the two short blocks to the Nagymezo utca where the nightclubs faced each other across the street.
I went into the Arizona, checked my hat and coat, and went to the bar. I hadn’t been in the place for nearly ten years, but it hadn’t changed. The same two-story room, open booths on raised platforms against the two side walls, the orchestra against the fourth wall opposite the entrance. The turntable dance floor was crowded with officers in uniform, men in dinner jackets, and women in evening gowns. The Arizona had been a mechanical marvel in the old days, and the gadgets still worked, for occasionally, with squeals of delight, the occupants of a booth would push the elevator button and the whole booth would disappear from sight into the cellar, to pop up again when a second button was touched.
I had scarcely time to order a drink before a slim blond girl perched on the bar stool beside me. She said her name was Ilonka and she preferred champagne. I don’t suppose she could have been more than seventeen or eighteen. The orchestra was making such a din in the small room, playing “Deep in the Heart of Texas” for the cavorting Russians and Hungarians, that Ilonka had to shout. I understood her Hungarian but I shook my head. If I admitted speaking the language I’d have to acknowledge previous visits to Budapest. The girl would report our conversation to the headwaiter who informed the police on all newcomers. Ilonka would get a percentage of my bar bill; the more I drank, the more money she made and the more information she would theoretically gather for the headwaiter. She also doubled in the chorus line.
She tried halting German. “You are new in Budapest, is it not so?” The bartender poured her a glass of champagne.
I told Ilonka I’d flown in from Geneva two days before.
“Then you are Swiss?”
I said I was.
“You are an engineer, perhaps?”
“In a way,” I said. “I’m in the watch and clock business.” I glanced at the crowded dance floor and wondered which blonde was Anna Orlovska. “Is this place always so crowded?”
Ilonka tossed down her champagne and ordered another. I told the bartender I’d coast on my whisky.
“The Arizona is always jammed,” the girl said. “It’s always full of diplomats and government people. And black-market operators.”
“I’ve heard Budapest is famous for beautiful women,” I said.
“Thank you,” Ilonka said. “Do you like me?”
“Of course,” I said. “I think you’re charming. But I mean society women. Who are some of those women on the dance floor?”
The girl smiled and slipped her arm through mine.
“You’d better take it easy. The Russians don’t like foreigners staring at their women. You’re too nice to get yourself into trouble.”
“I’m just curious,” I said. “I wondered if there were some famous people here.”
She swung around on the bar stool and nodded toward the booths. “That tall thin man is the minister of finance. That fat woman is his wife.” Ilonka giggled. “Oh, sometimes officials do come here with their wives.”
“Who’s the blonde in the third booth?” I asked. “She’s with the bearded man.”
“Oh, that’s Lilli Karvas. She’s the star of the National Theater. You wouldn’t like her. She throws things.”
“Aren’t there any Russians here?”
Ilonka looked at me curiously. “There aren’t any Russian women,” she said. “The Russians don’t bring their wives and daughters to such places.” She put her hand on my arm. “Are you married?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not married.” I looked across the dance floor. “Who’s that Russian in uniform? The one who’s alone in the booth.”
Ilonka looked the other way. “I like you,” she said. “Let’s dance.”
When we’d left the bar, she put her mouth close to my ear. “You mustn’t ask so many questions. It isn’t healthy in this place.”
The dance floor was jammed, and it was hard to move without getting an elbow in the back or a heel in the ankle. When we came in front of the band Ilonka said, “The Russian is Colonel Lavrentiev.”
“Who’s he?” I said. “He looks as if he were dressed for parade.”
“He’s head of the MVD,” Ilonka said. “Will you please talk about the weather?”
“Does he come for the show?” I asked.
“He’s in love with a Polish countess,” Ilonka said. “She meets him here every night. Now mind your business or I’ll leave you here on the floor.”
When we were back at the bar I made up a lot of fiction about trying to sell Swiss watches and clocks to the Hungarian government. Hiram Carr hadn’t briefed me but I felt I ought to tell Ilonka something she could repeat to the headwaiter. I said I was staying at the Bristol and would make my first visit to the ministry of commerce the next day.
I bought Ilonka another champagne. “You’re afraid of the Russians, aren’t you?” I said. There was no one within earshot. I didn’t realize the place might be wired. “Is everybody afraid to talk here in Hungary?”
Ilonka frowned. I noticed how thin and frail she was. Twelve years of war and occupation represented almost her whole life.
“We’re all afraid,” she said simply. “My father says the evil eye has returned among us.”
“The what?” I said.
“The evil eye. The Magyars fought hundreds of years to get rid of the Turks from the east. Now, my father says, the barbarians are here again.”
“Don’t let them hear you,” I said. “Don’t you know they invented civilization?”
She pointed to a small glass object pinned to her dress. “See?”
“What’s that?”
“That’s the good eye.” She unpinned it and handed it to me. “It protects us from the evil eye.” It was made of blue glass to represent a human eye.
“You don’t believe that?”
“Of course.” Ilonka was surprised. “Don’t Swiss people believe in the evil eye?”
I’d seen the charms in Turkey. I’d had a chauffeur named Murad who refused to drive my car without one on the radiator cap. I knew that Slovak peasants paint their huts blue to keep evil spirits away, that Polish farmers rub garlic on barn doors to keep vampires from milking their cows at night. But Budapest had been a civilized capital when I left in ’41.
“I must get ready for the show,” Ilonka said. She took my hand. “Promise you’ll wait?”
I said I would. I’d have an excuse to sit alone at the bar until the Countess Orlovska showed up. Though I hadn’t the foggiest notion what to do then.
I watched Colonel Lavrentiev’s image in the back-bar mirror. He was a big, broad-shouldered man, the typical square-faced, square-headed blond Slav. Like the late Major Strakhov, Lavrentiev wore a full-dress uniform complete to epaulets and a large patch of decorations. He was the first Russian I’d seen sporting a monocle, an affectation some Red Army officers had picked up from the Prussians. Lavrentiev was apparently a two-fisted drinker. There were four bottles in front of him.
Then the show started, and I forgot Lavrentiev and Herr Doktor Schmidt, Hiram Carr, and Herr Figl, the grave-robbing Austrian, until I caught sight of one of the chorus girls who looked enough like Maria to make me catch my breath. Then the spotlight reflected a mouthful of gold teeth, but the shock was enough to make me feel guilty and highly uncomfortable, sitting in a nightclub drinking whisky when I should have been searching for Maria.
The show was something to see, just the same, the way I’d remembered it from the days before the proletariat ran the place. The prima donna came out of the wings on the back of a baby elephant, chorus girls floated around the ceiling on hidden wires, the dance floor rose ten feet in the air complete with tap dancers, the band thumped joyously through a dozen ancient American tunes. Colonel Lavrentiev clapped and laughed and beat time on the table with a whisky bottle.
I needn’t have worried about identifying the Countess Orlovska. The chorus was wiggling through the finale when I saw Lavrentiev pull himself to his feet. He swept the empty bottles onto the floor, bellowed at the orchestra leader, and turned to face the entrance. The music ceased abruptly with a wail of the saxophone, the chorus line shuffled to a halt on one foot. Lavrentiev fixed his monocle, lifted his left arm in a sort of Roman-emperor gesture,
