A Remedy for All Things E-Book

Jan Fortune

• Herausgeber: Cinnamon Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 412

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

In the dream she is not herself. Belief is Catherine's gift, or it was once, growing up in the shadow of an extraordinary friendship amongst a cacophony of voices trying to tell her who to be. Now, in her thirties, Catherine knows what she has lost and what she has survived. Her professional life is on course and she has a new relationship with Simon, a writer who shares her imaginative and creative worlds. But when Catherine arrives in Budapest in winter 1993 to begin researching a novel based on the poet, Attila József, she starts dreaming the life of a young woman imprisoned after the 1956 Uprising. More disconcertingly, by day this woman, Selene Virág, is with her, dreaming Catherine's life just as she dreams Selene's. Obsessed with uncovering the facts, Catherine discovers that Selene was a real person who lived through the persecution of Jews in Hungary during WW2, but what is most disorienting is that Selene believed Attila József to be the father of her daughter, Miriam, despite the fact that József committed suicide in December 1937, eighteen years before Miriam was born. How do the three lives of Catherine, Selene and Attila fit together? Densely layered, constantly challenging the boundaries between fact and fiction, A Remedy for All Things is a disquieting and compelling exploration of what we mean by identity and of how the personal and the political collide. Spare, subtle prose and an innovative, original narrative combine with an accessible, moving story; an extraordinary follow-up to This is the End of the Story that will lead to the final book in the trilogy, For Hope is Always Born.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title

Copyright

Thanks

Dedication

Epigraph

1: Catherine

2: Selene Solweig

3: Catherine

4: Selene Solweig

5: Catherine

6: Selene Solweig

7: Catherine

8: Selene Solweig

9: Catherine

10: Selene Solweig

11: Catherine

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35: Catherine

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52: Selene Solweig

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55: Catherine

Acknowledgments

A REMEDY FOR ALL THINGS

JAN FORTUNE

Published by Liquorice Fish Books, an imprint of Cinnamon Press,

Meirion House, Tanygrisiau, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, LL41 3SU

www.cinnamonpress.com/index.php/liquorice-fish-books/about

All rights reserved by the authors. The right of each contributor to be identified as the author of their work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988.

Copyright © 2018 Jan Fortune.

ISBN: 978-1-911540-06-9

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers. This book may not be lent, hired out, resold or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either drawn from the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is coincidental except when citing historical incidents.

Book design by Adam Craig. Cover image © Adam Craig.

Printed in Poland.

Cinnamon Press is represented in the UK by Inpress Ltd www.inpressbooks.co.uk and in Wales by the Welsh Books Council www.cllc.org.uk

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Welsh Books Council.

Thanks to the many people who have assisted with the journey of this book:

to my family for their constant support,

to the writing groups who have attended courses I’ve taught at Ty’n y coed and listened to early drafts,

to Arts Council England for making the research in Budapest possible,

to George Szirtes for his kindness in helping me make connections in Budapest and for help with Hungarian spellings,

to Lászlo Kúnos and Gábor Schein for being so generous with their time,

to the staff of the Attila József Memorial Room in Gát utca,

to the staff of Pohárszék Bor & Kávé, Budapest, who kept me supplied with water and coffee through several drafts,

to Anne Clarke for meticulous copy editing,

to Irene Hill of in-words, Greenwich, and Judit of Massolit Books & Café, Budapest, for their assistance with launches,

and to Adam Craig, for listening to drafts, feedback and being endlessly supportive.

To Cottia and Seth who each have their own ways of seeing life as it should be.

And to Adam, always.

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. … — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be.

…

There is a remedy for all things but death.

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Catherine

In the dream Catherine is not herself.

She enters the yard, walls rising, blind, mute, slabbing out sky, yet its granite light dazzles after the cell’s gloom. She has an urge to bolt, run back to the blanketing shadows. Her guts twist. She lurches forward, knotting muscles to hold back piss, shit. Behind her, sharp fingers. She stumbles into a faceless quadrangle, huddles an eyeless wall. Someone is telling her to walk, walk — one foot, the next, right foot, left. Air ices lungs, skin burns cold, muscles tremble in unfamiliar shuffle. Behind her, other feet shamble. Don’t look back. Stagger on — one foot, the next, bleak wall grasped for balance. Don’t cry. Don’t fall. Don’t piss. Chant in her head: right foot, left foot, right… Falling — snow — falling, one flake, another, soft, as she sinks onto knees, hands, frozen flakes caressing her neck, hands hauling her out of the yard where women shamble, one foot, the next, women mute as walls, not looking as she is dragged back to the cell, soiled, wet, shivering.

On the wall, a list of dates chalked with a chipping of crumbled stone, the last one — Friday 6 November 1959. She huddles into a threadbare blanket, falls into a fitful sleep where…

on another day in Selene’s life —

a train sounds in the distance

Oh!

What is it? You look pale.

I’m fine now. One of those moments when you feel as though someone walked over your grave. Selene laughs. I thought I heard a train and then all the blood in me ran cold.

