The guard pounced up and down the capsules, and I heard him grunt and mutter to himself as he walked by the vent I peered out from. It would be no usefulness leaping backward and making noise. I decided to wait until the guard rested again.
I still had one more capsule to look into, and I was sure it was Eszter’s. So, in miniscule, I would not halt my quest. I heard a petite talking sound from that area too. I failed to formulate what she said precisely, but I thought I heard it singing. So with zero percent doubt in my mind, I decided that was Eszter’s ghostful voice wafting through the vent. Going forth, I soon discovered her. She sagged against the cornermost wall, her hair a nest of gray sticking to her head and the wall behind her. Her eyes flashed wide as she jostled with something in her hands. She also sung to the thing in her hand, in a petite voice, sometimes even speaking with it. It appeared dead and gray. I comprehended, then, it was a rat! A dead rat!
She embraced the thing and commenced lunging it in fits against the wall. She threw it, and it’d fall without life atop the ground. She embraced it up and repeated the same process over and over. She sang a range of curses, her voice expanding to more loudness. Like a wild person, she screamed at the rat until she disassembled its insides against the wall. Next, she paraded her wrists into the wall, her hands smushing against the bricks. She was bloody from it all, and I couldn’t tell if its origins were her or the rat.
When she terminated her anger, she picked up the rat again and pressured it against her chin. I could not comprehend her words, but she was talking with love. In that moment she appeared without age. She was in her own universe where she sets the rules. She could have been three or twenty-three or even a hundred and three. Innocence is determined, I believe, as the one hundred percent belief in everything. That’s exactly how Eszter looked. But knowing who she was, and what she had been through, this was all very disgusting. She was inciting momentous horror within me.
But I ventured down there to conclude a job. So pursuing my lips against the vent I whispered, “Eszter….” Just her body absorbed her name, and she put herself into a less tight wad around the petite rat. I think I was calling her back to the world of people aware.
She stood up like a snail, but what occurred next was the opposite that. With one hundred percent forcefulness, she lunged herself at the vent and began banging on it and screaming. I was in there hiding, but she knew I was there. She persisted screaming, her bloody fingers poking through the holes in the vent.
I heard her hiss, “Uncle Lanci, is that you?” She said your name an ad nauseam number of times, which utterly muddles me, Uncle Lanci. Why is this woman who gropes beneath the Ministry of Interior so possessed with a DJ of a rock music program? As far as I am cornered, you have quite a high level of explaining to do, and I am waiting for it.
Eszter continuously tried her extreme hardest to dislodge me from the shaft. Not one guard rushed to her aid (as normal). Soon her screams dampened. She now whispered your real name, Uncle Lanci, which was more chilly than her screaming.
“Laszlo Cseke, Laszlo Cseke,” she said. She is calling you by your other name, Uncle Lanci. Should I call you that? I can’t say I like it very much….
Anyway, I snapped my eyes down. I wanted to make pretend this was not occurring. That’s when I heard a soft tinkering. The sound of porcelain hitting metal regurgitated toward me. I opened my eyes to see Eszter aspiring to bite forth into the shaft. Perhaps she mistook herself to be the rat she embraced to breasts just a few minutes prior.
I am a sensitive being, and I could no longer refuse my soul the desire to simply comfort Eszter. I commenced speaking to her. Aware the fault resided within me that she began this mania anyway, I tried my best to flex my voice to softness. I pretended to be you. I told her she would be okay. I said that one day upcoming she would be able to flee this capsule and go somewhere, anywhere, she imagined to go. She commenced conversing with me, but you.
Addressing me by Uncle Lanci, Laszlo, and sometimes Mr. Cseke, she inquired why I left her with nothing when she endowed on you so much. I attempted to fabricate an answer, but I am a miniscule liar. All I could say was “I’m sorry,” which I sincerest was. She posited her mouth up next to the vent and I could even detect her breath from the tiny space I beheld. No way would I unravel my identity to Eszter in that instance. I squinted with my brain the very hardest I could imagine to understand her. She uttered something along these lines:
“You say you’re sorry, then get me out of here. Come back into the country. Proceed to get me and we can leave on this envoy together.”
Oh, how I was foaming with desire to leap forth and confirm her will to leave on the envoy. Inside me, a voice instructed me to decline Eszter on this. Wait, wait, wait, it said. I agreed with it, from my fear or rationale, I cannot say.
I harbored zero ideas of how to evict myself from that situation though. With Eszter continuously submerging her face into the vent, I just did not know how to send her away. I mumbled forth again my sincerest sorries. I really was, for disturbing her like that. I uttered the phrase so many times, my throat became tense-filled. By the tenth “I am sorry,” Eszter backed from the vent and settled again on her bed. Forgetful of the rat, she lay by herself now. Still mustering words, she remained in conversation, though I’m not one hundred percent positive with who. Maybe you, Uncle Lanci?
I backward scooted away from her. I propelled my butt across the shaft, the tunnels, and the doors and upward toward Andras. I solely desired to escape from all this situation promptly. To be forthright, Uncle Lanci, I am not certain if I will muster the courage again to return to the capsule where Eszter resides. Her demeanor is more frightening than I could ever possibly explain to you. So, if you would please spare me from this pain of finding her and simply tell me how to get on these envoys, I would give you all the money even I have saved and more. I aggressively wait your reply to me as if it was the crux that connected me to better parts of myself. It’s the notion that soon I will be gone from this place in a world of my deciding! Please adhere to my request soon.
If you can’t respond in earnest to my letters as I wish you would, could you simply at least play “She Loves You.” I am striving to see sweet Anika again. I’m make believing she is here, with me now, and I want to dance gently with her.
Sincerely,
Mike a Korvinközből
Desire is fuelled by all, but fulfillment. —Ernő Osvát
DORA TURJÁN
February 11, 1965
DETACHED AND DISORIENTED, Dora wandered through the night, a habit she had recently developed as her mind refused, more and more, to rest. She always kept Mike’s letters with her buried deep in her pocket—she had yet to hand them over to Joszef. Amazed at the speed of the city surrounding her, Dora felt out of sync with its energy—its trams, buses, and people—in perpetual motion. But the crunching of her feet against the hard, crusty snow eased Dora’s mind, allowing her thoughts to focus on the perfunctory rhythm of her walking, and nothing more. That is, until she heard her name being called out, cutting through that particularly cold night. Turning around, she saw her father, out of breath and sweating.
Ivan cursed as he stepped into a berm of warm dog poop lining the sidewalk. “I’m glad I found you. I need to tell you something,” he said as he scraped his boot against the battered curb.
Watching him, Dora thought about how it seemed people were always trying to scrape something off of themselves in this city. When they stepped outside, they peeled back their identities to become stern and subdued citizens. The second they entered the underground clubs, they tore off their public selves, discarding them like raggedy, old jackets, becoming rowdy, impatient, and in sync with the rock music. Dora wondered, through all of these layers, did she even know who she was? Or anyone else, for that matter?