Strangers in Budapest

by Jessica Keener

  Annie fished through her wallet again. Everyone wanted American dollars here. The Gypsy rushed back to her stand to prepare a small bouquet when two young Gypsy girls appeared at the woman’s side and handed her money. Annie guessed the children were the flower women’s daughters.

  “Ower,” Leo said, stretching his arms toward the Gypsies. Annie repositioned the jogger and sat down on the curb to wait.

  “Hold on. She’s getting them ready for you,” she told Leo.

  The Gypsy girls looked like twins. Both had dark shoulder-length hair, sleeveless blouses, and long skirts sweeping the tops of their bare feet. The older one, a few inches taller, couldn’t have been more than ten, Annie guessed. The younger one, maybe eight, saw Leo and skipped over to him to touch his reddish curls when three skinheads—young men with shaved scalps, wearing black clothing and boots—emerged from the crowds and shoved the little girl out of the way.“Gypsy steal American baby,” one of the skinheads said, spitting on the sidewalk.

  Intimidated and upset, Annie whirled the stroller around to distract Leo, who had gone silent before bursting into tears. By then, the skinhead and his two buddies had crossed the street, running and laughing. Their disgusting mission accomplished.

  Annie stooped to calm Leo, scanning the sidewalk for Will, but she still didn’t see him in the crowd. She moved to the side of a building.

  “Look, Leo.”

  The Gypsy woman handed Leo his flowers, and in that one moment, he was back in baby heaven, burying his face in the petals, captured by their smell and beauty. The two girls ran back over to his side.

  “Thank you. He loves them. Your children?” Annie asked the woman, and gestured toward the bridge.

  “No English.”

  She asked the question again in Hungarian.

  “Children? Gyermekek?” It was one of the few Hungarian words Annie knew.

  The woman nodded, then turned to a couple who had stopped to look at the flowers. Leo flutter-kicked again. “Nice.” He blew air between his teeth, breathing in the flowers’ scents around him, his nose wrinkling in glee.

  The Gypsy mother gave her daughters several roses wrapped in cellophane and pointed to the bridge. The sisters held hands, the older one with her long, skinny arms leading the way, the younger one compliant, following behind as they both reentered the streams of pedestrians converging at the busy intersection. Right away, the taller one began tugging on the skirts and pants of men and women passing by. A few people shouted and flailed their arms at the girls to shoo them away. Annie was horrified, yet the mother appeared indifferent, hardened by the rude and violent behavior toward her children, treating it as if it were normal. The older daughter persisted, pulling her sister deeper into the center of the masses on the sidewalk, burrowing into the crowd until Annie couldn’t see them anymore.

  Where was Will? Leo was hungry. He needed to eat. There. Annie spotted her tall husband in the crowd, heading back toward her. She stood up.

  “Carnation. Can you say it? Tell Daddy.” She pointed to Will.

  “Nation, nation!” Leo screeched, holding out the bouquet for his dad.

  Will laughed and Annie smiled despite an odd pressing feeling in her chest. She looked back to see if she could find the Gypsy girls, but they were gone. Why weren’t they wearing shoes? She felt uneasy in the swirl of people and heat, disturbed first by her meeting with Mr. Weiss and now by the sight of those young girls in their dirty bare feet and those horrible skinheads.

  “What is it?” Will took her hand. “What’s the matter?”

  “A skinhead pushed a little Gypsy girl. It was awful. He said Gypsies steal American babies. That’s just a racist lie. Plain and simple. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Where are the police when you need them?”

  “Are you sure you’re okay? I’m sorry I wasn’t here. Those skinheads are scary. They really are. They’re trouble.”

  “Horrible,” Annie said, shaken and disturbed. She tried to settle herself.

  “You know what? I’m going to see Mr. Weiss again. Something’s wrong. I know it is.”

  “Something might be wrong, but it’s not our business. He doesn’t want it to be. Let it go, Annie. The guy wants to be left alone.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  They walked alongside the stroller, neither of them saying anything. Will’s response was not what she wanted to hear. The skinhead’s violence lingered like a bad smell, and she found herself searching for a way to cleanse herself.

