When the Summer Was Ours

by Roxanne Veletzos

  “Miss, don’t mind him,” said a soldier, pulling her assailant away by the sleeve. “My friend here apparently can’t resist a pretty face. Not that I blame him. I myself would swim across this river for a chance to speak with you.”

  She said nothing, just smiled as brightly and innocently as she could, waving a gloved hand somewhat flirtatiously as she walked on, knowing they were watching her. Her heart was drumming too fast, making her light-headed. Yes, tomorrow, she thought, tomorrow she would board that first train.

  On the other side of the river, she took the steps to the top of the hill, stopped to rest on a bench in front of Matthias Church, where she whispered a prayer of protection, unable still to shake the frisson of fear. Sweat had gathered under her arms, yet she forced herself to continue on, drifting farther into Buda’s maze of winding streets, with their majestic oaks and old-world quietness. Another right turn on Lovas út brought her not to someone’s lavish residence or opulent clothing store but what appeared to be the makeshift entrance to an air-raid bunker jutting out from a hillside.

  Her only instruction this time was to wait there, which she did, trying to see through the blackened windows above the sidewalk. A few minutes later, the gate opened and a dark-haired girl of about Eva’s age, in what looked to be a medic’s uniform, appeared, carrying a lantern. There wasn’t much of an introduction as she eyed Eva.

  “You are Mr. Georgy’s friend, I presume? César?”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s me.”

  “Well, good, then. Follow me.”

  A moment later, the girl led her at a slight distance through an underground labyrinth of passageways with peeling green paint and domed ceilings topped with exposed piping. A final turn brought them through an alcove and into a large storage area lined with rows of white metal cabinets. In the corner, an iron sink was filled with towels, rags. Some, Eva could see in the dim light, were splattered with blood.

  “Please wait here,” the girl said, placing the lantern down and turning it off. “Use this only in case the lights go out.”

  Then she was gone.

  Eva waited, her anxiety spiking with each passing moment. Ten minutes had come and gone, and no one had come to look for her. Had she been out of her mind to let herself be brought down here without asking what this place was? Was it possible she’d been caught in a trap? She poked her head through the archway and down the length of the corridor, trying to remember the way she came. A few minutes more, she decided, and then she would bolt. She would leave the package right on the floor, and she would run.

  Before she could withdraw back inside the room, a figure appeared at the end of the tunnel, a mid-statured man coming toward her at a fast clip, his steps echoing in the silence. She took in the white coat as the person came into view, the downcast, concentrated gaze lifting to her—and felt all the blood pool at her feet. The man also froze when he saw her. Long seconds passed as they stared at each other.

  “Eduard?”

  “What are you… Eva? What are you doing here?”

  His gaze shot past her shoulder, as if looking for an explanation, then landed on her again. In his eyes, she saw the initial confusion fade like a cinema screen going black, and something impenetrable and cold seeped in in its place. He’d thinned since their last encounter, although it wasn’t exactly a gaunt look, but one of chiseled hardness. The cords at his neck were as sinewy as sailing ropes, the temples deepened with gray. There was a weariness in the downturned corners of his mouth, which made no attempt to smile.

  “What are you doing here?” he repeated, quite roughly.

  “I… I was to deliver a package.” She fished the parcel from her bag, her hands trembling as she held it out to him. “This package, here.”

  He took it. Stared at it for an instant, maintaining the blank expression, his lips shaping around a soundless word. Then he laughed. It came like a rumble from deep in his chest, building into a full explosion.

  “You? You are our courier? Well, I have to say, you’re the last person I expected to see here. For something this bold, that is. Seeing how you didn’t have the courage to convey, as I believe I had the right, that you wanted nothing more to do with me.”

