The Teardrop Method

1

Krisztina heard the song and she followed it across the city. The threads of it led her through the park of Városliget, from Heroes’ Square and out the other side. The snow had been falling all week in Budapest and it seemed to freeze in the streetlights like static against the pale sky as they flickered to life. Krisztina took a taxi across town. The cab smelled of sweat and cigar smoke. She felt the back wheels sliding as they crawled around corners, and she held her breath. Listening to the notes of the song, she directed the cab driver from one street to the next. They passed an accident in the northern part of Váci utca: an ancient Skoda had fishtailed into the back of a tram. A knot of passengers stood around muttering to each other, their breath misting from their mouths. No one seemed to know what to do. No one had died. This wasn’t the source of the song she heard.

But the song was close. It was clearer here, louder. She hoped she’d find it in time. She could hear the first narcotic notes repeating again, calling out to her. Krisztina paid the cab driver and made her way across the street to the steamy heat and light of a coffee house. The waiters were standing out in the cold, discussing the accident until the proprietor came out and clapped his hands, herding them back inside to take orders. Krisztina stamped the snow from her boots and entered the cafe. The smell of chocolate and marzipan and damp clothes greeted her. She studied the faces of the customers. The song belonged to none of them. But it was close. It was coming to her, she was sure of it. He was coming to her. So here she would wait.

Krisztina sat, sipping the froth from her coffee for a while until she spotted a man by the roadside. While a group of people attempted to push the Skoda away from the tram, the wheels spinning wildly, this man was standing in the snow, utterly still. He was wearing a mask. It was porcelain, expressionless. Krisztina couldn’t see his eyes but she could tell that he was staring at her. He became obscured as an ambulance arrived; the men stood around laughing and smoking cigarettes when they realised there was no one to take to hospital. The crowds dispersed gradually but the tram remained with the car pressed into its side. It looked like an elaborate art installation. It looked like so many things that Krisztina didn’t care to remember.

The window misted over with condensation, and when Krisztina cleared it, the man in the mask was gone. But when she turned the song and its host had arrived. She watched József enter the coffee house. Krisztina had first seen him at a theatre, some weeks ago. He was an older man. He’d been a soldier during the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1958, the specifics of which eluded her. Now he was a playwright who in recent years had fallen on hard times. She’d been hearing his song ever since she’d met him: no more than two or three notes that threatened to become the loose threads of a melody. It was the eighth song she had heard in this manner. Soon, she supposed it might be her way back into the world, for better or worse. She’d hidden away from it for so long only to discover it wasn’t waiting for her anymore. It had turned its back on her and she hadn’t realised.

József stood in the doorway, removed his hat, loosened his scarf, and stamped his boots. He peered into the café, and looked delighted when he saw Krisztina. She nodded at him and he made his way through the tight throng of tables and diners and seated himself opposite her.

Krisztina, he offered. What a surprise! I’m so happy to see you again.

She smiled, and then glanced away, out of the window, wondering what was expected of her. She suspected that she’d forgotten how to communicate with people. Finally she returned her attention to József. His face was flushed in the sudden heat of the café. Or perhaps it was her presence. She was uncertain. People had stopped being flustered in her company; she was no longer famous. But József knew her. He owned her record, This is Krisztina; he’d barely been able to contain his delight when he’d first approached her in the theatre foyer. He had told her that she reminded him of someone he’d known when he was a young man. He didn’t elaborate but she suspected he meant an old lover. He played her songs at least once a week, even now. Even now, she had thought. This long after the fact. She was, at best, a cult artist by this time. A handful of lost souls had kept the faith, kept her close to their heart and hoped for more; the rest of the world had simply moved on to the next thing.

But this song: it was the eighth that she’d decided to pursue, and now she almost had an album’s worth. The music that defined these last few weeks came from József. He’d left the fingerprints of his life all over the city and for the time she’d been unable to hear anything else. He was unaware of this, of course. She was the only one who heard the song. Songs of mortality. She tried to imagine how she could ingratiate herself into his life in order to pursue the song to its bitter end. Eventually it struck her, and despite it being the obvious route, it really didn’t much appeal to her. Needs must when the devil drives, she thought. After a moment’s hesitation, Krisztina reached across and took József’s huge hands in hers. Ignoring the feeling that she must look over his shoulder to be sure that no one would steal him away, she said: I’ve been thinking about you, József. Since we first bumped into each other. It’s no accident that we’ve met again.

