Chapter 25
We are booked on a late flight back to London the next day. So at eight-thirty in the morning we rendezvous with the two men outside a building, its neo-classical façade smothered in grime. Schmulli presses the buzzer, and we enter a brightly lit, tiled corridor, off which are several signposted doors. Disinfectant lingers in the air. We enter the first office, to find ourselves in front of a polished, mahogany counter. Behind it, long rows of shelves crammed with files disappear towards a distant wall. To our right are several large reading desks, some of them already occupied. In one corner is a microfiche reader and a photocopier.
A clerk is speaking to a customer. He’s wearing a name badge on the kind of brown overall jacket grocers used to wear in 1960s Britain. A woman waits her turn, we sit next to her. The clerk fusses around, bringing one file and then another. The woman looks at each, shaking her head as she gives them back to him. Their conversation seems to drag on and on, the customer increasingly irritable. The clerk looks as though he’s taking it all as a personal insult. Then, just when things look as though they are going to turn nasty, the customer snatches a file, and tramps over to one of the desks. The clerk scoops up the remaining ones, muttering to himself. I look at my watch. It’s taken him twenty minutes. We’ll need to get back to Pension Eszterházy to collect our bags before we head out to the airport. I start tapping my foot on the floor. Mutti nudges me, and shakes her head disapprovingly. The woman steps forward.
Without waiting for her to say anything, the clerk scuttles off and returns with a single file. The customer accepts with a wordless nod. At last.
Schmulli gets up and asks a very long question. The clerk replies in a curt, sullen sentence. Schmulli turns back to us.
“Upstairs.”
A flight of stone stairs, another, smaller office, lined floor to ceiling with ancient leather-bound ledgers packed tight into venerable oak bookshelves. Their custodian is another brown-jacketed clerk. Seeing our file, he takes a pair of wire-rimmed glasses out of his breast pocket like a professor of classical history examining a parchment scroll. As Schmulli is speaking, the clerk adjusts his glasses, and examines the documents in our compensation file. He stops at the address of the factory, taking out a battered map book from underneath the desk, leafing through it looking for the right page. Then he stands upright and looks at me and Mutti.
“You come, please,” he says in English. We all go over to the shelves. He runs his hands over the ledgers, talking in Hungarian.
“He says these books list all of the property in Budapest,” explains Schmulli. “With the names of the owners.” He pauses to listen. “It runs up until 1948 when the communist regime took hold.” The clerk now walks along the row, stopping at the end, and selecting a volume with 1930 embossed on the spine in black, gothic lettering. He lowers the heavy volume onto a desk, and starts leafing through it, the three of us peering over his shoulder. It’s all swirling copperplate handwriting and sepia coloured ink – addresses on the left, followed by numbers and names across the page. He turns over the heavy pages, sometimes going back and forth, and keeping up a commentary in Hungarian, addressed to Schmulli. Who replies every now and then, just one word,
“Igen.” Yes. Then they stop. They nod. They look at Mutti and me.
“I think we have something, ladies,” says Schmulli.
The brown ink, the lacy handwriting make it difficult to read. But it is there all the same. The address of Grandfather’s factory in the Budapest VIII district.
And even I can make out what’s written in the second column.
“This,” I say, “is my grandfather’s name. And this,” I move my hand across the page “is the family apartment in Szent Istvan Korut – it’s the one overlooking the river.” I turn to Schmulli, “Does this mean what I think it does?” He nods.
“It means that your grandfather certainly owned the factory in 1939 – it’s pretty much proof.” He puts a hand up. “But we have to carry on going through the ledgers to see what happened later. Mutti squeezes my hand very tight. Then she rummages in her handbag.
“I go out for a cigarette, ja?”
“You want me to come with you?”
“No, I’m fine. Really.” She does that thing of pulling herself in which is like she’s shaking all the pieces back into the right place. I watch her going along the parquet floor, her tall, bulky frame dwarfed by the room’s vast, echoing space. In this setting, she looks small, shrunken, vulnerable. But I’m soon distracted by the physical effort of moving the ledgers about. Together, we heave one, then the next, tracking grandfather’s ownership of the property across the years from the 1930s. He’s there in 1935 and 1936. In 1937, he’s still there, but has been joined by another name, Ferenc Kovács, which is still there with his in 1939.
