Morok

Chapter X. Dobos Torta

Gorenski would have discovered a way to find Zora Bukur without the auction brochure collected from the spies' bodies. Yet, knowing that Zora would be at an auction selling the works of some lesser-known representatives of the Russian avant-garde simplified Gorenski's hunt. The shiny paper with golden edges had a name and address: Budapest, Miksa Gallery. That was more than enough for the beginning.

Gorenski had a day to reach Zora unless she decided to appear out of nowhere to pester him. Despite his curiosity, he would not allow his elusive opponent any more opportunities to strike. To beat his enemy to the punch, Gorenski moved fast.

He set off in the morning, expecting to cross the border and reach the Hungarian capital in a few short hours. His finely tuned black Volga could complete the trip without any trouble. By the time Kazimierz and Anna caught up to him, Gorenski would be long gone, viewing the autumn-swept Fisherman's Bastion from the Danube's embarkment. He had grandiose plans.

He had visited Budapest many times in the past—mostly for the conferences and symposiums organized by the medics from Semmelweis University. But all those visits had been brief, leaving little time to admire the National Art Gallery, walk along the Monastery's Ruins on Margaret's Island, or drop by his favourite delicacy shop. A century had passed since he had lived in Budapest, inhaling its air and spending time in the shade of the blossoming chestnuts.

A hundred years ago, Gorenski had set up his medical practice in Budapest. While Gorenski's command of Hungarian had never been decent enough to rival the linguistic ingenuity of the local elites, he loved the city—or the memory of it: the artists in the clouds of smoke at Hadik Café, the faces of the poets long gone, and the trams that had changed their routes. Gorenski still existed in that interwar Budapest that was no more.

When the doctor returned, he recognized the roads and hills on the Buda side of the river, but the smell...he no longer knew it. His relatively new car made the commute easy. Back in 1910, he had driven a Métallurgique brought from Paris, one of the few such extravagant miracles in the city. The relatively new Volga was easier to stir, and the doctor missed the challenge.

Changing one's car once in a century seemed reasonable. Yet, every change, however welcome, reminded him of his age and invisibility. Gorenski felt the passage of time, even more, when he reached the house he had left a century ago.

In the last fifty years, Gorenski had felt no desire to enter it, leaving his villa in Buda under the care of his administrator. There was no point in revisiting the cobweb-covered rooms that echoed with the past and despised the present. Gorenski had abandoned so many of his own drawings and paintings there that the mere thought of someone seeing the empty canvasses brought frustration he no longer tolerated. If he disappeared, the house would fall into the government's hands due to its advantageous position on a busy avenue in a posh area. Would those people care about the interior?

Stucco had not crumpled over the years, even though the paintings Gorenski had left in the hall had grown grey with dust. Gorenski's steps echoed in the large room with an oriel window protruding into the garden and overlooking a collapsed fountain – long-haired Leda strangling a struggling swan. Not the usual conclusion to a beloved myth. When he had acquired the villa a century ago, the fountain had caught his eye. That same fountain was the reason Gorenski did not sell the house now, after all the years of his absence.

The building could have looked hospitable had its neo-gothic façade not acquired a greyish sheen. Its tumultuous history was written in the tiny craquelures, crisscrossing the stones like wrinkles on the canvasses of Dutch Masters. Even now, Gorenski loved its strangeness.

The doctor had brought his polished suits with him, as well as the toiletries that he had no time to replace. But unpacking had to wait. Feeling a foreign presence, Gorenski stopped in front of a flared staircase in the main hall—a space empty of furniture and decorations. A blood stain blossomed just beneath the steps—fresh, bright, and smelling of bitterness. A dead raven lay beneath his feet, and Gorenski stared at it curiously.