“They are beautiful. The most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”
“They are true,” he said in reply.
And they both looked out to the glassy pond, where a fishing canoe glided solitarily.
* * *
As the sunset deepened into a purple haze, Eva and Aleandro sat together in the grass and she told him things she’d never shared with anyone, not even Eduard: things about her life, her family. About her mother’s death and how Eva found herself grasping for anything that would keep her alive in her mind, and about her happiest days, when they were still a family, when she still had a mother as much as a father, who, at some point, was lost to her as well. She told him her dreams of becoming a nurse were important to her, because she didn’t want to become trapped, like many women of her standing, in a life of idle meaninglessness.
In turn, he told her about the meaning of his art and what he felt when he was drawing. How he hoped that someday, if he applied himself, it might lead him to a better life. He confessed about his parents, who had died two years prior in the typhus epidemic, which had torn through the gypsy town, and his younger brothers, whom he’d been taking care of ever since.
“Look,” he said, extracting a battered sepia photograph from his pants pocket. “That’s them. My brothers. I carry their picture in my pocket so I can never forget the reason for my existence. And I love them, Eva. I want to be a good father to them, to give them a happy childhood. That is my greatest purpose.”
Her eyes misted studying the photograph. They both had wounds, yet perhaps in these moments together, they found some measure of healing, and she set her head on his shoulder.
“Your portraits,” she said in the long pause that ensued. “You know that I can’t keep them.”
“Why? Why can’t you?”
“Because I wouldn’t be able to explain where they came from. I’d have to hide them in a drawer, and such lovely things should not be hidden. They should be kept in the open.”
“Well, perhaps they don’t belong on a mantel behind framed glass. But there will be more, and I hope you will at least indulge me by looking at them. No one else has to know of them. Only us.”
And she believed it. She believed that those portraits belonged only to him and her, that they were simply a glimpse in time that no one else had seen, nor ever would. And also, she knew that indeed more facets of her would be caught in the strokes of his pencils, perhaps her right now, in the grass next to him. But of this she couldn’t approve openly, and without further word, she got up and fetched her bike. As she rode off, she knew he was watching her, and her heart in that moment never felt fuller.
8
THE SOPRON ESTATE, WITH ITS optimal sun exposure and stark change in temperature from day to night, had every advantage to produce some of the best wine in all of Europe. Sándor Bartok decided this as he strolled through the province that late afternoon. Now that his son and wife had departed along with the others for Vienna, he could finally tackle the reason for his visit, and the afternoon seemed like the perfect time. It hadn’t taken him long, after all, in those very first days after arrival, to see that a grape-export business here would bring in a small fortune. Three hundred acres of vineyards packed with the tightest, most translucent, most perfect grapes that he had ever seen—and that aroma! In each grape he tasted, it was as though a different bottle revealed itself, and the variations—from dry, to sweet, to dark—had made him nearly giddy with excitement.
He was not a man of rash decisions and wanted to see the full land for himself. Besides, the more he reflected on Vladimir’s proposition over the past week, the more he began to see how myopic it had really been. So much more than grape export could be mined from a land such as this. Over the past two nights in particular, his vision had expanded from a modest label to one not so modest, if he was willing to open his pockets wide. Twenty thousand bottles—no, fifty—could be produced every year. He’d practically designed the label in his dream: the lush view from the veranda faded in sepia tones, his name, Bartok, in gold lettering as if emerging from the depths of the hillside. Fifty thousand bottles carrying his name, competing with even the most pretentious ones from the Loire Valley or Bourgogne.
The only thing dampening his vision—and the other reason for this prolonged promenade—was to see for himself the gypsy camp near the estate, which was less than ideal. All he could hope for, as he walked on through the rows of vines then down the small gravel road toward the dreaded site, was that things would settle themselves of their own accord quickly. It was about time that Hungarian authorities stopped dragging their feet and followed the example of his own country. As far as he was concerned, these gypsies were no more than vermin who could only be counted on to steal from the cellars. The sooner they were all rounded up and transported east, the better.
He strolled farther on. Perhaps it was there, on that very bank, which the gypsies insisted on polluting with their rags and filth, that he could set up his wine cellars—if all went his way by the time the papers were signed.
Yet he had come a little too late in the day, he realized, too late to survey the full activity to his satisfaction. Only two figures hovered on the edge of the pond, their silhouettes a blur in the flare of brightness reflected in the water. They looked like something he sometimes spotted on the covers of his wife’s romance novels—both slim, young, striking—although in this tableau, unlike in those covers, they were not intertwined in a swirl of passion. Only their heads were bent together as if they were sharing a confession. The girl threw her head back and laughed, and that was when Sándor saw who it was, and withdrew in the shade of a tree.
A little while longer he watched them. It was her, all right. Vladimir’s daughter. He had to stifle a laugh, recalling her at today’s lunch, tapping her foot under the table, pressing her lips as he complimented her on her dress, and how she’d looked away from him in the middle of the next sentence, offering him her beautiful profile as if it was enough contribution to what he was saying. And here she was, sitting in the meadow like a common peasant, with her feet stripped of shoes. And with a man, no less—a man who was surely not her fiancé. No, far from it. A moment longer Sándor studied him, the wildness of his hair, the dark skin and threadbare shirt.
