Triptych (28 page)

Acting the tourist, I stare across the car, studying the railway route map while keeping an ear tuned, trying to keep up with what Anikó is saying. Between the noise from the tracks and her hushed tone it is not easy. I get the general drift.

At the Headquarters Building, under Attila's direction, Anikó had been trying to locate Kati's AVO dossier. One day while cleaning the commandant's office, she discovered his file cabinet had been left unlocked. She was very nervous, but flipped through the materials inside, finally coming upon Kati's folder. She had barely started reading the contents when an AVO lieutenant rushed in. It was the day of the siege by Hungarian insurgents.

The Millenium Underground has eleven stations and the route is just under three miles. Stops are frequent. At each stop, bells chime and the station is announced. We arrive at
Bajcsy-Zsilinszky ut.
Anikó arranges posies in her basket while Gyöngyi and I silently watch the shift in passengers, willing any newcomers away with dagger eyes. The moment the train is underway again, Anikó takes up her story.

“I am at the open drawer, shaking, head to foot. The AVO man is totally preoccupied and does not question what I am doing. ‘We must leave immediately,' he says, herding me, along with two Hungarian Army conscripts in uniform, down a passage. The men walk with drawn guns. At a door, the AVO lieutenant peers outside, waves us to follow. I obey. Me, the cleaning lady, is banded with the enemy. Only it does not seem like the enemy. They want to protect me. Themselves, too, of course. We are at the side of the building. In front, bullets pop, scream, shatter. My blood is pulsing so hard it is like I have no sense of what I am doing, who I am, as we rush across an alleyway, enter the neighboring building.”

Anikó pauses. The bells chime and the programmed voice announces the next station. It is a long name and I am only half-listening. I am anxiously waiting for Anikó to continue, but instead she fusses with the bouquets in her basket.

Chimes, doors closing, and we're off again. I glimpse a polished wooden bench and an elongated sign reading
Vörösmarty utca
as we pull out of the station.

“We go to the basement, huddle in a corner. Soon, there is a pounding of footsteps on the stairs. From the sound, the AVO lieutenant feels sure we are outnumbered. I should feel happy. There are shouts, and I know these are Hungarians who come, but will they see the AVO uniform, shoot the lot of us?

“The AVO lieutenant cries, ‘
Megadjuk magun kat, we surrender.' And the three men with me, put down their guns.

“This was wise. The intruders appear. They are armed rebels. The leader has a Tommy gun slung on a leather strap and grenades dangling from his belt. He orders us to remain where we are. I try to explain I am not one of them, but he ignores me. His men take our weapons, leave. We stay put. Where else can we go?”

“After a while, the leader returns. We expect the worst. But he is alone. He has brought workers' clothes for the men, and tells them to change. I am in my cleaning dress and apron. He gives me his coat. Then he orders us to grab some of the pots and pans stored there in the basement. He leads us outside. Around us, insurgents are emptying buildings of furnishings and goods. Search parties, their weapons drawn, duck in and out of doorways. I shake, but help to load the goods into the back of a waiting truck, like I am told. He gets into the front of the truck with his driver. The three men and I climb in the back with the load.”

Chimes, an announcement for the Kodály körönd stop. My patience is tested as we watch the ebb and flow of passengers.

“We are leaving the alley,” Anikó continues. “The truck stops. Of course we expect we will be thrown off, hung from the nearest tree, like the many we see in the park. Instead, the leader jumps from the cab and runs to a woman and girl. He hugs them, then hurries them into the front with the driver. The truck starts as he climbs back in.”

“After we are out of the danger zone, the truck stops again. I am let off, the others drive away.”

“The AVO man? The others?” I ask.

Anikó leans sideways and whispers to Gyöngyi.

“Anikó does not know,” Gyöngyi says softly. “But she knows—we all know—Republic Square is a black mark. Yes, it is true, the AVO were brutal. Sadistic. It was their perversions that brought about the revolution. Still, the mob justice by Hungarian patriots that day is difficult to defend. Terrible enough, but these atrocities played into the hand of the regime. What joy they felt having the unspeakable photographs circulate all around the world.”

Gyöngyi sighs. “Thankfully, there are more stories like Anikó's. Not everyone at Republic Square that day went mad. In truth, the majority of revolutionaries had nothing to do with such brutality. Most Hungarians stayed true to their humanity. Saved lives, tried to stop the gruesome butchery. Like the man who helped Anikó and the two Army conscripts, but these accounts are not so well known.”

We approach
Bajza utca.
The doors open, but no passenger activity. Meanwhile, Anikó is once again whispering feverishly to Gyöngyi. The train moves and Gyöngyi holds up a hand. Anikó pauses and Gyöngyi, turning to me, explains that Anikó must get off at the next stop. First she must tell Gyöngyi what she has come here to share with me, and she has asked that Gyöngyi convey the information after she is gone. “Please I will tell all shortly.”