  “I hope he calls us if he needs something,” Annie said. She didn’t think she could leave it alone.

  “I hope so, too. Let’s try to enjoy the rest of the day.” He stopped and brushed her bangs aside, then kissed her on the lips, which surprised her. “This heat is getting to us,” he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when that happened. Leo seems okay. I’m sure we’ll all feel better after we eat some lunch.”

  She appreciated his attempt to cheer her up. They had come here to learn what it was like to adopt a new culture, to step into something unpredictable and disorienting. Prior to coming here, she had barely traveled outside of New England, had tried to be careful and measured in her decisions. Coming here had been anything but certain.

  “It was awful. They’re like Nazi brownshirts.”

  “You are exactly right. No different.”

  Will held open the door to the restaurant for Annie and Leo to enter. She paused to take in the broad view around her. Trolleys sidling across wide avenues—the oldest metro system in mainland Europe. The streetcars reminded her of Boston, and in that way, Budapest felt familiar to her. Boulevards sectioned the city into twenty-three districts, rippling out in rings from the center of town to ancient ruins of former Roman settlements in the outskirts. All in all, Budapest was a lovely, walkable city, the newest darling of capitalism and the Western world. A city full of promise. Now, after fifty years of communist rule, the Russians had finally left. Hungary’s cultural revival had begun. The country was striving to become modern after decades of war and a long history of failures, reopening its rusty gates to Western businesses and entrepreneurs, like Will.

  The threesome walked into Luigi’s restaurant with its welcoming wafts of air-conditioning. Bright ceiling lights hung overhead. Annie looked at Leo, covered in petals, a beautiful sight, and yet an ominous sensation still nudged her like a beggar’s insistent and lonely hand. What about those two Gypsy girls? Were the gates opening for them, too? Where did they live? And Edward, what in God’s sake was he doing here?

  Five

  The room was packed, busy with Americans eating lunch, escaping the heat.

  “There’s Dave. I had a feeling I’d run into him here,” Will said. “Order the penne for me. I won’t be long.”

  “Take your time.”

  Relieved to be out of the heat, she headed for an open table next to the picture window. What good luck. The table would give Leo entertaining views of pedestrians walking by, pigeons, and trolley cars.

  “You order now?” A slender woman began clearing the tabletop of pizza crust and crumpled napkins. She didn’t bother to fake a smile, which Annie appreciated. None of the annoying “Hi, my name is so-and-so, and I’ll be your server today” silliness you got back in America.

  “Yes. Could you bring some bread right away?” Annie looked at Leo. “It’ll keep him occupied. My husband and I will have the penne.”

  “Persze—of course.” Dressed in a short black skirt and white blouse, the young woman surprised Annie by breaking into a smile. “What is his name?” she said, looking at Leo.

  “Leo.”

  “Kicsi baba. I get you bread.” The waitress smiled again and left.

  A Hungarian smiling? It was the only time Annie observed Hungarians acting effusively—toward children. She learned this when she and Leo first arrived in the airport last January. After she got her luggage, she stood in a long line to pass through customs, Leo asleep against her chest. She was settl
ing in to wait, but then men and women in front of her kept turning to her and waving, pointing to the front of the line. She hadn’t understood at first. She thought she had done something wrong until a woman came over, gently took her arm, and with a big smile ushered her to the front of the line. It was a lovely gesture, one Annie would never forget, especially after so many hours of traveling, and she was anxious to see Will, who was waiting for them in the next room. He had flown ahead two weeks earlier to secure their flat.

  The waitress returned with a basket of rolls, handing one to the baby.

  “Lee-oh. I like.”

  “Köszönöm,” Annie said.

  Leo laughed, reaching out his hand for the bread.

