Since its opening in 1992, Kempinski Hotel Budapest has been passionately collecting Hungarian artworks to decorate the hotel’s common areas, rooms, and suites. The Corvinus Art Collection now consists of nearly 1,500 pieces. To celebrate its 30th anniversary, the hotel invited five popular contemporary Hungarian writers to spend a night in one of the Corvinus Art Collection Suites and write a short story inspired by the artwork in the suite. The stories have been published in the Kempinski Hotel Corvinus Budapest’s publication Storytelling Suites. Below is the story of Anna Mécs, inspired by Géza Pap’s painting.
Anna Mécs: A Walk under Intense Light
It was an unusual morning for early spring, the sun already high at dawn. He sat up in bed, bathing his face in the light that flooded through the threadbare blinds. His wife was sleeping peacefully, her dreams undisturbed by the light on her face and skin, as if her eyelids kept her safe from the outside world like gates of iron. He shuffled out softly to the living room, where Táltos sat at the front door with a pleading look. He donned his gray jacket and could only hope they’d be back before his wife woke up.
They followed the usual routine. They turned left at the old front gate, and from there he could rely on Táltos without a second thought. Passing the dentist’s office, they took a right at the shoemaker’s store. The sun didn’t budge an inch, as if time were standing still. He yawned and looked at the balding mountain tops, only now noticing they were just like the bald heads he’d watch at church of those sitting in the pew before him when the preaching got too tedious. Only rarely would he consider that he might present the same sight to anyone sitting behind him. Mountains encircled the small town, which found shelter in a valley, so that the sun was always later to rise and earlier to set. This seemed to lend an easy familiarity to the place, though all the colors were toned darker.
He kept an eye on the cobblestones under his feet, always just the one his foot was about to land on. He remembered his wife stumbling across these stones in her dressy shoes. And he thought about their theater visits, her beautiful red dress he had fallen in love with from day one. The only shadow that fell across this adoration was that he wanted to keep the sight to himself and keep those feelings from ever welling up in anyone else. Envy, he muttered under his breath, jealousy, shaking his head, strict in self-judgement for any trace of a sinful sentiment.
Lifting his gaze from the cobblestones ever so slightly, he first caught a sight of Táltos’s behind, and only by looking further up could he elevate his line of sight to a clearer view of a square they had arrived at, one that was off their usual early morning beat. As the outlines of the little square lit up before his eyes, he found himself facing the theater building. He shook his head gently at Táltos, muttering bad dog, to which the dog sidled up and sat down at his feet. It eyed its master apologetically, then turned, and he too turned to where the dog was looking. He saw a woman in front of the theater; she had a beautiful red dress on. He looked on, enchanted, and was about to walk up to her when he saw that she was not alone, that a dark-dressed man was holding her in his arms, and she returned his embrace, so they stood cleaved to one another and motionless. They never seemed to notice that evening had dawned into a new day, and an unusually bright new dawn at that, making every dust mote and drifting idea plainly visible. He felt a lump in his throat as he watched the embracing lovers.
The dog poked his limply hanging hand with its nose before setting off at a quick pace. He shook his head, but the couple just stood there stock- still. He didn’t want to intrude on them by staring like that, so he took off after Táltos when he heard the tolling of bells, bing-bong, bing-bong, his feet colliding with pavement like a bell ringing out, bing-bong, bing-bong, and as he lengthened his stride, the ground under his feet rang out louder and louder.
They would usually be having breakfast with his wife when the bells sounded. He was flummoxed about what had just happened here, how long were they dawdling in that square, where had the time gone? Sweating, he arrived at the gate. Táltos stopped beside him, tongue hanging out. He ran up the stairs to the first floor, knees aching, taking the steps two at a time, the dog on his heels. Even in the hallway he could tell he was already too late. His wife’s resonantly incoherent screaming.
He rushed into the apartment, and took the woman in his arms, but she only screamed louder, her whole body a rigid rebuff. This prompted him to clasp her to himself even harder, It’s me, he whispered, dearest love, though he knew by now she barely understood a word. Perhaps it was his smell, or the familiar voice, perhaps even just the close proximity of another human body, the rhythm of his racing heart, but in a few more minutes she relaxed pliantly in his arms. He sat her down at the dining table and prepared breakfast.
Anna Mécs (Budapest, 1988 – ) is an author and creative writer. She holds a master’s degree in mathematics and one in Hungarian literature. Her first collection of short stories, Gyerekzár (Child Lock), was published in 2017, and won the 2018 Margó Literary Award for Best First Prose Book. Her latest book was Kapcsolati hiba (Connection Error), published in 2020.