Gratitude (34 page)

Robert said he’d asked his assistant to stop at their home on Jokai Street. “
When?
” Klari shouted.

“Just a half-hour ago.”

“No,” she said. “I was there, too, today.”

“You went out?”

She nodded. He looked unhappy. She changed the subject. “So you saw Vera and her people.”

“Yes, I saw them. I managed to talk her uncle into giving me back a painting of ours, the one by Rippl-Ronai, the smaller one,
Christmas, 1903
. It was behind him, up against the wall by the entrance. I don’t want to part with it, though, at least not yet. I’d trade it for our son, naturally, or for safe shelter, if we’re forced to leave, or some kind of legal immunity I’ve been trying to arrange through Paul, but not for a sack of beans, or a dozen sacks.”

As Klari and Lili embraced Robert again, he kissed each on the cheek, held up his booty once more for them to praise and then asked what was in the satchel by the door.

“My fur,” Klari said, meekly.

“Is that what you went to get from Vera?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why? You
have
a coat now.” She nodded. He said, “Why then? We’re not ready to trade it, surely—or are we?”

Klari looked down. Lili stepped forward. Robert had set down his jars of pickles, and Lili took the fruit from him while he removed his coat.

“I want to take the fur to Simon. He’s cold. He’ll get sick. Only I can take it to him. No one else can.”

“Yes, only you can, but you may not,” Robert said. “I cannot allow it.”

The women gazed at each other as Robert went to the bathroom to wash up. They followed him. “I’m famished,” they could hear him saying from behind the door. “I want so much to sit with my ladies and eat. No amount of cake will equal the beans and pickles we’ll eat, because there’s nothing like hunger”—Robert opened the door dramatically—“and nothing like satisfying it. I would never have known that if our friend Hitler hadn’t taught us the lesson.”

Within minutes, the diminished, makeshift family of four had taken their places around the desk they’d been using as a dining table. Rozsi didn’t want to eat just then and held her stomach as though she were ill. They gave some of their food to the nuns and some to the Ganzes. Lili sat and watched Robert smacking his lips with relish. She had less than half his portion of boiled beans. “Sir, I ask you, please, to reconsider for the sake of your son.”

“And what about for the sake of my future daughter-in-law, I hope, I pray, if the Lord sees fit to release us from this grim joke?”

“You’ll have no daughter-in-law if you have no son.”

Robert stopped chewing. They were all surprised, even Lili, by the sharpness of her tone.

“I have you at least for now,” Robert said warmly, “and with any luck I’ll have my son back, too. My arithmetic is different from yours, that’s all.”

“Not arithmetic,” Klari put in. She set her fork down. “Your outlook is different, dear. I care just as much for this girl as you do, and as much for our son, naturally, but she’s determined. She’s here with us, the only one left from her small town. And she wears the perfect disguise with that blond hair of hers.”

“To be sure: our perfect Aryan.”

“Robertkam,” Klari said.

“Well, that’s what you meant, wasn’t it? All I meant,” Robert said good-naturedly, “was that you are a girl of many disguises.”

“And?” Klari asked.

Robert was cutting into a pickled tomato. “And you’ve kept us alive. It’s incredible what you’ve managed. You were sent to us by heaven.”

“We found each other,” Lili said sternly.

“And if we hadn’t, you’d be dead,” Robert said, “and we’d be dead. But we’re all still here—or some of us—and we can’t risk losing you, too.”

Klari said, “Robert, no one can succeed like this girl. We’re talking about our son.”

Robert set down his fork. “Think about what you’re asking, what you’re proposing.”

“I don’t want to think,” Klari said. “It’s not the time for thought—that much I’ve learned.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m sorry,” Lili said. “I don’t know.” She felt ashamed. Her face was red.

“No,
I’m
sorry. I don’t mean to be pompous.”

“No,” the young woman said. Klari reached for the girl’s hand again. Lili said, “Please, I don’t want to be dramatic either. I like to keep my wishes simple. I don’t question as much as you people seem to.”

Lili sat back and smiled disarmingly. She hoped she’d made her point. She hoped she hadn’t contradicted herself or offended anyone. The warm smiles of Klari and Robert told her she hadn’t.

