Triptych (5 page)

The scent was gone. Mariska was staring. I jumped forward a little, tried again. “S-she came into my room. I was half-awake, dreaming, but I heard what she said. She told me she was coming to see you.”

I did not add that my mother had invited me to join her. Surely the accident—
the killing
—would never have happened if I had gone along. I wanted to tell Auntie Mariska how sorry I was that I didn't, but I did not think I could live with the reproachful look I would see in her eyes—in other peoples' eyes—once the truth was out. It was bad enough having to look in the mirror.

Mariska rotated her mug between the palms of her hands. She seemed disturbed with what she saw, or didn't see, inside the cup.

“
What
was so important that she had to come into the city the day after she returned from her trip to Hungary?” I asked more forcefully than I intended.

She sighed. “Your mother did not come here that day. I am sorry. The policeman who visit me right after—the same one who stopped in again the other day—also thought I could help. But I cannot. You remember it was a Saturday morning? Zsófi and I were invited to a wedding. In Milwaukee.” She looked in the direction of the main part of the store, toward Zsófi. “I close the shop.”

“If she didn't come here, then where did my mother go?”

I removed the heart locket, its etched rose gold surface worn nearly smooth with time.

Mariska was familiar with it. “The detective, he show this to me when he visits.” With her fingernail, she pried it open and stared at the portrait inside. A sepia-toned image of a girl, about eight years old, with dark hair cut in a Dutch-boy bob. It was tiny and Mariska squinted then shook her head. “That strong chin, determined gaze…a child of unusual character, I am thinking. But again, just like I tell to him, I am very sorry.” Taking my hand, opening my palm, she folded the locket inside. “I do not know this little girl.

“There is something I must give you.” She stood, smiling down at me. “It is as if meant to be. Just last night, the detective's latest visit it stirred up a dream. I remember a box of things we pack up when we shift the store around, soon after your mother's passing. Today I was going to telephone. But like I say, perfect coincidence. You are here.”

Disappearing into the main part of the store, she was back again within moments. At the long table, she ceremoniously unfurled a large rectangle of taupe-colored linen, smoothing it on the table's surface. “Your mother she was making this specially for you. A surprise. She worked on it here in the months before her death.”

While I was too busy with friends
.

I gaped at the piece, tears welling up. A collage of three scenes from the
Twelve Dancing Princesses
. She
knew
me. At least she knew me when I was a little girl.

I blinked, realizing that I'd seen only what I wanted to see. The embroidered work played off a general sense of the story, but this was a completely unique rendering. The illustrations in my childhood storybook resembled lush pastel Rembrandt paintings. My mother's triptych interpretation was bold, more primitive Gauguin. The standout difference was in the number of princesses. My mother's rendering showcased just two.

Even without the other ten sisters, the triptych represented a great deal of work, and I admired her creativity. She'd taken the bones of the traditional story, simplified it into three acts and whittled down the cast. But why these scenes?

I observed them more closely.

The first panel was of the princesses' secret passageway. In my book, the twelve sisters, in elegant royal party dresses, descended a staircase, transcending three floors. In the top corner, the smallest princess, Elise, stood near a draped hidden doorway in their castle bedroom. Ahead of her, the eleven older siblings raced down the stairs, past elegant pillars, to a doorway on the ground floor. Beyond was the path to the enchanted forest.

My mother's princess duo also posed before a doorway nearly hidden by thick drapes. The doorway was at the top of the piece, but centered. The two princesses stood slightly apart, arms extended, holding hands and wearing traditional Hungarian costume—red boots, flaring ethnic skirts, puff-sleeved blouses, vests and crowns of flowers. Before them, a grand staircase spoked off, like two arms, forming separate grand stairways. At the bottom, the left staircase seeped off the fabric's edge into blankness; the other—like in my book—ended at a doorway in the lower right.

In panel two, a prince rowed a princess across the lake. Again, my mother had followed the standard storyline. But in keeping with her pared-down rendition, instead of a fleet there was one boat only. Elise's. Its prow was lifted up out of the water because unbeknownst to the boat's occupants, someone invisible was seated in the back. In my version, it would be the gardener boy wearing his magical flower.

