I had grown so accustomed to despising Sven that it was difficult to consider him from a fresh perspective. I couldn’t imagine him plunging into Monika without feeling violently ill, but didn’t actively wish him harm. He was a rival who had robbed and left me for dead in a Gypsy club. Had I been prone to the normal primitive emotions I should have wanted him dead. But all I really wanted from Sven was his disappearance. He was not worthy of enmity; I considered him an obstacle to be surmounted or removed. Perhaps we would all be lucky and one last argument would dispatch him permanently from the scene. In my weaker moments I fantasized they argued about me, Monika expressing doubts if not about theft at least about the extreme measures taken.
I returned to the Erzsébet Hotel just past sunrise and ordered a pot of coffee from room service. Every half hour I padded quietly down the hall to listen at their door. When I heard sounds of rising, I descended to the lobby and hid behind a Hungarian newspaper until, just before noon, they emerged from the elevator. No plan had yet emerged to give my surveillance direct purpose. I certainly did not intend to kill or rob them. I had an attitude rather than a definite plan. They had stalked and taken me; now I would stalk them. How to take them I trusted to opportunity and inspiration.
From the hotel they walked the few cramped blocks to the Deák metro station. The noon-hour crowds provided ample cover, and as they had no reason to suspect I followed, it was a simple question of waiting patiently until the push of the crowd concealed my entrance into the metro car next to theirs. Several stops later, when Sven stepped onto the platform, I allowed myself to be swept from the subway car on a tide of disembarking passengers, but caught sight of the raven back of Monika’s head, which still leaned against the inside window of the subway car. At the next stop she exited and ascended to a surface which I first mistook for the countryside. The urgency of errand or meeting impelled her steps, and we quickly covered a distance of a few hundred yards before Monika arrived at the edge of a lake, glanced left and right as though expecting someone, and sat in a spot of sunlight on a park bench.
Screened from view by angle and shrubbery, I unfolded a map of Budapest and located our position in a large park within the city boundaries. Sven would be lurking across the lake, having gotten off the metro one stop early to spy on the encounter and make a sudden appearance should events go awry. Taking the chance that I might lose Monika if I guessed incorrectly, I crawled through the bushes to wait by the road that passed near the lake. At five minutes before the hour, a taxi disgorged the familiar figure of the Austrian, dressed for sport in a baby-blue nylon sweat suit. I jogged up to him and, in the friendly way of Americans everywhere, asked if he spoke English.
He regarded my approach without suspicion, likely believing me a lost tourist. His English was heavily accented but serviceable. “Why, you could almost pass for an American,” I said, knowing the remark would please him. He confessed that he had spent some weeks in the United States, visiting both Florida and California. What a coincidence, I said; I was a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. “On vacation?” he asked. “In fact I’m investigating a Danish couple wanted for a string of thefts in California,” I said.
Helmut stumbled back as though stunned. The disorienting effect of hormones on his reasoning process aside, I didn’t blame him for doubting me. I didn’t look like a cop. He stubbornly asked to see my identification. I substituted Esterhazy for Valdštejn, and asked if the Danish woman he was about to meet claimed to be descended from both Gypsies and the Hungarian aristocracy, if she had said there was death in her past and future, and if a tall Danish brute claiming to be her brother appeared inconveniently when sexual promise seemed about to yield to consummation.
Details frightened him into believing me. I knew too much about Sven’s scam to be disbelieved once the conversation turned from my incredible claim of identity. Helmut thought I expected him to betray Monika and was relieved to hear that I merely asked him never to see her again. Nobody wanted the woman to go to jail, I said. She’d fallen into bad company with that Danish fellow. The Hungarian police were about to begin deportation procedures. The best solution would be to slap her wrist and send her home. Helmut babbled profuse and awkward thanks. I solemnly accepted them. It wasn’t until he turned into a baby-blue streak running to catch a cab that I understood why he had thanked me. Although unintentionally, I had done a good deed. I had saved him from being robbed and perhaps a considerably worse fate. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn Sven was murderer as well as thief. I supposed that even an unintentional good deed counted as a virtue.
