When Monika at last walked into Gerbeaud, hidden behind streaming black hair and sunglasses like a reluctant movie star, my hands trembled cappuccino over the cup edge and in setting down the cup upended the saucer. I lurched back to save my trousers and groped for a napkin. Monika’s glance swept the room. She looked for someone. Me, obviously. At any moment she would rush up all tears and laughter. I fumbled for the ring in my pocket. What would I say? I’d rehearsed multiple conversational gambits but could remember none of them. Panic washed my thoughts as clear of detail as unexposed film flooded with sudden light. Monika circled toward me, scanning the seated crowd. The ring wasn’t in the first or second pocket I checked, but the third. My fingers responded like wet wood to the command to fetch and unwrap. The clean profile of Monika’s face turned to three-quarters. At last I succeeded in ripping the tissue paper back, but when my thumb and forefinger grasped the band the ring squirted free. I stared paralyzed with horror as the ring bounced beneath the table and rolled into the aisle. If she saw me I couldn’t ask her to wait a moment while I retrieved the ring. I’d have to abandon it. Without the ring I could say nothing. How quickly the inner certainties of being crumbled to nothing. I dropped to my knees and crawled beneath the table. Hidden by the tablecloth I stretched a long arm into the aisle. By the time I surfaced, she would certainly have found a seat. I could saunter over and present the ring with a roguish smile. That you and I should meet here by chance proves our destiny, I might say. Clutching the ring in my fist I peered cautiously over the rim of the table. Monika moved away, toward the corner where each afternoon a pianist skipped through a repertoire of Central European waltzes and preludes. I dusted the knees of my trousers and stepped into the aisle, intent on approaching her the moment she sat.
A robust young man in a purple suit rose to his feet at the far corner table. Monika greeted him with a radiant display of teeth. What sort of man wore purple? Above the burbling crowd I thought I heard a hearty “Guten Tag!” German or Austrian. Considering the region’s historical alliances, I guessed Austrian. Helmut bent at the waist and took Monika’s hand. I thought he might continue the gentlemanly charade by kissing her fingertips, but Monika parried his hand and kissed him on the mouth. The kiss astonished us both. Helmut teetered on his heels. I nearly cried out in anguish. The gesture was recognizable. Monika had greeted me with an identical kiss the night I had taken her to dinner at Parnas.
Distance prevented me from hearing their conversation, but the substance was recognizable enough. Helmut performed verbal acrobatics while Monika listened, a private smile drifting across her face at odd moments seemingly unconnected to his monologue. A raven lock of hair tumbled across her brow, and an impatient toss of her head both disciplined the lock and warned Helmut when her attention waned. Then Monika spoke at length, her fingertips tracing in outline the span of his hand, which silenced him completely. In Monika’s company the previous week I had interpreted those same gestures as signs of an exclusive intimacy. It had never occurred to me they were as common to her relationships as a finger pointed to an empty beer glass is to the ritual of public drinking.
No matter how I argued that appearances were deceiving, that I witnessed an innocent tryst between Monika and a man who would turn out to be just a friend, someone who was probably gay, my body betrayed my true suspicions. An alien feeling lashed out in my chest, something very much alive, like a small animal who tasted too late the strychnine in a piece of bait, and thrashed against my ribs in the agony of being so simply and fatally fooled. It occurred to me that I was jealous. Strangely, I had no impulse to kill my rival. Had Monika bared her throat to me, I would have kissed and not cut it. I had always assumed jealousy was a savage, unthinking emotion; in me it provoked violent nausea and the conviction that I had been rendered invisible.
