Prague (13 page)

"Johnny, Maria. Maria finished the school's Beginners Two course today, so we're having a celebratory meal." Scott stood at the stove and scraped at something. "Maria, this would be John, my birth brother." "I am very happy to knowing you."

'And since it's kind of a private celebration," Scott said, smiling broadly and intentionally talking too rapidly for his date to understand, "I really look forward to catching up with you soon. That would be fantastic. I really look forward to that. And be sure to call first, as a rule." The door closed behind John, who considered calling Charles Gabor to have a drink but then thought better of it before hiking down the dark, suburban, cab-free hill toward the distant river.

IN
  
THE
  
PRECEDING
  
FIVE
  
OR
  
SIX
  
DECADES,
  
PEST'S
  
NINETEENTH-CENTURY

town houses—unlike the stylistically similar homes built by the nineteenth-century rich of Paris, Boston, or Brooklyn—had been left to erode under the tide of years, unbarricaded by money, exposed to the ferocity of the relentlessly crashing surf. A walk along any one of the city's dark, narrow side streets, late in the evening of the Fourth of July, 1990, would have provided a natural history museum display of the resulting striations and accretions.

The ornate iron grille in front of the leaded glass of the heavy, curved front door at number 4, for example, was only slightly touched: The black paint was scrubbed entirely away—not a single flake of it remained—and rust barnacles had sprouted in spots, but the plump iron leaves, the graceful metal ivy, even the brittle metal twigs were still solid. The frosted-glass panels behind the ironwork, though, had long since turned to wood and nails under the rhythmic lappings.

To the right, at number 6, inside the unlocked front door, one could still see the old square tiling of the entryway floor. Time had repainted the tiles,

stubbornly insisting on two shades of dull brown streaked with gray rather than a forgotten human's choice of pearl and ebony, and had then cracked almost every one and swallowed some of them whole, leaving here and there a small square of soft, gray dust recessed below the level of the floor, cunningly camouflaged traps where high heels and cane tips were lured and devoured.

A noisy crowd milled in front of number 16, at the corner where the street opened onto a small square. The building's facade had been worn until the stone garlands under the windows appeared to be paradoxically both smooth and crumbling. The balconies, like John's on Andrassy ut, were invitations to gamble. Bullet holes, administered in two doses, still drilled the front of the building, like the work of massive, lithovoric termites. One of these cavities— much to the amusement of generations of neighborhood children—penetrated the plump stone bottom of a floating cherub, who supported one end of a disintegrating garland. He had been looking over his right shoulder at the time of the shooting and now was trying to glimpse his wound. One could imagine a young Russian or German invader avoiding certain crucial details and reporting this incident as a confirmed kill or, in 1956, a Hungarian rebel sniper across the street, shooting perhaps from his own bedroom window, bored in a lull in the action and testing his skill on a promising target that he had looked at every day and night for nineteen years.

Number 16 had been a gift when it was completed in 1874. Its birthdate was carved next to a Latinized version of the Hungarian architect's name in the ornamental stonework over the front door, but by 1990 the entire 7 and the right half of the 8 had turned to dust (one lazy grain of rock at a time, like an aesthete preacher's illustration of eternity) until only a mysterious hieroglyphic remained, a date without a decade and almost without a century, 11 4.

BUT IN 1874 the building is in the very latest (French) style. It is the gift of a de-cliningly rich man to his second son on the occasion of that son's wedding. The son and his new bride take possession of the house in June of that year, one month after the date appears above the door. Man and wife arrive from Budapest's Nyugati rail station in their carriage, directly from a wedding trip that had taken them to Vienna, Italy, and Greece. The husband helps his wife down, takes her arm, walks her the ten yards from road to front stairs, past hedges and flowers, past welcoming staff (a cook and two maids come with the residence). At the threshold, husband smiles at bride, whispers something in her ear that

makes her blush, kisses her hand. "Welcome to your home, my dear," he says, and a maid opens their door.

BY 1990, THE HEDGES and flowers were gone. The road had been expanded, and a sidewalk only a few feet wide separated the six thin concrete steps to the front door from the daily parade of fuming tailpipes and balding tires. A side door for tenants led into the courtyard and from there to the crowded upper-floor apartments. Next to the front door, however, hung a hand-painted sign, red and black letters on wood: ISTEN HOZOTT A HAZAMBAN [Welcome to my house].

LATE ONE AFTERNOON, after the house is settled, the furnishings arranged, and a social life as a couple is embarked upon, the new husband is made to understand by his father that there is not enough money to support three sons without careers. The bulk of the father's fortune will naturally pass to the eldest son and a small annual sum—enough to pay for certain essentials, such as the house, for example, but far insufficient to rely on for everything—will accrue to the two younger brothers. In a small study off the main hall the father delivers this news to the young man in a tone of jovial inevitability, nothing surprising in the matter at all; nothing else could ever have been expected or supposed. The house, his father explains, was meant to provide a fair beginning and should serve that purpose in the family for generations. The father, feigning not to notice his son's expression, lists several possibilities that can be arranged for him, none terribly taxing or at all unbecoming, good opportunities to think over, no hurry, of course, but do let me know your preferences: a seat on the stock exchange, participation in some commercial ventures, a position in the government. The son is silent, his wrath overcoming his initial astonishment at the betrayal. The father, still avoiding his son's glance, concludes his practiced remarks, says he understands the boy will want some time to think about it, and offers to show himself out. The owner of the house waits until the sounds of his father's exit have faded before he hurls his coffee cup at the wall, where it shatters with an explosion muffled only by his obscene expression of fury.

