Gratitude (40 page)

And then she heard a slamming noise. It might have been a gun, but it wasn’t, because light washed over the hulking mass above her and the cold fell over them again, fresh and alive. The back door was open. Behind her, upside down for her, were the three sausage eaters, boys now, she could see, no more, just boys who had left their fields and shed their ragged farm clothes to take up a proud uniform and bear arms more powerful than life itself, as powerful as heaven and Earth and the Lord and the devil.

“Get off her,” she heard someone say. He’d found the way into her again and shoved at it, stopped his own breath as he prepared to buck. “Get off now!” the voice said again, this time more insistent. Erdo smiled like a madman—now I have you, his eyes were saying, now you’re mine—and then his head took a crack and his face went silly, his own blood dripping into her hair, as he sank like a boulder on top of her. “Get him off her,” she heard the voice say. The boys scrambled to their feet, all three of them.

Erdo was heaved off her to one side, and an officer, the voice’s owner, a man with grey hair and stars on his epaulettes, flung the bear onto his back. “He needs an extra long rest,” the officer said.

Lili got up on an elbow to gaze at her assailant. The ram still jutted out from his loins like a tree growing out of dense shrubbery with heavy thorn fruit hanging below it. This was not an instrument of love but an instrument of force. How would it have been possible to house such a tree in his pants? She swallowed more blood, felt Erdo’s blood in her hair and on her cheek, looked between her outspread legs and saw none. She shut herself up quickly, dropped her dress, tried to sit up but took an extra moment. She should have felt humiliated. She did feel humiliated, but the beast had been vanquished, and she was alive to remember, even if not to tell. She took a wintry breath and let it out as quietly as she could. Her heart settled.

The officer ordered the men to button up their sergeant’s protrusion. One snorted out a laugh but swallowed it quickly and leapt to carry out the task. The officer pointed to a wooden bucket in the corner. “Fill it with snow for the young woman. Let her pack some against her mouth and cheek.”

Lili felt her cheek, could taste the swelling. She sat up and pulled herself toward the bench on the side opposite the officer. The soldier there shoved over. Erdo slept with a scowl on his face. Lili was more sore than she’d realized. She’d be unsteady if she stood.

“Thank you for stopping him,” she said, feeling the flush on the cheek that was not sore. “If he’d succeeded, my life would never—I’d never—”

“Your life would have been over,” the officer interrupted. “He’d have used you up, killed you with a single slug across the face and thrown you out the back.”

For the first time Lili felt tears boiling up.

“Who are you?” the officer asked her, just as the men came back with the snow and set it beside her. They waited outside and whispered among themselves. Their colleague eagerly joined them. The snow in the bucket looked fresh and cool. She took some and packed it against her cheek, letting some of the crystals trickle into her mouth. She was so very dry. She took a bigger clump with the other hand and filled her mouth with it. It was an elixir. Then she took some for below. The officer turned his head.

After a moment, he cleared his throat to remind her of his question. She swallowed the cool snow. “I’m here to see Simon Beck, my husband. I’ve brought him some things.”

“Do you think this is a tour bus?”

“No,” she said. “Not any more than your camp is a proper place of business.” She looked down now, amazed at herself.

“You are impudent,” the officer said, and then added quietly, “and you are pretty, and brave.” She looked at him, saw kindness in his eyes. If this was what she was, pretty to all, she wished she could soften the effect or heighten it at will, like a firefly, turn it off for Erdo, turn it on for the officer, down for the Germans, up for the Jews, reduce it for Mary on the train—the woman did not need competition—let it burn bright for Simon. The smile was a switch, she began to see, but could not gauge yet what other gesture would help. She hadn’t been a woman very long.

The officer unbuttoned his breast pocket and fished out a handkerchief. He leaned across and offered it to her. It was monogrammed with an “F.” He saw that she noticed. “Fekete, it stands for,” he said gently. “Karoly Fekete. I am Commandant Karoly Fekete.” He offered his hand now, too, and she shook it, feeling a little queasy again as she leaned forward. She glanced at her assailant and wished he could be covered over entirely or carried across the road to be left at the house where the woman lived. He could wake up in bed there and continue with his business.

