Europa

O ponder the fascism of the heart.

Sing of disappointments more repeated than the batter of the sea, of lives embittered by resentments so ubiquitous the ocean's salt seems thinly shaken

William Gass

An Invocation to the Muse

The Tunnel

Budapest

Present Day

One had to be crazy to be out on a night like this but for Luzja, who’s appearances around town were infrequent at best, the sense of urgency had become unbearable. Cooped up in a cold, lonely apartment day after day, night after night, keeping tabs on the teammates wasn’t exactly the most exciting life one could have but it was necessary for the future. She was overcome with extreme boredom and an insatiable desire to go where this urge could often be satisfied. Away from prying eyes, with no possible chance of being noticed.

The ramshackle bar on the opposite end of town and the little alley behind it always served as the best place to satisfy this desire without anyone being the wiser. Beside it lie an abandoned lot, strewn with used car parts, broken washing machines, and heaps of general trash. One gets used to the stench emanating from it after being out there for a while and by the time the man, who could have very well been on the team with his muscular arms and closed cropped hair, lifted the black cotton shirt up to the small of Luzja’s back, the smell no longer mattered. She spread her legs apart, her black high heeled shoes pushing aside the mound of snow that had accumulated at the foot of the wall to which she now pressed her hands, bracing herself for the ultimate pleasure. Once she felt herself penetrated, she closed her eyes, turned her head upwards, the snow falling lightly on her face. It was quiet save for the sound of the young man’s grunts as he thrust in and out of her. She had to admonish him with a tap now and then to ease up a little as she felt her cock begin to part from here thigh where she had securely taped it. She didn’t know if the man behind her knew whether or not who he was fucking in that pungent, snow filled alley but for the time being she didn’t care. It wouldn’t be long now, anyway, and she could easily back off and gather herself before he could discover her secret.

Her legs spread wider now, her ass raised, the man finished his business then pressed his sweaty forehead to Luzja’s back.

As soon as he slipped out of her, Luzja immediately pulled down her skirt and turned to face the young man.

The young man, wiping the sweat and snow from his forehead with arm, pushed Luzja against the wall and kissed her, slipping his tongue in her mouth. Luzja gently pushed him away.

Time’s up.

Money exchanged hands and the young man lit a cigarette and as inconspicuously as he could, made his way back into the bar.

Luzja counted the money, slipped it into the pocket of her coat, took a deep breath and raised her face to the falling snow for a moment before exiting the alley and walking back to the street. 

Not wanting to bother with the tram, she buttoned her coat, fixed her hair and flagged down a taxi to take her back to her apartment across town.

After a quick shower, Luzja disappeared for the time being, back to the realm in which she lived in secret. In her place, the man she was checked for messages on his website and discovered one from a guy who was very eager to join the team. In the message, the prospective teammate promised to make a good impression, one that would be talked about by everyone soon enough. The message went unanswered for the time being. There were always potential new recruits waiting in the wings.

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Here, take this. That’s all we need is for the fucking police to pull us over.

Zoltán grabbed the bottle of Pálinka from Imre’s bruised and bloody hand

Take it easy, will you! It fucking hurts!

Sorry, Zoltán said, then took slug from the bottle, the liqueur warming his gullet.

It was snowing heavily now, burying the alley-like side streets in which Imre carefully navigated his brand new Suzuki Splash. He looked at his swollen hand on the steering wheel. Dried blood covered the knuckles of his hand. It matched the blood on his pant leg and the violent burst of reddish-brown gunk on the tip of his Doc Marten. He set his sights back on the road, slowing down so the tires wouldn’t skid over the wet cobblestones.

Zoltán passed the Pálinka to György who immediately used the cold bottle to nurse the bruise on his left cheekbone. He then took a long sip from the bottle, hoping the effect of the liqueur would help relieve the throbbing in his face.

He hit you pretty good, huh? Zoltán said over his shoulder.

Lucky punch, György said, handing the bottle back.