Monika exhibited greater persistence than I expected; disbelief that any man would stand her up kept her circling the park bench sixty minutes past the appointed hour. At last she moved purposely away, skirting the edge of the lake toward an odd cluster of buildings which attempted to imitate, simultaneously, a baroque palace and medieval castle, thus achieving an aesthetic of Disneyesque proportions. I strolled casually to a stand of trees not far from the water. Sven stepped from behind a crumbling wall on the opposite shore. From my screen of trees, the angle and sight lines were perfect if the distance imposing. They faced each other in a patch of grass a few yards from the lakeshore, shaking like trees in a wind. Helmut’s nonappearance seemed to have become the cause of violent discord. Monika’s hands swept the air. Sven swayed on his heels. Angry words flew back and forth between them like a flock of crows. I imagined the argument was absolute and final, knowing nothing of the perverse intimacy couples find in chopping each other to pieces. Still, the violence was unexpectedly sudden when the space between them cracked with the clublike blow of Sven’s forearm. I nearly leapt to her defense but cunning held me back. My appearance would so surprise they’d cobble their relationship to meet a common danger. Monika was able enough to defend herself in that public place, though I have little doubt he was capable of murder in more private circumstances. She sprang at him without fear, slapping once through his defenses before he raised his arm and clubbed her to the ground. Had I a gun I would have shot him. To do nothing but watch was torment. No matter how many times he knocked her down she would rise, unwilling to admit the superiority of brute force. My innocence at that time was vexing. Monika sprang at him again, and I so firmly expected broken bones and blood that I did not at first realize she had hurled herself into his arms. Within moments they humped tooth and claw against the nearest wall.
I turned my back and slumped against the tree, not caring to witness how they managed the technical requirements of intercourse. Sometime later, when they strolled arm in arm from the lake, I followed. Though incomprehensible, Sven’s power over Monika was unhealthy and dangerous. Twice I had turned events against them, and both tricks resulted in acts of unaccountable passion. I had always taken pride in cleverness, skillfully manipulating people and situations to my advantage; seldom had my machinations achieved such contrary results. Several new scenarios flashed through my imagination. Budapest teemed with twisting alleys. That night, a Gypsy knife or skinhead club could hurtle from the triangle shadow of a doorway.
SCANDINAVIAN FOUND DEAD
Robbery Suspected Motive
Accidents were a common hazard of big-city life. At rush hour the metro crowds thickened to swell the fringe dangerously close to the platform edge. An inadvertent foot or timely jostle as the train rushed through could result in a horrible accident.
TRAGEDY IN THE TUBE
Dane Flattened by Train
When their paths split at the metro station, I followed Sven. I hoped without cause they had enacted the strange phenomenon known as the farewell fuck, and I might see Sven off at the nearest train or bus station. Instead, I waited two hours under a threatening sky as he methodically wined and dined himself in a local restaurant. When the first raindrops splattered on the pavement at my feet, I imagined Sven, grogged with food and drink, stepping in front of a truck speeding on a slick road. But providence would not so serve me, and I lacked the nerve f
or an act more desperate than standing in a cold rain praying he might choke to death on a chicken bone.
Sven found the cold as little to his liking as I, and after dinner walked briskly across the Szabadság Bridge to the Gellért Hotel and Spa on the opposite bank of the river. I had read about Gellért in my guidebook—described as a famous medicinal bath founded by the Turks in some distant century—and thought it a curiosity appealing to few but Hungarian homosexuals and the occasional Russian taking a vodka cure. Sven passed beneath an imposing stone arch at the mouth of the spa and with an habitué’s confidence spoke to a woman in a kiosk. A placard above listed treatments in Hungarian; only those few making use of English loan words were comprehensible to a foreign eye. Sven slipped a few bills across the counter and handed a ticket to a man seated at the entry gate, who speared it on a metal spike and let him pass into the main hall, an imposing space of mosaic columns gently lit from above by a stained-glass-trimmed skylight.
