Strangers in Budapest

by Jessica Keener

  Finally, the fruit truck exited, and so did they a few miles later, onto a small, country road, more gravel than pavement. Picturesque, serene, no cars in sight—gentle hills appeared, more trees, and then she saw them: a few dozen Gypsies—Roma—walking in single file along the road. Men, women and children, pulling wooden carts, carrying bags.

  “What in the world are they doing? Where are they going? Slow down!”

  “I’m going slow, Annie. I’m not going to stop. That’s the town dump over there, where they live.”

  “Are you serious? How do you know this?”

  “I read about it.”

  The car scattered dust as they drove past the dark-skinned men, women, and children, all of them looking weather worn, their clothes dull with dirt. Then, quickly, the Roma were behind them, growing smaller again, inching toward the dump.

  “That was depressing,” she said.

  “You’re making a judgment.”

  “They didn’t look happy. Maybe we should turn around, give them some money,” Annie said.

  “I’m not going to turn around. I have an appointment. If you’re that concerned, why don’t you look into volunteer opportunities? You want to help the Gypsies? Good. Do it.”

  “Roma,” she corrected him. “By the way, Mr. Weiss doesn’t want me—us—to go his apartment anymore. At all,” she said, blurting it out. Angry.

  “When did he say that?”

  “Today.”

  “Good. I guess that finally settles that.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “Annie?”

  He reached for her hand, but she eased it away.

  She needed to calm down. Mr. Weiss had changed his mind. A sudden reversal at the end of her visit. Even an apology. At first she felt relieved, but now she felt hollow, unfinished, unsettled. The issue of Stephen Házy. None of it was adding up. What was the truth? Stephen was nice. She couldn’t shake the fact that he had been kind to her, considerate, helpful. He seemed genuine. But why would Stephen change his name? As for getting involved in volunteer work, it would mean taking another step toward attaching herself here in Hungary when in truth she wanted to get out.

  They drove in silence until Will turned onto another road, this one paved. It led to a small town square. They parked in front of a redbrick one-story building, which looked closed. Even the maple tree next to the building looked forlorn, withered with thirst.

  “Sure it’s today?” she finally asked.

  “This is how they all look.”

  Inside the building, she followed him across a clean linoleum floor to the mayor’s office where a middle-age woman with short dark hair sat at a desk, smoking, guarding the entry. Will introduced himself and asked for the mayor.

  “Nem itt,” she said. Not here. She turned back to her work.

  Will looked across the hall into a large room and an empty chair behind a desk.

  “I have an appointment,” he said, then struggled to say it in Hungarian.

  The woman took a plain piece of typing paper and began to draw a map with arrows. She handed it to him, glancing at Annie for the first time. Annie made an attempt to smile, but the woman ignored her.

  “You find him here. His house,” she said. “You go. It’s okay.”

  Will took the paper, but Annie could see that he was annoyed by this.

  “Does he have a cell phone?” Will asked the woman, his tone insinuating that he knew owning a cell was the ultimate status symbol.

  “Igen. Persze.” The secretary wrote the numbers on another piece of paper and gave it to him.

  Back in the car, Annie waited as Will dialed the mayor, speaking into the phone in halting but serviceable Hungarian when the mayor answered.

  “Okay. We’re set.” Will turned to her and started up the car again. “He’s a few streets away.”

  “Did he forget?”

  “No. He’s expecting us.”

  They followed a curved dirt street a few blocks up a hill without trees to a square stucco building at the top of another small hill. She guessed it was a half mile from the town center. Easy walk. Will parked on the road. Together they climbed a dirt driveway. At the top, a backhoe was stationed behind a huge mound of dirt at the side of the house.

  “Someone’s putting in a new driveway,” Will said. A path had been carved out, but more work needed to be done.

  A stone walkway led to the front door. Will knocked. They waited. He knocked again. She felt irritated. The mayor knew they were coming. Finally, they heard the lock turning inside. An overweight short man opened the door.