The black Suzuki turned onto Margit then across the Danube to Szt. István, the snow a swirling tapestry around them. They were in more familiar territory now, and Imre was able to relax a little. There wasn’t anyone on the streets at that time of night save for the occasional souls who were brave enough to come out on a such a freezing night but that didn’t mean the police weren’t lurking around, searching for speeders or drunk drivers. Like phantoms, they would appear out of nowhere.

Imre cracked the window to allow some of the cold air into the car, which had begun to stink of Pálinka and body sweat. He lit a cigarette to help disguise the smell of alcohol, just in case. He glanced out the window at the increasingly heavy snow and hoped he could get home without any problems. He had spent an awful lot of money on that car and it took him nearly a year working at the garage to save for it. The main thing was that Bianka approved of it. It was important that Bianka approve of everything.

Imre played with the radio trying to break the uncomfortable silence, then turned it off again when he found nothing decent to listen to. That was the least of his concerns. He glanced down at his boot resting on the gas pedal. That’s a lot of blood.

Something else caught his attention, something small and white nestled inside the cuff of his jeans. He reached for it, being careful not to take his eyes off the road. It felt hard, like a pebble. He brought whatever it was to his eyes.

He dropped the tooth into his shirt pocket.

A little souvenir.

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Krystóf Vrba tried to open his eyes but only a sliver of light was able to penetrate the caked on blood that had virtually sealed his eyelids shut. He tried to wipe his eyes with his hand but something felt very wrong. The fingers of his right hand weren’t where they were supposed to be, each one of them pointing in various angles. Strange. No pain. He let his hand drop to the snowy pavement as he labored to breathe.

In the distance he heard the occasional car or tram speed along the main boulevard. He tried to gage his distance from it by the sound. Perhaps a block, maybe two? He lied there for a while, struggling to breathe.

He reached for his ribcage with his good hand. It was painful to the touch. He tried to sit up. A sharp, searing pain shot through him. His yell echoed down the deserted side street and he fell back on the pavement into the snow. Tears streamed from his eyes, carving little canals in the mess of blood and snot. For the first time he thought he wasn’t going to make it but he knew he had to try. So long as he was still breathing, there was still hope.

He tried to sit up again, this time more slowly. He wiped the blood and tears from his eyes with his good hand so he could get a better look at his bad one. It was much worse than he realized. All his fingers, save for the thumb, were broken, bent and twisted in ungodly positions. Utterly useless. He used his good hand to push against the ground so he could try to get to his feet. He managed to lift himself a couple of inches before the excruciating pain forced him back into the snow. He lied there, wracked with pain now, his breathing more and more labored. He was still going to try. He was not going to die out there in the middle of the street.

Looking skyward, he watched the snow falling and swirling around him, the flakes kissing his swollen and bloody face. It was getting more difficult to breathe and his thoughts were careening from one thing to another before he finally realized that perhaps it was indeed the end. The last thing he would ever be conscious of was a presence, something or someone leaning over him, getting closer to his face before it all went dark.

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Rabbi Mordechai Weisz dropped newspaper on his desk, removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. It was the second time in a matter of weeks that another Jew was attacked and killed, this new victim in the same exact manner as the last. Such savagery, he thought. He didn’t know the victim but some in his congregation had. Orthodox, which meant he was an easy mark for the thugs who killed him. He didn’t come back to Budapest for this. He had spent the last ten years of his life teaching at a university in Israel, having left there due to the increasing instability and constant rocket barrages from another group who wished to see Jews dead. When the first attack occurred he thought it was an isolated incident, a group of racist thugs doing what they normally do. That was bad enough. Now a second victim and a pattern seemed to be emerging. He had been informed of the rise in anti-semitism as soon as he found himself back in his native city but he initially brushed it off. There had always been anti-semitic sentiment in Hungary, as far back as when his grandfather was a young man; but the more he’d been informed of the rise in right wing groups with Nazi sympathetic messages, the more concerned he became.

He slipped his glasses back on and contacted the man who claimed to have known this latest victim. After getting the information he wanted, he called the victim’s wife and offered his condolences and support. Anything they needed, just give him a call.

