Gratitude (39 page)

“Sshhh,” he said.

“Look at them,” she whispered.

The celestial beams were making their journey across the two of them on the floor, crossing both of them out, one each. She put her hand under the light to study it more closely and giggled again as quietly as she could. He took the hand and kissed it. She giggled again. “Thank you,” she whispered.

She sat up. “I need to go to the toilet.”

He pointed to the bucket in the corner.

“Not for me,” she said. “What am I going to sit on and wipe myself with, my dress?”

“The toilet upstairs has no running water, and you can’t go up there anyway.”

“What—
forever
?”

“No, just for now.”

“And what if they find me? What then? I’ll say I was scavenging for food and picked the lock. Do you think I’m the first who’s done that since the war started? I’ll make like a lunatic. They want nothing from me, Dr. Beck, believe me. They wouldn’t even waste a bullet. I’m going up to piss. Then I’m going to use some of your water to flush. Don’t worry, I’ll bring you more.”

So she did, taking care to replace the planks after she’d climbed out. He waited, listened attentively. She did her business and then she crossed the floor. She was making herself far too busy up there.

A minute later, she said to him, not whispering, “It’s safe, come up.” She’d lifted a plank and was talking into the hole.

He gathered up Smetana and climbed the ladder. He stole to the window, peered out in every direction until he saw something fluttering from his doorknob, a white tag. It had been tied to the door. “Look,” he said.

She joined him at the window. “What is it?” She stood at the window in full view of the world. “It’s a piece of cardboard. White. It has something written on it.”

She opened the door, took the tag off the knob and read, “
Verlassenen Besitz
”—“Abandoned Property.” And now he could laugh, too, with some relish.

Twenty-Six

Transylvania – December 8, 1944

LILI HEARD A CRACKING SOUND
,
which echoed through the fields against the mountains. A second shot and she was fully awake. The horses were bucking furiously. Their neighing had turned into shrieks. Lili opened her eyes to see the whites of her companion’s eyes in the stall and to see him rear against the wooden constraints. He was a stallion. The horses had spooked the pigeons, who shot into the air and flapped up against the rafters—up but not out, frantically trying to comprehend the new, low, unyielding sky. Lili jumped to her feet, too, and yanked up her sleeping bag to protect it. All the horses were whinnying, bucking and shrieking as they tried to vault over their troughs and smash their stalls. Something whirred by her face like a shot—a sparrow or starling—and spun past a post in a flurry of feathers.

Lili could detect in the dust and smoke the beginnings of morning as its light cut through the far boards. She must have been asleep for hours. She braced herself against the boards of the stall. Her horse saw her now, she was sure, her own boy. He was a noble Arab, smoky white with black tips and black eyes.

Who had fired the gun? The farmer? No, not the farmer. And not the Germans. They wouldn’t waste the bullets. Not the Arrow Cross. Who was out there to frighten? The men in the truck? Goodness. The men in the truck.

They fired again and Lili could hear voices whooping. Her Arab kicked and bucked, as did the others, the Lipizzaner in the neighbouring stall, and another Arab, a smaller one. There was nothing to calm them down. They wouldn’t hear calm talk, nor receive pats and caresses, even if she could get to each one of them. But she found herself unafraid of the horses. She would brace herself, hold tightly to her small corner and wait out the storm. She couldn’t pass by her Arab’s bucking hooves in any case. She would wait out the beasts of the barn and the beasts of the field.

It was an hour at least before the stable settled again into snorts and whinnies and some chomping of hay and slurping of water. Lili watched her horse drink with his sloppy tongue. Nothing like fear and hysteria to work up an appetite. Daylight had come and, while the barn was still dark, Lili could make out the sheen on the horses’ backs and bellies. How far was the farmer that he had not heard his animals’ cries? What if there had been a fire? How far was the truck with the soldiers? Had they collapsed in a heap somewhere or were they waiting for some more fun? Or had they departed? She would not have heard over the shrieking horses. She needed to see, to get out quietly, if she could pass undetected through the squealing door.

Lili straightened herself out, brushed the fur of her sleeping bag, packed it away, buttoned herself into her coat and combed her fingers through her hair. What a sight she must be. How could she make herself presentable for her prospective drivers? How could she make herself pretty for Simon? It had been too long since she’d seen him, and she hadn’t eaten well. What a sight she must be, what a surprise.

She patted her horse, and he whinnied for her. She made her way out of the stall and to the door and found a crack she could peer through. She could see little at first but the white field laid out like linen over a grand supper table. She took in a whiff of the horse-fresh morning. The field was abutted by a row of birch trees, which, with their white bark, stood like a line of naked girls caught by the cold. And then her eye took in with a thrill the blue mountains looming to her right. The partial view barely allowed her to ascertain their dimensions, so she had to step out, had to find her way on this last leg of her journey.

