By the time I got back to Margit’s house, I had been thinking for hours about calling Ivan, trying to figure out the best way to get down the road to the pay phone. But as soon as I had put down my backpack, Margit said that someone called Mrs. Nagy would be coming to see me in half an hour. Exactly thirty minutes later, Mrs. Nagy arrived with her son Zoltán.
We sat at the table. Margit and Mrs. Nagy chatted in Hungarian. Zoltán, whose pallor, small head, and straight black hair made him resemble an Edward Gorey drawing, stared at the floor. I mechanically ate all the pretzel sticks Margit had set out, like it was a job someone had given me. Margit said that Mrs. Nagy said that I should talk to Zoltán in English, because he knew no English at all, only German. That didn’t strike me as such a great reason to talk to him in English. “She says that you must talk to him and that you mustn’t be shy,” Margit said. Mrs. Nagy herself spoke no English, though she taught German now, and had taught Russian in the past.
I glanced over at Zoltán. He was looking at the floor. “Should I talk to him now?”
Margit also looked at Zoltán. “Well, maybe later,” she said.
? ? ?
I ended up having dinner with the Nagys. Everything was covered in sour cream. “EAT,” Mrs. Nagy said, in both Hungarian and Russian, gazing into my eyes. “EAT.” I tried, but I had always disliked sour cream. To my relief, Mrs. Nagy eventually took my plate away and put it in front of Zoltán’s little brother, Csaba—a pudgy, pale child who looked just like their father, and who ate everything. I felt great relief to see the food disappearing into his little body.
Over cream puffs, Mrs. Nagy interrogated me in Russian about higher education in America, asking whether only rich people were allowed to go to the university, how much money my parents made, and whether it was difficult to become a stomatologist. Then she said I should see some of the buildings her husband had built.
“AR, CHI, TECT,” she shouted, handing me a folder of brochures.
Mr. Nagy leaned over to point out various features of the buildings, all of which were long two-story structures made of reddish wood. I nodded and pretended to understand, because I was scared Mrs. Nagy would start translating again.
After we had looked at the buildings, Zoltán and Csaba recited poetry in German. Fortunately, they didn’t know a lot of poetry in German. Then Csaba took out a plastic recorder and played an incredibly repetitive song about a cuckoo.
“Enough,” said the father. Smirking, Csaba launched into the refrain for the fifth time.
“Enough,” repeated Mr. Nagy. The boy giggled. His teeth clicked against the plastic, and the exhalations of laughter passing through the recorder made a whistling sound.
“ENOUGH!” shouted the father, and punched Csaba in the stomach. The boy sat down. It had happened so fast that the smirk was still hovering around the corners of his mouth. My mother had once told me that whenever she saw a kid being struck in public, she always tried to show some solidarity, by either saying something to the child or making eye contact. But I couldn’t think of how to show solidarity with Csaba from where I was sitting, and also it seemed hypocritical, because I didn’t want him to start playing the recorder again.
I tried to imagine describing this dinner to Ivan, in case he ever asked me why I hadn’t called him. I couldn’t imagine it. I thought about telling Svetlana. Only you would end up in such a situation, she would say, as she often did. I wondered if it was true that different people gravitated toward different kinds of situations. On the one hand, it seemed to me that I hadn’t done anything special to end up here—that it could have happened to anyone. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine Svetlana sitting at the Nagys’ dinner table. Was that what was meant by fate?
I found myself thinking about a girl from school, Meredith Wittman, who had lived on the same floor as me and Hannah and Angela, though the few times I said hi to her, she murmured something without looking at me or moving her mouth. A graduate of Andover, she carried her books in a Christian Dior bag and had once written a feature for the student newspaper’s weekly magazine about Boston’s salsa and merengue scene. I happened to know, because I had overheard her telling her friend Bridey, that Meredith Wittman was doing a summer internship at New York magazine, and for a moment now I reflected on the fact that, although Meredith Wittman and I both wanted to be writers, she was going about it by interning at a magazine, whereas I was sitting at this table in a Hungarian village trying to formulate the phrase “musically talented” in Russian, so I could say something encouraging by proxy to an off-putting child whose father had just punched him in the stomach. I couldn’t help thinking that Meredith Wittman’s approach seemed more direct.
At ten, Mrs. Nagy finally stood up and said something to Zoltán, who put on his jacket. Mrs. Nagy put her hands on my shoulders. “UNTIL TOMORROW,” she intoned in Russian. “SEE YOU TOMORROW. AT SEVEN IN THE MORNING.”
“Tomorrow?”
“TOMORROW WE GO TO THE GREAT PLAIN.”
This to me seemed excessive. “Unfortunately, I’m not free tomorrow,” I said.
Mrs. Nagy laughed delightedly and said it wasn’t true—she had checked with Margit and I was free. In parting, she urged me to speak English to Zoltán on the way home, because sometimes he seemed stupid, but really he was only quiet.
“He doesn’t seem stupid!” I said.
Mrs. Nagy patted my shoulder and said I was a good girl.
? ? ?
Zoltán and I were walking along a dirt road between shadowy green fields. A low bluish cloudbank was rapidly encroaching over the starry black vault of the sky.
“You should say something,” Zoltán said abruptly in English, a language I had been told he didn’t speak. I was scared half to death. I said the sky was beautiful. He nodded. “It’s blue,” he said. We turned onto a wider road, with telephone wires. “There’s a telephone box,” I said.
“We could call somebody,” he said.
“We could call any telephone in the world,” I said.
Two figures were coming toward us through the darkness: Reni and her boyfriend.
“Hello, Reni,” I said.
“Hello,” said Reni.
“Zoltán, this is Reni. Reni, this is Zoltán.”
“Hello,” said Reni.
“Hello,” said Zoltán.
“Laci,” said the boyfriend.
“Zoltán,” said Zoltán.
We stood a moment in silence.
“Hello,” Reni said finally.
“Hello,” said Zoltán.
“Hello,” said Laci.
“Hello,” said Reni.
“Hello,” I said. Reni and her boyfriend continued on their way.
“You should say something,” Zoltán told me, after a minute.
“I think it’s raining,” I said.
“It’s raining,” he said, nodding. He looked at me expectantly.
“Why don’t you talk a little?” I said. “Tell me something about yourself.”
There was a long silence. “I am bored,” he said.
“Bored?”
“Sorry, it’s a mistake. Not bored—boring.”
The rain started coming down in earnest when we reached the drive. A flash of lightning illuminated the fields and the yard. Nonetheless, Zoltán refused to come inside.
“There’s lightning,” I said.
“It’s okay. I’m used.”