Triptych (14 page)

A moment earlier, Eva's complexion had been rosy with the heat. Now the look of terror in her eyes had returned, and she was completely white.

We faced a phalanx of men in blue helmets strapped under their chins, nightsticks strapped to their hips. A few officers began filtering into the throng. One officer eyed us suspiciously as we began walking again. Unnerved and unable to avoid brushing against him as we passed, I stumbled, accidentally stepping on his boot. An elbow hit home hard in my ribs. I yelped.

Next to me, Eva saw what happened. “
Disznó
,” she said under her breath.

I glanced over. She'd called him a pig.

The band abruptly stopped playing. Looking back toward the stage, we saw a flatbed truck moving in to be used as an alternate stage, blocked by a uniformed brigade.

From the multitude, a chorus of voices rang out, “Stop the war! Stop the war!”

Fists, many with fingers parted in the familiar peace sign, pumped the air. The uniforms broke rank. Sticks flashed in the glow from the headlamps of the truck. Concert goers scattered. Those caught, struggled.

I looked at Eva. A burst of light illuminated the expression of disbelief and horror on her face. The light bounced and a paddy wagon ground to a halt maybe twenty yards away. From somewhere behind us came a scream. I whipped around. An officer was clubbing a resisting protestor. Another policeman, grabbing the fallen young man's foot, began dragging him across the grass, his curly mop of hair bouncing and flopping wildly as he squirmed and kicked with the opposite foot.

A jeep, covered in barbed wire, carrying National Guard reinforcements, peeled onto a grassy mound beside the paddy wagon. Near the stage, the driver of the truck laid on the horn. Eva, pulling me now, found an opening. We bolted from the scene, eventually ducking into a dark alleyway.

Fighting for breath, our hearts pounding, we took cover behind a cluster of garbage cans, huddled close amid spilled waste on pavement smelling of urine and vomit, and for the first few minutes dared not speak above a whisper.

“Jeeps strung with barbed wire in Lincoln Park,” Eva said in a heated low voice. “Never could I imagine this. We are in America. What next? Tanks rolling through the streets?”

Feeling the trembling of her shoulder against mine, I remembered. Eva had been a young girl living in Budapest during the Hungarian revolution. Her family's apartment building had been demolished by shelling, her parents crushed in the debris.

“We're not in Budapest. It will be okay.” I placed a reassuring hand on her arm.

Her arm jerked free. Eyes wild, flashing with sudden rage. “Not okay. Barbarians. That poor young man. Didn't you see? His head was bleeding. They kept shoving him, dragging him like a scared dog to the paddy wagon.” She spit on the ground. “No better than the Communist pigs at home. Hunting down dissidents. Beating them, chucking them away. Not human. They will pay.”

I shrugged. “We can hope. We're not in Budapest, Eva, and they're not Communists. This is still Chicago. They were cops. More likely, the Daley machine will simply sweep this night under the carpet.”

The next day, Eva boarded her scheduled flight back to Italy.

Now, eighteen years later, seated on the font's base, Eva is jabbing with a sharp pick. A small pebble of plaster flies off, landing at my feet.

Eva grabs the abrasive pad and, using its pointed square edge, buffs the spot. “Look. More residue from that stubborn first layer of paint.” She shakes her head. “I'll never finish in time.”

I look closely. A minute strip of beige paint is evident along the leaf embellishment. I also see tiny gold flecks.

“Gold leaf?”

“Yes. Twenty-four karat. Once the stripping's done, I'll re-prime and apply fresh paint. Ivory with a glazing that will make it look antiqued. The rolled leaf motifs—” She points with the pad. “I'll highlight with beads of gold leaf. We have a photograph of the original finish. A diPietro family member was the artist. It'll look as good as new when I finish.” She sighs. “
If
I finish.”

“You will. And if half of what Mariska says about your talents is true, I have no doubt it will look better than the original.” My gaze returns to the statues on the lid. “John's arm is missing. You'll mend that, too?”

The two figures are posed in the traditional manner. Christ kneeling in the Jordan River, John holding a pitcher aloft over Christ's head, preparing to anoint Him with holy water. Only no pitcher, no arm, just a black wire protruding from John's shoulder.