When Lili emerged into the winter morning, announced by a yowl from the stable door, she was charmed momentarily into complacency. The sight called to mind the very first music she’d heard on a phonograph. It was some music by Mendelssohn her father had brought from Prague along with the phonograph itself. One record, one phonograph. David Bandel had said it was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” because it sounded like the woods and fields the composer had wandered through. What struck Lili that day, when she was no more than eight or nine, was that the notes sounded like the country they depicted, as free and as lively—she hadn’t realized until then that there might have been different kinds of country meadow. And that was what it would sound like here, too, sweet and lovely, to anyone who heard it with the blue mountains standing over these fields covered in white linen, awaiting their silver and their summer supper.

Dr. Beck had once said that one could fall for a piece of music as deeply as one did for a lover. He said it after he’d played a recording of Schubert’s songs without words. One piece in particular, which featured the cello, cried out at the listeners—seemed to fill them up—as they sat digesting their meagre dinner. When the music finished, Klari objected to what her husband had said about music and love, but then went about repeating it when he was not present as if it were wisdom newly distilled by her.

Lili heard the men’s laughter and turned to see the truck the woman had told her about the day before. It sat parked across from a ramshackle house with a red porch. A forgotten blouse flapped from the porch railing like a flag. How could she have missed the house as she’d made her way to the stable? She heard another guffaw from the parked truck and then saw a man with a rifle standing beside it. He set down his rifle to urinate into the field, but as he began, he saw her, too, and there was a flicker in the flow of the urine before he resumed. He took a quick look at his rifle. Lili was conscious, now, that all that stood between her and the remainder of her days was the whim of this soldier.

The soldier buttoned himself up and picked up his weapon again. He called out to her in Hungarian. “Get over here. Hey, you, get over here.”

A woman half-dressed in red and royal blue burst out of the back of the truck with a giggle and ran off toward the ramshackle house. Her hair was red, too, and half of its pins had fallen out so that she looked ruffled and plucked. The soldier who’d called to Lili turned and aimed his rifle at the woman’s back as she ran, wriggling to adjust her clothing against the chill air. Lili gasped and paused in her tracks. The man continued to aim but then turned his rifle on Lili before pointing skyward and firing in the air. The report alarmed the horses again. Lili could hear them screaming and bucking.

She resolved to proceed toward the man. If she turned and ran like the woman, the next bullet would certainly be aimed at her back and, if it missed, the one after that. She had no choice but to advance. “Hey,” the man shouted again, urging her toward him, the voice ringing around the mountains.

He aimed his rifle directly at her again, squinted one eye while locating her in his sights with the other. It might have been the forthrightness with which she now walked, the boldness of her stride, or maybe just the look of her, small, young, scrawny frame, maybe a look that reminded him of someone—his daughter, possibly, or a niece—but the man lowered his rifle again to his side and waited for her patiently.

When she got close, she saw he was a big man with a moustache and wore a Hungarian soldier’s brown uniform. A Hungarian officer—he had a sergeant’s three stripes on the arms of his coat. She remembered the Hungarians who’d rampaged through Tolgy, through her town and her house.

He said nothing to her but waited for her to speak. She heard a man’s voice inside the truck, then another guffaw. The horses behind her were still kicking and complaining.

“Sergeant Erdo,” someone called from inside. “You missed your turn with that red thing we had in here, and she was good and red all over.” They hooted and howled as Erdo stared at Lili, not once averting his gaze. They listened to the men inside laughing, but she, too, kept her eyes on Erdo.

She’d heard his name before. It had appeared in Simon’s letter. The nasty Erdo. A chill came over her. She felt for the satchel at her side, and he looked at it, too. “I would like to go to the labour camp where they make munitions,” she said in a measured voice, as if speaking too quickly would jeopardize her chances of succeeding. “My husband is there. I’d like to see him and give him a few things to make him more comfortable.”

“Your husband,” he said, “and who might that be?”

“Simon Beck. He has black hair and brown eyes.”

“An inmate. You don’t need to describe him to me. I know who he is.” Erdo stroked the barrel of his rifle. The steel must have been cold in the winter air. “Why don’t you come into the truck? It’s warmer inside.” He said it like a wolf, his eyes narrowing, and he pointed to the rear of the vehicle with his weapon. The men inside had heard their voices and had stopped talking. One broke out laughing again.