When Monika and Helmut left to stroll the quay along the Danube, I followed. The evening was impossibly romantic; a pregnant moon rose full-bellied over the water, a breeze carried mixed scents of river and lilac bloom, and the air seemed just chill enough to encourage like-minded lovers to clinch against the railing or entwine on benches. Even the rhythmic slap of water against concrete sounded to my ear like copulation. Helmut took advantage of the setting and seized Monika’s hand. At times I walked so close behind I could hear snatches of conversation. Near the stringed lights of the Chain Bridge, they paused to admire the view of the palace on the opposite bank. I took refuge behind a screen of bushes on the opposite side of the quay. I was certain he would try to kiss her there. My foot kicked at a stone. I was tempted to throw it. If they kissed I would retch. Helmut leaned close, waiting for the moment she might turn her lips to him, but Monika pretended not to notice, staring instead at the river swirling below, and from a glimpse of her face I saw she spoke of something with feeling. Was she telling him that she was already in love, with a certain young American living in Prague? Or was she reciting from well-worn memory the tragic history she once confided to me with such seeming intimacy?
From the surrounding dark, a voice called a vulgar proposition. I twisted about, startled and uncertain whether I had been addressed or merely overheard. The Budapest equivalent of a Las Vegas blonde stepped from the shadows of the nearest tree. A gap appeared in her teeth when she smiled, like a missing plank in a white fence, and at that distance I couldn’t discern whether she had a missing tooth or an inadvertent morsel of food lodged there. Encouraged by my curious gaze, the whore stepped forward to make the offer more specific. In the moonlight, her month-old bleach job framed a face made up like a carnal clown.
“Fuck fifty dollars, you me,” she whispered.
My laughter didn’t discourage her from reaching to touch my chest, where no doubt she hoped to find my wallet. I looked her over carefully, thinking her appearance at that moment an accident of fate that I must use to advantage. Aware of the intensity of my gaze the whore scooped her breasts together by touching the insides of her elbows, a gesture I supposed was intended to arouse me. I pointed to the couple on the quay and falling into the rhythm of her vulgar patois, advised, “You me no fuck. You him fuck.”
We peered down the length of my arm and together spied several moments on Monika and Helmut. The whore tugged provocatively at her miniskirt. “He have girl. You no have girl. I want you fuck.”
I pulled a collection of Hungarian currency from my pocket. “You don’t understand,” I explained. “His girl is my girl.”
The whore’s eyes sharpened, and the dark gap in her teeth revealed itself to be a silver tooth glimmering in a sex-wise smile. “Cut her,” she advised, and lifted her mane of bleached hair to reveal a long red scar slicing up the back of her neck. Glancing back over her shoulder, she caught me in a complicitous glance. “Is best here. No show.”
Her suggestion and the sight of her scar, still jagged at the edges, so startled me I joked, “And what should I use, a broken bottle?”
“I sell you knife, fifty dollar.”
The whore snapped open her bag and displayed the knife. It was a cheap blade, a stiletto design with a plastic handle. I could have bought its equal for less than half the price, but the poetics of buying such a weapon from a whore proved irresistible. I certainly had no intention of using it, on Monika or anyone else, but imagined myself years hence, comfortably married, the knife something I pull out of a drawer from time to time to entertain my more intimate friends with the tale of how a Hungarian whore once encouraged me to cut my future wife for infidelity. I met her price and doubled it to include Helmut. The money was meaningless to me. While she counted the denominations and stuffed the whole into her purse, I gave her brief but expert direction and whispered, “Action!”
From my distant cover of shadows I could watch but little hear the melodrama unfold. The Hungarian whore opted for a surprise attack. Strolling quietly along the quay, she hesitated briefly upon breasting Helmut and then flung herself upon him with a flurry of kisses, gropes, and fondles. Helmut’s mouth fluttered open a
nd shut in protest like the wings of a bird caught by its feet. I jerked my handkerchief from my pocket and stuffed it into my mouth to keep from giving myself away by laughter. At last Helmut pried himself loose from the whore, who changed tactics and berated Monika for what I can only surmise was stealing her man. Monika backed against the railing, properly horrified. Helmut did the gentlemanly thing and stepped between them. This maneuver resulted in a renewed attack from the whore, who directed the bulk of her efforts to the regions south of his belt. I feared she might unzip him on the spot, as did Helmut, who beat a hasty retreat, this time seeking refuge behind Monika.