Anikó talks rapidly to Gyöngyi. I try, but it is impossible to grasp anything. The train slows, and I anticipate the chimes. Anikó appears to have finished.

“Wait,” I say hurriedly removing the locket, opening it. “Ask her, does she recognize the little girl?”

Gyöngyi discreetly passes the locket to Anikó. Tucking it into a nosegay, she lifts the bouquet to her face and examines the contents closely.

Chimes.
Bajza utca
, says the canned voice. Brakes screech as she hands off the nosegay, along with the locket, to Gyöngyi.

Anikó stands. Her dark eyes filled with regret, she shakes her head. “
Nem ismerem,
not familiar.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Gyöngyi and I get off at the next stop,
Hősök tere
, Heroes' Square. We are at the end of Avenue of the People's Republic, a wide boulevard lined with trees and a wealth of handsome apartment buildings, cafes, and diplomat offices. Two of Budapest's major museums, the Museum of Fine Arts on the left, and the Palace of Art on the right, frame the vast open plaza.

We walk the length of the plaza, approaching the Millennium Monument on the far end. The monument is composed of several parts, a soaring 120 foot Corinthian column its centerpiece. Massive equestrian statues representing the seven Magyar chiefs who conquered the Carpathian Basin encircle the column's base. Looking up, I see Archangel Gabriel holding St. Stephen's Crown. Two semi-circular colonnades with statues of Hungarian kings and heroes, flank the column.

Pockets of tourists and some locals are gathered near the enormous sculpted monument. I look for my “friend” in the gray suit. Don't see him, but that doesn't mean much.

About twenty middle-school-age girls—clearly on an organized outing of some sort—are leaving the Palace of Art.

“Anikó was a classmate of my mother's. Wouldn't she have known how to reach my mother's parents? Or Rózsa, her sister? Why didn't Anikó contact them, tell them about Kati's fate at the hands of the AVO?”

Heat reflects off the gray and white stone pavement we are crossing. Gyöngyi fans her face with the nosegay she purchased from Anikó then hands it to me while she removes her jacket.

“Many questions. Good questions.” She secures the jacket in the saddle of her shoulder bag, reclaims the tiny bouquet. “Anikó worked inside the Headquarters Building, among AVO men. She had to be careful. Already, once, she barely escaped with her life. Put yourself in her place.”

I thought Gyöngyi was being overly sympathetic toward Anikó. How much peril would there actually have been in getting word to the family? Surely Anikó knew they would be beside themselves with worry over what had happened to Kati. Where was her compassion?

“I know what I would have done.”

Gyöngyi seems surprised by the certainty in my voice. “Anikó's life has not been so easy. She was ‘saved' from the headquarters' siege only to be sent back there again. When she became too old for scrubbing floors and toilets she was let go with a meager pension. With no family to help care for her, a Russian mafia with a flower business was her only hope. He hires old women like Anikó. People see them, feel sorry, buy. Anikó gets little of the money. The boss he is mean and keeps most of it. If she would like extra money, sometimes she is used as a spy. Who would suspect an old woman?”

I shake my head. “How does she do it? Live like that?”

Gyöngyi shrugs. “Anikó has been through the Second World War and the Stalin aftermath; the uprising and its consequences. Like so many Hungarians, when she gets up in the morning, no matter what the day holds, no matter what she has to face—as long as it is free from the horrors she has seen and endured—she can do it.”

We pause just short of the tall column. In front is a prominent, raised stone block. “The Hungarian War Memorial,” Gyongyi says.

A dedication on a plaque near the
cenotaph
is written in Hungarian. Gyöngyi reads the inscription to me in English: “To the memory of the heroes who gave their lives for the freedom of our people and our national independence.”

I would always remember the grim figures from '56—the cost for what amounted to five days of freedom—made vivid to me by the
Life
magazine article, of long ago. More than 2,500 revolutionaries dead. More than 26,000 arrested, most of them convicted. Over 500 death sentences, while the majority of the rest got sentences of at least five years. Many of those executed and imprisoned being young men and women.

Gyöngyi looks at me. “Here is where we come to remember Kati.”

We stand quietly. I close my eyes, recalling the image of Kati in my mother's family photo. A white dress with a flowery pattern. Hair pulled back with barrettes. Striking aristocratic cheekbones. A beautiful young woman with promise written all over her face.

I reach in my purse for a tissue. My finger touches the edge of Kati's prison photo. It is not the time or place, but I know now I will destroy the memento. Let the past—at least the dark past connected to her too short life and tragic death—end. Except…

“Gyöngyi.” I blot my eyes. “I don't want to ask this but I have to.” I wait until she looks over. “The speculation about Kati being a collaborator. I think it's been established that it can't be true, but my mother, she told Lilla there was unfinished business. That she had suspicions she needed to put to rest—” My words fade.