He hung up the phone and went to the window, looked down into the snowy streets at the people already out shopping for the holidays and it was only then did he realize how close to the High Holidays the attack occurred. Coincidence? Perhaps, but he was no longer sure. All he knew was that he was not going to sit back and allow this sort of thing to occur again.

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Inspector Laszlo Nadás had hoped his last few months on the job would be easy, taking care of loose ends, filling out his retirement papers, getting his affairs in order before finally leaving it all behind to enjoy the rest of his life in peace and quiet. He was still young, had a whole life ahead of him. Did he really need this?

Holding the cellophane bag up in front of the bulb in the desk lamp, he examined the crushed cigarette butt that was found at the crime scene. Idiots, he thought. They always make one stupid mistake, usually one like this. The brand of cigarette was common enough. The DNA sample they’d get from it wouldn’t be.

He put the bag aside and removed the curious little pamphlet from the file folder. He thumbed through the pages, reading passages here and there, shaking his head, a smirk tugging at his lips. Crafty, this one, he thought, but again, not very bright. At first glance it seemed like nothing more than a small treatise on the art of football. If it weren’t for the punk they had picked up two weeks earlier, he might never had thought twice about such a thing. The pamphlet led to a website - a football fan site - with a private forum, no less, one in which he tried to get access to but curiously could not and that only intrigued him even more. It was only after further questioning the punk did all the pieces come together. The great thing about the internet was that you could be anyone but at his age it took him a while to fully understand this. What was the internet to him? Nearing sixty, he didn’t have much time for the world wide web, except for the occasional use on the job. Recreational use was something that never occurred to him. Still, access to the forum denied. He would have to try another way.

He put the pamphlet back into the folder and fingered the cards in his Rolodex until he found the one he was looking for.

Hello, Rabbi, he said. Inspector Nadás calling. I’m sure you’ve heard.

He had been working closely with Rabbi Weisz since the first attack. The rabbi had been organizing, which was fine with him, but he didn’t want him to do anything to screw up the investigation. They were getting a little closer. Do what you have to do but don’t get in the way.

After the brief call he hung up, picked up the cellophane bag again. After finishing his coffee, he took it to the lab.

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The tram awakened Ferenc Bakos in the middle of the night. The first thing his eyes focused on was the shadow of the heavy snow falling behind the dirty curtains. Yellowed with nicotine, blackened with soot, he thought it was about time he dragged himself down to the store and buy some new ones. Another thing to add to the To do list; another thing he knew he’d never actually get around to doing.

It was quiet except for the creak of the bedsprings and the humming of the space heater a few feet away from the bed. He tried to get back to sleep, tossed and turned, the silence a little too obvious, the cold creeping into his bones. He wanted to move the space heater closer but was too lazy to get out of bed and he didn’t want the damn thing too close to the bedsheets. He couldn’t afford to burn the place down and he knew the old tinderbox he lived in would go up in minutes if, God forbid, that were to happen. The building was old, built long before the so-called modern housing the Communists built all over the city a half a century ago. Those weren’t much better. At least his place, despite it being decrepit and old, had a lot of character. He could imagine his grandparents living in a place like this. Whoever owned this building didn’t do much in the way of modernization. Whatever the code demanded. Not much more.

He climbed out of bed and went to the window. It was snowing fiercely, already a few inches deep. His eyes followed the trail of footprints along the sidewalk across the street, leading from the grocery, past his building, and down Ungvár Street beyond. He couldn’t believe that anyone would be walking around at that time of night. Perhaps some poor asshole who thought the store would be open at two o’clock in the morning.

Another tram.

Two passengers - a young man and a young woman, her head resting on his shoulder. He watched them as it passed by his window, probably coming home from a date - a date in this fucking weather. Someone was getting laid tonight.

Then it was quiet again.

He backed away from the window and checked the space heater, turned it up just a little, warmed his hands in front of it. Then back to bed, under the heavy, brown blanket, wrapping it  tight around himself to keep as warm as possible. He thought about getting his wool cap from the closet but he didn’t want to get up again.

Silence.

The creaking of the bed.

Sleep would come sooner or later.

