Under Budapest (5 page)

As they left, Daniel, feeling for the keys in the pocket of his expensive-looking grey parka, turned to Tibor: “Dissertation sounds really good, man. Really interesting. I'd like to hear more about it sometime.”

It was just after midnight, and the snow was rushing down, tumbling under streetlights, pulsing in dark. They paused, face to face, shoulders hunched. And Tibor knew that his best friend was lying. Daniel didn't want to hear more about the dissertation. Daniel didn't give a shit about post-war Hungary. Daniel was being polite.

So then why, given that, did Tibor respond as if he'd detected nothing. “Great, great. Well, why don't we grab a drink next Thursday?”

Daniel, keys in hand, had already taken one step away. He sucked his breath through his teeth, grimaced. “Oh. Well, I'm not sure about next Thursday. But sometime soon, for sure.” And then he took one step back toward Tibor to clasp him in a firm, manly hug. “Really good seeing you again.”

“You too.” Tibor clapped his friend's back. “Good to have you back.”

They separated with a “See you soon,” and Tibor pulled his toque out of his pocket, snugged it over his head, and trudged the twenty minutes home through five-centimetre drifts, feeling like he'd just been shit on.

Yet, two weeks later, Tibor held a tiny plastic birdie upended over his racket and inhaled, focusing. He pulled his racket back gently and swung it forward:
tap
. The trick is to contain the energy in the swing, contain it and release it in the tap, which ought to be unhesitating, direct. Only a small surface of the racket meets hard red rubber. All the energy of the elbow and shoulder, all the packed tension of the poised legs, the slight gravity of the falling bird must be concentrated exactly there in the racket's
tap
.

He'd sent Daniel an email: “Up for a game?” No risk, no pressure in that kind of invitation. They used to play tennis together, back in the day. Badminton was almost as good and easier to get court time. At first, Daniel had demurred—Bad­minton? Really?—but with a bit of cajoling, he'd agreed. For old time's sake.

Now the two men faced each other on the badminton court, Daniel in baggy blue athletic shorts and a faded red T, Tibor in dandyish white from top to bottom. Daniel, bouncing on the balls of his feet, launched the first verbal challenge, swaying in a parody of a sportsman on the ready: “Show me what you got, Rolly.” Still pals. Still boys. The years apart meant nothing between old friends.

Tibor served. Daniel caught the shuttle on the edge of his racket, belted it back. Tibor tapped. Daniel crashed to the other end of the court, went wide, and missed completely.

In badminton, to Daniel's disadvantage, the technique is different than tennis. The whole game, in fact, is different—the psychology as well as the physical technique. He managed to return at least half of Tibor's serves, sometimes managed to smash one by him, but it was obvious this was Tibor's game.

Tibor, as the experienced player, kept score. He called it out with every point. Four–One. Five–Two. Seven–Two. Eight–Four.

Daniel stomped. He sprawled a second too late every time, every actual contact the result of heroic leap and flail. There was no plan, no attempt at navigation, just dash and smash, smash and dash. But Tibor felt the quivering flight of the shuttle in his own sternum. He flew with it. He was winning. He felt the win in his abdomen, a glowing absolute. He was unbeatable. He was victory, personified,
the
victor.

Daniel chased after the bird that Tibor sent high curving over the net, arm extended ahead of him. His shoes pounded the floorboards. He caught the white plastic tail of the thing and managed to knock it back into the air. It snagged in the net.

Nine–Four.

Tibor served again and Daniel watched it. The bird flew low and even this time, just barely over the net, straight for him. Not so fast, really. Not so fast he couldn't reach it, smash it, pound it into the net or back into Tibor's smug grin. But fast enough that his brain couldn't decide: left or right, backhand or forward? Defensively, half knowing this was about to go wrong, he crimped left, right arm moving into backhand. Not fast enough. The bird smashed into his forehead.

“Fuck.” He bellowed. “Fuck.” His hand to his head. He'd already sent his racket flying, skittering across the varnished wood floor. “What the fuck was that for?”

