“What?” She jolted, shocked at first, but relieved to feel all her teeth in place.
“Over there!” Ferenc pointed to two men, middle-aged and business-like, packing a black Zis. They kept looking back and forth every few seconds, inspecting their surroundings a little too closely.
“That’s it. That’s got to be the envoy.”
“But that car….”
“Even smarter of them to use the same car as the secret police.”
“I don’t know.” Dora felt her legs start shaking. “I don’t feel good about this.”
“Let’s just go check it out,” Ferenc flashed Dora a grin and slipped his fingers into hers.
As they got closer to the Zis, one of the men hurried to the driver’s seat and started the engine. The other one continued packing the trunk, only looking at the boxes in his hands and nowhere else.
“Hello! Wait!” Ferenc ran toward them.
The man ignored them, quickly shoving the last box into the car.
“We know who you are,” Ferenc reached for his arm before he could slam shut the trunk.
He turned around and smiled warmly, though Dora noticed the edge of his lip quivering. “What do you mean? We are couriers, delivering our morning letters.”
“No, it’s okay, I’m supposed to go with you. I know Eszter. The dog ate the cat. The dog ate the cat.”
“Son, I don’t know what you are talking about, but I think you found the wrong people.” Shaking his head, the man, thin with slight, pale hands, closed the trunk and climbed into the front seat of the car.
Dora stood behind them, eyeing the other man, the driver, as he peered straight ahead. She didn’t believe them. In their black Zis, dressed in fitted coats, they seemed to be too delicate and serious for couriers. And why wasn’t the driver at least curious about what was going on?
“Excuse me, but we were sent here with explicit instructions from Eszter Turján. I am her daughter.” Dora stepped in front of Ferenc and caught the car door before the man could close it on them.
He paused, his black eyes jumping ever so slightly. He stared at Dora, taking in her face as his expression dropped from shocked to mournful. “We are not who you are looking for.” He buckled his seatbelt.
“I think you are,” Dora said.
“Please, leave us alone.” The man slammed the door on them.
The car started inching forward.
“You can’t go.” Ferenc banged on the windows. “The dog ate the cat! The dog ate the cat!” Ferenc tried to open the car door, but it was locked and too late. The Zis had found an opening in traffic. It peeled out into the lane, leaving them standing in the street, dumfounded.
“We can’t let them go,” Ferenc said, on the verge of breaking down. “We can’t let them go.”
“Then we won’t.” Dora started running. “Come on.”
Ferenc took off behind her, the two of them bounding down the sidewalk as they kept pace with the car. Dora willed herself to push through the fatigue of confusion and the cold, to just stay strong for Ferenc. Every time she started slowing, she felt her entire body sink, begging her to collapse onto the sidewalk. She was almost certain she had gotten sick from being outside in the cold for so long, or maybe Eszter gave her something. By the time they made it to the end of Andrássy út, huge black splotches had multiplied across her eyes. She wanted to faint.
Dodging the people and traffic accumulating in the early morning, the Zis wound through the streets. They managed to keep it in their view, though Dora’s breathing had grown haggard and she could hardly run anymore. Ferenc clutched Dora’s hand and pulled her along as the car turned into Városliget Park.
“It’s pulling over.”
“Where?”
“Behind that bush. I can see the top of it.”
“Get down,” Dora said. “If they see us, we’ll scare them off again.”
They crouched behind a barricade, still set up from yesterday’s rally in the park’s main square, where they could see plumes of car exhaust drifting into the icy morning.
“This isn’t good enough,” Ferenc whispered. “We need to see the actual car.”
“I know somewhere we can go.” Dora had played in this park as a kid and remembered her favorite hideouts. “Follow me.”
She took Ferenc’s hand and led him to a squat, rickety shed, which used to serve as the headquarters of her imaginary spy ring. Dora never thought she’d one day use this shed to actually spy on people. She kneeled down, locating a crack in the shed just wide enough for her, and Ferenc, to see through.
The Zis still sat there, idling, waiting for something.
From the corner of her eye, Dora saw a small figure hobbling lop-sided toward the car. As it got closer, she realized it was a woman draped in a worn, tattered blanket.
“Is that…?” Ferenc started.
The woman approached the car and whispered something to the driver.
“No,” Dora gasped.
The woman took off the blanket, revealing a long sheath of gray hair and a sickly hand. Her eyes flashed in Dora’s direction, and she saw in them a certain madness.
“Mom,” Dora said, this time loud and clear.
As Eszter climbed into the back seat of the car, Dora understood everything—Eszter had betrayed them.
“Mom!” Dora yelled, even as her voice closed in on itself.
Dora burst out of the shed and ran toward the car. She grabbed the back bumper, willing it to stay in place.
“Don’t go!” Dora shouted. This couldn’t be happening. It was all too fast. She had to stop them.
Eszter propped herself up on the Zis’ rear window. She rubbed the frost off the glass and peered out at Dora with a wide-eyed fright, like a child who knows she did something terribly wrong, but doesn’t understand what it is. A tear fell down Eszter’s cheek, just as the car’s engine started revving.
“Wait!” Dora cried, but the Zis jolted forward, throwing her to the ground. When Dora looked up, the car had moved out of reach. Within seconds it was speeding toward the street. In the back seat, Eszter’s head bobbed up and down, and grew smaller, as the Zis drove farther and farther away.
“No, no, no,” Dora sobbed, crumpling to a ball on the pavement, her tears choking her words, choking her thoughts, choking any desire to stay alive at all. Everything felt burning hot, even though her body convulsed in shivers. Dora barely noticed Ferenc as he hugged her and whispered, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” She just kept crying and crying into the gritty pavement beneath her.
EPILOGUE
Three Months Later
Dear (my beloved) Anika,
When I heard your name for the first time in Munich, I kept walking. Someone continued calling forth “Anika, Anika, Anika.” (Well, not really that name—the other one that is unmeasured more full of beauty—but I neglect to write it here for your safety. Of course, I am of aware you will be the first to read this because of your position, but I still take a caution with names now.)
I walked for three blocks, listening to that name until I finally turned backward. Of course, I saw two women smushing themselves into each other in a friendship embrace. I know I resemble being childish, but I thought, maybe, it was you. You comprehend, my hope has been leading me around so much these days that I fail to decipher between it and anything else. Chasing hope around is not a simple feat.
There is a singular hope that I do contain within me. It’s that you do not possess infuriation with me. I possess knowledge that you might, but please know, that I strove to write you as soon as I possibly could. As soon as I learned how to do it with safety.
When she fled in the car, I presumed the world had finished (I cannot utilize her name for your safety, but you are aware of who I am writing on). As I succamb to the desire to lie next to you, I embraced your tears on mine. You felt so warm, and that is when I knew a sickness had entered your bones for once and total. It was a sickness I once felt, and I remember it occurring when I knew my mom was gone away forever. When I mandated you sleep in my bed, you lay so peacefully that I couldn’t awake you. I meandered outside, because, Anika, to witness you suffer the loss that I once did made me gasp for air. As I cornered the curb, a man reproached me. It was the passenger in the car, the man who stunned us and ignored our pleadings.