Attaché
An American man drove through the Hungarian countryside. His wife sat in the passenger’s seat.
“I can’t believe you bought the bag,” he said.
“It’s a nice bag,” she said. “It needed to be bought.”
The man eased up behind a slow-moving vehicle. “If ever a bag existed that needed to be bought, you’d find it.”
“Look at that car,” she said.
“Russian?”
“From the 1980s,” she said.
He squinted. “No, looks like 1960s.”
She laughed. “It’s a Lada. They still looked like that in the 1980s.”
He turned on his blinker, looked for oncoming traffic, and passed the Lada.
“Be careful.” She gripped her seat.
He frowned. “I’m careful.”
They drove a rented Skoda. Higher and taller than a sedan, not big enough to be a wagon or SUV. They’d chosen it because the gas mileage was decent for its size.
He looked at his watch and did the math. “We’ll be at the border in five minutes.”
She jittered. “I’m nervous.”
“Don’t be. It’s just like driving from Kentucky to Ohio.”
“Looks more like Kansas.” She laughed, nervous.
“No, Kansas is flatter and has long, straight roads. You’ve never driven through Kansas.”
“This is how I picture it.”
He smirked. “Toto, we’re not in Kansas.”
The sun had ducked behind dark clouds. The countryside glowed pastel yellow and green, fields of wheat and corn and meadows and steer. An old man in a straw hat shuffled to the side of the road with a cluster of geese.
“I haven’t seen any shoulders in a long time,” he said. “Look for a place to pull over.”
“I wish you had your driver’s license,” she said. “Are you sure your International Driving Permit isn’t good enough?”
“Probably is. But better for you to go through border control. You have your U.S. license and International permit.”
“I don’t think they even use passports between EU countries anymore.”
“Probably not.” He pulled into a grassy area. They got out of the Skoda and switched places. They took a breath of the moist air and looked at the horizon, the sun painting a corner of the pasture pink.
“Looks like a Cezanne,” she said.
“Let me take a picture.” He fumbled with his smartphone.
Back in the Skoda, she drove more slowly than he had. She did not pass any of the slower-moving vehicles. It was only for a few minutes.
He looked at their printed internet map and driving directions. “It says we’ll cross into Croatia half a kilometer after this round-a-bout.”
“It’s called a circuit here.”
“Whatever they call it, we need to go through it.”
“Don’t we need a toll sticker?”
He thumbed through a guidebook. “I think the rental came with one.”
“Why would it? We’re not supposed to take it out of the country,” she said. They hadn’t paid the fee.
“But other renters do, so this car probably has one.”
“I remember the guidebook said you could get toll stickers at gas stations near the border.”
“They’re called vignettes,” he said. “Look, there’s a gas station. Pull over and we’ll ask.”
The man and woman parked the Skoda at the gas station and went inside. It was a dreary room with one man behind a counter, another man smoking a cigarette on a plastic chair. They watched a soccer game on an old tube television. It looked like a room in progress but covered in the grime of a room that had been here, uncleaned, for years.
“Ello,” the American man said in what he imagined was a proper hello in any language. “Do we need vignette? Drive in Croatia?”
The worker laughed, rattled off a few phrases neither the man nor woman could understand, then gave an oil-stained paper with hand-written notes: Plate number, names, passports.
She produced the information. The attendant typed the amount they needed to pay on a calculator. The cost was in Hungarian fornets.
“Why not kuna?” she asked.
“Maybe fornets are more stable,” he guessed. They paid the fee and took their receipt. “Do we put this in the car window?” he asked. “Isn’t there a decal, or sticker?”
The man explained in broken English that their license plate was registered in the system to show they’d paid the vignette.
“I can drive now that we’ve passed the border,” he said.
They drove along the road.
“I can’t believe how easy that was,” she said.
“I told you there wouldn’t be any border patrol. Just like crossing from one state into another.”
“What about the license plate being registered in the system? Do you think the rental car company will find out?”
“No. The states can’t even get their DMVs and BMVs and MVAs coordinated from one state to another. You think the EU has a system that alerts rental car companies when a car travels from one country to another? They’ll only run it if we get pulled over for speeding or have an accident.”
