Memento Park Read online

  As I set out along the steamy boulevard, I called Tracy to check in, let her know I’d arrived safely. I imagined we’d talk about McCabe, whose emergency appeal to the Supreme Court was being prepared, but she surprised me.

  “Your lawyer is an attractive woman.”

  Ah, Google, slayer of secrets.

  “Yes, I suppose she is.”

  “I thought you said your lawyer was a ‘he.’”

  “Did I? Maybe you misheard. Or maybe you were thinking about Brian.” When in doubt, deflect. “Anyway, it’s all very professional. Just like you and Brian.”

  In truth, after all the Brian business, I was flattered that she still cared. We talked for a few more moments, and I laid out the agenda of the next few days, a slew of interviews with family members and Kálmán experts. I told her that I missed her, that I couldn’t wait to see her back in L.A., and that I was hoping we’d each have good news to share.

  I strolled along a leafy side street, lined with listless, gray buildings. Exposed brick was visible everywhere beneath torn stucco, yet no building was without a satellite dish. I noticed strange divots in many of the buildings, near windows. Tibor later informed me these pockmarks were bullet holes, scars of war, of revolution. The farther I walked, the bleaker I felt. The sun could not penetrate the narrow streets. The whole city seemed coated with soot. Bored, surly young men on bicycles fingering cell phones, collected in driveways and alleys. The women all dressed like reality-show extras, stuffed into cheap and revealing dresses. A tremendous sadness gripped me, a heaviness that deepened as I walked.

  I continued along aimlessly, or so I told myself, but in truth I was drawn toward the Andrássy út. There were, perhaps, other more logical starting points. My father’s childhood home, for one. But I wasn’t ready to face that, not yet, not alone. Instead, the place I was pulled toward was that corner of that street, the vantage point from which Kálmán had seen what he had seen, in order to paint what he would paint.

  I turned onto the Andrássy út and exhaled as the street widened into a wide, sunny boulevard. Budapest’s Champs-Élysées, they call it, though the French would probably disavow any relation to this poor bastard cousin. I strolled past the Opera House, a hulking pile of stone squatting on a city block, all columns and spires and looming statues. The soaring eaves illuminated from within like sunken, baleful eyes. I shuddered under its scrutiny and hurried on. At last, I arrived at the facade that, according to several of my Kálmán textbooks, was the actual location of Budapest Street Scene. The presumed actual location. The generally agreed upon but unconfirmed actual location. The scholars, in fact, had no idea what the fuck they were talking about. One of my books reproduced a black-and-white photograph of the intersection from roughly the same period as the painting, and there are familiar aspects, not least of which are the cobbled archways. It’s comforting to accept their truth, but it’s one possible narrative, a best guess, and one impossible to confirm since that street had been obliterated. I stood there throbbing with disappointment. Another past erased, unconfirmable, unconfrontable. A bad omen for the trip, I decided, though I never have believed in omens, even as I dread them. My feet ached, fatigue swept over me, and my thoughts briefly turned to Rachel asleep in her—

  Virgil has fallen silent. He has either resolved his dilemma, or he has given up. Those are the only choices, after all.

  * * *

  RACHEL ARRANGED FOR A CAR to take us into the Buda foothills, to Kálmán’s home and studio, which had been converted into a museum. Despite Kálmán’s international reputation, the museum had a ramshackle feel to it, the obvious good intentions of the curators hobbled by lack of funds. A suite of seven large rooms, including a working reproduction of his studio, opened onto a desiccated courtyard garden bathed in late-afternoon sunshine. The smell of age, a slow rot, hung about the place. While Rachel was busy talking with the director, their hushed, urgent whispers echoing in the courtyard, I wandered around, taking in the digs, which were brighter than I’d expected, given the darkness of Kálmán’s output. A slide projector threw an image of Budapest Street Scene against one of the bare, whitewashed walls, a spectral reminder of our purpose. I perused the framed black-and-white photos and documents. It was a touching, homespun presentation, lacking finesse or a sense of occasion. There were no other visitors present, and Irma, the lethargic bespectacled intern, advised me in broken English that weeks went by without anyone stopping in. It saddened me to see Kálmán so neglected in his own land, and I imagined him here, veronal-addled, painting feverishly, especially in those last days, trying to finish his canvases to the sounds of his neighbors being carted away. There was so little time left, he must have known. Might those last days have been more profitably spent arranging an escape? Doing as my father did, getting while the getting was good? Or was it already too late?

