Gypsy Hearts

by Robert Eversz

  “I explained that you were incapable of such a thing, that we were in love and going away together. Now Sven maybe, but even he couldn’t possibly do something like that, which is what I told the police. Impossible. Out of the question. It didn’t help that you disappeared that night, and when I told the police you were staying at Hotel Paříž, they found no record of you ever being there.”

  “But we were there,” Monika insisted.

  I knew better, but said, “I’m sure you were.”

  “What name did they look for?”

  A dangerous question to a connoisseur of combs, condoms, passports, and other artifacts of women’s purses. “I realized when they asked of course I didn’t know your last name, so I told them Monika and then something Danish.”

  “I registered using my Czech name.”

  “I knew it would be something like that. And they were looking for a Danish couple, so of course.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  My hands fumbled above the table as though spilling water. I remarked, with happily discovered double entendre, “They could look forever and not find you.”

  Monika grabbed both my hands. I hadn’t expected that. I hadn’t expected her to touch me. She held me, trembling in her gaze, until she knew I saw in her eyes the sincerity of a wronged soul and asked, “Did you really think I would rob you?”

  “Me? No. The police. I tried to tell the police that. But they ask. Suspicious, you know. This and that. Questions. I told them—never.” My face flushed hot and red. I heard myself speak sentences breaking up like ice. I could think only with the severest concentration. I said, “But you should have said something. Called. Written. Anything. I was lost.”

  “I tried to write. A hundred times I tried to write. But what could I say? That I wanted to go away with you, but? But what? I’d start, and then I’d tear it up. My English wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t admit to you what happened. In English or Danish. That Sven wouldn’t allow it. That I’m a complete coward.”

  The bit about wanting to write I half remembered from a dozen different movies. I knew this scene. Couldn’t allow Monika to steal it from me. With her hands touching me, I couldn’t think. A gesture was needed. Something dramatic. I flattened the palms against the sides of my head. I started to breathe again. Rhythm and timing were all. Think over-the-shoulder close-ups. Think Frederic March to Greta Garbo.

  INTERIOR—GERBEAUD CAFE, BUDAPEST—DAY

  A grand fin-de-siècle café. High wooden ceilings. Gilt trim. Central European types huddle over frothing cups of cappuccino and hot chocolate. In the corner, Nix and Monika stare into each other’s eyes as though the world is about to end.

  NIX

  You think I didn’t know that? You think I didn’t feel exactly what you were going through? I know nothing about you, not your age or the name on your passport, but I know you better than anyone in the world. I know you only as someone who loves can know.

  CUT TO MONIKA, looking wounded as cut glass. Life is too short, too complicated, too doomed.

  MONIKA

  It didn’t work out. We tried, but it didn’t.

  ON NIX. His eyes burn with passion and destiny.

  NIX

  What happened before doesn’t matter. We found each other again. We have a second chance. I’ll tell Sven how we feel. That we love each other.

  MONIKA

  He’ll hurt you.

  NIX

  That’s a risk I’m willing to take.

  MONIKA

  What we had together was perfect. A perfect moment in time. But that moment is gone.

  NIX

  You can’t deny your feelings.

  MONIKA

  But I must!

  NIX

  Don’t go!

  MONIKA

  It’s over!

  Monika rushes for the door but turns at the threshold for a farewell look—

  ON NIX, bravely rising from the table.

  NIX

  (voice choking)

  Promise me. We’ll always have Prague.

  That last line was untouchable. I waited through several moments of stunned silence, thinking she might come up with a rejoinder, but nothing can follow a line like that. She wisely underplayed it, dipping her head in silent assent, then whirled for the door in a spark of heels. I wanted her to think me an idiot, to think I loved her, to think she could get away, yet to feel an inchoate dread that I was not an idiot, that I did not love her, and that she could never escape. I chased the last of my torte around the dish, wiped my mouth, and left the café.

