Free Prague by Arthur Phillips Page B

the tank, blocking the only exit for its choking, burning comrades.
     
    Charles Gabor's parents met in Cleveland, though they had both escaped from Hungary at the same time. Family legend grew around the amazing coincidences of their love: They had been at the same marches, then some of the same street battles of the uprising, had left the country within a day of each other, had killed time in refugee-holding areas in Austria within a kilometer of each other, had reached Cleveland within a month of each other, but still did not meet for another two years, until New Year's Eve of 1959-60, when, at a party, Charles's father was kissing another girl ("If I remember her name, it will be a miracle—Jane, Judy, Jennifer, Julie, something very American") and, with closed eyes and one hand full of angora-sweatered breast and the other stroking plaid kilt-draped rump, heard his future wife shout at someone, "Happy New Year when they still sit at my Gerbeaud with their fat, stupid Russian faces? When those Russian animals are defecating on my streets? It is not happy. Not happy at all." Charles's father often told his son he had fallen in love with her voice, views, and unwilling English even as his tongue was in the other girl's mouth.
     
    Charles, ne Karoly, was not born to a couple eager to experience the wonders of American assimilation, and his first language was Hungarian.
     
    "In your hometown, there is an island in the river where you can play football and then have ice cream and a bath and a massage."
     
    "I am too small for football."
     
    "Nonsense! You would be very good as goalkeeper. You will be tall enough someday. I should begin teaching you to play, where to look when their offense breaks through your defenders, how to bend your knees so you can jump in either direction."
     
    "They do not have goalkeepers in football, Father."
     
    "What are you saying? Ildiko, what is he saying? What are they doing with him at that school?"
     
    "Your father is right, Karoly. You would be an excellent goalkeeper. That ice cream," she squeezed his father's hand. "My God. Sour cherry." "But this ice cream is good, isn't it?"
     
    "Yes, it is okay, but the ice cream on that island is like nothing they make in Cleveland."
     
    "I think I am right about football."
     
    His parents often tried to reconstruct for each other the lives they had led in parallel before they met, their reminiscences often triggered by Charles's current age, as in: "I tried to walk across Lake Balaton when I was a little girl, not much older than that." She gestured at her son. "I thought I was tall enough."
     
    "Then that was the age I kissed a girl for the first time. Dohany utca. I kissed her on the cheek." He stroked his wife's cheek with the back of his hand. "She was a Jew, and even though I did not know what the term meant, I knew something about it was dangerous and I thought I was very brave, because my father would have found it quite alarming."
     
    "I was kissed the first time right next to the Vajdahunyad. I miss that stupid castle."
     
    "Whenever I think of the Corvin I cannot believe you were there and you could have been hurt and we would never have met. There was a great battle at this movie theater, Karoly. Not a movie about a battle, but a battle at the movies! Have you ever heard of such a thing?"
     
    His parents spoke often of real estate in mysterious hands, and struggled to re-create for each other (and for their heir) the homes they had known.
     
    "You have an apartment, Karoly, smaller than this house but much more beautiful, in the fifth district of your hometown. It is yours and someday you will be able to reclaim it and live there."
     
    "You have another apartment in the first district, my boy. Also very beautiful!"
     
    "I have two apartments and this house? How will I know where to live?"
     
    "This house is nothing special. It is those apartments you will like."
     
    "I like this house. Clark lives next door. And Chad lives