The Secret Speech (43 page)

– Word is that they have found the missing AVH officers. They’ve been hiding in the Communist Party headquarters all along.

Karoly’s expression changed. His exhaustion disappeared.

It took an hour to descend the hills and return across the river, approaching Republic Square where the Communist headquarters were located. There was gunfire and smoke. The headquarters was under siege. Tanks under insurgent control shelled the outer walls. Two trucks were on fire. Windows were smashed: chunks of concrete and brick were falling to the ground.

Fraera advanced into the square, taking cover behind a statue as bullets whistled overhead, fired from the rooftops. Held back by the crossfire, they waited. Abruptly the gunfire stopped. A man with a handmade white flag stepped out from the headquarters, petitioning for his life. He was shot. As he collapsed, the foremost insurgents rushed forward, storming the premises.

In the safety of the lull, Fraera led them from behind the statue across the square. A crowd of fighters gathered at the entrance beside the smoldering trucks. Fraera joined them, Leo and the others around her. Under the truck were the blackened bodies of soldiers. The crowd waited for the captured AVH officers to be fed out to them. Leo observed that not all of the crowd were fighters: there were photographers and members of the international press, cameras hanging around their necks. Leo turned to see Karoly. His earlier expression of hope that he might find his son had transformed into dread, longing for his son to be anywhere but here.

The first of the AVH officers was pulled out, a young man. As he raised his hands he was shot. A second man was pulled out. Leo didn’t understand what he was saying but it was obvious the man was pleading for his life. Mid-plea, he was shot. A third officer ran out and, seeing his dead friends on the ground, tried to run back into the building. Leo saw Karoly step forward. This young man was his son.

Infuriated at his attempt to run from justice, the fighters grabbed the officer, beating him as he clung to the doors. Karoly pushed forward, shrugging Leo off, breaking through the fighters and wrapping his arms around his son. Startled by the reunion, his son was crying, hoping somehow that his father could protect him. Karoly was shouting at the mob. They were together, father and son, for less than a couple of seconds before Karoly was pulled away, pinned down, forced to watch as his son’s uniform was ripped off, buttons popping, the shirt shredded. The boy was turned upside down, rope lashed around his ankles, carried toward the trees in the square.

Leo turned to Fraera, to petition for the boy’s life, only to see Zoya had already grabbed hold of her arms, saying:

– Stop them. Please.

Fraera crouched down, as a parent might when explaining the world to a child:

– This is anger.

With that, Fraera took out a camera of her own.

Karoly broke free, staggering lamely after his son, weeping as he saw him strung up, hanging upside down from the tree, still alive-his face bright red, veins bulging. Karoly grabbed his son’s shoulders, supporting his weight only for the butt of a rifle to be smashed in his face. He fell backward. Gasoline was poured over his son.

Moving quickly, Leo strode up to one of the vory, a man distracted by the execution. He punched him in the throat, winding him, taking his rifle. Dropping to one knee, Leo lined up a shot through the crowd. He’d get one chance, one shot. The gas was lit. The son was on fire, shaking, screaming. Leo closed an eye, waiting for the crowd to part. He fired. The bullet struck the young man in the head. Still burning, his body hung still. The fighters turned, regarding Leo. Fraera already had a gun pointed at him:

– Put it down.

Leo dropped the rifle.

Karoly got up, clutching his son’s body, trying to smother the flames, as if he could still be saved. He was now burning too, the skin of his hands bubbling red. He didn’t care, holding on to his son even as his own clothes caught alight. The fighters watched the man grieve and burn, no longer boisterous in their hate. Leo wanted to call out for someone to help, to do something. Finally a middle-aged man raised his gun and shot Karoly in the back of the head. His body fell on top of the fire, underneath his son. As they burned together, many in the crowd were already hastening away.

