Prague (32 page)

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revenues for the last several years, while the classics sold with respectable consistency. "We are all great fans of your Mike Steele," Horvath said, raising an ironic eyebrow to the American private detective whose hygiene-obsessed German-language exploits supported the publication of English-language collections of Boldizsar Kis and French-language editions of Endre Horn's plays. And in this comment Charles knew he was meant to hear Europe laughing at the United States, at its philistine tastes and at the clever European ability to use those tastes to pay for more elevated ventures. Charles knew he was being asked to laugh with them and, in so doing, declare himself European, one of their own by their own definition. He smiled, even bowed his head slightly, in acknowledgment of their cultural triumph over shallow America.

All expertise sat in these three managers, Charles decided; the Toldy woman was a gofer, and the importance of the old man was purely symbolic, though, Charles reminded himself, that was not without value for investment and publicity, no matter how unappealing a type he found Imre Horvath. Charles used that very word at the Gerbeaud the following Monday: "He's a type you see all the time. He's exactly like a fat television addict who won't shut up about his high school athletic accomplishments. How can someone live as a shell of their former self?"

An assistant listed the ex-Horvath assets the Hungarian State Privatization Agency had on the block and detailed the likely process of bidding for them before Imre added, "The current Hungarian government, Mr. Gabor, with its former prisoners, its dissidents turned ministers, its poets and its thinkers: Many of them are in our catalog as well. We have published them and other forgotten Hungarians left behind since 1956. This, obviously, involved certain complications in procuring of manuscripts, but such things could be arranged with an Austrian passport and a willingness to, ohhh, extend oneself." The press's catalog of samizdat was patently unprofitable, comprising mostly journals and essays: brutal descriptions of life under Communism, philosophical treatises on living honestly amid dishonesty and betrayal, hopelessly fantastical and irrelevant then retrospectively amazing and prophetic imaginings of a future democratic Hungary's structure and soul. All of it would have been obtained and removed from Hungary at enormous risk. Imre offered no details, merely swung his censer of mysteries and allowed the whiff of secrets to infiltrate the room and tickle the American's nose.

"It's absolutely without commercial value. But good P.R., I'll give the old liar that," Charles said as cakes came. "I might need you, Johnny, to make this

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deal happen. You ever lobbied? Anyhow, we'll get your little typewriter doing something useful for a change, maybe make you some money." With a quizzical expression, John Price looked up from cracking the caramel top of his Dobos torte. "Yes, my little Hebrew friend," said Charles. "Money."

"It is remarkable, but true, Mr. Gabor: The Communists never changed the name of the Horvath Kiado. It was the name of class enemies, those wicked Horvaths, oppressors of the proletariat, but they also knew the Horvath name was—as I think you would understand—a respected brand. And what did they do with that brand from 1949 until 1989? They told lies with it. Under my name. Under my family's stolen name, for forty years, Mr. Gabor, foolish and wicked men have produced nonsense and lies. Except for thirteen days in 1956 when I was again in charge. Forty years of lies, thirteen days of truth. A bad score, I think." On cue, without looking away from Charles, Horvath accepted a book from his assistant and tapped the spine: A Horvath Kiado. He tapped the cover, the Hungarian words The U.S. Terrorist Campaigns Against the People of Hungary, by Gyula Hajdu. He opened the book, still facing Charles, to the back page, with its distinctive colophon: a little drawing of a muscular factory worker holding a stylized shield, and on the shield, surrounded by a cloud of steam or smoke, the letters MN. "A Magyar Nepkoztdrsasdg." Imre spoke, at last, three words of Hungarian. "The People's Republic of Hungary," he whispered. "But MK," Imre said, and tapped the spine of another book (conjured from a different assistant), where the traditional pistol fired away. "My great-uncle Viktor's design. MK. A Magyar Koztdrsasdg. The Republic of Hungary. Since 1808, we have published for a free, independent, democratic Hungary. My ancestor died at Kapolna for this freedom. And now there is such a thing, a real place at last, not a fairy tale or a madman's vision, a true Republic of Hungary, and what do I have? My name and my business, very much one and the same thing, stolen from me to tell forty years of lies. Mr. Gabor, I want your help in restoring truth. This"—he looked straight at the impenetrable boy—"would be a triumph for a young Magyar hero. Not only financial but moral, historical, philosophical. We do need your firm's money, Mr. Gabor. This is obvious. But we can get that, I think, from other sources. We also need men and women of culture who understand the importance of what we represent. We need Hungarians of character, ready to reclaim their heritage. Please tell this to your firm." Horvath rose and four others rose in unison a heartbeat after. "I am needed elsewhere now, unfortunately, Mr. Gabor." He examined the seated Charles. "I am very curious to know what you will do in this situation that faces you,

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young Karoly." He squinted slightly at Charles and spoke in English, low and slow and grave. "You and I shall perhaps tell this story together. This Hungarian story. Your return to Hungary makes our return to Hungary possible. The truth restored by two Hungarians who wish to come home, one young and one old. Are you prepared, Karoly, to grapple with such a labor for your people?" He stood over Charles, his arms crossed, his powerful hands hidden in the folds of his Italian suit, his thin oval reading glasses holding back the wash of his silver mane, his blue eyes unblinking under thick lines of forehead, eyes angled sharply down at the American. His voice slowed and deepened further still. "Your Hungarian story. Think on this first, Karoly, and on balance sheets second. It is my best advice to you."

