“You do? Oh, okay, then.” He stood in front of the phone booth, with his back to me. I went inside and dialed the number.
I glanced at my watch while the phone rang. It was four in the afternoon in New Jersey. My mother picked up. “Did you arrive? Where are you?” she said in Turkish.
“I’m in Budapest,” I said. “I just got here.”
“Is everything okay? Your friend met you? Is he behaving like a human being?”
“Everything is okay. Everyone is behaving like a human being.”
“But your voice isn’t excellent. Where are you calling from? Is the Hungarian friend there?”
“I’m at a phone booth. The Hungarian friend is waiting outside.”
“He’s waiting outside? Well, I won’t keep you. But let me not forget to tell you: someone called you. Did you apply for a job this summer in Turkey as a researcher?”
“No,” I said. “Oh, I mean yes—for Let’s Go, for a travel guide.”
“Let’s Go, exactly. They called from there. They want you to go to Turkey now, for eight weeks. I told them I didn’t think you could do it, but I would ask you anyway.”
“No, I can’t just leave here now. I could go in August.”
“August, right? That’s what I said. But they said you would have to leave immediately and spend eight weeks.”
“Then it won’t work.”
“They sounded upset—it sounded like they really want you to go.”
“But I applied for a job with them ages ago and they turned me down.”
“They turned you down? Well, I hope they’re happy now. They said the kid who went had emotional problems and had to go back to Boston.” She said “emotional problems” in English. “I didn’t think you could go. I just couldn’t help thinking how nice if you were nicely in Turkey now, instead of dragging yourself around God’s Hungarian villages.”
“But I’m very necessary to God’s Hungarian villages.”
“Oh, of course, you are the only thing that was lacking from the Hungarian villages!”
? ? ?
“How is your mother?” asked Ivan as we walked back to the bonfire. “Was she happy you called?”
“Yes.” I told him about Let’s Go and the kid with emotional problems. “Maybe it’s true that all the researchers in Turkey get a nervous breakdown,” I said. “I wonder if I would have had a nervous breakdown.”
“In Turkey? You wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown. You’d give them a nervous breakdown.” I forgave him for a lot when he said that. I forgave him for almost everything.
? ? ?
The bonfire was burning lower. Periodically a branch would disintegrate into embers and the whole structure of the fire would be knocked down a few degrees. Ivan handed me a piece of watermelon.
Finally, they were putting out the fire, getting up, collecting bottles and trash. Ivan was talking with Dávid, Imre, and a boy in a leather jacket.
“We’re leaving now,” Ivan told me. “We’re taking some people with us.”
“Hello,” everyone started saying to each other. “Hello, hello.” “Hello” meant both hello and goodbye. I never got tired of seeing Hungarians say hello to each other in serious voices, and then turn in opposite directions and walk away.
The little store was closed when we got back to the Opel. The three boys got in the back and I sat in the front with Ivan. The car smelled intensely of bacon and bonfire. I fell asleep almost immediately.
“Did you catch that, Sonya?” Imre asked at some point.
“No,” I said.
“Too bad,” he said. “It was funny.”
That actually made me laugh. What an asshole, I thought, and fell back asleep.
The car stopped, and Imre and the boy with the leather jacket got out at the deserted corner of two unlit streets.
“We got rid of two,” Ivan told me, backing up in an alley. “You’re next.”
We drove through the center of the city, past all the illuminated bridges and the international hotels, where adults were staying for reasons unrelated to barbecues, and then up Castle Hill, where Ivan left Dávid on a narrow street lined by Gothic buildings. “I decided it’s actually faster to come this way first, and leave you at the hostel on the way back,” he said.
It was nearly one when we got to the hostel. All the lights were out. “I forgot about the curfew,” Ivan said, parking the car. “I’ll have to talk to the concierge.”
In the dark lobby, the same old man was sitting in the same booth with the yellow lamp. He and Ivan had an argument. The old man repeated the word “time.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Ivan said finally. We went back to the car. He said the concierge wasn’t letting me in. “There’s probably room for you to stay at my house tonight,” Ivan said, starting the engine. “You can meet some of my sisters.”
Soon we were driving on an unmarked road with infrequent streetlights and infrequent cars. The headlights picked out four or five skinny girls standing in the dark by the side of the road—their bare legs, short skirts, and pale faces. They looked about my age, maybe younger.
“I can’t believe the number of prostitutes,” Ivan said. “Every time I come, it’s worse. Now they made it all the way out here.” He didn’t sound like he wasn’t sorry for the prostitutes, but he also sounded like he was criticizing them.
We turned onto a narrower, darker road. Ivan turned on the bright beams. There was a sudden jerk and his right arm flew out in front of me. A little animal had run out in front of the car. It was frozen right there in the headlights, its eyes flashing, like a little piece of its will was flashing out at us from inside its head. Then it scurried away.
“Could you tell what it was?” asked Ivan.
“No,” I said.
“Maybe it was a cat,” he said. “Or a rat.”
“Oh.”
“Look at these horrible places I’m bringing you. You must really trust me.”
I felt a pang. “Of course I trust you.”
He frowned. “Well, I didn’t bring you anywhere horrible. This is where I live.”
The gravel path, overrun by bushes, ended in a circular drive before two modern-looking houses with a lot of big dark windows and a shadowy black garden. The headlights sparkled off of some kind of pool. Ivan carried my suitcase to the door of one of the houses. We went inside, into a little hallway.
“I think my youngest sister is asleep in the living room,” he said in a low voice. “We should leave our shoes here.” I heard footsteps hurrying down a staircase, and a pale thin girl rushed in. She wore wire-rimmed glasses, a flannel nightgown, knitted socks, and an expression of demented joy, and she rubbed Ivan’s arm, beaming from him to me.
“This is my sister Edit,” Ivan said. I held out my hand, which she shook in both of hers, so then I held her hands with both of mine, too, and we both started to laugh. She and Ivan exchanged a few words and she left the room. I heard her running up the stairs.
“She’s in a really good mood,” Ivan said.
“So I noticed,” I said.