Adam and Evelyn (10 page)

“I still have your handkerchief.”

“Keep it. As a memento.”

“You couldn’t use it anyway now.” She wiped her hands on it. “You’ll get it back laundered and ironed and blue checked, word of honor.”

“Registered mail from Tokyo.”

“We’ll make a ceremony of it. On top of Fuji. I’ll pay for your flight.”

Adam had folded the map so small that only two adjoining squares were left.

They drove across the Chain Bridge. Katja had taken the turtle out of its box. “What we’d love to do right now is go on one of those boat rides, right, Elfi?”

A Wartburg passed them and honked.

“I asked them for the time while you were curled up in the trunk.”

“Follow them.”

“You think they’re going to the same place?”

“Anybody driving that fast knows what they’re doing.”

On the other side of the bridge they followed them into the tunnel.

“It’d be helpful if you kept an eye on the map.”

“He’s just saying that out of jealousy, Elfi,” Katja said, knelt backward in her seat, and let the turtle slide from the palm of her hand into the box. Once they were out of the tunnel Adam gave her the map and tapped at it with his index finger.

“Somewhere here. I drew a circle around it, that’s where we need to go.”

“They’re going to have to turn right at some point, in fact just up ahead.”

“But they’re not.”

“Turn right, the next right.”

Ten minutes later they left the major artery and started up into the hills. The houses here had large front gardens. Behind the trees and bushes you could see villas, alternating with new structures and multifamily homes. The street was lined with parked Trabants and Wartburgs.

“Guess who’s puttering along behind us?” Adam said. “Our speedster.”

The trees along Szarvas Gábor út stood so close together that Katja didn’t see the steeple on their left until they had stopped right in front of it. The church’s garden was teeming with people. It was on a steep slope, but farther up were large tents.

Katja pulled out her last bar of Kinderschokolade, unwrapped it, and broke it in half.

“So this is the very rainy day?” Adam asked, and put his half in his mouth. The family in the Wartburg behind them was also hesitant about getting out.

“Wait,” Adam said, taking hold of Katja’s arm, although she had already opened the door. “I’ll take a look around first.” The posts at the foot of the stairway looked like chess figures. A long table had been set up in the garden, with large pots and laundry baskets full of bread. Adam climbed up to the church.

“Hello, I’m looking for Herr Kozma—” But the woman who had been coming toward him ran right by him and down the steps into the garden, where she joined the rapidly growing line waiting for food to be dished out.

Adam stepped into the church, a bright cruciform space. Except for a ciborium in gingerbread style, with a miniature Jesus on the cross, it was almost bare of ornamentation.

“We got your address from the embassy,” Adam said to a woman who looked like a gatekeeper and was sitting at a little table to the left of the entrance. She pointed to a door, which led him down a hallway lined with bookcases. You could smell food even in here.

“And you’re looking for …?” a short balding man asked.

“I’m looking for Herr Kozma.”

“That’s me.”

“Is it possible to spend the night here?”

“If you like.”

“Not me. But I have someone in the car who would like to. She swam the Danube—”

“Let her come,” Kozma said.

At that moment the man from the other Wartburg entered, two license plates in his hand.

“There are five of us,” he said, looking back and forth between Kozma and Adam.

“Please come in,” Kozma said.

“May I take a look around?” Adam asked.

“Please do,” Kozma said. His hand was resting on the end of a pew, his thumb rubbing along its carvings—a cross encircled by an omega.

Children were sitting on the steps leading down to the garden. Two older girls were playing badminton. People who hadn’t gone to get what was being offered to eat stood clustered in little groups. Higher up the slope a woman in a tracksuit was hanging out wash.

As Adam was leaving, the whole Wartburg family was coming toward him—the parents with suitcases, the children with small camping bags on their backs and stuffed animals in their hands.

“Good luck,” Adam said, but apparently they didn’t notice him at all. The woman just glanced briefly over her shoulder, as if afraid someone was following her.

“I think it’s on the up-and-up,” Adam said. “They have tents, big tents, they look new.”

Adam opened the trunk. He took out the Fichtelberg tent and the two sacks with whatever things of hers hadn’t been stored in the backpack.

