Adam and Evelyn (9 page)

“You know what? I’d love to be an amateur trafficker. It might even be a fun career! You can get across like a hot knife through butter.”

Adam gave another honk as the Dutchmen passed him.

“Look at them gawk at us!” Adam waved to them. “What’s wrong? What’s the problem?”

Tears were running down her cheeks and dripping from her chin onto her sweater. Adam held out his blue checkered handkerchief. But when she didn’t take it, didn’t even seem to notice it, he let it fall to her lap, between her hands—palms up, half open.

“I’M SORRY,”
Adam said. “I had no idea.”

Katja blew her nose in the handkerchief. She kept her head lowered, as if she were inspecting the round table or the empty coffee cups still on it.

“But it can’t be all that easy to drown.”

“That’s what you think. Rivers are different—and then when it’s pitch dark and you’ve got something like that on your back. And the first time your head goes under, when it pulls you down, you panic. All you know is: It’s stronger than you.”

“I wouldn’t have gone in. I would have let them nab me.”

“When you stand there looking across, staring at the far bank, the river gets smaller and smaller, and you think, Let’s go, dive in, best do it right now, don’t even stop and think. You’re only afraid of border guards and dogs.”

Adam tried to touch her hands. People at the next table glanced across. He slid closer to Katja.

“There’s nothing you can do to fight back, nothing at all. It grabs you and spins you around, like some evil angel, you’re powerless—”

“But you made it.”

“I was lucky, that’s all.” She wiped her tears and sniffed hard. Suddenly she was leaning against him, her head on his shoulder. He slid closer still and laid an arm around her. He stroked her hair, the back of
her head. He looked at the nape, the clasp of a thin silver chain. If the waiter had arrived a second later, he probably would have kissed her at that spot just under the clasp, where that little vertebra stuck out—the one he always used for measuring his clients.

The waiter laid the knives and forks, wrapped in white napkins, beside their plates, opened the lid of the mustard jar, and, as if the other guests weren’t supposed to see, slipped two little packages of ketchup under the rim of Adam’s plate. He departed again without a word.

Katja sat up.

“Here,” Adam said, pushing a glass of mineral water over to her. Katja took a sip, held the glass in her hand for a moment, only to drink it down in one gulp. She blew her nose again and stuck the handkerchief in her pants pocket. Adam unwrapped the utensils and passed her a set.

“First you need to get your strength back.”

“Where are you going from here?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“To the embassy, and I mean the right one, in Budapest.”

“I’ll take you.”

Adam tried to open one of the red and white packages. He laid it down again, wiped his hands, and tried once more. Finally he put it between his teeth and yanked.

“I can’t even watch this,” Katja said, grabbing the other package, and opened it with ease.

Adam pressed the ketchup through the tiny opening onto his wurst. A couple of squirts landed on the table.

“What sort of work do you do?”

“I’m a tailor, a ladies’ custom tailor.”

“I’d expect you to know tricks like that.”

“If you want, I’ll dress you up shiny and new.”

“Is that what that callus comes from?” She pointed to his right thumb. “I thought maybe you play guitar.”

They ate in silence. Adam was glad he hadn’t kissed Katja on the nape of her neck.

“Do you think they might have some chocolate here too?” she asked.

Adam turned around toward the buffet. They both got up. Katja pressed both index fingers against the glass of the vitrine beside the cash register.

“Kinderschokolade? Kinderschokolade!” he said, and directed the waiter’s hand with shakes and nods of his head.

“Kettő.” Adam spread two fingers. He bought four more bottles of water and paid.

Outside they sat down on a bench, each with a bar of Kinderschokolade in their hands, and pushed the little squares out. Pulling back the wrapper after each one, they stuck them into their mouths—Adam devouring one whole piece at a time, Katja biting them in half.

“What’s up?” Adam asked, when Katja stopped chewing to stare at the paving stones.

“Wouldn’t have taken much and the film would’ve started playing over again.”

Adam waited for her to continue. “You mean, if you’d been drowning?” he finally asked.

“That I could touch bottom was dumb luck, nothing else. And the rest was just a matter of having trained for a long time.”

