She stood, stepped over little Ilonka, who had just rolled from her father’s back, and went to the kitchenette.
“Who wants cake?” called Nina.
The girls screamed, “Me! Me!”
Mihaly whinnied.
Lazlo nodded, staring at Nina who glanced back to him and seemed, for an instant, to brood as she went to the refrigerator.
“The cake is fresh, but the milk’s sour again,” said Nina behind the open refrigerator door. “Not like on the farm where they have their own cow.”
Mihaly mooed, and the girls laughed.
“All right,” said Nina, “I’ll make tea.”
After dark Nina looked outside, saying the lights on the Chernobyl towers in the distance were almost invisible because of the snow. She asked Lazlo if he wanted to stay overnight. He thought about how it would be to sleep in the same apartment with the sounds of Nina and Mihaly turning discreetly beneath the blankets.
He thought about how depressed he would be early in the morning, driving back to Kiev. He said no, and Nina, the perfect woman, smiled at him, made strong tea for his drive back to Kiev, kissed him good-bye gently when it was time to go, linked arms with her husband, and waved to Lazlo from the doorway.
The long drive in the dark back to Kiev was filled with images of Nina, the woman who, if she belonged to Lazlo instead of Mihaly, would never have to worry about his fidelity. Halfway to Kiev, snow danced in the headlights like millions of shooting stars whose wishes were doomed to failure. When the snowflakes turned into blurred streaks of light, he realized he was weeping. Was he weeping for Nina and the girls and what Mihaly had done? Or was he weeping because he was going back to his lonely apartment in Kiev?
Perhaps he was weeping for the Gypsy who had hidden a pistol in his violin case should the boys recruited to arrest deserters come for him.
A snowy day in the eastern Carpathian foothills along the Romanian border. Lazlo and Viktor leave the army truck with their rifles and trudge through the snow to the farm village while the driver waits for them on the main road. He and Viktor are only nineteen; the driver, twenty-one. All three have undergone hazing together, Ukrainian recruits shipped to the Russian camp where Russian soldiers had their way with them. One nightmarish session consisted of putting a wig backwards on Viktor, painting a face on the back of his shaved head, painting breasts on his bony shoulder blades, and forcing Lazlo down onto Viktor.
A snowy day in the eastern Carpathian foothills in 1963. Russian officers are angry because of Khrushchev’s 1962 Cuban missile fiasco. Sometimes they take out their anger on Ukrainian recruits.
Lazlo and Viktor are chosen for deserter duty because they both speak Hungarian and the area in which the deserter’s family lives is Hungarian speaking.
A snowy day in the eastern Carpathian foothills. He and Viktor hear a violin playing as they approach the farmhouse, a sad solo not badly done. The deserter’s file back in the truck indicates he comes from a family of violinists. He and Viktor hope the deserter is not there. He has hidden and will come out later so he can stay the winter and help with spring planting. Deserters are common. Many are forgotten. When Viktor knocks, the violin stops playing. But instead of a parent or grandparent answering, the deserter himself, with violin in hand, answers the door.
A snowy day in the Carpathian foothills. Mother and sister are also in the house. The sister, perhaps sixteen, pleads as the deserter gives himself up. He asks to bring his violin. He retrieves the violin case, reaches inside, turns with a pistol, and shoots Viktor in the chest.
A snowy day. Viktor falling back through the open door. The pistol turning toward Lazlo. The eyes of the deserter determined.
Lazlo’s rifle already aimed. The struggle to release the safety and pull the trigger moves the rifle too high. The bullet explodes the deserter’s face, and the women scream. Blood streaks the snow as Lazlo and the driver drag Viktor and the deserter to the truck. Both are alive, but they die while the truck speeds to the nearest hospital.
When Lazlo visits the farmhouse again with his captain, the deserter’s father is home. He gives them the violin to bury with his son, saying villagers called his son Gypsy. The mother is in another room, having wept for days. The daughter stares at Lazlo with dark eyes like those of her brother. Only sixteen, yet she has become a woman. Except for the visit with his captain to the village to confirm what happened, there is no further investigation. Back at camp, Lazlo’s comrades baptize him with the name Gypsy, insisting the name migrated from the deserter’s soul to his soul when he avenged the death of his friend Viktor.
A snowy day much like this snowy night. But he is no longer a young man. It is too late for him. He had wanted to tell Mihaly this today. He had wanted to say to Mihaly he should be happy he has a wife in whose eyes he can gaze without seeing the eyes of the deserter’s sister.
As Lazlo drove into Kiev and along Boulevard Shevchenko, streetlights on new fallen snow made it seem like daylight. Although the hour was late, he decided not to go to his apartment. Instead, he drove to the central city to visit Club Ukrainka, where he would drink wine with artists, composers, and writers. If he were fortunate, Tamara would be there. Tamara, the editor of the literary review, his true friend for so many of his years in Kiev, the last woman who had slept with him and comforted him in his loneliness and melancholy.
A woman who did not remind him of the past.
When he entered Club Ukrainka, he could hear a single saxophone playing a sad song in a minor key, a song which, if played on a violin, could have been one of the Gypsy primas played by Lakatos and his Gypsy Orchestra, a Gypsy violin crying in the night the way he had cried on his way back to Kiev.
Layers of overcoats hung on the hooks near the entrance. He could smell wet wool along with disinfectant from the single washroom. Since his last visit to the club, someone had crossed out the sign “Men and Women” on the door and replaced it with a scrawled
“Czars and Czarinas.” The smells in the club entrance reminded him of a farm. Yes, a farm in winter, coming in from the wet cold while his mother cleans walls and floors, while his mother washes his baby brother’s diapers in a tub in the kitchen.
He entered the main room of the club where the shine of the saxophone pierced the smoky air. Tamara sat at a corner table with two bearded men. Her black hair gleamed in the light from the candle on the table. Long silver earrings glittered at the sides of her face. When she saw him, she raised her eyebrows and said something to the two bearded men, who immediately left the table.
Lovely Tamara sat with her hands folded and mouthed the word
“Gypsy” with her red, red lips as the saxophone cried. When Lazlo approached the table, he sensed the heat of the room and recalled the heat of Tamara’s body against his. For an instant he felt himself more of a betrayer than his brother.
6
On Wednesday nights Juli’s roommate, Marina, worked late, allowing Mihaly to visit. Every week, as Wednesday approached, Juli’s guilt increased, making her think of it as their last rendezvous. But as soon as Mihaly left her apartment, she would begin looking forward to the following Wednesday. Sometimes she imagined she had gone to medical school as her father wished instead of becoming a Chernobyl technician and meeting Mihaly.
While waiting for the bus to Pripyat, Juli recalled the previous winter. Her father had died, Sergey had broken off their engagement, and it had been miserably cold. This winter, while waiting at the stop outside the low-level laboratory building, it seemed much milder. She stared at the stars visible above the Chernobyl towers, wishing they could provide an answer.
Mihaly’s birthday had been on the weekend. The previous Wednesday he wondered aloud what kind of gift she could possibly give him. Not something from a shop. Not something he would need to hide. In the locker room before leaving the building, she had stuffed her blouse and brassiere into her purse and worn only slacks beneath her fur coat. She could feel fingers of air slipping beneath the coat. The sound of the bus coming over the hill excited her, and she wondered if this was how a prostitute felt. For a moment she thought she might have made a
