The Exiled (6 page)

ANNA AND NAGY BÉLA
had agreed to meet at midday on the quayside near the Békavár restaurant. At first the man had sounded irritable and rude, as though he didn’t want anything to interfere with his Sunday-afternoon routine, which, over the years, he’d got down to a fine art. But once he realised who Anna was, he started reminiscing about her father, waxing lyrical about what a fine and upstanding man he was, always on our side, always fair and helpful and so on, before finally agreeing – reluctantly and with some hesitation – to deviate from his plans and take Anna to the spot where he’d found the body. But only on the condition that Anna didn’t tell anyone about it, that if anyone saw them and asked what they were doing, she told them they were simply looking at the scenery and wondering when the Tisza would come into bloom – bursting out in clouds of insects. Of course, Anna promised.

Anna glanced at her phone and checked the time. Five past twelve. She was used to the fact that, in this corner of the world, being on time was frowned upon almost as much as being late in Finland; but this time she was nervous. What if he didn’t show up? What if he’d changed his mind at the last minute?

Seven minutes past. Anna crouched down to test how warm the water was. It was pleasantly cooling as it flowed through her fingers, but didn’t feel cold at all. Swimming in this will be fine, she thought, and decided to have a swim as soon as she could.

A couple walked hand-in-hand towards the quayside. Anna didn’t know them; they were young, barely eighteen. They stopped and sat down at the end of the quay, kissing each other and not paying her the slightest attention. Anna felt old and embarrassed. She turned away and looked across at Bánát on the opposite shore. I had nobody when I was that age, she thought. Nobody except Zoran, a married man. Had anyone her own age ever been interested in her? She couldn’t remember. She’d never looked at anyone else that way, so she probably
wouldn’t even have noticed any interested glances. What would a therapist say about all this? Serious traumas regarding her father, perhaps even regarding her brothers? Anna sighed. Maybe the day will come when I decide to work out who I am and explain that person to myself, traumas and all. But that time isn’t now. Perhaps it’ll never come. All this kitchen psychology, digging up the past and agonising over her emotions – what use was it? she wondered. But she knew only too well that her cynical attitude was a form of self-preservation. At least, that’s what her headmaster had told her years ago.

Twelve minutes past. Anna looked past the young couple, still engrossed in each other. She scanned the path running down the riverbank towards the quayside and saw an elderly man walking, brisk and upright, towards her. He was speaking on the phone. Rather, he wasn’t speaking but listening and nodding as though whoever was at the other end could see his body language. Eventually the man said
hvala, priadno
, ended the conversation, put his phone back in the breast pocket of his threadbare shirt and, reaching Anna on the quayside, shook her hand.

‘Csókolom, Anna vagyok,’
she greeted him.

The man stared at the river as though he was looking for something, then turned to Anna and looked at her keenly and curiously from beneath his wrinkled eyelids. His eyes were blue, his hair and moustache thick and silvery grey.

‘You don’t half look like your father,’ the fisherman said; then, without taking his eyes off her, coughed, spat a lump of phlegm into the water and lit a cigarette.

The man reminded Anna of Esko Niemi, her partner in the Finnish police. That same sense of self-assurance, the life experience, the same arrogance and stubbornness, the same disregard for people’s opinions. The same smoker’s cough. However, for his age the fisherman looked in good shape, and beneath his sullen demeanour there was a warmth it was hard to find with Esko.

‘Best not stand around here if we want to get there today,’ said the fisherman. He jumped off the quay and into his boat, which was
tethered to a post nearby, and held out his hand to help Anna jump in behind him.

The boat rocked wildly as she climbed in. Anna looked around for a life jacket, but, knowing there wouldn’t be one, she decided not to say anything. People round here didn’t bother with life jackets, smoke alarms, cycling helmets or safety belts in the back seat of their cars. The number of fatal accidents doubtless reflected that, though Anna hadn’t seen any statistics. What she saw was that people didn’t worry about trifling things. They didn’t think of life as being potentially hazardous, as something you had to watch constantly; and they didn’t spend their money insuring everything under the sun. Anna positively admired this attitude, though at the back of her mind her Finnish side was shocked by it.

‘We’ll have to be quick,’ said the fisherman as he started the engine with an assured flick of his hand, reversed away from the quayside and steered the boat with the current in the direction of Törökkanizsa. ‘I told the wife I was stopping for a beer and promised I wouldn’t be long. Lunch will be ready soon, and she doesn’t like having to keep it warm.’

In only a short moment the boat was in another world, as though civilisation had suddenly disappeared into the past and nature had enveloped the whole area, conquering everything in its path. There were no other boats on the river. The heavy, leafy trees and bushes lining the banks leant towards the river, their branches drooping into the water. The sun shone down from the misty-blue sky high above them and warmed Anna’s cheeks, though a fresh breeze blew down the middle of the river. A stork leapt into flight from the undergrowth along the shore. Its wings beat in great whooshes, and the bird swooped so close to her head that Anna felt the flow of air against her skin.

