The Fourth Estate (9 page)

The discipline
that had been instilled in him at the academy over the previous two years
allowed Lubji to carry on without food or rest until daybreak. When he
eventually slept, it was on the back of a cart, and then later in the front
seat of a lorry. He was determined that nothing would stop his progress toward
a friendly country.

Although freedom
was a mere 180 kilometers away, Lubji saw the sun rise and set three times
before he heard the cries from those ahead of him who had reached the sovereign
state of Hungary. He came to a halt at the end of a straggling queue of
would-be immigrants. Three hours later he had traveled only a few hundred
yards, and the queue of people ahead of him began to settle down for the night.
Anxious eyes looked back to see smoke rising high into the sky, and the sound
of guns could be heard as the Germans continued their relentless advance.

Lubji waited
until it was pitch dark, and then silently made his way past the sleeping
families, until he could clearly see the lights of the border post ahead of
him. He lay down in a ditch as inconspicuously as possible, his head resting on
his little leather case.

As the customs
officer raised the barrier the following morning, Lubji was waiting at the
front of the queue. When those behind him woke and saw the young man in his
academic garb chanting a psalm under his breath, none of them considered asking
him how he had got there.

The customs
officer didn’t waste a lot of time searching Lubji’s little case. Once he had
crossed the border, he never strayed off the road to Budapest, the only
Hungarian city he had heard of. Another two days and nights of sharing food
with generous families, relieved to have escaped from the wrath of the Germans,
brought him to the outskirts of the capital on 23 September 1939.

Lubji couldn’t
believe the sights that greeted him. Surely this must be the largest city on
earth? He spent his first few hours just walking through the streets, becoming
more and more intoxicated with each pace he took. He finally collapsed on the
steps of a massive synagogue, and when he woke the following morning, the first
thing he did was to ask for directions to the marketplace.

Lubji stood in
awe as he stared at row upon row of covered stalls, stretching as far as the
eye could see. Some only sold vegetables, others just fruit, while a few dealt
in furniture, and one simply in pictures, some of which even had frames.

But despite the
fact that he spoke their language fluently, when he offered his services to the
traders their only question was, “Do you have anything to se11?” For the second
time in his life, Lubji faced the problem of having nothing to barter with. He
stood and watched as refugees traded priceless family heirlooms, sometimes for
no more than a loaf of bread or a sack of potatoes. It quickly became clear to
him that war allowed some people to amass a great fortune.

Day after day
Lubji searched for work. At night he would collapse onto the pavement, hungry
and exhausted, but still determined. After every trader in the market had
turned him down, he was reduced to begging on street corners.

Late one afternoon,
on the verge of despair, he passed an old woman in a newspaper kiosk on the
corner of a quiet street, and noticed that she wore the Star of David on a thin
gold chain around her neck. He gave her a smile, hoping she might take pity on
him, but she ignored the filthy young immigrant and carried on with her work.

Lubji was just
about to move on when a young man, only a few years older than him, strolled up
to the kiosk, selected a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches, and then
walked off without paying the old lady. She jumped out of the kiosk, waving her
arms and shouting, ‘Thief! Thief!” But the young man simply shrugged his
shoulders and lit one of the cigarettes. Lubji ran down the road after him and
placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. When he turned round, Lubji said, “You
haven’t paid for the cigarettes.”

“Get lost, you
bloody Slovak,” the man said, pushing him away before continuing down the
street. Lubji ran after him again and this time grabbed his arm. The man turned
a second time, and without warning threw a punch at his pursuer. Lubji ducked,
and the clenched fist flew over his shoulder. As the man rocked forward, Lubji
landed an uppercut in his solar plexus with such force that the man staggered
backward and collapsed in a heap on the ground, dropping the cigarettes and
matches. Lubji had discovered something else he must have inherited from his
father.

Lubji had been
so surprised by his own strength that he hesitated for a moment before bending
down to pick up the cigarettes and matches. He left the man clutching his
stomach and ran back to the kiosk.

‘Thank you,” the
old woman said when he handed back her goods.

“My name is
Lubji Hoch,” he told her, and bowed low.

“And mine is
Mrs. Cerani,” she said.

When the old
lady went home that night, Lubji slept on the pavement behind the kiosk. The
following morning she was surprised to find him still there, sitting on a stack
of unopened newspapers.

The moment he
saw her coming down the street, he began to untie the bundles. He watched as
she sorted out the papers and placed them in racks to attract the early morning
workers. During the day Mrs. Ceram started to tell Lubji about the different
papers, and was amazed to find how many languages he could read. It wasn’t long
before she discovered that he could also converse with any refugee who came in
search of news from his own country.

The next day
Lubji had all the papers set out in their racks long before Mrs. Ceram arrived.
He had even sold a couple of them to early customers.

By the end of
the week she could often be found snoozing happily in the corner of her kiosk,
needing only to offer the occasional piece of advice if Lubji was unable to
answer a customer’s query.

After Mrs. Ceram
locked up the kiosk on the Friday evening, she beckoned Lubji to follow her.
They walked in silence for some time, before stopping at a little house about a
mile from the kiosk. The old lady invited him to come inside, and ushered him
through to the front room to meet her husband.

Mr. Cerani was
shocked when he first saw the filthy young giant, but softened a little when he
learned that Lubji was a Jewish refugee from Ostrava. He invited him to join
them for supper. It was the first time Lubji had sat at a table since he had
left the academy.

Over the meal
Lubji learned that Mr. Cerani ran a paper shop that supplied the kiosk where
his wife worked. He began to ask his host a series of questions about returned
copies, loss leaders, margins and alternative stock. It was not long before the
newsagent realized why the profits at the kiosk had shot up that week. While
Lubji did the washing up, Mr. and Mrs.

