Zsuzsa hung up and put the Nokia back down on the table, staring at the handset as though she had never seen a mobile telephone before.
She stood up from her armchair and slowly paced back and forth across the flat. That familiar adrenalin rush began to course through her body. It was the same feeling as when she uncovered Nationwide’s network of money laundering subsidiaries. This was obviously for real, and something very serious. The war, and the Holocaust, Eniko had said.
Eniko had told Zsuzsa a little about what happened to her family, how her grandparents had survived in an apartment building a block away on a street now named for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who had saved thousands of Budapest Jews by placing them under Swedish protection, how her mother had changed her name to Terez after the war to disguise her Jewish origins.
Zsuzsa walked outside to the balcony, shivering for a moment in the cold night air as she peered down at the evening street scene, deciding what to do. In warmer weather she always enjoyed sitting here, looking down on the streetscape like a secret spy, staring at the passers-by, imagining where they were rushing to – a date, a secret liaison, a visit to a relative.
In the summer the bars and cafés put out tables and chairs and the street felt almost Mediterranean. But now there were only a handful of pedestrians hurrying home. Two homeless people were bundled up in blankets by the bakery on the corner of the Grand Boulevard. The falafel bar and hipster coffee shop were deserted. Even the patisserie was closing for the evening. This part of the city, in riverside District XIII, was one of the most pleasant downtown areas, with plenty of neighbourhood bars, cafés and bookshops. But Hollan Erno Street and its neighbours were haunted, she knew.
The streetlamps glowed orange over the layer of slush coating the pavement. Zsuzsa peered across the street. She could just make out the two small brass plaques embedded into the pavement on the building facing hers. The brass plaques commemorated Jews killed in the Holocaust who had lived in the adjacent buildings. There were many scattered around District XIII.
During winter of 1944, Hollan Erno Street and its surrounds were known as the International Ghetto, where tens of thousands of Jews were confined in houses nominally under foreign neutral diplomatic protection. But as the Russians advanced, the Arrow Cross became crazed with bloodlust, rounding up Jews from the protected houses, marching them to the nearby riverbank and shooting them into the freezing water.
A few days ago Zsuzsa had finally remembered to stop and read the wording on the plaques outside the building facing hers. She still remembered the terse phrasing: the names, dates of birth of David and Eva Kun and their fate. David was thirty-two, Eva twenty-nine. They were both shot into the Danube in January 1945.
She wondered how it must have been, that last walk to the river nearby, David and Eva knowing these were their last few steps, that they would never have a family, build the lives they had hoped for.
Were they holding hands as the Arrow Cross gunmen screamed at them? Had they shivered in the line-up on the riverbank, heard the sound of the rifles being readied, felt the icy cold of the embankment on their feet as they took off their shoes so the gunmen could sell them later, heard the crack of the bullets as they hammered into their victims? Perhaps they had prayed, or merely sobbed silently.
The Nokia rang again. Zsuzsa took the call. She did not bother with a greeting. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m in.’
THIRTY-ONE
Tito Grill, Rakoczi Square, 8 p.m.
‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Goran Draganovic.
‘First I am going to finish this. Then I will think about it.’
Balthazar jabbed the last cevapcici with his fork, dipped it into a smear of ajvar, a spicy pepper paste, and ate it with relish. He drained the last of his beer, put his knife and fork down, and sat back, replete. Despite his plan, he had only grabbed a banana when he arrived home before heading out again to Rakoczi Square. Once the adrenalin had worn off and the excitement of the evening faded away, he was ravenous. ‘Thanks. That was very good. Best meal I have had for several days, in fact.’
‘Then drop by more often, brat,’ said Goran Draganovic, using the Serbian word for brother. ‘Not just when you’re in trouble.’ He picked up an unlabelled wine bottle filled with a clear spirit and poured two generous measures into the two small glasses in front of them. ‘Now some sliva, to aid the digestion.’
‘OK,’ said Balthazar. ‘But just a little.’
As Balthazar ate he had explained part of the story to Goran: about Elad going missing, being followed by the Israelis, about Geza Kovacs and the two Serbs who had tried to abduct him. Goran had listened without saying much. Unlike many of his Serbian compatriots, he was not voluble, which was one reason the two men got on well. Another was that Balthazar felt at home here.
Nobody stared at him, made remarks or otherwise bothered him. Balthazar rarely went out to eat in District VII, apart from a small old-fashioned eatery on Klauzal Square, run by a Jewish family. He did not feel comfortable in the hipster places. He had several times run into students or academics who he knew from his days at Central European University who looked at him with a kind of horror when he said he had left academia to become a policeman. He occasionally met someone for a drink in one of the less well-known ruin pubs, but even there he was often the only Gypsy male.