Movement drew my eye from the scene to a tall and lightly dressed figure hurrying up the quay. I prepared to flee in the event the figure turned out to be a cop; the whore, under threat of arrest or worse, might finger me as the mastermind of this farce. With each stride the figure neared familiarity. Monika jerked at the sound of a voice breaching the distance: Sven. The whore found herself unexpectedly flanked. She protested to Helmut, believing like any good actress in the reality of her role and his past affections. But Helmut was powerless to help even if he chose to do so, which he pointedly did not. Sven spoke a few sharp words which drove the whore back on her heels. She dug in, regrouped, and unleashed a tirade of angry Hungarian. Sven silenced her with a slap. The whore turned and fled. He ordered her to stop and, when she failed to heed, sprang forward and brought her to heel with a twisted arm and fist of hair. A flat leather billfold fell to the pavement. Sven kicked it to Helmut. My whore spat at the ground and hurried off, tugging furiously at her miniskirt.
Helmut retrieved his wallet with an obeisant dip of his head toward Sven that nonetheless conveyed intense resentment. At that distance I could only surmise the conversation that took place among the three of them. Helmut seemed intent on escape, bowing first to Monika, then to Sven, then to Monika again, as though forgetting where he’d started. To my astonishment, she entreated him to stay, leaving Sven’s side to place an enticing hand on his chest. The toothy gleam of Sven’s smile, and the faint residue of verbal encouragement that carried the distance, convinced me that he, too, didn’t want him to go. But Helmut was not to be dissuaded and, in taking several measured steps backward, signaled his firm intention to part company. Brother and sister sandwiched him a few yards down the quay, until, back-slapped and cheek-kissed, he made his way alone. The sound of his brisk footsteps veered away from the river and melded into the background sounds of the city.
Snatches of an angry duet blew in from the river, one voice mocking and the other strident. I was not close enough to make out the substance of the argument; Sven seemed upset about the appearance of the whore or perhaps the German’s escape, laying blame that Monika refused to accept. While making one emphatic point, Sven paused and stared directly at me, but like a character in a film or television show his gaze had no substance. I could have stepped out of the shadows with a bucket of popcorn and he wouldn’t have seen. A chill of invisibility blew through me; watching without being seen is a defining characteristic of the dramatic arts, but I felt more than the voyeurism of a spectator. From my invisibility it seemed I could direct things and, if not rewrite the script, at least affect the trajectory of the drama. Soon the sound of their voices ceased carrying the distance, and they stood quietly watching the moon over the palace, like any other young couple out for a stroll along the river. When Sven put his arm along her shoulder, Monika reciprocated with an arm around his waist. Such displays of sibling affection, which two weeks before I had thought so endearing, I now found unbearably vexing.
I clung as closely to their single shadow as prudence allowed when they wandered from the quay, terrified that at any moment they might hail a cab and disappear into the vast exoticism of Budapest. But they didn’t hail a cab, content to walk the streets coupled like twins joined at the waist, separating only when they reached the Erzsébet, a hotel I had checked for guests named Andersen the previous week. The suspicion that they paid the room rate of $100 a night out of what Sven had stolen from me brought a jabbing pain to my throat. I watched from behind a parked car on the opposite side of the street, and when the curtains of a fourth-floor room flared I approached the desk clerk to inquire about a room for the evening, preferably something on the fourth floor. Signing the credit card slip, I asked with all the casual discretion my anxiety allowed whether or not a couple named Andersen had yet checked in. The clerk tapped a computer keyboard and replied no guests had registered by that name. Taking my room key, I wondered if I’d misread Monika’s passport.
Upon reaching the fourth floor, I oriented myself to the street and by counting rooms calculated which belonged to Sven and Monika. When I pressed my ear to the door I heard angry voices. The thickness of the wood stripped words from voices but not the basic emotion. They argued about something. The fierceness of the argument aroused my curiosity. I hurried to my room and in the bathroom peeled the sanitary wrapping from a glass, to better conduct the sound from door to ear. The hour was late, and if by chance someone confronted me I could claim to be a private detective from America, investigating a murder which Sven was suspected of committing. The more I thought about Sven, the stronger I felt he deserved a good beating. It wouldn’t have surprised me to discover him a drug addict, thieving to feed a filthy habit. Voices came into focus when I placed the glass to the door, but words remained incomprehensible. I pressed my ear against the base of the glass and shifted its position, hoping to improve the acoustics until realizing Sven and Monika fought in Danish, a language I couldn’t understand if shouted directly in my ear.