  Catching up to Monika did not worry me. I knew where she would go, if not at that moment, then soon enough. If she could not be certain of my intentions, she would hurry to her hotel and, leaving a message at the desk for Sven, pack her bags for another hotel or perhaps another country. I anticipated her route from café to hotel and watched the crowds for her brisk strides, timing it to pop out of an alley at the exact moment she crossed it on her return. Even then, Monika clipped by without stopping, forcing me to trot beside her as I exclaimed, “What a coincidence. Don’t tell me you’re staying somewhere nearby?”

  Monika backed toward the street, toes arching, keeping me in front of her like something that could turn on her at any moment. Her voice threatened and was threatened. “Are you following me?”

  “What a crazy idea!”

  “I said it’s over. I can’t see you again.”

  “It’s fate, Monika. We belong together.”

  For a moment, she believed me—not that we belonged together but that I was convinced of it. For a moment, I think Monika pitied me. She would have turned and run had she not believed I might chase after like a faithful dog. Instead, she did what any decent human being does when followed by a likable dog that needs to be discouraged. She said, “We don’t belong together. You’re an idiot. Blind. Stupid. I don’t want you. Do you understand now?”

  “Of course I understand.” I smiled, amiable, dense, and determined. I took a few friendly steps forward.

  Monika shouted, “I don’t want you following me!”

  People slowed as they passed. One idiot-gallant could step up and ruin the scene. I broke out of character—or, rather, into my true character. I grabbed her by the elbow and said, “Maybe you’d like the police following you instead?”

  Monika stood very still, not daring to move or speak. She knew then and finally that I was dangerous. I heard very little conviction in her voice when she said, “Why should I be afraid of the police?”

  “You have no idea how well I know you. I have an advantage, because you know almost nothing about me. Nothing true, at any rate. But I won’t turn you in, at least not now. I have a business proposition for you.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “The same kind of business you’re in now.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out,” I said, and instructed her to meet me that night on the quay leading to the Chain Bridge.

  “If Sven learns I’m meeting you, I mean if he finds out you’re following me, he’ll hurt you.”

  “You can tell him about me or not. It won’t make any difference.”

  When I let go of her arm she flashed a smile as though she just won something. I knew her. I knew what she was thinking. I dipped my hand into my coat pocket, let show just the corner of a small thin green book, and said, “If you’re thinking you won’t show up tonight, if you’re thinking you might try to leave Budapest, leave the country, check your purse before the train station.”

  I had taken the precaution at Gerbeaud when she had been distracted by my seeming innocence. Monika dug to the bottom of her purse with the ferociousness of a feral animal looking for a bone. Her passport wasn’t there. I had stolen it.

  She said, “Bastard!” Then a few other words in Danish, which I didn’t need to understand precisely.

  I said, “Yes, I am,” and walked
away.

  15

  After leaving Monika I felt the triumph of an actor fresh from a successful performance and the insecurity of that same actor in fearing the magic will fail to return for the next. My anxiety was general and overwhelming, though it assumed the guise of particular terrors, which flitted promiscuously from one to the next. The idea of having sex with her terrified. The notion that she carried a second passport and at that very moment rode the elevator to the checkout desk so terrorized me that I hailed a taxi and returned to the hotel. That she had not checked out failed to console me, and I paced about the lobby until, exasperated with my insecurities, I fled to the street, resigned that she would appear with her bags the moment I had gone but not one second before.