“Maybe we didn’t need the vignette,” she said.
“I think we need it,” he said. “We’d get fined hundreds of dollars if we got caught driving without one. It’s worth the ten Euros.”
A light rain began to fall. He turned on the wipers. They worked better than the ones back home, no squeaking or streaking.
“The vignette we need. What we didn’t need was that bag.”
“Look!” She pointed straight ahead.
He sighed. “Oh shit.”
Directly in front of them was a border control zone, much like the one they’d crossed between the U.S. and Canada.
“Pull over,” she said, “We’ll switch.”
“Too late. It’d look suspicious.” He slowed next to the control booth. “Here goes nothing.”
He said good evening to the officer in his best Croatian, which was bad Croatian. The officer took their passports and international driving permits. He looked at them, eyed their car and windows. He asked for their registration. The American gave it to the guard and showed him the receipt from the rental company. The officer went inside his booth.
“They’re going to find out we’re not allowed to take the car outside Hungary,” she said.
“No, they’re not,” he said.
They heard the pounding of the passport stamp, like the library book checkouts from their childhoods.
“What if the car’s equipped with a GPS and they can see we left the country?” she asked.
“That would be too expensive. They rent hundreds of cars a day. They couldn’t keep track of it all. As long as we don’t have an accident or get a ticket, we’ll be fine.”
Another passport stamp pound. Then, the officer returned, thanked them in Hungarian, and let them go.
“That wasn’t bad,” he said.
“They didn’t even ask for your driver’s license,” she said with a laugh.
“What’s this?” he asked. Another guard booth was before them, another officer stepping out. “Customs?”
“That was for leaving Hungary,” she said. “This is entering Croatia.”
This time, their broken Croatian was appreciated. Their passports were stamped, and they were admitted.
“So, we weren’t in Croatia when the driving directions said we were,” she said.
“Guess not.”
“That’s why we paid in fornits instead of kuna. We just bought a Hungarian toll sticker.”
“But that was already included in the rental!” He huffed.
“Maybe we can just act like we thought it was for Croatia. And not buy one for Croatia.”
He stammered. “No. It’s not worth getting fined hundreds of dollars or winding up in jail. Let’s stop off and get one for Croatia. Another ten bucks.”
“Look.” She pointed. “Interpol.”
It was a gas station, but they figured the Interpol referred to their international crossroad. The attendant at this gas station didn’t speak a lick of English.
“Use your phone translator,” she said.
He typed out his question, showed the man, and found out they didn’t need a toll sticker to drive in Croatia.
“Exchange kuna?” the attendant asked.
“No,” she said. “We have kuna. Hvala — thank you.”
They got back in the car. He pulled onto the road. The streets were much narrower in Croatia than they’d been in Hungary. The change in scenery seemed instant. More brick and red stone, less stucco and gray stone. More Italian and Catalonian. Less Soviet and Eastern European.
“We got cheated out of ten euros for that Hungarian toll vignette,” he griped.
“It’s only ten euros,” she said. “Think of the hundreds we’re saving by saying we were staying in Hungary.”
“Where’s the freeway?”
She looked aside. “Maybe we’re on it.”
They drove on. The roads got narrower. The rain came a little steadier. The sky grew darker. For two hours they drove on a two-way street that curved through the Croatian countryside
They slowed behind a large semi-truck that was going about half the speed limit. The road was winding, narrow, and there were no sections with two-lanes to pass.
“I’ve got to get around this guy,” he said. “We’ll be late. We said we’d be in Zagreb at nine. It’s already ten.”
“So we’ll be late,” she said.
“There’re ten cars behind me now. This bastard should pull over and let us pass.”
“It’s probably hard to get off and on here.”
“If it was just me, I’d understand. But when you’re clogging a dozen drivers, it’s time to pull over.”
She put a hand on his leg. “Calm down.”
He edged over, peeked around the enormous truck on the small road, and quickly pulled back as another truck came from the opposite direction.
“Don’t pass,” she said. “Better slow and late than in a wreck or dead.”
“You’re right.” He sighed. “Especially being outside Hungary.”
She rolled her eyes. “I think the fine’s the last thing we’d be worried about if we had a wreck out here.”