You need to eat more, Zsófia retorts, you’re far too thin. Tell me more about Paris while we finish these sheets. Your parents really knew Brassaï? Why on earth did they ever leave? Isn’t your mother French? I can’t imagine choosing this miserable place instead of somewhere so romantic.

So many questions! Selene says. Yes, we knew Gyula Halász. I was about nine when my parents met him. He seemed to know everyone. And yes, my mother is from Paris — she met Papa when he was an art student, but we came back when I was thirteen — it got harder to work and Papa thought the Nazis would invade France. Mama has always hated Hungary and I’d known only Paris since I was tiny so I felt the same at first, but Papa thought he’d done the right thing, especially when Paris fell… Not that it’s been any easier here in the end…

Zsófia puts a hand on Selene’s arm as her words trail away.

Papa didn’t survive the Munkaszolgálat. Life as an art-dealer wasn’t much of a preparation for forced labour and starvation, but if he’d lived…

He’d probably have been seen as a class enemy?

Selene nods. A middle-class Jew — I suppose he’d have been forced out of Budapest or worse.

Zsófia folds another sheet onto a pile of crisp white linen. There are only three sorts of Hungarians, she says, those who’ve been to jail, those in jail and those who will be in jail. So we must be the third sort.

Not everything is so bad, Selene says. The price of bread never changes.

Pah! Don’t give me that spiel about how we’re all in it together — everyone poor and patriotic. Everyone except the political elite.

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others, eh?

Pardon?

It’s a quote from an English book. Animal Farm.

You’re far too clever to be stuck here. How do you even get these books?

Mama has family in England. Her sister married there.

It’s a good quote. The elite aren’t in it with us. They just want to keep us compliant and don’t mind using terror to do it.

Maybe it will end, Selene says.

Zsófia looks around the empty linen room, drops her voice to a whisper. Radio Free Europe says there’s growing resistance.

I saw that on a leaflet, but Mama wouldn’t approve of me ‘getting involved’.

How is she?

She talks about going back ‘home’, but her spirit’s gone. She seems so old, Zsófia, but she’s barely fifty.

Maybe you should have been a psychiatric nurse instead.

Selene smiles weakly. I chose nursing in the hope I’d be able to help, be more understanding and patient, but perhaps I’m too close to her to help. Anyway, I soon realised I wanted to work with cancer patients, not…

Lunatics?

Zsófia, really! She’s just depressed. I get low myself sometimes. I feel so responsible for her. You know, this building used to be for psychiatric patients? It was the Siesta Sanatorium. Klaus Mann came here for a heroin cure.

Who?

He wrote Mephisto and his father wrote The Magic Mountain, about a sanatorium for rich people, and…

You’ve read everything, haven’t you?

Not everything. Selene laughs. But some things — Attila József was here too.

Ah, now him I’ve heard of.

I should hope so. He was here after his final breakdown — July ’37.

And afterwards he went to Balatonszárszó and killed himself?

Yes. So sad.

All Hungarians are sad, Zsófia asserts. Wasn’t he in Paris before he got so depressed? Someone else who should have stayed there. Did you know him too?

Silly girl! He left Paris when I was a toddler with very little interest in poetry but apparently he visited my parents’ gallery once. There — all done. Selene stands back and surveys their work. Now we can eat.

Good, Zsófia agrees.

I’ll meet you downstairs, Selene says, parting from her friend at the crossroads of two long corridors.

Her shoes click on the new green linoleum of the National Institute of Oncology. As she walks, she thinks she hears a train, feels a wave of cold air, rubs her arms and tells herself Zsófia is right. She must stop running out of the house without breakfast in the mornings, it’s making her light-headed, but since the pay cuts it’s harder to support her mother. She pauses, aware of the faint sweet scent of oranges, blinks as a patch of light floats before her, trailing darkness behind. Not now, she says to herself. You have to work. The citrus aroma intensifies and she feels pressure over her left eye. In the distance a train sounds. She feels gooseflesh rise, turns a corner into another corridor that is not a corridor, but a green path through a meadow running down towards a lake…

Selene walks along a sandy bank. Lake Balaton, she says to no one.

The air is brittle, the lake planished beneath late autumn sun that has torn a hole in the ragged clouds. Selene shivers, folds her arms over the thin cotton of her blue-grey tunic, tugs off the white cap that is useless against the icy air. Not a single boat. No noise but the breeze shushing water. In the distance a train sounds. Selene walks towards clatter and shrill, approaches a bank, draws in a sharp breath as a man turns at the sound of her approach.

Thick brows knit. I startled you?

He peers at her and she wonders if she should try to explain her odd dress, a nurse out for a stroll at Lake Balaton, but she is too disoriented to describe her path from the hospital corridor and in any case he looks —

Sorry, you… you look like someone — like Attila József, in fact.

We have met before?

No, I don’t think we…

But you know my name?

Sorry?

Attila József.

You’re…?

When she comes round he has put his coat under her head in the dust.

