Invisible Murder Read Online Free Page B

now felt more like fatigue than the tense stiffness he had experienced on the way there. He wanted to ask Lujza if it had gone okay, but he already knew the answer. It hadn’t. Everyone had been pleasant enough, even friendly. Mr. Szabó had greeted him with a firm handshake and had chatted with him about hisstudies, about his upcoming exams and about what specialty he was going to choose—Lujza’s father was a lawyer himself and had given criminal law an enthusiastic plug. Mrs. Szabó had been far too preoccupied with her small, screaming, tulle-bundled heir to pay much attention to him, but she had given him an absent-minded smile when he was introduced to her. There was nothing wrong with the way he had been received; it was more his own performance he was dissatisfied with. He had felt his facial muscles freeze, fossilizing with every passing hour. And as so often happened when he felt that way, his voice dropped to a scarcely audible mumble, forcing his conversation partner to lean in and say, “Sorry …?” every other sentence.
    He hadn’t made a good impression. And he didn’t understand how Lujza could sit there next to him, seemingly happy and content, and kiss him on the cheek.
    They pulled onto Szív Street and suddenly had to slow down. A crowd of pedestrians was crossing without looking, as though normal traffic rules didn’t apply. The driver edged the cab forward through the crowd and tried to pull out onto Andrássy Avenue, but that proved impossible. The entrance to the wide boulevard was blocked by a handful of police officers and a temporary barricade, and there were people everywhere, both in the road and on the sidewalks. When the driver tried to back up, it was too late. The crowd had closed around the cab like a fist. The driver opened his door a little and got halfway out.
    “Hey,” he called out to the closest officer manning the barricade. “What’s going on?”
    The officer glanced over his shoulder. When he noticed the taxi sign on the cab’s roof, he raised his hand in a sort of semicollegial greeting between two professionals. “A demonstration,” the officer yelled back. “We’ll open up for traffic once it’s passed.”
    The cab driver sank back into his seat again, shut his door, and re-locked it. “Sorry,” he said. “We have to wait.”
    He rolled the windows down, just enough to let some air into the cab and then turned off the engine. “No point in wasting gas,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere for a bit.”
    Through the open windows, Sándor could now hear the sound of drums and rhythmic chants. He couldn’t help speculating on how much the fare would be. Even though the engine was off, the meter was still running.
    “Maybe we should just walk the rest of the way?” he suggested. “Or take the subway?”
    “I’m wearing heels,” Lujza objected.
    The sound of the drums got louder; the demonstration was approaching. It was coming down Andrássy Avenue from Heroes’ Square, he reckoned. He couldn’t see much from inside the cab, but now he could hear what they were yelling.
    “Save Hungary now! Save Hungary now!”
    Involuntarily, Sándor slid down a couple centimeters in his seat. Jobbik. It had to be Jobbik, taking to the streets again to protest the Jews, Communists, and Romas “ruining our proud nation.”
    “Them,” said Lujza, pursing her lips as though she had found something disgusting on the bottom of her shoe. “God spare us from any more racist, goose-stepping idiots.”
    The driver turned in his seat and gave Lujza the same suspicious look he had given Sándor at the beginning of the ride.
    “Jobbik aren’t racists,” he said. “They’re just for Hungary.”
    Oh no, Sándor thought. Please don’t make an issue of it.
    It was a doomed hope. Lujza straightened herself up in her seat and stared daggers at the driver, 128 pounds of indignant humanism versus 260 pounds of overweight-but-muscular nationalism.
    “And what kind of