Midnight Train to Prague

by Carol Windley

  * * *

  Natalia and Miklós talked about going back to Berlin to live. Miklós was eager to begin working for a newspaper again. And he could foresee the day when leaving Hungary would be difficult, if not impossible. The Communists were likely to take over the government in Hungary. The world was dividing itself into East and West, into them against us, once again. So it would be wise to get out while they could.

  In Berlin, Miklós said, they could rent a house with enough room for Rozalia to live with them.

  Rozalia said she wasn’t deaf; she could hear what her son was plotting.

  Miklós hired men from the village to do heavy work in the garden he had planted. Natalia fed the chickens and gathered eggs. Katya came every day to help Natalia with the cooking and cleaning, the laundry. Sometimes her daughter, Alena, was with her. Katya taught Natalia some sign language so that she could communicate with Alena. Natalia loved Alena; she was a graceful child, her smile was heart-melting, and every time Natalia looked at her, she saw her son, Krisztián, beside her.

  Miklós had a setback; the fever returned, he woke drenched in sweat, he coughed up blood. Natalia, terrified, sent for Dr. Imre. He told her that her husband had pulmonary tuberculosis. Your husband needs immediate treatment, the doctor said. Complete rest, three meals a day, sunshine and fresh air.

  “Are you all right?” the doctor asked her. She said she felt a little faint. She didn’t know what was wrong with her; she was tired all the time. He insisted on examining her. He took blood and urine samples. When he came back to the castle, he said she was anemic. He gave her a bottle of iron pills. Then he told her that fatigue was not an uncommon symptom of pregnancy. “You didn’t know?” he said.

  How was she to know? Natalia thought. Nothing was regular with her body, not after the camps, being starved, being sick with typhus. Like most doctors, she thought, he believed every symptom a woman had indicated pregnancy. How could she look after a child? And a sick husband. And a sick mother-in-law. And she wasn’t young anymore.

  * * *

  In Budapest, Natalia walked around the streets near the hospital where Miklós had been admitted for tests. When she saw Russian soldiers, she tried to avoid them. She had heard how, during and after the siege, they had committed acts of brutality and rape, as they had in Berlin. She didn’t know where Max Nagy lived in Budapest or even if he had been alive in 1944 or how he could have survived. When she was in a shop or at a café or at the hospital, she would ask people if they knew Max Nagy. Some people did know a Max Nagy but not the one she was looking for.

  At the hospital she sat in a waiting room furnished with three straight-backed chairs and a small statue of the Virgin Mary on a table. Miklós came in and took her hand and pulled her up, out of the chair, and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” On their way to the car, he saw a stationery store that was open, and they went in, so that Miklós could choose a new fountain pen. It took a long time. He compared the filling mechanisms of various pens and considered the merits of iridium nibs over gold nibs. The store’s proprietor offered his opinion, and Miklós said his wife would make the decision. “Why?” she said laughing. “Go on, you pick,” Miklós said. Natalia decided on a dark blue Pelikan fountain pen with a fourteen-karat-gold nib. It looked like a jewel; it looked like the most civilized thing in the world. It came in a silver and gold box. They left the store. They were optimistic, suddenly, about Miklós’s health. Surely, after all they’d been through, they deserved good news.

  When they got back to the castle, they sat in the car for a few minutes, dazed, exhausted. Should it be now? Natalia thought. How much longer could she keep such a secret? Dr. Imre had not been wrong when he’d told her she was pregnant. She started to open the car door. “What is it?” Miklós said. “It can wait,” she said. “No, tell me,” he said. She closed the door. She told him.

  He didn’t say anything for a long time. He stared out the cracked windshield. Then he asked her when this would be. In the fall, she said. November, maybe late October.

  “How long have you known?”

  “I didn’t know. I was tired, I wanted to sleep all the time.”

  “Well,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.” He kissed her. “This changes things, doesn’t it,” he said.

