EVA NEARLY FAINTED WITH RELIEF at the sight of her home standing—marred by bullets, yes, but standing—and the Venus statues welcomed her solemnly through the entrance, unlocked, to her surprise. The phone line was dead. None of the three families on the lower level had answered their doors—not even when she pounded them with her fists—and then came nighttime, another night she would endure without knowing if Dora and her baby were safe.
There was no electricity in the apartment, no heat, and all of the windows were either fractured or shattered. She tried every light switch, every furnace, then luckily in the kitchen she found a couple of utility candles and matches. She lit one, then ambled back through the vastness of the flat littered with glass and crumbled plaster, never having needed a shot of brandy more. The liquor cabinet was empty, but at least an old pack of Gauloises was there, in a gap underneath the glassware shelf where she’d made a habit of stashing them. Numb from cold, she extracted the matches from the filmy wrapper and sparked one, smoked it standing in the middle of what she realized now had been a looting. Above the mantel, in place of the Vermeer oil portrait that had been in her mother’s family for two generations, there was only a lightened patch in the layer of soot, and on the sofa table, the bronze centurion statuette had been replaced by an empty gin bottle next to an overstuffed ashtray.
She locked the door twice, shuddering once more at the unnerving quietness of the hallways, and made her way to the bathroom, where she placed the candle on the ledge of the tub. The water spurted ice-cold and smelling of rust, killing any desire she might have had for a bath. Instead, she took her last shriveled cigarette to her room and smoked it in the window seat from which once, on a night like this, she used to watch the Champs-Élysées of Budapest come alive in an array of colorful umbrellas and fancy frocks, moving in a cluster of unsuspecting cheerfulness in the direction of the Operaház. Exhausted, she crawled onto her bed and fell asleep with her shoes and coat on.
It was midday, perhaps early afternoon, when she woke with a searing headache, a queasiness swelling in the pit of her stomach. In the dressing mirror across the room, when she scooted herself up against the headboard, the face of a stranger looked back at her. The sharp, feral eyes, the plastered hair, the ghoulish twisted mouth couldn’t have belonged to her. She forced herself out of bed, went back into the hallway to see if the phone was working. This time she screamed, banged the useless receiver on the edge of the hallway table, not giving a damn that she was damaging a hundred-year-old antique. Then a sharp knock at the door cut through her frustration, and she let the receiver drop.
“Who’s there?”
The rush of sudden adrenaline should have sent her reeling but instead she inched closer, splayed her hands on the bloodred, lacquered door. “Whoever you are, leave now! I have a gun and I swear I will use it. In three seconds, I will shoot it right through this door.”
“Eva. Eva, let me in.”
She leaned against the surface. Pressing her cheek to it, she listened for the voice again.
“Eva, please. It’s all right. Please open up.”
Shakily, she unlatched the bolt and pulled the door open to see the man standing before her. A faint chorus of voices trickled in and broke the heavy stillness between her and Eduard.
“How did you know I was here?” Eva said when Eduard stepped inside and looked around gravely at the state of the place, then anchored his steel-blue gaze on her again.
“I didn’t. I took a chance.”
He was wearing a thin coat too flimsy for the weather, one she remembered vaguely from the spring prior, and in his hand, there was a brown paper bag from which he lifted a bottle of wine with a faded, silver label. “From before the siege,” he explained. “Well, it seems I got here just in time. Apparently, we could both do with a drink right now.”
A few minutes later, Eduard made a fire with a few splinters of wood found in the hearth basket while she did her best to pull herself together, scouring for a clean dress inside her armoire, running a brush uselessly through the tangle of her hair, then eventually pulling it into a ponytail. The wine was slightly turned, but it hardly mattered. She was just happy to sit there with him, to feel, even if it was to pretend, that her life was the same as it had been two years ago. Just to pretend.
“I heard about your father and wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss,” Eduard said from the opposite end of the sofa, his eyes intent on the wine, which he swirled in his glass. There was a formality in him, which seemed displaced given their time in the hospital, and Eva thought soberly that he wouldn’t stay long. “I came here to tell you that, because I behaved rather… gruffly in the past few weeks. It was just such a shock to see you, and I needed time to process it, if I have to be honest.”
“Thank you, Eduard, that’s very kind. But my father and I… we had differences at the very end. We were never really close in the first place, as you know, although yes, losing a parent is never easy, is it? But you don’t owe me an apology of any kind. If anyone should apologize, it is me. You were right when you said that I treated you unfairly.”