The boat glided toward the twilight kingdom where princesses danced in the arms of handsome princes until their shoes—or in this princess' case, boots—wore out. The enchanted fortress in my book was a dark presence, but rather than lifeless and foreboding as my mother had rendered hers, strings of lights draped the turrets. Tall windows were ablaze, the reflected light illuminating the specter of bejeweled trees that dotted the castle's grounds. My mother's twilight palace was chunky, turretless, an all-black square. Why was her vision of it so ugly, so barren? Was it unimportant to her? Or, had she felt rushed to finish it? Run out of time?

That would explain the third panel, a scene of the gardener offering Elise a bouquet. At least in my book it would be Elise, but this was my mother's rendition. Only red boots had been completed. The figure wearing them was unfinished. Like her love for me. Interrupted. Threads left dangling.

Mariska waited with an expectant look.

“It's beautiful. She remembered,” I said at last. “It was my favorite fairy tale. I read it over and over as a child. But I never thought to tell her—” My voice caught. “I loved her stories the best.”

I felt Auntie Mariska's warmth as her lips brushed my cheek. “Now her stories are your stories.”

And one of them is without an ending.

***

Budapest, 22 October 1956

Outside on the stoop of the apartment building, Évike shivered. It was late afternoon. In the dark corner where she waited, the freezing dampness penetrated her threadbare jacket. Her sodden skirt clung to her backside like a cold soggy bathing suit. Her teeth chattered. Where was Mother? Why didn't she answer the buzzer? Deák téri School was a short walk, but Mother tried always to be home when she arrived, to know she has made it safely.
I am here, Mother. I do not feel safe. Where are you?

In the director's office, Évike's thoughts had raced. Gombóc wanted her to spill something incriminating about the Petőfi Circle…its members…her mother, but Évike was no rat. What if she could throw
Gombóc a different juicy bone?
An easy target? A guaranteed notch in the major's oversized AVO belt?

It had happened so fast. The false traitor's name and offense spilled freely from Évike's lips, and it was over.

“This is between us,” Gombóc had warned before she left. “Or—one hundred percent sure—we will find a reason to come for your mother.”

Now, standing on the dank concrete stoop, Évike trembled again.

“Hello
édes gyermekem
, sweet child. What are you doing out here in the dark?” The unexpected voice—a woman's—startled Évike. The woman stepped closer. “Why, you are shivering.”

It was a neighbor. Married, childless, a few years older than her mother. Évike had chatted with her a number of times, briefly.
One in ten of all Hungarians are secret AVO informers
, her mother had warned. She drew a blank on the name.

Évike retreated deeper into the shadowy gloom. Conscious of her soiled skirt, she quivered with cold and shame, teeth chattering uncontrollably.

The woman hesitated as if gathering her thoughts. “Ah, your dear mother must be delayed somewhere. We know she would not forget…” Her voice trailed off. Then, brightly, “Well what are we doing still standing out here?” She inserted her key into the door. “Come, let's go inside.”

The small dimly lit vestibule reeked of mildew, but once the door was closed the odor from her urine-soaked clothing was noticeable. The woman turned to Évike. She looked away, but too late. She'd glimpsed the woman's expression. Not the look of revulsion she'd expected, but features soft with compassion.

“
Szegény lány
, poor girl.”

Évike was numb from all she had been through that day. The tenderness in the woman's voice, her gesture as she reached around and gathered her close, penetrated like the warmth of the sun. The woman was tall, lean but sturdy. Évike pressed her head against the woman's slight bosom and felt safe in the tender embrace, calmed by the rhythmic beating of her heart.

The woman's palm was gentle, her words a quiet unintelligible murmuring, as she stroked Évike's head, lightly brushed her cheek. Évike had been holding herself stiff for so long her limbs ached. She gave in to the comfort, surrendered to the woman's kindness. It was in this moment that the low sounds became intelligible.

