They say things are moving here, but I’ve been here and I’m usually gone, and things are happening and unhappening always, so where are things going? I don’t know, but I know that I get to say what is, and what isn’t, and I hear something… I do. Is it her? Is it her? Yes, it is—it’s Dora and she just got home from school, and she is crying because she just failed a math quiz, and I have cookies ready for her, and all night to tutor her. She looks at me with those probing, dark eyes. I feel like I could just jump into them and keep sinking and sinking, forever. And she tells me she loves me and I say, “I love you too.” I will always love her. She is my daughter.
DORA TURJÁN
January 25, 1965
DORA FELT COMPLETE despair, as if she had reached the end of a world she trusted to be round. Standing on the edge of a cliff that dropped into a dark expanse, Dora wanted nothing more than to turn around and go back, but she knew she’d never be able to. Dora had recognized those eyes in the basement. Distantly, she knew them, and now she had proof. No, they were not Boldiszar’s—he was dead, and that much she knew. Their catlike shape, the trace of beauty Dora now realized she saw around their edges, was unique to Eszter. They were her mom’s.
“Mom.” The word felt so clunky as it moved through her brain, making her uncomfortable and even a little sick, especially when she remembered there was not one glimmer of recognition in those eyes. Their owner looked out at a complete stranger, who was her daughter.
How could Dora continue standing or walking on the street, and then leave, go to sleep, wake up, eat or do anything, when another gruesome and bruised world existed beside hers? In fact, it existed below her. Beneath her feet, her mom suffered a terrifying existence.
Dora had long suspected Eszter committed some sort of murder. She also long suspected her mom had been imprisoned—the fate of many arrested during the revolution. She would never forget the night they came for Eszter.
The revolution exploded outside, and Dora was inside studying for a math test when a thunderous knock rattled the front door. Thinking maybe, somehow, it was Boldiszar, Dora ran out of her room. She knew something was wrong when Ivan didn’t acknowledge her and marched straight for the door. Watching her dad drew Dora into a panic, making her heart pound hard, like it was trying to choke her.
“It’s the police,” Ivan spat, staring straight at Eszter.
“I’ll hide,” Eszter whimpered. “Don’t tell them I’m here.”
Dora felt like she might stop breathing. “Can’t we just not answer the door?”
“Dora, get out of here,” Ivan snarled.
It felt like someone was stomping on Dora’s chest, pressing all the air out of her. When she didn’t move, Ivan scooped her up and sat her down in the kitchen. “Do not say a word.”
“Please, don’t let them take her,” Dora cried, clutching her dad’s hands.
“I’ll try my best,” Ivan said, getting Dora a glass of water. “Drink this and take deep breaths. They won’t be here for long.” Ivan stomped off, leaving Dora trembling and sobbing.
A thick, red velvet curtain separated the kitchen and hallway, and Dora, terrified yet needing to know every single detail, peeked out through it. She watched as Ivan combed his hair to the side five times, straightened his shirt, and opened the door. Three policemen, in thick coats buttoned to their necks and rifles strapped across their chests, stood in front of Ivan.
“Is this the home of Eszter Turján?” one of them asked.
“It is,” Ivan confirmed.
“We are requesting to see her. Now.”
“Wait just one moment.” Ivan closed the door and hissed at the armoire in the hallway, “What did you do now?”
“I’m not here,” Eszter said, her panic muffled by the armoire’s thick wood.
Before her dad could respond, the police kicked open the door, sending Ivan flying back against the wall. The police took one look at the armoire, grabbed the top of it, and slammed it to the ground. Eszter trembled, her back and palms pressed against the wall, as if she could just blend in with the dark blue walls.
“Get her to the floor,” one of the officers shouted.
Ivan positioned himself between Eszter and the officers. “No, please, let’s all sit down like adults and talk about this.”
“We know who you are, sir,” an officer said. “We have a message from our superiors that it would be best for you, and your daughter, if you just stay out of this.”
At the mention of Dora, Ivan completely shrank, fixing his eyes on the floor. An officer nudged him out of the way, and Ivan slunk to the corner of the hallway, not looking up once.
They moved in on Eszter, grabbing her and wrestling her to the ground. One of them straddled her while the other two stood over her pointing guns at her back. Pinned, with her belly to the floor, Eszter tried to break free, flailing like a tortured mermaid. Dora dropped to the floor too, somehow finding comfort in being at eye-level with her mom. She remembered thinking that, despite her anguish, Eszter looked beautiful. Her thick brown hair, normally in a taut bun, flowed wildly over her shoulders. Her skin still had just the right balance of tan and white. It stretched over her small nose and tall cheekbones, making a perfect stop at her eyes, which curved up at the corners. She seemed so indestructible.
Maybe she was. For a moment, Eszter’s arms shot out from under her, pushing her torso off the floor. It looked like she might buck the officer off her back when a baton struck her hand. Dora heard the smack of flesh. She felt the burning pain on her own hand and Eszter’s screaming inside her head, though Eszter didn’t make a sound.
Eszter clenched her teeth and turned her head in Dora’s direction. When their eyes met, Eszter stopped trying to wriggle free, though neither of them really showed any signs of recognition. No one mouthed “I love you,” or nodded or cried. Wide-eyed, and in shock, they just looked into each other’s eyes as if trying to find the answer to a question they didn’t know how to ask.
Dora wanted to say something that would somehow encapsulate the anger and love she felt all at the same time. Dora hated her mom for doing this, whatever it was—putting herself in a place where she could get arrested and the police could be standing in their living room ready to inflict something terrible on her and their family. But Dora also desperately felt the urge to run out and hug her mom. She wanted to cling to her, smell her hair, and run her fingers along her stubbly legs, like she did when she was little. She wanted Eszter to know that Dora needed her, no matter what, even if Eszter was gone most of the time. Knowing her mom would come home, at some point, had been enough for Dora. She hated Eszter for not instinctively knowing that. Staying in Dora’s life should have been her top priority.
Without warning, Eszter’s eyes disappeared. In jarring thuds, Dora heard them drag her mom across the floor. The terrible sounds of struggle—scuffling, grunting, a body slamming into a doorpost—echoed in the kitchen, until the door slammed and silence, mixed with Ivan’s dry, gasping sobs, took its place.
Dora ran to her bed and pressed her head into her pillow. She cried so hard that her entire body convulsed, tossing her back and forth, as tears poured down and around her. She didn’t stop crying for hours, until pain shot through her temples every time she tried to let out another tear. Dora thought it couldn’t get any worse.
Now, years later, she wondered if it just had. Her mom had been taken away to a secret prison where she was continuously and mercilessly raped. Dora would never wish that upon anyone, let alone her mom.
MIKE A KORVINKÖZBŐL