The door closed behind him and Imre Horvath stepped slowly and unsteadily down the carpeted hall that led to his office. With great effort, he walked along the corridor and directly to one of the guest chairs facing his desk. He sat heavily under a framed photograph: the current finance minister of the new democratic Hungary, age four, sitting astride the shoulders of Imre Horvath, age twenty-four—a picture used in Bekeben. The two of them squinted into the sunlight on the Danube riverfront on the Buda side, right in front of the bombed and sunken Chain Bridge, its broken connecting cables dipping into and rising out of the river, its main pediments supporting no road at all. The little boy perched high on the young man's shoulders waved and smiled; he had just crossed the river on one of the temporary ferries with his friend Imre, who took care of him from time to time. Imre held the soft dangling ankles in his fists, and pictured sleeping with the photographer, the little boy's oldest sister.

Charles's afternoon ended with a tour of the Horvath Verlag offices, warehouses, and printing equipment, under the leadership of Bela, the shortest of the three assistants, a young man nearly without hair, just a monastic fringe that ran from ear to ear, and a twice-broken nose that resembled one of the lesser-known pastas. Charles again investigated Imre's chain of succession, and Bela replied: "He has only a cousin, I believe in Toronto, but he has no children. By not having the family he was able to go to Hungary and come a little more free, could resist their certain pressures. It was often through family they made you to collaborate, you know, to bend you. He never collaborated, you see. Never. He never bended. But with a family, well—"

"It might have been his Achilles' heel." Charles finished the intolerably slow sentence.

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Bela stopped in front of one of the clattering machines, held up his hand with the palm facing his guest and the fingers curving slightly inward, a favorite gesture of medieval saints in flat paintings. "He has no Achilles' heel, Mr. Gabon He is one of the great men, the real rare men. This you will learn; you will be very lucky to work with him." And Charles saw that this was not a rehearsed part of the day's grand plan to impress the money man, not even really that smart a thing to say to a potential investor—just the absolute truth as far as Bela was concerned. Charles exerted himself to the utmost and did not laugh.

PART THREE
 
- A Temporary Digestive Disorder

JOHN
  
PRICE
  
SMOKED
  
A
 
SLOW
  
CIGARETTE
  
ON
  
HIS
  
BALCONY,
  
KISSED the photos of his antique wife and child good night, then lay on his folded bed's covers, unable to file the events of the day, the head injury and fratultery. His brother deserved nothing better. He should apologize to his brother immediately. He was every day better able to appreciate Emily. He was every minute less worthy of Emily. He was a bastard. He was a genius of living.

He was nearly asleep when a mathematical equation glowed behind his closed eyes. In the quick-pulsed, sweaty state between wakefulness and sleep, he watched a well-manicured, graceful female hand move chalk across a blackboard. The equation appeared in clicks and squeaks, the disarmed hand pushing the telltale chalk: Seriously — not seriously. As her hand came to the end, the letters began to fade progressively, in the order they had been written, like vapor

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trails or motorboat wakes. He watched the equation write itself over and over in the same space, at the same pace, fading, reappearing, again and again. Seriously = not seriously. Seriously = not seriously. When the word seriously began to look misspelled, imaginary, John was escorted into sleep.

The next morning, this equation—unlike great presleep revelations of the past, vast social engineering solutions, mathematical insights, philosophical breakthroughs—had not vanished but sat perched on his shoulder and demanded his immediate and undiluted attention when he opened his eyes: Seriously = not seriously. He rose and returned to his balcony, watched the traffic and the foreshortened pedestrians, who, directly beneath him, shrank to mere circles with four telescoping attachments. The equation paraded around, and he couldn't quite think of anything else for several minutes.

On and off during the morning, as he struggled to make sense of the bloodied notes from his interview with Harvey, he would lean back in his chair and chew his lip, considering serious and nonserious until, just before noon, Karen Whitley asked him if he was in the mood for "a special lunch." The equation finally revealed its secret meaning to him as Karen's closed eyes and open mouth swung metronomically in and out of John's range of vision. With each pendulum swing, her torso and head obscured and revealed in rhythmic alternation the ceiling rose, the plaster grapes and garlands encircling her bedroom's light fixture. John tried to see this carving in his mind's eye even when it was blocked by Karen. He tried to make the girl transparent on behalf of Emily, who sat obligingly nude next to him, placed one hand on his forehead, and demanded ferociously, like a martinet drill instructor, that he count the grapes, that he silently describe the garlands and the tiny cupids in complete detail to her. And, as he was following her orders, his equation returned—Seriously = not seriously—and John began to smile, and Karen, her eyes open now (vaporizing Emily), smiled back at him, and John smiled more broadly, and Karen, too, smiled more broadly, and John slowly began to understand the vision that had come to him with sleep the night before. After a while, Karen stopped moving and her head fell against John's chest, and the sound of her talking slowed and lowered and became the sound of her breath and then the sound of her sleeping. By then, John understood that some things mattered and some things did not and that the happy people in this world were those who could easily and rapidly distinguish between the two. The term unhappiness referred to the feeling of taking the wrong things seriously.

He left Karen asleep and returned to the office to finish his Harvey profile,

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which now typed itself with nonserious facility: Harvey was not serious; Harvey was amusing. Nothing could possibly be less serious than brother Scott and his Magyar mistress. John tapped at his computer keyboard with a dramatic rising and falling of the hands, like a concert pianist.

"AND YOUR
 
FATHER
 
SAID TO
 
ME, 'BUT THAT'S WHY WE'RE
 
HERE.
 
I'D
 
DO THIS

again in a minute.' Think about that. Even in that kind of danger, under fire, with me giving off very unhelpful doubt and fear, he was entirely clear about himself and his purpose. Extraordinary. They don't make a lot of men like Ken Oliver."