Trouble in Transylvania (20 page)

She nodded. “Romanian animals. They not care about the baths. They Ceauşescu men. Securitate. I grow up in Arcata. We never need police here.”

“You don’t think that Gladys killed Dr. Pustulescu?”

“Why Gladys kill Dr. Pustulescu?”

“Somebody killed him.”

“No, no, it was accident.” Her face assumed a sorrowful expression. “Sorry to say, these baths getting old, no tourists, no money to make better. People no have money come here. Understand?”

“But, Ilona, the voltage meter wasn’t malfunctioning, according to the police. Is there a possibility the doctor wasn’t electrocuted at all? I know that he got an Ionvital shot every day. Who would have given him that shot? Maybe something was in it.”

“Accident, accident only,” she said serenely. “Life is many accident, yes?”

“Don’t you think it was a coincidence that it was Dr. Pustulescu who—1) wasn’t a patient and 2) just happened to be showing Gladys how the galvanic bath worked and 3) had just quarreled with Dr. Gabor—who happened to be the one to have the ‘accident’?”

But this was all too much for Ilona. She gave me a tender pat on the shoulder and said, “I go now other lady.”

When she returned, I decided to ask her something else. “If you grew up here in Arcata, Ilona, you must know the story of that beautiful house up behind the hotel. The brown and blue one with the gate and the little gate across from it that doesn’t lead anywhere.”

“Yes! I know! It is the house of long-ago family. Their name was Lazsló. He was doctor from Tîrgu Mureş. You see their names on house. György and Erzsébet. I love that house.”

“Is it empty now?”

“Yes. Too big for most people. Someday maybe museum, I hope.”

“What about the gate across the street?”

“The Lazslós have five children, but one die. A young girl. Her mother puts grave there, and garden.”

“It has a feeling about it.”

“Yes! I know. Now you and friend get in nice warm water.”

“Ask her more about Dr. Pustulescu’s amorous activities,” I directed Eva when the two of us were floating in the silky mineral baths, and Ilona sat on a bench beaming at us with towels in her hands.

After a few minutes of rapid Hungarian, they were in gales of laughter.

“What is it? What is Ilona saying?”

“Unbelievable,” said Eva. “The old man had a wife—a young wife—and a mistress in Bucharest. He even had a mistress here in Arcata. But still he wasn’t satisfied. He was always trying to make love to the women in the clinic. Every time he came to the treatment center in Arcata he would follow the women around, trying to make love to them.”

“Ask her what women found attractive about him?”

Ilona snorted. “His money!” she said in English. “Doctor very rich man from Ionvital. He can give food, drink, perfume, clothes to women. Women have nothing, how they say no?”

“Ask her about the wife and mistress in Bucharest. Did they ever come here? Could they have possibly killed him, or arranged to have him killed?”

Eva asked her and then told me, “She says they only saw the young wife once. She came and was very critical of everything. But that was over a year ago. She hasn’t been back since.”

“And what about this mistress in Arcata? How do they know he had a mistress here, who was she?”

Ilona shrugged. “We don’t know, we only guess. Someone in a high position.”

I thought of Margit, with her nervous laugh and habit of rushing away whenever she saw me. Someone with a guilty conscience if I ever saw one. Had she been having an affair with Pustulescu? Had her husband found out about it and decided to kill Pustulescu? Had the husband plotted the murder or had Margit?

It could have been a crime of passion, but it was more likely to have been one of money. Dr. Pustulescu’s wife probably had the most to gain from his death. She would have been left a rich widow. How could I find out that information? Perhaps Nadia could help.

But first it seemed worthwhile to interview Margit.

“Margit seems kind of unstable to me,” I said to Eva, after we’d dressed and were back outside in the corridor. “At first I thought she was having an affair with Dr. Gabor, but then I decided not.”

“Is he married?”

“He’s a widower.”

“Oh, like you?” Eva had heard the rumor, but obviously she didn’t believe it. She laughed. “You probably haven’t ever even been with a man.”

“Please don’t cast aspersions on my deceased husband. André may not have been a man in the fullest sense of the word, but he served his purpose.”

We went upstairs to Dr. Gabor’s office, where we found Margit filing. “Can I … help you?”

