The PEN,O Henry Prize Stories 2011 Part 5

What if he doesn't want to give up the girl?

He won't want to, but he has to.

Who says?

No one says, it's just the way it is. Go on and see.

I can't dance to this kind of music.

Sure you can. It's just a box step. Go cut in.

I look over the dancing couples. The lady who catches my eye is Nancy. I notice the way her hands rub at the back of the guy she's dancing with. She just keeps them moving in slow circles on his back. She's doing it to Chet now. He has his head bowed and I can see the age spots on his neck. That looks like it would feel pretty good, just to have her rubbing that way. So I stand up and a bunch of nuts fall from the folds of my s.h.i.+rt. I'm a little buzzed from Clyde's gin and tonics, so I knock into Horace as I make my way to Nancy and Chet. Clyde sees me and frowns over Betty's shoulder, but lightens up when I move past him. I tap Chet on the shoulder and tell him I want to cut in. It works just like Wally said it would. Chet kind of puts Nancy's hand in mine with a little bow. Up close it's a small hand with swollen knuckles and purple veins, but it's warm and softer than it looks. Nancy smiles and even looks a little flattered. She moves in close as Chet stands back with his arms crossed.

I don't know how to dance to this music, I say.

Just follow my lead, Nancy says. She starts pus.h.i.+ng me around the floor. I step on her foot once and she winces, but her smile climbs right back onto her face. She has waxy skin and bright red lips. Her hair is a cake of white curls. Her face sits behind a veil of wrinkles and creases, but the smile s.h.i.+nes through it. She's light in my arms and I take care not to crush her. She's saying, Step and step and step and step. I smell the gin on her breath and I like it.

When I finally get the step, she says, Atta boy!

Her hands are rubbing at my back. I feel it in my chest, this feeling of almost burning warmth. It's been a long time since I felt it. It's how my body responds to kindness. I used to feel it at school, when a teacher would lean over me and show me how to draw cursive letters. Or when an older kid showed me how to fly a kite. I thought I had outgrown the ability to have that feeling. I had forgotten about it. But here I am, feeling it again as Nancy rubs my back.

I'm lost in these thoughts when Chet taps me on the shoulder and asks to cut in. I surrender Nancy like a real gentleman, transferring her hand like it's a parakeet that has to hop from my finger to his. He says, Thank you kindly, sir, and pretends to tip a hat.

No problem, sir, I say.

What a cla.s.sy bunch of fellas, Nancy says, eyes rolling.

Looking out from the haze trapped in my car, I can see them, silhouettes jitterbugging in the rosy window. The music is faint, but I tap along on the steering wheel. Maybe it's sad to say, but it's been just about the best party I've ever attended. Through the window they look like a movie flashed on a wall, hanging in s.p.a.ce with no connection to time. It seems impossible that I stepped out from it, or that I could get back in. It's like a soap bubble you try to put in your pocket.

I pick up the mustache, which has curled up from the heat, and I smooth it under my nose. It still has some stick. From across the street, I hear a song end and everyone shouts out, More!

That's all I need to be called back. I cross the dark street and walk up the curvy brick path. I finish the joint leaning against a ma.s.sive pepper tree, listening as I press at the mustache.

They're laughing in waves, singing harmonies. Someone's mixing drinks, shaking ice like a maraca. Someone's slicing meat with an electric knife. Why couldn't I have met them a long time ago, and played their music and eaten their cheese and crackers and drank their gin? But they didn't exist a long time ago, I know. Not as they are now. They only exist now and not much into later.

My dad didn't talk much. In the time I knew him, he only said one religious thing. He said, You know why people like beats? Because they tell you what's going to happen next. I've thought about that a lot. I think he was talking about patterns, about loops. And it's true that once you hear a measure or two of the beat, you know what's going to happen next and what to do when it happens. And the part that makes me think everything still has a chance-always has a chance-to work out is that you never know when the beat has completed a full cycle. This means everything in life that seems so random could actually be part of a beat. We just don't know yet. The full measure hasn't been played.

