Invisible Murder

HE BUS HAD to slow down to 20 kph to maneuver its way down the pot hole-riddled road. Eventually, there seemed to be more holes than asphalt, Sándor noted. He leaned his head against the dusty windowpane, feeling the vibrations through the glass.

The rage he had felt when he spoke to Tamás two days ago had long since evaporated. Maybe it would come back again when he saw him, but right now he couldn’t feel anything other than a thick, gray sense of failure. What the hell was he going to do when he arrived? Galbeno wasn’t “home,” even though that was what he had told Lujza. It hadn’t been home since … no, he couldn’t actually put a date on it, not even a year. He knew when he had been taken away, but he couldn’t nail down the moment when his inner compass had stopped pointing to the green house in Galbeno whenever someone asked him where he lived.

Grandpa Viktor had roared and raged that day, and the policemen from the white cars had needed to restrain both him and some of the uncles. One of them had his hands full just trying to manage Grandma Éva. Sándor had also scratched and kicked and struggled when they put him in the minibus with Vanda and Feliszia and little Tamás, but it was no use. The door closed, and there was no handle on the inside. Finally they drove away, up the same road where the ambulance had taken his mother, and through the rear window he could see Grandpa Viktor running after the vans, but he couldn’t run fast enough.

They had driven for a long time, without anything to eat or drink. There were two other children in the bus besides Sándor and his siblings, a boy and a girl. He had never seen them before; they must have been from another village. They held hands and didn’t speak. Neither did Sándor. The boy had peed in his pants, and it didn’t smell good.

Then the van drove through a gate in a fence and up the driveway to some tall, gray buildings. The door of the minibus was opened, and an adult stranger, an old bald gadjo in white clothes, pointed at Sándor and the other boy.

“Those two go to the blue wing,” he said. “The girls go over to the red wing, and the little one needs an exam at the health clinic.”

It took a second before Sándor understood that the gadjos wanted to split them up.

“No,” he said then. “I’m going to take care of them.”

“We’ll do that,” the bald gadjo said. “Now you just go over to the blue wing with Miss Erzsébet. That’s where the big boys live.”

Miss Erzsébet took his hand. She was young and pretty and also gadji, but he didn’t want to hold her hand.

“No,” he said. “I’m their brother.”

But they wouldn’t listen. A gadji lady, who was also dressed in white, had already picked Tamás up and was starting to walk away with him. Another woman had taken the girls by the hand, one on either side. Vanda’s face was swollen because she had cried the whole way, but now she was quiet. Her eyes were dark and frightened. Feliszia just looked confused. She hugged her pink stuffed rabbit, filthy as it was.

He tore himself away from the Erzsébet woman, but she grabbed him again, this time by the arm, hard. Then he bit her.

He could still remember the feeling, the tiny little hairs on her arm poking softly into his tongue, the salty taste of her skin mixed with a soapy bitterness he later learned was moisturizer. As he bit, he felt the skin break, and the saliva and blood mixed in his mouth.

So many years and he could still remember that, maybe because that was his last true act of rebellion.

You’ll take care of the girls and Tamás, right?

Mama, I was only eight.

The bus stopped at the end of the line, and he got out.

GALBENO WAS STILL Galbeno. Most of the houses had electricity now, but otherwise not much had happened in the past fifteen years. A small valley with a creek at the bottom, dusty grass and prickly shrubs, the odd fir tree that survived the quest for firewood because it was so full of resin that it would be foolhardy to toss it into the fireplace. Up on the eastern slope sat the cemetery with its crooked, white headstones, with a bigger population now than the village, which for a long time had been a dwindling cluster of houses along a road that didn’t go anywhere.

His arrival was instantly noticed by at least twenty people. An older woman who was sweeping in front of her house. Seven or eight kids in the middle of a water fight at one of the village’s three communal water pumps. Two men who were fiddling with an old, rust bucket of a car, three others who were watching and commenting. He knew they recognized him.

“Szia,” one of the men by the car called out, raising his hand in a casual greeting.

