kind of problem. “I believe I am being framed for murder.”
Manna doesn’t bat an eye. Manna doesn’t believe him. She says, “Oh?”
Tibor leans closer. “May I speak with someone in authority, please?”
“Do you have an appointment?”
I’m being framed for murder, and you think I’m putting it in my Daytimer? You have got to be kidding. Manna is not kidding. Manna has probably never joked in her life. Not in this office. Not in her job description.
“It’s sort of urgent.”
Manna clicks her mouse, surveys the computer screen. “Tomorrow at two?” She scans. “Oh. Sorry. Make that four-thirty. Does that work for you?”
No, you fat, fascist bureaucrat, it does not.
“No, it doesn’t. Listen.” Tibor checks over his shoulder. His mother is perusing a newspaper. “I witnessed that murder on Gellert. Do you understand? One of the murderers is a police detective, Detective Tamas Sarkady. He intimidated me. He’s had me followed. And now he’s setting me up.”
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Roland, but Mr. Sutherland is simply not available until tomorrow at 4:30.”
“Do you think I’m making this up? I’m telling you my life is in danger. If Mr. Sutherland doesn’t talk to me now, he’ll be visiting me in prison.” That was louder than it should have been. His mother has put the newspaper aside and is now approaching the desk with that firmness of intent he remembers from when he was a child and she was about to scold his teacher.
“I understand your concern, Mr. Roland. If you, and your mother”—she nods toward Agnes, who now stands beside Tibor—“would like to remain at the embassy for the day, or even a couple of days, you are welcome to do so. But Mr. Sutherland has a full schedule…”
“And who is Mr. Sutherland?” Agnes interrupts. She’d thought Tibor never stood up to anyone. Obviously, she has underestimated him. He has more of his father in him than she’d thought, and she feels a sharp, loving pain for this immature son of hers.
“The head of embassy security, Mrs. Roland.”
“Why do we wait for a security guard? We will see the ambassador.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Roland, but your son has expressed a security concern. Mr. Sutherland is the head of security.”
Agnes remembers this kind of woman. The landlady of their building, who reported on the doctor. The pharmacist’s wife, who took the bribe her father offered for her mother’s medication and then reported him. The woman next door, Mrs. Nemeth.
“We won’t be here tomorrow. That’s too bad. Steven will be sad that we weren’t able to pass on his little gift for Ambassador…”
“Ambassador Nolan,” Tibor supplies.
“And his dear wife. That’s Steven Harper. We promised him we’d stop by. Give the Nolans a sincere and off-the-record thank you for helping us keep those awful gypsies out of Canada. They went to school together, you know.”
There’s nothing more convincing than a woman in her seventies, Agnes thinks, as Manna ventures what might be called a smile and reaches for the phone.
In the hallway behind Manna, a door opens. Three men step out. One wears a sharply pressed blue uniform and police officer’s cap. Even before he turns, Tibor knows it is Ferenc. Have they put out a warning against him? Reported him to his own government? “Thank you for your time,” says Tibor. He grabs a pamphlet from the desk, takes his mother by the elbow, and hustles her toward the exit. “We’ll come back later for your passport.”
“Persze, Tibor. Persze. My arm.”
Walk, walk, walk. Tibor lunges ahead impatiently, then stops to wait for her to catch up. Thank God she wears her Adidas shoes today. Could they not just wait for a bus? It’s colder today, all yesterday’s melt frozen fast, and the shade of tall walls hides patches of glare ice. She extends both arms like a kid on a balance beam. Chasing her son at break-hip speed. Ha. She wants to share the joke with him, but he’s at least fifty paces ahead. What are they running from? Where is he headed?
For heaven’s sake. “Tibor.”
But the ice is faster and she’s down as her son strides away. “Tibor.” What is that look on his face? Apology? Alarm? He’s jogging back toward her. She should tell him it’s all right. I’m fine, Tibor. I was only a little frightened. And disappointed. And angry, mostly at myself. You see, I can stand on my own. It’s too hard to speak. Whew. Dizzy. I’d rather sit. But there’s no hurry. I know the march was only a march and I’m not a criminal. We can leave this country any time, like normal people. We can simply go to the airport and cross a border that is only a line taped on the floor. Isn’t that remarkable? We can file onto an airplane, crunch our bottoms into narrow seats, and push off into a gunless sky. I’m too old to run, Tibor.
