Strangers in Budapest

by Jessica Keener

  Will hurried down their long, sunlit hallway, which linked Leo’s room and the kitchen to a living room and their bedroom at the opposite end. She could hear Will shuffling papers, opening drawers.

  She loved the apartment—practically stole it for a few hundred dollars a month, including utilities. The herringbone floors, shiny as glass, the corner unit with so much light, and windows in Leo’s room that looked out to distant but spectacular views of Castle Hill, an old section of Buda. At night the castle glowed like a Disney World postcard. Spotlights lit up the castle’s stone walls casting long, elegant shadows under the stars.

  Annie searched the bathroom off the hall, checking pockets in their pile of dirty laundry. In the living room, nothing on the couch or the desk with the fax machine. She felt her throat closing up, the apartment stifling and thick with heat.

  “Not here,” Will said, coming down the hall again. “It’s lost. They stole it. God damn it. I’m reporting it to the police.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “We’ll walk over now.”

  “Do you want to call Stephen?”

  “No. I can manage it. If I need him, I’ll call.”

  “I guess he was right.”

  “Right or not, the wallet’s gone.”

  Once more, they stepped back into the hall, baby asleep in the stroller. Two other tenants lived on their floor: an elderly woman, frail and stooped, who Annie had seen twice in eight months, and a middle-age man who lived by himself with his beer. She saw him more often, several times a week in the hall lining up empty beer cans on his door mat next to his shoes. The super collected the cans once a week.

  Today Annie counted fourteen beer cans.

  They went back down in the elevator and passed the super again, standing at the door finishing a smoke.

  “God, she’s miserable,” Annie said once they stepped outside.

  “So am I right now.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Will pulled out his street map. “We need to cross the river and then it’s just a few blocks from there.”

  She felt bad for him, but the super’s misery had gotten under her skin.

  “Seriously. Can you imagine living her life?”

  “That’s a rhetorical question.”

  “Not really.”

  “Worry about your life. Worry about mine right now.”

  “I do. I’m sorry.”

  Outside, seeing the road and the cars heading toward the city center, she thought of the many thousands of people living their lives, hauling hidden stories. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. The entire planet was full of people hauling secrets, struggling to come to terms with them, like her brother. Like her sister.

  “Where to now?” she asked.

  Will pointed toward the river.

  “I think the super got divorced when her son was a toddler. Maybe her ex beat her and knocked out her side tooth. She has terrible teeth. I’d be an alcoholic if I lived her life.”

  “If all those things are true, what can you do about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Annie said. “That’s what bothers me.”

  “She has her life. It’s not a happy one, but it’s hers. Start with your own life, hon. Promise me you’ll meet some of those American women. Give it a chance.”

  Will took her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll get over this. Anyone would be upset.”

  “I know.”

  What she didn’t say is that the super reminded her, daily, of what her family didn’t discuss. Her alcoholic brother’s death five years ago in central Florida. Thirty-one. Unmarried. She was twenty-eight at the time. Newly married. The last time she saw him, Greg had been at her wedding, but even then her mother left the reception early to take him back to the hotel, embarrassed by his drunken behavior. Greg was stumbling on the dance floor, had knocked over a chair. It made Annie sad. It was summer. At the time, her mother had felt hopeful. Greg had landed a six-month contract to work at the university. Some new science facility. Maybe Greg would settle down there, her mother said before the wedding. Then the wedding revealed that nothing would stop his drinking. Annie stopped hoping for her brother. So she retreated from him. She stopped trying. During high school and college years, he disappeared for months at a time, then reappeared working construction somewhere on the East Coast. One wild throw of a baseball and their lives split off forever—her brother, her sister, her family—damaged for life. And, for Annie, she too buried a part of herself that fateful day.

  She stroked Leo’s sweaty head.