“What have you brought for your Simon?”

“Something to keep him warm and a little something to eat.”

“We don’t allow visitors. Did you not know that?”

“I did, but I’d heard something.”

“How could you have?”

She realized what path she’d stumbled onto and backed up. “Just a rumour, nothing more. I was hoping I could make it through. I wanted to appeal to someone.”

“Young girl, where is your family?”

“My family?” She hesitated. “In Budapest.”

“Aren’t you sure?”

She paused again. “No,” she said, and left it at that.

And so did he, softening his tone as he asked, “Are you indomitable?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what it means.”

“It means, not easily defeated.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“We don’t allow visitors,” the commandant said again and slapped the side of the truck. “Let’s get a move on,” he shouted. Two of the men clambered back into the rear of the vehicle, and the third, the one who’d sat on her right when she’d entered, jumped out and got into the front. She could hear the driver’s door slam, heard the engine start.

She was expecting Commander Fekete to escort her off the truck, make her return to the train, maybe even send one of his men to help her board, and then she would have to walk to the labour camp after all with extra pain and wearing one garment fewer. But what, then, would be the point, if the commandant had already barred her? Who would be there to overrule him or persuade him?

She was surprised, as were the soldiers, it seemed, that Commandant Fekete hadn’t taken a seat in the front with the driver. She tried to make sense of it. Surely it wasn’t to look after her. Surely she was no more than a curiosity to the commandant. He didn’t look at her across the darkness, or at anyone else. Maybe he just needed a moment to shut out the light and sit and think.

As for her, she was headed for Simon with the commandant of the camp to escort her in, albeit somewhat unwillingly. She felt bruised but hopeful. She was almost ready to ask for some sausage. She could have used a bite then, even if served by the greasy hands of the boy soldier sitting opposite her. She filled her mouth with snow again. It felt like a balm.

She would not tell Simon what had happened. He would take it upon himself to be gallant and react, and the commandant might not be there to intervene as Erdo slit their throats. As it was, she hoped she hadn’t created unnecessary danger for Simon. But how could she have? Surely the impact she had could not be so significant.

Oh, dear Simon. Her
neshomeleh
, sweet soul. How she’d missed him. She was coming to make him a little warmer. The trip was worth it for that reason alone. She needed to come for her own sake as well as for his.

The truck grunted up the mountain, its gears shifting jaggedly and its engine protesting. She felt soothed by the vibration and the rumble, felt she needed the time to recover her balance and her spirit before seeing Simon. But it would not be a party, she knew that. She knew where she was headed and could only hope for the best.

“The Russians are coming,” the commandant said across the darkness to no one in particular. “The Germans have taken over the reins now, and the Russians will come to try to drive them out. They will rampage over this land the way the Turks once did, and the Romans long before, and the Martians, for all we know. It’s a land of rampaging tribes, and it always will be. They all are.”

No one answered. “I don’t know how long we can stay put,” he went on, “especially with the Russians. They won’t let us, not even if we made the munitions for them. They can’t afford to let us. It’s about saying who’s boss more than anything, now.”

And then the commandant stopped speaking. Everyone waited patiently for the next instalment of his thoughts, but he kept them to himself, and so the others went on with their own. Lili shrank back to considerations of Simon. She didn’t want, just then, to think of anything else.

After two and a half hours the truck ground to a halt. Lili remembered what the woman in town had said. How could she have walked this distance up into the mountains in just five hours? Bad information, and it cost her. Erdo was still out cold, and the commandant ordered the guards at the gate to come and help lift him off the truck.

Lili didn’t know what she’d been expecting of the camp. The kindness of the commandant had lulled her into believing that it might be tolerable if not comfortable, even with Erdo looming over it. The inmates were housed in four barracks that were more ramshackle than the horse stable Lili had spent the night in, and they were colder. Each building had a single small wood-burning stove at the far end but no wood left to fuel it. Whatever wood remained had to be used to fire the smelters for the making of dies for weaponry and for ammunition. There was a barracks for the soldiers attached to the kitchen, so it was a little warmer, and a smaller cabin for officers: Fekete, Erdo, a corporal and also official visitors. The factory, which the inmates walked to each day, was three kilometres away over rock and ice.