“I left without Zsofi. I left her in the revolution and she was only sixteen.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Tibor is saying.
Has she said this out loud? So it makes no difference, after all, to confess. She’d thought the black box inside her would shatter, but no. Still there. Might as well have kept it inside.
He’s lifting her up. A good son, her Tibor. So protective. He’s found a bench in the sun. He folds his scarf for her to sit on. That’s nice. Solicitous and kind.
“Wait here. I’ll find a phone and call us a cab.”
She wakes in the dark. It’s 10:30, according to the idiotic clock. Tibor beside her, clicking away at his computer. “It’s too late to be working.”
“Mom. How are you feeling?”
“Sore.”
“You fell on the ice.”
“I said sore, not senile.”
“Do you want some soup?”
“I want to go home.”
“I know. We’ll pick up your passport tomorrow.”
“Why did you have to run so fast?”
“Long story. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“I would like some water.”
“Here you are.”
“I would like to go home.”
“Tomorrow, Mom. Like I said.”
“I thought you were running away from me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I ran away.”
“I know.”
“I ran away from my family.”
“You ran from an oppressive regime.”
“I left Zsofi.”
“It’s okay, Mom. You told me, remember?”
“I did?”
“Gyula told me you were brave.”
“Gyula?”
“I called him.”
“Gyula was my lover.”
“He told me that too.”
“He talks too much.”
“Call if you need me, Mom. You need to sleep.”
“And tomorrow we’ll go home?”
“Promise.”
His hotel room is almost too quiet. Across the black Duna, the parliament pretends to float. Snow gusts.
Why haven’t they arrested him already? They have the lying eyewitness, Csaba Bekes. They have the incriminating photographs on his camera. His footprints right next to where they found the head. And despite his lie, they know where he is staying.
They’re not sure they can get away with it, was Gyula’s assessment. Or maybe they just need a diversion. They need to look like they’ve almost got the guy, they’re closing in on him, but somehow you slipped through their fingers.<
br />
The thought is not quite soothing.
He tried to call Lucia first, but when she didn’t answer, he found Uncle Gyula’s number. Whoever he was, judging by his clothes, he was obviously pretty well to do. And Tibor had to admit he was reassured, dealing with Gyula. Sometimes, a well-connected older man is just more solid, more credible, than a young, politically outraged woman.
Tomorrow, Gyula would meet him here around three. One more time, Tibor would walk through every event in detail, as best as he could remember. The party at the squat. The moonlit jog. The voices and the names he was positive he hadn’t misheard. Gyula would put in a call to the National Police. Then they would go together to the consulate at four-thirty. And then what? He wouldn’t speak unless someone could guarantee his protection. Gyula had agreed that was the right tactic, so that’s what he’d do. But he could also just leave. As long as there was no warrant for his arrest, as long as he was only the useful diversion, he could simply book an earlier flight and, with his mother, fly away home.
“You might want to consider that,” suggested Gyula. They talked with low voices so as not to disturb his mother as she dozed. She’d sprained her wrist but thankfully nothing worse.
Now, he clicks on the TV to catch the eleven o’clock news. Compulsive. He can’t help himself. Strange sense that he’s eavesdropping on his own life. Or the trap that’ll close on it. Another witness has stepped forward, confirming that Hagy left the party in a black Mercedes. Detective Tamas Sarkady says they are getting closer to putting together those last few hours of Janos Hagy’s tragically brief life. Police have not yet found the body. Anyone with information is urged to call.
Next, the boy’s father. He’s just some ordinary-looking businessman in a blue, button-down shirt but clearly shattered, straining for dignity then splitting apart. Please, if you have any information. Please come forward. Whoever did this. Has to be arrested. I just want justice. For Janos. For my son. Who could do such a thing? I loved my son.
I loved him.
Oh, my son.
My son.
My son.
The boy grins out at him from the TV. Cool hat. A pimple on his chin.
And Tibor stares back. And Tibor hates the boy. He resents his smile and the pimple that reminds him that the boy couldn’t have known what was coming. The boy looks like a posturing, suburban, self-entitled little fuck. He hates that their lives are now linked.