Karolyi chooses the adagio from Beethoven's Cello Sonata No.5. Sometimes he forgets its name, but he never forgets the music. It was what he always played at the close of a concert and it drowns out every other sound and thought from his head.
Someone applauds from a deep doorway. Karolyi bows briefly before placing his cello back in the brown case. He folds his chair and, chin high, marches across the street to a military tune that haunts his mind.
He walks down steps to a small café. Its windows are at street level. Inside, there is no electric light, only candles. "Table for one," he says to a waitress who sits on a tall stool. She shrugs and waves her arms at the empty room. Karolyi looks around. Each table wears a checkered cloth. Blue and white. Karolyi thinks blue is his favourite colour. He sits with his back to a wall, facing the door.
The waitress comes to take his order. She is black-haired, tiny, with big dark eyes that Karolyi imagines he has seen somewhere else.
"We have burgers," she says.
Karolyi nods. "Mutton?" he says.
"You don't want to know," the waitress says.
The burger comes with French fries and a bottle of beer. Karolyi can hear noises somewhere. The waitress shuts the windows and draws the curtains.
"Mortar time again," she says and shivers, folds her arms, pulls them tightly against her sparrow chest.
As Karolyi eats and drinks, the noises become louder and he hears them walk up the street. The café windows shake and he knows there will be flowers outside. He looks for the waitress and sees her crouching beneath a table in a corner, as far away from the windows as it is possible to be. An older woman has joined her; she wears a grubby apron and Karolyi assumes she is the cook. Both women are trembling.
Karolyi lifts his cello from its case. He plays them his Beethoven adagio.
Eventually it is quiet inside and outside. The waitress smiles as she collects Karolyi's empty plate. "They've given up early tonight," she says. "Your music was beautiful. I think it's charmed them away."
Karolyi pays his bill. The waitress's dark eyes look hungry as she sees the money in his wallet: deutschmarks, not worthless local paper, a legacy from his last tour. She looks directly into Karolyi's eyes, asks unsaid questions. He nods, and when the café closes, they leave together.
Her name is Dina and she lives in a shell-shocked village that once housed Olympians. Inside her apartment, each window-hole is covered in polythene. Karolyi props his cello and chair against an inside wall.
"I won't be long," Dina says.
Karolyi removes his scuffed shoes, shabby suit, black bow tie, and frilled shirt and hangs them carefully over rusting bedrails. He hears water somewhere and presently Dina rejoins him. She carries her clothes, folded into a neat pile, and places them on the only chair. Her eyes seem larger and darker than before; Karolyi cannot tell whether she is excited or frightened.
"Love me," she says.
They lie on the cold white linen of her bed and as they press themselves into each other, both begin to cry.
Karolyi's home is somewhere he cannot reach anymore. There's probably someone he misses, who may miss him in return, but he can't be certain. Sometimes he's not even sure his name is Karolyi, only that someone said it was.
Each day he works the streets. His deutschmarks are gone but he will accept no money for his music. "Music must be free," he says. But in the evening he sits in the café, eats burgers Dina pays for, then allows himself to play for his supper. And each night he cries when Dina holds him. She doesn't cry anymore.
Karolyi sees something glimmer in Dina's eyes. She hums a gentle tune he doesn't know, and seems to expect something more from him. He cannot explain the reason for this change in her; the fireworks carry on as usual and roses still stalk the streets.
Foreigners fly in from somewhere safe. They want Karolyi to form a string quartet with three of his former colleagues. They will fly them out of the city to perform in foreign cathedrals, but then they must return. A deal has been worked out with those who control such things.
Dina frowns when Karolyi explains.
"But you will come back?" she says. She holds a linen dishcloth in her hands, twists it around and around.
"I'll come back," Karolyi says. "What would I do without you?"
Dina stands on the perimeter of the pockmarked airport. Karolyi sees her wipe her eyes then wave a slow goodbye as the small aircraft taxis along the only serviceable runway.
They don't have far to fly, a few hundred kilometres to another airport in a city once in Karolyi's own country. Here the roses grow in gardens. Here they have people to look after them. Karolyi walks with his cello along the streets. They are alive with traffic and Karolyi knows it would truly be madness to play Beethoven in the midst of all this rush.
He drinks coffee until it is time to return to the airport. The café has blue and white checks on the tablecloths and he likes the way the dark-haired waitress smiles. He thinks of his café, of Dina. Why, with a bit of imagination, this could be the same place, the same girl. He dips a hand in his pocket, wraps fingers around money Dina gave him, asks this smiling girl to count it for him.
"Can you play that?" she says, nodding at his case.
"A little," he says.
He leaves the girl a tip.
In the departure hall, Karolyi's fellow musicians stare at nothing while the foreigners search faces, tap their feet, compare their watches with the big clock on the wall. It suddenly occurs to Karolyi that if this trip could make any difference at all it would never have been allowed to happen. He steps behind a pillar and keeps it between him and the others as he retreats towards an exit.
He watches the big airplane lift off, carrying three-quarters of the string quartet to a temporary freedom.
He walks back to the café. The waitress's smile is wider than before. This time she comes out from behind her counter and he sees she is plumper, more comfortable than Dina. She brings him coffee and he gives her more of Dina's money.
Karolyi opens his case and takes out his cello. He thinks he might stay here.