Daniel's face was purple, almost, with exercise and fury, staring at him. Tibor approached the net, his racket dangling loosely from his right hand. “What did I do?”

“Whatever.” Breathing hard, Daniel bent, hands on his knees. And Tibor felt it in his throat first, the fizz of laughter, a nervous involuntary reaction. A tickling all the way to the back of his eyes. Tibor thought the last thing he must do now is laugh. He told himself sternly the last thing he should do is laugh. He. Must. Not. Laugh.

Daniel must have heard the sniff, first, a larger snuffle. Then a noise like a hiccup. Still in a half-crouch, Daniel slowly turned his head toward Tibor.

Tibor just the other side of the net held his hand clamped over his mouth, but suddenly unable to contain it, he loosed a breathy, high-octave wail of laughter. Tibor held his stomach and staggered backward. “I'm sorry.” He gasped, waving his hand in either apology or denial, trying to distance himself from his own behaviour. “I'm sorry.”

Daniel straightened. Other players around them were looking now, their attention caught by Tibor. They exchanged querying looks. They shrugged. It was a joke nobody got except Tibor, who had just seen his old friend unmanned for the very first time. For the first time in their whole friendship, he'd won. And the laughter wasn't because Daniel looked like a sore loser, a boy who'd lost his ball, but because of the sheer ungodly delight of being better.

“Okay, you know what? Fuck you.” Daniel turned and left Tibor standing there, still laughing.

Months later, Tibor heard about the wedding. He'd considered calling to wish his old friend congratulations. He'd even gone so far as to dial the number and let it ring. But then he decided the call would only draw attention to their drifting apart. And to the fact that Tibor hadn't been invited to the event. Better to let it go. Let him call first. He didn't. So fuck him.

. . .

Why does she come to him? Almost every week for four months, she arrives with hair dishevelled or tidy, satchel slung over her shoulder, sometimes bearing a baguette and cups of takeout coffee, sometimes a bottle of wine, once a half a joint. She is usually on her way to or from the university library, just four blocks from his place. She might not have an academic position, but she refuses, she says, to let go of her research. He once joked that if he lived anywhere else in the city, she'd have lost interest in him long ago. As the realtors say, “Location, location, location.”

She'd chortled with that full-throated, unchaste giggle. But hadn't denied it.

It is amazing, being with her. Maybe the most amazing experience of his life. So Tibor tries not to ask himself questions like Why did she come? Or What about Daniel? Daniel is irrelevant. The fact that they are both in some way attached to Daniel, well, that's just coincidence. Happenstance. No, Daniel is random. But Tibor and Rafaela—
Tibor
and Rafaela—together in these enclosed and perfect hours, they are what matter. Hours outside of history, he tells himself. An entirely separate place and time. And though he knows it is completely delusional, that's how it feels.

“Okay, your top ten dictators.”

She rolls onto her back. “As a believer in democracy, I have to call your question invalid. Illogical. Immoral even.”

“So top one. Come on. Everyone has a favourite dictator.”

“Stalin.”

“Why?”

“He invented the five-year plan, a phrase now used uniron­ically by every major and rinky-dink business in America, never mind life coaches and
Oprah
addicts. He created a nation of surveillance, the most insidious and powerful form of governance deployed by government, also the basis of great reality TV. And even now, he survives as both revered dead leader and kitschy collectible.”

“Good answer.”

“Who's yours?”

“Oh, I hate them all equally. I believe in individual liberty.”

“I hate you.”

“Really? But I fuck so superbly.”

“
God
, you sound like Daniel sometimes.”

Blam.
Doors and windows slam in sudden vacuum. World goes cold as Siberia. They both feel it.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

Tibor shakes his head. “It's okay. I mean, I know you're married. If anything, it's kind of strange you never talk about him. Or your daughter.”

“No,” Rafaela says, her hands curled into fists, holding the sheet to her chin. “It's
separate
. It's the only way it works.”

He loves her more. He loves her more and more.

