“Or better yet, we could pack a couple of the families into our luggage and take them home with us.”

“Bird . . .”

“You know, like souvenirs. Nothing Canada loves better than a bunch of refugees.”

“Stop it!”

“Or we could just shoot them and be done with it.”

Mimi sits back and stares out across the room. I cradle my espresso and listen to each breath I take.

Slow. Deliberate. Slow. Deliberate.

“The portrait,” I say, after I get myself under control, “is of Endre Ady. He was a poet. And a journalist.”

Mimi has tears in her eyes. She pushes her cake to me. “Here,” she says.

We sit there in silence until the waiter brings the bill. The two of us, in the heart of Budapest, in the middle of a summer afternoon. There is probably something I could say, something I should say, but in the end, we simply leave the café and catch a cab back to the station.

VII

The train back to Prague is an uneasy truce, a silent passage. I sit and look out the window, watch the land rush by, hum show tunes in my head.

“The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha.

“If I Loved You” from Carousel.

“Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific.

This is dangerous and not recommended. Musicals tend to make me emotional, and there’s no telling when the humming will get out of hand.

Mimi passes the time reading an English-language book she bought at the station. The cover suggests that it’s a gathering of porn stars in a hospital. It’s not what Mimi normally reads, but then she’ll read anything with text.

It’s my fault. I understand that. It was probably the “just shoot them” remark. Which was supposed to have been satiric. At least, that’s what I tell myself, now that the fury has faded.

But I’m more inclined to hold the refugees responsible.

If they hadn’t been trying to escape the devastations of war, they wouldn’t have been in Keleti station. And if we hadn’t gone to Budapest to see the sights, we wouldn’t have seen the children. And if we hadn’t seen the children, Mimi wouldn’t be angry with me.

The logic is somewhat flawed and self-serving, so I don’t repeat it out loud.

By the time we pass through Bratislava, I’ve run out of show tunes.

“Good book?” I ask, to try to break the impasse.

Silence.

Out the window, the land is flat, and I can see that there is no pardon on the horizon.

So we’re in Prague.

We pull into the station before midnight and take a cab back to our hotel. The air conditioner is still going, the room is still hot, the spiders are still on the ceiling, the tourists are still walking back and forth across the Charles Bridge.