  “Hello. Come in. Please. I am sorry. I was on phone.”

  The familiar Hungarian accent.

  Will shook the man’s hand and introduced Annie. The mayor nodded and led them down a dark hallway across herringbone-patterned wood floors. He wore an eggplant-colored polyester suit.

  “Sit, please,” the mayor said, directing them to a brown vinyl couch. The mayor pulled up a chair. An Oriental rug hung on one wall in typical Hungarian fashion. In their own flat, two small Oriental rugs also hung on the living-room walls, like tapestries.

  Will took out his pocket dictionary and began to speak in both English and Hungarian. He explained that he wanted to bring cable to the small town.

  “Good, but this is impossible,” the mayor said. “Who will do this?”

  Impossible. The classic Hungarian response. So predictable, Annie thought. The room was dark. Drapes covered the windows.

  “I will need permission from official. You understand?” the mayor said.

  “I have it right here.” Will said, opening a leather folder. He pulled out several papers with embossed seals the size of silver dollars and several signatures in blue fountain ink at the bottom of the pages.

  To Annie, they looked like award certificates. Will had explained to her that these seals took weeks to get.

  The mayor bent over the papers, picking them up, one by one, and held each to the low light, looking for the watermark. Slowly, he ran his finger over the signatures, back and forth. Clearly, it was a method, a ritual the mayor had learned years ago, like rolling a cigarette. She expected him to spit on the paper to see if it would stand up to the test, but he didn’t. She guessed the mayor was in his fifties because of a balding spot in the back of his head.

  Then, as if something in him clicked, the mayor accepted the official seals as authentic. He smiled and took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, offering one to Will and Annie in confirmation.

  “Kérem,” the mayor said. “Please.”

  “Nem köszönöm. But please help yourself,” Will said, opening his palms like a book. My wife and I don’t smoke.”

  “Persze. Americans.”

  The mayor lit up and exhaled a messy stream of smoke, then pushed the papers back to Will again. “I think about this.”

  “Good,” Will said. “It’s a good opportunity for your town. A good source of money.”

  “Igen,” the mayor said, nodding. “Pálinka before you go? I’m sorry my English.”

  “Your English is very good,” Annie said, smiling.

  “We’d love some pálinka,” Will said.

  The mayor left the room and returned with three small glasses and a bottle of pear liqueur. They clinked glasses. Annie did her best to sip the liquid that was sweet and warm in her throat, thinking what an odd moment this was in the mayor’s dim, sparely furnished house. She wondered if the mayor had children or a wife.

  “Very good,” Will said.

  “How do you like our country?” the mayor asked.

  “Jól, good. A good time to be here. Good opportunities.”

  The mayor nodded. “Igen. Many, many changes. Some good. Some not so good. Not good for old people.”

  “So I understand.”

  “Why?” Annie asked.

  “No work, no money.” The mayor made that universal gesture for cash, his thumb rubbing circles against two fingers. “Prices up. Pension down.�
�� He turned his thumb up, then down. “You understand?”

  Annie nodded. “And the Roma?”

  The mayor made a spitting gesture.

  “Gypsies? Nem good. A big probléma for Hungary.”

  Annie regretted asking the question. Will finished his drink, stood up and gave the mayor his card. The two men shook hands.

  “Thank you very much. I look forward to doing business with you,” Will said.

  When they settled back in the car, Will said, “Now you see what I deal with.”

  She wanted to reach over to him and tell him that he should keep at it, but her heart held her back. She kept her hands in her lap. She couldn’t lie to herself. Edward had helped her in that way. This trip to nowhere. It felt like a dead end. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said.

  They rode in silence, the tires thrumming the road until Will fed a cassette into the tape player, his favorite compilation of classic rock songs: Allman Brothers live in concert; the Beatles; Led Zeppelin. She told herself to be patient. Success didn’t happen overnight—whatever success meant. Edward was right: Success is a phony word. She sighed.