One day, as they sit side by side in Tibor's queen-sized bed, sharing a sandwich, Rafaela chews, swallows, and then tries to answer his question. “I love my life with my husband. I love my family. Do I still love
him
? The man I supposedly fell in love with—though I hate that phrase—the man I found so fascinating four years ago that I couldn't bear the thought of him not finding me equally fascinating? I don't even know if the question makes sense. The love isn't about him, anymore, but what we have, and who we are together.” She looks at him. “I'm not going to leave him, if that's what you're asking.”

It is October already. The leaves have turned and the old locust outside his bedroom pixillates yellow, tossing light against the walls and making the air glow. Maybe that
is
what he is asking. And he thinks, I love you. I love you so much I can hardly bear being with you, but he says, “So why do you come here and make love to me every Thursday?” And he tries very hard not to sound petulant, or insecure, or wounded.

She wipes the crumbs from her mouth with a napkin. “I love your calm,” she says.

“A sexy, passionate calm?”

“I know how that sounds, but it's praise, believe me.” Rafaela pauses. She pauses for a long time, long enough for Tibor to finish half of his sandwich.

“I feel clear when I'm with you,” she says. “I can be just who I am, just ordinary and uncomplicated and unattached. The way I remember being, before Daniel and Evie.” She'd been staring out the window as she talked. Now she looks at him. “Well, and you're irresistibly sexy.” She adds this last bit matter-of-factly, as though stating an obvious truth; but Tibor is conscious, sitting up in bed and eating the other half-sandwich, that his stomach has two very slight, soft rolls and that he is likely getting crumbs in the creases.

It has nothing to do with him. That's what she is saying. The best thing about Tibor is that he isn't Daniel. Isn't complicated or passionate or dizzying or infuriating or larger than life. Tibor has no mystery.

Rafaela stands. With two rapid actions of wrist and fingers that Tibor can never quite catch, she pulls her hair into its scrunchie. This is the signal that their time is over.

“The traffic was unbelievable today. I don't know why I drive.” She leans over to kiss him goodbye. “See you next week.”

. . .

It was bound to happen, and so it does. Saturday afternoon, he sees Daniel at the Summerhill LCBO. He spots him among the New World Wines, under the vaulted, church-like ceilings of the converted train station, now racked and gleaming with bottles, elegantly lit. The sight of his once best friend, so unexpected and so present, stops him dead. He isn't prepared. He'd prepared for it every day for a while, and then stopped. Now there he is. Daniel holds on to his daughter's hand, his left shoulder stooped to reach her. What is her name? Evie. Father and daughter face the wall of bottles together. She wears a purple corduroy dress with striped wool tights, her straight hair tied up in two pigtails, and as her father browses the Argentinian selections, Evie turns her face in Tibor's direction. She chews on the foot of a blond Barbie, drooling over her hand and into the sodden pink ruffle of Barbie's dress. She stares at Tibor with small, squinted blue eyes that make him think: mongoloid. The kid has Down syndrome?

They stand like that for what feels like minutes, staring at each other, the retarded girl and Tibor. And Tibor thinks, So that's why. That's why Rafaela comes to him. And then he thinks, Maybe Daniel got what he deserved. And then he just thinks, Jesus, I didn't know.

She breaks the stare, butts her head against her father's hip. Daniel holds a bottle in front of her: “What do you think, Malbec or Cabernet?” She guffaws like it's the best joke in the world and he smiles. “All right, then. Malbec it is.” Bottle in his right hand, holding fast to his daughter with his left, Daniel manoeuvres the two of them delicately, doggedly sideways down the aisle just as Rafaela emerges from behind the cheese display with a bottle of white, smiling at her family.

“Good timing,” Daniel greets her.

Clutching his own bottle to his chest, Tibor turns to avoid them. Too late. Daniel's voice: “Rolly? My God, it's been ages.”

Gellert Hegy

Long before the revolution of October 1956, the rumours were that the Soviets were tunnelling. Their tunnels spread with the speed of rhizomes, under the surface of Budapest. The rumours spread the same way, sprouting and multiplying, their source untraceable.