So sorry, she whispers. I’ve only had black coffee today. I was on my way to the canteen for lunch — vegetables and potatoes again no doubt, but… She registers his brows knit in puzzlement, Sorry, I’m babbling. I’m a little light-headed. I was feeling hungry and worrying about my mother and I don’t know how I found myself here and I thought you said your name was Attila József.

Please don’t faint again, but that is my name. I’m just surprised you knew me.

I’ve seen photographs of you, read your books… but you… What are you doing near the tracks? You mustn’t — I mean…

He wipes a hand across his forehead, lays it on hers. I’ve liked watching trains since I was a boy, though they make me sad since — I saw someone die once — in Budapest — I was only a child and felt as though that person had died in my place, but I remain fascinated. In dark moments I’ve even put my hat on the rails…

Oh!

He smiles. But not today, he says, placing a hand on his hat. And your name is?

Selene. Selene Solweig Virág. I’m a nurse at the new National Institute of Oncology. You would have known it as Siesta Sanatorium.

I’m not sure I understand. That place is still there. I was there recently —

Yes, it’s still there for you, but for me… I’m not sure how to say this. For me, it’s not 1937, or it wasn’t only half an hour ago.

He looks bemused, feels her head again.

I’m not mad or ill. I’m just not from… I’m sorry —

Well, you are certainly beautiful and have a beautiful name — moon and sun and flowers in one. It’s an unusual name, not Hungarian I think — and unique, he pauses, tilts his head to one side — and yet I can’t help thinking I’ve heard it before… He shakes his head. No, can’t quite recall…

Selene smiles. In Paris, perhaps? I was a young child when you visited my parents’ art gallery. Sándor Virág and Marie Spire…

Yes, I recall. I swept up a little girl and twirled her in the air.

And you told me to remember you, Selene says, smiling. Though I think my parents must have told me about the meeting. Even though it feels like a memory. And — as for the rest of the name — Austrian grandmother, Hungarian father, though his father adopted Virág rather than Haas when he arrived in Hungary.

Ah, yes — I too am a mongrel, so much so that my stepfather of a short while said…

that your name didn’t exist. He called you Pista, but you ran away, back to your mother in Budapest and discovered you shared your name with King Attila the Hun. You wrote that this made you who you became — someone who would not take the opinions of others for granted, but would always do his own thinking.

Extraordinary, he says quietly.

Selene sits up. I’m fine now; thank you, just rather dusty. Sorry about your jacket. She gets to her feet.

It’s nothing, he says, beating it so that dust flies.

I can tell you the name of the poem you will give Flóra when she visits, Selene says. ‘You Came With a Stick’, and also —

She sees him pale and stops speaking.

So perhaps you are from the future Selene Solweig Virág — or perhaps I am making you up. I’ve been suffering a lot —

No! You’re not imagining me. You mustn’t think there’s anything wrong with you. It’s just hard to understand. For me too.

So you must know the manner of my death? He asks.

Oh!

That would be yes, but you are right, it’s too cruel to make you tell me. I’m afraid my sisters will be expecting me back. They get anxious if I’m gone too long.

Of course. I’ll walk back to the lake and hope I find my way. Selene laughs nervously.

After they’ve said goodbye, she watches him walk towards the village, retraces her steps, telling herself that she is shaking simply because of the November chill. At the lakeside, she walks across the meadow towards the path, hears a distant train, the click of her feet on new green linoleum…

Selene! You’ve been nearly ten minutes, Zsófia says. We’ll miss lunch.

Only ten minutes?

Pardon? Are you okay? You look pale.

Sorry, it’s nothing. A little headache. She links her arm through Zsófia’s. I’m so hungry today. Let’s hope for fat potatoes and a good sauce on the vegetables.

Budapest: Saturday 6 November 1993

Arrived! Odd to be here alone after two months with Simon, but Margit and András, my contacts at the university, met me at the station and even left me food for the first day: cherry yoghurt and a Kakaós Csiga, a sweet swirl of ‘chocolate snail’ pastry for breakfast and, for this evening, a pot of lecsó — peppers, onions, tomatoes and eggs, made rich with hot paprika, plus bananas, apples and coffee.

So tired after travelling overnight — bathed and fell asleep before tasting the food. Now I’m ravenous, writing while the water for the coffee boils, trying to clear my head of dreams.

This ‘Downtown’ area of Budapest has been beautiful — art nouveau and art deco buildings on every street, leaded glass over ornate wooden doors, but so many facades are crumbling or ingrained with dirt, ornate balconies peeled of paint, their metal tarnishing or rusting. The apartment I’m in has a shabby door to the street, tucked between a restaurant and an indoor food market. There’s a long hallway with chequered-tiles on the floor and what must once have been shiny blue tiles on the walls, up the staircase that spirals the rim of the building. The tiles are chipped, cracked or missing in places and the banisters are grimy, as though the building is exhaling dust.

Glad I only had one flight to climb and András carried my case. The apartment is at the back of the building, wrought iron grilles over the windows that look into the central courtyard, so there is not much light and the walls rising above me block out the sky. But it’s very clean, has a small galley kitchen at one end of the living area and there’s a little desk as well as the dining table, so I’ll be able to set up a proper writing space. There’s also a dressing table in the spare bedroom that will work as a writing room for Simon when he arrives.