  * * *

  Perhaps, Miklós said later, he should think about doing what the doctor advised. “Good,” Natalia said. “I think you’re right.” But she was afraid too. Still, she telephoned Dr. Imre, and he arranged with the doctors in Budapest for Miklós to begin treatment. The specialist was Dr. Ferenczi. He ordered more tests, more X-rays. He talked with Miklós and Natalia in his office. He wanted to know everything: when the cough had begun and when the fever had started. He wrote and then placed his pen on the desk. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose and at length gave his opinion, which did not, to Natalia, sound like something she wanted to hear. He suggested what he called a relatively simple pneumothorax procedure. It involved collapsing a lung, which would, for one thing, he explained, reduce the ability of the tuberculosis bacterium to replicate and spread the disease. She knew about this procedure from when she’d visited Julia Brüning at a hospital in Moabit, in Berlin. Julia was there for months.

  The next time they saw Dr. Ferenczi, he had reconsidered the operation. He said they would continue for a while longer with bed rest.

  Miklós was admitted to a tuberculosis hospital in Budapest. Dr. Ferenczi introduced him to a tuberculosis specialist from Sweden, Dr. Janssen. The Swedish presence in Budapest, which dated from 1943, interested Miklós. He and Dr. Janssen talked about the disappearance of the Swedish envoy to Hungary, Raoul Wallenberg, and his efforts to help the Jews of Budapest escape Adolf Eichmann, who had remained in Budapest transporting Jews to the death camps even as the Russians were approaching. Miklós wanted paper and a pen, but Dr. Janssen said no writing, no intellectual activity for now. Rest, he said. Miklós asked Natalia to bring him the things he had asked for. She said she would see what she could do, but she had no intention of going against the doctors’ orders. It scared her, seeing Miklós in that hospital bed. She forgot sometimes, or didn’t want to remember, that he was fifty-four years old. She didn’t want to hear, either, what the doctor told her: that tuberculosis was a more serious disease in people over the age of fifty. She didn’t want to know that.

  In the early hours of the morning, while Natalia slept at her hotel, Miklós experienced a serious hemorrhage of the lungs. A nurse met her at the door to his room and said she must wait to speak with the doctor. How serious, she wanted to know, when Dr. Ferenczi came down the hall to see her. Dr. Ferenczi studied her over his glasses for a moment, and said they were not by any means giving up on the treatment. When he was studying medicine in Vienna, at the end of the Great War, he said, he had developed tuberculosis. Within a year it had cleared up spontaneously.

  “So it can happen?” she said.

  “In the early stages.”

  Like God, he gave and he took away, that doctor.

  She began to hate the hospital. It smelled of carbolic soap, boiled potatoes, medicine, the same as all hospitals. People came here to be cured or they died, it was that simple, and these days, after six years of war, and the deprivations that went with war, they mostly died. The nurses, when they had time, encouraged her to sit quietly in the hospital chapel. Pray, they told her, guiding her to the chapel door. Natalia did what she was told to do. She dipped her fingers in the font, genuflected, prayed wordlessly, having nothing to say. She was afraid of calling attention to herself, of forcing God to notice her, and thinking, Why should this one be all right, when so many are suffering? She prayed to Dr. Schaefferová. Magdalena, she said, I know you’re here with me.

  Her child, this child, must not grow up without a father. It was a terrible thing, not to know your own father. She would not allow it.

  At the hotel where she was staying, the staff and the other residents were nice to her, but their smiles irr
itated her, their inquiries about her husband’s health made her want to scream. She always said the same things: Thank you, he’s doing well. The nurses are wonderful. The hospital staff are wonderful. Thank you for asking. Yes, I am on my way to the hospital now.

