Gratitude (46 page)

Thirty-Two

Budapest – February 16, 1945

Dearest Rozsi,

I want to outwait this bad time, and then marry you, if you’ll have me. This ring was my mother’s. May its ruby heart stand up to your stout Beck heart. Please take it and accept it.

Zoltan
I love

Rozsi folded up the note for the hundredth time and asked Lili, for the fiftieth time, about the people who’d returned. Could Lili go with her to the Jozsefvaros station and wait for the trains to come in?

The Germans were gone from Hungary. The Soviets were in charge. Wallenberg had never returned from his meeting in Debrecen, and the Swede’s whereabouts were unknown. Some suspected he’d been taken to Siberia. Per Anger could not get an answer from Stalin’s government.

Robert and Klari had returned to their house on Jokai Street to find that, in addition to Vera’s family, another family, the Oszolis, had moved in. Robert insisted on having his home back, but Vera’s uncle said they were not leaving. “We’re willing to make room for you, Dr. Beck.”

“Willing to make
room
?”

Robert and Klari had no recourse. The provisional government was not discussing such trivial matters. Vera made the Becks a meal, and Robert calmed down.

Klari noticed her Turkish carpet with the great medallion pattern was gone, as was the tablecloth she’d bought outside the gates of ancient Ephesus. She was relieved to see her raspberry marble-topped table with the painting on it by Edvard Munch was still there. The silver griffins and eagle clock were gone, and so was the cabinet they had stood on. She had a blue-and-white platter, from the Ming dynasty, which she’d inherited from her mother, and it was gone. She noticed things missing every day. But they had one another, she kept telling herself. She had her Simon and her Robert, and Lili. And she had Paul and Rozsi.

Since Paul and Rozsi’s home had been burned to the ground, Robert asked his nephew and niece to move in with them.

“We’ll find another home,” Paul said.

“I won’t hear of it,” Klari said. “It’s roomier than Ulloi Street with all those people and the fake nuns.”

“Please,” Robert said to his nephew. “Don’t insult us.”

And now, sitting on the bed she shared with Rozsi, Lili swept the hair off Rozsi’s forehead. “Of course we can go to the station, sweetie,” she said. “I’ll wash you up a bit. We’ll see who has come back today.”

Word was out that people were trickling back. Lili herself had heard from Maria at the Madar Café that Emil Gottlieb, the pharmacist from over on Kiraly Street, had reappeared one day. His wife, Izabella, and their unfortunate daughter, Nora, with the early onset of rheumatoid arthritis, hadn’t returned with him. He had been hoping to find them at their old home on Rose Hill, but there was no sign of them. He described himself as the “first” one back. When he arrived at the house, he found five families living in it. He shoehorned himself in the way the Becks had, moving into a small sunroom at the back and saying it would be fine, but only until Izabella and Nora made it back. It was only a matter of time.

The florist, Monika Danzinger, had come back to find her husband, Oliver, sitting in their flat tending to their poodle, Arisztoteles, named after the Greek philosopher because the Danzingers could tell she was extra smart from the day she was born, and their parakeet, Mor, because he had so much to say, like the writer Mor Jokai.

Monika had stood, stunned, at the door when Oliver opened it. She’d hoped and prayed for his survival and begged the
kapo
at the camp to let her know about him, if not see him. But she eventually despaired that she would never lay eyes on her husband again.

“I was here the whole time,” he said, meekly.

“I thought you’d been taken ahead of me. When I came home last April 11, you were gone. I thought you’d been taken.”

“No, I was at the Fenix, having supper. When you didn’t come back, I thought you might have been taken.”

“So you went for supper?”

“Not right away. I looked everywhere for you and waited.” He lowered his head. He was petting Arisztoteles, who was still not warming up to Monika. The talkative parakeet was quiet.

“Didn’t you move to the ghetto?”

“No, I didn’t want to.”

“You didn’t
want
to?”

“All Jews this way,” the parakeet finally said. “All Jews out.”

The humans looked at Mor in his cage. “It might have been mandatory,” Oliver said, “but I didn’t want to. I figured, if they wanted to take me, they’d take me. I’d wait. But no one came for me.”

“So you’ve lived in our place all this time, since I was taken?”

“All Jews out,” Mor said. “Curfew time. Let’s close the curtain. Curfew.”

She looked around the apartment before stepping in. They hadn’t even hugged yet.