  They named him Leo after the sun. Naming their son had turned into an effort not to offend either family. On her side, the Episcopalian side, it would have been natural to name the first-born son after the child’s father—William—but on Will’s side, the Jewish side, it would have offended his parents, who had hoped Leo would be named after a dead grandfather or dead somebody in the Jewish tradition of honoring the dead.

  But then Annie would have felt left out and she wanted something that would bridge the differences in their upbringing—a name that would hold equal meaning for them. So they agreed on Leo. Will joked that Leo was also the name of James Joyce’s fictional Jew, a wanderer, a seeker, and that association hit a right note for Annie as well because she had felt that way, too: a wanderer from an early age, searching for something she couldn’t find at home, drifting through the rooms of her family’s impeccably restored, historic Maine house late at night when everyone was asleep. In her childhood home, every piece of furniture had its proper place—not so for her family who lived in it. Her parents worked hard to keep her sister Tracy’s brain-damaged life and, later, her brother’s alcoholism and death, out of public sight. These things were not talked about. Instead, Annie, who was the youngest, simply took on the role of doing things right.

  “Eep, eep.” Leo pointed to a pigeon stabbing crumbs on the sidewalk outside.

  “That’s right honey. That’s what the birds say.”

  A year after Greg died, she met and married Will, a Jewish man from Miami. Her parents didn’t know what to think of her decision, or how to respond—they’d lost that ability once and for all after her brother’s death—so they said nothing. When she and Will moved to Hungary with their infant son, her parents couldn’t understand that either. Why Hungary? her mother had asked.

  Why Hungary?

  As soon as Leo arrived in Annie’s arms via an adoption agency, something burst open inside her, some dormant seed awakened. Will felt that way, too. And once Leo was legally theirs, Annie couldn’t wait to leave the country, couldn’t wait to leave her old life, couldn’t wait to get out from under the adoption agency’s watchful eyes in the name of one particular case worker, a Mr. John Calloway. Calloway was a tall man with big ears who had insinuated himself into her and Will’s life six months leading up to Leo’s adoption, which was finalized and officiated by a Massachusetts judge.

  To be fair, Calloway did what adoption case workers were supposed to do. He visited their home every two weeks to check, probe, and question them about baby care. But she resented the process. During his visits, Calloway inspected their house, smiling and nodding as he perused their downstairs rooms, the living room, and kitchen before climbing upstairs to Leo’s bedroom in search of clues of misconduct. Of course, he found none and signed off at the three-month mark, which allowed the judge and lawyer to proceed with the finalization of Leo’s adoption. Thank God for that glorious day.

  Beside her, Leo handed her his smooshed roll, and she took his fingers and kissed them. Coming to this foreign city had taken her far, far away from that particular worry about her beautiful son and the constant, unmentionable burden of who she was—a girl who’d lost both her siblings to tragedy.

  Few Americans traveled to Budapest, yet the feeling of Calloway crossing their personal boundaries lingered; the real possibility that a stranger could have cut her heart with one disapproving scratch of his pen on his agency report made her shiver. It touched a raw nerve in her. She knew how a lifetime changed in an instant. An errant baseball. A sudden glint of sunlight, and her family’s life was broken forever. First her sister, then her brother.

  Thank goodness Leo was solidly and completely theirs now. Annie reached into the jogger and pulled out Leo’s powered milk, his formula that she mixed with water. She shook the bottle then handed it to her son.

  With a new baby? her mother had asked.

  Yes. She and Will thought it was a perfect time. Why not? Leo was four months old. He wouldn’t care where he lived as long as he was with his parents. When she told her friends, Annie discovered that Americans, her friends included, had a hard time imagining that babies lived—let alone thrived—anywhere outside the States. She looked out Luigi’s big windows and wondered where the little Gypsy sisters slept at night. In a dingy apartment in the outer reaches of town? In a tent? She didn’t know anything about the Gypsies and decided it was time she did.