“Abhorrently, I think would be a better word,” he retorted. There was a trace of humor in his voice although none of it rose to his eyes, which remained pinned on the glass. A faint flush permeated his face. It had not occurred to her that he might be nervous as well, and a warmth inundated her.
“Do you think you could ever forgive me, Eduard? Do you think now, at the end of this awful road, there is a chance that we might still be friends? Because I would like that. I would like it very much.”
“I’ve already forgiven you, Eva. How could I not, after all that I saw you do in that hospital? I saw the goodness that has always been in you, the goodness and determination and courage that enchanted me when we first met. And I thought, because at least that still existed, maybe now, as you say, after all that we’ve been through, you might finally be able to confide in me what you couldn’t before. If it is friendship that you want, Eva, I’m here to give it. But some things must be settled before that. I’d like to trust you again.”
“Oh, Eduard, does it really matter? Does any of it matter now?”
“It will always matter to me, Eva. You see, despite everything, it seems that I still care for you deeply. And yes, I do need to know. For my own peace, I do.”
She measured his expression as he refilled her glass, recalling Tamara’s words. What you still have is far more than dust. Yet he wasn’t hers to have any longer; she’d forgone that right long ago.
“Tamara has said nothing to you? In all our time in the bunker?”
“No, nothing pertaining to us. None that I recall.”
“Tamara loves you, you know. She loves you, Eduard. And she would make you very happy.” They were beyond pretenses now, and she was rather glad for it.
“I know,” he acknowledged, resigned. “And not long ago, I thought perhaps I could love her, too.” He searched Eva’s face, his eyes gleaming with renewed energy. “You see, Eva, unfortunately for me, it seems that nothing can change my feelings for you. Not her, not even this godforsaken war.”
Eva bit her lip and looked into the embers in the fireplace as they petered out, leaving the room in its usual coldness. How easily it could have been once to marry him, to have this man at her side, this man she did not deserve nor love in the same way she’d loved Aleandro. How very awful, she thought, that the heart should so stubbornly attach to phantoms while everything real and true should subside under its tyranny.
But she had seen him through Tamara’s eyes, and she couldn’t pretend now that the words he’d spoken meant nothing to her. After a moment, she concluded that she would do it. She owed him that much. And bravely, she said:
“Let’s take a walk. Let’s see if we can find a bench in City Park, a place from our past that might still exist. Then I will tell you, Eduard. If you are willing to listen, I will tell you. Even though I fear you’ll despise me after the fact.”
“I could never despise you, Eva. No matter what stands between us, the one thing I promise you now is that I could never despise you.”
There had not been a bench—not one that hadn’t been fully submerged in grime and ash—and they stopped on a bridge overlooking the pond. Eva kept her gaze on the glassy water as she spoke, unable to look at what might be in Eduard’s eyes, aware of this last bit of anguish that she was inflicting. His hands gripped the stone railing so tightly that his knuckles turned white, but otherwise he betrayed nothing. She knew there would be no friendship at the end, that there would be no concessions, no way to move forward into a future of any sort in which her betrayal would be a constant guest, yet she wanted the best for Eduard and did not intend to keep him hostage in his feelings for her. And so she held nothing back. She told him everything there was to tell, even about Bianca, and when she opened her eyes, she did not expect him to still be there.
But he was. Motionless still, his face bent down toward the water, where an empty, flattened tin can floated underneath the bridge. “Did you love him?”
“Truly, I don’t know. I thought I did. Or perhaps it was just the freedom that he represented that I loved. Perhaps it blinded me.”
“And you didn’t think that you would have that with me.” It wasn’t a question but a statement accompanied by a reaffirming nod. “And is it over now, Eva?”
She looked at him, at how stoic he was as he asked her these questions. The graciousness in Eduard’s heart made her ashamed, ashamed that while she had spoken the truth, there was one thing that she could not admit, would not admit even to herself: yes, she had loved him. She loved him still; she would always love Aleandro. But it was as though a chamber of her heart had detached from that love and was now reaching for what was here, still possible after this terrible war, precisely as Tamara had said.
“It was over before I even knew I was to have her. Perhaps that’s why I think of her as singularly mine. So yes. Yes, that chapter of my life is fully closed now. It’s been for some time.”
It startled her, the small cry from Eduard’s lips. He moved away from her, walked to the other end of the bridge, where he tilted his face to the flock of birds flying in formation through a gloomy early February sky, departing to warmer lands. And when he came back to her and reached for her hand, she felt herself detach even further from the impetuous girl she had once been and step fully into a life in which she became a woman. Into a life devoid of any ghosts.