“Who the hell is Ferenc Kovács?” I ask. Schmulli, and Aaron look blank. “Is there some way of finding out?”
“I think this person,” the clerk points to grandfather’s name, “is Jew. No?”
“Er, yes,” I reply, wondering where this is leading. “This person,” he points to Kovács, “not Jew.”
“Probably something to do with the anti-Jewish laws,” says Schmulli. The clerk nods fiercely. “From years of nineteen-twenties, government make difficult for Jewish,” he says.
“Yes,” I say, “I know.” He ignores me and carries on.
“No vote for Jewish, few doctors, few lawyer. Numerus clausus, also in university.”
“Academic quotas, and in the professions too,” I say. “No cars, boats, trains, radios. I’ve read about that – but how does that relate to the factory?”
“When they brought in laws ‘Aryanising’ Jewish property,” says Schmulli, “thousands of people could apply for anything owned by Jews, from apartment buildings, industrial plants, even wedding rings.”
“That’s legalised theft. And people just went OK, here you are?”
“It’s a damn sight better than being gassed and burnt in an oven like the Polish Jews, you know, so people just put up with it and I think they hoped one day the tables would turn again. As they always had before.”
“So what’s happened here? Why the two names in the ledger, and then one?”
“This is just a guess, but maybe your grandfather could see the writing on the wall. A couple of years before the full-scale Aryanisation laws he brings in the non-Jewish partner. Probably he was trying to stay one step ahead of the game. At first, they share the ownership of the business, and then in 1943 your grandfather steps back, and from the outside it looks like an Aryan company. But he’s running it behind the scenes.”
“But then his luck ran out,” I say.
“Do you know what happened to your grandfather?” asks Schmulli.
“Not really. They hid. Mutti told me he was shot, but never went much further than that. She sort of seizes up and can’t get the words out. It’s hardly surprising. But I’ve managed to fill in the picture myself and you must know. Things were pretty chaotic, death squads rampaging around the city pulling people out of so-called safe houses. I just assume…” Schmulli and the clerk nod.
“Ja.” I hadn’t heard Mutti slip back. She must have heard what I just said. The click of a lighter, the whoosh of air being dragged through a cigarette, and we’re all engulfed by a cloud of smoke. “Every night we sat in the cellar, listening out for Russian shells. For footsteps, shouting. In the dark, in the cold. But when they came, it was…” She draws deeply on her cigarette and no one tells her this is a no-smoking zone. “It was early in the morning. Bashed down the door. You, you and…” She falters. “They took him. They… my mother tried to use connections, you see. We knew people, contacts. We had a letter, was supposed to save him. But I didn’t find… couldn’t see. I left him – to die.”
“But you were fourteen, Mutti.” She nods. “It wasn’t your fault.” The clerk crosses himself, and we fall silent.
“But tell me now, who’s this?” I ask quietly, pointing at the name Ferenc Kovács in the ledger. The others part to make room for her at the desk. She lifts up the glasses that are hanging on a gold chain around her neck, puts them on and cranes forward to see.
“I can’t believe it,” she bolts back upright, her face red. “The bastard, the bloody, the…”
“What can’t you believe?” She takes another drag of her cigarette.
“My father’s chauffeur was Kovács – to us he was Kovács bácsi.” She flicks ash onto the polished parquet tiles. The clerk watches it fall. “Uncle Kovács.”
“It’s not necessarily the same person,” I say. “After all, Kovács seems to be a common Hungarian name. You see it all over the place.”
“But it makes complete sense, Elizabeth,” says Schmulli. “A servant is just the kind of person who you’d choose to put down as the nominal owner of your property. Just the kind of person who might feel some kind of obligation, and who you’d trust to give it back afterwards. That’s exactly what people did.”
“But I don’t think he returned it at all,” says Mutti. “Did he?”