The tub in the bathroom is cavernous and the plumbing noisy and slow, but the bath filled eventually and it was wonderful to soak away the dust and the spirits of all the places I’d passed through on the long train journey.

All I want now is to eat, then sleep again, hopefully without dreaming that I’m someone else — Selene Solweig Virág, a prisoner at the end of the Fifties, but in the bizarre illogic of dreams she was also someone who knew Attila József in his final year. I dreamt she was working in a hospital, folding sheets in a linen room, then walking long corridors. I knew, in the way that things are certain in dreams, that it was today’s date, first in 1959, then 1952 — a dream within a dream. And she seemed to be experiencing aura — migraine or dissociation? — She turned a corner and was walking towards the lake at Balatonszárszó, the ‘Hungarian sea’ of the land-locked country. It was the same date still, but fifteen years earlier. I’m sure there is no mention of her in the books or articles I’ve read about József and, in any case, there is no way a young woman from the Fifties could have been a young woman who knew him in the Thirties. All very odd. But still, I’m glad József’s insinuating himself into my unconscious, however strangely. In the dream he reminded me of Simon. I’ve never noticed a resemblance from photographs, but there was something about the eyes — dark, not blue, but deep-set — questioning, intelligent, but with an uncertainty I’ve seen at times…

A dense dream, the sort that clings — but looking forward to researching József further. So far this book has been slow. I need to move on with new projects and this one has me fascinated.

I always wonder what Miriam would make of any new place I visit. Four years since she died. I carry her with me, reminded of her daily by the damascene hamsa I found — or was given in a dream of her — in Toledo. I hear her telling me: until death, it’s all life, Cassie — there’s a remedy for all things, except death. Only my mother calls me Cassie now. And no one will ever call me Casilda again.

So much happens in so little time…

I must eat and sleep. But this afternoon I’ll explore the neighbourhood — home for the next month — and then go to meet Margit and András at the university.

Selene Solweig

Falling — snow — falling, one flake, another, soft, as she sinks onto knees, hands, frozen flakes caressing her neck, hands hauling her out of the yard where women shamble, one foot, the next, women mute as walls, not looking as she is dragged back to the cell, soiled, wet, shivering on the bench, where she remembers Zsófia, a day working together when the Institute was new. It was the first day they spoke the word ‘resistance’ to one another. Zsófia had joked that there are only three sorts of Hungarians, but Zsófia was a fourth sort of Hungarian.

Her mind drifts to Miriam. She tries to picture what her daughter might look like now, says her name out loud, a hoarse supplication to a blank wall. I’m still here, Selene whispers to Miriam or to herself, sinking into a state between sleep and unconsciousness —

slipping into another body that moves through an era that has not yet been, sensing the day as if she is a woman whose name has mutated across thirty-two years: Cassie, Kat, Casilda, Kitty, Catherine; a woman writing a book about Selene’s lover, Attila, who died more than twenty years ago in a time that she slips into at unexpected moments. She has not seen Attila for almost a year; December 1 1958, two days before his death in 1937. Was that their last meeting?

In the dream Selene is not herself —

Selene Solweig Virág? Margit asks. Unusual names. No I’ve certainly never heard of her in connection with Attila József. You’ve read Flóra Kozmutza’s memoirs and letters, of course?

Yes, Catherine agrees. Márta Vágó in the late Twenties, Judit Szántó during his time in the Communist Party and various nurses who treated him before Flóra. I got the impression Selene was another nurse, perhaps someone he knew at the end of his life.

And what did your source say about her? András asks. You read about her in…?

That’s the thing, Catherine says, Stupid really — it must have been one of those Internet searches I did and haven’t kept the website address. I can’t seem to find it again. Maybe I just dreamt her, she says with a nervous laugh.

Maybe you did, Margit agrees, your mind finding a new character for the novel, perhaps? It is fiction after all.

Yes, Catherine assents.

But properly researched, András puts in. After all, József is an important figure and the book should be as true to him as possible.

Oh, András! Really! That’s far too literal. Catherine isn’t researching a biography. You’ve read her first novel — people live through centuries, swap souls across time. An invented character to illustrate something in József’s life would be a fascinating device.

Well… I don’t know…

We have this all the time, Margit says, cutting off her colleague and turning to Catherine. He has the same over-literal approach to poetry translation. Impossible! You’ve read what Thomas Kabdebo says, András, she says, addressing him again.

Yes, but…

No buts at all. Poetry translation must take account of culture, sociology, semantics, style, but above all it must capture the essence of the poem or the nuance is lost; any irony or humour wiped out. Literal translations are dogmatic, lifeless — there must be association of ideas, my friend. You agree, Catherine?

I’m afraid I do, she replies, smiling at András. It’s a discussion I’ve had many times as an editor, especially working with Italian poets.

See? Margit asks, I knew I was right. And if we need creativity in translation how much more so in fiction?