“Swimming?”

“Rowing. First single scull. Then coxless pair, then fourman, until I was seventeen, and then I’d had enough.”

“You just trained in the wrong sport.”

“I pedaled and thrashed like an idiot, trying to get out again.”

“Where do you come from?”

“From Potsdam. I was gasping for air till I thought my lungs would fall out. And then almost froze to death. Everything drenched. My neck pouch gone—no money, no papers, everything gone!”

“And all for a married Japanese guy?”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what you said.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Of course that’s what you said.”

“Oh! I’ve always wanted to get out.”

Adam gave her his last bar of Kinderschokolade.

“Thanks, I’ll save it, for a very rainy day. So you’re going to go on to Budapest now?”

“Have to I’d think.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You saw what happens when you’re left unattended.”

Katja stuffed the wrapper into the empty box. “I feel so stupid for acting the way I did yesterday. Can I tell you something?”

“Fire away. Betray any secret you want.”

“The whole time Elfi made sounds as if trying to calm me. You don’t believe that, do you?”

“Sure, sure I do,” Adam said. “Come on, let’s go. If you want I’ll even carry you.”

“That’d be lovely, at least part of the way.”

They stood up, each grabbing two bottles of water, left the empty boxes lying on the bench, and walked to the car.

THEY HAD FOLLOWED
the traffic signs for the center of the city and found a parking place along the Danube between the Chain Bridge and the Elisabeth Bridge. On Váci utca they lined up at an ice-cream cart. Adam watched the server pull down on the lever of the machine. The ice cream coiled into the cone, creeping upward and quickly achieving daredevil heights, till the peak curled over and froze in place.

Katja’s lips encircled the tip of the ice cream, and from there her mouth automatically moved down the spiral as if she were prayerfully screwing it in. Adam, his shoulder bag under his arm, kept glancing at the circular scar on her left biceps. His sleeveless black T-shirt with the faded Brazilian flag looked good on her.

“Twist my arm and I’d have another,” she said.

The server gave her a smile when she appeared before him a second time.

“He piled on a little extra this time around,” Adam said as they strolled down Váci utca in the direction of Vörösmarty tér. He zeroed in on a souvenir shop. Katja inspected the display window while Adam bought a map of the city.

“Look what they have here,” she said, tapping at the windowpane.

“The snow globe?”

“No, there.”

“The pipe?”

“The Rubik’s Cube, the magic cube you can twist and turn.”

Adam went back inside and returned with the cube. Katja gave him a quick hug. Her shoulders were hot from the sun.

“I’m sorry,” Katja said. “I’m not really this childish. I do have better manners. Do you want it?”

“No big deal. It’s my pleasure. Now here’s a practical item, so you’ll have something in that handbag of yours.” Adam gave her a little wallet.

“There’s money inside. Way too much!”

“Just three hundred, in case you want another ice-cream cone.”

He walked ahead to a bench that had just been vacated. He first placed his shoulder bag on his lap and then spread out the map.

“Oh Adam, thank you.” Katja sat down beside him, shoved the last tip of the cone into her mouth, and twisted at the Rubik’s Cube.

“What was the name of the street?”

“Something like Népstadion, but it’s the street parallel to it, otherwise we’ll end up at the wrong embassy. I’ve been picturing this for weeks, sitting here and eating ice cream.”

“Not with a view to Fuji?”

“It’s almost the same thing.”

“I want to take a picture.”

“No, don’t.”

“Why not, just for me.” Adam unsnapped the leather case of his camera.

“But I don’t want you to!” Katja turned to one side.

“What’s wrong with that? One shot, for me.”

Katja shook her head.

Not until Adam was sitting beside her again and thumbing through the street index did she finally turn around.

“If only I knew the Hungarian word for ‘embassy.’ ”

“Should I ask?”

“No,” Adam said and returned to the souvenir shop. He watched Katja through the window. She pulled her legs up, raised both feet onto the bench, and embraced her shins. When someone sat down beside her, she ambled back and stopped at the open shop door.