We have to turn the heavy pages to see what happens after 1944. The name Kovács continues, year after year until the sequence runs out.
“So that’s it?”
“Yes, and I’m afraid though what your grandfather did was a clever move at the time, it leaves you with a bit of a problem,” says Schmulli.
“What do you mean?”
“It looks as though the property was legally transferred to someone else and wasn’t confiscated. He did it voluntarily, before compulsory Aryanisation came in. You can’t really claim it was theft, unless you can find some paperwork in which Kovács undertakes to return the property at a certain time.”
“That’s ridiculous. Of course he wouldn’t have just given it away to some bloody driver.”
“But how can you prove intention on the part of someone who is now dead?”
“I’m not giving up on it.”
“What else can you do?”
“I’ll look through those other ledgers, for a start.”
“It’s a waste of time. I’m sorry.” I turn round to pick the next ledger up, but it’s too heavy. The clerk helps me, and together we lever the tome up onto the desk.
The new tome has a repeat of the same information, but has an additional column with amounts of money listed. The clerk shakes his head, unable to explain what they are. We turn the page, and at the bottom of the column there’s something new. Another address.
Outside, we’re assaulted by a burst of morning sun. Schmulli is leaning up against the wall. I walk towards him, waving my notebook. He shrugs.
“What have you got?” asks Schmulli.
“The address,” I reply. “I’ve got the address for Kovács.”
“But it’s nearly fifty years old. He won’t be there. The building probably doesn’t even exist anymore. ”
From the terrace of a café overlooking a square, we can see leaves on the trees turning dry with the intense summer heat. I heap sugar into my espresso, and gulp it down, craving the caffeine.
“Who says the address doesn’t exist?” I say. “We might as well try it.”
“And what if he is there? What are you going to say?”
“I’ll find out what’s happened.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know, I’ll work it out.” I look at Mutti. Impassive, she turns her head to blow smoke away from us.
“I think you have to be at the airport by six, so you probably haven’t got enough time anyway. What you should do is find a Budapest attorney who can carry on the search when you are back in London, using the new information.” He’s right, of course. We thank Schmulli and bid him goodbye. But there’s a lot we can do in four hours. We’ll sort out the attorney later.
Soon we’re on a tram, rattling north along the Danube. Mutti’s quiet, gazing over at the water, as if she’s trying to see something below the surface. I wonder if the bodies are still lying down there, silted over by fifty years’ worth of accumulated debris. Or perhaps the pounding current has washed the bones along the winding river bed towards Romania’s border with Ukraine. Where the Danube splinters apart across a vast delta, its separate streams tumbling out into the murky depths of the Black Sea.
“You all right?” I ask.
“Ja, ja,” she snaps on a bright smile.
“Tell me what it is, Mutti.”
“It would be so nice to go on one of those boat rides on the river. Such lovely views. Nice glass of wine.”
“Yes,” I say. “It would be lovely.” The tram makes a rumbling noise, kerdunk, kerdunk, kerdunk.
“I wanted to stop them, you know. I… I tried my best.” Kerdunk, kerdunk, kerdunk.
“You did, Mutti, you did.” That’s it. We’ve reached our stop, and stumble off the tram, hands clasped together. We can’t find the right bus for the next part of our journey. It should stop here. I let Mutti sit for a while on a bench smoking, while I study the map. It looks as though we need to cut through to the adjacent main road to pick up our connection. We set off, walking at a pace she can manage. The reserves of energy she discovered yesterday have dissolved, and despite her evident determination, her walking is laboured and slow.
“What were you about to say, on the tram?” I ask. We walk on for a few minutes while Mutti is composing a reply. She nods to herself, as though she’s trying out different forms of words in her head. She swallows, and looks away.
“I watched them – take my, take my father.” Her voice fades away to nothing. “My mother was like a child, paralysed. I had to take charge, decide what to do. I ran to father’s old colleagues. If I’d been stopped by the militia they would have shot me too. No good anyway. And then I remembered that Kovács bácsi knew them all. He was supplying all the black market nylons and booze for the – those people – he made sure they needed him. He introduced us to some of his contacts, we went round the city from one to another and finally we got a letter requesting my father’s release.”