After heading south a short distance, the fisherman slowed somewhat, then steered the boat closer to the shore. Glancing around him a few times, he secured the boat in a thicket growing on the riverbank.

‘This is it,’ he said and switched off the motor.

Anna tried to look at the bank but the bushes were so thick she couldn’t make out where the water ended and the shore began.

‘How did you manage to see the man? You can’t see anything at all in there,’ she wondered out loud.

‘When you drive past every day like I do, you notice even the smallest things out of place,’ the fisherman responded.

‘What was out of place on that day?’

The man thought about what to say as he used the oars to guide the boat closer to the riverbank. Anna had to hold back the branches on both sides to stop them hitting her in the face.

‘I saw a flash of red,’ he said eventually.

‘Was the man wearing red clothes?’

‘No, black. And dead people don’t move. Whatever it was in red was alive.’

‘Another person?’

‘Probably. What else could it have been? We don’t have animals that colour round here,’ said the fisherman and chuckled as though he’d told a particularly good joke.

‘Did you tell the police this?’

‘Of course.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They said they’d look into it thoroughly.’

Did they now? Anna thought. They didn’t say anything to me, though I told them about the little girl in the red skirt.

‘Did you get a good look at the red skirt?’ Anna asked, unable to hide her agitation.

‘I don’t know anything about a skirt,’ he replied and gave Anna a quizzical look. ‘And I didn’t see anyone else by the time I got here. Only the man.’

‘And he was already dead, yes?’

‘I didn’t get out of the boat to take a closer look, but he was dead, no doubt about it. He was lying over there, right by the water’s edge.’

‘What position was he in?’

‘With his head down towards the water.’

‘Was he lying parallel to the shore?’

‘No, his head was pointing towards the water. His legs were up on the verge. His arms were spread out, if I remember right. He was looking up towards the sky.’

‘Can I get out of the boat?’ asked Anna.

Again the fisherman looked behind him and squinted, allowing his eyes to scan the water as though he was looking for something, but the river was deserted.

‘I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t really be here.’

‘Who says so?’ asked Anna.

‘The police told me not to reveal this place to anyone before they’ve completed their investigation.’

‘You mean on the phone just now, when you arrived at the quayside?’

The fisherman looked at Anna with his blue eyes, another puzzled expression on his face, and nodded.

‘Yes. They called me especially to reinforce the point. When I was walking to the quay I was unsure whether I should have come at all. I was already thinking I should call the whole thing off, seeing as my lunch is waiting for me as well, but then the chief of police called me. The boss himself.’

‘And?’

The fisherman gave a hearty laugh and spat into the water.

‘Then I knew I had to show you the place, even if it meant my lunch getting cold. He wouldn’t have called me if there was nothing to hide out here. Don’t you think?’

‘I think you’re right,’ said Anna and gave the fisherman a friendly smile. She felt like hugging him, but the boat was rocking so she didn’t dare stand up.

‘I’ll steer this tight up against the shore so you can look at the spot from the boat.’

‘I want to inspect the scene as thoroughly as I can.’

‘We don’t have much time, and I don’t think you should go ashore.’

Anna thought about this for a moment. She wanted to argue the point or simply jump out of the boat, but there was something about the man’s mood – something about the whole situation – that made her reject the impulse, however tempting it was.

‘All right, I suppose it’s best if I don’t leave any footprints. The police and the crime-scene investigators will be coming back here again.’

The fisherman nodded, lit a cigarette and guided the boat forward until it was touching the riverbank. If someone had been watching them from the river, it would have looked as though the bushes had swallowed them up.

Anna allowed her eyes to wander across the clayey earth covered with last autumn’s leaves. If the thief had slipped on the verge, there should be marks leading down towards the water; the weight of his body would have left a deep furrow in the mud, she thought. But there was no such furrow in sight. Instead the ground looked badly trampled and full of large footprints. The police officers must have disturbed the scene when they collected the body. It would be interesting to see the technicians’ report.

‘Was the water level particularly high that evening?’ Anna asked.

‘What do you mean?’ the fisherman asked, puzzled once again.

‘You said the body was partly on the verge when you found it…’

‘Yes.’

‘Could his head have been under the water earlier in the evening, before the water level fell?’

‘It’s possibly, in theory, I suppose, but now that the worst of the floods have passed the water level doesn’t change very much. So, no, I don’t think so. As far as I can remember the river has been at this height for about a week.’

‘Would you say it’s normal for someone who has drowned in the Tisza to end up on the shore like that?’

The man thought about this for a moment, spat into the water and cleared his throat. ‘He drowned, did he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, the bodies I’ve come across in the past have generally been in the water for some time – they’re swollen and the fish have eaten away at them. But it never occurred to me that this man might have drowned. The body looked too normal somehow.’

‘The police told me the man had slipped into the water and drowned, that he’d become caught in some tree roots under the water.’

