Ghost Geographies by Tamas Dobozy

Author:Tamas Dobozy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781554201808
Publisher: New Star Books

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Sargis taught Elek how to read and do research, in Hungarian and English; how to manipulate an argument; how to write when you had nothing to say; all the tricks he’d once taught to undergraduates at the university. He also taught Elek about the keys, and together they learned the finer points of theft, sometimes having to hide again under beds or inside closets or flattened behind an armoire. After the burglaries, Sargis was even kinder to Elek, trying to compensate for this one bit of miseducation, as if there was some ministering spirit guiding the old man — tucking the boy in, reading him a story, melting real chocolate once in a while on the old iron stove and mixing it with milk.

Sargis did calculations in the apartments they robbed. He’d pick up a picture of the tenant (they never robbed families, it was a rule) and ask Elek how old they looked, and the boy would scratch his scalp and say, “Sixty-five, seventy,” as if he knew, and then Sargis would check the pantry to see how well the tenant ate, looking around for booze or cigarette butts, going into closets and bathrooms to check for running shoes regularly used, or a wet swimsuit, anything that suggested exercise. Then he’d pick through the loot and take out an ivory brooch, a ruby necklace, a bundle of forints, saying, “This one’s going to live for another twenty years. They’ll need this. No more stealing from here.” As they left he’d drop the key they used back through the mailbox, sealing the promise, then turn and nod not at Elek but at some vacancy in the air, slightly above, off the edge of the balcony, as if he was acknowledging a presence, though there was something wary, distrustful, even paranoid about the old man’s face.

On Sundays they went to sell what they’d stolen. It sounded more exotic than it was — “the black market” — meeting with their fence in a stand-up bar in Moszkva tér, the chrome and melamine tables filthy with the residue of green beer, car exhaust settled from the air, the absence of anything suggesting a recent clean, the floor covered in flattened garbage and cigarette butts, and reeking with the smell of piss. Despite this, Sargis always dressed for the occasion, wearing the one suit he still had from the 1950s, though it sagged on his old man’s frame, walking there with a long-lost confidence, even flamboyance, as if there wasn’t a thing to be scared of. Elek followed at a distance, having begged Sargis to dress down not up, the space between them growing and shrinking as he vacillated between fear for himself and fear of losing the old man. If Sargis noticed he never said anything, never spoke to Elek’s terrors or affection, as indif-ferent handing over the broach or earrings or watch they’d come to sell as he would have been handing over a carnation, his sense of security, even

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