The stems of the nosegay are wrapped in paper, fixed with a rubber band. Gyöngyi untangles the fastener. “Here,” she says handing me the creased paper. “From Anikó.”

The paper is thick but pliable. I pull it taut. The printing is Hungarian. I hold it out to Gyöngyi, look at her questioningly.

“A village on the Hungarian border,” she says. “Below that, a person's name.”

“What does it mean?” Even as I ask the question, I hear the vague voice of my mother, just returned from her second visit home, on the eve of her death. She is describing going to the countryside, a farmer's son.

“It is the special something that Anikó wanted you to know.”

I feel uneasy.

“After the revolt,” she continues, “when Anikó returned as scrub woman in the Headquarters Building, one day she was in the basement. There she saw the janitor, a friend, tossing files into the furnace. It was a miracle, or fate, or perhaps Kati's spirit guiding the way. Anikó checked hurriedly through the stack. Kati's folder was there. Her previous inspection of it was interrupted, remember? Now she looks more closely. Inside was the charge:
Conspiracy to subvert the people's democratic state
.”

I frown. “Attila said Kati was arrested for teaching Hungarian history in the home.”

Gyöngyi nods. “Layman's translation.

“Anikó went on to read personal notes made by the AVO commandant. In them, he wrote Kati was turned in by an eleven-year-old female student. An interesting coincidence perhaps, as the girl's parents were under watch because of their association with certain Petőfi Circle members.

“According to the commandant's note,” Gyöngyi continues, “the questioning of this student, Kati's accuser, was assigned to a female interrogator.”

“Interrogator? The AVO bullied a child, wanted her to squeal on her parents?”

Gyöngyi shrugs. “This kind of thing it happened. But instead—and this is very interesting—the student turned the tables, made an accusation against her teacher.”

“Kati. A
false
accusation.”

“Yes. Even the commandant saw through this. He made a note saying he was quite certain the student was lying to deflect attention from her parents.”

I shake my head. “And on this flimsy accusation, the AVO arrests Kati? She dies? Her family suffers not knowing her whereabouts. Her reputation—the family's—is forever soiled. This clears the Katona name, doesn't it?”

Gyöngyi allows a small sad smile.

Ironically, the covey of girls I had observed earlier has joined us at the
cenotaph
. They are keeping a respectful distance, but Gyöngyi clearly is no longer comfortable. We turn and she links her arm in mine, leading us away from the memorial. Her other hand holds the flowers clutched to her shoulder bag.

Stem of diamond, branch of gold, twig of silver…the proof is out. The kingdom—the Katona family—is released from the spell.

Almost.

“What happened to the girl?” I ask when we have cleared the crowds.

Gyöngyi shrugs. “The interrogator questioned her thoroughly, but the child showed unusual strength. Never wavered from her accusation, even embellishing it. According to the girl in this supposed secret class, which our family will vouch never existed, Miss Katona instructed her students that democracy is better than Communism. That one day, Communism in Hungary will be no more, and there will be plentiful food and material goods—not just for party members but for everyone. And that everyone will be free to practice religion just like her sister, who is married to a minister, in America.”

My voice is incredulous. “A child brought this up?” I take a breath. “Anything else?”

“The commandant wrote simply, ‘Will pursue.'”

“And Kati was arrested.”

“Yes. The girl's parents were eventually arrested as well, following the uprising. Apparently the mother was
convinced
—” Gyöngyi's wry tone makes no bones about what this means. “—to enlighten her interrogator as to what happened to the child, who by then was missing. Sent out with a courier, according to the file notes.”

A wave of tourists conversing in German comes toward us, parts, passing us on both sides.

“Is that it? That was the extent of her file? What about Kati's side of the story?”

“Apparently this was not important enough, or perhaps desirable, to keep in the record,” Gyöngyi explains. “There was an entry concerning the farmer who acted as guide, escorting the child, along with a group of fleeing Hungarians, across the border. The AVO pursued this enemy of the people. Executed him.

“Anikó did not save the papers from incineration, but two things got locked away in her memory—the names of the village and the farmer who helped the girl. Your mother's visit helped to unlock the information and Anikó shared it with her. Now, this is what she has also given to you, on the paper.”

I grasp the locket. “The girl. Is it her in here?”

“Anikó would not know this. There was no picture of the child in the file. A student. That is all we know.”

“The student? Her parents? They weren't named in the file?”

“Anikó did not remember.”

This rings false. But the note Anikó has passed on to me is inside my shoulder purse. I pat its leather flap. “The farmer's relatives or someone in the village may be able to tell us.”