Attila & Lyudmila

reserved

"Behold a shiny warrior on his horse,

Armed with tongues of flame,

Born of thunder and the stars,

See how he holds its shaggy mane,

How he blows the poet’s horn."

– Alexandr Pushkin

Ruslan and Lyudmila

(trans. Peter Hargitai)

CHAPTER 1

It was my first week as a greenhorn freshman at Cleveland State University when my Scientific German professor called my name out in class. Was there a Mr. Art Nagy in the room? Someone outside the door wanted to see me. A man wearing a suit and one of those new Afros said he was a detective from the Fairview Park Police Department, and he needed me to go with him down to the station, a matter of a few questions they had to ask about a certain neighborhood girl named Millie Weiler. I may want to take my books and stuff since there was a good chance I wouldn’t be back.

I was pretty rattled. My heart did its usual sickly somersaults before breaking into a full gallop. I tensed my muscles to keep everything in, to appear nonchalant, to pretend I didn’t give a rat’s ass.

So – I was caught. Finally.

The suburban police station on Lorain Avenue where I was hauled in the back seat of a police cruiser looked like something out of Main Street in Disneyland. The Stars and Stripes rippled against a bright-blue sky, the aluminum flagpole gleamed in the sun. Everything was neat and clean and orderly down to the immaculate lawn and the freshly chiseled shrubs. Going inside was another story, more like freaking culture shock. I was led through a maze of cement-block walls, battered desks and banged-up file cabinets into a tight little room, bare except for two chairs and a table with an oversized ashtray. Sergeant Lang would be with me shortly. But Sergeant Lang took his sweet old time, because after 20 minutes I was still waiting. My sweaty hands had a death-grip on the chair as I stared dumbly at the wall. A group picture of a Little League baseball team, glossy color photographs of the assassinated President John F. Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.

Not long ago I was staring at another wall with larger than life pictures of Lenin, Stalin and Marx. That was before the Hungarian Revolution and dodging a hail of Russian bullets to get to America. I felt bad for all the shit I got myself into since being here in the good old U.S. of A., but this took the cake, icing and all. The complaint against me was pretty serious. I was informed I was in direct violation of a statute of the State of Ohio that made it illegal for a person 18 and over to have sex with a minor.

Pretty surreal. My family and me risked our lives when we escaped from Hungary to be free, and now I was facing the possibility of being locked up behind bars for God knows how long. As an adult I would be charged with statutory rape and if convicted I’d have to serve prison time. It didn’t matter where I was from or how long I have lived here. Ignorance of the law was no excuse. In the eyes of the law, a minor was a child and I was an adult who should have known better. My interrogator would want to know the whole damn bit – and from the beginning. I never told anyone about any of this, and now I was going to have to tell my life story to a total stranger, a freaking cop of all people. The mere thought of my old man finding out scared me shitless more than anything else, because the thing was, I never could talk to my old man. Maybe the fact that he was a judge had something to do with it.

Christ, it was a weird year, starting with the summer of ‘64. It was the summer of the Beatles’ Ticket to Ride spinning around every turn table in the country, the XVIII Olympiad in Tokyo and Hungarian gold in soccer. The 1964 Civil Rights Act. The summer we moved from the inner city to the burbs of Fairview Park, Ohio, the summer my best friend Gypsy chopped off half his thumb, the summer we found out my favorite aunt died. It was the summer I was enrolled in Fairview High School where I first met Millie Weiler.

I remember being pretty pissed at my folks for having me transfer schools. I had been going to an all-boys school taught by a religious fraternity called the Brothers of Mary. This would be my first time in a public school. Fairview freaking High. My parents had me transfer to this crappy school just because we moved. Hey, what about my senior freaking year? I was fit to be tied. Like I was being put on the back burner and doing a slow burn of my own. Just wasn’t fair. My brother got to graduate with his friends, why couldn’t I? Why? I asked them. Why the heck do we have to move all the time? Their response was a series of sighs and groans and Here we go agains.

Don’t tell me, I said. Let me guess. Status. It’s status. It always came down to that.

No Puerto Ricans here, boy, my father said.

Or Gypsies, my mother chimed in.