When the revolutionaries stormed Communist Party Head­quarters in Koztarsasag Ter on October 30, they found half-cooked palacsinta—far more than would be required to feed the number of prisoners found in the building's cellar prisons. Frantic, searchers fanned out into every dank hallway, looking for secret doors, knocking index knuckles on walls that looked solid, testing for hollow. There were so few prisoners in the building. Where were the hundreds who'd vanished? Someone had heard shouting from below. Someone else had heard a number: one hundred and forty prisoners. Where were they? They had no food, no water. Time was running out. General Bela Kiraly, the commander of the Revolutionary National Guard, gave the order to drill.

Three boring masters were ordered to the city from the Oroszlany coalmines. Drill! From the National Geophysics Institute came one cathode-ray oscilloscope, four Soviet-made geophones, one anode-battery with necessary cables. Drill! Twenty metres down and not far enough. Drill! Heavy machines, the same used to excavate the city's extraordinarily deep subway tunnels, were put to revolutionary service, much of Budapest's Sewage Company too, with their ropes, their pickaxes, their Soviet labourer muscle. Drill! Searchers spread into the sewers. They dug out the cellars in the houses surrounding the square. Hundreds of people gathered with shovels and pickaxes. They dug and they scraped and they listened, desperately, for the voices of the interred. The search ended early morning November 4 when Soviet tanks thundered into the city. The revolution was suppressed. The prisoners in the tunnels remained buried.

In 1993, the search began again. This time, a film crew hired the National Geophysical Institute to find the tunnels. Anomalies in the soil structure were found. An oil drill with a diamond bit was ordered. The drill hit something four metres below the surface, a hard substance that ate up the diamond. And another, and another. Three diamond bits were wasted on that impenetrable substance below the square.

It doesn't matter that the tunnels were never proven. Everyone knows they exist. They must. It's the only possible explanation.

1.

Tibor wakes to the battering
rat-a-tat
of a cement drill to realize he's hot and unbearably itchy under a hotel comforter of prickling fibreglass. It's 11:13 a.m. He throws off the comforter to find the crinkly burst plastic of the airplane snack that somehow landed in his bed when he did. Cracker crumbs in his chest hair. Hauling himself upright, he teeters to the window and yanks the curtain cord. Light pours in. Ah.

Across the Duna, the parliament gleams, white spiring the complete blue of sky. Budapest, finally: the salve his poor, love-damaged soul needs. Salvation. He'd been dreaming of this moment for months. Granted, they had been some of the worst months of his life. After the devastation of losing Rafaela, he retracted. The way he described it—to himself, that is; he'd never say so out loud—was that his soul had beat a retreat, had shrunk up and back inside itself like a penis, coldly plunged.

The reason he can't stop thinking about what happened, he thinks, is that they didn't have final words. He didn't get to tell her that he loved her, that he's sorry he never told her that he knew Daniel, that he didn't intend to make life difficult for her, that he wishes things could have been different—that she'd had a normal child, that he hadn't fallen for her, that they'd both been truthful from the beginning, that he'd never bumped into them like that in the liquor store. He'd never forget her face as, foundering, she put things together.

“Rafa, this is my old friend Rolly. Back in undergrad, we were inseparable.”

Rafaela extends her hand. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

“And this is our daughter, Evie. Evie, say hi.”

Slobbering child opens her mouth and caws.

How did Daniel not see what was happening? His wife every shade of crimson and fury and his friend stiffly grinning.

He'd half expected her to call to yell at him, call him names, accuse him. And he'd considered calling her—to apologize, to explain, to confess his love. He is still every day in his mind composing the words that would salvage something from the disaster, but sometimes, there's just no salvage. He lost her. It feels impossibly bad.

A bit self-consciously at first, he named this bad feeling grief. “Grief,” he said out loud. But even that potent word could do nothing to tame the writhing vermicular mass of loss and abandonment or fortify the queasy state of “being loser” that having lost implies.