“Szia,” Sándor called back, without knowing who he was talking to. It could even be Tibor; Sándor wasn’t sure he would recognize him now. He had forgotten so much. Only a few names lingered in his mind.

He hoisted his duffel bag over his shoulder and started walking down the road toward Valeria’s green house. He hadn’t brought his suitcase or the cardboard boxes he had packed his things in because he didn’t want it to look like he was moving in. True, he had no idea where he would be living after May 15, but it wouldn’t be here; he had made his mind up about that. He might have to spend a few weeks here until he found something else, but he wasn’t moving in. Ferenc had been generous enough to store his boxes for the time being, though it meant he practically had to climb over the furniture to make it from one end of his room to the other.

Two little girls raced past him, giggling, and he knew he wouldn’t make it to the house unannounced. He could already hear their high-pitched, excited voices: “Valeria, Valeria, Sándor’s home!”

His mother appeared in the doorway. Then she came out to meet him, her arms outstretched.

“Sándorka! My darling.”

She embraced him and pulled his face down so she could kiss him warmly on both cheeks. Then she did it again, just to be sure.

“Mama.”

She was so small. It had come as a shock to him the first time he had seen her once he was a grown up—she was a tiny woman who didn’t come any higher than the middle of his chest. She was thin and more sinewy than he remembered her, her face tauter. There was something birdlike about her lightness, as if she had air in her bones where other people had marrow.

He knew women in their forties in Budapest who looked like young girls, and often behaved like that, too. That was not the case with Valeria. Her hair was still black, and she was so small that her T-shirt and jeans would fit a twelve-year-old. But no one who saw her face would mistake her for a teenager. Life had left its mark on her. There was a determination and a will to survive in her that weren’t the result of hours spent at the gym.

“Have you eaten?” she asked.

“Yes, yes.”

“When?”

He couldn’t help but smile in spite of everything that had happened.

“Mama, I ate.” An apple and a sandwich from the kiosk at the bus station, but that was plenty. His stomach couldn’t handle anything more.

“Well, then we’ll have some coffee. And you can tell me why you’ve come.”

Because naturally there had to be a reason for him to show up like this, in the middle of exams.

“Where’s Tamás?”

“Tamás? He’s not here.” Her eyes darted away as she said it, and he guessed it was because she wanted to hide something from him. Did she know what Tamás was up to?

“Mama, where is he? Do you know what kind of a mess he is in?”

She didn’t answer right away.

“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to the bench by the door. “I’ll make some coffee.”

“Mama!”

“He left, Sándorka. He has to earn money, too, doesn’t he?”

“Doing what?”

“The violin, of course. But there’s no one willing to pay around here anymore. Do you know how many men in the village have jobs?”

Sándor shook his head. How would he know that?

“Fourteen. And eight of those are just doing temporary work paid for by the council.”

He knew things were bad, but not that bad. From what he remembered from his childhood, nearly everyone had jobs most of the time. “People used to have jobs,” he said.

“Yes. When the Communists were in charge, the Roma had no trouble getting work. Now it’s just the Hungarians. And hardly anyone hires musicians these days. So Tamás is abroad now.”

“Where?”

“Germany, I think. No, wait.… Somewhere up north. I think it was Denmark.”

It would be nice to think that Tamás had only nicked his passport because he didn’t have one of his own and wanted to go to Denmark to play his violin and earn some money. But Sándor remembered the interrogation room and the questions the ever-patient Gábor had asked him, over and over again. Are you interested in weapons, Sándor? Why did you go to hizbuttahrir.org—you’re not a Muslim, are you? Where does your money actually come from, Sándor? For seventy-two hours.

NBH wasn’t in the habit of wasting their time on street musicians.