“I found provisions for us as best I could, Arisztoteles, Mor and me. I did the best I could.”

“Well, weren’t you clever?” she said. “Foolish, but clever.”

“Yes, both.”

She looked unspeakably skeletal. He looked better, but not much. The dog and parakeet looked best. Finally, the Danzingers embraced, painfully, her bones grinding against his. But she was home, now, and so was he, and they had to hope for the best from here on in. He gave her some tea and biscuits, for which he’d traded a watch some time before and was saving for just such a day, and the two had a little meal together.

Every story was extraordinary, every rumour, every anecdote. To the last possible minute—until three weeks before—Germans were still rounding up people. The Nyilas were still summarily executing Jews and dumping them into the Danube. Robert had heard, on one of his few forays out of the Dutch insurance building, that a colleague of his, Zsigmond Lengyel, a neurologist, was shot to death five minutes after he got off the train on which he had returned to Budapest. The news was mixed everywhere.

Robert was welcomed back to his clinic at Sacred Heart, though not to his old job as chief of surgery. He was happy to find the jacket he’d left behind hanging in the closet, still waiting for him—and his Swedish papers still in the pocket. His first order of business was to get his niece a bottle of sedatives.

But he was gone twenty-four hours. He narrowly averted capture by a squad of renegade Arrow Cross men out looking to spill some blood. He crossed through a park and ducked into the courtyard of a building where he believed an operating-room nurse of his, Lidia Szent Mihaly, worked. It turned out he was right. She was glad to put him up for the night, though her husband was nervous about it. Robert overheard him whispering to Lidia late that night, asking what time she would ask Robert to leave.

“Not before the doctor has had a little breakfast,” she whispered back, “and is satisfied with us.”

“
Satisfied?
” he asked.

“Quiet,” she said, “and I
mean
it.”

Robert left early, and by the time he stole back home Klari was frantic. She’d paced all night. She’d been imagining the fate that had befallen him after these long months, like his poor colleague, the neurologist. How could it have happened to her, to his decimated family? But then there he was, as before, relieved to be back. Klari had to excuse herself to go to the bathroom—she didn’t want the young women to see—and cried the incident out of her system.

Rozsi asked Lili, the world traveller, “Who else is waiting for someone the way I am? Are there many others?”

“I’m waiting,” Lili said.

“Of course you are,” Rozsi said, and she took the blond girl’s hands in hers. “I know you are. And how will they even find you? How will they know you’re here, and how would they find you even if they
did
reason that you’re here? I meant, are there many others?”

“Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands.”

Rozsi’s eyes clouded over. She seemed to find comfort in this information.
Tens of thousands
. Surely that would mean that many, or even most, were coming back. Where could the Germans have closeted
tens of thousands
of people? What would they feed them?
Did
they feed them? They’d become a nuisance. Surely, they would feel that. They couldn’t have turned as savage as all that, not
all
of them, surely.

“Lili,” she said, still holding the younger woman’s hands, “take me to Zoli’s hideout, please. He had a perfect place nobody knew about. I know exactly where it is. I’m the only one, and I’d give anything to go there.”

“I would take you if there was a point, Rozsikam,” Lili said. “We’ll go on another day. We’ll go tomorrow.”

“But I have to go. Even if you can’t take me, I need to go.”

“But why? You don’t think that Zoli is there, do you? You can’t be thinking that.”

“What if he is?” Rozsi asked. She had an intense look in her eyes. She needed to feel that he might be there, could be, by some chance, but for whatever reason could not get back to her just now. There were so many reasons these days, you could take your pick. Maybe he was surrounded by the Nyilas and had to stay put. Maybe he was surrounded by
Russians
, for all they knew. Maybe he had broken a leg on his flight from someone and couldn’t drag himself across town to her. Maybe he had set it himself with something, some planks or steel pipes in his boiler room, and had to administer to himself but might by now be needing some provisions only she could find for him, or she and Lili together. If they didn’t check, he could die in his building of a broken leg with Rozsi foolishly waiting for him anxiously a few blocks away. How would she live with
that
realization?

That afternoon, Rozsi asked her Aunt Klari to give her the taxi fare so she could take a ride somewhere. “By yourself?” Klari asked.

“I can manage,” Rozsi said, brushing back her hair.

“What about Lili?”

“I want to go on my own.”