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Her mouth completely encircled the dark haired girl’s hairless vagina, sucking so hard that it bored deep dimples on her cheeks. The dark haired girl’s head tilted back, her bright red lips parted, her eyelids fluttering, occasionally opening to reveal the whites of her eyes as her irises rolled back into her head. Soft little moans escaped her lips as her hand reached down to run her fingers through the dirty-blonde hair of the girl pleasuring her. The sound of her moans occasionally disappeared and reappeared again, in between the distortion of the image on the screen brought about by literally hundreds of views. Bianka Majoros opened her eyes to see the warped and static filled image as her hand worked furiously over her clitoris, rubbing so hard now that she was starting to hurt herself. A momentary glance at the alarm clock on her bedside table read 3:15am. Too late - or too early - in the day to be engaged in such antics but she had woken up in the middle of the night with the desperate urge to pleasure herself. Her well worn videocassette labeled Porn in her sloppy, curlicue handwriting had been in the cabinet under the TV stand, placed conveniently next to her video biography of Pablo Picasso she had bought years ago from the gift shop at the Szépművészeti Múzeum. The porn tape had been gleaned by recording what she called pussy fucks from late night, on-demand cable programing. She was reaching climax now, and the more the dirty-blonde haired girl sucked at the dark haired girl, the more intense her burgeoning orgasm was becoming - and the harder and faster she rubbed.

The two women on the screen were no longer nameless actors. The one being pleasured had a specific name but known only to Bianka. A secret desire, one who had no idea that somewhere in Budapest, a twenty-three year old girl was just about to reach the orgasm of her life fantasizing that it was herself in that video, imagining the wet, musky pussy just below her nose and moistened lips were hers. She opened her eyes again, but only just enough to peer at the image, and now the dark haired girl’s thighs were firmly pressed against the dirty-blonde girl’s head; the dirty-blonde’s head now turned slightly to the right as she sucked so hard she was pulling her partner’s labia between her thick, lipstick coated lips.

Her orgasm was fierce, sending an explosion of pleasure throughout her body, her fingers soaked from the milky discharge from her own sex. It was an orgasm she had never felt before and when she settled down, she reached for the remote control and turned off the tape. She tossed the remote down on the bed beside her and immediately reached for the telephone. She wiped the sweat from her forehead as she listened to the ringing on the other end. Soon, a groggy, half-asleep voice answered.

I just had the best orgasm of my life, she said. You have no idea.

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Ferenc glanced at his alarm clock. 3:35 am. It took a moment for Bianka’s comment to register. No hello, how are you, just an immediate statement of fact, one in which caused a slight stir in him as he tried to knock the sleep out of his head and have something of a coherent conversation.

Did I wake you? Bianka half-whispered.

Not really, Ferenc said, looking at the alarm clock again. I’ve been kind of drifting in and out all night.

This wasn’t the truth, of course. Ferenc had been hoping to hear from Bianka all night - and if that meant getting up in the middle of the night to speak to her, so be it. This sort of thing had been going on since they first met.

Are you going to work tomorrow? Bianka asked, again half-whispering.

I don’t know, Ferenc said. I think I might call in. If I do, do you want to come by?

Maybe. Depends on when I get out of class.

That was funny to him. He hadn’t seen the inside of a classroom in over a decade, since secondary school. It only served as a reminder of how much older than her he was.

Well, I’ll give you a call in the morning and let you know what’s what.

He reached for the pack of Symphonias on the night table, lit one. The raw tobacco seared his throat.

What did you do tonight? he asked.

Well, I went to the lab tonight for a little while - and then ZsiZsi came over. She was so annoying that I wanted to kick her right in her fat ass. One of these days I have to introduce you to her. You’d never believe she’s for real.

I can believe it.

She was moaning about some guy again, saying that all they want to do is fuck her. I think they’re just enamored with her huge tits. I’d be surprised if any of them even see her face.

Is she pretty?

She’s pretty. I think so, anyway.

What kind of men does she attract?

Anyone and everyone - and she’s fucked so many at this point...

I get it.

Ferenc yawned, looked at the clock. 3:45 am. There was no way in hell he was going to get up on time. He felt cold, pulled the blanket over his shoulders.