THE HOUSE’S ONLY habitable room was home to six people. Sándor’s stepfather Elvis didn’t live here anymore. He and Valeria had split up several years earlier. Both Sándor’s sisters were married now, but neither of them had actually moved out. Vanda used to have an apartment in Miskolc, but then the building was renovated, and some of the apartments combined into something larger and more “in keeping with the times,” as the property owner put it; when the tenants were due to move back in, for some reason or other there wasn’t room in the lovely, remodeled building with tiled bathrooms, renovated kitchens, and steel balconies for the three Roma families. So Vanda was living with Valeria again with her two little boys while her husband worked as a painter in Birmingham to earn money so they could get another place. Feliszia, who was seventeen now, had married a boy her own age from Galbeno, just a few months ago; he and his father were putting a roof on one of the abandoned houses on the outskirts of the village “so the young people would have somewhere to live.” Valeria quipped that at the speed those two were working; the young people would be middle-aged before they could move in. And besides, it wasn’t what Feliszia wanted. She wanted to move to Budapest or at least Miskolc, but certainly away from Galbeno.

“There’s nothing wrong with dreaming,” Valeria said as she made a bed for Sándor in the spot that was actually Tamás’s. And Feliszia noticed the hint of sarcasm in her tone right away.

“Tamás promised he would help,” she said defiantly. “He’s going to lend me the money for that hydrotherapy course, and then I can work as a carer for people with disabilities until I can afford to start my own clinic.”

Those weren’t just dreams; they were plans. Sándor looked at the determination his suddenly grown-up little sister radiated and wondered where it had come from. A year ago she had been a quiet, mild-mannered girl who was the most cautious of all the siblings.

“It’s easy for Tamás to make promises. And anyway, he doesn’t have any money,” Vanda said.

“He will. When he comes home from Denmark, he’ll have money.”

“How much does the course cost?” Sándor asked.

“Two thousand six hundred euros.”

Sándor did a quick conversion. That was more 700,000 forints. Where in the world did Tamás think he was going to get that kind of money? Certainly not from performing on street corners. Not even if he were lucky enough to get a job in a restaurant. He usually just played for tips and maybe food—if he was lucky.

“And what does Bobo say to your big plans?” Vanda asked. Bobo was Feliszia’s husband. “What does he say to a wife who wants to open her own clinic in Budapest?”

“He’d just be happy,” Feliszia said with a defiant note to her voice which revealed that she wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

“Why does Tamás think he can earn so much money in Denmark?” Sándor asked.

Valeria took the last quilt, unfolded it, shook it, and spread it out on the low built-in shelf, bench in the daytime and sleeping space at night, which ran around three of the room’s four walls.

“You shouldn’t talk about money right before bedtime,” she said in a firm voice. “And it’s bedtime now. Sándor, get out of here. Let the girls wash.”

Sándor got up. It hadn’t occurred to him that he would have to go out so his sisters could get undressed. God knows how long they had been waiting for him to leave of his own accord.

Outside it was so dark he was having trouble finding the path to the outhouse. There was a smell of wood smoke and a pig manure, as Valeria had bought a suckling pig that was being fattened up for the winter. He could hear it breathing, snuffling, and panting—presumably it was sleeping under its half roof of boards and plastic a few meters from the house.

Finally, there was the path. He made his way to the outhouse wondering how he would know when it was okay to go back in again. He felt like a bumbling idiot. When had this happened? Was it because Vanda and Feliszia were married now? Did Tamás go outside, too, to give them some privacy? Or were the rules different if you grew up together? Nothing was simple or straightforward. Maybe it would be easier for all of them if he slept in the other half of the house, even if part of the gable and some of the roof had caved in. It was summer after all. But if the wind picked up, some of the loose tiles up there could come down on his head while he slept.

The instant he opened the outhouse door, he was assaulted by yet another razor-sharp childhood memory. The darkness, the smell, the worn board with the hole in it that had been far too big for his little bottom. He had been terrified of falling in. So terrified that sometimes he would just squat down behind the chicken coop and hope no one noticed him. One time his stepfather had caught him in the act, with his pants down around his ankles. That had cost him a couple of sharp smacks.

“You’re not a goddamned animal, you filthy little brat. Only animals shit in the street!”