I approached the kiosk, vigorously pointed at several untranslatable items, and hoped I hadn’t by chance ordered a series of colonics. Receiving several tickets, I hurried to the passage through which Sven had disappeared. A man in the white uniform of a hospital or lunatic asylum barred the way. I waved my tickets. He plucked one from my hand and pointed to a set of stairs ascending to his left. At the top of the stairs, another white-cloaked attendant issued me a towel, key, and small square of linen. The third and last attendant led me to a curtained cubicle, pointed to a locker where I should secure my personal articles, and snapped the curtain shut.
As I disrobed, my fingers stumbled across the stiletto the Hungarian whore had given me the night before. I wrapped the knife in the towel, picturing Sven found several hours from then slumped in a corner of the spa. I didn’t plan to murder him. I merely imagined it somehow happening that the knife should find its way into his chest. The small square of linen appeared to be a loincloth. After a few unsuccessful experiments, I decided the cloth was to be worn in front and the strings tied behind. A discreet glance at my neighbor confirmed I wore the loincloth correctly, and following his mottled pink behind I descended the staircase to a set of double glass doors opening to wisps of steam. Twin octogenarians in loincloths flanked the interior doorway like sentinels withered by eternal duty, watching a bathhouse lit by domed skylight. Midway down a tapered arc of Moorish vaulting, the light diffused in a fetid mist. Slaps of flesh and water echoed crisply from the tiles, above an indistinct babble of voices. Through the dull blue pool at my feet, disembodied torsos waded to drink from the bubbling mouth of a stone chimera carved to the face of a man, the snout of a lion, and the body of a carp. The air beyond the pools thickened to a miasma of steam, minerals, and sweat. The men shuffling past had the wasted buttocks and sagging breasts of old women. I felt a ghost among shades and wondered if Sven had tricked me into the river Styx. The moment I thought of his face I reached into the center of the rolled towel and wrapped my palm around the stiletto. Cloth muffled the click of the extending blade. I edged another few feet forward. A row of flesh sat the bench along the near wall, voices bickering in an alien tongue. If I thrust my hand forward with sufficient force, the towel would compress as the steel pierced his chest, then drape around the blade as it was withdrawn. It would seem I held nothing more menacing than a rolled towel.
A door opened to scalding gusts of steam. The Turkish bath. The shape of the man nearest me vanished into the steam’s source and moments later appeared to clamber up a wall. I groped forward. Steam hissed in plumes behind stepped benches where three figures slumped elbows on knees like tired gods, one as exquisitely chiseled as Aphrodite’s Adonis. Sven. I turned my back to avoid recognition and sat on the lowest bench. The steam wasn’t unpleasant once I became accustomed to it, the heat soothing my anxieties. I needn’t do anything violent. The Turkish bath was too crowded to allow action. I listened for the creak of wood or wet slap of foot on tile that signaled arrivals and departures. If we should be left alone for just a moment, I could saunter up to Sven and say Remember me? He’d glance up in sullen surprise, groggy with the heat. He’d have little reason to fear. Was I going to call the Budapest police to report a crime I couldn’t prove he’d committed in Prague? I’d say something, like You wanna fuck something, fuck this, and give him the stiletto blade first. No. Too vulgar. I wouldn’t say anything. I’d laugh at him. And when it was done I’d wipe the stiletto with the towel and drop both at his feet. After a half hour or so someone might notice the blood and discover Sven had fallen into a state of infinite quietude. By then, I’d be dressed and gone. But the pink and yellow parade of new arrivals continued unabated, most lasting only a few minutes before wilting in the heat. I felt as though I’d been pricked a thousand times and through these small holes my very substance leaked out. A beer-bellied man on the bench above slapped his skin, spraying sweat in all directions. Much longer and I’d boil down to nothing. Sweat dripped fast as rain at my feet. My breath burned wet and hot. The beer-bellied man grunted and stumbled off. The heat was intense as a drug. My thoughts shrunk to the size and precariousness of a small ball bobbing on a boiling sea.
The first thing I noticed to disappear was my penis, which I initially suspected had shriveled to nothing from fear and excitement, until I observed that my thighs and knees shimmered oddly. I waved my hands in front of my face. The silver and turquoise ring I wear on my right index finger streaked through the mist. When I held my hands still, the color of flesh paled like milk diluted in water. It seemed I shed corporeality with sweat. The substance of my chest wavered to transparency. I stood and couldn’t distinguish my feet from steam. The phenomenon of my invisibility seemed to be transforming from feeling to fact. Far from being alarmed, my dissolution was a moment of great astonishment and satisfaction. I had completely lost myself. I could do anything I wished, and no one would see it.
