Lawrence Block - Tanner’s Twelve Swingers

“We will stop here for the night,” I explained. “Here in Komadi. Tomorrow we can continue to Debrecen and find friends who will help us across the border.”

“We could push on tonight if you wish.”

“Tomorrow is time enough.”

“I know that I am slowing you down, Evan.”

“There is no hurry,” I said. And, I thought, that was true enough. The faster we moved, the sooner we would get to Latvia. And the sooner we got to Latvia, the sooner we would find ourselves unable to rescue Sofija, and would thus have to turn around and head for home. I was in no hurry to get back to New York. There was a pudgy little man who had a habit of turning up there with undesired assignments, and I was in no rush to see him for some time.

“I am beginning to tire, Evan.”

“So am I.”

“Is there a hotel in Komadi?”

“Hotels are dangerous,” I said. “They want to see one’s papers and we haven’t any. Guest houses are as bad. I think we’d do better to cross through the town and put up at a farmhouse to the north.”

“Do the farmers take in guests?”

“We shall see.”

The first farmer we approached was gracious enough but explained he had no room for us. But he had a cousin just a quarter mile down the road who, he assured us, would make us welcome. Just a few pengo and we would be given comfortable beds, a hearty dinner, and a good country breakfast in the morning.

The cousin, it turned out, was a young widow with black eyes and hair and milk-white skin. She had been in the country eleven years, having moved there just before the birth of her one child, a daughter with the same plain good looks as the mother.

“We were in Budapest,” she told us after dinner. “My husband and I, we were married almost a year. I was from this part of the country and went to Budapest to the University, and met Armin and married him, and after the Revolution he was taken with the others and put up against the wall and executed. And so I did not care to remain in Budapest any longer. Will you have more coffee?”

Dinner was a thick veal stew on a bed of light noodles, all highly spiced and very filling. Milan made an effort to stay awake after dinner but was not quite equal to the task. Our hostess showed him to his room. I suspect he fell asleep on the way to the bed.

The daughter went to sleep shortly thereafter. Eva – I never learned her last name – sat with me in the living room before the fireplace. When the fire burned down, I went outside for more wood. I returned with the wood, and she appeared from the kitchen with a bottle of Tokay. We drank a few glasses. She talked of art and literature and the cinema. There were few persons with whom one could discuss such subjects in the country, she told me. She missed Budapest, with its busy coffee houses and its bubbling culture. But she did not miss the political hubbub of the city or the memories of 1956.

“It is lonely here,” she said. “But people are good, and I have much family in the area. This was my own father’s house, I am used to it, it comforts me. But one grows lonely.”

“You will marry again.”

“Perhaps. I have been ten years widowed. Sometimes a man comes to help me work the farm for a season and stays with me for a season. There have been those who would have stayed longer, but I was married to a fine and intelligent man, and when one is used to gold, one does not care for silver.”

I said nothing.

“Married at twenty and widowed at twenty-one, and now I am thirty-two and alone in the world. There is but a little wine left in the bottle. Shall we finish it?”

We finished it. The drink had brought a flush to her white cheeks, and she was breathing a bit heavily as she got to her feet. “And now it is time for me to show you to your room, Evan.”

She walked unsteadily before me. I thought of Annalya in Macedonia. Macedonia was many miles away.

The room was small, furnished simply with a narrow bed, a chest of drawers, a single chair, and a cast-iron woodburning stove. She lit a fire in the stove, and it warmed the room. She came toward me, her dark eyes shining, her black hair hanging loose and free.

“Eva and Evan,” she said.

Her mouth tasted of sweet wine. She sighed urgently and pressed tight against me. Her arms went around me, tightened. Her hands moved over my back, and her mouth kissed greedily. I was very pleased that we had been unable to reach Debrecen and that the first farmhouse had had no room for us. “Eva and Evan,” she said again, and I kissed her again, and her slim, sweet body was warm to my touch.

We undressed in the glow of the woodburning stove. I took off my jacket and my sweaters and my shirt and my trousers and my underwear, and I looked at her as she slipped out of her clothing and I saw the odd look in her eyes and I looked down at myself and saw all those silly little oilcloth packets taped to various portions of my anatomy.

“What-”

“A book,” I said.

“You have written a book?”

“No. I am a… a courier. I am taking the book to the West.” I hesitated. “It is a political book.”

“Ah,” she said. She sighed. “I should have known you were a political man. I am always attracted to political men, and of course they are the most dangerous men for women to love.” She looked at me again and suddenly she began to giggle. “You look very silly,” she said.

And then we were both laughing. She threw herself into my arms, and her hands touched the oilskin packet strapped to my back, and she began to laugh again, and her thighs pressed against the packets taped round my thighs, and her breasts pushed against the packet taped to my chest, and she kept kissing and giggling and kissing and laughing until we tumbled gently into bed. Her hand reached for me and found me, and she said, “Thank God it’s not a longer book, we wouldn’t want anything taped here, ” and, while this was the funniest thing she had said all night, neither of us laughed or giggled or in fact said anything at all until, in the throes of sweet, desperate passion, she cried out with love and raked my oilskin packet with her nails.

Butec slept fortwelve hours, just twice as long as he had assured me was his usual custom. I didn’t attempt to wake him. He would travel better for being well rested, and I myself was in no great hurry to move on. While Eva slept I sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading a rather excessively heroic biography of Lajos Kossuth, Hungary ’s national hero who led the Revolution of 1848. The book was back on the shelf, and I was back in bed by the time Eva awoke. She made little mewing and purring sounds and came to me, soft and sweet and sleep-warm. After an hour or so she padded contentedly from the bedroom and went to cook breakfast.

I did a few helpful things, chopped a basket of firewood with a heavy double-bitted axe, brought up a bucket of water from the pump, built up the fire on the hearth. Eva’s daughter breakfasted with us, then hurried off to the road to wait for the school bus.

“Every day she goes to school,” Eva said, “and every night I have to teach her that almost everything they have taught her is untrue. But she is bright and learns quickly to separate the true from the false. It would be easier, though, if I could keep her out of school and educate her at home. The law does not permit this, however.”

We talked of music and literature and politics, and we talked not at all of the pleasure we had given one another in that narrow bed. I thought of my son, Todor, and I wondered idly if I might have gifted Eva with a permanent souvenir of our night of love.

A disquieting thought, that. I was not entirely pleased with the image of myself as a happy wanderer contributing to the global population explosion by leaving a trail of precious bastards in my wake. Yet not entirely displeased, either – children are rather good things to have and no less enjoyable simply because one doesn’t have them underfoot all the time.