Edward locked the door to Josef’s apartment and started toward the elevator, past the open stairway. A meager bulb lit the way. He stopped to listen. In the building of mostly older folks, he could hear the distant humming of televisions and radios through floors and ceilings. He headed down the hall, running his hand along the wall to help his balance, until he reached the elevator to take him down.
Outside, engulfed by the humid air, he waited by the panel of buzzers, the blazer he’d worn on the plane hanging loosely over his upper body, an unwelcome reminder that he’d lost more weight. He could feel his thirst returning in the back of his throat. He swallowed.
Come on. He looked down the street for the cab.
Now it was 9:52. Late for him. Typically, he would have changed into his pajamas by now, settled on the couch to read and nod off. Annie’s call gave him a surge of energy.
The taxi flicked its light. Edward raised his hand. His back stiff from arthritis, his eyes semiblind in the glare of the headlights, he bent forward and eased into the back of the cab.
“You speak English?”
“Yes. Where do you go?”
Edward handed him Howard’s address, written on a piece of paper in block letters.
“You know where this is?”
The driver, a middle-age man, took the paper from him, nodding. “Persze. Near Duna.”
“Good. How much in American dollars?”
“Three dollars.”
“Get there quickly.” Edward handed him a ten-dollar bill.
The movement of the cab jostled Edward’s knees, his hips, and the memory of Deborah calling him the day before she died: Dad, please call me . . . Something in her voice not sounding right, but he didn’t pay it enough attention. Was it the drugs? Her MS making her slur her speech? She didn’t answer when he called back a few hours later. Why hadn’t he called her again? Anger? He was still too angry at her for marrying a creep.
He deserved this nightmare and dry-swallowed the poison of self-hate. There was the call from Howard the next morning, telling him he’d found Deborah gone, in her bed. He thought she was sleeping, he’d told Edward. “She’d been sleeping a lot in the past few days. We were planning to go to Nassau. Maybe it was too much for her,” Howard said.
“Don’t let anyone take her before I get there.” Edward hung up and was in the car, racing to Deborah’s, the pain exploding in his stomach, ready to strangle Van with his own hands.
When Edward walked in, he told the police he wanted an autopsy. But it wasn’t under his jurisdiction. Howard was her husband, her health care proxy. Howard refused.
“No autopsy. It’s not what Deborah wanted,” he said, showing the police and Edward the written DNR directive: do not resuscitate. “She was squeamish about that sort of thing,” Howard said. “She wanted to be cremated, her ashes buried—not the traditional Jewish way—but that is what she wanted. She didn’t want to take up space. It’s all here,” Howard said, shaking the papers.
Death by asphyxiation, multiple sclerosis. His daughter in ashes. Edward made a mess of it. He should have followed his instincts and insisted on the autopsy despite Deborah’s wishes, and Sylvia’s. Nan didn’t try to interfere.
In the backseat of the cab, Edward placed one hand in his lap, the other on the car door handle. Alongside the Duna, the cab stopped at a traffic light. All around him, the city was alive and thoroughly disinterested in Edward’s existence. Fifty years later, a piece of cloth, a priceless exchange in Austria after the war, and Josef Szabo’s name and number in a telephone directory in Stow, Massachusetts. It was too unbelievable to be true, but there it was: Josef Szabo living three towns away from Edward and Sylvia, Deborah and Nan. For how long? Decades. All those years.
“This is Edward Weiss, the American—”
“Yes. It’s you,” Josef had said. “Not a day I forget you and what you did for me. What can I do for you, Edward?”
“Do you still have your place in Budapest?”
Fifty years after a war.
“Yes. Of course. It needs a little fixing up, but everything works. Do you need it? A place to stay? It’s yours. It’s waiting for you.”
In the cab, driving along the river, his heart pummeled his ribs, demanding to be let out of its prison. Edward looked across a city glistening with lights, the old Chain Bridge draped in glitter, a sparkling white necklace. He was thirsty, his tongue pulling for liquid. He forced himself to swallow. It’s yours, Josef had said. After all those years.
After the funeral director came and took his daughter away, Edward returned home to Sylvia, who began her death spiral, eventually leaving him, then leaving this earth. He told Sylvia he wanted to call the police, insist on an investigation, but Sylvia told him to stop. Let her go in peace, Edward. Let her be. Now he was taking a cab to the cockroach who took his daughter’s life. He could never let it go.
Was he dreaming this?
The driver crossed Elizabeth Bridge. Edward watched a sightseeing ferry floating in the middle of the river, its oblong shape moving toward the docking station tethered to the bank. He spotted a fisherman smoking a cigarette under the bridge. Through the open windows, he breathed in a blossoming smell of river water and putrid car exhaust; the night’s moist heat throbbed in his ears. He would make it. He’d made it through the war.
And here they were. The building set back inside a courtyard as Annie described it. Edward put one foot on the cobbled surface and struggled to lift himself. The driver took his arm and helped him out.
“Thank you.”
Edward waited under the archway for the sound of the cab departing, like wind fading, and then came the silence. He took his first steps into the courtyard. He would make it. He looked down at his feet. Sylvia was always telling him, Slow down, Edward. Why do you rush so? What’s the hurry? His heart ached for Sylvia, her breasts warm and soft against his chest.
Life whipped by like a storm. Gone in an instant. His daughter. His wife. Everything.
He inched across the courtyard, familiar as the ones he crossed in the war. Shots banging into walls, stonework cracking. He was trapped in the open air, running for the rubble, calling on God. God help me, he had said then. God. He almost said it now in the quiet, late darkness. Not a sound in the night courtyard. He once told Nan waiting made you crazy. Battles knocked out crazy thoughts. She knew. Nan battled for her patients every day.
Inside the building, the heavy iron doors folded back and he stepped into a large cage of an elevator. Garbage in the entryway. Rotting odors to keep you away. But he wouldn’t stay away. When Nan told him that Howard had moved to Budapest, he knew he had to follow. He couldn’t let the killer go.
The cage ratcheted up, nicking the walls when it passed another floor. He leaned against the metal ribs to keep himself steady against thirst, against dizziness. The cage halted, settled in, and opened up.
Down the hallway to the end. On the right, facing the river, Annie said.
He moved along the wall, using it for support. The bulb cast a flickering light, the glare turning the walls yellow, scratching like sand in his eyes. He stopped midway, rubbing them to see. It had been days since he’d been out. Blood swelled in his head, his ears. He listened. Behind him, the cage started rattling its way down to the ground. He continued along the hall. Finally, he stood outside Howard’s door.
He put his hand on the door knob. The knob turned easily. He released it. This was the moment. Here. He almost wept. This wouldn’t do. He wiped his eyes and pulled the gun out of his pocket, unlocked the safety, and slipped it back into his pants. He turned the knob again and opened the door.