Ascension (8 page)

Esa stood in the kitchen and listened, like a mouse who suspects that an owl is near by. For a long while she heard nothing, and then—faintly, tentatively—came the sound of knuckles on wood, emanating from downstairs. Esa’s brow furrowed. From about eight o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock at night, the main door to the apartment house was left unlocked. So why was someone knocking?

Esa considered going down to see who it was. Three years ago she would not have hesitated, but now things were in a state of upheaval, governments falling like raindrops, some new revolution always threatening the last, and in this time of instability it was hard to know the right thing to do. But surely there could be no harm in answering a knock at the door, could there? she asked herself. Maybe if her husband László were here he would know what to do. But he was one of the lucky ones who still had a job. Most of the others who hadn’t fought in the war were not so fortunate. No, it was a good thing that László Nagy was not at home in the middle of the day.

Well, she decided, we are still living in a civilized country, and in civilized places when a door is knocked upon you answer it. She smoothed her skirts and walked out of the kitchen, into the front room and through the main door. The door opened onto a catwalk that ran along the front and sides of the apartment house, and was exposed to the middle of the building, where there was an open courtyard. Esa walked the length of the catwalk, past two other apartments, to a large curving staircase that led down to the ground floor. She kept a firm hand on the banister as she descended, wary of a fall. The treads of the staircase had been worn dangerously smooth by generations of feet, and it was easy to slip. There had once been an ornate newel post at the foot of the stairs, but in the years following the apartment house’s prime, some irreverent children had sawed it level to the banister so that they could slide down the rail unobstructed.

The apartment house at 7 Viola Street was in one of Budapest’s rougher neighbourhoods, and it stood out like a pine tree in a desert. A three-storey building made of blocked stone, it was built in the early nineteenth century, intended as apartments for the city’s wealthier citizens. Now, a century later, the area was not one that anyone with a lot of money would want to live in, and the larger apartments had been subdivided into smaller ones. Despite the gradual disappearance of many of the building’s more ornate touches, it was still an undeniably fine residence, especially when the unusually reasonable rents were considered.

Esa reached the bottom of the staircase and entered the hallway that led to the front door. There was a row of mail boxes which, before the end of war, had contained letters on a frequent basis. With the chaos that followed the loss of not only the war but much of Hungary’s territory, and the subsequent
governmental uncertainty, the mail had slowed to a mere trickle. It made little difference to Esa, who could neither read nor write, save to sign her own name, which her husband László had taught her to do.

There had once been a thick green carpet covering the floor of the hallway, but it had been removed in the latter stages of the war, exposing a wooden floor, its varnish unmarked. Signs of wear were now beginning to show, a trail of scuffs and water damage leading through the hall from the door to the staircase. Esa, who had never lived in such fine places before she had married László, was shocked to see that people would treat such a beautiful old building so poorly.

Esa braced herself and swung the heavy wooden door open. It gave way noiselessly, its hinges having been recently oiled by the building’s caretaker; this was one of the few jobs he did with any sort of regularity. A rush of cool air chased the opening door, sending a chill down Esa’s spine.

In the doorway leaned a thin, sick, exhausted Salvo Ursari. At first he was not sure whether this woman who stood before him was his aunt Esa or not. She looked like he remembered her, sort of, but it had been five years since he had last seen her, and even then he had only been four years old so he was not completely confident in his memory. There was no way to know if his aunt and uncle even lived in the same place. Salvo had, like any good Rom, correctly remembered the address on account of the street bearing the name of a musical instrument. The house number he had not been so sure about, but as soon as he saw the apartment building at 7 Viola Street, he knew he was where he was supposed to be.

His aunt Esa had been a very beautiful woman when she had defied Romany law and custom by marrying a
gadjo
, his
uncle László. Her mother and father disowned her, as they were obliged by rule to do, and Esa moved to Budapest with her husband. When her parents died shortly before the war, she did not go back for their funerals. Her younger sister, Azira, Salvo’s mother, had ignored her banishment and visited her sister twice in Budapest, once before Salvo was born and the other time when he was four years old. Salvo’s father had accompanied them to Budapest, but he had refused to shake László Nagy’s hand and would not sleep under his roof. Salvo did not know whether his father’s hostility stemmed from personal reasons or if it was an attempt to avoid any possibility of the shame of László and Esa’s relationship attaching itself to the Ursari family.

That mattered little now, though. It had taken Salvo two months to get to his aunt Esa’s house, and he didn’t care if she was an outcast or not. He remembered almost nothing of the journey; he had been in a haze of hunger and grief and fatigue. But he had made it. There had been times when he had thought he would not, but he was here and what would happen now did not matter because, finally, he had reached the end of his travels. Salvo fell to the ground.

His aunt Esa stepped back, startled, one hand on the door. “What do you want?”

Salvo was unable to speak. His mouth moved like that of a fish removed from water, gulping at the air.

“What do you want?” his aunt repeated.

Salvo closed his mouth and, with every ounce of strength he could muster, called up his voice. He received one word for his efforts. “Ursari,” he croaked.

His aunt’s face remained blank for a moment, and then her eyes flashed recognition as she realized who he was. With a
strength far beyond the usual capability of a woman of her size, she scooped Salvo into her arms and carried him upstairs.

Esa Nagy tossed three large sausages into a pot of boiling water. She found sausages to be strangely ironic things. Take the intestine of an animal and stuff it with its own flesh or that of another animal. It was like you were eating a creature that had eaten itself. Still, sausages were cheap, easy to cook, and László couldn’t get enough of them. As hard as he was to please in nearly every other area, if she put a sausage on his plate he was happy.