The door opens and one of the ladies peers out. It's Nancy.

There you are, Stanley! she says when her eyes lock in on me.

I wave, thinking I should probably tell her my real name.

Don't think I don't recognize you behind those handlebars.

I touch the mustache and smile.

She shuffles toward me and I offer my arm.

Got you right where I want you, she says.

She slowly leads me around to the other side of the pepper tree.

Whoops. Tipsy, she says when she trips on a root.

We step out on the lawn under the ma.s.sive dark canopy. I can see a rope slicing down from a high branch, catching light from the house. I follow it down with my eyes and see that it is weighted on the end with a tire swing. Nancy pulls me to it.

We have this here for the grandkids, but they've outgrown it, she explains. It needs a muscle man to get it going and here you are. Lift me?

Before I know it, she has both her arms around my neck and she's hanging off me like a human necklace. I scoop up her legs and slide her into the tire. All I can say is, Really? You want to swing?

Swing, baby, swing, she says. Be-dap bap bap!

I look up at the rope. It looks solid, but it's dark so who can tell. I stand back. There's a buzzed eighty-year-old woman hanging a couple feet off the ground in front of me, jewelry jangling, white hair slightly aglow.

Come fly with me, she sings, Come fly, we'll fly away!

I'll swing her a little, I think. Why not?

I push her gently forward again. She's shaking her head.

Come on now, she says. Put some muscle into it! We're not going to get off the ground if that's your idea of swinging.

I give her a good push and she swings out over some of the yard.

That's better!

She swings back into me and I grab on to the tire and throw it out into the darkness. She goes with it, saying, Atta boy. Now really put your back into it!

She comes back at me and I sidestep her like a bullfighter, but as she pa.s.ses by again, I throw my weight into a push that drops me to my knees. I watch her sail up and away, then reach the top of her arc, ease to a point, then fall back at me. She's yelling, Woohoo!

I roll out of the way and get to my feet in time to add to her momentum as she swings by. I watch her flying upward, now higher than the roof of the house. So high, her feet are up above her and her head aimed at the ground. The rope is creaking. The tree is moaning, shuddering when she hits the end of some slack.

All the way, honey! Loop-the-loop! Loop-the-loop!

I stand back and watch her moving past me like the arm of a metronome. She's keeping time but losing the beat with every pa.s.s, slowing more and more, until I come in and use everything I have to get her back on the beat, to hold the time steady. It will only slow down if I let it. I step in after her as she jangles by and try to send her over the top.

Glorious! she shouts as she sails up into the darkness.

Then I hear the guys yelling inside. Something crashes and someone screams. Be right back, I tell Nancy, giving her another shove into s.p.a.ce.

Inside, I find the living room a mess. The coffee table has been knocked over and crackers and peanuts cover the ground. The guys are trying to pull Wally and Clyde apart as they grapple on the floor. I push in and pick up Wally.

Clyde comes with him, then lets go and falls to the ground with a grunt. The others pull Wally away as Horace helps Clyde to his feet. Clyde makes a big show of dusting himself off.

Hey, guys, I say. Chill out!

You're lucky this kid came along, Clyde says. I was close to murdering you.

You see what you did, you son of a b.i.t.c.h! Chet is yelling at Clyde. You see?

Chet points at Wally's ear, which is ripped a little by the lobe. Blood runs down into his collar. Wally dabs it and looks at his fingers. He rushes at Clyde but I push him back and he falls onto the couch.

You're all a bunch of a.s.sholes, Horace says, swatting at the air. You're all bent on ruining a good thing.

What's going on? I say.

Everything has to end, Wally says. It's the way of the world. You think you can escape that?

At first, I think they're talking about the party, the ladies. But what I soon realize is that they're talking about the band. They're talking about breaking up the band.

I sit down on the couch. Well, G.o.dd.a.m.n.

You said it was over when Abe died, Wally tells Clyde.