Two men approached them in the church vestibule. They were walking across the tiles barefoot, they stared at Katja and went on outside. Kozma was nowhere in sight.

“Let’s hope I don’t end up with them,” Katja whispered. “This place smells like a school camp.”

“Well then, take care,” Adam said. “You’ve got my address.”

“Don’t you want to spend the night here and then head out tomorrow morning?” Adam shook his head. They extended hands. Then Katja threw herself around his neck. She said something, but so softly that he couldn’t understand her.

Adam had already set the turtle’s box on the passenger seat and started the engine when he noticed the Rubik’s Cube.

As he was climbing the stairs, Katja appeared up top. “Adam,” she called, “Adam!” and ran, tent and bags pressed to her like stolen goods, down the steps to him.

ADAM CROSSED
the intersection and pulled to a stop. “Can you read it? What’s it say?”

Katja bent forward. In her left hand she was holding the Budapest map that Adam had folded up, in her right the cube, on her lap lay the road map of Hungary.

“Somehow I can’t find this road, it’s not on here. Turn around,” she said. “We made a wrong turn somewhere. Just turn around and drive back to those traffic signs.”

“ ‘Somehow,’ ‘somewhere,’ ” Adam said, opening the back door and hauling out one of the two twenty-liter jerricans. He unscrewed the gas-tank cap and fed the funnel in. He had to lift the can almost to his chest, the first slosh spilled.

“Can I help?” Katja called.

“Stay put,” Adam managed to gasp, his face distorted with exertion. His upper body moved in rhythm with the can’s glug-glugging and whenever a rapid boom-boom-boom echoed inside the can. In time, however, these hollow thuds grew softer, until the gasoline was flowing almost soundlessly into the funnel and Adam’s face relaxed. Even when only drops were coming out, Adam went on holding the can at vertical. A cricket chirped.

“And?” Adam asked as he got back in the car. His hands gave off the odor of gasoline.

“You can take me back, you know.”

Adam started the engine and made a U-turn.

“It was childish of me,” Katja said. “I don’t know myself why I panicked like that.”

Adam glanced at his watch.

“You can let me out right here, I’ll find my way back.”

“Stop it now.”

“I can’t always be tagging along behind you, hoping you’ll buy me more ice cream.”

“And what if those people there send you away?”

“Then even great big Lake Balaton won’t be much help either.”

“Maybe there’ll be another miracle.”

“Have you got enough money?”

Adam shrugged.

“Can you lend me some? I’ll pay you back, in Westmarks, one to one, as soon as I can.”

“You don’t need to pay me back. I’d rather you tell me where I’m supposed to be going.”

They stopped at an intersection, the car behind them honked.

“Take a right here, we have to circle around to the right, there’s the sign. No money, no paper, no nothing—up the creek.”

“I don’t have all that much, just the forints they allow—and you know how far that goes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We’re going to drive to Lake Balaton now, and tomorrow we’ll see. We know some people there. You won’t starve. You don’t need to worry, not on that account.”

“I don’t need much.”

“I’ve got another two hundred Westmarks. Once we’ve tanked up and take off for home, you get whatever is left.”

“Just let me out here somewhere, Adam. You don’t need to be afraid I’ll make any trouble for you. Your wife won’t so much as see my face, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Now stop it, once and for all! What’s left to eat?”

“
Hörnchen
and jam and a jar of mustard.”

“Well, fork it over!”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Sure you are,” Adam said. “You need to eat something, by way of precaution.”

They left the city just as the sun vanished below the horizon.

Around eleven they pulled in at the campground at Badacsony. The barrier was down, no gatekeeper in sight.

“Whoa, look at those prices!” Katja exclaimed. “They want thirty marks a night.”

“West German marks,” Adam said, nodding in the direction of a little group just returning to their tents. “They’re the ones driving prices up.”

“I’ll just walk in,” Katja said. “We’ll meet again then tomorrow, okay?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Or the day after?”

“Let’s go a little farther, we’ll find something yet.”

“Aren’t you going to go meet your wife?”

“It’s too late now.”

“What do you mean too late?”