Sven sat alone on the middle bench. I climbed and crawled along the top bench until I sat directly behind him. His head curled forward in his hands, stretching the skin of his back around a row of vertebrae as fragile as porcelain beads on a string. The smallest slice would scatter him to the floor. I lifted the knife and imagined it plunging into his neck, severing his spinal cord and killing him instantly, silently, with a slight trickling of blood from the wound. I traced the outline of his back ribs, locating the soft indentation between bones through which a knife could reach the back of his heart. The knife in my mind tore through his flesh, but paralysis struck the knife in my hand. My brain’s signals to thrust the blade forward were met with an embarrassing silence. I had motive, weapon, and opportunity. But I couldn’t act, no more than a ghost can rattle any but imaginary chains.
13
In the hotel bar at Gellért, where he chatted up everything in a skirt while chasing eight beers with eight shots of vodka, Sven proved himself the swinish sort of man women adore. First there was a pert blonde, but she apparently either had taste or a husband too near to permit an indiscretion, and edged away soon after Sven allowed his hand casual draping over her upper thigh. Her place at the bar was claimed by a zaftig brunette who had no such reservations, greeting him with a sloppy-warm kiss on the mouth. I was not near enough to hear their conversation but guessed she was Spanish or Italian, a guest of the hotel, and they had arranged to see each other that evening, as two drinks after meeting they slipped out of the bar and rode the elevator to some undetermined location, the most logical guess being her room, where they spent the next hour and a half, again the most logical guess, fucking.
Looking disheveled if momentarily sobered, Sven returned alone to the hotel bar. He drank another beer and vodka chaser, glancing periodically at his watch. After a half hour of solitude, another woman approached. Although the dim lighting made it difficult to see clearly, she might have been as old as eighteen. When she extended her hand in shy greeting, Sven pulled her to his chest and kissed her. The girl pushed away but didn’t seem displeased, until, about twenty minutes into their c
onversation, Sven three times took her hand and placed it on the rising promontory between his legs. Sleeping with two women in one day and sniffing a third made Sven too cocksure; the girl giggled at her first touch but panicked at the third and fled.
He spoke to no one else, communicating immediate needs to the bartender by the thump of his empty glass. He drank until he could keep his head no steadier than a buoy in high seas. Just before midnight, he pitched himself from the bar and stood several minutes contemplating the sheets of water pouring from the awning at the hotel entrance. I would have welcomed his hailing a taxi then, content to lose him rather than follow on foot through the rain. He had been fed, bathed, and drained of bodily fluids. His only destination was bed and a sated sleep. But the alcohol lent him false warmth and a misplaced trust in his coordination, and he skittered crookedly into the storm like a man chasing, catching and losing his feet. I fastened the collar of the coat around my neck and reluctantly followed.
Sven crossed the road that led to Szabadság Bridge, stumbled to the edge of the embankment, and howled insults across the Danube. Watching him was an embarrassment. He stomped in puddles, sang snatches of beer-drinking songs, and twice slipped to his knees. Few men were more deserving of death, but I hadn’t the nerve or brute desire to murder him. In my imagination I could shoot, stab, hack, and chop him to bits, but my paralysis in the steam room proved me incapable of direct action. I would have preferred to be the sort of man whose actions were circumscribed neither by vestigial conscience nor by failure of nerve. The foul rain and Sven’s stumbling drunk conspired to perfect circumstances. All that prevented me from murdering him on the bridge was my idiotic inability to act. I could think of no way of eliminating Sven other than killing him, but as I couldn’t bring myself to the moral certainty of murder, he would remain with Monika and I would be denied both revenge and carnal pleasure. I tried to think of a way to arrange his arrest that would leave her free. Any mention of his grift would necessarily involve Monika as his partner. I felt as though I walked in a thick fog, searching for something and certain I passed within feet of it, but unable to see precisely where. Then rough outlines emerged, and I knew I had something.
Gypsy Hearts Page 12