  Choked by paranoia, I crossed the river and struggled up Gellért Hill until the city was safely distant below, the rumble of traffic and river fading to a single note. Since my first conscious moment I have faced sudden and unexplainable paroxysms of nerves. My throat swells and lungs constrict; the air turns to liquid, and my bronchial tube to a crimped straw. Consciousness diminishes to a white noise not unlike a television channel tuned to no specific signal. I sat very still, drew deep, even breaths, silently counted, and visualized the numbers as I sounded them in my head. When I was small, a child psychologist suggested that my anxieties were little monsters who couldn’t breathe if I didn’t think about them and thus went to sleep. I still thought of my anxieties in this way, and relaxation as suffocating the little monsters. I didn’t need a fully conceptualized plan when I met Monika that night, and she would show as certain as I held her passport. With Sven’s disappearance, she had no money and few resources. True to Hollywood form, all I needed was a one-line concept that would sell itself. A dark serenity of spirit settled over me. I was certain I’d found a way of winning Monika and defying my father both.

  Monika looked as though she had prepared a role of her own coming up the quay that night, simply but elegantly dressed in flowing bone- and ash-checked coat, eyes cloaked in sunglasses even at that post-crepuscular hour. I watched from behind my familiar screen of bushes and noted the gestures of agitation in her pocket-clenched hands and brisk stride. She hesitated at the railing where we were to meet, turned once to scan the quay, and, torn between impatience for my arrival and the need to conceal her impatience, wheeled toward the Chain Bridge. When deaf to the clip of her heels, I crossed the quay to the railing. I didn’t mind allowing her to see me waiting if I knew she waited also. A few hundred feet up the quay, ash and bone checks flashed beneath lamplight. I propped my elbows on the railing and watched the river, marveling at the disciplined hurry of her approach, as though she had not been waiting at all but arrived just now and late. I thought, Sam Spade to Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon. I thought, Humphrey Bogart.

  “Sven is waiting for me,” she said, pulling black-gloved hands from coat pockets.

  “Where?” I asked, aware I inappropriately grinned.

  “Somewhere close enough to hear if I shout.”

  I did not allow myself to contemplate that her lie might have unintended accuracy. Forty-eight hours of drift would have carried him well past our spot on the quay, possibly out of Budapest, though bodies are notorious for clinging to branches, rocks, and bridge abutments as though willing beyond death to be found. I must pretend it never happened, that Sven indeed waited, vertical and murderous, a few yards distant. I asked, “What does Sven think of our meeting?”

  “He wants to take back my passport.”

  “How does he propose to do that?”

  “Beat it out of you.”

  “I’m happy to hear he hasn’t changed.”

  “You have no idea how violent my brother is.”

  “I have no idea he’s your brother.”

  She pulled a pack of Gitane Blondes from her coat pocket and cupped her hands to light one.

  I said, “Since when did you start smoking?”

  “I’ve always smoked. Just not around marks.”

  “Nervous about something?”

  “Wouldn’t you be, someone threatens you?”

  “I thought Sven threatened me. Something about a beating, you said.”

  “Maybe you’re too stupid to be scared.”

  “How long has Sven been your brother?”

  “Half brother. I told you the story.”

  “You remember the afternoon I met you, in the café at Obecní Dům, when I left to attend a meeting?”

  “Why would I want to remember something so unimportant?”

  “I didn’t have a meeting.”

  A contemptuous spear of smoke glanced off my shoulder. She said, “So. What.”

  “I followed you instead.”

  I was acutely aware that she now listened, trying to remember: Where had she gone, what had she done?

  “Not to the Hotel Paříž, where of course you never stayed, but to the Merkur, the cheap, no-star, shabby little Merkur.”

  “What were you hoping to find out?”

  “Nothing. It’s a game I like to play.”

  “I’ve met some pathetic men in my life.”

  “I bet you have.”

  “I’ve had this feeling lately of being watched. It’s what you like to do, isn’t it? You like to watch?”

  And what of it? Artists are voyeurs.

  I said, “I like to steal.”

  Monika flicked her cigarette between my feet. I let it burn. She said, “What do you steal, other than ladies’ passports?”

  “The same things you steal. The difference is I don’t steal for money. I steal for fun.”

  “Jobs are easy enough to find and the pay is steadier. Don’t pretend you know anything about why I do what I do.”

  “Do you still insist Sven is your brother?”