  Why didn’t he stop painting and make his escape? Instead, he worked. Making do. And then he was dead.

  Rachel’s goodbye to the museum director ended my reverie. She took my arm and guided me to the door. Outside, on the street, she smiled. They tend to be conservative in these matters, she explained, especially since Kálmán was a popular target of forgers, so they’ve got liability every time they weigh in. But, she went on, they were aware of the provenance of this particular version of Budapest Street Scene and, having reviewed the file with Rachel, concurred that our claim appeared stronger than Rabbi Wolfe’s. They would sign an affidavit to that effect.

  “So what’s next?” I asked her.

  “That’s it for today. I’m off the clock,” she said.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  * * *

  THE DOHÁNY STREET SYNAGOGUE—the largest one in Europe—didn’t look much like a temple, with its strange Ottoman-flavored spires. I don’t think I’d have been surprised to hear a muezzin’s call. The taxi deposited us in front of a fenced-in graveyard that ran along the building’s flank. How many times, I wondered, had those faded tombstones been desecrated? A single file of people was moving through a metal detector. Virgil, how inadequate you would have felt, how much less of a man in the shadow of the armed uniformed policeman who stood by while his partner, a bearded fireplug in a kippah and polo shirt, greeted the worshippers. We approached and I craned my neck to see past the line, to the space within.

  “Is this the entrance to services?” I asked.

  “Why?” English. A relief.

  “It’s Friday.”

  “And?”

  “It’s the Sabbath.”

  “And?” I wondered whether he was a petty tyrant or merely yanking me around, some Friday fun with the tourists.

  “I am here for services.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “L.A.”

  “What was the last Jewish holiday?”

  “Passover.” Even I knew that one.

  “Shavuot,” he corrected me. “What’s the next?”

  I didn’t know the answer, so to spare Rachel the need to rescue me, I pivoted. “Do I need to pass an entrance exam to go to shul?”

  “I don’t know you. I have never seen your face before.”

  I explained that I was trying to follow in my Hungarian father’s footsteps and that he could search our bags if he wanted to reassure himself.

  “I am just trying to protect my people,” he said with a trace of apology.

  I held his gaze for a moment, then replied: “I am your people.”

  Hah. I wish. What would Rachel have made of me if I’d replied with such certainty? In truth, I only thought of the riposte the following morning, as I was still fuming over my mistreatment, though I think the scene is better in my version. At the same time, I couldn’t escape a feeling of sadness that such measures were required to keep his people safe and, more pointedly, that I was so obviously not one of them.

  Rachel finally interceded and spoke to him in Hebrew. Once again that terrible feeling of exclusion as he nodded and dismissed me with a fin
al shrug, insisting we remain for the whole service. He perused our passports, checked our bags, and waved us in.

  “No pictures,” he said. Then he returned to greet more familiar arrivals.

  * * *

  A WROUGHT-IRON BALCONY encircled the space, and stained-glass windows allowed the fading evening light to enter. Dark polished pews, vaulted ceilings, and illuminated archways, gilded Hebrew lettering. I took in the beautiful interior and turned to Rachel.

  “Wow,” I whispered. “How did this survive the war?”

  “It didn’t.”

  The sparse, elderly crowd looked even thinner and older in the cavernous emptiness, a stark contrast to Rabbi Wolfe’s robust and prosperous Chicago congregation. Fewer than forty people scattered through the first dozen pews, leaving row upon empty row stretching back toward the doorway, where we now stood. Rachel pulled a lace head covering from her bag and fastened it to her hair with a bobby pin. She looked at me expectantly. I was, of course, unprepared. I searched the entryway for a supply of guest headgear without success, and shrugged at her when a sixty-something who bore a striking resemblance to Saul Bellow handed me a temporary. I’d expected one of the felt, silk-lined kippot of my youth. This one felt disposable, like a piece of vacuum cleaner filter. He insisted I return it at the end of the service.