Eva smiles. “Right down to the fingernails. It's more intricate work than this—” A nod to the basin. “I'll make a new form from wire, replaster and sculpt in the details, but not here. Back at the studio.”

“I better let you get to it. Zsófi and Mariska will be disappointed you can't make it. Another time?”

“Sure.”

My gaze lingers on the wire protruding from John's shoulder socket. “Wish mending Zsófi's hand was so simple. Mariska told me about the secret police, what they did. She…they've…never filled in why she'd been tortured.”

Eva's dark eyes narrow. “And you want the sordid details? What the AVO is capable of doing to innocent people? To women?”

Her words reverberate loudly, the sudden show of passion not unlike the angry explosion I witnessed in the alley so long ago.

I place a hand on her shoulder, squeeze.

The steel wool pad begins its shuffing sound again. “You must ask Mariska. Zsófi. It is not my place to tell.”

***

Budapest, 28 October 1956

Along Bartok Bela ut, a pageant of pamphlets and leaflets, posted on surfaces everywhere, greeted them.

Her mother clapped mitten-covered hands, nearly dancing for joy. “
Truth
has competition,” she said. “Isn't it wonderful? For ten years a solo voice has hogged the stage. Now we have a full choir!”

It was late afternoon, cool but clear, and somewhat oddly, they appeared to have the street to themselves. Évike smiled, flitting freely with her mother from one lamppost, one building front, to the next, eyeballing the variety of free newspapers plastered everywhere. They nailed copies of
Truth
alongside sheets printed by the police, the Army, and factory workers, observing their calls for order, national unity, and defense.

The corners of fliers with student demands protruded from beneath some notices. They had been brushed over with strokes of paste preparing a place for newspapers, like
Truth
, with “hard” news, but also for posters with lighter fare. Évike giggled at a caricature of Communist Party General Secretary Rakosi departing with his suitcases labeled “Lies” and “Promises.”

An artist had created a mock memorial card with an illustration of the fallen Stalin statue, inviting people to its funeral. “Clever,” her mother said smiling. “And clever, too, that the Stalin boots have found a practical use.”

At last a pleasant recollection. Évike and her mother, accompanied by Josef, had gone to the site where the hated statue had once stood to witness what was left—the two enormous boots still on their pedestal of pink marble, now filled with bouquets of Hungarian flags.

Throughout Budapest, only food shops remained open for business. Coming upon a cluster of closed shops, they observed the many smashed windows with goods inside that had not been touched.

“Tempting, isn't it,” her mother said. “I could have a new blouse or—” they paused before a children's store, “you could have a decent pair of shoes.” At a bakery displaying cakes, there were signs that rats or other varmints had been nibbling on them. “Better let a few cakes spoil than set an example of what might appear to be looting,” the mother commented.

In front of the bakery, an unguarded open suitcase with many hundred-forint notes and a sign asked for donations for the wounded or homeless. Next door, at a partially destroyed florist's shop, this time the goods had been taken. Just ahead was Móricz Zsigmond körtér. The square was largely destroyed. All around huge piles of debris and gaping buildings were smashed Russian tanks. Placed reverently on a long row of flag-covered bodies were the flowers from the shop.

The quiet, the lack of human contact, was eerie but Évike's mother insisted they continue on to the square. “We need to learn what has happened, what has gone on here. I will write a report for Josef to publish.”

Évike saw several white mounds. She knew what they were and quickly looked away. The Russian dead who were not removed by retreating forces lay where they had been killed, their identities lost beneath a coating of lime dust.

Her mother paused. “Russkies.” A heavy sigh. “In death, their faces, sprinkled with lime, well…they look almost serene. Like snow-white statues.”

Évike shivered and continued to avert her eyes as they walked a little farther.

The sun was low in the sky. Évike hooded her eyes with her hand and looked up. Her heart stopped. A tank had blown in the second floor of the shop at the end of the row. In the huge gaping hole, sat a gaunt woman with uncombed white-streaked black hair, a rifle across her knees.

“Mother, look,” she whispered.