  THE POLICE STATION, or rendőrség, was located in a 1920s deco-style white-stucco building. Its preserved exterior hid a dark, rundown interior—beauty and ugliness coexisting, each one vying for dominance. It was a familiar aspect of the city and it unsettled her again. She sat down in one of the plastic chairs in the main room, Leo by her side, asleep for now and hopefully for at least another hour. Will went to the service window and explained the situation in Hungarian, speaking well enough to get by.

  The woman behind the window pointed to another door.

  “We need to fill out a report,” Will said.

  Annie followed him into a small room where a large-bellied policeman sat at a metal desk.

  “Sit down, please,” he said. “I speak little English.”

  Will explained what happened, talking slowly in Hungarian, looking up words in his pocket dictionary. The policeman hunched over his desk, his shoulders lopsided and bulky.

  “I write paper but”—the officer shook his head and shrugged—“we find American wallets in Duna, on street. Every week. Empty. Gypsies. No good.” The pen looked tiny between his thick fingers. He grimaced then dropped his pen on the table.

  “You’re saying this is a scam?”

  Will flinched, then squared his shoulders.

  “I don’t know this word, scam.”

  “Criminals?”

  “Igen. Yes. They are Gypsy.”

  Will pointed to the papers. “I don’t think they were Gypsies. They looked different. I’ll fill out those forms.”

  The policeman leaned toward them. “Gypsies. This is the way.”

  Annie thought of the flower woman and her two girls and those disgusting skinheads. She didn’t believe it was the Gypsies. Will would know. Tomorrow she would go back to the flower stand and follow the mother home, see for herself. She watched Will write his name and address, the make of his car, and his passport information. Did Will look that obvious in the crowd? That American?

  Of course he did—they did. Her husband’s dense curls, his tall, muscular posture—no, that wouldn’t have singled him out, though the men in Budapest tended to be shorter, smaller-boned. With Annie in her American running shorts, their American jogger that no one in Budapest had seen before, the three of them together were a walking pronouncement of their absolute Americanness.

  “Impossible,” he said, looking at Will. “Nothing we can do.”

  “What do you mean, impossible? How many like me?” Will asked.

  Annie knew that Will was annoyed by that favorite Hungarian expression: impossible. It was the antithesis to their American way of thinking.

  “Will. Forget it. He’s saying there’s nothing he can do about it.” She was sickened, too. This theft sucked the air from that shrinking balloon of optimism that floated around her when she first arrived in Budapest.

  The officer nodded at Leo and smiled.

  “How old?”

  “Almost one year.”

  “I’m sorry. Wallet. Every week somebody.”

  She looked at her child, who mixed Hungarian sounds with English words because he spent every day with Klara, their Hungarian babysitter, and Klara’s boyfriend, Sandor. Another convenience: babysitters cost nothing compared to what she would have to pay in the States.

  “Do you know who these Gypsies are? Where they live?” Annie asked the officer.

  Will repeated what she asked in Hungarian.

  The po
licemen shrugged. “Pest. They do this after Russians leave.”

  The policeman left the room to make a copy of his report.

  “Why don’t we call Stephen, have him look at the forms?”

  “I can read them, Annie.”

  “Just trying to be helpful.”

  Above them, a 1920s chandelier seemed oddly out of place — intricately etched crystal glass and brass—hanging in this ugly utilitarian office. Annie considered the life of the chandelier, guessing it had hovered in the wings of history, bearing witness to horrors. Possibly lifted from a Jewish home during the Nazi occupation. Probably stolen from one of those Gothic stone-and-wood estates lining the big avenue that led to the hills of Buda and to Leo’s pediatrician and the green region of the city where most American expats lived.

  “Do you think they targeted you because you’re Jewish?” she said.

  “Doubtful.” Will went over to the windows—two French windows that might have been beautiful except for the bent metal blinds defiling them. “I’m American. I have big American dollars. Pretty simple and obvious. There aren’t many Jews left in this city. I don’t think anyone’s thinking about Jews here. The city’s making a grand gesture of restoring the big synagogue downtown, but that’s about it.”