  She slept; she hated herself for sleeping, but the pregnancy made her want to do nothing except sleep. She fell asleep sitting up at the hospital; in the chapel; she woke and sat up, dazed, and went back to the hotel and tried to eat a piece of toast; she drank a cup of tea, which gave her heartburn. She walked back to the hospital. The sun shone, and there was a mild wind; the air smelled cleaner, less smoky, and the sound of hammers echoed throughout the city as buildings were being repaired. The Chain Bridge had been bombed and was going to be rebuilt. Budapest was being rebuilt. Even this soon after the end of fighting, it was being reconstructed. Was that a hidden function of these terrible wars, she wondered, to destroy and destroy, in the manner of a child kicking aside beloved toys he’d grown tired of, in favor of new bricks and mortar, a new way of living in this difficult world?

  * * *

  Dr. Ferenczi stood waiting for her at the end of the corridor. The nurses had told her he wanted to talk to her. Countess Andorján, he said, and his tone alarmed her. She knew what he was going to say. There was a deterioration in Miklós’s condition. There was nothing else they could do. At first Dr. Ferenczi’s actual words didn’t get through to her. He said, “Countess Andorján, we have been giving your husband two new drugs. He seems to be responding well.”

  These were very new, very promising drug therapies to treat tuberculosis, he said. The newer drug, streptomycin, had entered human clinical trials in the United States only a year previously. It was not yet approved for use, and it wasn’t being manufactured. It was in the nature of a miracle that he had received a small supply of streptomycin. Another drug was para-aminosalicylic acid. In Sweden, this drug had cured a female patient in the final stages of tuberculosis. Cured her, Dr. Ferenczi repeated. The two drugs, used in combination, appeared to be highly efficacious. His colleague Dr. Janssen had obtained the second drug from his brother, a doctor in Stockholm. The streptomycin had come from a friend of Dr. Ferenczi in London. The treatment would take fifty days, and Miklós would have to remain in the hospital for some time. There could be serious side effects, but in his opinion, the risks were worth it. Overall, Dr. Ferenczi said, there was reason for optimism.

  * * *

  Hungary at the end of the war was not a good place for them. They knew this, they had discussed it, but even after Miklós was able to leave the hospital, they did not make any definite plans. She was going to have a child. Rozalia was unwell. In addition, they had unfinished business at the castle. When the ground thawed, in the early spring of 1948, Miklós and Vladimír exhumed the German soldiers’ corpses and doused them with kerosene and burned them. Later they moved what was left of the bones down to the ossuary. Natalia went with them, to say a prayer, because somewhere these men had had families, parents, perhaps wives, children. Vladimír’s flashlight illuminated the Greek lettering on the wall. She stared at it. The gods cannot count and know nothing of arithmetic. A cold little observation, she thought, and seemingly irrefutable. She shuddered. Miklós put his arm around her. They went up out of the cellar to the kitchen, and Miklós and Vladimír drank vodka. No one must ever know, they said, and Rozalia, hearing them, said she would do it again, if necessary, and think nothing of it.

  Natalia, washing dishes at the sink, thought of Gudrun. She wondered whether Gudrun was still in England, and if she and her children were doing well in their new life. She had a sudden, vivid picture of Gudrun in the garden outside the house in Dahlem, with her small bunch of parsley, speaking haltingly of what had happened to her when the Russian army had occupied Berlin, in May 1945. Natalia could still hear the terror and shame in Gudrun’s voice as she recounted the things she had gone through, the terrible things she had seen.

  Natalia wiped and put away the dishes, moving slowly between the worktable and the cupboard. She remembered the hours of work she and Gudrun had put in, in the kitchen of the house requisitioned by the Americans. How many meals had they cooked and served? She remembered filling endless tureens with vegetables, roasting meat, mashing potatoes. That such mundane tasks had to be done with such wearying regularity had sometimes annoyed her, but she had also believed that the work was, in a way, sacramental. To feed the hungry, give shelter to the homeless, was a holy act. It was just that there were so many hungry people. Displaced people. While everyone in that house had been well fed, outside its doors people had nothing. It troubled her to remember this.