“ ‘Embassy’ sounds something like”—Adam looked at the slip of paper that the salesgirl had handed him—“nagykövet.” He jingled his change.

Katja followed him to the phone booth. Adam picked up the receiver and hung up again. “It works.”

He reached down for the phone book dangling in its hard binder, opened it, thumbed through it for a long time with both hands, constantly flipping pages back and forth.

“Shit!” he suddenly cried, and let the phone book drop on its chain. “Some idiots have torn out the page—Katja?”

Adam stepped out of the booth and looked around. He stood there for a while. Then he started walking back in the direction they had come from.

Katja was sitting at the edge of the fountain under the statue of Mercury, next to a young couple wearing the same suede hiking boots she had on, their framed backpacks set before them.

“Hello,” Adam said.

“My friend,” Katja said. The young woman with a thick braid and cut-off jeans wrote a phone number on the back of Katja’s hand.

“The embassy’s closed,” Katja explained. “They’re not letting anyone in. We have to go to the Maltese Charity, up in the hills.”

“Why isn’t the embassy letting anyone in? They can’t just turn people away, can they?” Adam asked.

“You’ve got to go across to Buda, to the Zugliget district, they have tents in the church garden. They’ll look after you,” said the young man, tugging at his sparse reddish beard. “Kozma is the priest’s name. You need to ask for the way to Szarvas Gábor út, that’s where the church and this Father Kozma are, everybody knows him, or so I’ve heard.”

“And you two?” Adam asked.

“We’re sleeping out on Margaret Island,” the woman said, and took her friend’s hand. “It’s nicer there.”

“We’re on vacation until our cash runs out,” he said. “At the end of the day everything’s real cheap at the market hall. Sometimes they just give us stuff, because they know what’s going on here.”

“Weirdos,” Adam said after good-byes were exchanged.

“Why? They were perfectly okay.”

“Well, maybe. But when they don’t even look at you, I mean at me.”

“They looked at you.”

“No they didn’t, it was as if I wasn’t even there. And if there’s something I can’t stand it’s cut-off jeans, braids, and childish beards like his.”

“Look where Mercury’s pointing—that’s west, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Adam said. “That’s Buda over there.”

“Will you take me to this priest?”

They walked back down Váci utca.

“Do I get a good-bye ice cream?”

“If I can take your picture.”

“Nope, then I guess not.”

The line was longer than before. Katja dropped her Rubik’s Cube into Adam’s shoulder bag, laid both hands on his right shoulder and buried her head in them, as if to fall asleep there.

“By the way, Adam,” she said softly. “It’s really not important. But is it possible that you forgot my backpack, left it there just before the border?”

Adam didn’t answer.

“It wasn’t on the backseat,” Katja continued. “And not in the trunk either.”

“Could be,” Adam said, without turning his head. “Could be you’re right.”

“It’s nothing horrible, really it isn’t—like I said, absolutely not.”

“You can have my sleeping bag, and the air mattress,” Adam said and stood up very straight. When he started moving, it was with tiny steps, so that Katja could follow without taking her hands from his shoulder. They kept close together like that until they were at the head of the line.

ADAM HELD THE MAP
in place on the roof of the car. The wind had folded the top half over. The evening sun stood above the hills of Buda. At the dock was an excursion boat, its railings decorated with garlands of tiny lights. A waiting crowd had gathered before a chain that blocked the entrance to the gangway. Gulls screeched. The facades of the buildings along the Pest side of the river suddenly seemed to have taken on color, to be glowing from the inside.

“For some reason I don’t like the idea,” Adam said as he tried to fold the map smaller. “We should have asked at the embassy anyway. Who knows what kind of tent camp this is.”

Katja was still licking at her ice cream.

“Did they speak to you first or the other way around?”

“It just happened somehow.”

“Don’t say ‘somehow.’ Did you ask them?”

“They could only be some of our bunch. They were headed for Bulgaria and then got wind of what’s happening here, and went to the embassy.”

“So you spoke to them first?”

“It doesn’t matter! Do you think I wouldn’t notice if there was something fishy about it?”

“I didn’t like them, looked like plants to me, and it worked perfectly.”