I also got into a big fight with Imre tonight, she said.

Again?

That’s all we ever seem to do, right? He can be such an asshole. Sometimes I think I should just dump his dumb ass, hook up with another woman and move to Jozsefváros and become a lesbian.

Ferenc didn’t say anything, waited. He’d heard this record before.

He just doesn’t get it. It’s got to be a man thing, right? I mean - are you like this?

I don’t really know what he did...

Just in general, I mean. Acting like a jealous douche bag.

We all get jealous sometimes.

But he’s out of control. I mean, really. Do you know what he tried to do? He tried to throw out my porn tape the other night.

Really?

Yes! That’s how jealous he can be. Are all men like this?

Not all of us.

Did I ever tell you about the time he found my dildo and took a knife and cut it in half?

No, Ferenc said laughing. Seriously? What’s the big deal?

I guess he’s threatened by it because it’s bigger than he is.

Ferenc laughed, took a drag off the cigarette.

Do you care if your girlfriend uses a dildo?

I wouldn’t care.

See? That’s why you’re so cool.

He didn’t answer and fought to keep his eyelids open.

I’m running out of patience with this guy, I tell you.

I’m sure it’ll all work out.

I hate it when people say that.

You know what I mean.

Coming from you, I do. But still, I hate hearing that. It’s like when you’re at a wake or something and people get all awkward and say the dumbest things to you.

Sometimes people just don’t know what to say. It is awkward sometimes.

Is this awkward for you?

Not at all. Since I’ve heard this song and dance before...

What time is it? Jesus, it’s late. You probably want to kill me, right?

It’s all right Bianka. I told you if you ever needed to talk...

Let me let you go back to sleep, Bianka said. I’ll call you tomorrow.

So you just called me to tell me about your orgasm?

Essentially, she said, laughing slightly. Plus I’m frustrated with this whole thing with Imre.

Ferenc shook his head, pulled on the cigarette. All right, he said. I can still get a couple of hours in. If I don’t go to work tomorrow, I’ll call you. Try to stop by.

I will. Good night.

He hung up the phone, finished his cigarette and went back to bed.

But it was too late now. He was up for good. He climbed out of bed and went to his desk, turned on the laptop and read over the journal entries he had written, something that he had been doing for the past couple of years, initially handwriting them in notebooks. It had been something of a lark - a strange desire to begin documenting the events in his life. He added this recent antic from Bianka into the journal then went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. If he was going to stay up, he may well be up. He turned on the television when he came back into the living room, watched the weather report on the news. More snow expected. He glanced out the window and looked at the heavy snow again. If it got any worse, he figured, it would be the perfect day to stay home. 

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The television was still on, the fuzzy image of a late night talk show flickering in the dark. Bianka eyed the remote control and reached for it, rewound the video to the point where the two women begin kissing.

She stubbed out her cigarette and slipped back under the covers, lowering the volume a little so as not to awaken her mother in the room down the hall. She watched the dark haired woman kiss the girl with the dirty-blonde hair, then slid her fingers down the front of her underwear. She fast forwarded to the point where the dirty-blonde girl gently layed the dark haired girl backwards on the bed and spread her legs. Once the dirty-blonde’s lips kissed the unshaven vagina, Bianka’s hand moved at a furious pace. Again the two women on the screen became herself and the object of her fantasies.

The orgasm wasn’t as intense as the initial one but it was enough to help put her to sleep, remote in hand, the video playing out to the end.

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Walking across the quad in her ever present army shirt and black beret, her Doc Marten’s making small footprints in the freshly fallen snow, the eye of every guy had fallen upon Jaelle Kolompár as she raced towards the Fine Arts Department building, eyes front, unconcerned about the looks she was used to getting. Pushing her way past a group of young men standing in front of the door - and ignoring their comments - she entered the building stomping the snow off her boots as she struggled to make class on time. Her lateness was becoming a problem and she didn’t want to hear any more lip from her professor.

She made it with a few minutes to spare and quickly took her seat, again ignoring the probes and stares of the young men in the classroom. She unpacked her books from her knapsack and opened her textbook to the poem the class had been studying since the beginning of the semester, keeping her head down, trying to ignore all the eyes she felt on her.

