My Canary Yellow Star (2 page)

“Please, Mama! Please, Papa!” I begged. “Listen to Madam! She knows what she is talking about!”

“Going to work is out of the question for you, Marta,” Mama said. She turned to Madam. “Thank you for your offer. But you must not trouble yourself about us. I can take care of my family.”

“Of course, Mrs. Weisz,” Madam said stiffly. “Please remember that should the need arise, my offer will be open.” Although she was addressing Mama, Madam was looking at me.

I didn’t want to make my parents feel worse by crying, so I went to my private place – the landing at the top of a short flight of stone steps leading to the back entrance of our apartment block. The rays of the spring sun warmed my face. I was so absorbed in my wretchedness that a light tap on my arm made me jump. Peter Szabo was peering down at me in consternation.

“Marta, why are you crying? Tell me what’s wrong, Shorty.”

Even in my misery, I grinned at hearing my nickname. “Everything’s horrible! I had the worst morning of my life. First, my school closed and then –”

“Come on, Shorty. I thought you hated school.”

“But that wasn’t the worst of it! When I got home, Papa received his conscription notice. He has to leave tomorrow morning to dig ditches in Yugoslavia.” I could feel tears filling my eyes again. “What will happen to him? When is he going to come home? How will we manage without him?”

Peter sat down on the step beside me and put his arm around my shoulders. He let me howl until I couldn’t cry any more.

“Good, you finally calmed down. Come home with me. You’ll have to wash your face before you’re a fit sight for human company. You don’t want your parents to see you like this.”

Peter lived on the fifth floor of our apartment building. When we were younger, Ervin and I spent countless hours
at his place, playing dominoes or Snakes and Ladders on cold winter evenings. If the weather was good, we’d be on the sidewalk in front of our block, playing tag and hide-and-go-seek.

A sweet Liszt melody greeted us when Peter opened the front door of his apartment.

“Peter! Marta! How nice to see you, sweetheart,” trilled Peter’s mother, jumping up from the piano bench. “What are you two doing home at this time of the day?” She looked at my tear-stained face.

“We were let out early, Mother, because of the Occupation,” Peter said.

I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face and combed my hair. When I returned to the salon, I could see by Mrs. Szabo’s frown that Peter had told her about my father. I sunk down into the comfortable sofa.

“Can I get you something to …” Her voice trailed off as a key turned in the front door. “Why, Dezso! I wasn’t expecting you till much later. Look who –”

“Later, Agi! Later!” growled Peter’s father, then he turned on his heels and left the room without greeting me. I was astonished because he usually made much of me, calling me his special pet and telling me how pretty I was.

“You must forgive Dezso his lack of manners, Marta. He has a lot on his mind. It’s been difficult in the foreign office for him. But I mustn’t say too much.”

“Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Szabo, I understand. Well, I should be heading home. I want to see Papa before –”

“Just a minute!” Mrs. Szabo disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a parcel wrapped in a snowy napkin. “I baked poppy-seed rolls this morning. I know how much your father likes them,” she said. “I heard they cut your rations again. I hope your poor mother will be able to manage.”

I tried to give back the package. “Thank you very much. It’s very generous of you, but I don’t think my parents would want me to accept this.”

“Nonsense, Marta,” Mrs. Szabo said. “You know how close Dezso and I are with your folks.” Peter’s parents and Mama and Papa had been playing canasta on Thursday nights for as long as I could remember.

“Tell your father that I’ll pop down later to say goodbye,” Mrs. Szabo added as I was leaving the apartment. She made it sound as if Papa was going on a joyful vacation.

We woke up at dawn, even Grandmama Weisz. Although she usually lived alone in a cozy apartment on Rose Hill in Buda, she had come to us as soon as Papa phoned her with the terrible news. She wanted to be with Papa when he left.

“Look at all these glum faces!” Papa smiled at us with false cheer when we sat down at the breakfast table. A
small vein throbbed in his temple. Grandmama’s face was ashen, and Mama hid hers behind the coffee pot, her eyes red and puffy. She didn’t even make any comment when I took some coffee. No one seemed to notice that Ervin and I were quiet. I was afraid I would begin to cry like Mama if I tried to talk. Ervin kept cracking his knuckles.

“Cheer up, Nelly,” Papa said to Mama. He patted her hands, which she held tightly clasped on the tabletop in front of her. “I won’t be gone for long. You’ll see! I’ll be back before you can even miss me!”

Mama buried her face in her hands.

“Aron, promise me you’ll write often,” Grandmama said.

“Every day, Mother. Every day. I promise,” Papa said. “I want you to promise me something too, Mother. I am worried sick about you being all alone in your apartment. And with your heart condition and the extra expense with me gone … It would be so much easier if you moved in with Nelly and the children.”

“I’d love to have your company, Grandmama,” my mother added in an encouraging tone. “The children and I would be so much less lonely with you here.”

Grandmama shook her head. “I don’t know. What about my apartment? I can’t just leave it and all my beautiful things behind.”

“Mother, you know that Colonel and Mrs. Nagy would jump at the chance to rent it from you. They’ve been badgering you about it for years. They love the location.” Papa
was growing impatient, “Having you here, with Nelly and the children, would mean so much to me, Mother,”

“Well, Aron, since you put it like that, …, I’ll telephone Colonel Nagy later today to see if they’re still interested,” She smiled at Papa fondly.

He gave a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Mother. I’m glad that’s settled. It was weighing on my mind. Nelly, you’ll contact my patients? Let them know that I had to go?”

Mama nodded silently.

“Mrs. Szabo was going to come down to say goodbye. I guess something must have come up,” I said.