  ACROSS THE CROWDED restaurant, Will stood at a table talking to a bald man who Annie guessed was in his fifties, presumably Dave, and a younger man with longish brown hair. Will must have mentioned her because Dave raised his chin toward her and waved. She responded in kind, lifting her hand, thinking it comical the way Americans in Budapest gravitated to the same restaurants, read the same newspapers—the New York Times, the London Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the city’s expat paper, the Budapest Reporter—as if they had all joined the same traveling circus. And, in fact, they had.

  Women in sleeveless summer dresses, men in shorts, their hairy legs stretched out under cafe tables; corporate officers like Dave in their summer uniforms of polo shirts and khaki slacks—an all-American expat crowd at this hour. A few couples with their kids. What was the point of coming to a foreign place to hang out with one’s own? So far, she’d gone out of her way to avoid befriending Americans—those few thousand who had come to meld with this city of several million. Yet here she was, doing just that.

  Will walked toward her, the older and younger man following him.

  “Annie, this is Dave Johnson. Remember I mentioned him a few weeks ago? And this is his translator, Stephen Házy.”

  She shook their hands. Dave’s hand felt meek, his palm bent as if to say, I’m not much of anything. By contrast, Stephen’s palm was open, his handshake confident and firm.

  “Annie, nice to meet you,” Dave said. “You’ll have to meet my wife when she gets back from the States. Stephen here is from Boston. He came over several months ago. Great find for us. He speaks fluent Hungarian.”

  “Really? How did you learn it?”

  “Grew up with it. My parents are Hungarian. Anyone would learn under those circumstances.” He tipped his head in a deferential way, engaging her. “I understand your husband took lessons before coming over. Commendable.”

  “Most people don’t try,” she said, proud of Will’s efforts. Except for Stephen, she had not met one American who spoke more than a few phrases of Hungarian. They assumed it was too difficult a language and didn’t bother, relying on Hungarians to speak English, which many did, though haltingly.

  “Are you enjoying your time here?” Stephen asked her.

  “It’s a fascinating place.”

  “You mean difficult? Not easy for Americans to adjust here, is it?” he said to her as if he could hear her deeper thoughts, his green-gray eyes taking her in. He spoke softly, the way Hungarians did, but he didn’t have a trace of an accent. “Nothing to do on weekends, right?”

  “It’s a different pace.” She decided he looked more European than American, wearing sandals, and an open button-down shirt that revealed his chest hairs. Or maybe it wasn’t European but some kind of upgraded hippie look.

  “There’s plenty to see, you know. Day trips. Little villages you should check out. I like those flowers your
son has there.”

  She looked at Leo consumed now by his bottle, the shredded flower petals scattered around him.

  “Where did you grow up?” she asked. He was classically handsome—balanced features—as tall as Will with bangs that fell in a careless, offhanded way. Approachable was the word that came to her.

  “Originally? New Jersey. But I left there long ago.” He spoke as if New Jersey were a faraway, imaginary place, his eyes gazing out the window at the crowded street. “You see, my mother was pregnant when they left Budapest. Came over after the ’56 uprising. I was conceived here. So, technically, I guess you could say I began here. I was born in the States.”

  “A terrible battle,” Will said.

  “Blood under the bridge,” Stephen said. “I didn’t have to live through it. My parents did. My father, especially. Rest his soul. He never recovered. That’s the truth.”

  “I’m sorry,” Annie said.

  She watched Stephen’s face as his eyes circled around the room and back to her. She wanted to ask more.

  “Stephen’s been a great help to us,” Dave said, patting Stephen on the shoulder. “Will, I want you to meet the mayor of Székesfehérvár. It could lead to something. It’s a nice town. I believe it used to be the capital.”

  “Yes. It was the City of Kings. Dozens were crowned there. The name means ‘royal white castle,’ ” Will said.

  “Interesting,” Dave said.

  “Will is full of interesting facts,” Annie said.

  “Most Hungarians call it Fehérvar, or White Castle,” Stephen said, smiling at her.

  “Good to know that,” Will said. “Town’s got one hundred fifty thousand people.”

  “If you sign on a town like that,” Dave said, “other towns will follow. It’s a good opportunity. What do you think, Annie?”