Then they're all shouting about Abe, who I learn was the drummer who just died. Abe was their meter man, their beat. It seems that Clyde promised Abe on his deathbed the band was kaput.

But you just got to keep going with the charade, Chet says. Look at us, for Christ's sake, we're down from fifteen guys to just the five of us.

I count the guys and it's clear that Chet isn't counting me. I'm six. If they want me, I'm six.

You think anyone cares about what we're doing? Chet yells.

They argue on, shouting in each other's faces. Ruth comes in and says if they don't leave she's calling the police, but they ignore her as they bring up old complaints about each other: Horace is losing his ear and he's. .h.i.tting a lot of clinkers. Wally's lip is shot. Chet can't make it through a song without getting dizzy.

It's DOA, Wally is saying. It's DOA.

I reach up and pull off the mustache and smooth it out on my thigh, then crumple it up in my hand and stuff it in my pocket. Outside, I can hear a woman's frail voice, calling for someone named Stanley.

Tamas Dobozy.

The Restoration of the Villa.

Where Tibor Kalman Once Lived.

Tibor Kalman. Tibor Kalman's villa." That's what Gyorgyi told Laszlo the night they went AWOL from the camp, the two of them huddled in the barracks amid the other conscripts, boys like them, but asleep, some as young as sixteen, called on in the last hours of the war in a futile effort to salvage a regime already fallen, a country and people already defeated. "We need to get to Matyasfold," Gyorgyi said, "that's where the villa is. Tibor Kalman will give us papers." But Gyorgyi didn't make it far, only to the end of the barracks, to the loose board and through the fence, frantically trying to keep up to Laszlo, who always seemed to run faster, to climb better, to see in the dark. Laszlo was already waiting on the other side of the ditch, hidden in the thicket, when the guard shouted, when they heard the first crack of bullets being fired, Gyorgyi screaming where he'd fallen, "My leg! I've been shot! Laci help me," and Laszlo looked back at his friend for a second, calculating the odds of getting to him in time, the two of them managing to elude the guards, limping along at whatever speed Gyorgyi's leg would allow. They'd be caught, charged with desertion, executed-both of them. And then Laszlo turned in the direction he was headed, Gyorgyi's cries fading in the distance.

It was the end of December 1944, and that night, running from the makes.h.i.+ft encampment and its marshaling yard, running and running long after the military police had given up, not wanting to risk their own lives by following him east, Laszlo realized it was hopeless, there was a wall of refugees coming at him, and behind it, the Russian guns, already so loud he felt as if they were sounding beside his ears. Budapest was streaming with people fleeing from the suburbs-Rakospalota, Pestszentlorinc, Soroksar, Matyasfold-because the Red Army had not only arrived to these places already and taken control, but was advancing on Budapest itself.

So Laszlo became part of the human tide flowing from one death trap to another during the siege, and the things he'd seen would live on, unspoken, beneath everything he was to think and say from that point forward. Civilians used as human s.h.i.+elds by the Red Army. n.a.z.is exploding bridges over the Danube while there were still families and soldiers streaming across. Men and women forced to carry ammunition across the frozen river to German soldiers stationed on Margit Island while Soviet bullets and sh.e.l.ls and bombs rained around them. He saw a soldier holding off two dozen Russians by running up and down the stairs of a devastated building, shooting from every window, making them think there were a dozen other soldiers trapped inside. Young boys cras.h.i.+ng in gliders while attempting to fly in supplies for the fascist armies of Hitler and Szalasi, the fields littered with broken fuselages and wings and pilots contorted in positions that seemed to Laszlo the war's alphabet-untranslatable into human terms. There was a broken gas main near Vermezo that for days shot flame through every crack and hole in the asphalt-blue, orange, yellow-dancing along the road as if fire alone were capable of celebrating what had become of Budapest.

