“She just had her first date,” he said. At the word “date” I could feel my face fall—I could feel myself losing the cheerfulness I had felt to see such a joyful and dear-looking person, and there was nothing I could do to disguise it.
We went up half a flight of stairs to an open floor with steel bookcases. “We designed the house ourselves,” Ivan said. We continued up a narrow spiral staircase, which led to some large dark space. Through a long window resembling a bus window, lights glimmered on a distant hill. Ivan came up behind me with the suitcase, and turned on a lamp. We were standing in a long attic with a sloped ceiling and a skylight. A huge bed stood like an island on a raised platform.
“I used to sleep here in my last year of high school,” Ivan said. “Now my youngest sister uses it. On this visit she said she’ll give me my old room, she will sleep in the living room. I said no, of course—but it turns out she really likes to sleep on the sofa! Only my father doesn’t like it. When he leaves for work in the morning, there are sleeping people in the living room.”
Edit’s head appeared through the top of the staircase. “I found some little linen only, I’m sorry!” she said, climbing up into the room. She started to shake the pillows out of their cases. The pillows were square and at least twice as big as any pillow I had ever seen on any bed.
“I’ll show you the bathroom,” Ivan said. I followed him downstairs to the kitchen, and then down some more stairs to a landing with red walls. The toilet was in one room, the bathtub in another. “My parents are sleeping on the other side,” Ivan said. “Try to be careful about noise.”
I nodded.
“I want to talk with my sister now,” he said. “And you probably want to sleep.”
“I do.”
“I’ll wake you up tomorrow morning.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night,” I said.
? ? ?
When I left the bathroom, Ivan and Edit were sitting in the dark kitchen and we all had to say good night again. Edit asked if I would like a bath. I said I could wait till the morning.
“But you will feel better now,” said Edit.
“Yes, take a shower,” Ivan said. “You had a long day.”
Indeed, it had been not just long but malodorous. I went upstairs to get my shampoo and a change of clothes, then back down to the bath. The bath reminded me of Turkey—it had a handheld showerhead, a plastic stool, lemon Fa, and no curtain. A draft came from a window near the ceiling. The hot tap barely ran warm. It cost some effort to undress. I didn’t look in the mirror.
With the most circumscribed motions, terrified that I would splash the floor or make a noise, I washed my hair twice with the apricot-scented children’s shampoo that Svetlana and I had bought on sale at Monoprix. The water started running cold. I still smelled like a barbecue. I washed my hair a third time in cold water and finally couldn’t smell smoke anymore.
The kitchen was as black and still as if it had been empty for years. Back in the attic, where I had left on the light, I noticed a girl’s short-sleeved blouse and denim skirt lying on the floor, and a telescope standing on a long wooden table under the window. I wanted to look through the telescope, but felt embarrassed—it felt like looking in someone’s medicine cabinet. The medicine cabinet of God. Well, and what would change if I saw some stars?
I couldn’t get over the enormity of the bed and the pillows. I wondered what would have happened if Edit hadn’t been there to change the pillowcases. Would Ivan have done it, or would he simply have handed me the clean pillowcases, or would there have been no changing of the pillowcases?
The sheets hadn’t been changed, and there was all kinds of stuff inside the bed. Straight off, I found a sock, a clock, and a Paris Métro ticket. Gradually, other items emerged: a pencil, a second Métro ticket, two yellow tickets from the Paris commuter rail, and a copy of Let’s Go Thailand with a marker at “Bangkok: Places to Stay.” Thinking about all the other people who must have slept here, I turned off the lamp, and then the only light was from the hilltops far away on the other side of the window.
? ? ?
At breakfast I met Ivan’s mother, who looked just like Edit. I was surprised at first by how young she seemed, then realized that, even though Ivan seemed so much older than me, we were basically the same age—our mothers were probably the same age. I met Ivan’s youngest sister, Ilona, who was wearing a faded calf-length sundress. “Ilona,” she said in a serious voice as we shook hands. She didn’t smile at all, but looked into my eyes with an open, serious expression. Ivan’s mother said it was wonderful that I was there to meet everyone. She said that only two of Ivan’s sisters were missing: one was in Transylvania at a folklore camp, while the eldest was at the hospital in Pest, with her boyfriend’s father. “I’m afraid he’s dying,” Ivan’s mother said, about the sister’s boyfriend’s father. “But it means you must come back, to meet everyone else.”
Ivan carried my suitcase downstairs. I understood that the rest of my life would consist of causing Ivan to lug that suitcase in and out of his mother’s old car, for all our days. Before heading to Peter’s grandmother’s apartment, we were going to drop off Edit at the commuter train. While we were waiting for her to get her things, Ivan showed me the garden. It had rained again and the ground was springy underfoot. We walked among the baby watermelons and burned-out roses of late June, under the fruit trees. Ivan told me the Hungarian words for cherry and sour cherry, and asked if Turkish also had two separate words, and which of the two I preferred. I liked the sweeter ones, but I knew it would sound childish to say so.
“Do you prefer the sour ones?” I asked.
“Yeah, the sour ones are more interesting. The sweet ones don’t taste so distinctive. But they’re ripe now.” He picked two of the dark, almost black cherries and handed one to me.
A plastic-lined canal was full of fat sleek orange carp, with gauzy fins and plaintive round mouths opening and closing. They wanted, and wanted. “They’re beautiful,” I said.
“They’re a pain in the ass,” Ivan said. In the winter they had to be caught and transferred indoors. He indicated, through the dusty glass of an annex, the carps’ winter tub.
Edit came out wearing a long skirt and boots—just as if it were already fall, and time for things to happen, and not the summer anymore.
? ? ?
Back in Peter’s grandmother’s apartment, Cheryl was sitting under the piano again, and Andrea was teaching everyone how to say “please” in Hungarian. “So, you were locked out?” Peter said.
“The concierge wouldn’t give us the key,” said Ivan.
“Why didn’t you tell your roommate you were going to be late?” Peter asked me. “She could have left the key for you downstairs.”
“I didn’t know who my roommate was,” I said.
“Your roommate is Dawn.”
“Hey,” beamed a plump red-haired girl wearing a T-shirt that read ESCHEW OBFUSCATION.
“Hi,” I said.
“You could have asked me,” Peter said.