He starts moving more on the bed, scooting his butt up and down. He feels Ferenc. He must. “Are you hiding something under here?”
I put my hand behind me because I am scratching it, and it’s the only thing I know to do. I feel something hard and metal go into it, from the crack between the bed and the wall. I run my hand along the top of the object. It’s pointed, a screwdriver. It’s the one Ferenc uses to open the vent, and he has given it to me now. I know exactly what to do.
“I have something for you too,” I whisper.
The guard looks at me, hopeful.
I take the screwdriver and I stab him, stab him, stab him in the eye. Thoughts leave me, and all that remains is my body moving, attacking. He screams, but I don’t care. I keep stabbing. He falls to the floor, and I jam the screwdriver in his ear. I stand above him, possessed by a strength I didn’t know I had. I kick his head over and over until he doesn’t move, but I can see him breathing. That is enough, I decide.
I grab Ferenc’s arm and help him out from under the bed.
“Eszter, thank you, thank you,” Ferenc gasps.
He sounds like he’s praying to me. When his eyes finally make it to mine, I recognize the expression.
“Boldiszar,” I say to him. “Trust me, this time it will work.”
But what I really want to tell him is that we can all become someone else. We aren’t original. We are people who have already lived, or died, or who aren’t even dead yet. I’ve already done this before, to him, years ago. Boldiszar grins, too much.
Before I can leave, I have to say goodbye to my rat. He barely exists now because he has deteriorated to bones and loose, torn skin. I hold him tight. My hand is getting worse, and puss is festering in the wounds. My little rat doesn’t mind. His tiny nose is still intact, and that’s what I kiss.
Boldiszar looks over my entire body, and suddenly I am worried. “What?”
“You won’t survive out there.”
“I have to.”
“It’s winter. And that looks infected.” He reaches for my hand.
I pull it away from him. “I’ll be fine. Just get me out.”
“I’m taking this.” Boldiszar grabs the worn blanket on my bed. “It’s not much, but at least we can keep you a little warm.”
He is so thoughtful, my Boldiszar. I nod.
We start with the vent in my cell, my first hurdle. When I make it inside, I feel the icy darkness of something that never brought me heat. My eyes search for nothing in the black, but my ears follow Boldiszar, who is crawling in front of me and then up, up, up. He reaches his hand down and I hear it tapping on the metal, beckoning me to grab it. I do, and he pulls me up, grunting through the exertion. The vent creaks, and I wonder if it’s on the verge of splintering. Every time it happens, Boldiszar pauses.
We come upon a solid piece of metal. It’s a blockade. I hear Boldiszar fiddle with keys, then the sure sound of a lock unlocking. We continue. Crawl. Door. Unlock. We enter a tunnel that smells like dirt and urine. We are wading through a bigger tunnel, and sewage collects around my ankles.
But I see it. It’s my first glimpse of freedom at the top of a grate. Through it I spy yellow light, barely poking through.
“Eszter,” Boldiszar is pointing up. “Please, tell me, when I open that, you will take me to the envoy.”
I nod forcefully, my neck so raw and grimy, and me not liking it for the first time. Boldiszar climbs up a ladder built into the wall. He pushes on the grate. It slides off. He reaches down to me. Holding my breath, I grab his hand one last time. He pulls me into the night.
My body is rigid. I can hardly look up, but when I do, I see, for the first time, nothing above me. I feel the swell of the universe, a momentum going up and no longer down into the basement. So much air rushes into me at one time that it feels like all the wind in the world is being funneled into my lungs. My skin is on fire, even though it’s cold. The air is digging its tiny fingers into every pore and yanking out the staleness of the past nine years. I might be turning numb, because Boldiszar drapes the blanket over me, but I don’t feel it. My entire body begins convulsing, and I feel the ground hit me. There is little I can do but endure this onslaught. I am free.
DORA TURJÁN
February 28, 1965—Midnight
DORA COULDN’T BREATHE again, like she was really drowning this time. She’d feel a wave of terror engulf her, followed by a swell of regret that would push her further and further down into the tumult. It was so dark and so cold, and she couldn’t hold her breath much longer. She just couldn’t. Her mom, at any moment, would emerge into the night, and she didn’t know what to do.
After they fled the rally, Marta ran to get Tomasz and Dora went straight to the ministry, hoping she’d find Ferenc there. Dora thought he’d seek help from Eszter in his panic, though she certainly wouldn’t be able to unjam the radio. Dora caught Ferenc just as he was running in the door, out of breath and sweaty, and so determined he didn’t even notice Dora at first. When she shouted his name a second time, he spun around and rushed to her. Pulling her into his arms, he kissed her hard, his sweat making his forehead almost as moist as his tongue. Dora leaned into him for a brief second, enjoying his attention and his warmth.
When she told him about the room in the ministry with the additional jamming equipment, he smiled, a watery film coating his eyes, and took Dora’s hand. He kissed her again, and they began their search for the room.
Ferenc had keys to most of the doors, though the longer they spent searching the building, the more Dora wondered if Ivan had misspoken. The fact that they would build redundancy into the jamming system made sense, but it didn’t quite add up that they would put the equipment in the ministry. Why not just store it somewhere in the radio building, where the infrastructure was already in place?
When Ferenc finally opened a room with what looked like radio equipment, Dora let out a sigh of relief. And, even better, the room was empty. Dora had mentally prepared for a different scenario, silently practicing her most senior voice, which she’d use to explain that she had orders to override the current jamming schedule.
Shortly thereafter, Tomasz and Marta arrived, and Tomasz went to work right away. Once he disabled the jamming device, Ferenc told them all to wait outside. He had to go get Eszter. She had a radio and hopefully heard the code. They couldn’t risk staying there and getting caught listening to Radio Free Europe. Once outside, Marta and Tomasz excused themselves to search for a backup radio, though Dora knew it was really just to give her some privacy.
Dora still hadn’t figured out how she’d break the news to Ferenc that she was actually Dora and not, indeed, Anika. She didn’t want to say anything that would distract him from the mission, though it didn’t seem completely fair he’d learn the news just as he prepared to leave the country with her mom. After knowing Ferenc’s innermost thoughts for years, Dora speculated that if he did get upset, however, it wouldn’t last for too long. His desire for love usually outweighed most other things in his life.
She wandered to the side alley, the place where she first unknowingly saw Eszter. She thought back to that day—how she would have never imagined the power of one look and all that it would put in motion.
She leaned back against the brick wall, its ragged surface catching on her coat, providing the illusion that someone was holding her up. “Mom,” Dora practiced saying. “I’m glad you made it out. I’m glad you’re here.” But every time she said the words out loud, they sounded so fake. “Mom, mom, mom” she said again, hoping the repetition would calm her down. She thought about turning around and going home, back to her life with her dad. She didn’t, after all, need to see her mom for the plan to work. She could probably find a way to confirm that Ferenc and Eszter made it out without being there to witness it.