The winter of 1921 had been an unusually cold one, she reflected, glancing out the window of the kitchen. Or maybe it just seemed that way. After all, didn’t every winter seem colder than the last? That was, Esa decided, the very nature of winter. It had a way of making you think your suffering was new. A good trick, she thought. A very good trick.

The children, Salvo and Leo, were in the front room playing. When Salvo had first arrived, Esa worried that they would not get along. More specifically, she worried that Salvo would treat Leo harshly because of his clubbed foot. She knew how the Roma treated those who were disfigured. She herself remembered how, when she had been a Romany child, she and her playmates had thrown rocks at a man with one eye. She did not wish for Leo to face that from Salvo.

This had not proven to be the case, however. From the very beginning, Salvo had taken to protecting Leo from any special attention that might be accorded him due to his being a cripple. Three years his senior, Salvo acted the part of older brother far better than any real older brother would have been likely to do. He was, as far as Esa was concerned, a blessing upon the Nagy family.

Salvo, for his part, felt that the Nagy family had done him a small miracle by letting him stay for these past two years. He missed his family, sometimes so much he could hardly imagine what it had been like not to miss them, but without Esa and Leo he knew it would be worse. He also enjoyed the
gadje
lifestyle far more than he ever would have imagined. The Nagy apartment was, by Salvo’s standards, a palace, and they ate far better than Salvo had ever eaten in his life. As for Leo, Salvo liked the sickly boy, and seeing as how the child didn’t seem to care who Salvo was or where he had come from, Salvo decided that he didn’t care about Leo’s physical shortcomings. Besides, it wasn’t as if there were a lot of other kids for him to play with. Most
gadje
children wouldn’t play with a Rom, and László had strictly forbidden both Salvo and Leo from consorting with gypsies. So Salvo really had no choice.

Salvo and Leo sat on the floor. Today they were bandits on the run, huddled around a makeshift fire, their voices low, eyes nervously scanning the night for signs of their pursuers. The head bandit, Salvo, told stories to pass the time.

“Sometime in the past, in a place that is not this place, there was a village of
gadje
who could not talk to God. They had lost His voice, and wanted badly to get it back. But it would not come, no matter how they asked for it.

“Then one day they asked, even begged, a Rom who lived on the edge of the village to help them hear Him again. The Rom was suspicious, but he felt badly for them, so he agreed to help. The Rom went and climbed the steeple of their church and asked God to speak to these people again. But there were things this Rom did not know.

“He did not know that God had stopped speaking to these people for a reason. He went silent because the people were wicked. He
went silent because the people were greedy. He went silent because these people were no longer His people. None of God’s opinions were known by the Rom, but maybe the Rom would have agreed with God. After all, it is not often that God is mistaken.

“So the Rom, in his ignorance, asked God to speak again to the gadje. Because God loved the Rom, He granted this request. But He refused to lie to the
gadje
and tell them good things about themselves, which is what they wanted to hear. He told them the truth, which is never what anyone wants to hear. The pain of hearing it caused the village priest to fall down dead where he stood.

“The
gadje
did what
gadje
have always done, which is blame the Rom. They found him in his home and they killed him. But killing a Rom is nothing; it will not stop him. The ghost of the Rom returned to the
gadje
church and went to the top of the steeple and called again to God. God told him that from that day forth, He would no longer speak to the people, not one word. And He spoke no more.”

Esa stood in the doorway. “I have never heard of this story.”

Salvo blushed. He hadn’t known she was listening.

“Is it true?” Leo asked, eyes wide.

Salvo nodded. “It is, or may I be dead.”

“You will not die of this, but that story is not true, and you would be wise to watch where you repeat it.” Esa returned to her kitchen of sausages.

“Maybe now,” Leo said, “God isn’t mad. Maybe you could talk to him.”

Salvo shrugged. “Maybe you could too.”

“Nagys aren’t Roma,” Leo said. “Mother used to be, but she stopped.”

Salvo nodded. She had stopped. And his uncle László was no Rom, that much was obvious. Salvo knew his aunt was right; he
should watch what he said. He shouldn’t make up stories that served no purpose except to aggravate his well-being in this house. Being a Rom had caused him trouble enough already.

The knob on the front door turned and the door swung open. László Nagy drooped into the apartment, shedding his heavy coat and scarf and hat and gloves into a frozen lump on the floor. It was only a ten-minute walk to the glass factory where he worked, but that was long enough for his moustache to have frozen stiff, with two icy rivers extending from his nostrils.

He nodded to Salvo and Leo and crossed through the front room into the kitchen, where he stood by the stove and let its warmth seep into him. Esa kissed him on the cheek and brought him a cup of hot tea. It was too hot to drink, so he set it on the sill of the window to cool. “I’ll burn my mouth if I drink that,” he said.

“Sorry.” Esa took the cup from the window and poured it out. She set another one to steep, wary of its temperature.

László Nagy watched his wife as she tended to whatever was on the stove. When he had first met her, he had thought her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It had not mattered to him that she was Roma; after all, no one can help what they are born into. He had offered her a better life, and she had accepted with little hesitation. She had known as well as he had that if she married him she would be disowned by her family, something he had thought to be a not altogether bad thing.

Since then, though, for some reason he found Esa less compelling than when he had first laid eyes on her. She certainly had not changed that much. No more than he had. To be sure, she was still beautiful. But there was something about her now, something he thought she saw in him that he did not like and for which he felt great guilt. He often wondered what it was she saw. A part of
him knew that there were things inside him that were worth being ashamed of.