Tanner’s Twelve Swingers

Chapter 8

In the late afternoon, clouds covered the sun, and the air turned cold. We had walked a few miles cross-country after entering Hungary, then switched to the roads. We were never on the road for more than a quarter of an hour before someone would stop and give us a ride, but the rides were invariably in farmers’ wagons and rarely carried us more than three or four miles at a clip. It was slow going, and I could see that it was getting to Butec. He didn’t complain – indeed, most of the time he said nothing at all – but I knew he was tiring.

I hoped he could hold out until we reached Debrecen, the chief city of Hajdu Province in the northeast. There was a man named Sandor Kodaly in Debrecen who knew of me and whom I could trust. I was fairly sure he could provide shelter for the night and either he or friends of his could ease our way across the border into Czechoslovakia. Fence-climbing left one with a sense of accomplishment, but it was also damned dangerous, and I didn’t want to push our luck any more than I had to.

But by nightfall we were no further than Komadi, a good forty miles short of Debrecen. Had I been by myself, I might have pushed on, but Milan Butec was an old man who, after the day’s efforts, had every right in the world to be a tired old man. He was walking more slowly now and with visible effort. And yet he had not offered a word of complaint.

“We will not go any further,” I told him. We had taken to speaking Hungarian to one another to get ourselves in the habit. His Hungarian was rather heavily accented but otherwise sound. He had told me that he could speak passable Czech as well, which might or might not be helpful; we would be crossing through Slovakia, where they speak a very different tongue from the language spoken in the western sectors of Bohemia and Moravia. Once we entered Poland, he had added, I would have to do the talking for both of us. He spoke no Polish, no Lithuanian, and no Lettish. He could read and write Russian but was unable to converse in it.

“We will stop here for the night,” I explained. “Here in Komadi. Tomorrow we can continue to Debrecen and find friends who will help us across the border.”

“We could push on tonight if you wish.”

“Tomorrow is time enough.”

“I know that I am slowing you down, Evan.”

“There is no hurry,” I said. And, I thought, that was true enough. The faster we moved, the sooner we would get to Latvia. And the sooner we got to Latvia, the sooner we would find ourselves unable to rescue Sofija, and would thus have to turn around and head for home. I was in no hurry to get back to New York. There was a pudgy little man who had a habit of turning up there with undesired assignments, and I was in no rush to see him for some time.

“I am beginning to tire, Evan.”

“So am I.”

“Is there a hotel in Komadi?”

“Hotels are dangerous,” I said. “They want to see one’s papers and we haven’t any. Guest houses are as bad. I think we’d do better to cross through the town and put up at a farmhouse to the north.”

“Do the farmers take in guests?”

“We shall see.”

The first farmer we approached was gracious enough but explained he had no room for us. But he had a cousin just a quarter mile down the road who, he assured us, would make us welcome. Just a few pengo and we would be given comfortable beds, a hearty dinner, and a good country breakfast in the morning.

The cousin, it turned out, was a young widow with black eyes and hair and milk-white skin. She had been in the country eleven years, having moved there just before the birth of her one child, a daughter with the same plain good looks as the mother.

“We were in Budapest,” she told us after dinner. “My husband and I, we were married almost a year. I was from this part of the country and went to Budapest to the University, and met Armin and married him, and after the Revolution he was taken with the others and put up against the wall and executed. And so I did not care to remain in Budapest any longer. Will you have more coffee?”

Dinner was a thick veal stew on a bed of light noodles, all highly spiced and very filling. Milan made an effort to stay awake after dinner but was not quite equal to the task. Our hostess showed him to his room. I suspect he fell asleep on the way to the bed.

The daughter went to sleep shortly thereafter. Eva – I never learned her last name – sat with me in the living room before the fireplace. When the fire burned down, I went outside for more wood. I returned with the wood, and she appeared from the kitchen with a bottle of Tokay. We drank a few glasses. She talked of art and literature and the cinema. There were few persons with whom one could discuss such subjects in the country, she told me. She missed Budapest, with its busy coffee houses and its bubbling culture. But she did not miss the political hubbub of the city or the memories of 1956.

“It is lonely here,” she said. “But people are good, and I have much family in the area. This was my own father’s house, I am used to it, it comforts me. But one grows lonely.”

“You will marry again.”

“Perhaps. I have been ten years widowed. Sometimes a man comes to help me work the farm for a season and stays with me for a season. There have been those who would have stayed longer, but I was married to a fine and intelligent man, and when one is used to gold, one does not care for silver.”

I said nothing.

“Married at twenty and widowed at twenty-one, and now I am thirty-two and alone in the world. There is but a little wine left in the bottle. Shall we finish it?”

We finished it. The drink had brought a flush to her white cheeks, and she was breathing a bit heavily as she got to her feet. “And now it is time for me to show you to your room, Evan.”

She walked unsteadily before me. I thought of Annalya in Macedonia. Macedonia was many miles away.

The room was small, furnished simply with a narrow bed, a chest of drawers, a single chair, and a cast-iron woodburning stove. She lit a fire in the stove, and it warmed the room. She came toward me, her dark eyes shining, her black hair hanging loose and free.

“Eva and Evan,” she said.

Her mouth tasted of sweet wine. She sighed urgently and pressed tight against me. Her arms went around me, tightened. Her hands moved over my back, and her mouth kissed greedily. I was very pleased that we had been unable to reach Debrecen and that the first farmhouse had had no room for us. “Eva and Evan,” she said again, and I kissed her again, and her slim, sweet body was warm to my touch.

We undressed in the glow of the woodburning stove. I took off my jacket and my sweaters and my shirt and my trousers and my underwear, and I looked at her as she slipped out of her clothing and I saw the odd look in her eyes and I looked down at myself and saw all those silly little oilcloth packets taped to various portions of my anatomy.

“What-”

“A book,” I said.

“You have written a book?”

“No. I am a… a courier. I am taking the book to the West.” I hesitated. “It is a political book.”

“Ah,” she said. She sighed. “I should have known you were a political man. I am always attracted to political men, and of course they are the most dangerous men for women to love.” She looked at me again and suddenly she began to giggle. “You look very silly,” she said.

And then we were both laughing. She threw herself into my arms, and her hands touched the oilskin packet strapped to my back, and she began to laugh again, and her thighs pressed against the packets taped round my thighs, and her breasts pushed against the packet taped to my chest, and she kept kissing and giggling and kissing and laughing until we tumbled gently into bed. Her hand reached for me and found me, and she said, “Thank God it’s not a longer book, we wouldn’t want anything taped here,” and, while this was the funniest thing she had said all night, neither of us laughed or giggled or in fact said anything at all until, in the throes of sweet, desperate passion, she cried out with love and raked my oilskin packet with her nails.