He'd seen exhausted doctors trying to save patients from a burning hospital, carrying them into the snow only to realize they had nothing-a blanket, a sheet, even a s.h.i.+rt-to keep them from freezing. He'd come across the most beautiful girl, eighteen or nineteen, in one of the ruined homes filled with those too wounded to go on, staring up, whispering from the ma.s.s of bodies, injured, starving, gripped by typhus, and as he leaned in to hear what she wanted to say-"Shoot me, please shoot me"-he noticed both her legs had been torn away.

And all that time Laszlo had been tormented by Tibor Kalman's villa-it was like the place was imagining him rather than the other way around-it sometimes appeared in place of what he was running from, and Laszlo had to stop himself from leaping into a burning apartment, a metro tunnel, or a garden under sh.e.l.ling, thinking: this is it, finally, I've made it.

After a while, Laszlo began to feel protected by the villa, as if the new life it promised was his true life, and the one he was living now only an alias, false, as if there was no one really inside, and that anything that happened was therefore not really happening to him. This is what helped Laszlo survive when he was press-ganged, along with a number of other boys and young men fleeing west, into the Vannay Battalion, and ended up doing the very thing he'd hoped to avoid: fighting for the n.a.z.is. He would have liked to remember when it happened, but there were no dates then, the end of December, the beginning of January, sometime during those hundred days of a siege that never did end for him, being hauled out of the cellar where he was hiding by Vannay's men, him and the rest, given a gun and told what the Russians looked like, and from there the black minutes, schoolboy comrades falling around him, Vannay making radio announcements to the Soviets that they would take no prisoners, and the Soviets responding to this as Vannay had hoped, likewise killing every one of them they captured, which Vannay was only too pleased to tell Laszlo and the others, knowing it would make them fight with that much more desperation. And then the breakout attempt of February through Russian lines, German and Hungarian soldiers cut down in the streets as they tried to escape the gutted capital to make it to the forests and then west to where the rest of Hitler's armies were stationed, running headlong into rockets, tank fire, snipers stationed in buildings along the routes the Soviets knew they would take, drowning in sewers where the water level rose with each body that climbed down the ladder until it was up to their noses, pitch-black, screaming panic. So few of them made it. Three percent, the historians would say. And the rest, the thousands, killed along Szena Square and Lovohaz Street and Szell Kalman Square, piled into doorways, ground up by tanks, swearing, pleading, sobbing, unable to fire off even the last bullet they'd saved for themselves.

But Laszlo was not there. He'd gone over to the other side by then, turning on the boys he was fighting with, aged sixteen and seventeen, shooting them dead as they stared at him dumbstruck, and then saw, over his shoulder, the approaching Russians. He thought he saw a last glimmer of envy in the boys' eyes, regret at not having thought of it first, before what light there was forever went out, and Laszlo turned, feeling something fade inside him as well, his voice cracking at the edges, soft and unwavering as radio silence. "Death to the fascists," he shouted, and was rewarded with bits of red ribbon the Russians tied around his arm, and a hat they placed on his head, before sending him back into battle.

It was Laszlo's decoration as a "war hero" by the Soviets that finally brought him to Tibor Kalman's villa late in 1945, to the place where it seemed all his misfortune and redemption were concentrated, where he might be absolved of his guilt for having claimed the place someone better-anyone at all-might have taken, someone worthy of survival, like that legless girl in the makes.h.i.+ft infirmary, for he had done what she asked that day, scrounging among the soldiers crammed wounded or dying or dead into that corridor, found a revolver, and embraced her with one arm while with the other pressed the barrel to her temple. If only he'd gotten to the villa in time, he told himself. If only he'd chosen the one other option he had: death. He knew now it was preferable to what he'd done to save himself, though it was too late by then, betrayal had become Laszlo's vocation, and the woman who met him that November day in the doorway of the villa sensed it, with the tired look of someone who has outlasted her interest in life and can't understand why she's being provoked by those who insist on living. She introduced herself as Tibor's daughter-in-law, Karola, wary enough of Laszlo and his uniform to give only the answer he wanted and not a drop more, keeping her voice to a perfect monotone, without a single nuance he might have fastened onto had he been seeking something other than forgiveness.

