“Where?”
“I was there,” Rózsa repeated. And it seemed to me that she meant the dock, where the white stuff had been falling from the trees, though I wasn’t sure why, or what she would have been doing there.
“Do you think it’s going to rain?” I asked.
“Yes. Why?”
My heart quickened. “I don’t know,” I said. Then I realized I wanted it to rain because maybe Ivan and his family would come back to Budapest a day early and Ivan might call me. I knew there were a lot of flaws in this reasoning. But my body didn’t know.
A whole ocean of rain seemed to be pouring out of the sky. We sat under an awning near a hotel parking lot and ate yellow plums. Eventually Rózsa ate one of the cookies I had bought, and I felt happy and proud, like I had successfully fed a shy and proud animal.
Within minutes the sun was blazing as if it didn’t remember a thing.
? ? ?
One evening, the children were in a pageant arranged by Ildi and the gym teachers. There was an outdoor stage, with folding chairs for the adults. The older boys were in one program, the girls in another. The younger boys weren’t in any program at all, and were sitting on blankets under the teachers’ watchful eyes.
For the older boys’ program, a canvas screen had been hung from the ceiling, ending a few feet from the ground. German techno music started playing. One by one, the boys marched across the stage in time to the music. The screen hid their bodies from the waist up. All you could see were their legs. Numbers had been pinned to their shorts.
“The American girl will judge the boys’ legs,” announced one of the gym teachers, handing me a clipboard with a mimeographed form on which to rate all the legs on a scale from one to ten.
I looked from the form to the adolescent boys’ legs. I knew that the legs were going in a circuit, because the numbers kept repeating. But other than the numbers, they all looked the same. They all looked like legs. The whole point of people having faces was that that was how you told them apart.
“I can’t,” I said when the music stopped, and tried to give back the form. They wouldn’t take it back.
“She needs to see them again!” called Ildi.
The music started up again. The legs resumed their circuit. I started to notice differences between them. Some were longer, others shorter, some skinnier, others more muscular. Some were freckled and several had skinned knees. I understood that number eleven was Fábián, because he had a cut on his thigh, and also because of the way he walked—it was a kind of stamping dance. Whether despite or because of the fact that all you could see were his legs, the dance was both comical and highly characteristic of his personality.
Nonetheless, when I tried to put the legs in any kind of order, either ascending or descending, I felt panic rise in my chest. The gym teachers kept pointing at the clipboard and urging me to write. Or did I need to see the legs a third time, one of them asked, and everyone laughed.
“Do you want me to help you?” Rózsa whispered. I nodded.
“She wants to see numbers seven, eleven, two, fourteen, and ten,” Rózsa called. Numbers seven, eleven, two, fourteen, and ten came out again and pranced across the stage. Rózsa looked at them carefully and whispered her scores to me. Then the boys came out from behind the screen, and I awarded cardboard medals to the winners. First place went to a dark, muscular boy who was fifteen and reminded me of Reni’s boyfriend. Fábián was the runner-up.
Madonna’s “Vogue” started playing. It was time for the girls’ program: a fashion contest. The girls sashayed onto the stage two at a time, one from each side. They struck a pose at the middle, then strode off in opposite directions. Wearing lip gloss, eye shadow, and hair clips shaped like flowers or shells, they looked so groomed, groomed to please. There was no screen hiding their faces, and you could see the many different things they were feeling.
Zsófi and Cica came out together: Cica in a tiny gold-spangled off-the-shoulder shirt, Zsófi in a green polka-dotted dress. Pert, dimply Cica strode around confidently to the music and posed with her hand on one hip. Taller and coltish, with long trembling eyelashes, Zsófi mostly just stood there, occasionally dancing in place in a private, thoughtful way.
I thought the first prize would go to ági, who was fifteen and punkish, with boy-short hair. She marched out wearing ankle boots, short shorts, and a little leather jacket, and when she took off the jacket and twirled it on one finger, everyone clapped and whistled. ági shared the stage with her friend éva, who looked paralyzed by shyness. When ági took off her jacket, éva tentatively shrugged off her brown cardigan. “You’ll get cold!” yelled a male gym teacher. She put the cardigan back on.
The judges were three grown men: the gym teacher, Ildi’s visiting husband, and a sort of repairman who was always hanging around tightening things. They did several rounds of callbacks, while the girls who weren’t called sat awkwardly to one side. Finally, the repairman announced the winner and runner-up: Zsófi and éva—of all the girls in the pageant, the two who had seemed the most confused and uncomfortable. I didn’t understand right away. But then I saw that, when you looked past their demeanor, clothes, and hairstyles, Zsófi and éva really did have the most raw physical beauty. éva’s face was so worried you could barely look at her, but she had a lovely body and long legs.
Zsófi accepted her bouquet with a placid Bambilike expression. éva started to take off her cardigan again, then stopped, then went through with it after all. This time I noticed her cute, optimistic breasts. The repairman kissed her cheeks. Then all the girls came back onstage, and the men kissed all of them. What had men ever done, to deserve so much beauty and grace?
? ? ?
I spent the last evening of camp in the cabin, writing. I was sure that Ivan would call, because it was his last night in Hungary. He would be back from his family trip tonight, and would be leaving for Bangkok in the morning. He knew the number of the camp. He had asked me how long I was staying. Why would he have asked, if he wasn’t going to call?
For some reason, nearly everyone left me alone that night. Nobody wanted me to sing songs with the children, or play badminton. There was only one interruption, around nine. Fábián came crashing through the door, his prizewinning left leg covered in blood.
“Can you help me?” he asked.
I had just identified the iodine bottle in the first aid kit when two of the gym teachers came in. “Lukács Fábián, you leave the American girl alone!” they shouted and, leading him away, bandaged his leg in a visibly efficient fashion. I kept writing until ten.
Ivan didn’t call.
AUGUST