  “Well, I’m not convinced.”

  At the end of the war, the city was emptied of Jews in a matter of months—more than a half-million Hungarian Jews rounded up, sent off to be gassed at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen death camps, an orgy of murder when Hitler saw the end coming.

  The policeman returned and handed another form to Will.

  “This is for car. If police stop, you show.” The policeman shook the paper at them both. “You must have. Okay?”

  Will’s cell phone rang.

  “Hi, Stephen. Yes. Filling out the forms right now.”

  She listened as Will told Stephen where they were.

  “No need,” Will said. “Thank you. Sure.”

  He hung up.

  “What did he say?”

  “He offered to stop by. I told him not to.”

  “That was nice of him to offer, don’t you think?”

  She felt relieved to know that someone American, someone able to cross the language barrier, was so available to help them. Will managed, but he wasn’t fluent. On the form, she read Will’s birth date, their address back in the States, their address here in Budapest, and Will’s bank number.

  “What are they asking for?” She pointed to a long paragraph that Will had written in Hungarian.

  “An account of what happened.”

  “You keep in car,” the policeman said, handing Will several copies. “One copy for you. Understand?”

  “Igen.” Will gave the policeman his business card. “Call if you find the wallet. It’s got a pen mark on the front. The baby wrote on it.”

  They all looked at Leo, asleep in his stroller, impervious to it all. The prospect of finding a waterlogged wallet with an ink scribble mark on it was ridiculous. The officer nodded, but it was clear he didn’t think he would ever make that call.

  “I’m glad I reported it,” Will said. “Even if they never find it. Maybe it will motivate them to do more.”

  They stepped outside, Annie manipulating the jogger over the threshold, Leo’s limbs shaking gently from the movement.

  “Stephen!” Will said. “You didn’t need to come.”

  “I know.” He shrugged apologetically. “You’re not mad I did, are you?” Stephen smiled at Annie.

  “Of course not,” Annie said, glad to see him again. “How are you?”

  “I was a block away when I called. Did you get those papers?”

  “All set,” Will said.

  “That’s good. You’ll be fine with those papers.”

  “I still can’t believe he was robbed,” Annie said.

  “It happens to the best. Don’t take it personally,” Stephen said. He leaned over and took hold of the front wheel of the jogger, helping her lift it over the stairs onto the sidewalk.

  “I’ll try not to. Thanks.”

  She wanted to feel optimistic and not discouraged. She reminded herself that these mixed, uncertain sensations were common to expats and that getting robbed would upset anyone, expat or not.

  Stephen tapped the wheel of the bike with his sandal. “Nothing bothers this guy, does it?”

  “Not usually.”

  “Thanks for your concern,” Will said.

  “Have a good rest of your day.” Stephen took a step back, his moss-colored eyes drawing her in. “See you soon.”

  “Thanks, Stephen,” she said.

  They watched him walk away. Annie didn’t want to go home to their suffocating apartment and it was too warm to stay out. The heat’s constant presence was a wall hemming her in. She couldn’t climb over or get around it, like the thought that they had actually been robbed. It stirred up waves of homesickness. Yet, she still held on to the stubborn hope that Mr. Weiss would call and tell them he had found it.

  “That was nice of him,” she finally said. “Why were you unfriendly?”

  She waited for Will to say something, but he was lost in himself, his shoulders rounding inward, his mouth stiff with annoyance, silent and grim. He looked miserable.

  Finally he said, “I wasn’t unfriendly. It’s very simple. I didn’t need his assistance in handling this. It’s personal. That’s all. Let’s go to the hotel and cool off in the lobby. It’s too hot to do anything else.”

  Eight

  Every day, so much. You will have knee problems,” Klara said to Annie.

  “I hope not,” Annie said. She finished tying her sneakers and stood up. “I’ll be fine.” Her babysitter was young, but she worried over things, which cast a permanent shadow of doubt across her face except when she was talking to Leo.