Tibor wrestles his attention back to the spires, the Car­pathian blue sky. He's here now. At home, it's reading week. Here, it's the day before the conference begins. He's made it. He'd made the decision in January. A bit last minute. Peter, a friend of his, was putting together this conference and had first contacted him back in October, at the very centre of the maelstrom called Rafaela. When one of the participants dropped out, he emailed Tibor again, and for some reason, the pro­position struck Tibor as exactly the right cure. A conference. He'd always excelled at conferences. He likes the showmanship of it—the off-the-cuff opening, the studied pause, the sly aside—and his research, he likes to think, lends itself to performance. He would have his argument sewn up, solid, and he would dismantle any attempt at critique. A conference was exactly what he needed. And in
Budapest
. He hasn't been here since his post-doc days eight years ago.

And now, the city awaits. He turns. The bedside clock radio glares: 11:15.

Which means his mother has been waiting for him in the lobby—showered and dressed—since ten.

His mother.

She'd ambushed him over a plate of turkey fillet in paprikas cream sauce.

“You what?” he gabbled, mouth full, fork hovering. “I mean, have you booked a hotel? A flight? You can't just do these things last minute, you know.”

She spooned more sauce on his plate, beaming pinkly. “You'd be proud of your old mother; I even did a web booking.” She said
web booking
, not
veb booking
. Her
w
was perfectly Canadian and
now
, now of all times, she'd decided to go home. Tibor cursed the Internet and the amiable North York travel agent who apparently had no problem sending a seventy-eight-year-old woman on an arduous journey across the world to a potentially volatile post-communist state. “I never would have done it on my own, but since you were going. Well, I thought it might be my last chance.” She didn't say, Before I die. She didn't say, I am old and alone. But he heard it. He heard it and he wanted to cry.

Sure enough, in the hotel's ground-floor, near-empty restaurant his mother sits by herself at a window seat, a ringed espresso cup in front of her, a heavy paperback balanced against the table's edge. The awkward, upward tilt of the head keeps her glasses from sliding off her nose. It also makes her thin neck as vulnerable as a downy gosling's. Pecking her on the cheek, he slides into the chair opposite. “You should have called. I was fast asleep.”

She closes her book. “I didn't want to wake you. But the menu is
so
expensive here, Tibor, so I didn't order lunch.”

“No problem. The Angelika's just around the corner. Not cheap, by Hungarian standards, but good food, great atmosphere.”

“The young lady at the desk tells me there's a palacsinta house just five minutes away. I would
love
a mazsolas-turos palacsinta.”

“I'm sure they have palacsinta at the Angelika.”

“She says this place is very good. And inexpensive. When I was a girl, I thought I could live only on palacsinta. Hortobagyi husos and mazsolas-turos palacsinta was all I wanted to eat.”

“Mom. I'm sure we can afford lunch at a decent restaurant.”

“Persze, Tibor, persze.”
Persze.
Such a harmless, conciliatory word, with multiple, micro-sonar nuances as yet untabulated. Of course, Tibor, of course. As she tucks her book into her bottomless handbag.

“It's a great restaurant, Mom. You'll love it.”

“Good. You know it's been hours since that airplane snack.”

The Angelika doesn't serve palacsinta and it doesn't suit her. A renovated old convent, its floor is at least four feet below street level, and stained-glass windows look out onto pedestrian feet. High-ceilinged, white-walled, and pristine, with his mother here in front of him, it suddenly seems pretentious.

She orders a soup, the cheapest item on the menu. “Salty,” she concludes but finishes it. She's so hungry, she'd eat grass right now. She asks for a chamomile tea. They're sold out. She orders a cup of hot water instead, which earns her a stiffly polite nod.

“My aunt and uncle lived not far from here. After the war.”

“Is that right.” Eager to recover from his error, he tilts too far toward enthusiasm. She doesn't seem to notice.

“It was only one small room. My uncle put their bed up on stilts to make room for a table.”