Robert said, “You are so smart and serious for someone who cheerfully dismisses thought.” She didn’t understand what he’d meant, entirely, and didn’t want to ask. She didn’t want to disappoint him. She’d thought just enough about herself in her short life to know she was more earnest than smart, more honest than able to apprehend truth or anticipate the larger realities. Or perhaps she’d come from too insignificant a place to see the bigger whole, and insignificant as it was, the place she’d come from was not even a place anymore.

Robert ate the last half bean on his plate and set his fork down before saying, “You can’t go, Lili, and that’s final—not on my watch.” And he rose out of his chair and went to lie on his cot. He felt weak and sorry.

Lili got up to tidy up, but Klari stopped her. “I’ll take care of everything.”

Lili wouldn’t hear of it. “It’ll only take a minute.”

Klari clutched the girl’s strong, insistent hands. “Go, rest, let me. Offer a bit of food to Rozsi again.”

Lili bowed her head and went to sit with Rozsi. Rozsi gave Lili her hand, but kept her eyes closed. Lili sat with her back straight, determined, like Joan of Arc, but not rebellious. She could not rise up against her adoptive parents. Robert was as wise as her mother. She remembered the white wardrobe back home in Tolgy, how her mother had hidden her behind it. She was asked to stay put then, too, so she stayed put. At the time, it was the right thing to do.

When Rozsi fell asleep, Lili crept up the stairs to the window out of which all the Swedish inductees spied the Hungarian streets through a chink in the shutters. The spot was ideal, because the stairs provided a place to sit. Lili made herself comfortable on a step and looked out at the dark winter street.

A single gas lamp stood before her building, the flame flickering in a glass globe. She was mesmerized by its undulating glow. She thought of Simon for a time, but then a young couple appeared. The girl was barely older than Lili, barely past her teens. The two stopped beneath the lamp. As they kissed and giggled—Lili could see them giggling even if she couldn’t hear them—a parade of people appeared just as magically as the lovers and marched by on the far side of the street. Lili rose from the step to watch. Some looked unreasonably young, others unreasonably old, out of their beds at this ungodly hour. And there it was now: the marchers were being led by the Germans. A night march.

Lili slipped to her knees on the floor but still peered out the window. Above the marchers’ heads, other windows had been shuttered. Had they been shuttered all along? Lili’s eyes darted all around.

The lovers stopped what they were doing and turned their backs to the marchers, resuming their embrace. They struggled to recapture the mood beneath the little globe of light. But the young man slapped at his sides. The moment was ruined, the magic gone. He flailed about until the young woman got hold of his arms and clamped them to his sides. The man turned away from Lili as if to say something to the marchers.

Someone stopped across the street from the young couple. He had to be a guard. He unhooked the strap of his rifle from his shoulder as the people flowed on behind him. The guard took aim at the young man, but his girlfriend gave her man a great push. The young man almost tripped. “Go,” she was saying, “
go
.”

Lili ducked for cover and stayed that way for several minutes. When she peeked again, the couple was gone, but the soldier was still there. He was hanging the strap of his rifle back over his shoulder and turning to rejoin the stream of walkers heading toward the train at Nyugati Station.

KLARI FOUND LILI
before dawn, still dressed as she’d been dressed for dinner, still sitting determinedly on the step. She sat down beside the younger woman and put her hand on Lili’s shoulder. “I haven’t been able to sleep myself, but you haven’t even tried.” Lili didn’t answer. She didn’t mention the deportation march she’d witnessed. She didn’t mention the lovers either.

“I want to go to him,” Lili whispered. “He’s cold. He needs some comfort now. I just feel it.” A moment passed as Klari stared at the dark floor. “I can manage,” Lili said. “I’ll get through and back.”

“Then you should go.” Klari took a deep breath as she felt the young woman’s eyes on her. “We’ll know in years to come whether or not your choice was the right one, but we don’t have the luxury of waiting to find out. You may succeed, or you may not. You may step onto the wrong train and find yourself deported. You may bring him back here and find we have gone. We may be foolish to think Paul’s influence gives us some kind of lasting immunity. It could all backfire. Or you may come back, and we’ll celebrate, only to perish, all of us, the following day. Or you may go and not return, either of you, and we could follow and disappear with you over the frontier into Romania, or into the ether. We could become nomads again. Our ancestors were. But we don’t have the luxury to wait.”

