Deceptions by Anna Porter

Author:Anna Porter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

The girls were willing to spend the evening with Gustav, watching old American movies on Attila’s too small, too old TV. They enjoyed tucking into his and Helena’s grocery items. The only offering they disdained was the carrots. “We have enough of those at home,” Sofi said. “Carrots and cauliflower and celery. Very good for you,” she added in a perfect imitation of their mother’s instructional voice.

Anna made a disgusted face when Attila went to the balcony and lit one of his Helikons, but she refrained from repeating her mother’s comments about Attila’s smoking habits. During the first few months of their marriage, Bea had pretended to like the smell of his tobacco, but a couple of years later, she had started to cough every time he reached for a cigarette. Although he had not smoked in the apartment for some time, when she moved out, she listed the Helikons as one of Attila’s more objectionable traits.

The girls spent the night in his bed, while he shared the couch with the happily farting Gustav. Hungarian salami was not ideal for a dachshund’s digestive system.

Bea was still asleep when he delivered the girls to their apartment the next morning. He used their need to change out of their Sunday clothes to explain the early morning drop-off. He didn’t want to mention that he had to catch the eight o’clock flight to Strasbourg or lose his job. Amazing that even after all this time separated from his wife, he was still anxious not to offend her by displaying concern for his job — concern that she thought ridiculous because he should never have become a private detective. Not that she had ever been pleased with his previous profession, but at least it was steady work. She had rarely mentioned to her friends that her husband was a police officer and tended to agree with his mother that policing was underpaid, ill-defined menial labour with few vacations and even fewer perks. The past twenty years of state-sponsored kleptocracy had offered thousands of opportunities for the men (“Yes, men! But not you!”) with the right connections, and Attila had failed to take advantage of even those that had dropped into his lap. Now, Anna’s jaundiced view of Bea’s current boyfriend suggested that he was more enterprising but less likeable. “A lawyer,” she said, making the word ügyvéd feel slimy, “with all the ‘right connections’” (imitating her mother’s tone of voice). “And, what’s even more important, a very nice car.”

Had there been more time for such discussions, Attila would have told his daughter that the reason her parents no longer lived together was not just her father’s inability to make more money, or to buy a better car, or make the right connections, it had had more to do with having outgrown each other. Whatever had been the basis of their relationship was now foreign territory for both of them. Even their conversations were stilted, each word weighed before it was allowed to slip out.

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