"And, best of all, I found you again, after all this time. I want us to be together. I want to be able to hold hands in public, go to the same parties, neck in the back row at the movies, just like we used to, no matter who is there. I don't care what the Divas think, or anybody else for that matter.
I'm not divorced yet, but I soon will be, so the only impediment from my perspective are your feelings for me. I know I'm pushing too hard on this, but I feel I've wasted a lot of time."
"Karoly, I am very glad to see you again after all these years. Really, I am. And I like being with you. I'm thrilled the Cottingham is working out well for you. But for now we are going to have to leave it at that. There are a few, what will I call them, outstanding items in my life that need to be resolved before I can make that kind of decision."
"I'm not sure what you're saying. Can we continue to see each other?" he said.
"I would like that," I said.
"I suppose that will have to do," he said. "I'm not going to give up, though."
That last statement made me think of Rob, something I didn't really want to do at that moment: Rob when he'd said he was going to put his effort into getting me back rather than getting over me. "Could we talk about something else?" I said.
"Of course. I'm sorry. Whatever you like."
"Budapest, then. I went to Falk Miksa utca. I suppose I can't get too far away from antiques. I remembered you'd mentioned it. Where exactly was your store?"
"I take some comfort from this, that I was obviously on your mind." He made a bit of a face, but he got out a pen and a piece of paper and drew me a map. I asked him what other places I should see, and after a minute or two, the conversation naturally moved on to safer topics.
At the end of the evening, when it came time to go, Karoly helped me with my coat. He was standing behind me, and rather than stepping away, he put his hands on my upper arms, very gently, and just stood there. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck, and the pressure of his hands through my coat. Don't lean back, I told myself. If you do, you know how this will end. But then I felt a wave of emotion wash over me, part loneliness perhaps, part nostalgia, and also, to be honest, a large measure of desire, feelings so intense, I felt as if there wasn't enough air for me to breathe. I very slowly leaned back until we touched, his arms came around me, and my resolve vanished.
CHAPTEREIGHT
July 19
The countryside is extraordinarily beautiful. The people here call them mountains, but really they are hills. The wooded hillsides are covered in beech trees with lovely silvery leaves interspersed here and there with dark green evergreens. There are meadows, and lakes the colour of emeralds. The feature of the landscape of most interest to me are the limestone outcroppings. Even from below I can see they hold much promise. The going is fairly steep, but not impossible to someone young and in good health.
Once again I am the most fortunate of individuals. The Nddasdi family has insisted that I should stay in a cottage at their estate. It is right in the mountains, on the eastern edge of a great plateau, a beautiful place with cascading waterfalls and streams, surrounded by magnificent slopes. The town is small and rather quiet, its main industry, a foundry, having relocated almost thirty years ago. There are hopes it will become a resort, a place for people from Budapest to spend their summers away from the heat of the city, and has been named Lillaftired. I am grateful to be here, as I am told that Budapest is very hot and dusty in summer. I remember only too well the extremely hot summer we endured at home last year, and am glad to be in the cool of the mountains.
Still no word from T, but I must be patient. His business affairs are of the utmost importance, I am convinced, or he would be here by now. Sometimes at night I fear that something untoward has happened to him, but then comes the dawn, and my work in the caves, and these morbid thoughts vanish.
There are so many caves. I despair when I think how many lifetimes it would take for me to explore them all. I have eliminated several as not fit for habitation even by most primitive man, and others because they are devoid of any soil, and therefore all is revealed with the most cursory search. If ever man lived there, his signs have long disappeared.
I have decided to restrict my search now to two caves. Both are very high above a valley, and quite difficult to reach, and commended themselves to me because of their good aspect. One has two chambers off the entrance, the other a single one. They seem to me suitable places to live if one must live under these conditions, as ancient man did. The entrances to both are high so that a cooking fire would not cause serious problems, the single chambered cave in particular having a very high cathedral ceiling. Both are approximately 100 feet or more in depth, and, being situated at the narrower end of the gorge, would provide a good opportunity to watch for game from relative safety. I have found small pieces of stone which may well prove to be altered by man rather than the elements in the two-chambered cave, and a skull which I believe to be a bear in the other. Tomorrow I will choose one, perhaps with the toss of a coin, given no more scientific solution, and contrive to make a start.
September 16/17.
You'd think spending the night with the first great love of your life would cure any case of insomnia. Any case but mine, that is. At least I had something more interesting than maps of Hungary to look at that night. Karoly slept soundly, and, with the cares of daily life temporarily at bay, the lines of a couple of decades smoothed by sleep, he looked much as he had in college, the charming, funny, affectionate man I'd loved. It was difficult for me, with him so close beside me, to think he was capable of anything the Divas accused him of: blackmailing Morgan, cheating on his expense account, forging a diary and a twenty-five thousand-year-old artifact, and, if Cybil's rather emotional ramblings were to be given any credence, saying something so terrible to Anna that she threw herself off a bridge. Somehow, lying there in the semidarkness, none of it seemed even remotely possible.
But then, of course, came the dawn, and with it harsh reality. Surely all of the Divas couldn't be wrong. Surely they couldn't be caught up in some collective hysteria that made them invent all of these things. And what did I really know about Karoly? What did I know about any of them? Time, life in fact, had intervened, and all of them were, to some extent, strangers to me. I went over the previous evening's conversation, at the restaurant, and the things he'd said in the night. But I had not been truthful, not at least in response to his questions over dinner. How could I be sure he was being honest with me?
The thing was, ever since I'd started reading the diaries, I'd had this sense that something was amiss. Diana had felt it, too. In my rather lengthy conversation with Dr. Frederick Madison, I'd told him that I thought that scientific testing was a second line of defense, really, that came into play after someone who had a bad feeling for the object in question had doubts as to its authenticity. And the more I read the diaries, the more I felt that way. Something was wrong with them. So far, however, I couldn't point to anything specific. I'd sent the Divas off to verify the landmarks that were mentioned, and they all checked out. Even the weather was right! Not only the paper on the original, but the ink had come through with flying colors! But here I was lying in the dark beside the man who'd published them, who'd used them to find the Venus, which, of course, also checked out, and I was having my doubts.