Klari was about to discourage Rozsi but saw the determination in her niece’s eyes. Rozsi had the driver take her to the old building Zoli had stayed in, where he’d kept his darkroom. Some of the films were housed in the Swedish buildings and had been developed, but there might be pictures here that no one had seen.

When they arrived, the driver said the upper floors of the building had been bombed. She shouldn’t go in. Rozsi didn’t listen. She got out, and he asked if he should wait for her. She said she’d be a little while.

“I’ll wait,” he said.

Some of the furniture Zoli had scavenged was still there: the bed, the little table where they had drunk plum
palinka
together. She looked for hints of recent life, some food or water, the bed unmade, but saw nothing. He had tidied up nicely before he came to the building on Ulloi Street to see her on their last night.

She went straight to the door he’d told her contained his darkroom and found it was padlocked. Rozsi could have called the taxi driver to help her, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to break into the room herself. In the boiler room around the corner, she found a chisel and a brick. Using the brick as a hammer, she banged at the lock until she got through. She rubbed her hands together and got her breath back before opening the door. Inside, she saw the jars of developing liquid. She hunted for rolls of film and was relieved to find a small box of canisters, but then she saw the newspapers. They were back issues of the
Csillag
, the paper Zoli used to work for. She leafed through one, and a photograph fell out. It was a picture of a father and his two young daughters being escorted to the river by the Nyilas. The smaller of the two girls trailed behind. She wore a kerchief, as well as sandals and socks, just like her sister’s. Her legs were thin, and she was leaning forward in her rush to keep up with her father, sister and the soldier.

Rozsi searched the newspaper further and found another hidden photo. The same three figures, father and two daughters, were tied together, all of them facing outward, away from each other. The little girl had lost one of her sandals. If there were more photographs tucked into the paper, Rozsi didn’t want to see them.

She picked up another issue, dreaded what she would see next. There was a photograph tucked in it, too. It was a picture of her, Rozsi, at their bench in the Strawberry Gardens. It was a later photo, she could tell, because the bench was stripped of its seat and because Rozsi was wearing her ruby ring. It was the moment before Zoli had arrived. In a moment the worry would subside—he’d be there—she’d feel at ease again. It had become her role to wait. And now she’d wait some more, but for how long could she bear it?

She couldn’t look at anymore. She wanted to go, but had to see one last thing: the roof where the lovers had been shot. She worked her way up the stairs, past fallen brick, plaster and wooden beams. Three-quarters of the way up, she could smell the open air and thought she might get through. All she had to do was crawl over some rubble, which looked solid enough to support her. She made it all the way, had got her head out in the cool air, level with the gravel, when the crumbling stone beneath her feet gave out and sent her tumbling through to the floor below, plaster and wood coming down with her and covering much of her body.

It was the taxi driver who found her. When he dug her out, both of her legs were bleeding as well as her lower back. He rushed her out to the cab and laid her gently in the back seat. “You have to go back, please,” she said to him.

“Where?”

“You have to go and bring out some photographs and a box of film.”

That evening, her Uncle Robert looked Rozsi over and stitched the cut in her back. He gave her an extra tranquilizer to help settle her.

She wanted to know if there was any more news of people coming back. Robert said he saw people every day at the hospital. They were coming back with all kinds of ailments, but little that they couldn’t cure.

Thirty-Three

Budapest – March 7, 1945

AT FIRST
,
all they could say over the telephone was each other’s name.

“Istvan?”

“Paul.”

They’d made it.

“You’re back?” Paul asked.

“I was here all along.”

“I was hoping you were. We all were. And you’re in your office.”

“Yes, I’m back here in my dental office. Are you practising law?”

“No, not yet.”

“Oh.”

“I’m coming to see you,” Paul said. “I’ll get a car today. I’ll be there later today.”

“What about Rozsi?”

“Rozsi made it, too, but she might not come. She’s been waiting for her fiancé.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.”

“He was a photographer—
is
—he’s—”

“I have a little place on Alma Street in Tower Town, Number 22,” Istvan said. “Can you come for supper?”

“Of course I can.”

They held on, not saying goodbye yet.

“I’m not Jewish anymore,” Istvan said. “I gave it up. I’ve had it. The Russians don’t like Jews either. It was the first thing they asked when I requested my dental licence back.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them I wasn’t Jewish. Who needs it?”