  She couldn’t get the words out, struggled to form something, aware that nothing would do, that there was no explanation to offer. “I’m so sorry, Eduard,” she began feebly. “You didn’t deserve that; you are right, and you have every reason to be angry with me, but it was complicated. It was a very confusing time for me, and it would have been difficult to explain to you the reasons.” She swallowed hard. “The reasons, I mean, why I had to leave Budapest. But I’m here now, and I’m trying to do the right thing. I’m trying… I’m trying to make a difference.”

  “Well, how wonderful that you’ve decided to return.”

  “I haven’t returned. Not really. I’m only here for a few days.” She was tempted to tell him that her father had died, that as of this morning, the Sopron villa was no longer hers, that so much had changed in her life, but it was absurd to think he would care. He was right. She’d exited his life like a coward. There wasn’t anything at all to speak of.

  “Eduard, I know there is no excuse for what I did. For whatever it’s worth, I want you to know that it had nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothing to do with me?”

  “I know you find that hard to believe, but it’s true. I never meant to cause you any harm. In a way, it was to protect you.”

  “To protect me? To protect me? You shattered my heart, Eva! Do you have any idea what it was like for me? I couldn’t work! For months, I couldn’t even work! All I could think of is that I managed to offend you somehow so deeply that you couldn’t even bother to write me a good-bye note. To leave me the way you did, without a single word, was… Well, whatever it was, whatever your reasons, they certainly were not for my protection.” He drew back, composing himself as he inhaled through his nose. “Well, thank you for the delivery. Good-bye, Eva.”

  He turned and walked away. She watched him go through the corridor and around the corner, and then she was alone again and had to lower herself to the ground. She didn’t even have the strength to cry. She just remained there on the cold, checkered tiles, leaning on the wall, hating herself.

  After some time, she made her way back to the street, embarking on what would be an exhausting trek home. She had to get away now. Budapest no longer had anything to do with her life now, and she thought it almost ironic that today of all days, this last string should be severed.

  God, how she missed Dora and Bianca.

  She quickened her step toward the Chain Bridge, but as she crossed through Fisherman’s Bastion, where she’d stopped to rest just an hour before, something disrupted her course. There was a disturbance in the air, a trembling. A hissing. She looked up at the sky, but the sky was clear. She saw only the spire of Matthias Church spearing the sky like a white medieval sword, and the usual scatter of pedestrians below in the square. Yet the sound was still there, growing, deafening in her ears.

  People were running in all directions, ducking under benches, under trees and alcoves. She caught sight of a woman’s red overcoat disappearing inside the church as the ground heaved underneath her feet. There was a spray of glass—she was inside it, she realized, flying through the air with the shards, twisting with them in a dance as beautiful as it was grotesque. Then the ringing stopped abruptly, as if someone had shut out the sound, and a white silence enfolded her, carrying her off as if in a dream.

  18

  Dachau

  Autumn 1944

  THE FACES THEMSELVES HELD NO particular meaning. It was only the features that Aleandro focused on—the arch of a nose, an eyebrow lifted slightly higher than the other, a strand of hair like an upside-down question mark over an exceedingly high forehead. Nothing existed beyond these features. The only way he could draw them at all was to deconstruct them in this way, to pull them apart, separate them from the person to whom they belonged.
<
br />   One by one, the guards came to him—or rather, he was brought to them in that same office where he first painted the commandant, and a choice, if such a thing existed here, had been offered. “If you can do something as good as this,” he recalled the commandant remarking from behind the massive oak desk, brandishing the sketchbook, “I may find a reason to spare you from the firing squad. I may find a way to overlook your… infraction.”

  In truth, Aleandro would have preferred facing the wall, yet, in the moments between standing in the courtyard and this stuffy room crammed with dossiers and an oil portrait of der Führer hanging above the desk, something had changed in him. A reversal of sorts. Eva had come to him on the brink of death, not to usher him to it but to pull him back. It wasn’t madness to see it as an omen, a sign that she was out there, still waiting for him. He’d never seen anything more clearly. And so, his choice that day had been more or less made for him. For her, and the chance to see her again, he would live.

