Budapastiche 42: Opium

Happy Friday,

Updated PDF is up here.

:)

Chip

The instant Farkas produced the leather pouch, all the mirrors that he used to create the illusion of a personal narrative made perfect sense. Never mind that he was good company, his easy demeanor was only one aspect of his magnetism. Another was the air mystery. What other trinkets and charms were concealed in his breast pockets?

After an hour of rollicking banter, Nick detected the patterns of his conversational sleights. First, Farkas would open with a question about your personal biography, and his curiosity was endearing.

Where did you grow up?

The states, Vermont, and Ohio, mostly. How about you?

When Nick returned the question, Farkas dodged it masterfully.

I grew up everywhere and nowhere. My father’s job kept us moving.

A military man?

Hardly. Sales. And you, what about thus and such?

The conversation never lagged, and only in hindsight did it become evident that there was no substance to what Farkas had divulged.

How long have you been in Budapest?

Long enough to fall in love twice, and out three times.

Upon reflection, Nick realized he learned very little about Farkas, despite having himself shared the outline of a personal memoir. But there was more to him because your everyday huckster would stop with the ambiguity. Leave it at that. But Farkas would twirl and give you a wink, letting you in on that the fact everything he shared was a playful lie.

This pervasive wink revealed another room behind his tapestry, and merely by admitting its existence, he heightened everyone’s desire to see it. Maybe it was a broom closet. Maybe another hall of mirrors. Whatever it was, because Farkas was so charming, everyone wanted to see it.

After Nick offered a brief window into his nomadic professional life, the jobs he’d moved through before eddying out in San Francisco, Nick asked Farkas about his line of work. By this time, Nick knew he would not get a straight response. He asked solely to see what artful dodge Farkas had at the ready, and he shared what those in his circle already knew:

“I sell waterbeds,” he said.

And that was it. The wink. The lie that Farkas did not expect anyone to believe. It seemed strange and reasonable until Nick considered that he hadn’t seen a waterbed since 1989.

When the pouch appeared, Laszlo turned it over in his hands, gently cradling it without giving it his attention, while deftly moderating the rhythm of his soliloquy about the refined elegance of Dubrovnik. He employed the dexterity of a croupier shuffling a deck of cards with one hand as he spoke.

But the appearance of the pouch shifted the disposition of Katarina, who sat closest to Farkas, and then Elena as well. All of this was invisible if you weren’t watching for it, but Nick clocked it all. It was as if the pouch released a pheromone, and everyone knew this ritual would happen at some point in the evening. Anticipating as they may be, the mastery of the Mafiettes was that they seemed as hapless as a fluttering honeybee buzzing by just as the buckwheat blossoms.

This pouch was powerful. It was Farkas’ magic wand, and he knew its power, and he handled it so casually. His thumb found the zipper pull and paused before sliding the pouch open. While he made no effort to conceal the action, his manner of giving it no attention made the pouch invisible to anyone beyond their inner circle. And from inside the pouch peeked in the edge of a plastic bag.

Katerina turned from Elena in perfect time to meet a tiny spoon with her nostril, and with the grace of a single stroke of a mascara brush, the tan powder was gone. She stood. And Elena stood, then leaned down to whisper something in Farkas’s ear, then she also accepted a blast of Farkas’s magic dust. The two peeled away to the bar.

Nick observed the elegant routine and in the same way that mist reveals an apparition, the dynamic of Farkas’ relation to these two magnificent creatures, now drifting away through the crowd, became apparent.

With the lift of an eyebrow, Farkas offered Nick a ride. How could he not accept?

Someone enveloped Nick in a blanket that had been warming in a cedar kiln. He sat back and had only an instant to register Lewis’s curious expression about what had just transpired. Nick’s easy smile was enough for Lewis to accept the spooned gesture when it came his way.