“Poor darling. These dark times. Just a child…What has happened to you? What has filled you with such fear?” the woman was saying.

Now the emotion she had so willfully denied to Gombóc burst forth. Hot tears flowed down her icy cheeks. Mucus dribbled from her nose. She sniffled, and the woman began dabbing her face with a handkerchief.

Évike looked up into worried dark eyes and a concerned smile, and did her best to smile back.

“Come, my darling. I will walk you to your doorstep.”

Arms locked, they crossed the stark interior courtyard, climbed cement stairs to the second floor, arrived at the beat-up door. A note greeted them.

Édes lányom, sweet daughter, I am at
Dóra
's. Come over, okay?

Évike's shoulders caved. She needed to change her skirt first.

The neighbor's dark complexion seemed to blacken. “How did she expect you to get in from the street? Does she think you are a ghost? You float through locked doors?”

At the harsh tone of the woman's voice, Évike looked up anxiously. The woman's voice softened. “She is caught up with things, isn't she? I have noticed this.”

The woman's fingers ruffled her dark coarse hair and she spoke in a faraway voice. “My husband should like to go to America. ‘Stay here,' he says, ‘try to make change, go to prison, maybe die. Leave, be free. In America it is good; it will always be good. Here it was always shit; there will always be shit.'”

Évike stared, her eyes wide. The woman noticing, laughed. “My husband has a way with words, don't you think?”

She held Évike's hand as they walked the short distance to the apartment next door. “I will leave you now,” the neighbor whispered. Using the back of her hand, she lightly smoothed Évike's hair away from her face. “You are very strong. You will be fine.”

***

Évike knocked. From the other side of the door came the clacking sounds of a typewriter. She waited, rapped again. When the tapping continued, she tested the knob. It turned. She entered Dóra's apartment.

Dóra and her mother, consumed in conversation and their respective activities, did not notice her as she stood near the entrance.

Dóra sat at the typewriter, her back to the door. Her long, untamed, fire-red hair swept back and forth with the movement of her head, turning from the keyboard to a document propped on a stand beside the machine. Her mother was at the nearby dining table, hunched over a Hungarian tricolor, the flag's horizontal bands—red, white, green—splayed across the table's surface. The scissors she held opened and closed with a crunching, biting noise, snipping out a circular section—the hammer and sickle—at the cloth's center.

“Franciska, you and I, we're Communists,” Dóra was saying, “Russia is our friend. If we leave her friendship there is the risk the facists will take over again.”

“Yes,” her mother said, walking over from the table to join her friend. “And everyone was in agreement.” She pointed with the scissors to the paper on the stand. “Here. Point Number Three. That there be Hungarian-Soviet friendship—”

“—
but
that Soviet troops be withdrawn from the country,” Dóra finished for her.

Her mother nodded. “Yes. What right do they have to be here? We have debated this. They must go.” She slapped the flat of the closed scissor blades against her palm. “It will work out. We merely want a few changes, and we have identified them. Now we need to be heard.”

The tapping sounds resumed. Her mother, returning to the table, leaned over the flag again, scissors poised.

“Hello, Mother. Dóra,” Évike said, venturing into the open living area, careful to keep a safe distance, sensitive to the smell of her skirt.

Her mother looked in her direction, frowned. “
Drágám
, darling, you do not look so good. What is the matter?”

Before Évike could answer, Dóra's one-year-old daughter, Dórika who had been sleeping in the adjoining room let out a shriek. Dóra scrambled to her feet.

Head tilted to one side, she regarded Évike. “You look like a warrior just back from battle. Rough day at school?” she observed, ignorant to the bitter truth of her words. Before Évike could answer, the baby shrieked again. “Excuse me,
my
warrior princess beckons. Lucky for breast milk, otherwise she'd be going hungry like the rest of us.”

“I'll take over cutting the stencil,” Évike's mother said, assuming Dóra's seat.

Dóra glanced back over her shoulder saying, “Yes, please, hurry, finish Franciska. At the university they are waiting…” and disappeared into the adjoining room.