  “Half brother.”

  She reached into her coat pocket for a knife, a gun. I caught her wrist and held it, asked, “What’s it like to fuck your half brother?”

  Monika jerked her head aside. She said, “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I followed you. I heard through the door.”

  “He’s not my half brother.”

  I let go of her wrist. Her palm cupped the pack of Gitanes. I watched her hands shake when she tried to light a cigarette. I took the lighter and lit the cigarette for her. She said, “I could have screamed, you know.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Maybe I don’t want Sven to hurt you. Maybe I’m curious. How long have you been in Budapest, looking for me?”

  A disingenuous question, no less so for the seeming innocence of her asking. I said, “I looked in your purse the day I met you. Saw the train ticket, a receipt from Gerbeaud’s, figured you for a regular. Arrived this morning.”

  “I won’t sleep with you, if that’s what you want.”

  I laughed because I did want to sleep with her; I laughed to wound her vanity. Bogart would say, You’ll sleep with me baby and like it if I tell you to. I said, “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “What do you want?”

  I told her. Not the truth, which she already knew despite my denial, but the concept through which I hoped to obtain her. I said, “Listen carefully to what I’m about to say: There are no checks in Czechoslovakia.”

  Monika stared at me as though I’d just told her that the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain. The beauty of the concept was the double entendre, which she failed to grasp until I carefully explained it to her. She was too desperate not to listen. The Helmut thing hadn’t worked out. Sven had disappeared two days before. She stayed in a hotel room costing $100 a night. They had quarreled violently the day he disappeared. She knew him well enough to suspect he’d abandoned her for a few days of carnal frolic. She wouldn’t mind punishing him with a new arrangement on his return. My fate didn’t concern her. Sven would either go along for the money or kill me. She didn’t stand to lose much either way. He might beat her, but then they’d make love and everything would be the way it was befor
e. My idea sounded lucrative enough, and I avoided details which might reveal the sketchiness of my plans. Sven was officially alive and murderous, and I carefully included him in the plot, though the starring roles went to Monika and myself. She had a talent for performance but not plotting, and Sven had been a creature of desire and the moment, so even the bare concept I presented to her on the quay was like hearing Spielberg. She agreed to discuss the matter with him but wouldn’t promise agreement. I could have been a gentleman and accepted her equivocations, but instinct suggested that Monika admired bastards. I said if she and Sven decided to reject my offer, she would be required to return the money and equipment they had stolen from me. If they decided not to participate in my plan and couldn’t return the money, she could retrieve her passport from the Czech police, who might have a few embarrassing questions for her.

  “You’re forcing me then,” she said.

  It was a lesson I’d learned game-playing among the tourists in Prague. To have no choice was to act without responsibility, without guilt. Freed from the responsibility of choice, she could act with abandon. This was the look I saw in her eyes, of blaming circumstance for doing something secretly she wanted.

  “You can always choose to go to jail,” I said.

  * * *

  Sven officially disappeared the next day. The scene had been horrible, she wept when we met in her room. Sven had become irrationally angry when she suggested they at least temporarily accept my proposal. It had begun with shouting. If that’s how you feel. I knew you liked him in Prague. A cozy threesome. I’ll kill the bastard before I ever—that sort of thing. Then he started to hit her. He had thrown her against the wall and knocked over the mirror. She pointed to it on the floor, propped undamaged against the bureau, as though my seeing it would be the same as witnessing the act that knocked it from the wall. I nodded and cooed, perfectly trained to be a sympathetic listener. Hadn’t I heard a dozen women painstakingly recount the exact moment they must have lost their wallet, unaware I had stolen it minutes before? Sven had been terrible. A wild beast. The shouting and crashing grew so loud the hotel manager had been forced to bang on the door to shut them up. Sven had stormed out of the room, his belongings packed into a single bag. When he left, he naturally neglected to pay the hotel bill, and would I be kind enough to take care of it?