‘Well, in that case the tree must have hands of its own, because it would have had to lift him up on to the verge again. There are no trees like that round here, and if there is one, it would probably be able to make itself disappear too.’ Nagy Béla chuckled at his own wit.

‘So, even if the man had drowned, slipped in, the way the police said, or fallen from a boat, there’s no way he could have ended up in the position and location in which you found him?’

‘It would be strange if he had,’ said the fisherman, then threw his cigarette, which he’d smoked down to the filter, into the water and lit up another.

‘Are you certain you’ve remembered these details correctly?’

Nagy Béla didn’t answer. ‘We have to leave now,’ he said instead.

‘Is it possible to get here on foot?’

‘Yes, but the path is covered in thicket.’

‘Can you show me the way?’

‘I only ever come down here by river,’ said the fisherman. ‘And now we have to leave.’

Anna tried to ask for more details about the body, but Nagy Béla wasn’t talking any longer. He was entirely focussed on powering the boat as fast as he could back to the quayside at Békavár.

Once they had docked, he began loudly explaining to the men sitting by the quay that the Tisza would soon come into flower as long as the water level kept low and the air temperature remained this warm, taking pains to point out that he rarely went up and down the river without his nets and fishing gear for the fun of it, but that it was nice for a change. Anna didn’t hear the slightest hint of fear in Béla’s voice, though his reasons for all the explanations were obvious.
So as not to attract any further attention to herself and their suspicious trip down the river, she quickly thanked the fisherman and headed back to town, dozens of strange and unpleasant questions darting back and forth through her mind.

THERE WERE HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE
in the brick factory and in the surrounding woods. To Dzsenifer it seemed like there were millions of them. At school they had counted up to numbers their teacher had said were called millions. On paper they didn’t look all that big, but Dzsenifer understood that, if you had a million pieces of chewing gum or a million peaches, there wouldn’t be room for anything else in the world. There was no room for any more people at the camp either, but new groups of them kept arriving all the time. Dzsenifer wasn’t very good at maths or other things they taught you at school. Other children her age were already in fourth grade, but she never seemed to progress above second. It didn’t worry her, though. There was one pupil even older than her in the class, a boy who lived in the same cluster of shacks where she and her brother sometimes lived. Anyhow, Dzsenifer didn’t bother going to school very often. Her brother didn’t think it was all that important, never chivvying her out of bed or making her pack her bags, and the teachers never asked after her either.

The camp smelled of bonfire smoke, strange spices and tobacco. Thousands of black eyes stared at Dzsenifer as she wound her way along the paths formed between piles of rubbish and people lying on the ground, looking around for a young woman. Everywhere she looked she could see only men. Men staring back at her. Dzsenifer was afraid because she’d never been here by herself. With her brother she always felt much safer.

Outside the brick factory was a parked van with a sign painted on its side: a red cross on a white background. Behind the van stood a woman by herself. A long, noisy queue of people had formed in front of the van. Dzsenifer saw that the people in the van were handing out food and could tell by the movements and expressions of the people queuing that they were hungry. The woman behind the van was spooning soup into her mouth and peering vigilantly around her.
She was wearing a long-sleeved jumper and her head was wrapped in a scarf, despite the heat. Her eyes looked friendly. Dzsenifer stepped out of the dilapidated factory building and plucked up the courage to walk towards her.

The woman wasn’t interested in the credit card, but her eyes lit up when she saw the passport. She took a quick look at the photograph, then said something in a language Dzsenifer didn’t understand. The woman placed her bowl on the ground – it was still half full of soup, and Dzsenifer could have snatched it if she’d dared – and swiftly led Dzsenifer to one side of the camp and into a set of small bushes buzzing with flies. Dzsenifer could tell the place had been used as a toilet; the smell made her want to retch. Holding back the urge to vomit, she watched as the woman pulled a bunch of banknotes from beneath her clothes and handed it to her. Dzsenifer might not have been good at maths in school but she knew how to count the number of euros in the wad of notes and work out how many dinars this would get her. The sum seemed enormous. She’d never had so much money in her life. First of all she would go to the bakery and buy a pastry full of vanilla cream, then maybe to the thrift shop to find a new skirt or blouse. The thrift shops were cheap and their clothes looked stylish.

The woman thanked her; at least that’s what Dzsenifer thought she said. Dzsenifer saw tears in the woman’s eyes. Then the woman quickly stuffed the passport back where the money had been and walked off. Dzsenifer watched as the woman disappeared into the woods, and for a fleeting moment she felt the desire to run after her, take her by the hand and become her travelling companion, her little sister. But she realised this was impossible: she too would need a passport. Besides, she was hungry.

Dzsenifer walked back into town, skipping across the cracks in the asphalt. She pretended she wasn’t allowed to touch them or a great chasm would appear and swallow her up.

In the town, she went straight to the bakery and ate so many cream cakes and drank so much Coca-Cola that she felt sick.