It’s not… András begins tentatively. Not that I don’t see your point. I’m just aware of how people might misinterpret the book or react against it if they think it’s a historical novel and then it turns out to be something entirely different.

Catherine nods. I hadn’t actually thought of including Selene until this conversation. And I see why you’re anxious, but it’s an interesting idea. There are lots of judgements to be made after all — was the diagnosis of schizophrenia correct or did József suffer borderline personality disorder? Was the death a suicide or a terrible accident? I have to imagine answers to so many unanswerables and Selene might be a device for doing that, though I’m not sure how at the moment.

Well I would only advise caution, András adds, and as for the question of József’s death, it was certainly suicide. He…

Pah, to caution! Margit cuts in. Though I agree about his death — suicide fits the logic of József’s life completely. But of course there is doubt in even the most likely things, and in a novel… Anyway, let’s show Catherine around the department and then find a good restaurant to continue this discussion in.

Definitely suicide, András insists. I like what you say about logic — yes — his end is absolutely consistent with the life.

Well, it’s good to have some agreement. Margit winks at Catherine. A rare event, which we can celebrate with dinner. Our guest needs food and drink.

András chuckles. On that we also agree, dear friend.

Százéves Étterem? Margit asks as they walk through the corridors of Eötvös Loránd University.

Perfect, András says.Piarista utca is just ten minutes if you don’t mind walking, he adds, turning to Catherine. We will see the Erzsébet Bridge as we go.

Sounds lovely.

Well, it’s the oldest restaurant in the city, Margit says. Rather touristy really, but you are a visitor and should go there once. After this we will eat at real places.

Catherine laughs. Fair enough.

They sit at a table with crisp white linen that reminds Catherine of hospital sheets. There are dark wooden benches with curved backs and table lamps that give an amber glow to the hearty food. Catherine chooses a warming goulash soup while her new friends eat goose liver pate and continue squabbling amiably about the philosophy of translation. The contention continues as András devours a giant steak and Margit attacks a leg of pork. Catherine chooses a baby chicken with vegetables and jasmine rice and hears someone saying, Let’s hope for fat potatoes and a good sauce on the vegetables.

Oh, but you must, Margit insists when Catherine declines a dessert. The sweet dumplings here are perfect — or the pancakes.

Catherine chooses a plate of fruit and consents to taste Margit’s kecskemeti barack pudding, a sweet apricot concoction, and András’s Gundel pancake, all washed down with glasses of tokaji.

Hold utca, 15, Budapest V.

Saturday 6 November 1993.

Dear Simon

My first full day in Budapest has been busy and interesting. The apartment is in an art deco building on Hold utca— I might have been a bit intimidated by it if I’d arrived alone. It’s seen grander times, but it’s cosy and clean. The university is about a half hour walk away or I can take a bus from Arany János utca if I’m in a hurry. Margit and András are delightful — they bicker like a proverbial old couple and if they have their way I’ll put on a stone in dumplings before you even get here — but they know everyone in academic circles and are so eager to help with the research.

I had a bizarre dream last night. It seemed to be about one of Attila József’s lovers, except that she couldn’t have existed — not only was she a young woman in prison in 1959, as a result of the ’56 uprising, but in the dream she appeared to move between time periods and only to meet József in the last month of his life. She’s haunted me all day — I don’t mean as a memory, but as though she has moved through the day with me, or even in me. I can’t shake the feeling that she is real, despite knowing it makes no sense. Margit suggested I use her in the novel, which András objected to — he’s worried about historical accuracy — but I think Margit is right — it would add a way of exploring his diagnosis and how his life ended.

I didn’t expect any strangeness and mystery in my research here, but perhaps I always make it happen, so it could turn out that both of our novels will deal with the odd — or maybe it is simply the case that life is bizarre and inexplicable. Miriam, as you know, was a fan of Quixote, and never tired of reminding me that the unreason of the world is more insane than any fiction. Surely, that’s true. Of course, she also used to tell me that I’m gullible — ‘belief is your gift’ was her romantic way of phrasing it. Perhaps I’m too suggestible. I often wonder how much of any given day I’m simply making up — I sometimes still think I’m making you up — it seems so unlikely that I could find a soul-mate — but I digress. What I’m trying to write, circuitously, is that this woman I dreamt — Selene Solweig Virág — feels like someone I know and the fact that she seems to slip through time seems eminently reasonable, even quotidian. Does that make sense? Have you ever come across the idea of Tanasukh? It’s an Islamic theory of the transmigration of souls, a heretical notion, but one adopted by Sufis, who also believe in bunuz — that one soul can project into another. I can’t shake the feeling that Selene is doing just that — sending her soul into mine, or I’m sending mine into hers. You are the only person I could write this to and not be considered certifiable, but I still worry that it must sound ridiculous.

Anyway, I sat down to write how much I’m missing you, how much I’m looking forward to you joining me here, and instead have bombarded you with questions and speculation, so I’ll change tack.

