Gypsy Hearts

by Robert Eversz

  30

  The desire to escape the past and reinvent oneself in an imagined, better future are intrinsically American virtues. That morning I hoped to prove myself all-American. A towel draped my head as I hobbled toward the spa elevator, and in my hand I carried a gym bag, which might have contained a swimsuit and a few essential toiletries. The corridor was empty of both guests and plainclothes cops at that early hour. I rang the call bell and waited. The starched-white attendant greeted me with a cheery Guten Tag when the elevator arrived, and for once I was only too happy to be mistaken for German. I replied in kind. Though not quite a Hungarian Lourdes, the Gellért Spa has a faithful following among Central Europe’s chronically crippled; visits by the stooped and lame are not extraordinary, though the sight of my face might alarm her. She locked me into the wire-cage and pulled her brass lever, beginning our descent. I pulled the towel over my face like a cowl.

  “Arthritis,” I confided, clutching my hip when once she looked my way.

  “Ach! Arthritus,” she commiserated.

  I tipped a hundred forints to ensure her continued sympathy, and followed helpful directions to the spa’s central hall. Instead of continuing to the mineral baths, I turned more immediately down a tunnel parallel to the indoor swimming pool, white legs awkwardly bobbing in blue-tinted portholes along the way. A locker room waited at the end, quiet at that hour except for a few restless old men and one scampering grandchild. I claimed a corner locker and donned jeans, T-shirt, and casual sport coat, as though I had just completed a swim and dressed for the day. From my gym bag I extracted a California Angels baseball cap and a pair of Ray-Bans. Although any contact with my skin induced grunts of pain, a glance in a mirror conceded the accessories helped to conceal my swollen and skewbald face. At a distance in dim light, I looked almost normal.

  If Bortnyk had posted a man at the spa’s exit, I would need a better disguise than cap and sunglasses, but I entered the central hall confident I had outwitted him. Adrenaline proved as effective an analgesic as codeine, allowing me a stiff-legged stride. When I breached the entry arch, I paused to enjoy random sunlight spilling from a broken sky. Figures no more threatening than the old and infirm approached. The avenue flanking the Danube buzzed with Škodas and Ladas and the occasional Mercedes. The pockets of my sport coat held my old passport, three counterfeit hundreds I dared not attempt to change, and just over $70 in forints. When a streetcar clanged to a stop across the street, I hobbled off the curb and pulled myself onboard. No one shouted or shot at me. I curled up on a seat as though wishing to doze. A quick peek beneath my cap confirmed that no one looked at me as though I was out of place. People are probably beaten senseless in Budapest all the time, I reasoned, exulting in my luck.

  A family of Gypsies begged in the subterranean plaza at the mouth of the train station, where I ascended from the metro. As usual, the father was off somewhere, leaving the mother to beg in her colorful rags, infant at tit and two children at her skirt. I had learned months before that a simple passing glance encouraged them to chase you open palmed, the children in particular. I limped past, deaf to entreaty, and pulled myself up the stairs one game step at a time to the bird-cage arch of the main station. Above the departing trains flickered the sculpture I had noticed on my arrival three days earlier, depicting in neon tubes and steel beams a man with electric hair, his mouth in open howl. Below, a signboard listed arrivals and departures in German, Russian, and Hungarian, demonstrating by language the unfortunate fact of Hungary’s geography. The first international train left for Vienna immediately. The next headed to Bucharest in less than an hour.