  Since then, at least a dozen more guards passed through that very same chair. Most of them sat turned in profile, smoking, as Aleandro drew them, his fingers clutching the pastel stick so forcefully that it continued to break. Occasionally, they talked to him, these faces he couldn’t look upon as a whole. They told him about their families back in Munich or Hamburg, their children in Hitler’s youth camps, their wives and girlfriends they hadn’t seen in years and for whom the portrait would come as a welcome surprise. Once in a while came a special request: If he could fill in that slightly receding hairline or omit that scar slicing through the upper cheek, there would be a nice little reward for him at the end. If he could shave off a few years from beneath the weary eyes, he would be spared labor detail, or better yet, the cleaning of the latrines for one week.

  He didn’t mind cleaning the latrines, he explained time and time again. He did not want food, either, for what honesty would there be in accepting it? He wouldn’t betray the men in the barracks—not for a moldy bread roll or a grayish scrape of meat they wouldn’t feed to their dogs. All he wanted was to get back his sketchbook. For that alone, he would paint all of the guards ten times over, he would clean the latrines every day, he would work in the quarries until his palms bled. Most times he was laughed at, shoved out of the way, but one day, one day, the miracle he prayed for materialized.

  Something was tossed to the floor.

  “Here you go, maestro,” said one of the older guards, a man with a leathery, mottled face and bloodshot eyes, which regarded him with some detached curiosity. “This is what you’ve been asking for, isn’t it? Well, consider this an early advance. For what, I’m not sure. But surely there will be something. There always is.”

  Aleandro fell at the foot of the chair on which the guard sat and picked up the sketchbook. Holding it to his chest, he turned away, gathered the oil pastels in a tin box, and handed the man his portrait.

  “My God, she seems quite above your station, doesn’t she?” There was an indifferent shrug as the guard swiped his coat from the back of the chair, narrowly missing Aleandro’s face. “Well, we all fall for the wrong woman, don’t we? God knows my choices haven’t been all that different. But my one piece of advice for you is that you get yourself together.” He laughed as he made his way to the door. “If I were in your place, I would try to forget her. It’s not like you’ll ever see her again.”

  All Aleandro could do was nod numbly. After the guard left, he crouched on the floor, muttering a prayer of thanks to the patch of sky in the window, where a gray column of smoke billowed above the distant scattering of cypress trees.

  For many nights after, he held the sketchbook in his hands, sinking into dreams of her. Every detail had become a source of concentration, a source of sleeplessness: The tiny specks of gold in the depth of her blue pupils. The sprinkle of freckles on her tanned shoulders, like stardust flicked from a hand. The silver ball in her earlobe catching a glint of sun as she pushed back her hair and tucked a daisy behind her ear. These simple details were most important to him: from these details he could reconstruct the larger ones. He regretted drawing them in only charcoal, wished he had just once captured Eva in color.

  In the morning, he placed the sketchbook underneath the mattress, got on with whatever was required of him, no longer caring what he had become. No longer caring that he was no more than a puppet on a string that the guards would keep alive as long as his hands kept producing.

  And so, days passed, months, soon nearly half a year. At some point he no longer saw himself as human, but as a force floating outside of a body, which he regarded with increasing detachment. Flesh set apart only by a sea of armbands: red for Communists, purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses, the yellow star for the Jews. Black for vagrants, criminals. Brown for people like him. They were all just flesh, sleepwalking on the periphery of life.

  * * *

  One afternoon in late October, a new prisoner was shoved into his barrack—a small-framed man with a pronounced Adam’s apple and skin as translucent as a day-old corpse’s. As soon as the guards left, the man went down to his knees, then collapsed to the floor in stages, as if releasing a long-held breath. To have been brought here, to this barrack occupied mostly by labor prisoners, seemed a mistake, for someone drenched in sweat and weak as he was would have been taken straight to the infirmary, or worse, to the brick building in the back of the camp from which no one returned.