We come to a junction and wait for the lights to change before we cross. Mutti looks at me. “I couldn’t believe it – I had the precious letter addressed to a Colonel – what was his name? Something beginning with F – ach what was it?” She’s holding her hand up as though the letter was in it now, she’s remembering exactly what it felt like to hold the piece of paper that could spell life or death. “No matter what his name was anyway, I’d never met him, didn’t know what he looked like, but he was supposed to be the man with the influence. Kovács bácsi still had my father’s car, and he took us down to the river. But when we got there we didn’t know who to give it to – what to do. We didn’t know if we were even in the right place, Anyway, no good. Too late.” Her shoulders slump as though she’s reliving the impotence all over again.
“It wasn’t your fault though,” I say. “You were just a young girl – how come you had to bear the responsibility for saving your father?” She shrugs and we walk on until we arrive at the bus stop. Mutti throws her cigarette butt on the floor and grinds her foot into it until it’s pulverised into dust. We get on the bus, and sit very close together.
Our journey continues through the traffic-clogged city. As we head north, the streets get narrower and smaller. Elegant old buildings with their ornate mouldings give way to irregular square, modern blocks, blackened with grime, and stacked together. Looming shadows make the road dark, as we bump along. Every now and then the bus catches a slice of sunlight, cutting between the stern edifices.
Mutti wobbles up to the front of the bus to ask the driver if we are near our destination. She comes back waving three fingers in the air. We count the stops, like children on a day trip. Then we’re out on the pavement, looking round for landmarks. Grandfather’s factory was built in the 1920s, but nothing we can see looks as though it has been here more than about forty years. We are surrounded by squat, Stalinist tower blocks, a crushing memorial to the post-war era.
We scan the roadside, looking for signs, but there aren’t any. Along the monotonous road each corner looks just the same. Solid concrete: buildings, satellite dishes and washing bursting from crumbling balconies. A small shop selling cigarettes and lifeless vegetables. I give Mutti the map and hover behind as she goes into the shop and buys a pack of cigarettes as an excuse to ask the shopkeeper for directions. He looks at the map and an ancient business card Mutti has been keeping in her precious folder. He shakes his head, and says something. Mutti turns to me.
“It’s not here anymore. The road we are looking for, it’s not here, doesn’t exist anymore.”
“But it’s on the map.” The shopkeeper is now serving someone else. We wait, then Mutti speaks to him again.
“He says the map must be old.” I look at the man in his blue overalls. A black five o’clock shadow on his weaselly face.
“Bastard,” I say loudly. He may not speak English, but he’ll have got the message.
We pause on a low wall outside the shop.
“It’s as though the entire Hungarian nation is against us. They’ll do anything they can, even take down the street signs.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Why don’t you sit down here, and let me have a look around?” I say.
“But how can you ask for directions?”
She’s right, of course. Mutti is our team communicator, she’s already walked far more than she would consider possible on a day at home in Cardiff. I help her up, and she shuffles along, leaning on me.
“We might as well go back to the guest house to get our stuff,” I say.
“But we haven’t found it.”
“And we’re not going to at this rate.” The return bus stop is down the road, but Mutti’s slowed down to a crawl. Looking down, I notice that her legs have swelled up to an alarming size in the heat. They look like great, painful pink sausages, straining out of their skins.
“Maybe a cab?” she says. But the traffic seems to be made up of pick-up trucks and ancient Trabants. Drinkers sitting outside some kind of sawdusty bar stare unsmiling as we creep past. Mutti responds to them with a deep-frozen glare. “Maybe we could sit here for a moment?” She nods towards some empty seats.
“It doesn’t look very welcoming,” I say. “Are you sure?” She gives me a desperate, doggy look. “OK, but no booze, I don’t think that’ll do your legs any good.”
When the waiter comes, Mutti seems to take a long time ordering soda water for two. He crosses his arms over his chest, expatiating at some length about something. Then she gets out the dog-eared cardboard file and shows him the old business card. There’s a lot of “Igen, igen.” And energetic pointing one way and then another, as if he’s giving directions. Mutti’s nodding and smiling.