How are you? How goes the research in Prague? Did you meet the curator at the Castle archive? I’m expecting photographs of the grimoires and homunculi! Hope you are finding lots of material for your book and that Prague is brimming with secrets, history dissolving into myth at every turn.

Keep safe.

Much love & yours always,

Catherine xx

Catherine

Each night, Catherine dreams the life of Selene; dreams that are nightmares.

On the wall of scratched dates — Thursday 7 November 1959. She huddles beneath a threadbare blanket, falls into a fitful sleep, dreams of life before the farradalom, the ‘boiling over of the masses’ — uprising…

Zsófia makes a slight grimace meant only for Selene to see. They stand in line with the other hospital staff listening to a reading from Free People. Finishing the article, the party secretary looks up and scans the lines.

It is a pleasure to see that so many comrades have already subscribed to the peace loans to help our great country, he says. These are hard times for all of us as we resist imperialism, but even in difficult times we are provided for —

Zsófia makes a small snorting sound and István Bálint stops, takes off his wire-rimmed spectacles and peers.

— well provided for and any loyal Hungarian is glad to contribute to our general welfare. Of course these contributions are voluntary, but if anyone here has so far overlooked the opportunity to make a difference to our national security, let me assure you your donation will be gratefully received. He coughs, replaces his spectacles. You will find new rotas posted. However there are many gaps and no doubt you will be eager to take solidarity shifts, also voluntary, of course.

As Zsófia and Selene line up at the rota board, Zsófia points to a new poster, garish and blocky, a picture of a footballer under the slogan ‘Magical Magyars to Strike a Blow for Freedom’, advertising the upcoming international match at Wembley between the Mighty Magyars and the English.

Maybe some of them will have the sense not to return, Zsófia whispers, as she and Selene walk towards their ward.

I don’t think they’re the sort who would defect, Selene says.

Perhaps — but Kovach and Rabovsky did it.

But they were dancers — artists — thinking people, not footballers — and they were lucky — what’s the chance of finding a subway under your hotel that will take you to the West?

Very romantic and good luck to them.

Shh, Selene warns as they near the ward. Even saying their names brings suspicion and I don’t like the way Boglárka watches you. There are always informers.

Yes, and to think we thought Stalin’s death would make a difference, Zsófia agrees.

It’s early days, Selene insists. Nagy will make things better. He’s already reigning in the ÁVH and dissolving internment camps…

Boglárka walks towards them and they fall silent.

Zsófia, Selene says in her fitful sleep. Miriam!

She half-dreams, half conjures this day two years earlier…

Get up! Filthy Jew! The guard at the door spits. Stinks in here. Get up. Move!

Selene stumbles to her feet.

Quick!

Where?

The rubber truncheon sends her to the floor. She clutches at the pain blazing her kidney.

Get up now! Don’t ask questions. He roughly ties her hands behind her back, fastens her feet together with a chain. Walk, he commands.

Selene pulls herself up the wall, staggers ahead of the guard who throws a blanket over her head as she reaches the cell door. She bumps into a wall and he laughs, prods her into the corridor with his baton, roughly guides her with it as she staggers on, or occasionally prods the burning kidney, tittering to himself as she winces and arches forward. She loses track of the turns in corridors.

Stop.

Selene leans against the rough wall as the guard clatters keys into a cell door.

Welcome to hell, the guard says and laughs, goading Selene forward, pulling off the blanket as she stumbles into through the door.

There is no bench, no thin, rough blanket. She thinks of the detention cell at Andrássy út, 60 where she had spent three nights when she was arrested last November. She had planned to join the march of women planned in early December — thirty thousand women who would dress in black to mourn the lost uprising and walk in silent protest, but instead she’d spent the day in a detention cell that was no more than a basement pit, barely a metre across, yet only half a metre from where the elegant boulevard ran, with its neo-renaissance facades, opera house and ordinary life — so close and unreachable — Andrássy út, renamed Stalin út since 1950, and briefly, with so much hope, the Avenue of Hungarian Youth — Magyar Ifjúság út.

The new cell is almost as airless, almost as small, the tiny window high in the wall is covered with bars, roughly painted over like the one in Andrássy út, but without the twin bare light bulbs that had glared at her at eye level, day and night. She slumps against a wall, hugging the pain in her right side while the guard takes off the chain, yanks the rough binding from her wrists.

Well, you wanted a trial and now you will get one — a fair trial from the People’s Court.

Catherine wakes sobbing, tangled in sheets and blankets. It is 3 a.m., but she won’t sleep until she writes the nightmare away. Simon often teases that she doesn’t know her own thoughts until she’s written them in her journal. She makes mint tea and sits at the little polished desk in the high-ceilinged living room.

Budapest: Sunday 7 November 1993

Another nightmare that I am Selene Solweig Virág. I dreamt of a conversation with her colleague and friend at the hospital in 1953, the early months of Nagy’s presidency, and then was back in 1957, and in prison. I (I mean ‘she’!) had been in gaol for a year without trial and was moved to a cramped, dark cell, without even the tiny folding table in the wall or the open metal toilet in one corner, herded there by a bully who struck her with a rubber baton and thought it funny. (Her or me? It felt like me, but I also knew it was happening to Selene)

In her sleep, before the vile guard arrived, she called out for Miriam.