  I approached the ticket counter with cap pulled over eyes and head down. On a slip of paper I had written destination, time of departure, and guidebook-instructed Hungarian for a one-way ticket. Let them take me for a mute; I did not wish to identify myself as American by voice and language. Second-class fare was just under 10,000 forints. The sculpture of the howling man watched over my shoulder as I counted out the change. I collected the ticket and skirted the sides of the station, determined to keep clear of the platforms until the last possible moment. I wished to do nothing that might attract attention to myself. A chill up my back warned me that someone watched. Bortnyk had posted my description throughout the city with instructions to shoot to kill. Paranoia. He thought I still slept, a hotel prisoner without passport. Only the howling man watched, his head afire with a neon glow. I reasoned it wise to avoid so obvious a place as the train platform, in the event that someone observed from habit or specific instruction, and scuttled back down the steps to the subterranean plaza at the mouth of the metro. It was safer and cooler there; no one would notice my deformities with so many to choose from in the bustling crowd. For several minutes, I wandered aimlessly, until the feral pains gnawing at my every step drove me against a wall.

  If the old ascetics were correct in believing that suffering purifies the spirit, I felt whipped and chaffed enough for sainthood. Though my conscious mind mocked such superstitions, I secretly suspected that I was being punished for the crimes of my character. Only through suffering would my character be purged of offending elements. I was a loathsome, vile, selfish human un-being, congenitally crippled in spirit and with newly matching deformations of the flesh. Until my skin healed, no one would accept me as a dashing filmmaker from Southern California, traveling through Central Europe to research the newest Tom Cruise vehicle. They would see me more precisely as I was, and not as I pretended to be. They would look at me and think, monster!

  I vowed that in Bucharest, or in whatever city I chose to claw a new foothold of identity, I would devote myself to a new concept of being. First, I would get a job, however poorly paid, that might benefit others and thus ennoble the spirit. I could volunteer for the Peace Corps or apply to Greenpeace. English teachers were needed everywhere. I would even be willing to go hungry in the service of a good cause. A job peddling syntax and vocabulary would teach me humility, and in side comments to the main lecture I might instruct my ex-Communist charges in the glories of Western culture. They would revere me as a role model, and I would strive to be worthy of their respect. Of my artistic ambitions and accomplishments, I would remain mute. Those passing my garret late at night might see a light still burning in the window and wonder what so feverishly occupies that nice young teacher who devotes his spare time to working with orphans. Some years later, they might gasp in surprise when, at the local cinema, they saw my name splash across the title credits of the newest Hollywood blockbuster; until then, I wouldn’t breathe a word. Relations with my father would remain cool for some time, but after a year or two, even he would notice that I’d changed. He might not approve when I informed him that I planned upon turning thirty to donate Grandfather’s inheritance to charity, but he would respect me for it. After some time, I might even allow him to talk me out of it.

  At my train’s imminent departure, I decided to make some initial gesture of faith, demonstrating the seriousness of my conversion to a more reputable character. I had 500 forints remaining from my second-class ticket. In my bag I carried enough water, fruit, and bread for the journey. I needed little else. Forints were a nonconvertible currency. I would never return to Hungary. To keep the money would be the same as throwing it away. The Gypsy family still begged in the center of the square. Other families begged by the steps and at the entrance to the metro. Their takings were meager. Twice or thrice during the half hour someone had paused to drop a small coin into one of their hands and hurry on. Barely enough for a loaf of bread, poor beggars. They were a misunderstood race of people. I had been as guilty as most in romanticizing and reviling them. I arrived in Central Europe believing them a nomadic tribe of fiddlers, when I thought of them at all. Though I saw them on the streets every day, dressed as businessmen, workers, beggars, whores, and thieves, though I had cheated them and they had beaten me, and though I had fallen in love with a woman who claimed a Romany heritage, I knew nothing about them, and my ignorance h
ad cursed me.

  It was time to make my peace and go. An offering would rid me of maledictions. I folded the bills into neat halves and approached the woman in the center of the square. She turned from one callous passerby to the next, murmuring pleas for mercy and charity. At my turn she thrust her baby forward, as though I might have some personal responsibility for the unfortunate creature’s existence. I stopped and admired the child. Somehow, she managed both to cradle the infant and press her hands together at the palms, as though praying to me. I counted out three bills and set them on the infant’s swaddling clothes. Her two children obediently flocked to me with open palms. I couldn’t tell how old they were—children’s ages always confound me. Though the sight of begging children fills me with horror, I graced each of their palms with a hundred-forint note.