  The others didn’t notice him: clustered in groups, they talked quietly among themselves while others sat on their bunks with vacant looks, dreaming of food. It was Aleandro who scooped the man up in his arms and carried him to the back, where he laid him in a crevice between the bunks and the wall. From his canteen, he poured water on his sleeve and swiped it across the man’s fevered temples.

  “Köszönöm.”

  “What did you say?” Gently, Aleandro shook his shoulder, then again, a little more forcefully. “What did you say?” He was nearly sure that he heard it correctly. Thank you. “Tell me, are you Hungarian? Are you from Hungary?”

  Hoping to revive him, Aleandro lifted the man’s head and poured some water into his mouth, but only some nonsensical, feeble ramblings came in response. For the rest of the night, all he could do was to keep vigil, rocking him gently as he might have one of his brothers, dribbling more water into his mouth as his frail body thrashed and shivered. “Stay awake, stay with me,” he kept whispering, something that seemed meant not just for him but for his brothers as well, and all the others he’d seen die, far from home, alone, broken. After some time, Aleandro lay down next to him and draped his coat over them both. Warmth was perhaps the only small comfort that he could offer.

  At dawn, when Aleandro’s eyes flickered open, the man was no longer beside him. Disoriented, he staggered to his feet, and in the silence of the barrack, his heart plunged.

  “Damn it! Damn, Aleandro!” he shouted to himself. Then, in the semidarkness, he spotted a mound on one of the empty bunks and flew like mad over the planks.

  The man lay there with his knees drawn to his chest, facing the wall, and at first Aleandro hesitated to touch him, afraid that when he did there would be no movement, only the definitive stillness of a lifeless body. But the man did stir ever so slightly, and when Aleandro rolled him onto his back he was met not by a blank stare but by one so lucid, so present, that it jolted him away.

  “I thought you were dead,” murmured Aleandro in Hungarian, overcome with such sharp relief that his throat ached with tears. “I didn’t think you would live to see the sun come up this morning. I was almost certain of it. But here you are, alive.”

  The man motioned for Aleandro to come closer. He smelled rank, and his cheeks were hollowed, as if the flesh had been scraped with a scalpel from the bones sustaining them, but his smile was utterly serene and untroubled as a full moon on a clear night.

  “I nearly was dead,” he whispered in Aleandro’s ear. “It’s a small miracle. A miracle indeed, my dear friend, that last night you didn’t
drown me with all that water.”

  * * *

  His name was Rudolf. Rudolf Luben, born and raised in Budapest, the eldest child of a Romanian Jewish mother and a French father whose ill-fated move to Hungary before the war had landed him in this unfortunate circumstance. He had inherited his mother’s petite stature, but certainly not her fiery temper. No, Rudolf was a man who measured his words as well as his actions, a man who used his intellect as a weapon. An educated man. That much was clear to Aleandro from the way Rudolf spoke, using eloquent words he barely understood, yet somehow managing to make more sense than anyone ever had in all of his twenty-four years. And his eyes: there was a warmth in his whiskey-colored eyes, a glimmering light that seemed to belong to a madman at first, but now he viewed it as something entirely different. Rudolf seemed to float over all this horror as if he were observing it from above, and learning.

  “So, tell me, Aleandro,” Rudolf said in the following weeks, challenging Aleandro to see beyond their grim reality. “What of all this bothers you most? Is it the baseness, the humiliation we must endure, or the fact that such cruelty is inherent in human nature?”

  “Both, I suppose. What about you?”

  “Well, certainly I don’t enjoy not knowing when my last day will come, but too much focus on the self leads to nothing constructive. Because when all a man thinks about is his own survival, he becomes no better than an animal. Fear can turn you into that, you know.”

  Until now, Aleandro had numbed himself in order to survive, but since meeting Rudolf, his humanity began to reawaken a little more each day in the hardened terrain of his soul.