  “What is it?” Will asked.

  “Nothing.”

  She had run out of things to say. That was her problem. Their problem. This inability to find words to make things better. It was so much easier to say nothing. She felt the seductive pull of it. Stop speaking. Sink into quicksand. Become silent. Pretend things will be okay. Sink into silence as if it could protect her from the noise of life above and all around her. It was an old family habit, this silence. She leaned back in the seat, the music and the wheezing rush of the air conditioner meshing together. Silence was the phantom body in her family. Her sister’s injury and, later, Greg’s death in Florida. All those years drinking himself into silence, then falling to his end, a purposeful slip from a scaffold. He had waited until everyone had gone home. It was dark. They found him the following morning, his crumpled body. A stain of blood near his head. She disliked the word suicide. Sometimes she thought of it as liberation, his heart’s release. But all of it was death in the end.

  She sighed again.

  “Maybe it will finally rain,” she said, an effort to get out of the flooding in her mind as they approached the city. It was late afternoon and the beginning of rush hour. Clouds torn and heavy with rain amassed overhead.

  “We’ll be okay,” Will said, squeezing her leg, but she didn’t feel reassured. “We have to stay positive.”

  “It’s getting harder. I’m having trouble breathing.” She huffed in the car’s weak, recycled air.

  “Open your window. We’re almost home. You’ll feel better.”

  Will pumped the brakes and slowed to a near stop, inching along as feeder roads merged and became one avenue jammed with odorous Ladas. A bus cut in front of them. A Mercedes bullied its way between two lanes to reach the head of the line, where cars had stopped for a red light. A policeman standing on the side of the road walked out into the middle of traffic, stopped in front of their car, and pointed at Will, directing him to move off the road to a space in the breakdown lane behind a parked police car.

  “Why’s he pointing at us?”

  “I have no idea,” Will said. He eased out of the line and parked behind the police car as instructed.

  “We weren’t speeding,” she said. “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know.” He rolled down his window.

  The policeman walked over to Will’s side.

  “Do you speak English? We’re American,” Will said.

  The officer shook his head. He walked to the front of the car and pointed.

  “Nem.” The officer had a medium build, thin lips. He said something else, which Annie didn’t understand but apparently Will did.

  “We need those papers,” Will said to her. “They’re in the compartment.”

  Quickly and nervously, she handed Will the paper he had filled out at the police station. Will gave them to the officer, who signaled to a second officer sitting in the parked police car.

  “What’s the problem?” she asked again. “We haven’t done anything.”

  “Hold on.”

  The second officer came up to the window.

  “You are American?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  The officer strolled to the back, compared the numbers on the plate with the papers in his hand, then resumed his position at the open window again.

  What did he want?

  The officer leaned into the car to look at Annie.

  “My wife,” Will said. He said it again in Hungarian.

  “Hello,” Annie said, unable to force a smile. She felt scared, not knowing the rules, not knowing how she should behave in this context.

  The officer nodded. She thought he appeared satisfied, yet he surveyed their car once more, up and down, in and out, front and back. Annie felt half-undressed, as if he were trying to strip them of something. Finally, the man leaned in and returned the papers to Will. Without looking at them again, the policeman stood back and waved them on.

  Oh, yes. They needed those papers. Once again, Stephen was right.

  Twenty-five

  Burtz!” Leo said, pointing.

  Annie followed him as he toddled after a lone pigeon on the walkway that circled the top of Castle Hill. And there it was: the spectacular view across the valley, reminding her why Will suggested Bernardo meet them up here. The view took in the entire flat side of Pest from this high vantage point. Below she could see Budapest’s density and size, its possibility. Its immensity surprised her every time, spreading out like an ancient sea basin, sediments of centuries left behind, the present oozing into the horizon, simmering, active, mercurial, alive.

  “Come on, Leo. Let’s go see Daddy and his friends. This way.”

  They crossed the cobblestone square.

