Fall and Budapest
It was Fall when I
returned from Lockn. Odd, that only the
preceding day and 45 miles away, it was blazing hot and summer was in full
swing. That morning the ride through the
hills... 45 miles as the crow flies, but a full two hours of winding around wooded
mountain curves, down through hollows, past chilly streams, fields of joe pye
weed and farm land… the morning ride was foggy and cool. And when I pulled up
the driveway I was slapped in the face with the scent of pine and the changes
in the huge trees near the cabin. In the evening as I sat on the porch swing
the cricket chirping was louder than usual and holding fairly steady, but at a
more deliberate tempo than before I left.
I never have known
what the other insects are that have made up my soundtrack since childhood, but
they had all dropped an octave and it was somehow clear that they were singing
their way on out. “A band of angels
comin’ after me…”.
I am reminded of the
angelic choir singing an American gospel in the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona
earlier this summer, seeing clearly the wild green and gold light radiating
through arched stain glass windows, framed with marzipan candy looking colored
balls on top of pinnacled alabaster towers with a hint of pineapple… and then
the cobalt turning into turquoise and Jesus sailing above the crowds bringing
streaming light from the sky through his heart and spreading it through the
cathedral. It was pretty
magnificent. The next photos in my
iPhone are of the interior of the Alhambra and though very little of my
four-month trip was devoted to notorious tourist cites, despite the crowds I
felt very alone in both of these buildings.
Was it the love and intention in the building of them or something
inherent in the design that made the spaces sacred? A third possibility with
the Alhambra was the influence of what happened there over the years. The walls
must absorb some of the energy into its stone and clay. History was everywhere…
in the arches leading to the castle above Salzburg, in Edinburgh, in Florence.
It felt as though the dramas were too passionate to fully vanish and were still
reaching out for some sort of consummation.
When I arrived back
in the country, my son picked me up at Union Station in D.C.. I made it only as far as his apartment in Harrisonburg,
where I slept for two days. On the third
day, I stopped for supplies on the way home, picked up our dog, opened what
windows hadn’t been left open and plugged in the dehumidifier in the basement. Then I called my parents.
“How did you like
Budapest?” my mother asked. “That’s one
place we didn’t really get to stay.”
My father on the
other phone added, “We were there for one night.”
Who doesn’t love
Budapest?
I relayed with
excitement the vitality of the city. It
was my second visit.
“We stayed between
Buda and Pest,” grumbled my father.
“On Margaret
Island?”
“No. On the
Danube. In a floating jail.”
The telephone
connection was going in and out and I wasn’t sure that’s what he said.
“Why were you in
jail?” I asked tentatively.
“Because I turned
off the car,” answered my mother bitterly.
My father backed up
a little. “It was night and we were
walking outside lost, so they picked us up.
You see, it was still behind the Iron Curtain then.”
I had been to the
Soviet Bloc while it was still under Communist rule and pictured the stealthy
black KGB jalopies sliding silently down snow-covered roads, the only vehicles
out. My parents would have been the only
people outside late at night as well. Wearing
a long black wool coat with a fur-lined collar and a large fur hat, a large
gruff man would have opened the door and pointing a gloved finger inside, demanded
that they get in.
“So we were just
sitting there and I had read that they just sit out all night in those cars and
after awhile they turn the engine off to not waste fuel, so I leaned over the
seat to turn the key and that’s when they arrested us.”
“That’s not why,”
retorted my father. “It’s because you
got in the fight at the airport.”
I thought it was
only recently that she was kicked off an airplane for fighting with
someone.
Before they got
really engrossed into an angry debate of what was evidently a long term point
of contention, I wanted to ask about the moment she decided she should turn off
the ignition.
“Well, don’t you
think that was rather audacious to turn the key?”
“I don’t know why I
did it,” she answered.
“That’s not why they
arrested us,” my father insisted. “It’s
because of the girl at the airport.”
“Well they had no
right to treat her that way!” shouted my mother. “They were dragging her and she was an
American.”
“She was a spy,”
answered my father disgustedly.
“I don’t care if she
was or she wasn’t! No one should be treated that way.”
I interrupted my
father’s rebuttal, “Well, if you get a
chance, you should go back.”