Really? Whatever József was anticipating, these were not the words he expected to hear coming from her mouth. He shrugged his large shoulders. She could see snow shining on his patterned pullover. "You’ve been thinking? About me?"

Is that so strange? She squeezed his hands and tried to adopt a coquettish manner. She tried to visualise Catherine Deneuve or Anita Ekberg in her mind. She enjoyed the old movies. She was fairly certain she had none of those actresses’ allure, but perhaps she didn’t really need any charm at all in this instance.

***

Evidently, she was correct. József took Krisztina across the river in a battered old Renault filled with fast food wrappers and Pepsi cans. The snow was fluttering out of the sky and then sweeping upwards at the windscreen. Krisztina felt herself being hypnotised by the rhythm of the wiper blades and the smothering heat rushing from the dashboard. Beyond the wall of snow, the lights of the city were diminishing, and soon all that remained were the identical grey tower blocks of District VIII, whose windows were filled with rusted bikes and dead plants and frozen washing lines. Thousands of marginalised lives being lived in the shadow of the city she knew. Migrants and the poor, the prostitutes and the career criminals. Surely no one could be following them this far from town. But she’d seen the man in the porcelain mask several times in the past few months. She wondered what would happen if she simply approached him. If in fact, the scenario was some kind of cruel construct of her mind. Perhaps it was crumbling like the snow on the windscreen.

József had in recent times been reduced to living in two narrow rooms in a tower block – a living area with a kitchen, and a bathroom. It smelled of stewed vegetables. He had tacked up a poster from the theatre he had worked in but the damp had made it bulge away from the wall. There were pizza boxes, coffee ring stains and cigarette burns on the table, dirty plates and cutlery piled up in the sink. The linoleum underfoot was stained and split, black underneath. Krisztina had studied the doors of the other flats as she’d followed József up to his flat. There was no one else around. That was good. The song was louder now that it was so close to its conclusion, and the melody was gradually revealing itself to her. But not enough for her to simply walk away and call it József’s song. It didn’t work that way. She wondered how long she would have to wait. Not for the first time, she wondered if she was too close here. Too close to death. It was no way to live.

József cleared the detritus of clothes and crumpled paper from the couch, tossed them onto the floor. There was an old typewriter beneath the coffee table, the lines of a play stalled at page five. Krisztina knew all about that kind of creative famine. The frustration of the empty page; sitting at the piano forcing notes to become music and failing. But no longer. For almost a year now she had heard songs, indeed, had been given songs. She wanted suddenly to know József’s; wanted to hear what it was of his life that suggested music, a lyric, verses and chorus. She wondered what it was that constituted his middle eight. Finally, when too much time had elapsed and it felt as if she was stalling, Krisztina felt compelled to let him push her skirt up around her thighs and then tug down her woollen tights. She sighed when they tore, but she didn’t say anything; she simply smiled at him and allowed him to bury his tongue deep inside her. Beyond the window the snow was still falling. Everything was white, everything was silent. It was growing dark, and at the same time, more luminous. Krisztina ran her fingers through József’s hair and sighed as he lapped at her, tried to imagine it was Alice there between her legs. She wondered how much longer she would have to wait. Although the song was loud and clear now, there was no sign of József’s impending mortality. Finally after several minutes of clumsy cunnilingus, he rose and wiped his mouth. He swayed above her and then unbuttoned his trousers. Krisztina watched him, glanced away when he fumbled with his underwear as it tangled at his ankles. She shifted as he knelt back down and pressed his weight onto her, nuzzled at her neck, covered her face in kisses. She tried to sigh, to fill her mind with the memory of Alice’s attentions but it was no good. She could feel his stubble rough on her skin, his breath sour in her mouth…

"No, she said, pushing József away finally. I’m sorry, no, I can’t."

He tried not to look wounded by her rejection, but she suspected it had happened before, for he withdrew immediately, nodding his head dutifully. He rose and tugged his underwear