  Will stood at the entrance of the Hilton Hotel wearing his casual business attire: khaki pants, white Brooks Brothers shirt, no tie this morning, waiting for Bernardo to show up. She waved and he waved back, squinting at the sun, tilting his head up as if the sky might offer her husband insight. This wasn’t just another meeting with Bernardo; this time Bernardo had specifically asked Will to bring her and Leo along for breakfast.

  German tourists also gathered outside the hotel entrance, pointing at the old stone exterior. She watched them marveling as she had when she first arrived here. Stone walls and crooked gates charmed them as she had been charmed. But Budapest’s premiere hotel needed an interior face-lift; its monastic origins and Gothic tower remained at odds with its dated seventies’ decor inside. And with the brand-new hotel downtown, it had competition, a newer, uncomfortable concept for Hungary, the old communist mentality still hanging on.

  She looked at her watch. Normally Bernardo was punctual, but today he was already ten minutes late. Will looked at her again, nodded toward the entrance door, and went in. She followed. Inside the dining area, brown carpeting, dark tables, and dim lighting made for a lackluster atmosphere. Where had Hungarians been these past five decades? Living in their minds, living in dreams, waiting for tomorrow with no money for repairs and no competition to spur them to make changes. It was inconceivable to an American, this waiting for tomorrow. She corrected herself—inconceivable to a privileged American. She’d been waiting less than a year for Will’s business to pick up, and at this point she was barely holding on.

  “You wish for breakfast?” the maître d’ asked her. He was tall and lean, clothed all in black except for a red vest.

  “Igen. May I take this with me?” She pointed to the jogger.

  “Igen. At your pleasure.”

  She rolled the bike across the carpet to a table by the windows. In an unlit corner, two Hungarian businessmen smoked and sipped on cups of Hungary’s thick coffee. One man had a noticeable paunch and bloated face. His companion was gaunt. Both wore black suits with the kind of sheen that comes from too much wear—maybe the only suits they owned.
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  She sat down beside Will, next to the big glass windows, and that hundred-mile view across the river and the flatlands of Pest. The maître d’ positioned a high chair for Leo.

  “I think they’re former communist insiders trying to make it in the new world and not faring well,” she said to Will, tilting her head toward the men in the corner.

  He winked at her, bemused. “It’s possible.”

  “It’s not farfetched,” she said. She saw suspicion in their grim, nervous eyes, as she had in the eyes of so many Hungarians as they inched their way toward a new and uncertain world of social democracy. More signs of it in their stained fingers—she couldn’t stand the smell of their cigarettes. She pulled the high-chair straps around Leo’s waist and handed him a bottle.

  When would Hungry ban cigarettes from restaurants? she wondered. Pollution was a soaring problem in the city. Children who lived in Budapest had a 10 percent higher chance of developing asthma than those living in the countryside. It worried her. Was she risking Leo’s health? They lived on the seventh floor, which, their doctor said, assured them of cleaner air. Again, she saw her mother standing at the kitchen sink in Maine, her silver hair pulled taut in an old-fashioned French bun: But, Annie. What is it about Hungary? Indeed.

  “Change is hard,” Will said, raising his hand to signal the waiter.

  The maître d’ leaned over their table, glancing in the direction of the jogger.

  “Is it in the way?” Annie asked. She had parked the stroller next to the window.

  “It is good.”

  “Coffee. Four, please,” Will said, holding up four fingers. “Toast for the baby.”

  “Louds,” Leo said, pointing out the picture window.

  A stretch of clouds hovered over the Duna below, the river looking dull as a strip of pavement.

  Bernardo stepped into the room, accompanied by Stephen Házy.

  “Jesus. I couldn’t find a parking space up here. It’s like New York, for chrissake.”

  “Ordered coffee,” Will said. “Next time I’ll take you up on the funicular. Goes straight up the hill. That’s what we took.”

  Bernardo laughed. “I bet Leo likes it. How you doing, fella?” Bernardo rubbed Leo’s head.