Siege 13 by Tamas Dobozy Read Free Book Online Page B

grief could work that way, though in the end it was only what he’d wanted: the death of whatever it was—affection,friendship, love—that kept him in place, reminding him of what he was and in that way of what he’d seen, when all he wanted by then was the roar and the leap—the moment when he was finally something else.

Sailor’s Mouth

    T WAS 1957 and the sailor built a plastic boat. Everything on it was transparent—plastic hull, plastic mast, plastic sail—and he lay down in it with a sack of kifli and a jug of water and headed south from Budapest, down the Danube, toward the Black Sea.”
    â€œDid he make it?”
    â€œNo, he was seen. His boat is in the Museum of Failed Escapes.”
    â€œThere’s a museum like that?”
    â€œIt’s in the ninth district. A private collection. One day I’ll take you there.”
    â€œHow did you get in?”
    â€œI’ll tell you later.” Judit shrugged, her skin dark even for a Hungarian, long hair trailing on the pillow like rays from a black sun.
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    Her daughter, Janka, was five years old, with the same black hair. She was standing in the doorway the first night I carried her mother home. It was the tail end of an ordinary flirtation,Judit pretending she was drunk and her guard was down and she was doing something she didn’t do for any man—show him where she lived—while I held her arm saying the streets of the eighth district were no place for a woman in her condition, all giggles and hiccups, fingers fluttering in my face. But it was really Janka I was after, having listened to Judit describe her, the life they led, their home, the food they ate, the kind of places the girl played. When we arrived, there was an old woman holding the door—the grandmother I guessed—hair covered in a lace shawl, standing stooped on the other side of the open door threatening Janka with a beating, no dinner for a week, if she didn’t come inside immediately. The old woman was unsurprised when Judit and I stumbled through, little Janka trailing behind grasping after her mother’s hand. I put Judit on the couch, mumbling that she’d be okay, that she was just sleepy. The old woman stared at the floor, shaking her head. “I told her never to bring anyone here.”
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    I was supposed to have stayed in Budapest only a day, then gone on to Romania. “You stay as long as it takes,” my wife, Anna, said. We had a child already, seven years old, Miklós, who was as eager as his mother for a brother or sister, it didn’t matter, he’d been waiting as long as he could remember, smiling into my face as I said goodbye at the airport, telling him I was going to a place where orphanages were overflowing with children desperate for older brothers. Anna stood there also smiling, stroking the back of Miklós’s hair as I spoke to him, once in a while backing up what I said, even jumping in to describe what the little girl would look like—olive eyes, curly hair, dark brown skin—the three of us pickingout names—Juliska, Klára, Mária—as we waited for me to go through security.
    Anna and I had been cleared to adopt years ago, when it became obvious that the magic that had produced Miklós was gone, vanished along with the conversations we’d once had (apart from how our son was doing, how much money we needed for daycare, renovations, bills), and our interest in concerts and art galleries and sex with each other—everything gone except the three or four glasses of wine we drank every night ( that we could still agree on), though by the time of my departure for Budapest Anna was slipping even in this, and making up for it by criticizing me for drinking too much. Instead of dealing with it, our marriage, we decided, or Anna did, to become political and adopt a child.
    We’d gone through the adoption course, sitting beside other desperate couples,