“Hello,” her mother called to the seated woman.

The woman remained stone-faced.

Her mother walked to the building, stopping just below the black hole above. “Why don't you come down?” The shop door was open. She took a tentative step inside. “I'll come up to help…”

“Don't.” The word held so much venom it stopped her mother cold.

“Okay,” she said retreating, “but is there someone else I could bring here for you?”

A ray of dull sunlight struck the woman's lined face, painting her sallow skin a deeper shade of sickly yellow. Her cheeks looked sucked-in. “I wait for no one but the Russians. They took everything…everyone…I ever cared for. In 1916 they killed my husband, a prisoner of war in Russia. This morning, my son fell two blocks from here. That—” she aimed the rifle at the floor, “was my millinery shop and this—” she waved the weapon in a circle, “was my home. There is nothing left for them to take from me.”

Évike jumped at the sound of a truck approaching full-speed. Both she and her mother whipped around, then breathed sighs of relief. The truck's antenna brandished a tricolor flag. The vehicle screeched to a halt near the flower shop. A small contingent of teenagers, in ragtag clothes with tricolor armbands, leaped off. They began lifting flag shrouded corpses onto the truck. More boys with rifles hopped down from the back of the vehicle and began fanning out into the square. A thin, wiry older student, a Tommy gun clutched in one hand, climbed down from the truck's cab. He started to wave at the seated woman. His hand froze. At the same moment, a barely audible, “Jenõ Toth!” escaped her mother's lips.

With a backward glance at the woman perched on the second floor, Évike dashed after her mother.

Jenõ's black eyes drilled the mother as they approached. “What are you doing here?” His eyes flicked nervously left and right. “This is a main route for Soviet tanks entering the city.” He nodded in the direction of a burnt-out tank. “Well,
trying
to enter. That one will make a good barricade for the next skirmish.”

“Nagy has called a cease-fire,” her mother said, barely able to hide her sarcasm. “Haven't you heard?”

Jenõ smiled wryly. Then his expression hardened. “For us only one alternative. Win or fall. We have confidence in Nagy, sure. But we will lay down our weapons only to regular Hungarian troops, and we will put ourselves at the disposal of the new government only
if
it really is a Hungarian government.”

Her mother nodded then asked about her husband. Jenõ had not heard anything about Miklós.

“We could use his help,” Jenõ said, his fingers combing back his long black locks. “We're short on weapons and experience. These kids, though, we're lucky. They're inventive, tireless.”

Évike and her mother followed his gaze to a side street jutting off the square. Two boys were positioning overturned brown soup plates just beyond the cobblestone entry.

“We've run out of high explosive charges to place beneath them,” Jenõ explained, “but the tank drivers won't know that, and we hope that they haven't heard of the silk trick.”

“The silk trick?” the mother asked.

A short distance from the boys aligning the plates, another team was spreading out a vast blanket of shiny fabric. Jenõ nodded to them. “A scout has reported a fleet of tanks is heading this way. When we know they're close, the boys will soak the silk with oil. That's when our petrol bombers exercise their throwing arms. If they don't score a hit, we'll try luring them into one of the alleyways. Once in, they can't get out and we got 'em.”

“What about her?” Évike asked, pointing to the perched woman.

Jenõ smiled, but it quickly faded. He smoothed Évike's dark hair. “She's determined to help us. If you've heard her story, you know it is right that we let her.”

“And us?” her mother asked brightly.

Jenõ wagged his head. “Absolutely, no. I could never face Miklós again if anything happens to you…or his daughter.”

All at once, the sound of an enormous explosion in the near distance. Then another. The ground shook and Évike screamed. Across the square, the buildings were hidden by smoke. Then, a piercing whistle, followed by another explosion, close to the truck.

A blast of air knocked Évike sideways. Falling, she glimpsed the shelled-out shop. The woman was out of her chair, kneeling, the rifle directed at the approaching tanks. Évike watched, waiting for her to fire.

“Come,” her mother said sharply, yanking her up by the arm.

“That way.” Jenõ pointed to the nearby side street, then dashed in the direction of the truck, calling back over his shoulder, “Don't stop.”