“He calls us a cab. And he knows where the factory is – it’s only a couple of streets away, won’t cost much.” The waiter comes back with two large round goblets of iced beer, dripping with condensation. I turn to Mutti, but she gets in first.
“Don’t make a fuss. Hardly any alcohol. And this I learnt from your Daddy” – she takes a large gulp – “is the most thirst quenching drink on hot day. Better than soda water.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I take a sip. She’s right. It is very thirst quenching indeed.
The cab takes us along to the corner where we got off the bus, and then turns right along a busy main road. There’s a shocked look of recognition on Mutti’s face as it comes into view. She clasps her handbag tight as we stop in front of a sprawling industrial complex lurking behind a tall wrought–iron fence. A mess of styles, new bits apparently added in different decades. But in the centre, the once-white rendering and lozenge windows suggest sleek art deco origins. A sign whose jagged graphic style suggests it was added in the mid-seventies declares “Feher”. With the meter ticking, we buzz the entry phone, and enter a reception area guarded by a suited girl. Cue discussion. Usual thing, highly voluble, lots of hand gestures and some over-dramatic facial expressions on both sides. But oddly enough, quite amicable. Mutti helps herself to a brochure from a pile in a plastic tray on the desk, and gives it a quick glance mid-conversation. Then there’s a curt, “Köszönöm szépen,” and she turns to me. “Come on, we go.”
“But aren’t we going to talk to somebody?” She shrugs.
“Not necessary.”
“How so?”
“No time. And I already know all I need.”
“Ask her about Kovács.” She looks at me. “Come on, this is our last chance, you said it yourself. Ask her about Kovács.” I know that petulant look. It says she knows I’m right. But while she’s stalling I get in there.
“Do you speak English?”
“Leetle.” A fixed smile.
“Can we speak to the boss?”
“Sorry?”
“Head man, senior exec?” I can feel my voice rising.
“Not possible. Must have appointe-ment. Please.” She picks up a brochure and points to a phone number with the tip of her biro. “You telephone.”
“Who owned this factory before?” I make a large hand gesture, as if this will clarify my question.
“Before?”
“Communist time. And before communist time.” The girl looks at me with distrust.
“Current ownership since nineteen ninety-one,” she parrots as though it’s something she’s memorised. “Previously owned by Hungarian state, now company privat management. Please you telephone.”
“Can we speak to someone else? We are flying back to London right now.” She’s looking at something from the corner of her eye, hand hovering. Oh God, she’s got some kind of panic button that’ll call a battalion of security men. I grab Mutti and we leave.
I should have more faith in my mother. In the cab she repeats the entire conversation verbatim while I make notes. The name of the company, who owns it, when it last changed hands. Its entire history since the collapse of communism, its turnover, product range of computer casings and even the names of senior executives. Nothing before 1991, though. It’s as though that doesn’t exist.
By now it’s nearly four in the afternoon and we check in at six. We’ve still got to get back to Pension Eszterházy to get our bags.
“Tell you what,” I say to Mutti, “We should go straight for the airport.” I’ve only got a few forints left, and I don’t think Mutti’s got any. There’s no time to start hunting for Kovács.
“This is our last chance,” she says. “We find the apartment.” And in case I’d missed the point. “Kovács’s apartment.”
“I know, but let’s be realistic. That place may have belonged to him back in the 1940s, but what are the chances of him still being there? Virtually nil. We might as well skip it.”
“No.”
“Don’t be stubborn. If we miss the flight, we can’t get home, and I imagine you’ve had more than enough of the airport police.” As the car rumbles over uneven tarmac, she sits there brooding like an old toad. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see her fiddling with the map, in that petulant way of hers, folding it one way and another. And then she suddenly yelps something at the driver, and he swerves to the curb.
“It’s here,” says Mutti, scrambling to get out of the car. “Well, just round the corner. Come on, Elizabeth, please.” We take a couple more turnings and then stop. I pay the driver. That’s it. Finito. We have now got no cash, no travellers’ cheques and just over an hour and a half to get to the airport.