“Yes, but this isn’t the street.…”

The story immediately became a favorite with the whole family, told and retold with laughter and giggles, especially among the grandparents: There was the boy, squatting there with his butt hanging out, still as cocky as ever.…

Cocky. That was when you talked back to the grownups, when you were impertinent, and it was usually promptly punished. And yet there was always something ambiguous about the punishment. They didn’t spare the rod, but nevertheless there was an acceptance behind it, bordering on approval. Boys were supposed to be cocky. Calling a little boy a “pet” was an insult, on a par with calling him a “sissy” or a “Mama’s boy,” and even though disobedience could earn you a beating, too much obedience just brought you scorn.

He sat in the stinking darkness of the outhouse, no longer afraid of falling in the hole. But other than that he was by no means cocky. He had had that knocked out of him, effectively and a long time ago, and fear had eaten its way into his life. There was no defiance left in him now, no rebellion. It had been a long time since he had dared to be disobedient.

He hadn’t told Gábor and the NBH about Tamás. That was sort of rebellious, wasn’t it? Or was that just obedience to an older law? One that had been beaten, yelled, drilled, and loved into him the first eight years of his life: You stick up for your own.

He was glad he hadn’t ratted on Tamás to them. He was still furious at his brother, who had obviously acted like an asshole and a moron to boot, and the thought of the mess Tamás had landed them both in filled Sándor with a fear that was totally and utterly different in scope and extent than the everyday fear of messing up, failing, breaking written or unwritten rules, or being caught with your pants down. But in some small, overlooked, stubborn corner of his soul, he was still glad that he hadn’t told them about Tamás.

He finished and stepped out into the somewhat fresher air outside. His eyes had adjusted to the May darkness now. Here and there it was punctuated by light from the village houses’ small peephole windows combined with the bluish, white flicker of TVs. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad living here, he thought, without heat or running water or indoor toilets, if only you didn’t see how other people lived whenever you turned on the TV. But there were TVs here, in almost every house. The antennas jostled on the decrepit roofs, their bristly metal branches jutting out in all directions to catch the best possible signal.

Valeria came out with a washbasin and tossed the soapy water out onto the stinging nettles behind the house. He took that as a signal that the coast was clear again.

“Do you want me to heat up a little water for you?” she asked.

“No,” he said, because that would mean she would have to light the wood stove, and it was most certainly warm enough inside already. “I’ll just rinse off down by the pump.”

“No, do it here,” she said, passing him the basin. “You don’t wash in the middle of the street.”

That was a subtle dig, he thought, noticing the hint of a smile in one corner of her mouth. Apparently there was more than one thing people didn’t do in the middle of the street in Galbeno. He took the pink plastic basin but didn’t move. Neither did Valeria, standing less than a meter away from him. The light from the open door etched deep shadows under her cheekbones and chin and made her look older and sharper. From inside the house, he heard a sleepy little boy’s voice whining, and Vanda mumbled something reassuring in response.

“Mama, what’s going on with Tamás?” he asked quietly. Maybe she would say more now that Vanda and Feliszia weren’t listening.

“Why would anything be going on with Tamás?”

“Because the NBH is very interested in what he’s up to. Mama, they arrested me because he had borrowed my computer and used it to visit some sites on the Internet.” He faltered a bit, having no idea how much or how little Valeria might know about the Internet. It wasn’t like Galbeno was crawling with laptops. Could you even get online out here? Apparently there was some mobile coverage, but the Internet?

Valeria raised her head, and the moonlight gleamed in her eyes.

“The police,” she scoffed, sounding harsh and hostile. “They’re always after us.”

“It wasn’t just police, Mama. It was the NBH, the security service!”

“They’re still police,” she said. “Stay away from them, Sándor.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly go and ask to be arrested,” he said, unable to hold back a spark of irritation. “Mama, what I’m trying to say is that I think Tamás is mixed up in something dangerous.”

She touched his cheek with a damp, soap-scented hand.

“Well then, Sándorka,” she said in that Mama voice that went right to his gut. “You’ll just have to get him out of it. Won’t you?”