I can’t shake the feeling that Selene is a real person, bizarre as that seems. I also can’t rid myself of the idea that she is connected with Attila József, despite knowing that she would have been only about ten years old when József died. Her name nags at the corner of my consciousness and I’m sure I’ve heard it before… Something Miriam once said about former lives…

A large part of me doesn’t want to revisit those thoughts. I’m here in this world in the late twentieth century. I’m Catherine Anne McManus, getting on with ordinary life. But something else in me whispers that nothing in this world can ever be commonplace or logical in the face of how ingenious humanity’s inhumanity can be or in the face of human suffering.

Selene Solweig

Selene scratches the date onto the wall. Almost three years. She thinks of the grim cell she was taken to — how long ago? two years? — where she awaited trial. All through the first year she had kept hopeful — reciting poetry, clinging to the thought of Miriam, believing that everything that was happening was a terrible mistake. Miriam will be four now, won’t know who she is. I’m still here, Selene whispers to her daughter, or to herself. Sinking into the space between sleep and consciousness, she thinks of the woman she has dreamt of being —

No research today, Margit says down the telephone. It’s the weekend. I will show you round the city.

Catherine smiles. Clearly Margit, ten years her senior, has decided to make her a project, not only to put some fat on her, but also make her take time off work.

How about this afternoon? Catherine bargains.

Margit sighs theatrically. Very well. I’ll take you for lunch and…

Oh, I was just going to have…

No arguments. Proper lunch and then we’ll walk it off. All the way to Margit Island.

I was wondering about visiting Andrássy út, Catherine says.

For the shops? Or to see the theatres or opera house?

I was thinking of number 60. The building that was the Arrow Cross headquarters and then the Communist secret police.

There’s not much to see, Margit says. The building has had some renovation, but it’s not what it was. Terrible history, but not your period. József joined the Communist Party in 1930, when it was illegal, and of course he got prosecuted for sedition for his essay on socialism and literature, but that’s a long time before the Soviets took over.

Yes — weren’t the charges against him for obscenity and political agitation? Catherine asks. Someone should have warned him not to go looking for trouble, she adds.

Certainly, but he wouldn’t have listened. It seemed to be part of his depressive condition to court conflict. He fared no better in the Communist Party — too liberal for them, wanted to unite with the Social Democrats so he was called a Fascist and thrown out. But the Arrow Cross didn’t get going properly until after József’s death. It did begin in ’35, but was banned and started again in ’39.

It wasn’t so much for József, Catherine says tentatively. I was thinking of Selene Solweig.

Ah, your dreamt-up character. Yes, of course, though I don’t think that building will tell you much. It keeps its secrets close. I’ll find someone who can talk to you about the Fifties. Someone other than me so you get another perspective.

Thank you. I’m not sure András would approve, but I’ve got her fixed in my head.

Pah! He needs more up-to-date ideas about writing. Now we are in the civilised west we have to be modern, Margit adds, chuckling. So? I’ll call for you at 12.30. Deal?

Deal, Catherine agrees.

At the little walnut desk, Catherine spreads out copies of photographs and begins making notes as she sorts them chronologically.

The first is of Áron József looking stiff and formal in military clothes, the Romanian father who abandoned his family before Attila was three years old. Another of Attila aged about twelve, thin and mischievous, standing next to his seated mother, Borbála, who would be dead from cancer within two years, and also showing one of his sisters, Etelka or Jolán, who would become his guardian along with her husband Ödön Makai, who in turn later married Etelka as his fourth wife. Makai — the man who saw József’s potential and paid for his education. There is no picture of the terrible time at Öcsöd after his almost destitute mother placed him the care of the National Protection League. They sent him to a strict and cruel foster father who told him ‘Attila’ was not a name, making him doubt his own existence. There are no photographs taken in his late teens when he published his first collection of poetry and, soon after, the poem that got him convicted of blasphemy, facing a fine and a prison sentence. Friends had the verdict overturned, but he was undeterred.

I had a friend like you, Catherine says to the debonair-looking picture of József taken in the late Twenties, I constantly told her not to go looking for trouble. I was always saying ‘let’s find another road’, but she was set on her own path.

By the time this handsome photo of a young man in Vienna was taken, József had been forced out of the University of Szeged, where he was to study Hungarian and French Literature and become a teacher. His rebellious nature had brought him into conflict with one Professor Horger, a lecturer who found one of the poems in József’s second collection offensive. ‘I have no father, I have no mother, I have no God and no country’, began the poem, Nem én kiáltok (‘That’s Not Me Shouting’). And so he was expelled.

But Vienna and Paris were better places for him. At the Sorbonne Julian Bell was a peer, and in a Parisian coffee house he met his next publisher, Imre Cserépfalvi. His poems appeared often in L’Esprit Nouveau, attracting acclaim. He took in French surrealism and it became a major influence on his third collection, published not long after he returned to Hungary.