“This had better be good,” I warn her. At the corner we check the name of the road. Mutti’s right, we are only a few yards away from Kovács’s last known address. As we walk along the pavement, noting building numbers and names, each heart beat thuds in my ears. The apartment block is still there, curvy art nouveau lines still evident, despite that now familiar exhausted, tattered look.
“Do you recognise this place?” I ask. Mutti nods, throwing her cigarette butt into a drain, and pocketing the holder, as she marches through the door. Inside, what was once an elegant stairwell has been vandalised by the addition of an old-fashioned cage lift. It clatters to the ground floor, we get in, and it starts hauling us up noisily. My hand finds Mutti’s. Hers feels warm and dry, while mine is cold and sweaty. We get out at the third floor. Before ringing the bell, she takes out her powder compact and gives herself a couple of quick dabs. Then she pulls herself up to full height. The door is opened by a young woman in tight jeans and a red jumper. She takes a cigarette from the corner of her lipsticked mouth to say, “Igen?”
Mutti says something in a low voice, about Kovács. There’s a mention of her own maiden name. The young woman looks doubtful. She makes to shut the door, then seems to have second thoughts and calls into the flat. Leaving the door half-open, she retreats inside. We can hear her in conversation with somebody else, an older woman whose mottled voice echoes down the passage. Mutti flushes, and she nods to herself. A few moments later, an elderly woman in a flowery apron creaks towards the door. She gives us a suspicious look, before asking Mutti a question. Again, I catch the word Kovács, but everything else is just a clatter of Hungarian vowel sounds.
Whatever Mutti has said, it has an amazing effect. The old woman claps her hands together, and lets out a babble of verbiage beginning with the only Hungarian I know.
“Ó Istenem, istenem.” Oh God, Oh God. She seems rather in awe of Mutti, taking her hand in hers and bending forward and back in a worshipful kind of way as though she is honoured to bits at our presence. We are ushered into the front room, to sit on heavy, forbidding armchairs while the old lady hobbles excitedly into the kitchen. After a few minutes filled by creaking and jangling as well as a constant stream of chatter, she comes back with a tray of cake and soda water. The china plate stands on a white lace cloth, along with silver spoons and cake forks of exactly the kind Mutti would think de rigueur.
It’s a long time since breakfast and my hand shakes as I help myself while our hostess chatters away, wiping her hands on her apron while we eat. Mutti keeps up the conversation, turning pink and then pale by turns. Not knowing what they are banging on about is killing me, especially as Mutti is giving me meaningful looks. The moment there’s a pause, she turns to me.
“Kovács is her brother. She hasn’t seen him for years, but they write.” She stops to listen, nodding. “He lives in London. For forty years.”
“He what?”
“London.”
“Where in London?”
“I don’t know, not clear.”
“Well, if her letters are reaching him, she must have the address.”
The old lady takes a plastic covered book from a bureau, flicking through its alphabetical pages, and showing it to Mutti, and saying, “Vestempersted.” We must look blank. She gives us a quizzical look, as if it’s us who are stupid.
“Sorry?” I say. Mutti squints at the book.
“W–E–S–T– H–A–M–P–S–T–E–A–D,” she spells out. Mutti looks puzzled.
“West Hampstead?” I ask.
“Igen,” says the old lady, nodding with pride. “Vestempersted.” She turns to a shelving unit in the corner, where some aging post cards are on display, and brings one to show us. Buckingham Palace from around 1960, complete with guards in red jackets and bearskins, the colours faded from years’ exposure to sunlight. The old lady points to it, with pride. “Vestempersted,” she repeats, nodding enthusiastically.
“The man who took your father’s factory lives in West Hampstead?”
“He may not have taken it, we don’t know.”
“That’s not what you said this morning.”
The old lady is holding out the plate of cake to me, smiling and urging me to have another piece. It is a cloyingly rich confection, but I need the energy so I tuck in, allowing Mutti more time to prise information from our hostess.