He turned away in disgust. Of course, he might have gone to her, presented himself, admonished her as he might his own daughter. But he would do nothing of the kind.
He smiled as he departed quietly in the other direction. The ache in his bones lightened at what he could only see as an advantage. An advantage in his negotiation with Vladimir.
July 20, 1943
My dearest Eva,
I speak from the heart when I say that Budapest without you is like a dreary day in winter with no promise of sun, or warmth. The things that I’ve seen, Eva, in the past weeks fill me only with desire for a different decision, if one could have been made.
They say that forty thousand Hungarian boys were killed on the Eastern Front and that sixty thousand more are now prisoners beyond our borders. That the ones who have made it home are the lucky ones. Though how can they be lucky, I often ask myself, how, when they arrive in such a state? Some have been dragged through the snow across the border crossing, some arrived wearing no shoes and with wounds festering behind soiled bandages. Nearly all of them suffer from dysentery, and there is little I can do for so many of them. I look into each pair of eyes, hold each boy’s hands, lift water to his lips. I tell him he will be all right, that he must be strong, knowing well enough that at sundown, when I return for my rounds, a different soldier will occupy this very same bed. And I weep, Eva, I weep when no one is looking.
When I leave the hospital at midnight, Budapest unfolds calmly, though it is a heavy calmness. Horthy holds strong against Hitler’s wishes for mass deportations, although with the latest news out of Poland, I’m gripped with a terrible fear for what might still come. A colleague of mine suggests that if he is to continue along this path
, a full invasion of Hungary is likely. Words of pessimism, which I choose not to believe. Certainly, with such disastrous losses at the hands of the Red Army, Germany cannot sustain this madness much longer. It is what I pray for, what we all pray for.
How are you, my darling? I haven’t heard a word from you since you left. Perhaps in Sopron, away from all this, you do not want to hear of such things. I do not blame you, but honesty is what we’ve promised each other, Eva, and I know that any other words beyond these genuine ones would only worry you. All I can say is that in the dreariness of my days, my thoughts of you and our wonderful spring together console me. In my dreams I am there at your side, walking the vineyards with you, hearing your voice soft in my ear telling me, as you did on our last evening together, that you love me. Please write, dearest.
Yours,
Eduard
9
THE LATEST LETTER FROM EDUARD was still on Eva’s nightstand, unopened. In the four days since it arrived, she’d picked it up and set it down more than a dozen times, unable to read it. At some point, she considered sending back a letter of her own, explaining that the wedding arrangements had been made in haste and she needed more time. He wouldn’t be happy, but he would understand in his generous, kindhearted way, and once she was free of the impending event, she would figure out what to do next. But figure out what, exactly? Whatever it was that she felt for Aleandro, it was all so very new and fragile, as easily breakable as a porcelain cup. And could she really give up Eduard? Could she give up the life she’d envisioned for herself with him, her dreams for the future?
Still, despite her endless consternation, for the third night in a row she slipped out at half past ten and made her way to the edge of the estate, where Aleandro would wait for her near an abandoned wine cellar, which had become their meeting place. The first two nights they went no farther—they just sat in the grass and he showed her his latest work under the dim light of a lantern—but tonight, he did not bring his sketchbook.
Rather, they walked farther through the field of high grass to the top of the hill opposite the villa, from which she could make out the faint contour of the gypsy camp. To the left of the clustered rooflines and garments strewn on crisscrossing lines, a spark of light bloomed in the darkness. A bonfire, Eva recognized, as they kept walking closer.
Twenty-odd figures were gathered around it—women with babies in their laps, older children roughhousing, men playing cards and passing a flask around, laughing—and she was struck by the beauty of the scene, knowing that in the circles of her life dominated by propriety and etiquette, she would never know what it was like to share such closeness. A fiddler—the elderly one she recognized from the villa—launched into a ballad, a soft, tremulous melody that seeped through her like a warm liquid. There were words in the gypsy dialect, which Eva didn’t understand, and she hesitated going any closer.
“It’s all right,” Aleandro said. “I promise. You don’t have to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid of them. Not any more than I’m afraid of you,” Eva said haughtily, and he laughed. “It’s more that… well, it doesn’t seem right. I don’t think they will like it.”
“There are no rules here, Eva. Here, there is only freedom. Freedom, and the magic of the night that belongs to us all. You’ll see.”
Yet she wasn’t entirely wrong, for as they emerged into plain view, the voices and the music trailed off.
“This is Eva,” Aleandro announced. His words hung in the air listlessly, and Eva took a step back, but Aleandro grasped for her hand. “She is my friend. And she came to hear you play, not to see you stare. So come on, let’s get on with it. Let’s show the lady how we play among ourselves.”
With some murmurs of disapproval, the figures around the fire finally resumed movement and the notà picked up again. Someone handed her plum brandy in a rusty tin cup, as if daring her to drink it, and a little girl scooted herself closer to her mother to make room, still regarding Eva suspiciously.