Then Paul said it again, “Istvan,” not knowing what else to say.

“Come tonight, Paul.”

Paul didn’t want to drive the Alfa Romeo—it called too much attention to itself—but the Swedish embassy was glad to lend him the blue Buick that Raoul Wallenberg had sometimes used.

He first made a stop up near Rozsadomb, because he’d heard from a contact that Dr. Janos Felix, a man they’d saved from the transports, had an office there. Paul heard that Felix had treated a Russian man who might know where Raoul was.

Although Felix was not seeing a patient, Paul had some trouble getting in to speak to him. His secretary asked Paul to come back another time, but Paul knocked on the door to Felix’s office until the man answered.

Felix stood blocking the way in, his hand remaining on the door handle. “Mr. Beck, how good it is to see you.”

“Thank you,” Paul said, giving the door a little push. Felix stepped back, but only a step, and Paul advanced. “Did you treat a Soviet man,” he asked, “a Konstantin Zarodov?”

Felix merely looked at Paul, neither confirming nor denying what he was asking.

Paul said, “Zarodov might have information about Raoul Wallenberg’s meeting with the Russians in Debrecen. Did he tell you anything?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Felix said.

“You don’t know what I’m saying?” Paul could have strangled him. “Did you treat Zarodov?”

Felix broke into a sweat. From behind Paul, his secretary said, “Is everything all right?”

Paul said, “The man saved your life.”

Felix continued merely to look at Paul and grip the door handle.

Paul turned and left. He had to sit in the car to catch his breath. His mind reeled. He thought of all the good people he hadn’t managed to save. Was there a way of knowing in advance what they would be like?

Paul needed to move on. As he started the engine, he realized he was within a block of the place, years before, that his Uncle Bela had taken him and Istvan to see the Gypsy women. It was where he’d met Ruth.

He drove the block and parked again. The rickety old house was smaller than he’d remembered, but it was familiar to him. It was stubborn enough to have resisted the war and the weather. Paul stared at the building. He could not calm his heart.

He knocked lightly on the door but then stepped in. There was a woman there, sitting on a couch in the front parlour, smoking a cigarette. Could this have been the same red couch his uncle had sat in as he waited for his nephews to finish?

The woman said, “It’s early, but I’m sure I can rustle up a little happiness for you, if that’s what you’re after.”

Paul shrugged his shoulders. He felt awkward, embarrassed. “I’m looking for someone,” he said. “Her name was—is—Ruth.”

“We have no Ruth here.” The woman stubbed out her cigarette.

“She was—
is
—a Gypsy. Very pretty.”

“We have no Gypsies, never had them. We’re all Hungarians here. Purebloods.”

“Oh,” Paul said, “lucky you.”

“Do you want a cigarette?” she asked. He shook his head. She lit one for herself with her tarnished silver lighter.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Paul said. “May I?” He took a cigarette and accepted the lighter from the woman. The letters were almost worn away with use, but they were unmistakable: “MM.”

Paul took the Number 5 Road south toward Szeged. There was even a dusting of snow before noon, but shortly after the sky turned a chill blue. The air carried the promise of spring.

Paul asked himself what he was to do, now—renounce his Judaism, too, like Istvan—was that what one did? Was he to renounce his Hungarianism, renounce his manhood, his place in the species, his place among molecules?—or just the add-ons—the Judaism, the Hungarianism? He could be a man without a country, without a faith, without a woman. It was liberating—nothing limiting to hang on to, nothing to distinguish him. He could be Chameleon Man. Separation was the Fall, William Blake taught us. Starting up a universe was the Fall.

Yet he still felt affection for what he had, loyalty to his people, mixed with a little disdain. Why not? Could they follow him out of their differentness into the ocean of sameness? Could he lead anyone that way?

It was good to be Hungarian, good to be a Hungarian Jew. He did so miss Zsuzsi, the particularity of Zsuzsi, the way she spoke, the way she comported herself, the determined way in which she tightened her lips. And he missed Raoul, the grandness of his ambition, yet the humility special to him. Only he could be so humble, because only he could span a gap so wide between achievement and modesty. Paul would add to his complement his brother, his aunts Klari and Hermina, Lili, Rozsi. And he would add his father, because Paul could not have become what he’d become without his example.