As we emerge back onto the pavement, I check my watch. Apparently Kovács’s sister claimed to know nothing about the factory. Ignorance is safer, I imagine, to someone who has spent their adult life under communism, and what I imagine is constant fear of the secret police. It’s five o’clock, which means we have just one hour to get back to Pension Eszterházy, grab our bags and leg it. At the bottom of my bag I’ve found a few coins, but not enough for a cab. We head for the main road, hoping to spot a bus heading roughly in our direction.
Mutti makes a show of setting off energetically, as though she believes positive thinking can get her there. But it’s only a few minutes before her swollen legs have pulled her to a halt. Just when I’m wondering how much washing up you have to do to earn an air ticket, she starts laughing.
Then I see it. Coming towards us is a horse-drawn carriage, adorned with brightly coloured ribbons with pom-poms. She waves the driver to a halt.
“We can’t go in that. We’ve got nothing to pay him with, and it’ll be no quicker than walking anyway.”
But she’s already in the carriage. I scramble in to keep up with her as it moves off, getting bounced into the plush, plum-coloured upholstered seat. Opposite me, Mutti sits there like the Queen Mother greeting her people. She puts a cigarette in her holder, looking pleased with herself, and conducting some kind of regal conversation with the driver.
“Don’t worry, darling. I make a deal. Will be most reasonable.”
Now I’m going backwards along the avenue, and the bumpety motion is beginning to make me feel sick. Mutti points out the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, something called the Gresham Palace, and the glories of the gothic, baroque and Romanesque parliament I’ve already heard so much about. She turns her face up to the sun.
“Isn’t this wonderful?”
“Not if we miss the plane,” I say. The driver keeps up a commentary in Hungarian, with Mutti interrupting him now and then, and they share some kind of private joke. When we get to the Pension, we get out. I open my handbag with trepidation, wondering if he’ll take a few quid in sterling. He waves his hand at me.
“Nem,” he says, shaking his head and then rattling something off to Mutti. She says something back to him, smiling her regal smile and shaking his hand.
“He refuses to accept any payment.” I shake the man’s hand, puzzled. As he drives off, Mutti says, “Gypsy family.” She gives a dark nod implying some kind of fellowhood in suffering.
Mutti persuades Madame Eszterházy to sub us money for a cab to the airport, promising we’ll cable it back from London. By the time we hit the departure lounge, the rich cake we ate at Kovács’s sister’s is churning round in my stomach. Mutti fusses round, getting me water to drink, and dousing me in refreshing travel spray.
Once we’re on the plane, I push back my seat, but images of Kovács’ sister and the fascist boot boys float round in my mind. I can hear the echoing sound of footsteps on a tiled floor, and “Ó Istenem, istenem,” repeated over and over again in my grandmother’s voice. I open my eyes to find the air hostess standing there with a tray. The paprika fumes from the hot food make me feel like gagging. But Mutti tells her to put it in front of me, and proceeds to polish off both meals. Then she strokes my forehead like she used to when I was a little girl.
“I phoned him,” she says.
“Who?” I ask. My brain grinds slowly, like a machine without oil.
“Kovács.” I jolt upright, narrowly avoiding a spillage into my lap.“You phoned him?”
“From the airport. When you were resting.”
“You should have waited for me!” I’m fuming. “What did you say?”
“I just asked if we can meet,” she says.
“And?”
“Ja, he sees us. Tomorrow.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “And maybe we take you to the doctor?”
“I’m not that ill – tummy upset. It’s been a difficult couple of days. Better tomorrow.”
“I think it will take longer than that. Nine months is the usual time.” Oh God, Ó Istenem. Why didn’t I think of that?
“You think I’m…”
“Do you think?” I think back over the past month. “I’d better call Dave,” I groan.
“Mazel tov, darling.” She takes a forkful of dessert.
But it may not be that simple.
“You know, I think is best to stick to white or yellow until it is born. Don’t you think?” I give her a weary nod, as she continues, “You want that piece of cake?” Between mouthfuls of creamy gateau, Mutti expatiates on the relative merits of different sorts of buggies and prams. Sounds as though she’s been researching it for some time. I’m still trying to do the maths.