Back in the apartment, among the hungover vory and joyous Hungarian students, Malysh tried to find some space, retreating to the kitchen, making a bed under the table. He took hold of Zoya’s hands. As if rescued from a freezing sea she could not stop shaking. When Fraera entered the room he could feel Zoya’s body tense, as if a predator were nearby. Fraera had a gun in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. She crouched down, her eyes bloodshot, her lips cracked:

– There’s a party in one of the squares tonight, thousands of people will be there. Farmers from the country are bringing in food. Pigs will be roasted whole.

Malysh replied:

– Zoya isn’t feeling well.

Fraera reached out, touching Zoya’s forehead.

– There will be no police, no State, just the citizens of a free nation, and all of us without fear. We must be there, all of us.

As soon as she left the room Zoya began to shake again, having contained her emotions during their conversation. The soldiers who lay on the streets, bodies coated in lime, were uniforms more than they were men, symbols of an invading force. The dead Hungarians, flowers thrown over their graves, were symbols of a noble resistance. Everyone, dead or alive, was a symbol of something. Yet Karoly had been first and foremost a father and the officer strung up had been his son.

Malysh whispered to Zoya:

– We’re going to run away, tonight. I don’t know where we’ll go. But 0we’ll survive. I’m good at surviving: it’s the only thing I am good at, except maybe killing.

Zoya considered for a moment, asking:

– Fraera?

– We can’t tell her. We wait until everyone is at the party and then we go. What do you say? Will you come with me?

Zoyadrifted in and out of sleep. In her dreams she imagined the place where they’d live, somewhere far away, a remote farm, in a free country, hidden by forests. They didn’t have much land: just enough to feed themselves. There was a river, not too wide or fast or deep, where they swam and fished. She opened her eyes. The apartment was dark. Unsure how long she’d been asleep, she looked at Malysh. He raised a finger to his lips. She noticed the bundle he’d prepared and guessed that it contained clothes, food, and money. He must have readied it while she was sleeping. Leaving the kitchen, they saw no one in the main room. Everyone was at the party. They hurried out, down the stairs, into the courtyard. Zoya lingered, remembering Leo and Raisa, locked in the top-floor apartment.

A voice called out from the dark passageway:

– They’ll be touched when I tell them how you hesitated, sparing them a thought, before running away.

Fraera stepped out from the shadows. Quick-witted, Zoya lied:

– We’re coming to the party.

– So what’s in the bundle?

Fraera shook her head. Malysh stepped forward:

– You don’t need us anymore.

Zoya added:

– You talk about freedom. Then allow us to go.

Fraera nodded:

– Freedoms are fought for. I will give you that chance. Draw blood and I’ll let you both go-a single graze, a cut, a knick, nothing more. Spill a drop of blood.

Malysh hesitated, unsure. Fraera began walking toward them:

– You can’t cut me without a knife.

Malysh drew his knife, ushering Zoya back. Unarmed, Fraera continued walking toward them. Malysh crouched low, ready to strike.

– Malysh, I thought you understood. Relationships are a weakness. Look at how nervous you are. Why? Because there’s too much at stake, her life and your life-your dream of being together, it makes you fearful. It makes you vulnerable.

Malysh attacked. Fraera sidestepped his blade, grabbing his wrist and punching him in the face. He fell to the ground, the knife now in her hand. She stood over him:

– You’re such a disappointment to me.

Leo turned to the door. Malysh entered first, Zoya followed, a knife pressed against her neck. Fraera lowered the blade, pushing Zoya inside:

– I wouldn’t get too excited. I caught them trying to run off together, happy to leave you behind without so much as a good-bye.

Raisa stepped forward:

– Nothing you say makes any difference to the way we feel about Zoya.

Fraera retorted with mock sincerity:

– That does seem to be true. No matter what Zoya does, whether she holds a knife over your bed, whether she runs away, pretends to be dead, you still believe there’s a chance she’ll love you. It’s a kind of sentimental fanaticism. You’re right: there’s nothing I can say. However, there might be something I can say which will change the way you feel about Malysh.

She paused:

– Raisa, he is your son.