  I was not surprised when they failed to thank me, but instead pocketed the money and proffered their palms anew, as though I was a cash machine which had unexpectedly begun to spit money. When I limped toward the stairs, the woman continued to thrust her baby in my face while the two children backpedaled ahead.

  “No more,” I said, good-naturedly.

  Two more children materialized to tug at my coat from behind, and another Gypsy woman, older and fatter than the first, beseeched me with clasped palms. I brushed the children’s hands aside and sternly shook my head at the fat one.

  “No,” I commanded.

  She grabbed a child and flung her at me. The thing had no shoes and a face as dirty as her feet.

  “I have no more money,” I explained.

  She clutched at my sleeve and loudly proclaimed, I supposed, that she was worthy of my charity. I pulled away only to be assaulted by a swarm of squalid brats and Gypsy women who shoved their palms and babies under my nose. I held my hands up helplessly. The women chattered and the children whined with excitement, like pack animals on the hunt. Hands pressed and grabbed my clothing. The infants thrust to my face blinded me to the hands below. I gasped and wheezed for air. They felt for my wallet. I was a fool to expect a little charity would earn either forgiveness or respect. They looked at me like meat on the hoof. I couldn’t breathe in such a ravenous crowd. The Gypsies were part of a conspiracy, organized by Bortnyk and Zima to hound me to my death. My train was departing that very moment. I didn’t think about consequences. I panicked. I swung my bag like a club and knocked the nearest children sprawling on their backsides. The women screeched. Two fell to their knees and huddled over infants. The fat one stepped up to shout at me. I slapped her out of my way and clubbed her sister with my elbow when she reached out to claw me.

  The children were slow to understand the nature of the hunt had changed and continued to grab at trousers and coattails. I kicked them away and ran. The boys gave chase, shouting insults. I looked back over my shoulder when I reached the stairs. The plaza was as still as an auditorium, the bystanders and passersby locked between steps like an audience in its seat. From the entrance to the metro, three young men, dark and lean as wolves, sprinted. Despite the spurts of adrenaline charging my body I could not manage the stairs quickly enough with my swollen ankle. One of the beggar boys caught hold of my bag midway to the top. I dragged him along, banging his skull into the steps, but the stubborn creature refused to let go. I dropped him and the bag and scrabbled to the top on hands and knees.

  In the web of tracks I searched and found the strand that railed the train to Bucharest. My legs churned with nightmarish reluctance, as though I ran, drugged, in deep sand. Behind me I heard the lupine yips of the three lean young Gypsies. Even as I ran, I argued that I was being pursued not due to a chance encounter but because my suffering and persecution were part of an elaborate mechanism of fate, the workings of which were too complex to understand. A blue uniformed train official a dozen paces ahead held a whistle to his mustached lips. His eyes bulged at me when he blew. The public address system blared a message distorted by volume and indecipherable language. Warning, comrades! An imperialist dog runs loose in the station! Women, protect your children! Men, to arms!

  If I had a camera and filmed these last moments, I would begin the sequence framing at foot level a desperate character who hobbled along a train platform swarming in baggage carts and embarking passengers; then with a quick move of camera I’d catch and race abreast his swift pursuers, lens focused upon the thrust and churn of loping muscles here, the carnivorous slant of an eye there, and craning high into the station’s arch view his impending devourment from the perspective of the howling man sculpture, neon hair sizzling as the camera passes through its open howl. A last scheme came to me as I neared the rear passenger compartment and a hopeful escape. If they caught me, I would shout Cut! and, looking up at the skylights, call, Was that good for camera? Good for sound? To my pursuers I’d announce, That’s a wrap. Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll shoot the dismemberment scene tomorrow. Like actors on a set their chase would abruptly break, and I could escape to travel east, as those with suspicious pasts once traveled south, to a place where no one knew me and I could pretend again to be anyone I wished.

  I shrieked with laughter and lunged for the compartment door.