Cerani conferred
in the corner of the kitchen. When they had finished speaking, Mrs. Cerani
beckoned to Lubji, who assumed the time had come for him to leave. But instead of
showing him to the door, she began to climb the stairs. She turned and beckoned
again, and he followed in her wake. At the top of the stairs she opened a door
that led into a tiny room. There was no carpet on the floor, and the only
furniture was a single bed, a battered chest of drawers and a small table. The
old lady stared at the empty bed with a sad look on her face, gestured toward
it and quickly left without another word.

So many
immigrants from so many lands came to converse with the young man-who seemed to
have read every paper-about what was taking place in their own countries, that
by the end of the first month Lubji had almost doubled the takings of the
little kiosk. On the last day of the month Mr. Cerani presented Lubji with his
first wage packet. Over supper that night he told the young man that on Monday
he was to join him at the shop, in order to learn more about the trade. Mrs.
Cerani looked disappointed, despite her husband’s assurance that it would only
be for a week.

At the shop, the
boy quickly learned the names of the regular customers, their choice of daily
paper and their favorite brand of cigarettes. During the second week he became
aware of a Mr. Farkas, who ran the rival shop on the other side of the road,
but as neither Mr. nor Mrs. Cerani ever mentioned him by name, he didn’t raise
the subject. On the Sunday evening, Mr. Cerani told his wife that Lubji would
be joining him at the shop permanently. She didn’t seem surprised.

Every morning
Lubji would rise at four and leave the house to go and open the shop. It was
not long before he was delivering the papers to the kiosk and serving the first
customers before Mr. or Mrs. Cerani had finished their breakfast. As the weeks
passed, Mr. Cerani began coming into the shop later and later each day, and
after he had counted up the cash in the evening, he would often slip a coin or
two into Lubji’s hand.

Lubji stacked
the coins on the table by the side of his bed, converting them into a little
green note every time he had acquired ten. At night he would lie awake,
dreaming of taking over the paper shop and kiosk when Mr. and Mrs. Cerani
eventually retired. Lately they had begun treating him as if he were their own
son, giving him small presents, and Mrs. Cerani even hugged him before he went
to bed. It made him think of his mother.

Lubji began to
believe his ambition might be realized when Mr. Cerani took a day off from the
shop, and later a weekend, to find on his return that the takings had risen
slightly.

One Saturday
morning on his way back from synagogue, Lubji had the feeling he was being
followed. He stopped and turned to see Mr. Farkas, the rival newsagent from
across the road, hovering only a few paces behind him.

“Good morning,
Mr. Farkas,” said Lubji, raising his wide-rimmed black hat ...

“Good morning,
Mr. Hoch,” he replied. Until that moment Lubji had never thought of himself as
Mr. Hoch. After all, he had only recently celebrated his seventeenth birthday.

“Do you wish to
speak to me?” asked LubjJ1.

“Yes, Mr. Hoch,
I do,” he said, and walked up to his side. He began to shift uneasily from foot
to foot. Lubji recalled Mr. Lekski’s advice:

“Whenever a
customer looks nervous, say nothing.”

“I was thinking
of offering you a job in one of my shops,” said Mr. Farkas, looking up at him.

For the first
time Lubji realized Mr. Farkas had more than one shop. “in what capacity?” he
asked.

“Assistant
manager.”

“And my salary?”
When Lubji heard the amount he made no comment, although a hundred peng6s a
week was almost double what Mr. Cerani was paying him.

“And where would
I live?”

“There is a room
above the premises,” said Mr. Farkas, which I suspect is far larger than the
little attic you presently occupy at the top of the Ceranis’ house.”

Lubji looked
down at him. “I’ll consider your offer, Mr. Farkas,” he said, and once again
raised his hat. By the time he had arrived back at the house, he had decided to
report the entire conversation to Mr. Cerani before someone else did.

The old man
touched his thick moustache and sighed when Lubji came to the end of his tale.
But he did not respond.

“I made it
clear, of course, that I was not interested in working for him,” said Lubji,
waiting to see how his boss would react. Mr. Cerani still said nothing, and did
not refer to the subject again until they had all sat down for supper the
following evening. Lubji smiled when he learned that he would be getting a rise
at the end of the week. But on Friday he was disappointed when he opened his
little brown envelope and discovered how small the increase turned out to be.

When Mr. Farkas
approached him again the following Saturday and asked if he had made up his
mind yet, Lubji simply replied that he was satisfied with the remuneration he
was presently receiving. He bowed low before walking away, hoping he had left
the impression that he was still open to a counter-offer.

As he went about
his work over the next few weeks, Lubji occasionally glanced up at the large
room over the paper shop on the other side of the road. At night as he lay in
bed, he tried to envisage what it might be like inside.

After he had
been working for the Ceranis for six months, Lubji had managed to save almost
all his wages. His only real outlay had been on a secondhand double-breasted
suit, two shirts and a spotted tie which had recently replaced his academic
garb. But despite his newfound security, he was becoming more and more fearful
about where Hitler would attack next. After the Fuhrer had invaded Poland, he
had continued to make speeches assuring the Hungarian people that he considered
them his allies. But judging by his past record, “ally” was not a word he had
looked up in the Polish dictionary.

Lubji tried not
to think about having to move on again, but as each day passed he was made
painfully aware of people pointing out that he was Jewish, and he couldn’t help
noticing that some of the local inhabitants seemed to be preparing to welcome
the Nazis.

One morning when
he was walking to work, a passer-by hissed at Lubji. He was taken by surprise,
but within days this became a regular occurrence.