Adam got back into the car. “So what’s up? Do you want to come along or don’t you?”

Katja hesitated. “Do you know your way around here?”

“Come on.”

They drove on, until Adam stopped and made a careful turn off the road.

“So have a look,” he said and turned on his brights, revealing a meadow and the water. “Now that looks like it’s been made for us.” He turned the headlights off and opened the door. “How about a swim? Or not your kind of thing?”

“Sure, of course,” Katja said. “It’s just so dark here.”

“Not a soul, just crickets.”

“Let me get used to the idea first.”

Adam at once began blowing up an air mattress. Katja unrolled the tent and put the poles together by light from the car interior. Adam helped her set it up. “Listen, frogs,” he said.

When they were finished he undressed and walked out into the water.

“Don’t you want to come in? The water’s fine, not too cold, not too warm.”

It got deeper only gradually. “Katja? Are you there?” When he got no answer, he glided into the water and swam off. He tried to move as soundlessly as possible. Everything else sounded far away. The lake was circled with light. It was dark only directly behind him.

“Now that’s what I call a puddle! Now I smell like water instead of gasoline,” he said. Katja handed him a towel. Adam walked around to the other side of the car, dried himself off, and fetched fresh clothes from his suitcase. “Shall we go find a beer somewhere?”

“Not for me.”

“I’ll sleep in the car.”

“Are you still going out somewhere?”

“No,” he said. “Have you taken care of Elfi?”

“I gave her a little softened-up bread.”

“Anything wrong?”

“Good night,” Katja said, disappeared into the tent, and pulled the zipper shut.

“HELLO, GOOD MORNING.”
Katja was holding two tent pegs, banged them together, and scraped off the rest of the dirt clinging to them. She was wearing the Brazilian T-shirt over her bikini. “We need to get out of here.”

Adam sat up. Several families had already spread towels and blankets in the general area, there was an odor of suntan lotion in the air.

“The Young Pioneer loves and protects nature,” Adam said. “Did I ever dream a lot of crap.” He rubbed his face with both hands, as if washing it.

“How late is it?”

“You’re the one with the watch.”

“Let’s at least take a swim,” Adam said after they had loaded everything into the car.

“You’re a gutsy guy.” Katja pulled off her T-shirt. Some kids were playing on the shore.

“Ugh, slimy!” Katja yelled and backpedaled.

“Elephant poop, genuine Hungarian elephant poop. You have to wade through it, if you want to get to the West, all the way to the far shore,” he said in a low voice.

“That’s not the West over there!”

“I’ll carry you through the elephant poop and collect the bounty money.”

“Bounty money?”

“Well, what you’ve cost the state so far, which is what they’ve saved on you over there.”

“How much does it come to?”

“Twenty thousand, maybe?”

“That’s all?”

“Or fifty. I’ll buy fabric with it. Nothing but the finest. Come on, let’s go.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Once you’re in—”

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean can’t? You having your period?”

“Lower your voice.”

“Well then, what is it?”

“I’ve told you already. I just can’t.”

Adam waded back to the shore. “Come on,” he said, holding a hand out to her. “Once you start in with that kind of hocus-pocus, you can never shake it off. Come on, hold tight.”

Taking reluctant, tiny steps, Katja entered the water, pulled her hand away and ran back.

“I’ll carry you.”

“No, I’m way too heavy for you.”

“Come on, one arm around my neck, and now alley-oop!” Adam staggered briefly, but then walked sturdily into the water. Katja held tight with both arms.

“Don’t be afraid,” he panted, getting a better grip. “I won’t drop you.”

“Go back, Adam, please, take me back.”

“Nyet,” he said and waded ahead as quickly as he could.

“Please, I’m scared!”

“No need to be. Everything’s fine, everything’s fi-hine.” Adam was almost running when the water reached his trunks. “Think of Fuji or of Elfi—it’ll be a little cold at first.”

Katja screamed but at the same moment flipped onto her stomach and went into a crawl. Adam slipped into the water. Katja swam in a curve around him.

“It’s not so bad, is it?” he shouted and did a few quick strokes. “Everything okay?”