Next to Aleandro, Eva sat, pulling the folds of her skirt tightly around her. There was a guitar playing now, a rich, raspy voice joining it, the quick, rhythmic clapping of hands, the metallic thump of a tambourine. Closing her eyes, she tipped her head back to the stars, then somehow she was on her feet again, her hand in Aleandro’s.
It was like no other dance she knew, so she let him lead her. She stumbled and laughed, and he pulled her closer, his arm tightening around her waist. She tried to focus on her feet, but all that she was acutely aware of was his hand on the small of her back, there, where it burned through her dress, and the hardness of his shoulders under her fingertips. For an instant she closed her eyes, overcome with the brandy and his proximity, and when she opened them again, he was staring down at her. All she had to do was tilt her chin up to him and his lips would be on hers.
A boy launched himself at his legs. It jolted Eva, broke the spell, and with her heart still pounding, she watched Aleandro bend down to pick up the boy.
“Sweet Jesus! You sneaky little rascal! What are you doing here at this hour? You scared me half to death!”
The boy only gave a raspy little laugh and Aleandro lifted him onto his shoulders. From above him, the boy beamed at Eva. He had beautiful eyes, exactly like Aleandro’s, large and dark, endless in depth. That smile, she thought, it was the most beautiful smile she’d ever seen on a child.
“Well, who’s this?” she said. “Let me guess. Are you Lukas?”
“Ah! You know me! You know my name!” He leaned down and whispered in Aleandro’s ear, even though it was loud enough that Eva could hear. “Can we bring her home, Andro? Tamás made soup. Maybe she’s hungry. She looks awful skinny. But real pretty. She’s prettier than in your pictures.”
“Soup?” said Aleandro, quirking an eyebrow. “Well, I don’t know. Besides, you should be sleeping.” He gave Lukas’s leg a firm tap and set him back down on the ground. “When are you going to start listening to me? Just a week ago you were burning up like a cinder and now you’re running around at almost midnight. I told you before, I told you a dozen times: if you’re going to get your strength back, you need to rest!”
In reply, the boy stretched his arms over his head and pushed himself to a handstand, wiggled his spindly little legs in the air, then came back up with a triumphant smile. “See? I’m strong again. Now can we bring her?”
“No, Lukas, I don’t think she’s hungry at this hour…”
“I’d love to come,” said Eva. “I’d love to come! Thank you for your invitation, Lukas. As it turns out, I’m famished. And I’d love to meet your brothers.”
* * *
There wasn’t any soup. It was all a ruse, and all Aleandro could offer her in a hurry was water and a drop of overly sweet homemade wine, but it hardly mattered. At the small wooden table, she sat with his brothers who were drawing pictures of their own with some old pastel bits, as if to compete with Aleandro. There was only a lantern on the table, the nubs of coloring sticks no bigger than pencil erasers—a treasure trove. They fought over them, fought with such fierceness that Aleandro threatened to throw all the colors into the pond if they didn’t quit.
“I’m sorry, they can be very unruly sometimes,” he offered to Eva, then a little louder in their direction: “Downright rebellious! Tonight, it seems, especially!”
“Oh, they are fine, Aleandro.” Eva laughed, as the boys were now poking one another under the table with their feet. “They are lovely! And who would have known, such budding little artists?”
She was tempted to blurt out that she could buy new pastels for them, and for Aleandro, too, but knew he would find it insulting, and she wasn’t going to go back there again. Instead, she rose from the table and pushed through the threadbare cloth that separated the kitchen from the rest of the space. “Did I tell you that I’m an artist, too?” Silence greeted her from the other side. She poked her head through. “No soup, but I see you have lemon and garlic. And some leftover bread. And, from what I can
gather here, some rosemary and olive oil.” She held up the little tavern jar and the bunched herbs. “And do you know what you get when you mince all these things together? No, maybe you don’t. So you’re in for a treat.”
She glanced at Aleandro, saw him smiling widely in the same way Lukas had smiled at her at the fire earlier.
“Don’t move,” he said. “Stay like that for just one moment longer.” Then he reached for one of the pastel bits and a sheet of paper on the table, and as she stood in the partition holding the jar and the herbs, he drew her.
* * *
Their meetings after that night were no longer contained solely to the hours after dark. Her father (to Eva’s great relief) was absorbed in business, and he spent entire afternoons in his study or entertaining that awful man he hoped would become his partner. Often Eva would go into town and watch Aleandro play, not minding Dora’s warnings and endless reproaches. Later they’d walk back together to the gypsy camp, and she would fill him in on things she was learning in her anatomy books. He in turn would talk about his art, which seemed to preoccupy him a great deal lately.
“This painting I do,” he told her one such afternoon. “It feels urgent, like it demands to be heard. But often I think, is this just an indulgence? A foolish dream? I mean, I should be focused only on caring for my sweet brothers, Lukas above all, whose health has been fragile since he was born. Yet I want my brothers, my people, to be left with a legacy, and my drawings may be all I can offer. I want to leave something of significance behind; I want my brothers to know that they were raised in a beautiful culture, a place of love and acceptance. That, to me, is equally important.”
When the Summer Was Ours Page 5