Vilmos Kondor - Budapest Noir

A uniformed bellboy opened the car door. Krisztina got out; then Gordon did as well. “Pull off to the side,” Gordon called to Czövek, “I’ll be back right away.” The bellboy gathered up their bags and followed Gordon and Krisztina into the opulent lobby. Men in hunting outfits and tuxedos hurried along to the restaurants in the company of their wives, who wore expensive evening dresses and sagged from the weight of all their jewelry. Gordon headed to the reception desk.

“A reservation under the name Gordon,” he announced in a measured tone, “a double room, two nights.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, paging through the book before him. “Please be so kind as to follow the bellboy up to the fourth floor.”

“My driver needs lodging for the night, too,” said Gordon.

“Why of course. Indeed. If you prefer, I can recommend some private homes where he can sleep.”

Taking the slip of paper on which the clerk had written the addresses of several local homes, Gordon turned to Krisztina. “If you want, go on upstairs. I’ll let Czövek know where he can go; then I’ll be right up.”

“Hurry,” said Krisztina, heading off after the bellboy.

Czövek was sitting on the hood of the car, having a smoke. On seeing Gordon approach, he jumped off.

“Listen, Czövek,” said Gordon, “here are some addresses where you can find a bed for the night.” Giving him the slip of paper and a five-pengő coin, he added, “And here’s the money. This will cover your breakfast, too.”

“Thank you.”

“Go on ahead, and be back here tomorrow morning at nine.”

The bellboy had just stepped out of the elevator when Gordon returned to the lobby. Gordon pressed a pengő into his palm and went up to the fourth floor on his own. Upstairs, the elevator doors opened quietly and he stepped out onto the thick, spongy carpet. It was practically daylight in the hallway, so strong were the lamps. Looking at the numbers on the doors, Gordon turned right and, midway down the hall, opened the door to room 304.

A lamp burned on the little table by the balcony. From the bathroom came the sound of gurgling water. Gordon crossed over to the balcony window and pulled aside the curtain, looking out upon the silhouettes of the slender trees clinging to the steep mountainside and the light of the moon sparkling on the surface of the lake.

The bathroom door opened. Krisztina stepped out in a satin nightgown Gordon had given her as a Christmas gift a couple of years ago. Her hair fell freely about her shoulders. The light streaming out of the bathroom filtered through the delicate fabric against her skin.

Gordon flung away his trench coat, took off his blazer, and loosened his tie. Krisztina walked over to the bed and slipped under the blanket. “What are you waiting for?” she asked, looking at Gordon. “Come on over here.”

Gordon didn’t wait a moment longer.

Eight

It was past eight by the time they awoke. But Gordon had started up in alarm more than once in the course of the night: the silence was disconcerting. Every time, though, he fell back to sleep. Finally, in the morning, he got out of bed and went to the bathroom. At the cost of several minor cuts, and in nearly half an hour, he’d managed to shave. He was still in the bathroom when Krisztina appeared.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning.”

“Are we in a hurry?”

“Czövek will be waiting for us at nine in front of the entrance,” replied Gordon. “If you want to have breakfast, it wouldn’t hurt if we hurried.”

By eight-thirty they were already seated in the restaurant. Krisztina ordered scrambled eggs; Gordon, a coffee. They watched the hotel come slowly to life with the guests going to and fro, dressed for the day’s activities. Several wore hiking clothes as they sat at the tables, a few wore hunting outfits, and quite a few of the men were in suits, ready to enjoy the opportunities made available by the hotel, which didn’t even require that they step outside. The billiard room and the card salon would quickly fill up with men, while the wives would converse among themselves in the winter garden, listening to music on the radio and gossiping.

The waiter came to their table to offer them a couple of Budapest newspapers. Gordon waved his hand dismissively. “Thanks, but this morning I’m doing fine without them.” He turned to Krisztina. “Do you want any?”

“Oh, no. But I do want you to tell me what you want me to ask Teréz Ökrös.”

“She should tell you everything she knows about Szőllősy’s daughter,” said Gordon, raising his eyebrows. He and Krisztina understood each other even without words. “I don’t know how much she’ll tell you, but no doubt more than she’d tell me. Just chat her up and find out everything she knows.”

At a couple of minutes before nine they exited through the hotel’s main entrance. Czövek was waiting for them in pretty much the same pose he’d had when Gordon had seen him off the night before: he was chowing down his breakfast while seated on a makeshift tablecloth draped over the Opel’s hood. On seeing Gordon and Krisztina, he broke into a grin.

“Take a bite of this,” he said, extending toward them a chunk of meat he’d presumably bought from the hog-raising family he’d stayed with. “My God, I don’t know when I last had such heavenly head cheese.”

“Endre,” replied Krisztina with a smile, “if I’d have known, I wouldn’t have had breakfast.”

“No problem,” said Czövek, jumping off the hood, “but the rest is in the car.” He opened the door for Gordon and Krisztina, and as soon as they were inside, he got behind the wheel and started the engine. He turned left beside the lake, then began the ascent toward Bükkszentkereszt. Although the Opel handled the incline well, it couldn’t go too fast, leaving them time to admire the view. Looming high above them on the left was the giant boulder called the White Stone Lookout, and they could see two figures on top. Czövek was enjoying the drive a great deal, and he handled the massive car exceptionally well. The road was lined with poplars, and they were fortunate not to encounter a single horse-drawn carriage along the way. They made it up to Bükkszentkereszt in under twenty minutes.

The well-ordered beauty of the mountaintop village surprised not only Gordon but also Krisztina. “It’s as if we’re in the Alps,” she said, “that’s how lovely it is up here.” Smart-looking houses with sparkling clean yards lined the roads; indeed, this might well have been somewhere in the Alps but for the fact that the houses were distinctly Hungarian. Gordon considered the narrow, portholelike windows and low roofs of the longish houses, each of which had a verandah, some stretching right up into the hillside. As the car rolled slowly past the houses, Gordon looked in a couple of windows. His spirits plummeted on glimpsing the low ceilings with their brown-painted rafters. He could not imagine how someone could wake up here day after day, much less for an entire life. No wonder so many people in this country committed suicide, he thought. No, it wasn’t “Gloomy Sunday,” that popular song considered an anthem for suicides, that drove people to take their own lives, but rather the dark, oppressive homes that weighed down upon them.

“Stop right here,” Gordon called to Czövek just as they drove past a woman carrying a milk can—a woman who readily pointed out the house Teréz Ökrös lived in.

They parked in front of the immaculately kept property and got out. Czövek fished a link of sausage out from under the front seat and resumed his breakfast.

Gordon and Krisztina approached the carved wooden gate. All at once, two big, shaggy black dogs—pulis—burst forth from out of nowhere, each, it seemed, barking louder than the other. On hearing the noise, an older man stepped out of the shed and headed toward the gate.