Erdo stepped up to the back and opened the door. Lili could see three men sitting inside, two of them in some disarray, and the third, the one in the middle, the more composed one, holding a knife. They all sobered up instantly. Lili smiled. She didn’t know she could have such a deadening effect on people and wondered how best, under the circumstances, to make use of the ability.

“Get in,” Erdo said from behind, “we’ll take you.”

The one who’d laughed, the one to her left, who was the most dishevelled but looked the youngest, as young as she was, a year or two older at most, snickered again but looked away. Lili got a sick feeling in her gut as she climbed in quickly, unobtrusively, hoping only to sit on the floor on her bag. “Please,” she said to no one in particular. She checked behind her suddenly, feeling Erdo might be smiling, but found him serious and earnest, almost gentlemanly looking.

As she stood uncomfortably in the back of the warm truck by the door, she could feel how musky it was and was grateful for the winter air pouring in behind her. She could smell the heat of sex, remembered the fresh scent of dung in the stable she’d crept out of.

Erdo had now climbed heavily into the truck behind her. She could sense his shadow on her back as big as a tree, could feel his breath on her. The soldier in the middle, directly in front of her, pulled a coiled sausage out of a bag beside him, a thick Romanian sausage big as an arm, and cut off a hunk and offered it to her with a greasy thumb and forefinger. She’d told herself never to refuse food but found lately she was doing so all the time. She shook her head. “Maybe later, thank you.”

He smiled and passed the hunk of meat to the dishevelled man beside him. She tried to share his smile. He cut off another hunk and jammed it into his own mouth. He chewed with relish. Erdo slammed the door behind him, shutting out the light and the cold. Lili could still not see him without turning around entirely. The sausage cutter gave a third piece to the third soldier, and a fourth he offered to Erdo. Erdo didn’t answer. She could hear him puffing, panting almost. The soldier held the piece up to her again. She felt she should accept it, but first she wanted to settle. The whole rear of the truck smelled of sausage now. It had overtaken the scents of sex and the winter air.

Lili made as if to sit down, setting her satchel carefully on the floor. The sloppy young man to her left shoved over, indicating she could sit with him, but then she felt a large hand on her side at her waist, then her hip. The man who’d offered his seat sobered up. His eyes widened as he saw what his sergeant intended.

Lili heard a belt buckle clang behind her and became light-headed, ready to faint away, but instead she picked up her bag and pressed it to her chest, as if lifting a bit of home with which to shield herself.

Erdo swung her around and tried to kiss her, but she turned her face and his clammy lips slid off to her ear. His pants were down around his ankles. The three other men didn’t move or make a sound. They receded into the darkness of the walls of the truck.

“Please,” she said.

Erdo advanced and she slipped and fell back onto her haunches. Nothing was there to cushion her fall and no one to catch her. Her coat was open, revealing her green serge dress. When had Erdo managed to undo the buttons? She tried to brace herself, to clench her teeth. She lay down, let her head drop back, because she could not bear to look. She gazed instead into the calm darkness of the ceiling. She decided at that moment that, if she survived, no one would ever know it had happened, not Simon, not Klari, not Robert, not Paul, not her family, if she ever saw them again.

She felt her dress being flipped up to her neck. She didn’t want her dress torn. Then Simon would know right away. And how would she travel back? Would she even be seeing Simon now? Was this the price of admission into the camp? If not, would they let her go back? Could this be her last stop, this army truck?

Her underwear was torn from her body. She could feel the steamy draft between her legs. She’d be torn again, this time flesh. She struggled now to look up at her assailant. He was a bear, immense, with a dark battering ram ready to break open the gate. She managed against her slamming heart to squirm a hand into the pocket of her satchel beside her.

She remembered Mary. “Can I give you an egg instead?” She held it out to him in her palm.

He smiled broadly and snorted out a burst of laughter. “Yes, but not a chicken egg.”

She felt the ram softening slightly against her inner thigh, like a mollified beast. He bent to his target again, determined to press on. She saw the whites of his eyes now, grey in the darkness, like the bucking Arab stallion’s eyes, felt him between her legs, pressing against the opening, too immense by far for the opening, as big as the head of the baby, surely, that might pass out the other way. She must not imagine it. She must not think a single additional thought.

He wanted to tear open her dress at the neck, but she fought him, so he struck her hard across the face. She could taste the blood in her mouth, but she didn’t cry, felt she shouldn’t. The bear leaned forward to chew on her ragged lips.

She was plugged, felt she would be ripped in two. A fierce burning pain shot up from her loins, volcanic, and he was still not in her, not ready to proceed. Her innards tried to run from their assailant. He reared up below and slid over top. He grunted and huffed above her, his humid breath acrid and hungry with a bear’s hunger.