Papa glanced at the grandfather clock ticking in the corner for a long moment, then stood up from the table. “Well … unfortunately, it’s time for me to go,”

We bade farewell in a sea of tears. When it was my turn to be hugged by him, Papa drew me very close and whispered in my ear: “You’re like me, Marta: strong. Take good care of your mother and Ervin – and Grandmama.”

I nodded as I felt my father’s lips in my hair. Then Ervin claimed him.

Papa refused to allow us to accompany him to the railway station, but Ervin carried his knapsack down to the street. We crowded in the doorway to watch Papa’s tall figure, slightly bent under the weight of the heavy bag, get smaller and smaller as he walked down the long avenue. Every few steps, he turned around to wave to us. Then, with a final wave, he turned the corner and was gone.

H
ow do I look, Marta?” Mama asked. She twirled in front of me.

“Very fashionable! Very pretty! I’d hire you for sure if you came to me for a job.”

“I wish I could! That would solve all our problems,” she said, laughing. She shrugged on a loden green coat. The April air outside was nippy. “My jacket is a bit threadbare, but it’s still stylish, isn’t it? I don’t want to look shabby.” I nodded my reassurance. “You did a wonderful job darning that nasty tear, dear.” She held up her sleeve for my inspection. “The repair is barely visible. Well, wish me luck, darling!”

“Good luck, Mama! I’ll stay home till you get back.”

I spent the afternoon tidying up our apartment. I even went into Papa’s office to dust his books. While straightening
the papers on his desk and putting them into a neat pile, I uncovered an ashtray with a pipe in it. I picked it up and held it near my nose, inhaling its scent. I imagined Papa sitting at his desk, his pipe dangling precariously from the corner of his mouth, doing his paperwork after the last patient of the day was gone.

By the time I had helped Grandmama dust Mama’s Herend figurines, delicate shepherds and shepherdesses frozen in perpetual happiness, dusk was falling. There was still no sign of Mama. I could see how worried Grandmama was by the way she kept peering into the darkness. Ervin repeated “Shouldn’t Mama be home by now?” so often that finally I screamed at him to be quiet.

“You’re too old for such outbursts,” Grandmama admonished me. “A lady always keeps her temper.”

We were so absorbed in our squabble that we didn’t hear Mama come in. Her quiet voice startled us. “What’s going on? What’s the matter?” she asked. Her hair was disheveled and her tired face was smudged with dirt.

“You are so late! We were getting worried,” Ervin cried.

I helped Mama pull off her coat. The red suit underneath was limp and stained. She walked over to the sofa and sat down. “I am so tired,” she said.

I noticed that her nails were broken and dirty.

“Let me get you a cup of tea, Nelly,” Grandmama said.

“Thank you, dear. That would be nice.”

After a few sips, she seemed to revive. “Well,” she said, “the good news is that I got a job. It wasn’t easy. I took with me a list of the businesses owned by Papa’s patients. I kept having snooty secretaries tell me that ‘Mr. Magyar is in a meeting,’ or ‘Mr. Lakatos is out for the day,’ or ‘Mr. Peto is not hiring at the moment.’ Finally, I got to Mr. Szabados’s furniture warehouse, and I happened to meet him face to face. He would have passed me by as if he had never met me before, but I caught hold of his sleeve and stopped him,” Mama said. She sounded angry.

“‘I am Nelly Weisz, Mr. Szabados,’ I told him. ‘Don’t you remember me? My husband-was your physician.’ The man had the grace to blush. Well, to make a long story short, I asked him for a job. After lamenting the sorry state of his business for several minutes, he told me that the only opening he had was for a cleaner in the warehouse. ‘I don’t think such a position would suit you, dear Mrs. Weisz,’ he said. He was taken aback when I accepted the job. I was late coming home because I started immediately. It’s dirty work, but I’ll get used to it,” she said cheerfully.

“Oh, Mama! A cleaner!” I couldn’t imagine my glamorous mother doing such menial work.

“I’ll leave school! I want to help,” Ervin said.

“Don’t even think about it!” Mama said. “There is nothing wrong with my job. It’s honest work, and I feel lucky that I got a job at all. I’ll be good at it. I have enough practice picking up after the two of you,” she added.

“How much will they pay you?” Grandmama asked.

“That’s the bad news. My salary is only eight hundred pengos.”

“Oh, Nelly, what will we do? With all the inflation, I had to pay eighty pengos for a loaf of bread yesterday. We’ll need at least two to three thousand to survive.”

Mama ran her fingers wearily through her hair. “Well, Grandmama, we’ll have to manage on eight hundred pengos somehow, because I can’t get more.”

“But I can! I’m going to ask Madam for a job.”

“Absolutely not, Marta! I forbid it!” Mama said.

“Marta is right,” Grandmama said. “We need the money she could be earning. We won’t be able to manage without it.”

“Please, Mama! Let me go to Madam’s!”

My mother began to cry and drew me into a tight embrace. “Your father would be so angry! So disappointed!”

“Then we won’t tell him.”

“This isn’t what I want for you, darling.”

“I know, Mama. I know. But we have no choice. Once the war is over, Papa will come home, I’ll go back to school, and everything will be as before.”

The next morning, I was sitting on a straight-backed chair in Madam’s office at the back of her salon on elegant Vaci Street. I tried not to rush my words.

“I came to accept your offer of a job, Madam. My mother was able to get work, but she is poorly paid. We can’t make ends meet on her salary.”

“Does your mother know that you have come to see me, Marta?”

“Yes, Madam. Mama knows.”