She took up violin because it was her mom’s, and our grandmom had died. She carried the violin with her in all places. Even when we went to the opera! At various times, she’d awaken me in the middle of the night and force me to accompany her to Liszt Ferenc’s music academy to sit in a room, solitary, with the violin.
When I emitted tears for being too tired to take part in her exuberant manifestations, she would glare at me like I was preventing the world’s offerings from her. Her eyes quieted my tears, but made me so scared that I would not be able to sustain her. By three in the morning, I’d fall asleep on the floor of the music school, my drool crafting a neat pool at the bottom of my arm. Mom would pick me up and say she was sorry. When I woke in the morning, I would fabricate that the night previous never had a stake in reality. At breakfast, Mom nudged me a little and delivered me a cup of coffee as she realized how tired she had forced her petite son to become.
Soon, Adrienne, only five, became aware of the secret nights at the academy. It was impossible to pass through anything with her. But Mom possessed her time with Adrienne too. Once, when Mom took Adrienne and I to the Széchenyi baths, she asked us both if we would like to participate in the whirlpool taking place. I plunged immediately into the center of the pool to demonstrate my bravado. Adrienne looked fierce, then constipated. I thought she would need to go toward the toilet, but then tears exuberated from her eyes. Mom took Adrienne’s hand and I thought she would convince her join me in the divine whirlpool. Instead they escaped back into the baths. Fine, I calculated, I did not mind. I would be on my own and push forward into the whirlpool. After twirling around with men twice my size and with their fat globbing onto me like nodes of peanut butter, I ventured into the baths to discover Adrienne and my mom.
Like two sisters, they luxuriated in a petite room that shot forth from the main one. Adrienne had her hands in my mom’s, and my mom played at examining them, then continued forth in painting them with an imagined nail polish. Flames of jealousy erupted before me. (I realize, now, Uncle Lanci, they were completely petite of me to even possess. I thought since I was my mom’s initial born that I should fill her to capacity.) But there Adrienne perched like a queen, and my mom served her so. They laughed and then Adrienne took her turn painting my mom’s nails with the imagined polish. I wondered how frequently those interactions took place. That’s when I realized a world existed beyond me, one that was reserved just for Adrienne and Mom, and I have zero accessibility to it. And it’s that world I desire more than anything to bestow upon Adrienne. If I could just show her that it is still existent, just walking around in another country, then she could believe in it again.
When I later appeared at the Ministry of Interior for my cleansing duties, I felt the fear I endured while pent in its confines. All the memories that sifted through my forgetfulness remerged in my consciousness. Andras laughed at me when I started emitting tears. It forwarded me to anger since he escaped seeing what I saw.
I persevered hard to contain the sum of my knowledge on Eszter within me. Of course, I indulged Andras in the other gorrisome details of my imprisonment, like getting beaten upon. Andras endured an hour in prison that night, so he listened with such enthusiasm. I couldn’t even detect his broom meeting the floor while I persisted my mind so hard to decline the image of Eszter below us crying. I know she has become mixed up, Uncle Lanci, because she had to.
I appreciated when your music, Uncle Lanci, beamed on, precisionly “The Sound of Silence,” which indulged shivers in me. Do you feel mourned for Eszter in the slightest? She said this was her radio station. I experienced mourning while listening to your music, and anger avenged me for what I heard occur to her. Andras peered at me again and asked if my experience in prison really was that immense. He is a firm friend, after all. He would not permit me real pain without assisting me to overcome them.
I burst into an explanation of Eszter. Holding that in was more perilful to me than I knew. I began to tell him the sum of everything, especially regarding how Eszter succumbed to the upmost horror I ever heard. Andras, who I knew would maintain our friendship most loyally, sat straight forward and made his back extremely long. For a many number of minutes, Andras uttered zero words and glanced at me peculiarly like I was sideways. I thought for a second I had incited resignation in him. Or worse, anger.
“Mike,” he said, and I could see these little invisible beams of sadness fleeing from his eyes, “Did you know that once I viewed what you heard? I viewed rape and I did zero about it. I witnessed it but refused to step into action.”
“That must have invoked pain in you,” I said.
“Is there anything we can achieve for Eszter?” he asked. “We must go down to assist her. We must.”
I was shocked that my friend would be so forceful about this. But, he kept looking downward, as if he knew all along that something was there. And now that it was confirmed, he would never unfixate from it. I doubted we could venture down there with the sparse keys I owned, not to mention the foreboding guards.
But then I reminisced on Adrienne’s eyes, her petite, squeaky voice and all that she hoped for when I promised I would flee to Munich. I also understood this was probably what Eszter wanted, or at least what the sane division of her wanted. She desired for me to come back. That’s why she uttered the escape story.
Andras persevered studying the bottommost portions of the office. Immensely, Andras finally pointed to the vent below us. He gave me that look… you know, the one in the movies when both characters know what the other one is pondering. It was that look and we knew: that’s how to get to Eszter.
We used a screwdriver in our pockets to wrest open the latch. Andras attached a rope to me that he retrieved from the maintenance closet. If Andras had not existed during this plan, I have heavy doubts I would have succeeded in my descent. It is so luxurious to have friends who maintain smarter wits than you. This whole ordeal was not thrilling to me, but so burdensome. Especially when I spied Andras’ downcast eyes as I spiraled down the shaft. He looked like a little raccoon in the night.
Once black subsumed my vision, I spidered in a horizontal trajectory forward. I had to go through a mess of metal tunnels. That’s the junction when my head attached to something hard. I got very proximal to the hard thing and realized it was a door. And it was cemented. My head sinking with my heart, I moved myself backward when some delicious thinking told me I should just try my keys on these doors anyway. Miraculously, they just rippled through the lock and opened it! I commenced spidering through the tunnel, opening every door that blocked me with the same key. Finally, I peered a long tunnel, and at the end of it was a light. I spidered to it, and it turned about to be a row of air vents. Through them were rows of horrendous capsules.
Inside some, prisoners slumbered in balls embracing their knees. Like petite, stricken rodents, they tried to comfort themselves with their own bodies. Others spread out in their cots as if asking someone to come and occupy them and pinch them away to another place for the evening. But as I kept spidering, I noticed more and more prisoners awoken. I assembled the fantasy that they were longing for the music we played every Thursday.
I passed admist the lone guard as he leaned over his chair absorbed by whatever materials he was pursuing. It resembled the naked women portfolios I indulge in at times. At first, I resonated zero noise, but then my knee ripped a weak point in the metal and a loud creaking emitted throughout the capsules. I made a screech—my very first one I had ever made in my quest to find Eszter—and the guard’s head shot up from his reading material.