Eva took over in Hungarian, much to Margit’s surprise. She jumped up from behind the doctor’s desk and grabbed her stethoscope. I thought she was going to make one of her fast escapes, so I reached out a hand to stop her. Her arm was wiry but emaciated, and the skin had a dry electric feel.

I burst out, “We need to know about Dr. Pustulescu.”

Eva repeated it in Hungarian, and listened to Margit’s shrugging answer.

“She says she doesn’t know anything. She never had anything to do with him.”

“That’s impossible. Margit works with Dr. Gabor and together they work with all the foreign patients getting Ionvital treatment. Of anyone at the clinic she must know more about what was going on around here than she’s saying. We’ll shock her. Tell her we know that she was having an affair with the old guy.” Eva looked dubious but spoke anyway.

Margit looked at me with furious and hurt eyes. “Lying!” she said in English, followed by a whole torrent of Hungarian, none of it flattering to judge by Eva’s pained expression.

At this juncture Dr. Gabor appeared, and Margit took the opportunity to rush past him into the corridor.

“That girl,” he said. “What’s the hurry? I am always asking her. Hallo, Mrs. Really, you have a friend?”

I introduced him to Eva. “A friend from Budapest. We’ve just heard some troubling things about Dr. Pustulescu,” I began.

“But you are Hungarian,” Gabor said to Eva. “That is wonderful. You come from Budapest! Budapest, the most magical city in the world! Tell me, how you find this country?”

Eva stammered, “I like it very much.”

“No, it is a terrible country,” Dr. Gabor laughed. “How much suffering we go through, you can not imagine. But we do not give up. We are working for freedom, someday to be not united back with Hungary, but to be on equal terms. Free borders, Magyar literature taught in the schools, a reconnection with Central Europe, which is our true home…” He launched into Hungarian and Eva responded eagerly. I thought I heard the words Milan Kundera.

I had a suspicion that Margit knew more than she pretended about a number of things. It was time to see where she went when she vanished from Gabor’s office.

Aside from my strenuous treatments the day before I had not really investigated the full extent of the clinic’s resources. I started right outside Gabor’s office, asking everyone in white I met if they had seen Margit. No, no. No Margit. The bath attendants bustled past me with arms full of towels and with baskets of plastic sandals. Some accompanied elderly patients, some slid by me with blank looks, uncomprehending. Then a nurse pointed down a corridor where I hadn’t been yet, and I pushed through double doors into a steamy realm of whirlpools and saunas.

“Margit?” I kept asking, and someone pointed me on again. The atmosphere here was as close and muggy as a hothouse. The corridor had a greenish hue, and patients staggered past, all face and ghostly body, like lilies or orchids, white with invisible stems. The water here didn’t drip but hissed, like serpents roiling at the bottom of a ravine.

I heard the sound of retching and then bitter crying from behind a ladies’ restroom door, and without thinking I went in.

Someone was in one of the stalls, throwing up into the toilet. I had heard that sound in our family bathroom back when Maureen was giving up on the idea of being a nun.

When she came out, Margit’s face was pallid and her lipstick was smeared and garish. The superficial impression of vivacity she usually gave was gone and she looked older, and more tired.

“You’re pregnant,” I said in English, and saw by her expression that she understood me. “Aren’t you? Is it Pustulescu’s child?”

“Why do you care?” she said bitterly, and her English was clear and unhesitating, as good as Gabor’s or better. “You’re an American. You don’t have to live here. The old man is dead and no one misses him. Why do you keep asking questions?”

“Because of Gladys,” I said, but at the moment I didn’t quite convince even myself. “Can I do anything to help?”

Margit steadied herself against the sink, facing the mirror. “Help?”

“Why would you sleep with him, Margit?”

“He would have made me lose my job. That was the first reason. Afterwards he said he would tell Gabor. I knew Gabor would despise me if he found out. I was trapped.”

“How long did it go on?” I asked.

“Five years, six years. My husband never knew. He would say, Why can’t we have children, Margit? But when I became pregnant it might have been the doctor’s. I had four abortions in two years; the doctor always arranged for them in Bucharest.

“After that I was more careful; I was able to get birth control after the revolution. I kept thinking, He must die soon. Now he is dead, and I am glad he is dead, but I am pregnant again, and must abort again. I don’t want anyone to know. They knew in the clinic about Pustulescu, that I was his mistress. They hate me, everyone except Nadia. Nadia is a kind woman. The others hate me. I hate myself.” Margit stared into the mirror. Perspiration had come out on her forehead.

