She glanced across the garden at the house, checking that nobody was coming down the path. It was ten past six in the evening, almost time for dinner at six thirty, so she needed to be quick, but for a short while at least she knew she would be undisturbed. She stood up for a moment and counted the rose bushes that marked the end of the lawn, touching each of the seven with her right forefinger, checked she was behind the middle one. She nodded to herself. Three on one side, three on the other. This was the right place.
A Trabant sputtered past on the road behind the house, its underpowered engine straining against the hill, whirring like a hairdryer, gusting out clouds of exhaust. She wrinkled her nose as the acrid smell drifted through the hot summer air, crouched down again and began digging once more.
Her fingers pushed deeper through the earth, determined now, probing, scooping, until they brushed against a smooth metal surface. She pushed the soil away, sliding her hands down both sides of the box, loosening it until she could take it out and place it on the ground nearby.
It was a small, plain metal container. The blue paint had faded and the lid and its hinges were rusty. She could still remember how excited she’d been when she had found it a couple of years ago. The builders had been working on the pipes or foundations or something, and one day, when they went home, she looked into the big hole they had made and saw the corner of something blue and metallic poking out of the sandy mud. She had not said anything but that night she sneaked into the garden, pulled the box out and kept it hidden in the ground ever since. It was her treasure chest, and nobody else’s. No one else in the family even knew she had it.
The box felt cold and heavy. She smiled as she carefully brushed the loose soil from the lid, sat down, rested it on her legs and opened it. She somehow knew, with complete certainty, that the moment she took her treasure chest inside the house, she would never see the box, or its contents, again.
She was only ten but she already knew about lots of adult stuff, like not telling other people that their home had eight rooms and two gardens, one in the front and one at the back, or that they had all these other people, like the maid, around to help all the time. She glanced across the garden to the far corner where the maid and her husband, the gardener, lived in a small cottage. It had a bright red roof and a thick wooden door, like something out of a fairy story. Sometimes they invited her in for lemonade and biscuits.
There were so many things she did not understand. They had learned at school that communism meant everybody was equal, but how could that be when they lived in such a big house and everyone else, or almost everyone, apart from her parents’ friends, lived in flats? Her home was perched on a hill, overlooking Obuda. Alongside the wide road at the base of the hill, there were row upon row of panel-lakasok, panel flats made from giant slabs of pre-formed concrete, sometimes ten or twelve storeys high, whole families crammed together in small apartments. That didn’t seem very equal.
She would think about that later. She looked down at the box and smiled. For now, she had her treasure chest. And there was real treasure inside: a red velvet box with four rings; a long white silk scarf, or something like a scarf, more like a shawl, with blue stripes and extra bits of white string knotted along the bottom; a book, like one of her exercise books at school but written in a strange alphabet like little blocks of ink. There was a photograph as well, of a young girl with curly blond hair in a dark dress with a single row of buttons down the middle.
She had taken the shawl out once, stood up and draped it around her shoulders. The garment was enormous on her and its bottom spread out along the ground, the white strings trailing in the grass. The shawl felt light and delicate, smooth against the back of her neck, but it didn’t feel right on her, made her shiver. She had folded it up and put it back in the box. She had not taken it out since. How had the exercise book got here? she wondered. And what did the writing say?
She lifted it and held it to her nose. The paper smelled damp and musty. The pages had turned yellow but the heavy, black script was clear.
She looked at her watch. It was almost twenty past six. Time to pack up. They would be shouting for her soon and she needed time to hide the treasure chest again and properly cover it with earth. She put the book and the white silk shawl back inside carefully. There was just enough time to quickly check her favourite things: the rings in the red velvet box, one that looked like a woman’s ring, with quite a big diamond, and another with a black stone – that was a man’s one, she thought – and two plain gold bands.
The gold ones were her favourites. She took them out and placed them both in the palm of her left hand. One was bigger and heavier than the other. She guessed they must be wedding rings and then she had an idea, one of those ideas that when it came to her made her think Why on earth didn’t I think of that before? She held the big ring up to her eyes and looked at the inside. Inscribed in tiny letters was: Miklos, 10 August 1933, Budapest. There was a name inside the small ring as well: Rahel, and the same date.
Somehow the names gave her a funny feeling, the same as when she had put the shawl on. She quickly put the two rings in the red velvet case, put that back in the blue metal box, closed the lid, placed it back in the space by the tree roots, covered it all with the loose dirt and smoothed it over. She stepped back, looked at her handiwork and smiled. Now nobody would know that anything was there. She rubbed her hands against each other, trying to brush the soil away. It didn’t really work, but it didn’t matter. She was a kid, and was expected to get dirty in the garden.
She skipped back to the house, looking forward to dinner. She was hungry now. For a moment she felt the weight of the wedding rings in her palm again, heard the sound of the two names in her head: Miklos and Rahel, wondered about their fate. Then her mother appeared, calling her with her arms wide open, telling her it was time for dinner. Her stomach rumbled, and she ran towards her.