He says, “My friend Peter and his wife had exactly the same arrangement in their flat. It works surprisingly well. Like a loft.”

She blows to cool her water and tentatively sips.

Tibor settles his coffee cup in his saucer. “So, it's men's day at the Kiraly today and I thought I'd take advantage, go to the baths this afternoon, Mom, if you think you can manage by yourself for a while.”

“Persze, Tibor. You go ahead. Relax. You have a big day tomorrow.” A pause, and Tibor braces himself for the
but
. “I think I'll go to the cemetery. I asked the girl at the desk and she tells me it's quite easy to get there by subway, just a ten-minute walk from the Keleti train station. I'm sure it's not too complicated. She gave me a map.”

“You're okay on your own?”

“Persze.”

She gazes out the window that offers no view. She seems all right. Or is she pretending? She rides the subway all the time in Toronto, but that's Toronto. It's different here, as she'd discover. Some underground stations house whole villages of homeless, aggressive panhandlers, pickpockets, beggars, particularly near the train stations. People selling puppies and stolen cameras and cigarettes. In her tidy American boots and all-weather coat, she'd be a walking target.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, thank you, Tibor. They've been dead a long time. Almost twenty years now, hard to believe. I just want to pay my respects. I'm sure I'll be fine.”

At dinner, she'd tell him how hard it was to get there, how rude were the gypsies. She'd call them gypsies. She'd say nothing about sadness or grief or the funerals she'd missed. She'd detail the unkemptness of the paths, the graffiti. How nothing was the same, nothing respected.

“You don't want some company?”

“No, no. Really. You don't have time. I know your presen­tation is tomorrow. You should prepare, practise.”

She probably assumes he's the main event at this interna­tional conference—her son, the star. And Tibor feels suddenly both abashed and fond, and under the tidal insistence of such fondness, his plans erode.

At Batthyany Ter, the escalator descends about a hundred metres at warp speed at a nearly vertical angle through a tight red-and-white metal tunnel. Tibor supports his mother's elbow as they take the step together and are borne vertiginously down, handrail jiggering.

“So this wouldn't have been nearly complete by the time you left,” he says. “Work on the metro halted in…1953, I think. It was this massive, hubristic exercise in Soviet symbolism. The deepest metro in the world, vertically superior to any other subway. I wish I knew who thought of the idea first. What chaos. Thousands of workers shipped in from the country to dig with shovels and pickaxes at fourteen different locations.”

“It's true, I—”

“The dig under Rakoczi Ut was apparently the deepest. That's the remarkable thing: there was absolutely no structural or engineering reason to tunnel so deep. Of course, in the absence of reason, one Soviet science journal claimed that tunnelling would expose the buried secrets of Budapest's prehistoric past, bringing them to the surface for the enlightenment of all workers.”

His mother seems surprisingly unworried by the dizzying, speedy descent, the look on her face almost seraphic. When they get to the bottom, she steps unhesitatingly as harried people push past.

They sit side by side on the cold vinyl bench, and the train carries them under the Duna. His mother grips a bouquet of flowers—calla lilies, ferns, three yellow roses, some pink carnations—wrapped in stiff, crinkly green paper. With one gloved hand, she fiddles with the paper.

“The Soviet propaganda said that commuting via subway would save workers nine million working hours annually. Can you imagine? One newspaper declared that meant millions of Hungarian people could watch more than four and a half million movies. Right, Soviet movies, exactly. But then after Imre Nagy came in as prime minister—the first time, I mean, not for those few revolutionary days—the Soviet leadership ordered it all to stop. All the workers went home. They'd decided the workers needed apartments more than they needed transit. So they started building up instead of down.”

The subway grinds to a halt. An electronic voice announces that the doors are opening. People pour in. The voice warns, “Careful. The doors are closing.”

“They built it so deep so the top party officials and their families could be kept safe in case of a nuclear attack,” she said. “That's why they went so far down.”

“Well, that was the rumour circulating, yes.”

“There were stores of food down there when the rest of us had nothing. ”