The phone rang. Gordon raised his head, but continued typing when he saw Valéria pick up the receiver:
. . . she reported her discovery to the head of the local gendarmes.
“Zsigmond!”
Gordon turned around.
“It’s for you.”
“Who is it?”
“He says his name is Kalmár.”
Gordon ran over to the phone.
“How did you know I was here?” he asked.
“I didn’t know, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try.”
“So, what is it?”
“The usual. Your beat. We found a girl.”
“What sort of girl?”
“What do you think? A dead one.”
“Who have you told?”
“I always begin with you,” replied the cop.
“That I believe. Were you on the scene, too?”
“No, I’m calling from headquarters. You’ve always paid my five pengős, so why wouldn’t you pay me now?”
“Give me the address.”
“You can be especially grateful for this, Gordon. It’s right in your neighborhood.”
“Don’t go telling me the tram ran down some maid out on the main boulevard.”
“I won’t. You’ll see the cops out front at the start of Nagy Diófa Street. There they are, standing around a very lovely and very dead young woman’s corpse.”
“Did she swallow a bunch of match heads? Jump out the window?”
“How should I know? But I think you should get moving if you want to see her. The coroner left for the scene ten minutes ago.”
Gordon pulled on his trench coat, slammed his hat on his head, and grumbled something to Valéria on his way out.
Within a couple of minutes he’d arrived at Nagy Diófa Street. As soon as he turned the corner from Rákóczi Street, he saw the black hearse and, beside it, a few uniformed officers and two plainclothes ones. Gordon looked at his watch: it was past ten. Usually he avoided murder scenes; he’d seen quite enough of them, and after five years with the Evening there wasn’t much that could surprise him. And yet he hurried now, for Kalmár had called him first; the next day—regardless of the prime minister’s death—this is what every paper would write about. But he was the only one on the scene so far, and that was worth more than five pengős.
As the crime reporter at the Evening, Gordon knew the countless modes of death better than he would have wished. Maids drank ground-up match heads to poison themselves and flung themselves in front of trams. Barbers dismembered their lovers. Divorcees slashed their veins with razors. Tradesmen’s apprentices leaped off the Franz Joseph Bridge. Jealous civil servants cut their wives to shreds with butcher knives. Businessmen shot their rivals with revolvers. The possibilities were endless, and yet they were oppressively the same, for the end was always identical.
Hastily he went toward the guarded building, but one of the plainclothes officers stepped in his way. Gordon called out to detective Andor Stolcz, who waved to his colleague to make way. Notebook in hand, Gordon stepped over to the body, which was lying facedown right in the doorway like some discarded rag doll. Her face was turned into her shoulder; her black hair was sprawled out over her back.
“When did she die?” asked Gordon.
“She’s still warm,” replied Stolcz. “The coroner hasn’t seen her, but I figure she’s been lying here for an hour. It’s amazing the telephone call came in so quickly.”
“Sooner or later a gendarme or a police officer would have passed down the street and seen her.”
“Assuming no one else would have.”
“What did she die of?”
The squat, veiny detective shook his head. “How should I know, Gordon? We’ve only been here a couple of minutes. I don’t see blood.”
“Nor do I. Who is the girl?”
“Now that’s the thing,” said Stolcz, sticking his hands in his pockets. “We didn’t find a thing in her purse. Just a few shreds of paper and a Jewish book.”
“A what?” Gordon fixed his eyes on Stolcz.
“A Jewish prayer book.” The detective reached inside the open back door of the automobile waiting on the sidewalk. “This,” he said, producing a thick little package wrapped in a piece of white fabric. He unwrapped the book and held it out toward Gordon.
“Is anything particular written inside it?”
“Nothing. A few pages with their corners turned in. That’s it.”
“Nothing to identify her.”
“I’ll look at the list of missing persons back at headquarters,” said the detective with a shrug, “but I doubt she would have been reported. And anyway, we just found her. Maybe in a couple of days someone will report her missing. You know as well as I do that more than one or two girls arrive in Budapest every day who wind up in this neighborhood. This isn’t the first streetwalker to end up in an unmarked grave in this city.”
Gordon nodded. But this was exceptional all the same: a dead Jewish girl on a street with such a dubious reputation. He took another look at the corpse. One of her feet was wedged under her body, and on the other foot he saw an ungainly, cheap, high-heeled shoe. Her skirt had slipped to the side, and there was a run in her brown stocking. Her peach-colored blouse shone from underneath her threadbare but good quality jacket. “She wasn’t overdressed,” Gordon remarked.
“Let’s just say that for the work she was up to,” replied Stolcz, “she didn’t need to be.” The left sleeve of the jacket had slipped above the elbow. Gordon leaned closer in the scant light. Then he squatted down. He took the girl’s wrist and turned it toward the light. Just below her elbow was a birthmark the size of a two-pengő coin. His stomach churned, as if suddenly in the grips of a long-forgotten childhood fear.
Gordon glanced up at Stolcz, who was talking with the other plainclothes detective as the three uniformed officers listened in. He reached inside his pocket and took out a fountain pen. Carefully he reached out toward the dead girl’s hair, and brushed it away from her face with the pen. The girl’s eyes were open, opaque, the irises dull. And green.
For a couple of seconds Gordon stared at those green eyes, the bloodless face, the slightly curly locks of black hair. It wasn’t hard at all to conjure up that sad, defiant smile he’d seen in Gellért’s photographs.
Two
Since every coffeehouse had closed, Gordon hurried back to the newsroom. Valéria had begun a new novel, and she raised her head just as Gordon picked up the telephone to dial. He had to wait eleven rings.
“About dinner . . . tonight,” he began.
“That you were late for again? Or did you want to cancel, Zsigmond? At ten-thirty?”
“I had a long day, Krisztina. Don’t be angry.”
“The devil is angry with you, but I could wring your neck. Tell me, why do I cook for you?”
“Because you like to cook. And I like your cooking.”
“It’s not so simple. You know that full well. And if you think flattery will sweep me off my feet, you’re knocking on the wrong door.”
“You think I don’t remember your fits? You’d be the last person I’d try to flatter.”
“But if you’re not out to flatter, then what?”
“To say sorry; I had a rotten day.”
“You’re always having rotten days.”
“Except when I’m with you.”
“Zsigmond, Zsigmond, it’s way too late. The rooster paprikash is much too cold for me to be in the mood to listen to you.”