I told them their new middle-class house was in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Here I was stuck light years away from civilization as I knew it. Life consisted of going from parking lot to parking lot. Not too swift without wheels. I’d have a marathon walk just to get a lousy pack of cigarettes. I had to leave my buddy Gypsy behind in our old neighborhood, the inner city. I still missed the shit out of it. Going over to Gypsy’s pad was nothing short of an expedition, if only he had his wheels already. He was expecting a hefty settlement from the paper factory where he got injured.

Gypsy was a real-life Hungarian Gypsy with inky skin. Everybody called him Gypsy and the name stuck. He was slight, with small hands and delicate fingers, perfect for picking pockets. So said my racist family. What bull! The poor schlub only had half a thumb, the other half got cut off by a paper cutter where he worked since dropping out of high school. For a laugh, he’d stick his half-thumb into his ear and it would look like it was going right through his head, or he’d put his half-thumb by his groin to make it look like he was holding his dick. Once he pulled his stunt in a movie theater only to have this chick sitting next to him whack him in the nuts so hard he screamed like a freaking banshee. Man, I missed him.

The day before my first day at the new school, I was banging my soccer ball against the brick foundation of our new house when my old man whipped into our driveway. He braked so hard the old Chrysler rocked. The car had been in the shop for another brake job. My father had the brakes checked regularly to make sure no one was messing with them. Go figure. He was paranoid. About the Jews and the Rosenbergs and a secret society called the Nokmim. The unpronounceable Hebrew word meant The Avengers. To me it sounded like something on the boob tube, but to my old man they were the ones who supposedly caught up with Adolf Eichmann, and they were bound to catch up with us and wipe us out, one by one.

It was all a lot of bunk!

The car door slammed with a hollow, metallic bang. The door had been replaced when my father sideswiped a parked car a while back. He was barely out of the old Chrysler, and he was already all over me. He said if I had to play sports I should play tennis and not waste time on a back-alley game played by Gypsies and hooligans.

I ignored him. Using my left instep first, then my right, I kept kicking the ball against the brick foundation. My kicks were becoming harder and harder.

Stop that. You want to cause damage, is that your new game?

That’s it, I said in Hungarian. We spoke to each other in Hungarian as we always did.

Every time you overdo it, your heart acts up. You’re better off reading books.

The box my old man was trying to conceal under his arm looked too much like a book, a crappy medical book. He fished them out of the green garbage bin behind the hospital where he worked as a janitor. Before the Russians ruined my father’s life, he had been a Royal Hungarian judge. Now he was a janitor and a royal pain in the ass. He told me he did not want me ending up like him. A medical doctor was at all times and in all places immune to the whims of regimes, he expounded. The title of the last book was Melanomas of the Breast. Filled with pictures of dissected breasts and words like histology and fascia.

My mother, still in her white hairdresser’s uniform and white support stockings, was cooking up a storm in the kitchen in honor of my father’s new chompers. For a month or so he lived on soup and cigarettes, and now he could finally chew and savor his beloved Hungarian diet. All four burners were on and the chicken paprikash going strong. My mother lifted the lid for me so I could breathe in the sweet red spice and nod approvingly. If she only knew I had already gorged myself on a McDonald’s double-cheeseburger and a giant shake less than an hour ago, it would be my goose boiling on one of the burners. Your father’s in the dining room, she said without taking her eyes off the stove. He’s got something for you. See if you can be civil for a change, son. I don’t think he’s feeling that good. His dentures are killing him but he’s too vain to say anything.

The box sat on the dining room table. My father was scanning the front page of the Hungarian daily, and when he saw me bounce in, he put the paper down and took off his thick glasses. He looked thin and worn out, his starched collar too large for his neck, the dyed hair almost white at the roots, but the mustache was jet-black above his grim upper lip. He lit a cigarette from a new pack of Parliaments and watched me through the smoke. Open it.

Instead of a book, the box contained my blue letter-sweater – minus the gold letter. He said he had the tailor remove it. The letter, he said, ruined an otherwise perfectly handsome sweater. I told him I was never going to wear it and started to go up to my room. He followed. Said it looked stupid and American and, besides, how would it look wearing my old colors in my new school? By the time he got to the top of the stairs he was wheezing. I let him catch his breath so he wouldn’t have one of his asthma attacks. He explained in gasps that a big letter like that was unbecoming on a sweater, but if I wanted to I could hang it up on my wall. No, he hadn’t thrown it out.

I came back down. I can’t believe you did that, I said. You have to ruin everything. Just like the time my aunt sent me a soccer jersey from Budapest, and you wouldn’t let me wear it because of that goddamn red star. Yeah. Remember that? You made mother unstitch it. I yelled for my mother in the kitchen: Tell him. Tell him.