When he rented a car in the States along with an airline, he could usually get a discount on a rental car in a combo deal for ten, fifteen, twenty dollars a day. The Skoda was costing them $40. The cheats at the airport counter wanted an extra $50 a day for insurance, which he declined but they charged anyway. And an extra $30 a day for permission to drive outside the country.
“Well, then, we’ll just stay inside Hungary,” he’d snapped at the counter girl when she tried to apply the charge—after she’d already tried to upsell them into a $70-a-day car. He’d declined but she’d upgraded them anyway since they didn’t have a reservation.
“But what about Bratislava and Ljubljana?” His wife had asked as they stood at the rental car counter.
He’d frowned a shhhh look at her and said to the lady at the desk, “There’s plenty to see in Hungary. Eger, Tokaji, Pecs, Sopron. We’ll stay in the country before we pay that much for a car.”
He’d known then they’d be throwing the dice by crossing five borders. But the stamps went on the passports, not on the car registration.
On the winding Croatian highway, the rain continued to fall, and the horizon grew foggy. She said, “We’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Not with this truck slowing us down.”
“Yes, we will.”
The rain stopped. Yellow-orange streetlights beckoned in the distance. It was an honest-to-God highway again. “This is more like it,” he said. He went the speed limit and they felt like they were racing.
“See,” she said. “We’ll be there an hour late, but we’ll be there.”
As they got close to Zagreb, she scratched the back of his head.
He smiled. “I guess it’s okay you got the bag.”
“Where else but a place like Pecs could you find such a unique attaché?” she said. “Hand-stitched and stamped leather, all done by an old man’s family business that’s probably been around for a hundred years or more?”
“There’s a place in Texas. Or New Mexico. A man and his daughter. Boots and bags. Saw it in a magazine.”
“You’d pay five times more at least,” she said.
“Probably.”
“Besides,” she said. “You needed a new attaché.”
“The one I have is fine.”
“The one you have is twelve years old. And made by machines in a factory.”
“The one I had before that is still fine, too.”
“That raggedy thing was an embarrassment, not even real leather.”
His laugh was almost a sigh. “The new one is nice.”
“It’ll be a great souvenir from Hungary. Better than a trinket.”
They pulled off the freeway and into Zagreb. Soon, they were in the alleyways of an apartment-filled suburb outside Zagreb’s city center. He didn’t see the low chain blocking their assigned parking spot in the dark and their car rammed into it, creating an awful chain-against-metal sound. A scarf-clad woman, strolling, frowned at them, walked slowly around to look at the front of their car and the fallen chain, shook her head, then walked on.
The man used his phone’s flashlight to inspect for damage, remembering the $1,000 fee for each blemish to the car.
“Every scratch?” he’d asked at the airport.
“Yes,” the counter girl had said.
“So,” he’d snarked, “if there’s one scratch here and another a few inches away, I should connect them so I only have to pay for one?”
She’d frowned. “That is not advisable.”
But now, as though a miracle, he found no damage to the car. None of the dents or scratches they’d heard being forged. The old-fashioned, functioning bumper was still in style over here. It may have saved them thousands of dollars. Far more than the few hundred he’d lost in his pick-pocketed wallet in the courtyard of Budapest’s royal palace. Even with the new attaché thrown in, it all evened out.
“How bad is it,” she asked.
“Not a scratch,” he said. She grabbed her purse, and he threw his new attaché over his shoulder. They headed for the Jospino Studio Apartments.
He held the door for her, and they entered the dry warmth of the Croatian apartment’s lobby, Hungarian leather hanging at his hip. As their host came down the stairs to greet them, he smiled at his wife. “I’m glad you got the bag.”
© Eric D. Goodman
Eric D. Goodman is author of six books, including Wrecks and Ruins (Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press, 2022) The Color of Jadeite (Apprentice House, 2020), Setting the Family Free (Apprentice House, 2019), Womb: a novel in utero (Merge Publishing, 2017), Tracks: A Novel in Stories (Atticus Books, 2011), and Flightless Goose, (Writers Lair Books, 2008). His first collection of poetry, Faraway Tables, releases spring 2024 (Yorkshire Publishing). Learn more at www.EricDGoodman.com.
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