In the Tito Grill, however, he could relax. All were welcome, but it was well understood that this was a place where the diners valued discretion and privacy – at least until the slivovitz started flowing on a weekend night and the sound of the Boban Markovic´ Orchestra or another Balkan Gypsy brass band started booming around the room and the dancing started.
It was also where deals were made and sealed, sometimes between ‘businessmen’ it would be best not to cross. There was no menu and only two dishes were available: cevapcici, small kebabs, and pljeskavica, a hamburger, both made from a mix of minced beef and pork. Both were served with ajvar, fat chips, raw onions and a slice of tomato on a lettuce leaf described as ‘salad’. The cevapcici were served in either five or ten. Balthazar had opted for five, not sure of his appetite after the events of the evening.
After Pisti and the forensics officers had gone upstairs to the flat where the dead man was, Balthazar had sat for a while in Rakoczi Square, processing the events of the day. Until recently the square had been the centre of Budapest’s red-light district, its meagre greenery lined each evening with prostitutes and their pimps. Balthazar’s father, Laci, had started out as a pimp here, back in the 1970s, running streetwalkers who serviced their clients in the back streets and narrow alleys.
But the gentrification that had transformed District VII had inevitably spread to District VIII, especially this part immediately behind the Grand Boulevard. The park in the centre of the square had been kitted out with modern equipment, dozens of trees had been planted and new pathways laid. Even the metro station had a fancy new glass-and-steel entrance. The grand old apartment buildings were no longer home to prostitutes, but a new wave of young families looking for affordable flats near the centre. On Saturdays farmers from the nearby countryside gathered to sell their produce and vegetables. There were still a handful of dark, tiny grocery stores that survived by selling parizsi, the cheapest form of processed meat, and huge loaves of fel-barna, heavy half-brown bread, cheap cigarettes and beer, but they were falling one by one.
Balthazar’s encounter with Pisti, and his warning, combined with the recurring image in his mind of Geza Kovacs with most of his head blown away, meant that part of him just wanted to go home – not to his empty flat on Dob Street, but to his proper home, that of his childhood, just a few blocks away on Jozsef Street, to eat his mother’s csirke paprikas and go to sleep.
But that couldn’t happen. After a while, he realised that he wasn’t only cold but also ravenously hungry and he walked over to the Tito Grill. The first five cevapcicis had disappeared in a few minutes and another five had quickly appeared as if by magic.
The Tito Grill was still holding out against gentrification, a stubborn remnant of another era, not just of the old District VIII, but also as a homage to a country that no longer existed. Framed and mounted over the wooden bar was a red, blue and white Yugoslav flag with a red star in the middle, a prized antique from the partisan era. Ancient faded travel posters for JAT, Yugoslav Airlines, showed the tourist sights of London, Paris and Berlin.
Many of the customers hailed from the former Yugoslav states. During the wars of the 1990s, Hungary had given refuge to thousands of refugees and some, like Goran, had stayed. Still, Balthazar thought, as he looked around the room, there was something different about the place. It had kept its ramshackle charm, but had definitely been spruced up. The walls were now a proper shade of white, not a mucky light grey. The wooden bar was still pockmarked with cigarette burns but had been smoothed and polished, glowing warmly in the dim light. The partisan flag had been reframed. The refurbishment had been subtle, but was definitely noticeable. Balthazar looked down at the plastic table cloth – the familiar red and white checked pattern but the cloth itself was definitely new.
Balthazar said, ‘You’ve redecorated.’
Goran nodded. ‘You have a good eye. We are doing well. I thought it was time. But we still have same Balkan charm, yes? Not too shiny?’
Balthazar shook his head. ‘No. It’s perfect. It looks great. You got it right. You always do.’
Goran smiled. ‘Thank you.’
The two men clinked glasses, both saying ziveli, Serbian for cheers. Goran knocked his shot back in one; Balthazar took a sip.
Goran’s slivovitz was brewed by his grandfather in Subotica, just across the border, and smuggled across. It tasted fresh and clean with a long fruit finish, warming him inside as it slid down.
‘Do you know this guy, Geza Kovacs?’ asked Balthazar.
‘Not in person. But I know his name,’ said Goran.
‘How?’
‘He was asking around, after Reka Bardossy dissolved the gendarmes. Looking for work.’
Balthazar poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the table. ‘He found some. He was sitting in the park in Klauzal Square with a walkie-talkie just before the gunman on the motorbike shot up the car.’
Goran shook his head. ‘Bad for business. Nobody likes this gunplay.’