"I wish I could help you," she said. "But Tibor is dead."

Laszlo stood there with his military decorations and wondered why he'd come, given that the war was over, and with it his reason for seeking out Tibor. "He's dead," Karola said again. "He was dead when we returned here from Budapest." And she pointed at the hole left by the bomb in the roof above the dining room, covered with a number of tarps inexpertly sewn together. She told him the story in a manner so offhand it was clear she was still in shock: Tibor Kalman had lost both hands when a Russian sh.e.l.l landed on the villa. He'd raised his arms to protect his wife, Ildiko, from the collapse of the ceiling, and a beautiful chandelier of Murano gla.s.s sheared off both hands at the wrist, though it hardly mattered to Tibor by then because both he and Ildiko were dead, crushed by the weight of plaster, bricks, and several tons of antique furniture they'd stored in the attic overhead. Karola stood for a moment, as if waiting for Laszlo to respond, and when he didn't she said, "Anyhow," and he could see the effort it was costing her to repress a sneer as she scanned the medals on his chest, "you don't seem to be doing too badly."

There was something else, something other than scorn, in the way she said this, a quiet acknowledgment of what he'd come for, and at the same time, a dismissal of the explanation he wanted so badly to make. "Vannay sent out radio messages to the Soviets," he whispered, and immediately regretted it, as if even now, in attempting to make amends, he was still looking out for himself. "They weren't taking any prisoners. I had to make them a sign of good faith," he said. "I was only eighteen!"

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked, and he noticed that even while talking to him she was gazing elsewhere-at the orchard, the flight of birds, a fence fallen to its side-unable to keep her eyes on anything for long.

"I killed two boys," he said. "I wanted to show that I had switched sides ..."

"I don't know anything about what you're saying."

"You do!" he shouted. "I was supposed to have come here. Tibor was waiting for me, for boys like me. And I couldn't get across the Russian lines!"

She shrugged. "We couldn't make it either. We were trapped inside Budapest. There were many people who suffered."

"I was part of Vannay's battalion. It was during the breakout. And when I saw the Russians coming I killed two of the boys I was fighting with." He was shaking. He no longer had any control over what he was saying.

"Then you are not welcome in my house," said Karola, and for the first time since she'd opened the door, Laszlo felt her gaze rest on him, and he realized, too, that she'd been looking away not because she was disinterested in him, but because her eyes had seen too much, absorbed too much, images impossible for her to contain, which made her look elsewhere for fear of pa.s.sing them on. He felt ashamed then for not being able to do what she did, keep it to himself, or expend it by s.h.i.+fting his gaze to where it would do no harm-the air, the fields, the sky.

"Then you do not deserve to come in here," she hissed, and slammed the door in his face.

And so began Laszlo's persecution of Tibor Kalman's family, using every opportunity his status in the party gave him-making false claims, denying them meaningful jobs, padding the files on Karola, her husband Boldizsar, their children Istvan, Adel, Aniko, citing their attendance at ma.s.s, their political support for the Smallholders Party in the elections of 1945, their open criticism of the Soviet occupation and its control of the police, factories, transit system, everything. But at the time there were so many people like this the Soviets couldn't make them disappear fast enough. It wasn't until he saw what was happening to the members of the resistance, old trade union leaders, those who'd been outspoken communists prior to the arrival of the Red Army-who had paved the way for it but made the mistake of expecting Marxism in its wake-only when all of them were being arrested, sentenced in show trials, and murdered did Laszlo realize that the most dangerous thing of all, the most grievous of crimes, next to being a n.a.z.i, was to have actively fought against Hitler in the name of communism. These men and women had had the courage to oppose the state, been brave enough to think for themselves, even at the cost of their lives. And it was because of this, exactly this, that the Soviets got rid of them. They were not the kind of citizens the Kremlin wanted, any more than Hitler had wanted them. Picking off the most loyal had the added benefit of amplifying the fear, of making everyone feel equally vulnerable, because if loyalties didn't matter, if the liquidation of men and women appeared random, then survival had nothing to do with you and everything to do with grace, which arrived from the state, as mysterious and medieval as the favor of G.o.d.