The inmates were off at the factory when Lili arrived. They wouldn’t be back until dinner. They were fed once in the morning and once in the early evening, bread and coffee first thing and later a broth made of potato peels, carrot tops and turnips and hunks of stale bread. Once a week they were treated to an apple and another day to some cheese. Twice a week for breakfast, they ate salty porridge, which warmed their bellies for the walk ahead and the work.

Fekete told Lili when they arrived that, considering the hour, if she wanted to see Simon she could not get back to the train station until the next day. She of course had the option of leaving the package for Simon with a note and departing immediately. The commandant would see to it that Simon got the supplies. He looked upon her kindly—he was smiling—but he said, “If you decide to stay in the barracks tonight and cause a disturbance of any kind, I will have you both shot.” The smile continued as the message hung in the air between them. “You’ll spend the day working in the kitchen with Tildy, a local who works for us.”

“Simon wrote that there was a man in the kitchen,” Lili said, “an inmate—”

“He’s gone,” the commandant said as they walked. “He didn’t make it. We need all the able-bodied men for the war effort.”

Lili looked down.

“He didn’t make it,” Fekete said again without affect. She thought of Erdo, the cold.

Tildy didn’t speak much to Lili as they got the food ready for the evening. Lili gazed into the cauldron of swill as it simmered on the biggest wood stove she had ever seen. Tildy didn’t ask if Lili was hungry or what she was doing there, but she seemed to be wondering all the same. Maybe she was thinking Lili had been brought in to replace her. It was Lili herself who finally spoke. “I’m here just for a day. They’ve let me in to see my Simon.”

“I don’t know him,” Tildy said coldly. “I don’t know any of them. They’re mangy.” She looked straight at Lili with beady dark eyes, waiting to be challenged. Lili had a sister named Tildy. Nobody could have looked less like her sister than this woman. She was a big woman. Perhaps there was more to eat here in the kitchen than it appeared. She wore a tight hairnet to contain her short brown curls, giving her head the look of an animal caught in a trap. She had a scowl etched into her face, and she panted as she walked or spoke. “Set the tables,” Tildy told her. “Then mop the kitchen floor and sweep the mess hall.” Tildy pointed at each thing with her nose—the bowls, the dining room, the mop and the broom—and she snorted each time.

Lili rushed the work in the kitchen so she wouldn’t have to spend more time than necessary with Tildy and drew out the work in the dining room, shining each spoon on the apron Tildy had provided. What kept her going was the thought of seeing Simon soon, in a matter of hours.

When the men came shuffling back, finally, she was not prepared for her second shock, a line of scrags entering through the gate. Simon’s healthy, handsome face was drawn, his eyes were ringed with shadow, and his nose ran, a condition he shared with nearly everyone. He had lost all his youthful bulk, and he’d lost the lustre in his eyes. But then her eyes met his, and his face lit up. How was this miracle possible? his face seemed to be asking.

The other inmates looked even worse. They must have been here much longer than Simon. They were ragged. Some wore bandages unaccountably around their heads, one had a bandaged hand; some limped; many stared blankly, even at her, not even curious about who she might be.

As for the barracks, no one could care less that Lili was there. How could there be room for bawdiness in a place of such deprivation, so much dampening down of young men’s spirits, turning them old and haggard in a few short months?

Lili kissed Simon in the dark barracks, and he held her as passionately as he was able. What was Lili doing here? Was she insane, risking her life this way? How could his parents have let her go? “It was my fault,” he said, his eyes running now with his nose. “I should never have sent you the letter.”

Lili showed him the fur sleeping bag, and his tears continued to pour. He put his head on her shoulder, and she told him it would not be long now before he would come home. It
could not
be long. She showed him the peppers and garlic and eggs and wafers, too, and his eyes and nose ran freely. Then she gave him the tobacco and he smiled.