  Rachel took a seat near the rear, in a pew on the left. I started to slide in beside her when she stopped me and pointed to the center pews. I hadn’t noticed that the men and women were seated separately. Disappointed, I slid in across the aisle from her and felt exhaustion settle over me. This had been a mistake. But we were here, we were committed. I dug in and pulled the prayer book out, hoping for some kind of refuge or guidance from the printed page. This time, however, the bilingual prayer book was in Hebrew and Hungarian. I set it back, envying Rachel, who had kissed it and found her place in its pages.

  Twenty minutes into the service, everyone in the room turned to face the rear of the temple. Why? I didn’t know, still don’t, but I have been overwhelmed by how much there is to know about being a Jew. At any rate, see me there, standing terrified. Because my comfortable position hiding in the back of the congregation has now been promoted to the front, and I’m certain I will miss the moment when I’m supposed to turn back. I will be left facing the rear alone, exposed in my ignorance. I perspire and strain my peripheral vision looking for movement, waiting for a telltale rustle of clothes to alert me. Which it finally does. I turn, not quite seamlessly with the room, but not completely out of step either.

  The cantor takes the stage and begins to sing. I am transported. The song—Hashkiveinu, Rachel later tells me—seizes me. Perhaps it’s just the jet lag, but I am newly aware, intimately aware, of death and loss and eternity and my family, all lost to me now, this journey, this long journey, and the music continues and the cantor closes his eyes and reaches into himself to infuse the words with knowledge and wisdom and history and, above all, soul. I try to hide my tears from Rachel, but I know she sees them, I can feel her eyes upon me, and I want him to finish, to stop singing, because it’s too much, more than I can bear, here in the land of my dead father.

  At length he concludes, and finally, as I wipe my eyes, a moment I recognize. The wine is being poured. Trays are loaded up with the kind of white plastic cups one uses in a dentist’s office. My poor jet-lagged stomach heaves at the notion, the sickly sweet taste clear in my memory, but I can see no way to refuse. A few rows before me, a senior in a white windbreaker vigorously dumps one cup into a second, then inspects the double shot. My thoughts cannot help but return to Béla-bácsi as I turn to Rachel and raise the cup toward her in a manner I hope she’ll find charming, but as I toss the wine back, her expression tells me I have not achieved the desired effect. The wine remains unconsumed in every cup but mine. I consider spitting it back into the cup. Instead, I swallow it, shuddering at the sweetness. A lengthy prayer follows, during which I do my best to hide my empty cup from view. When, at last, the congregation drinks, I follow suit, a heathen mime. The empties are collected and the service comes to an end, and the congregation, released, turns in toward itself, shaking hands, embracing, wishing one another a good Sabbath.

  Why do I feel so sad, so excluded, when the men turn to shake each other’s hands? It seems a childish, almost petulant response. After all, this is a congregation. These people see each other every week. I am, as the pit bull out front observed, an outsider. I shouldn’t take it personally. But for neither the first nor last time, I contemplate the high price of my father’s spiritual indifference, as well as my own. Did he ever, in all the years he lived here, set foot within? Perhaps accompany his father to this service? I look around and some of the faces are old enough that I allow myself to believe that perhaps one among them might remember him, might have a story to tell me, if only I weren’t so obviously apart. I think of my father trudging with his suitcase into his hotel.

  And then Saul Bellow extends his hand to me. I think he’s asking for his kippah back, but there’s a smile on his face as he shakes his head and says, “Shabbat shalom.” I grasp the hand and for a moment it seems as though I will not be able to release it.

  I turn to look at Rachel across the aisle. There is something so beautiful about her in this moment. That sense of home I felt in her office amplified. That sense of belonging I felt in Chicago with the dial turned up to eleven. Everything is so foreign, the language, the people, the time zone, as I sway, hobbled by too little sleep. Yet I cannot deny the power of this, this third time that I have stood among other Jews and felt at home. But beneath it all ticks the threat of discovery. To be seen as a fraud, a performer, again. Buzzed on Manischewitz, I surrender to Rachel as she eases us into a waiting taxi.