Lewis waited a moment to pinch his nose and drew an inhale through his nostrils. There was no burn, just a taste of sweet vinegar in the back of his throat. His ability to speak pressed itself against the back wall of his consciousness and the concern that it might stay there was washed away by a warm sensation of wellness. There was nothing to be changed or fixed or healed, and nothing much needed to be said anyway. His eyes fell on Judit and that she was eighty feet away at the bar with a woman of equal beauty was just a matter of fact. If his tongue was not asleep and his legs feeling like rolled carpets he might go to her, greet her with a kiss on the cheek and a compliment, with such gentle ease that her companion couldn't help but appreciate his manner. That was the real Lewis. There was no fear in his heart, no concern for mysteries or imperfection. Those were all just layers of clothing to be shunted toward the closet floor. Judit smiled, but her friend's glare was stern and measuring.

"He's zee one in zee corduroy?" The accent was French and it moved like cold honey.

"No, the other, in the shirt with the..." Judit fluttered her fingers alongside her neck, indicating Lewis's high collar.

"I still hate him, but I see zee appeal," Joelle said, and her face tightened as if the admission fostered even greater contempt. "He's shit, Judit. Any man who hides a jewel as lustrous as you is eedee-oht."

"You sound like Csaba."

Joelle was a cellist from Marseille, studying at the academy, and in fact, her impressions of Lewis had been tainted by a conversation with Csaba that very afternoon. Joelle was fond of Csaba, and she thought Judit should be, too.

"You should listen to us both."

Joelle's condemnation could sear flesh.

"We are not married, Joelle. Anyway, I think it's sexy. The secrets."

Joelle's face pinched further as if she smelled something foul.

"Do you know what is sexy, ma petite bijou? A man who admits his powerlessness over your beauty and your mind. Zat is sexy."

"He might not admit, but..." Judit smiled and turned away from the courtyard.

Later, when Nick and Lewis were walking back to Hajos Utca, the warm cedar-scented blankets still enveloping them both, Lewis asked, "How did you know?"

"That it was opium?"

"What you were in for."

"I didn’t, but…” Nick thought about it. “Well, I knew it wasn’t coke. Katarina and Elena aren’t the speed types. They were more like jaguars, taking the last two frozen paces before they pounce. So my guess was opium or MDMA…"

"Or ketamine?"

"Farkas isn’t the ketamine sort. The law of probability reduced it to two possibilities, and, I could see the tan hue. So I deduced opium."

“You’re like the Sherlock Holmes of powdered narcotics.”

“That’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“This epithet for Farkas has been bouncing around my dome. He’s like a narco Gatsby. The way you describe his parties. The pouch, the Mafiettes.”

Something more concerning struck Lewis.

"Do you think I just did heroin?"

"Maybe. How do you feel?"

"I feel good. Warm, sluggish. I’d say sleepy, except the last thing I want to do now is sleep.”

"Well, leave it at that, then.”

The curious frown on Lewis’s brow dissolved. Leave it at that, indeed.

They walked in silence for a while. The cobblestones were glazed by a mist settling from the cool, heavy air. The city exhaling. A ringed glow contained each of the streetlights, or so it seemed. A cat darted across the street. Nick followed it with his eyes as it disappeared into the barred window of a catacomb. Nick pursued, through the bars caked with corrosion, into the smell of soil, deep into the darkness, where not sixty years back family treasures were packed in alcoves where the fascists would never find them, and then bricked over — Papa! We must go! — as the old man splashed soot on his rushed masonry. He might never return, but surely, his children or theirs one day would. They would get this place back. Nick could see a lone vase painted with chrysanthemums in darkness so still that the dust hovered for years before it settled on the slip, muting the pink and orange.

And then 10 years later,
when the tanks rumbled through Budapest,
the pillar shook
and the vault filled
with the sound of jangling silver
wahm wahm wahm, the vase teetering
recovering its balance
and to this day, it stands
right where Papa placed it,
after a quick remembrance:
the afternoon his Kara found it
at the summer market
in a village on the river Tisza

And then they were crossing Andrassy, and whether Lewis had spoken to him in the preceding moments he couldn’t say.

What brought Nick back to the moment: a few paces in front of them, a dark-haired beauty disappeared into a taxi. In his mind, unencumbered by fear or resistance, Nick let her be Vera. There was no impulse to shout her name or to give chase, but just as clearly he could see through the darkness of the catacomb, he believed it was her. He let himself as he watched the burning flare of the break lights fade to calm, red suggestions as the cab drove away toward Deak Tér. And Nick was content to let her go, but it did please him to sense that she was alone.