My mother came out with the cucumber salad and said there was no reason for me to mouth off like that. She was a tiny woman but strong, and I knew I was dancing on thin ice, but I kept on dancing. Yes or no, I pressed on. Did you or did you not take off the red star from the soccer jersey your sister sent me? It was my Easter present, remember?

She didn’t. I did. Vividly. It was in 1953, the year Hungary beat England 7 to 1. I said to my father: You came home drunk that day.

Watch it, boy.

You came home from your night watchman job and you wouldn’t let me keep the soccer jersey because it had a red star on it. You didn’t care. That’s what our World Cup team wore. You didn’t give a crap how much it meant to me. All you cared about was your Persian rug with the swastika. Mother poured gallons of ink on it, remember? The blasted swastika bled through anyway. We almost got evicted.

My mother slammed the bowl of cucumber salad on the table, snatched up my sweater and left in a huff. By the time she was back with the sweater under her arm, my father was about to throw my ass out of the house. You think I’m going to let you talk to me that way? I should’ve left you in Hungary. You would’ve made a great Communist.

"Heil Hitler," I gave my old man a Nazi salute.

He lunged at me, cursing, "Az anyád kurva úristenit!" The Hungarian words are untranslatable, something about your mother and whore and God. I was never able to connect the dots on that one.

I spun out of his way. He lurched toward me, his blue eyes icy and wild. I veered out of his way and he missed me again. He was a raging, aging bull and I was the graceful matador. Another feign. This time he lost his balance and had to paw the table, making the dinner dishes dance. You’re going to be sorry, he gasped. Just you wait, you Pecsovics.

As far as I knew, Pecsovics was some kind of Hungarian Benedict Arnold. Someone who betrays his God, his country, and his family.

Enough! Both of you, my mother stepped between us. She told my father not to work me up, she didn’t feel like another trip to the doctor. Sometimes when I got too wound up I’d get breathless and my heart would race and do somersaults.

My old man lit another cigarette, this time with trembling fingers. Then he marched to the kitchen. I heard water running which meant he was probably popping one of his pills. My mother tossed my letter sweater on the table. She had sewn the letter back.

I didn’t acknowledge it.

Look, son, your father is set in his ways. Sometimes he can be difficult to live with.

I’m sure. I must’ve been difficult to live with, too, since you got rid of me.

You’re going to start all that again? She looked hurt. We were poor, son. You have no idea.

Why didn’t you send János?

You know why. You were your auntie’s favorite, not your brother. The poor woman couldn’t have any children of her own. She had to have her womb taken out. Her first husband gave her syphilis. You’re old enough to know what that means. She’s lucky to have lived through it. She told me – I don’t know if I ever told you this – that you’re the only one who actually brought a ray of sunshine into her life. My mother was crying now. Oh, son, you know how she doted on you.

Doted? She was obsessed with me.

You’re going to sit here talking that way knowing she passed? What kind of person are you?

What kind of person? That’s just it, Mother. I was never a person to her. And that goes for Uncle Arthúr, too.

My mother broke down now. She said, between sobs, I had no right to talk the way I did, I was too young to know what it was like under Communism.

I told her it must’ve been really bad for a mother to want to sell her son.

She was on the verge of losing it and demanded to know what in the name of Jesus I was talking about.

Nothing, I muttered. Just nothing.

She stopped crying and nodded her head slowly, took a deep breath with her eyes closed and nodded her head again. Do you know how she died? Did you even bother to ask? She was found frozen to death in the Párisi Street apartment. In the foyer. My mother elaborated in minute detail as if she’d been an eyewitness. The poor woman probably fainted in the foyer. They found her blue. And you know what else? They had to pry a photograph from her hand. Guess whose picture it was? Yours. That’s right. She had a death grip on your picture. God, it’s awful. She took out a crumpled handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

My old man was still in the kitchen. I could hear him pacing. I lay down on the couch in the family room and started to flip through an old medical journal he brought home by the dozen.

My mother marched back to the kitchen, I heard them mumble, and then my father came back out. Good cop, bad cop. I didn’t bother to look up. I heard my mother’s shoes clunking down the basement steps to start the laundry.