Leo waited for Raisa to dismiss the notion. When Raisa finally spoke her voice was subdued:

– My son is dead.

Fraera turned to Leo, smug with secrets, gesturing with her knife:

– Raisa gave birth to a son. Conceived during the war, the result of soldiers rewarded for risking their lives and being allowed to take whomever they pleased. They took her, over and over, producing a bastard child of the Soviet army.

Raisa’s words were washed out, drained, but they were steady and calm:

– I didn’t care who the father was. The child was mine, not his. I swore I would love him even though he’d been conceived in the most hateful circumstances.

– Except that you then abandoned the boy in an orphanage.

– I was sick and homeless. I had nothing. I couldn’t feed myself.

Raisa had not yet made eye contact with Malysh. Fraera shook her head in disgust:

– I would never have given up my child, no matter how dire my circumstances. They had to take my son from me while I was sleeping.

Raisa seemed exhausted, unable to defend herself:

– I vowed to go back. Once I was well, once the war was over, once I had a home.

– When you returned to the orphanage they told you that your son had died. And like a fool, you believed them. Typhus, they told you?

– Yes.

– Having had some experience of the lies told by orphanages, I double-checked their story. A typhus epidemic killed a large number of children. However, many survived by running away. Those escapees had been covered up as fatalities. Children who run away from orphanages often become pickpockets in train stations.

His past rewritten with every word, Malysh reacted for the first time:

– When I stole money from you, in the station that time?

Fraera nodded:

– I’d been looking for you. I wanted you to believe our meeting was accidental. I had planned to use you in my revenge, against the woman who’d fallen in love with the man I hated. However, I grew fond of you. I quickly came to see you as a son. I adapted my plans. I would keep you as my own. In the same way, I grew fond of Zoya and decided to keep her by my side. Today both of you threw that love away. With only the thinnest of provocations, you drew a knife on me. The truth is that had you refused to draw that knife, I would’ve allowed both of you to go free.

Fraera moved to the door, pausing, turning back to face Leo:

– You always wanted a family, Leo. Now you have one. You’re welcome to it. They are a crueler revenge than anything I could have imagined.

Raisa turned and faced the room. Malysh was standing before her, his chest and arms covered in tattoos. His expression was cautious, defensive, guarded against denial or disinterest. Zoya spoke first:

– It doesn’t matter if he’s your son. Because he’s not, not really, not anymore, you gave him up, which means you’re not his mother. And I’m not your daughter. There’s nothing to talk about. We’re not a family.

Malysh touched her arm. Zoya understood it as a reproach:

– But she’s not your mother.

Zoya was close to tears:

– We can still escape.

Malysh nodded:

– Nothing has changed.

– You promise?

– I promise.

Malysh stepped toward Raisa, keeping his eyes on the ground:

– I don’t care either way. I just want to know.

His question was offhand, childlike in its attempt to conceal the vulnerability. He didn’t wait for Raisa to answer, adding:

– At the orphanage I was called Feliks. But the orphanage gave me that name. They renamed everyone, names they could remember. I don’t know my real name.

Malysh counted on his fingers:

– I’m fourteen years old. Or I might be thirteen. I don’t know when I was born. So, am I your son, or not?

Raisa asked:

– What do you remember of your orphanage?

– There was a tree in the courtyard. We used to play in it. The orphanage was near Leningrad, not in the town, in the country. Was that the place, with the tree in the courtyard? Was that where you took your son?

Raisa replied:

– Yes.

Raisa stepped closer to Malysh:

– What did the orphanage tell you about your parents?

– That they were dead. You’ve always been dead to me.

Zoya added by way of conclusion:

– There’s nothing more to talk about.

Zoya guided Malysh into the far corner, sitting him down. Raisa and Leo remained standing near the window. Leo didn’t press for information, allowing Raisa to take her time. Finally, she whispered, turning her face away from Malysh’s view:

– Leo, I gave up my child. It is the greatest shame in my life. I never wanted to speak about it again, although I think about it almost every day.