It might all have worked out, Catherine says to the almost-smiling picture…

But the next image is of Márta Vágó, who he met in 1928. Beautiful, rich, daughter of a famous economist. They shared passions for philosophy and sociology, but when she left for the LSE, the frequent letters dwindled and she ended the affair. After that the poetry was more mature, influenced by unrequited love. Women constantly attempted to save him from himself — Judit Szántó, a fellow Communist, who tried to take care of him, then a series of psychiatric nurses.

So sad, Catherine says to the next picture.

This one was taken only two or three years later, but József, moustached, eyes deep-sunk, looks old, his skin weathered, brows furrowed. From 1931, aged only twenty-six, he regularly received psychiatric treatment, diagnosed, perhaps wrongly, with schizophrenia. He latched onto Freud to find theories that would help explain his torment, but dejection was never far away and he became chronically depressed after being rejected by the Soviet Writers Congress.

He wrote to a friend: My eyes are jumping from my head. If I go crazy, please don’t hurt me. Just hold me down with your strong hands.

Until death it’s all life, Attila, Catherine says, picking up the next image — a photo of József with Thomas Mann.

By then death was a common theme in József’s work and after the meeting in 1937 he wrote ‘Welcome to Thomas Mann’, but was banned from publicly performing it, another blow to his psyche. Earlier that year he’d met the next nurse who would try, and fail, to save him. Flóra Kozmutza was his final muse.

Catherine pauses. I wonder, she says. She holds the picture of Flóra, writes:

A gifted psychiatric nurse who specialised in treating children, and later married the poet, Gyula IIlyés. The affair was once again fervent and brief. She accepted his marriage proposal in April, two months after meeting him, but wrote about the aura of hopelessness that enveloped József and by July he had suffered a complete breakdown and was admitted to Siesta Sanatorium. Flóra visited him at his sister’s home near Lake Balaton late in November and he gave her two despairing poems, but then wrote to her that he would be well again, that miracles happen.

Until death it’s all life, Catherine repeats.

But on December 3 he crawled onto the railway tack in Balatonszárszó where a salesman, a conductor and the local village ‘lunatic’ watched, powerless to prevent him being hit by a train. His right arm was severed and his neck broken.

Catherine startles as the apartment buzzer sounds. She presses the intercom to let Margit in and tidies away the notes.

How often were you told not to go looking for trouble? She asks the neat pile of pictures.

Later, after nightmares of a jail, Catherine paces the apartment.

In the early morning — her journal lies open on a small desk, purple handwriting on cream paper, the script small and child-like —

…how ingenious humanity’s inhumanity can be.

She goes to the kitchen and pours water into a tall glass, gulps it down in two draughts and returns to the desk, picks up a fountain pen, but doesn’t write, sits with the pen hovering over the page until she realises she’s cold and exhausted; she must try to sleep again and hope not to dream of Selene.

Catherine

There is no date scratched on the wall of the cell. Catherine wonders if it is the next day for Selene, Friday 8 November 1959 or in 1957 when Selene was remembering the trial?

What did she do yesterday in Budapest? She struggles to remember, but can recall only a guard goading her along, corridor after corridor towards this dank pit, as though Selene’s memories are the only one she can bring to mind. She chokes for air, struggles to swim towards night in a comfortable apartment where she is a novelist and editor, has new friends at the university who take her for meals, argue good-naturedly about… but that life feels distant — as though she only dreamt it

Her side aches, a dull, deep pain till she stands up, when agony sears through her and she cries out and someone bangs on her door, muttering obscenities in response to her yells.

Selene slides down the wall, hunches, body crunched, kidney burning. She stays there five minutes, ten, thirty, an hour, two…

till the door swings open and a guard — not the same one, rough-shaven, squat — pushes a bowl towards her, a scrap of bread, sets down a meagre tumbler of water. When the door closes Selene inches towards the bowl — a few beans float on scum-flecked liquid. The bread is too hard to bite. She flakes it into the greasy fluid, slowly cleans the bowl of every molecule, stopping to dry retch as she eats, sipping the grey water between mouthfuls.

It will end soon, she thinks. The trial will start today. The court will be shocked that a young mother, a nurse from a good family who was hardly involved in the uprising, who returned from Austria believing in the promises of immunity, ready to work, ready to care for her mother and daughter, has been kept in prison for a year without trial, interrogated, mistreated. They will be appalled, will apologise. She will be with Miriam soon.

Her mother’s voice in her head tells her not to be so naïve.

Good family? That’s what they hate, here, isn’t it - the bourgeois, the kulaks, anyone who tries to better themselves. They want us all to be poor together. All biddable like children.

You should have gone to university with your education. Still, they probably wouldn’t have let you in. Your cousin Jakov has just been turned down for the third year running. Every time the message comes back ‘Perfect exam scores. Currently no spaces.’ No spaces! This is a terrible country.

Amnesty? You stupid girl! Look what they did to your papa. And don’t tell me it’s a different regime. They just swapped uniforms. Fascists. Communists. They’re all the same.