  “Today we go to the park, okay, kicsi baba?”

  Leo rested comfortably on Klara’s hip, his hand reaching around her neck to hold her long brown ponytail. She was more than a babysitter to him. They loved each other and it showed.

  “Perfect. I’ll meet up with you in an hour or so, after my run.”

  Annie kissed Leo and went out to the hall elevator. Most weekday mornings she went for a jog along the river or to Margaret Island and back, but today she planned to head across the bridge to see Mr. Weiss. She would go to the island to meet up with Klara and Leo afterward.

  The elevator dropped smoothly to the foyer and opened its doors to the stink of garbage baking in the heat. Will had already left for a downtown breakfast with Dave to discuss the City of Kings connection. Outside she passed the super, who was smoking a cigarette. No surprise when the woman turned away, pretending not to see her.

  Another too-hot day in August. She ran with a bottle of water in hand, her cell phone in the other, the sun slicing through her exposed skin. She was the only person running this morning. She jogged past women hurrying to work in heels and summer skirts. Most of the men wore short-sleeve polyester shirts, long pants, no ties. Later she would take Leo to an air-conditioned hotel up on Castle Hill to cool off.

  The distance from her flat to Edward’s seemed shorter today as she crossed the bridge, then slowed to a walk, her arms, legs, and face slick with sweat. She didn’t want to show up as a dripping mess in the hall outside his door. Toweling herself with the bottom of her T-shirt, she turned onto his street and there, several blocks down, she saw Stephen Házy standing on the sidewalk next to a tree trunk, smoking a cigarette.

  “Hello there!” she said, waving to him.

  It surprised her to see him there, but he looked even more startled to see her and made a motion to toss his cigarette behind the tree, as if she had caught him at something, then changed his mind. He shrugged good-humoredly, exhaling a stream of smoke.

  “This is a pleasant surprise,” she said, stopping in front of him.

  “It certainly is.”

  She was glad to see him. It wasn’t cooler under the maple tree, but less br
ight, easier to see. His clothing looked similar to what he’d worn the day before: dark pants; white corporate shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows; and sandals. “Do you live here?” She gestured at the low brick buildings behind him.

  “No. No. I’m meeting a client.”

  “What kismet. Thanks for coming to the station yesterday. You didn’t have to, but it was nice of you. I really appreciated it.”

  “I hope Will didn’t mind.”

  “No. He’s okay. Upset to think he was targeted, you know? It’s weird.”

  Stephen took a long, finishing drag of his cigarette, then dropped it on the sidewalk, snuffing the smoky stub with the bottom of his sandal before putting the dead filter into his pocket.

  “That’s considerate,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

  “I’ve tried to quit, but as you can see, I failed. I hope you’ll forgive me.” He tilted his head until his bangs fell over his eyes in a mischievous tangle. He nudged them in place with the back of his hand.

  “Worse than quitting heroin, I hear.”

  He laughed. “What would you know about heroin?”

  “Working with homeless. In my old job.”

  “Is that right?”

  He raised an eyebrow, absorbing this new information about her. “I would not have guessed that about you.”

  “What would you have guessed?” She reached up to a lower branch and pulled on a maple leaf, curious to hear how he would answer.

  “Lawyer, maybe?”

  “Nope. Why’d you think that about me?”

  “You seem like someone who follows rules.”

  “I follow good rules. Is that so bad?”

  “I didn’t mean it to be. So, is this your running route?”

  “No. I run different places. Margaret Island. Little side streets like this one for a change of pace or for the shade.” She looked up at the treetops. She felt funny lying about Mr. Weiss, but that was one rule she wouldn’t break. A promise was a promise.

  “You won’t see Hungarians running in this heat. You Americans are nuts.”

  He sized her up in a way that didn’t feel offensive to her. His half-closed eyes and the humidity gave him a glazed, distant look. Everyone was suffering in this heat.