“Did you hate Pustulescu enough to kill him?”

“I hated him more than that. But I didn’t kill him. He had a heart attack, that’s all.”

“Who gave him his Ionvital shot every day? Did Gabor? Did you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that maybe it wasn’t a heart attack, either spontaneous or the result of a shock from a problem with the voltage meter. Maybe Pustulescu’s death had nothing to do with electricity. It would have been easy enough to substitute something for the Ionvital, something poisonous.”

“No one gave the doctor his shot besides himself. He was like his hero Ceauşescu. He trusted no one.”

But Margit’s eyes didn’t meet mine. Suddenly she bolted again for the toilet stall, though she had nothing left to vomit, except bile.

Back in Gabor’s office I found that he and Eva had been joined by the tenacious editor of
The Washtenaw Weekly Gleaner.

“Hi Cass! I heard you talking about Dr. Gabor being a real Magyar patriot and I decided to get the background for my piece straight from the horse’s mouth. No more dull history. Real stories from real people.” Archie turned on his tape recorder. “I’ll start right in, Doctor. For most American readers, all the countries behind the old Iron Curtain seem pretty much the same. Can you tell me some differences?”

Gabor laughed. “What a big question, Mr. Snapp! I must refer you to Mrs. Kálvin about Hungary, which as you know has already in the last ten years shown many good changes in freedom and economy. In Poland of course you have the strong trade unions, you have since long time Solidarnosć and Lech Walesa. In the old Deutsche Demokratische Republik, East Germany, there was a coalition of Greens and other liberalizing tendencies—now they are together with the West and everyone is suffering. And then the Czechs! The Czech Republic (not the Slovaks, they are like Romanians, very corrupt and backward) is a country I admire very much. They had a very strong dissident movement for years before their revolution. Not like Romania, where most intellectuals and writers collaborated with the government. In Czechoslovakia they went to jail or took hard manual labor, like Havel in the brewery. There the intellectuals were part of the masses. Here in Romania there was almost no samizdat movement. Typewriters had to be turned in. We did not communicate among ourselves for fear of speaking to an informer.”

“So, Dr. Gabor, you’re saying that Romania had no opposition movement?”

“Hah! It had no opposition movement then. It has almost no opposition movement now. Because Romanians are used since Turkish times to bow down their necks to rulers. Only in Transylvania did the Magyars organize. But in secret.”

“But Ceauşescu’s regime didn’t just fade away, it was overthrown,” said Archie. “It was the bloodiest of all the uprisings.”

“Yes, we can be proud we were the only Eastern European country to overthrow such a tyrant. But we are also the only country, except Bulgaria and then later Lithuania, to have voted in another Communist government. The National Salvation Front, coming into existence in the hours after Ceausescu tried to flee the country, is the Romanian Communist Party. It has another name, but the same faces. They pursue many exact same policies, including opposition to Magyar autonomy in Transylvania.”

“Romania’s leaders always blame Hungary when there is any violence between Romanians and Hungarians,” Eva interjected.

“Exactly,” said Gabor. “But it is always Romanian nationalists who start the violence. There is a group now called
Vatra Româneascǎ,
something like Romanian Hearth, very right-wing, with many members now from Securitate, Ceausescu’s old secret police. In 1990, in Tîrgu Mureş, 2,000 Romanian fascists attacked a peaceful demonstration of Hungarians.”

Eva said, “I remember that. Many thousands of us gathered in Budapest in solidarity with the Hungarians in Tîrgu Mureş.”

“What do you think, Cassandra?” Archie asked me.

“What?”

“About this whole question of nationalism. Isn’t it dangerous to revive these sentiments?”

Truth to tell, I had not been paying full attention. I was still preoccupied with Margit. Was it really possible that Gabor knew nothing of what Margit had gone through? Was he trying to protect her? Was he using her to protect himself? Or had the two conspired to kill Pustulescu together? What had Pustulescu and Gabor been quarreling about? If they’d been arguing in Gabor’s bugged office the police would have overheard them. Why didn’t they arrest Gabor then? Why were they so fixated on Gladys?