Later, in my room, I imagined Sven packed his gear into a duffel bag while begging Monika to reconsider her decision to separate. They had quarreled at least twice that day, and they could have decided no longer to travel together. Sven already might have left. If I returned to listen at her door, I might hear a soft and solitary weeping. The door might be ajar, so I could see her, sitting on the bed, face in hands. If I entered the room, she might lift her tearstained face to mine and realize how much she missed me. I don’t second-guess my decision to return to listen at the door. I could not stay away. The pull was as strong as a window-framed woman to a voyeur. I glanced both directions down the hall, ears alert to distant clicking lock or hum of elevator. Nothing moved save the low thrum of air through ventilation ducts. I lifted the bathroom glass and carefully positioned it below the numbers on the door.
12
Although it may seem incredible to those who know me, I felt until that moment an innocent, dabbling in various petty evils and certainly guilty of criminal indiscretions, but nonetheless blindly willing to think the best of people even while I thought the worst of myself. One need not be good to be innocent; innocence is a state of blissful ignorance about the nature of others. The cries piercing the glass at my ear made me wise in a way I previously had not imagined. Sven was as loud in his physical exertions as a Bulgarian weight lifter, grunting and groaning under the strain of each thrust. I tried to imagine the stabbed cries accompanying his rough rhythm as belonging to someone other than Monika, but the cadence and timbre of the voice was Danish and undeniably hers.
I didn’t return to my room, preferring to run the streets wildly like a poisoned dog. It’s possible that I wept. I don’t remember. If I did, my grief was ridiculous. Monika considered me less a person than a resource to be stripped. The events of the past week unreeled through memory in sharper focus. The Erzsébet Hotel hadn’t registered them under the name of Andersen because Sven’s last name wasn’t the same as Monika’s. They played siblings to better fool their victims. Monika promised passionate sex; Sven hovered nearby to break up any serious attempts at consummation. Between promise and fulfillment something would happen that the victim later couldn’t piece together precisely, except the related disappearances of Monika and his money. The stories about her Gypsy grandmother and Count Valdštejn were as fanciful as the tales I told about my successes in Hollywood; a few of
the details may have been actual, just as any good fiction contains enough truth to trick the unwary into belief. Her seemingly tragic circumstances and later claims of love had been staged to relieve me of both senses and wallet. The only uncalculated act had been my chance arrival to her table in Obecní Dům. Little wonder she had regarded me then with such cutting irony, like a fox observing a nearsighted rabbit enter its den to nibble a patch of fur mistaken for grass.
That Monika didn’t love me disturbed less than having fooled myself into thinking she had. I had willingly suspended disbelief, confusing fiction for reality to such an extent that I had allowed myself the emotions of a lovesick teenager. I sought to reassure myself that such behavior was out of character. I was as incapable of loving as I was of being loved. Monika had merely beat me at a game I had considered myself an expert in playing. As I watched from the edge of Szabadság Bridge the eastern sky lighten to a sodden gray, I realized Monika was more worthy of me than I had previously believed. I admired the consummate skill with which she had played me. I could even imagine that we deserved each other. With a woman my equal in cunning and duplicity I might return to Southern California. We could tell tales and make deals that would spin studio heads, our talents for deception earning us certain success in the chicaning art of Hollywood film.
My emotions were evidence of an obsession—not love—and to feed this obsession I needed to exploit my natural talents in scheming and manipulation. That Monika and Sven were not siblings meant they could be separated. They frequently argued; the arguments I witnessed as both victim and voyeur proved they had not been acting solely to deceive. Monika’s sexual provocations angered Sven. The night she pressed herself against me on the dance floor with deliberate sexual intent, he had acted out of jealousy and not simply a role. Though I was not fool enough to believe she cared for me, it was possible to consider that I aroused her. Given the proper circumstances, she might see how well we suited each other; that and physical attraction might form the basis of a relationship.
Gypsy Hearts Page 11