She briefly looked up and saw the six pair of eyes looking her up and down. Her eyes then fell to her enormous breasts - the bane of her existence - how they seemed to push the front of her black tank top to the bursting point. With one hand, she pulled one side of her army shirt across her breasts, bringing the show to an end for the morning. Another quick look around the room and the eyes of the boys were still on her. Disgusted, she rested her fingers on her forehead, covering her eyes, tried to focus on the poem.

She thought college would be different from secondary school but it had only gotten worse. Of course a young woman filled out quite a bit since her secondary school days but her junior year in college had proved to be something of an additional part of her education. Guys got worse as they get older. Especially these guys, the so-called intellectual guys, who try to catch her attention on a daily basis by waving their books around: this one waving Marx, this one waving Derrida, this one waving Lacan - an endless stream of immature bullshit. It was a circus that she had never gotten used to. She just wanted to get this class over and done with. Photography lab was next, the only thing she truly cared about. Greek epics were really not all that interesting to her.

The young men in the classroom just couldn’t keep their eyes of this beautiful, dark haired, creature of Romani descent; her thick red lips, Asiatic eyes with irises as black as coal, her fine, aquiline nose, and her just-this-side of a darker caucasian complexion. But it was the image she projected that turned them on most, this sort of revolutionary feminist, complete with random stickers and buttons boasting radical causes, the patch of the female symbol with the raised fist in the circle sewn in the most prominent spot of her knapsack, her Che Guevara button pinned to the left pocket of her army shirt and of course the black beret, complete with red star at front and center. The intellectual boys couldn’t get enough of it. The regular guys only saw a walking pair of tits bursting out from behind her tight tank top, and her tight blue jeans which flawlessly hugged her hips and shapely, prominent ass. She oozed an extreme sexuality that even she wasn’t fully aware of but her pheromone levels were high enough that one could literally smell it whenever they stood near her. All she wanted was to be left alone, to get through the day without the circus of men nipping at her heels.

Forty-five minutes of The Orestia and the boring, droning, nasally voice of the professor seemed to go on for an eternity but when it was finally over she didn’t waste a moment packing up her books and making a quick exit out the back door, still feeling the numerous eyes on her as she made her way out of the Fine Arts Department building, back across campus to her second hand Volkswagen Golf. There was still another hour and a half before Photo Lab and she planned on spending it at a local coffee shop she frequented, where sometimes her friends went between classes to talk about more important things than the tragedies of two thousand year old Greeks.

When she arrived at Zoltán’s Café she ordered her usual mid-morning cappuccino and took the table near the window, watching the snow begin to fall a little heavier than it had been over night. She rubbed her arms with her hands to fight off the chill and cursed herself for not bringing her coat. She didn’t think she would need one being that she was simply going from car to class, class to car, then back home. It wouldn’t be the first time in her life that she made such a serious miscalculation.

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It was the third time that week that Bianka had seen the good looking guy with the black hair and black leather blazer talking to Jaelle in the hallway. She tried to determine from their interaction who he was to her. A boyfriend? A classmate? A friend? The guy seemed casual, not looking at her as if she were a piece of meat, like most of the other guys around campus usually did.

Bianka fiddled with her camera, cleaning the lens with the hem of her sweater, adjusting the strap, peering through the viewfinder, waiting for her lab partner to finish up with this guy so they could get to work. She was a little miffed that Jaelle hadn’t yet acknowledged her, making her feel foolish standing around waiting. Jaelle didn’t even look her way, or even bother to take the time to introduce her friend to her, another source of slight irritation.

After a few minutes, Bianka started towards the darkroom, swaying her hips somewhat as she walked past them in an effort to let her partner know that she was there and ready to get to work. Jaelle didn’t even look at her.

In the darkroom, Bianka gathered the rolls of film that she had planned to develop, then began to set the table with the various trays and chemicals that she needed. Hardly anyone used these anymore. Everything’s gone digital. But for this project, they decided to go old school, something their professor was eager to agree on. Hunting down the film for this project proved to be extremely difficult. It was