“What about Dr. Beck?”

“I will take care of my husband. Dr. Beck will find it difficult to despise you when you’ve gone to help his son. Dress up warmly, dear, and go. We’ll wait for you anxiously, but I have confidence in you.”

Lili leapt into action with the spirit of someone who’d just got permission to go to the carnival. Within a few minutes she was at the door with her bundle, the fur sleeping bag they’d created and a few other things for the journey. Klari had returned to her bed as Lili prepared. At first, Lili thought she could see Robert stirring in the dark. Then she could hear his voice, and the voice of Klari, but he didn’t come out to stop her. When Klari emerged she didn’t say what he’d said. She said only, “You’re a brave girl. I know why my son loves you. He’s lucky.” She kissed Lili on the forehead and watched her leave. She glided out the door like a cat and was gone.

Lili wanted to walk boldly down to Andrassy Street as though she were on her way to a job at the Madar Café, like her friend Maria. But as she strode down the boulevard, she encountered what she dreaded most: another stream of marchers on their way to Nyugati Station. Had the Germans stepped up the campaign? Paul had been saying they might, because Wallenberg’s group was meeting them at every point of exit from the city. Lili was going the opposite way and needed to act confidently as she rushed by. She didn’t know how jaunty she should be while passing them. She had seen others—non-Jews—simply go about their business. Were they used to the sight? She pranced by them like a lover on the way to another promising lamppost, and no one stopped her. She wondered what they thought of her, but then sped up as if to help rush the thought along, too. She worried about the bundle with the fur coat. What would she say about it? She’d say she was visiting an ailing aunt with circulatory problems. She had just such an aunt in Tolgy who always asked for medicine from Lili’s father, but David told her to bundle up instead, cover her legs with a blanket as she crocheted. Sometimes these thoughts pierced her like a bullet as she came upon lines of deportees or heard Paul talk about them.

Lili passed the line of deportees as quickly as she could. She could not look at a single one in case he or she looked back. She couldn’t bear to carry the image with her. She was relieved to find the line was shorter than the one she’d seen through the window.

She walked by two shops, both closed—a shoe repair shop, featuring their handiwork in the window, and a florist—before a man stepped out of a doorway and startled her. “You can’t go any farther,” he said almost inaudibly, “not at the moment. You might get into trouble up ahead.”

“What kind?” Lili asked, taking a single step as if to pass the man. He was much taller than she was and was eyeing the bundle she now held behind her back.

“Trust me,” he said, opening the door he had come out of. She didn’t move. “Come in, please. Trust me.”

Maybe there was something up ahead. She chose to step in. “Just for a moment.”

Lili found herself in a dark wood-panelled vestibule with a grandfather clock standing in front of her, ticking. She gripped her bundle and was reluctant to proceed through the French doors into the man’s parlour. He was not as imposing a figure, here in the dark, as he’d been outside. He was young, but looked thin and wiry rather than powerful. Maybe he hadn’t had much to eat lately.

He sensed her hesitation and looked down as if hurt. Was he an innocent bystander to all the activities in his city? Was he a Hungarian Catholic? Was he a sympathizer? A resister? An Arrow Cross guard? A Jew? He didn’t look like one, but neither did she.

The man took a step back as if to invite Lili to come forward, and she did. The smell of cabbage clouded the air. Suddenly there came the croak of a woman’s voice from the adjoining room, and the man flinched as if he’d forgotten the woman was there. “We traded the cabbage for the linens,” she said, “but we still have the linens.”

The young man rolled his eyes. “We haven’t traded the linens. We still have the linens, and the cabbage, too.”

“What good are the linens when we have nothing to set out on them? Nothing splendid, nothing.” Her voice faded. “We traded them with the other girl who was here,” she said more cheerfully. “We traded Hermann’s chair for the tobacco the young girl brought.”

Lili peered in at the woman. The lights in the woman’s eyes seemed to have gone out, as if her mind were fading. The woman wanted to say something more, but she didn’t or couldn’t. Her mind was grasping at thoughts. Then the look of Lili smiling effortlessly registered on her consciousness. “You are such a pretty girl,” the woman said, “like someone from a fairy tale, a pretty girl who walked in out of the war. Won’t you stay with us for a cabbage roll? It’s good. It has rice in it and meat.”