ONE
Dob Street, Thursday, 14 January 2016, 7 a.m.
Balthazar Kovacs peered through the narrow glass spyhole in his front door, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. It was an old-fashioned aperture, mounted high, that only showed what was directly in front of the viewer. He saw pale yellow walls, the dark-wood entrances of his neighbours’ flats, the curved metal handrail that snaked around the building’s art deco staircase. A weak winter sunlight seeped through the large window at the end of the corridor, streaked with rain and city dirt. So far, so familiar. So too was the top of a head with silver hair, trimmed and styled in a permanent wave that had been the height of fashion during the late 1980s.
The knocking that had first woken him sounded once more, sharper. This time there was a voice, speaking in a loud whisper. A female voice, one that he knew, but sounding unusually stressed. ‘Tazi, are you awake? It’s me.’
There were two women in Balthazar’s life he could not refuse. The first was his actual mother and the other was Eva neni, Auntie Eva, his neighbour and surrogate mother, whom he saw far more often. And if Eva neni was knocking on his door at 7 a.m. there had to be a reason. He opened the door, gestured for her to come inside, closed it behind them.
Eva neni stood by the kitchen entrance. Just five feet tall, she was dressed in her usual faded pink housecoat, brown polyester trousers, and slippers. But her face was creased in anxiety and her blue eyes, usually bright, were red-rimmed.
‘Mondd, tell me,’ said Balthazar. Something bad must have happened for her to be knocking on his door this early.
‘He’s gone.’
‘Who?’
‘Elad. The flat’s empty and he’s not answering his phone. I couldn’t sleep all night, I went over there just now. I’m sorry to wake you. I didn’t know what else to do. Did I wake you?’
He shook his head. ‘No, it’s fine. I wasn’t sleeping.’ He gently squeezed her small hand. ‘Don’t worry, Evike. We’ll sort this out. Come in, sit down, I’ll make us some coffee and you can tell me everything.’
They walked through to the narrow kitchen. It was a small space with no street-facing window, that overlooked the courtyard. The plain white functional cupboards, the linoleum floor and the worn enamel sink were decades old. A corkboard hung on the wall above the red Formica-topped table. There were several photos there of Balthazar with his family: one of him as a teenager, arm in arm with his brother Gaspar, another as a child with his mother and father, and one together with his son, Alex, in a park downtown by the Danube. Two clippings from Paprika, the country’s main tabloid newspaper, pinned to the board, were slowly turning yellow.
Balthazar pulled out a chair for Eva neni and she sat down at the table. They were both coffee drinkers, and he filled the kettle and spooned grounds into an old-fashioned cafetière, while Eva neni looked at the photographs one by one. Now she was inside the flat, and could see Balthazar was there for her, she was calmer.
‘I haven’t seen these pictures before,’ said Eva neni, turning to him with an affectionate smile. ‘What a handsome boy you were, Tazi.’ She tilted her head to one side and gave him an appraising look. ‘You still are. But you need someone to look after you. What happened to that nice-looking girl, Kati, the one who worked in the prime minister’s office? I thought she had almost moved in.’
Balthazar laughed, good humouredly. ‘So did I. Then she moved out.’
Eva neni shook her head, sighed. ‘Tazi, Tazi, it’s not good for a man of your age to be alone. It’s not good for anyone. I lost my husband a decade ago and I still miss him every day.’
He glanced at her as he waited for the kettle to boil. ‘You’re not alone.’
She gave him a wan smile. ‘I know.’
Two minutes later he sat down with the cafetière and two cups. ‘Mondd, now tell me the whole story. When did you see Elad last?’
‘On Wednesday morning, yesterday. He was due to come over and pay the rent in the evening, around six o’clock. I was going to make him dinner. I called him several times during the day to check, left voicemails and sent some text messages. I didn’t hear anything back. At first I wasn’t worried. I know how busy he is. But he didn’t turn up for dinner, didn’t call back or reply to my messages. He’s never done that before.’
Balthazar processed this information for a few seconds. A day wasn’t very long. ‘He’s a young man, single, in a new town. Maybe he met a girl. He’ll probably come home later today.’
Eva neni ran her finger over a crack in the red tabletop. ‘Maybe.’ She pushed down harder on the crack, moved her finger back and forth. ‘I don’t think so. Something’s wrong. I can feel it. The flat is empty, it’s been cleared out.’
Balthazar drank some of his coffee. His mind switched a gear, went into detective mode. ‘Completely? None of his clothes or books or papers are there?’
‘No. Nothing. Not even a toothbrush.’
Balthazar nodded slowly, fully alert now, the caffeine already working. ‘Was the lock broken or the door forced open?’
Eva neni shook her head. ‘No. Everything looks fine. But why would he leave like that, without saying goodbye, or telling me? Something’s not right.’
