The Closed Garden

Chapter One

Near the close of the second world war, Hungary had attempted to withdraw from the Axis side and was met by occupation by German forces. When the Third Reich was defeated, the Russians entered Hungary and drove the Germans out, but instead of liberation as the Hungarians expected, the Russians would not leave for another forty-five years.

Hungary had suffered for eleven years of Communist rule by 1956. The people and politics were being stretched like an overstressed wire that was destined to break...

Budapest, Hungary, October 10, 1956

Like the ruins of some ancient city sat the streets of a poorer quarter of Budapestby the name of Szabadság sor.

The stone buildings loomed over the narrow, gray street like gigantic tombstones. The only thing that gave any noise to this somewhat ghost-district was the swaggering chatter of the Russian policemen standing on the street corner discussing the events of the day. Business hours were over and the owners of the many tiny, family-owned shops had gone home or retreated to the drafty, dusty apartments upstairs were the families resided. No wind blew but a thick layer of cloud covered the sky, which turned an orange and then a dark blue hue as the sun set with no ceremony.

Szabadság sor was the name of this nearly dead district of Budapest, and only a translation will serve the purpose of letting my readers discover the irony of this name. These two Hungarian words, in English, mean 'Freedom Row'.

The name had existed for the area long before any of its current residents could remember, but those who passed by it's street sign on their way to work or even as they were carted off by the Russians to some torturous prison could not help but feel their heart somewhat pierced by the disgusting irony.

Yet the story here lies not in street signs or tales of bittersweet irony, but in a tiny apartment just above Kelemen's Antique Shop. Drafty it was, dusty and somewhat damp, with the wooden boards of the floor always creaking and even cracking in the most extreme places. They had a water leak problem that caused the wallpaper to be peeling from the walls at an alarming rate and a cat that was always shredding the moth-eaten curtains. The Kelemen family had not always been like this, they were once quite middle-class and well off, and could have almost been considered wealthy during the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Two wars and Russian occupation haunted them now, and with each of these events had come a hard blow that had shook the family to its core. Somehow they had managed it all, but secretly, from the Grandfather of them all down to the youngest girl of fourteen, they were all braced for the very walls to crumble in upon them.

Íllés Kelemen was forty-five and had taken up ownership of the shop when his now sixty-eight year old father, Árpád, had retired. Íllés had a charming wife four years younger than himself named Cili, and was the proud father of two sons, Gabi and Konstantin, and a young daughter named Karola. Gabi was to be married in a year to a quiet, humble girl that lived on the other end of Szabadság sor by the name of Vörös, Annuska Vörös, the sister of a successful young entrepreneur in the jewelry-making business who was called Zsigmond. The Vörös family was slightly wealthier than the Kelemens, however that is not to say better off. Annuska and Zsigmond's parents had been arrested the previous year by the Russians and their children did not know if they were alive or dead. They had been shipped to Vác, which was known notoriously for it's inhumane methods of treating it's inmates, and now the young siblings doubted their parents still lived.

Now Karola Kelemen, who was only fourteen, stood at the dusty window that faced the street. Her nimble fingers clutched at the windowsill as the petite girl tried to see out of the high window in some near-desperate fashion, trying her best to wipe the glass with the sleeve of her dress as she peered into the black sky. Her grandfather, Árpád, approached her slowly from behind and tried to decipher what the youth was gazing at.

"Gyerek," 'child', as he always called her, "what are you looking at?"

"I am trying to see the stars, Nagyapa," Karola softly addressed him as 'grandfather' as she leaned forward on the windowsill a bit more.

"I'm sorry, you will not be able to see the stars from here."

She turned to him in a quick motion, causing her light brown curls to bounce slightly. "Why not?"

Normally any child her age should have known this, but the family had not been able to scrounge enough money to send Karola to school, so she was somewhat behind the rest of the girls and boys her age on common knowledge. She was highly intelligent, however, and a fast learner, so it had become a long-term goal of her father, Íllés, to make enough to one day give her a fine education.

"All the machinery and industry in the city lets out lots of smoke, Karola," Árpád explained. "and it goes up into the sky and blocks the stars out at night. But if you go out far away from Budapest or any other big, big city, there isn't any smoke and you can see every single star in the sky."

The girl smiled broadly at him and then turned back toward the window. "Nagyapa, I want to live in the country someday. And I want to have a big farm, and have lots of animals, and live like the Magyars used to in the very old days."

The old man chuckled slightly. "And why is that, Karola? You wouldn't have any modern conveniences, and in the old days the Hungarians didn't have running water, or electricity..."

She interrupted him. "I don't care." Somewhat indignant. "I don't like how things are here, in the city." Karola paused. "Why are the Russians so mean to us?"

"Because, gyermek, they haven't got anything better to do. Now off to bed with you, my dear, it's quite late and already past your bedtime." Karola sighed deeply, giving him a somewhat annoyed look as she ran off to the room she and her brothers shared.

"That girl is going to make some man very happy someday," Árpád mused seemingly to himself for a moment. "Isn't that right, Íllés?"

The old man's son stepped out of the door frame from the adjacent room. "You never fail to catch me eavesdropping, father."

"That's because you're not very good at it." A smile on his wrinkled face. "And you never were."

"Annuska was here earlier," Íllés said, trying to change the subject to his son's coming marriage.

"You're awfully worked up about this, son," Árpád turned his gaze toward the window. "Especially for a man who will be thousands of forints in debt by the time the ceremonies are done with."

Íllés said nothing.

"And of all the banks you had to loan from, you chose the Pervoye OVK," his father concluded, shuddering slightly at the name of the treacherous Russian-run bank.

The younger man made another attempt at changing the subject. Árpád had an uncanny way of finding the gloom and doom in everything, no matter what it may be. "You should get some sleep, father."

"So should you," he shot back. But before the moment could turn for the worse, a loud bang sounded from outside and Íllés scrambled to the window beside his father, and they gazed out into the darkness.

On the street lay a dead man, surrounded by spilled groceries from an overturned basket. A roar of annoying laughter hit their ears as well, and a few Russian policemen, one holding a shotgun, were approaching their murder victoriously.

"That man isn't from around here..." Íllés began.

"Nem, nem..." the old man interrupted. "He is. Look a bit harder, that's Jószef Nagy from the other side of the Row. Poor damned wretch..."

Íllés shook his head. "What do you think he did?"

"They probably didn't like the way he looked is all. That's the second one in three months they've shot in the street. They keep this up and there'll be none of us left."

The younger man turned away from the window, beginning to leave the room with his head hung somewhat lower than usual. "Maybe that's the idea."