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Nicks took several mouthfuls of his Dreher beer, sat back and surveyed the bar. He liked this place, always had. A hint of ‘student’ reminded him of Keith’s, on Lark Lane in his hometown of Liverpool.
Tonight it was not as vibrant as usual. A young couple sat at a small table on the far side, an old guy sat watching the TV and a group of four played pool in the back room.
The large, shaven-headed, middle-aged man had been looking at him intently. Foreign Legion, Nicks speculated. Never one to back out of a ‘situation’, he engaged him with eye contact and nodded. The barman nodded back and raised an empty glass. Nicks nodded again and downed his remaining beer.
He lit a cigarette and promised himself he would give up smoking soon then put the earphones to his iPod back in his ears. There was no music, just a vestige of the isolation he needed.
Placing a Dreher on the table, the ‘Legionnaire’ accepted payment with a hint of a smile. Nicks gulped the beer down, sucked heavily on the cigarette, rested his head wearily against the wall and closed his eyes.
He was remembering the letter she’d written, hidden amongst her things for him to find; when the time was right. Imprinted in his memory, each word bore the soft inflections of her voice, each sentence softly crushing his heart. The tears, almost imperceptibly, filtered through his eyelashes, gathering together as if unsure where to go next.
He sat up with a start to the pain of the burning cigarette and self consciously eyed the room for any reaction. There was none. He was invisible to all but the barman who stood before him; another beer on the table. Nicks removed an earpiece and stared up at him. “You look as if you could do with this,” the Legionnaire said in Hungarian “It’s on me.”
The following day, he left the hotel, walking along Eötvös Utca to the Oktogon. The sun was shining and, with undertones of Paris, Budapest felt welcoming.
Usually, he’d spend time in Berlin, harvesting cash from the ATMs, but this time he needed to get home. He couldn’t linger in admiration; one more call to make and a train to catch.
He took the Metro to Batthyany tér station and walked across to the nearby man in the wall. It should be enough; anyone tracking the use of his bank cards would think he lived in the Buda part of the city or was on his way to Déli pályaudvar, the Budapest railway terminal serving the west of the country. Job done, he re-crossed the river.
As he entered Keleti station through the grand portico, he checked the departures board then bought a kávé from a small shop close to the entrance; walking with it to the side exit. He liked this coffee. It was strong, that’s why you didn’t get much of it. With two sugars it tasted near perfect. At the benches, he dropped the rucksack whilst he had a smoke and finished his drink.
He clicked a playlist and sat down to watch Budapest life trundle by. Ingrid Michaelson sang ‘Soldier’. It was the song he’d played the very first time he’d made this trip. He smiled.
She was waiting for him as he stepped down onto the platform. With barely time to drop his rucksack, she flung herself upon him, showering him with kisses.
“Thank you for coming back to me.”
Every time, she thanked him, as if his returning home was a gift she never took for granted. Her eyes filled with tears that trickled down her cheeks as he hugged her as hard as he dared.
Anca was 36 years old, fluent in six languages and a sought after literary translator, so why she had chosen him, a man 20 years her senior, was beyond Nicks. Perhaps she’d chosen him because they were both broken, sharing a common bond of sadness; the feeling of needing to be saved from themselves.
They walked to the station’s small café where she bought them coffee. It was a little ritual of theirs. She always said it was like meeting each other for the first time over and over again. On the bench outside, Anca told him everything that had happened whilst he’d been away: the new neighbours, her progress translating yet another novel and the flowers she was planning to plant in the window boxes of the tiny flat they called home. And it was home. Anca and this quirky Romanian town. His refuge.
He of course told her the same story every time; visits to his parents, places he’d seen. She would listen attentively, nodding and smiling now and then. She neither wanted nor needed him to tell her more. She’d never asked him what he did when he went away. It wasn’t because she was foolish, or stupid, far from it, but simply because she loved him. He was her love, her best friend, her peace of mind. The rest was of no consequence.