Free Siege 13 by Tamas Dobozy Page B

here.” I shrugged and laughed, glancing at Mihály, who seemed to relax a bit. “He’s liking Budapest,” I continued, “it’s his first time.” I wanted to add something about Anna here, to tell him that Miklós’s mother was Hungarian too, and how jealous she’d been that our son was going to Budapest instead of her, and how she’d kissed him the morning I came to pick him up, and then kissed me, too, on the cheek, before going back inside to János, their daughter Mária, and that whole other life she’d come to after the divorce. And I’d taken Miklós’s hand and walked off into mine.
    But before I could figure out how to phrase it, or even if it was worth phrasing, Mihály remembered something. “Didyou ever hear about the sailor who tried to come back?”
    â€œShe never mentioned him,” I said.
    â€œ Her ,” he said, guiding me to a glass case mounted on the wall behind which were large pieces of paper that appeared blank. Mihály told me to look closely at them, and I did, noticing how worn the paper was, as if it had been rubbed over and over with a wetted fingertip until there were only the faintest of lines, traces of red, blue, green. “She thought it was just a question of erasing the maps,” he said, “and she’d find herself once more in that place from which she’d started out. I mean when she’d started,” he corrected himself, “before she’d discovered anything of the world.” He came close to the glass to look at it with me. “It’s beautiful,” he said.
    â€œIt is,” I replied. And it was, like some transcript of dreams, written days later, when all you remember is the faintest of traces, a world already gone before it registered. But there was no surprise there, looking at it, only gratitude for what Judit had given me and what a woman like her, trapped in that life, would never be allowed—that hopefulness her sailors felt in their moment of escape, when home was still everywhere, glimmering out there, and where every mistake, every wayward decision, was for a moment erased.

The Restoration of the Villa Where Tíbor Kálmán Once Lived

    ÃBOR KÁLMÁN . Tíbor Kálmán’s villa.” That’s what Györgyi told Zoltán the night they went AWOL from the camp, the two of them huddled in the barracks amidst the other conscripts, boys like them, but asleep, some as young as sixteen, called on in the last hours of the war in a futile effort to salvage a regime already fallen, a country and people already defeated. “We need to get to Mátyásföld,” Györgyi said, “that’s where the villa is. Tíbor Kálmán will give us papers.” But Györgyi didn’t make it far, only to the end of the barracks, to the loose board and through the fence, frantically trying to keep up with Zoltán, who always seemed to run faster, to climb better, to see in the dark. Zoltán was already waiting on the other side of the ditch, hidden in the thicket, when the guard shouted, when they heard the first crack of bullets being fired, Györgyi screaming where he’d fallen, “My leg! I’ve been shot! Zoli, help me,” and Zoltán looked back at his friend for a second, calculating the odds ofgetting to him in time, the two of them managing to elude the guards, limping along at whatever speed Györgyi’s leg would allow. They’d be caught, charged with desertion, executed—both of them. Then Zoltán turned in the direction he was headed, Györgyi’s cries fading in the distance.
    It was the end of December 1944, and that night, running from the makeshift encampment and its marshalling yard, running and running long after the military police had given up, not wanting to risk their own lives by following him east, Zoltán realized it was hopeless, there was a wall of