I was told to sit up, and to put that magazine down. My father’s wheezing simmered. I got up and turned on the television. The Warren Commission was coming close to releasing their report. Insiders say the report is most likely to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for the killing of President Kennedy. I waited for him to ask me to translate, to ask me who this Warren person was, but he didn’t. I waited for him to wave his bony arms to indicate what he thought of the Warren Commission, that it was a cover-up, a burlesque. But he didn’t do any of these things.

What he did was to turn off the TV and in his calmest voice say, Don’t let your mother’s histrionics fool you. Your aunt was killed. Some son of a bitch got to her. They’re on to us. I’m telling you they’re on to us. Jesus God. Your poor mother.

What – are you talking about?

They’re on to us, boy.

They? You’re paranoid.

Watch yourself.

Well, you are.

Is that all you have to say? Your auntie loved you like a son and that’s all you have to say.

The Hungarian secret police or whoever they are must have a lot of time on their hands to go after some old woman, and to send agents all over the world for a dumpster diver.

What d’you call me? What did you call your father, you hyena sucking son of a bitch?

Nothing, I said under my breath.

Too late. What was said was said. I was ready to feel the stinging slap. My ear would smart, then ring. It shocked me my father didn’t hit me.

I had gone too far. I said I was sorry.

No you’re not.

It’s just that you never listen. I tried to tell you the other day that Rosenberg was a common name.

He made an attempt to calm down. He waited. Followed his breathing. Sighed. Took a deep breath, let more air out. Let me tell you something, son. It’s not the name. I told you it wasn’t the name. It’s the face. I never forget a face. As a royal judge, I had to study faces. Different faces. The faces of criminals. I can tell you if a person’s guilty by looking at his face. It’s not just the look of guilt in the eyes, but the shape of the forehead. The closeness and position of the eyebrows. The hairline. There are three types of criminal countenances. One is the Neanderthal, another is the Negroid, and the third is the Ashkenazi Jew. Hooked nose, slumped shoulders, hairy back. That’s where the Rosenbergs come in. You think I can forget a face? A resemblance to a face? As surely as I am standing here, I can see his father’s face. Dangling from the gallows.

I turned to go. Out.

My old man reminded me that I couldn’t run away from who I was. I couldn’t run away from having been my godmother’s liebling. Come back here, you!

He wanted me to look at the instructions that came with his new medicine, the one that was supposed to make him breathe easier and help with his mood and all that. I dragged myself to the kitchen counter, where I found the old man’s new medicine. Next to it was a printed piece of paper with the word WARNING large and bold. Patients taking this medicine, called an MAO Inhibitor, were to abstain from salami, red wine, ripe cheese, etc. All the foods my father ate all his life. Essentially it was my father’s Hungarian diet.

He was standing right by me, his eyes magnified by his reading glasses. Well, what?

Don’t eat Hungarian, it says.

Very funny. He snatched the paper from me and raised his voice. Show me where it says Hungarian diet. I know that much English. Show me where it says that. The printed paper trembled in his hands. I went upstairs, taking my time. When I came down, it was with our bulky English-Hungarian dictionary. I slammed it on the counter so it landed with a loud thud.

My old man’s breath and patience were running out at about the same time. He wanted to know what in the name of God had gotten into me.

I’m going out?

What about dinner?

I told him I wasn’t hungry.

Go. Go! But don’t bring home any babies, you hear me?

I’m getting the hell out of here.

I slammed the door so hard the windows rattled. I heard it creak open behind me. That’s all I heard. The old man must have run out of air.

CHAPTER 2

For my first day of school, I took a long, steamy shower. For some weird reason I always had trouble tolerating a hot bath. I’d break out in hives and my heart would speed up like crazy. Sometimes I couldn’t catch my breath. After a sleepless night of tossing and turning and listening to the roar of jets as they took off and landed (that’s another thing: our new house was close to freaking Cleveland Hopkins Airport), I got up at the crack of dawn, scrubbed myself in the shower, put on a light blue dress shirt, gray trousers, and a brown sports coat. The final touch was a pair of black patent leather shoes with toes that came to a needle-point.

I rubbed some of my mother’s VO5 hair cream into my scalp and slicked my hair back. At the kitchen table, I fished out a Camel from a fresh pack, lit it with my Zippo lighter, inhaled deeply, and let the air out through my nose. According to the kitchen clock, I still had a two-hour wait.

With its arched windows and ivy, Fairview High School could’ve been taken for a swank private college