THE SIGN—ISTEN HOZOTT A HAZAMBAN—was hung in 1989 by Tamas Feher when the legal standing of his new project was still unsettled. The sign was a joke, a feeble disguise expected to fool no one. And even when the club's legal status was secure, nothing more official or easy to use replaced the old sign. In-

stead, the institution grew in popularity without any name at all and was widely known simply as A Hazam [My House]. The building's interior layout had changed substantially in its 116 years; by 19 9 0 the small study (where the first of the wedding china had broken) corresponded only approximately to "Backroom 2," where several cartons of liquor lay stacked next to Tamas's desk. The small study off the main hall had been larger than Backroom 2, however, and if the china cup had exploded just over where a framed photo of a Hungarian fashion model now sat on Tamas's desk, it had actually been thrown from a spot located on the far side of the curtain that separated Backroom 2 from the bar.

THE NOISEWILL SOON conjure his curious wife. The thought of her seeing him like this, humiliated by his father and elder brother, is unbearable. He strides out of the room, passing a frightened maid coming to clear up the remnants of the cup, and turns away from the main stairs, pretending not to hear his wife calling him. Still unfamiliar with parts of his new home, he finds himself in the kitchen, walking rapidly past the baffled (and territorially offended) cook, who is in conversation with the faceless second maid, both of whom jump to standing and bow their heads as their fuming master passes. He opens first one door, which he finds full of pots and pans, then a second, and walks down the brick stairs in front of him. The staircase is impossibly dark, and in a rage he turns back up the stairs. "Gyertydt!" he demands, and the maid quickly complies. Armed now with a candle, he closes the door behind him and heads downstairs again. He stands on the new brick floor of a cellar he did not know he owned, whitewashed and clean, larger than what his candle can illuminate all at once.

IN 1990, THE CELLAR was lit by metal lamps, plain round stainless-steel hoods, enclosing extremely bright single bulbs, attached to plastic claws that gripped heat and water pipes. They were pointed at the corners, where the dirty white walls met the stained and cracking ceiling. The reflected light was sufficient, even atmospheric. Tamas had been pleased when his fashion model girlfriend had brought him fifteen lights as a gift, prouder still when she described stealing them one or two at a time from the studio of a West German fashion photographer based in Pest. The windowless, unventilated cellar held about 250 people on the night of the Fourth of July, 1990.

HE WALKS THE ROOM'S perimeter while he thinks what to tell his wife. He drags his left hand lightly along the white plaster. Ledges that are cut into the wall support sacks of potatoes, flour, other staples. Realizing the room's shape, he crosses it diagonally. In the center of this cool rectangle, bottles of French and Tokaj wine recline in tall wooden racks. The cellar must stretch all the way underneath the courtyard. He tries to recall the layout of the floors above him and walks aimlessly, carrying his small circle of yellow light with him, guessing which pieces of furniture float over his head. Directly above him, he decides, sits the long chair next to the fireplace, and above that is the bed, and above that, the maid's basin, then the roof with birds' nests, then open sky. Through all of this furniture, weightless over his head, on invisible floors, stroll staff and wife, layered over each other, amid floating and carefully arranged decor. Then the unbidden thought comes, soothes him, solves everything: If he were to arrange the death of his elder brother, all would be well again. He stands straight, turns to face the wall, looks up again, and wonders how it could be accomplished. He knows he will never do it, even as he hopes that he might. He says aloud that he will never do it, thus permitting himself to plan.

AGAINST ONE SHORT WALL, Tamas had built a small wooden stage, about four and a half feet off the floor. On the Fourth of July, 1990, the stage supported Cash Ass, a band composed of three men and a woman. She wore a black cocktail dress and high-heeled black shoes. Her platinum-blond hair was cut in the smooth, curving Hollywood style of the late 1950s. While she waited in the background during an instrumental passage, her face expressed a fleeting interest in her bandmates and calm indifference to the hundreds of eyes watching her. The three men were playing the instrumental opening, the sixth and final song in the third of the night's three-set contract. The men, too, wore black cocktail dresses and high-heeled shoes to match hers, and their platinum-blond hair aped hers so perfectly, it seemed likely that she too was wearing a wig. One musician played an assortment of children's instruments— ukuleles, banjos, cowboy guitars—all heavily amplified and blasted through the several large speakers slung around the basement. The second man played a bass guitar with incredible facility, maintaining a funk groove interlaced with thirty-second and sixty-fourth note trills, machine-gun patters, like bandoliers worn as fashion accessories. His thumps and pops caused dancers to twitch and jump in the steamy heat. The third musician sat at an array of cassette players wired to a single control panel. Brushing his platinum-blond bangs away from

his eyes, he brought up the volume of one cassette while he lowered another. During this song, he orchestrated:

• a baby crying and an elderly male voice attempting soothing Hungarian.

• a Soviet-era speech in Russian. (All of the Hungarians in the room had, at one point or another in their academic lives, been required to learn Russian, but it was a point of pride to assert forgetfulness, the highest achievement being lack of any Russian vocabulary whatsoever, a common claim belied by the number of dancers who now laughed and made faces.)

• the theme song from an American children's television program, sung in a happy major key by a man, a woman, and several gifted children.

•
  
a Hungarian couple exerting themselves, moans and bed squeaks.

• cut-and-spliced British cricket commentary:" The South Africans have rather a steep hill to scale steep hill to scale have rather a steepsteepsteep hill steepsteep hill to scale the South Africans have rather a steep hill to scale this afternoon, Trevor, Trevor, Trevor, Trevor."

« the Hungarian national anthem, recited atonally by three friends of the band. They imitated distracted schoolchildren until, after about ten seconds, the three voices were at three entirely different places in the anthem, and the crowd's applause and shouting grew deafening as the nation's hymn scrambled toward incomprehensibility.