Vilmos Kondor - Budapest Noir

“And there, he’s far enough away from Fanny,” said Gordon, crushing out his cigarette.

The doorbell rang. Mór stood up and left the room and in a few seconds reappeared carrying a meal can.

“The good man brought rooster paprikash,” he announced. “With spaetzle. And pickles. Not exactly diet food, but this is what you need right now.” He went into the kitchen, and when he reappeared this time, he was carrying a tray with the food.

Gordon fell ravenously upon the food. He did not feel his wounded mouth, nor did it bother him to be eating with his left hand. Once he finished, Mór took the tray back to the kitchen. When the old man returned, Gordon was sleeping on his side. His breathing was labored and vexed, and remained so even as Mór pulled the curtains shut and sat down in the living room, attentively reading the Gastronome’s Cookbook .

Seven

It seemed to take about fifteen minutes for Gordon to come to from an unsettling dream, but in fact hardly a minute had gone by. With aching limbs he rose to his feet and headed slowly to the telephone. Mór was snoring away on the divan; an entire switchboard might have been ringing, but he still wouldn’t have woken up. By the time Gordon reached the phone, it had fallen silent. But the ringing came again a couple of minutes later.

“Zsigmond,” said Krisztina in a distant, panicked voice.

“Yes? What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? I’m not sure. Something must be wrong.”

“Tell me.”

“I woke up about fifteen minutes ago. A bad feeling came over me, and my eyes suddenly popped wide open and my stomach knotted up. I got up to check if maybe someone was in the flat. But there was no one. That’s when I went to see if I’d locked the door. Which is when I saw the sheet of paper stuck to the glass.”

Gordon sat down in the armchair.

“I opened the door,” Krisztina continued. “It was one of your articles. Then I looked down at the doormat. Lying there was a dead hen, its neck broken.”

“I’m listening.”

“This is what they’d written on your article, in red ink: ‘Stupid hen, if you don’t tell him to call it quits, we’ll wring your neck next.’ You there, Zsigmond?”

“Of course,” he replied. “Put down the phone, don’t move, and don’t let a soul in. I’ll send Opa over. I can’t go, I’ve got business. Opa will bring you over here. Don’t let in anyone but him.”

“But Zsigmond . . .”

“This once don’t give me any but s, just do as I say,” replied Gordon, and he put down the receiver. He went to the bathroom and slipped on his robe, then went back to the living room and sat down on the chair by the divan.

“Opa,” he called to the old man. “Opa, wake up.”

Mór kept snoring. Gordon gave him a gentle nudge. “Opa, rise and shine.”

His grandfather’s eyes popped open and Gordon helped him sit up, then waited for Mór to rub the sleep out of his eyes. “What is it, son?” asked Mór.

“Opa, you’ve got to get Krisztina right away and bring her over here. Someone left a dead hen on her doormat along with a note saying if she doesn’t stop me, they’ll wring her neck.”

“I’ll get going right away,” said the old man with a look of alarm.

“Get yourself ready. I’ll call a cab in the meantime.”

The old man dragged himself to his feet and went to the bathroom. By the time he returned, Gordon had also begun to get dressed. “Opa, you can go down in front of the building already, the cab is on its way. Go get Krisztina, come back here, and don’t let anyone in except me.”

“Can you get dressed on your own?” asked Mór as Gordon, gritting his teeth, pulled on his trousers.

“Sure, Opa, don’t you worry about me.”

Since Gordon couldn’t manage to button his shirt, he went to the closet and took out a sweater he’d gotten from Krisztina. Getting on his blazer was an easier task, as was his trench coat. Before heading off, he took a pack of Egyptian cigarettes from his desk drawer and shoved it into his pocket.

The Grand Boulevard and Rákóczi Street were already in the throes of the usual Monday morning rush: pedestrians heading to work, cars and buses honking their horns, runaway horses sweeping carriages along at breakneck speed. Gordon gave the concierge a nod, went up to the newsroom, and put down his coat in the cavernous space that was slowly coming to life. He took a notebook and a pencil and headed to the cellar.

Only a single light bulb was on in the hall. His steps echoed as he went over to the heavy iron door that was always unlocked. He stepped in, reached to the left, and switched on the light. The cold room was flooded with light. Long rows of shelves spread out before him, shelves holding all the back issues of the Evening , the Budapest Journal , and Hungary in chronological order. In the case of the Evening , this meant just twenty-six years; but the Budapest Journal had eighty-six. Andor Miklós, owner of this conglomerate, had purchased the entire archives back in 1920 along with the Budapest Journal , and spared neither time nor money to catalog it all. The catalog cards practically took up more space than the bound issues from each year. By the wall stood wooden cabinets of the sort used in libraries, with a slip of paper on the front of each drawer showing what was inside.

He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but Gordon didn’t like this system. During his years in America he’d learned the system there, but try as he might, he just couldn’t get the hang of this. True, he didn’t take too much trouble to learn it, either, since the man in charge of the archives, Benő Strasser, knew everything there was to know about the newspapers. He and Valéria, who worked only at night, were the odd ducks of the house. Strasser claimed that ever since the founding of the Evening back in 1910, he’d come to work every single day, summer and winter, Christmas and Easter. He sat down behind his desk, took out his pencil and notebook, and proceeded to read the previous day’s papers from front to back, taking notes on everything. Rumor had it that he even read the advertisements and radio program schedules. Not for a moment had Gordon doubted that this was so. There was Strasser behind his desk from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon, filling up one index card after another with his notes, smoking nonstop. Andor Miklós, while he lived, regularly went down to the cellar to get his take on various issues, for no one had a better handle on the concern’s publications than Benő Strasser.

Gordon paused while standing there in front of the shelves and let out a big sigh. He didn’t even want to touch the index cards, and so he took the first issues of both the Evening and the Budapest Journal for each month from 1933 and sat down with this stack of papers at the desk opposite the entrance. No, not at Strasser’s desk—not even Gordon would have dared do that—but at the desk reserved for visitors. He knew what he was looking for; he just didn’t know where it was. He glanced at his watch. It was seven-fifteen. He had time to read until Strasser arrived.

Exactly at eight the door opened, and in walked the chief archivist.

Strasser was a tiny little man with a wiry face that, despite his decades spent under artificial light, bore no eyeglasses. Having removed his jacket and then his blazer, he slipped an elbow guard onto his arm and a green visor onto his head, and only then did he turn to Gordon.

“It’s got to be important if you’re here so early,” he said.

“It’s important, Strasser, very important. I’ve got some digging to do.”