He knew that even if he started a new planet, he’d be tempted the first night to lay down his weary head and say, This is mine. And that spot is for my wife, and those for my children. Over there, nearby, I need a spot for my friend Raoul—and just over there, a place for our café—and here a good school, because my children are very smart indeed—and there a house of worship—we’ll keep it down somewhat this time—and then, here we are again, at Eden’s exit—animals in a zoo, not in the wild—a Carnival of Animals.

Something stirred in him. He remembered the last time he’d seen Raoul, remembered the touch on the cheek. Paul’s face burned again. He was glad he was alone, glad to be driving away from Budapest.

Where are you, Raoul, and
who
are you? Did you come from the spirit world to run among the devils, only to fly back to it with your Russian pilot?

And having been touched by the Spirit, who have I become? And what am I to do, now? Go back to defending people able to buy their freedom? Open a café with a monkey in it? Sell shoes? Start a new faith? Was this a religious need, after all, a need to worship at an altar of my own devising? It’s a blessing to have served genius, but a curse to be one of the few wretches who recognized it for what it was.

Raoul, what have they done with you? Have they laid you out on some frozen Soviet slab to await resurrection? Shall I expect you by the eastern gates of Jerusalem?

How clever, Mr. Stalin, the cleverest of all—don’t hate some people, hate everyone. Kill everyone in your path—German, Ukrainian, Swede,
Russian
—even if you have to glorify them in doing so, even if you have to martyr them. Raoul, how are you to outwit an all-hating man, a man who knows only fear and is its great monger? And what do I do? What do I do?

Who are these Stalins? The lids of their eyes are locked open to receive only the ice-blue light, the angels and martyrs indistinct, lost and floating in the blue vapour. I hope a small consolation awaits you, Raoul, in that blue gas, knowing you’ve done what you’ve done, saved the last of a generation.

Was it possible, Raoul, that we stood on trains, or
in front of them
, and blew whistles? Was it possible we met with the Devil’s man, listened to his Beethoven, fully expected to be let go to resume our work,
were
let go?

If I can no longer follow, who am I to lead? Will you loom over the work of my remaining days, dear Raoul, blocking my view of all other life?

And there was the sun still, over the Number 5 Road, insistent, always aware of its place, its role.

Paul couldn’t park the Buick on Alma Street, because no one else would be able to get by, so he left it a block and a half away.

Marta met him at the door. She was beautiful, pregnant.

“Istvan didn’t mention me?”

He shook his head.

“I feel as if I know you. I’ve heard so much.”

She asked him in, and he had to duck to get through the doorway. Istvan came out of the bedroom. He was wiping his hands on a towel. Again, they paused to look at each other before coming together in an embrace. “There’s so much less of us,” Istvan said.

“And fewer—less and fewer.”

“This is Marta. She protected me.”

Right away, Paul saw the number on her arm. “Thank you,” he said. “It must have been very hard, terrible.”

Marta kissed Paul softly on the cheek. “Welcome,” she said, and went to get dinner ready while the two brothers caught up. They sat and went over the list, calling out the names, those missing, those who’d made it, relatives first, friends, public figures. They came back to the start, to their father, and both shook their heads and gazed at the floor.

Finally, Paul said, “You gave up your faith for a lovely Jewish woman?”

“She’s Catholic.”

“Barely,” Marta said. She came out to them. “He gave it up for himself.”

“I have little faith,” Istvan said. “Except I do believe in one thing. Convenience.”

Smetana jumped into Paul’s lap, startling him. But the cat just as quickly calmed him down. He curled up instantly and went to sleep. Paul chuckled, petted him.

Over dinner, they talked about everyone again, guessing what other course of action each might have taken. “Why speculate?” Marta asked them. “I know you’re both thinking men, but if you second-guess yourselves, you could be at it for a long time—
decades
, if you let yourselves.”

They knew she was right. Paul smiled and then went back to his meal. It was rabbit stew. “A patient brought the pot to me today,” Istvan said, “along with this homemade wine. It’s better than money.”

Paul raised his glass. Istvan said, “Another lady made this same meal for me when Marta was taken. Let’s drink to Anna Barta.”

Later, though Marta and Istvan had asked Paul to stay, he said he wanted to get back to Budapest. He promised he would bring Rozsi and the others next time. The dark night sky was as calm as the afternoon blue had been, and the road and the air, the memory of the dinner, the cat, Marta and the little house, warmed his way home.