  HAVE YOU EVER HAD A MANISCHEWITZ HANGOVER, Virgil? I think not, by the look of you. Just as well. I wish no such misfortune upon so stalwart a companion. There was something about this particular brew, an excess of sugars, even in such small quantity, that held me in its mephitic grasp as I stumbled through the National Gallery the following afternoon.

  More experts. More authentication. The third stop of the day. I was, I am ashamed to admit, already bored. Rachel introduced me to the museum’s Kálmán experts, and they fell into an abstruse conversation about provenance, from which I quickly excused myself. Why don’t you browse the galleries, she suggested, as a weary mother might dispense with a restless child. The Kálmán collection is superb, she reminded me. One of the conservators glanced at me with ill-concealed distaste. He had tobacco-stained teeth and fingers, and a thin ladder of hair pressed across his skull. He no doubt saw me as a usurper, laying claim to riches that rightfully belonged in his galleries, so I smiled my best Unthreatening Second Banana smile (stars similarly hate being usurped) and excused myself.

  I wandered through galleries that were surprisingly modern, a contrast with the building’s neoclassical exterior. Here were the same blond wood floors I’d seen at the Norton Simon; the same bored guards, your Hungarian cousins, Virgil; even the same kissing teenagers who were, if anything, more flagrant in their gropings. The Kálmáns were afforded a place of honor, a dedicated gallery in a prime location. But the museum’s enthusiasm for its treasures was unreciprocated. The gallery was empty with the exception of an unpleasant docent with a bulbous nose jutting from her creased face.

  Despite my diligent research into the man and his art, I was unprepared for the explosion of color that greeted me. I had become so used to Budapest Street Scene and its darkened palette that I was dazzled by the raucous, vibrant hues that shone out from the room’s many gilt frames. Kálmán the colorist had drunk deeply at the well of the fauves, and everywhere I turned, electrifying shades greeted me. Some were almost garish, artificial; others were almost bottomless pools of color into which my poor hungover eyes swam.

  And yet, contrary to Rachel’s endorsement, the gallery’s offerings seemed a humble assortment of second-rate works from an artist considered a national treasure,
and one of the few Hungarians with an international following. I expect the rest had been snapped up by eager collectors around the world. From the sampling that remained, the highlight was a canvas of csárdás dancers. The docent’s nose wandered into view and advised me these traditional dancers were a favorite subject of Kálmán’s. Her educational brief fulfilled, her nose moved abruptly away to leave me with the painting.

  It bears some superficial resemblance to Budapest Street Scene in terms of composition, of framing. Again, three characters, all female this time. But where Budapest Street Scene is a frozen moment just prior to an escape, a mad dash, in which you can feel the tension waiting to be released, as when the hammer of a pistol is drawn back, these dancers are all bright, kinetic colors. Oranges, yellows, and light reds swirl against light green and pale blue backdrops, suggesting something of sunrises against the horizon. It was hard to believe these were the work of the same artist, and I marveled at the mind that could contain such multitudes. For a moment I heard the music of the csárdás, which I can remember playing on the radio that one afternoon I visited the Tower Club with my father. Or if it wasn’t, it should have been. I felt my chest constrict, and was about to leave the gallery when I noticed an empty space on the wall, bearing the trace outline of a painting. A work on loan, presumably, or in the lab for restoration, but I felt as though the rightful spot for Budapest Street Scene was announcing itself to me.

  I roamed the adjacent galleries, all filled with minor paintings by unknown Hungarian artists, and I was struck by how Hungary always seemed to lumber a decade or so behind the rest of the world. All the great movements found their way to Budapest eventually, just later. Pointillism in 1912, blue period portraits in 1913, cubist forays in 1925. It was as if those who remained were fated to be also-rans, their country an eternal backwater. I felt a grudging gratitude to my father for choosing to plant his mediocrity in more fertile soil. I was about to head back to look for Rachel when I noticed a side gallery labeled “Székely, Bertalan.” The painter after whom my father’s street was named. He’d mentioned it in the hospital. On his deathbed. How melodramatic that word feels. And yet it discomposes me. I was headed to that very street later in the day. Convergences, Virgil. Mark them. They infect this tale.