Laszlo filed report after report to the Allied Control Commission, which was controlled by the Soviets, about the activities of Tibor Kalman and his family during the war: how they'd sheltered political refugees from Germany, how they'd helped young men escape being drafted by a government they despised, how they'd drawn up false papers for all of these. "Conscientious objectors," he called them, and it was this, finally, that elevated the Kalmans above the common stream of citizens complaining about the occupation. It wore the family down-visits by police, seizure of property, arrests and brief imprisonments that were hints, preludes, to the sentences yet to come-and then, in a final blow, Laszlo managed to get them evicted from the villa, and to have himself, the war hero, the decorated veteran, the loyal subject of the party, installed in their place.

That was late in 1946, the letter from the state informing the Kalmans that their villa was being "reallocated" to "a more suitable candidate." In return, they would be given a cowshed in Csepel. The shed had held three cows and could easily fit six people, which meant that only one member of the family would have to sleep outside. And so the family finally left, driven beyond exasperation, beyond fear, beyond even the love of their country. Rumor was they escaped to the west, following their eldest son, who'd left the country six months earlier. In many ways, Laszlo was happy to have been part of their forced removal, and he was delighted to think of what it must be like for them out there, wherever they'd gone-not speaking the language, not making any money, not having their degrees and expertise recognized. At night, when he couldn't sleep, it was helpful to know that in some way they were suffering at least a fraction of what he'd suffered during the siege, at a time when he should have been with them, in Tibor's care, being given a new ident.i.ty and a new life.

But in the end, he had to admit, it was not the Kalmans he'd been after, not really. It was the villa, the freedom to walk inside, to feel its ma.s.s around him.

He never forgot his first time crossing the threshold. There was the falling plaster, the bullet holes still in the walls, the water damage along the ceiling, the bits of furniture and possessions the family had left behind. There was the room where Tibor Kalman had died, its door nailed shut, the debris still inside as it had been when the family returned from the siege. But more than this was the feeling Laszlo had, walking down the hall, entering the rooms, that he was not yet inside, that he was still searching for a point of entry. "Another step and I will be there," he told himself, speaking into the emptiness of the home. And with the next movement, he said it again, "Another step and I will be inside." Eventually, he would exit the villa, stand in the courtyard bewildered, then cross the threshold again, hoping this time to get it right, haunted by how he'd dreamed of the place, hoped for it, imagined being safe inside these rooms, when in reality he was facing bullets and starvation and disease in Budapest. And killing people.

At night, unable to sleep, he would shake off nightmares of the siege by fixing up the place-the water damage, the rotten studs and joists, the plastering, the paint, the careful work of reconstructing the villa-as if by restoring the building to what it was it might finally open up to him, truly open, and he'd step inside to the life he should have had.

After the third week, he ripped off the boards covering the door to the room where Tibor died, and a day or two later, steeling himself, went inside, staring at the mounds of rubble, the debris strewn along the floor. The Kalman family had already exhumed and buried the bodies, touching the rubble only as much as was needed to pull it apart. After that, the family kept the door nailed shut, Laszlo had thought, because they couldn't bear to face the site where Tibor and Ildiko died, but as he began to clear away the rubble, he discovered why they'd really left it as it was, for once the bricks and plaster and shattered beams and bits of gla.s.s were swept aside, he found the hole in the floor where Tibor had kept his workshop, and inside, the stacks of messages he'd received during the war from the resistance, from places as far away as Cologne, and the equipment he'd used to forge ident.i.ties, along with the lists of names and addresses under which Tibor had hidden the refugees. Laszlo would use these lists to keep himself useful to the state, exposing ident.i.ties one by one whenever he felt the pressure to demonstrate his loyalty. In return, they let him keep the villa. The villa with its printing press, the one they knew nothing about, his escape.