  But she was selfish. She wanted peace, sanctuary, untroubled days slipping past like rosary beads. She had a debilitating fear that somewhere, not far away, the war was still being fought. Phantom armies were massed at borders, waiting for the order to begin an assault. Or real armies. A seemingly insignificant diplomatic incident, and it could begin. Right now, at this moment, in some country that hadn’t yet been named, a tyrant could be taking office. If it had happened once, it could happen again. Who could assure her that the death camps, the forced-labor camps, now belonged to history?

  Every morning she woke with a sense of panic. At first, she wasn’t even sure where she was. Then the room took on its familiar shapes, and light appeared at the window, and she knew she was in bed, in the castle, and her husband was better and had come home, and they were going to have a child.

  Was this too much good fortune for one woman? What if the gods became jealous? She said this once to Rozalia, who told her: “Look, if you are going to be constantly afraid that something bad will happen, then do this: break a dish, break a matchstick. The bad luck will have had its moment, and you will feel better. If you can’t let go and trust life, what is the point, Natalia?”

  For the child’s sake, she had to be cheerful, Rozalia said. The baby would not arrive in a perfect world, but Natalia had to make it seem nearly perfect, a good place, with music, games, sunlight, people who loved him. They all had to keep this in mind, Rozalia said, but especially Natalia, because she was the mother, and it was her responsibility, and besides, it would make her happy too.

  But it was Rozalia who decided they had to leave Hungary. As soon as Miklós was well and after the baby was born, they were going somewhere else to live. She pored over an atlas. It had to be a country where she could speak the language. It had to be in Europe. Germany, she said; the west of Germany. She had no intention of subjecting herself to Communist rule, not in Hungary and certainly not in East Germany.

  Only a few days later Natalia got a letter from Beatriz, who exultantly passed on the news that her house in Zehlendorf remained legally her property. Rozalia said, “That’s settled, then. We will live in your mother’s house. Do you see how everything comes together, Natalia, when you have a little faith in life?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Franz slips an arm around her neck. She leans slightly, adjusting his weight on her hip. He’s warm from running around and pedaling a shiny red toy car, a gift from Beatriz. Natalia kisses him, kisses his damp hair; he pushes her away and protests, Mama, don’t.

  Franz, where are we? she asks. Buenos Aires, he says. And where is Buenos Aires? Argentina. And whose house is this? Oma’s house, Franz replies, and wriggles down out of her arms and runs to the open French doors to find Oma, who never insists he’s sleepy and needs a nap. Natalia plucks a peach from an espaliered tree that Beatriz swears is the same one that grew here when she was a girl. Are the trees in this garden immortal? Beatriz is as pretty and youthful as when she left Berlin fourteen years ago, in 1938. Prettier, even, with a luster, a glow bestowed on her by the southern sun. Her blond hair shines, her skin seems transparent; her eyes are the same intensely clear blue, and she pays great attention to fashion and wears the latest styles, dresses with three-quarter-length sleeves, tiny waists, full skirts nearly to the ankle. Scarlet lipstick, heels, a clutch purse. What have you done
to yourself? Beatriz asked, frowning, when she met them at the airport in Buenos Aires. She arranged appointments for Natalia with hairdressers, cosmeticians, manicurists. Beatriz knew that even people like her daughter had suffered in the war, but the way suffering went deep into the body, into the soul, that had obviously shocked her.

  Beatriz’s former caretaker, Dom, is now her gardener. He lives in Buenos Aires with his wife, Maria, who is Beatriz’s cook. Maria’s sister, Desirée, is the housekeeper. Five mornings a week they travel together on a tram to Beatriz’s villa in Palermo. On Fridays, Desirée slips though an iron gate in the garden wall and cleans house for a neighbor, Professor Lucien Dray, whose entire family, including his elderly parents, were deported from France by the Nazis to Auschwitz and were killed. Every Sunday the professor is Beatriz’s guest at brunch. He and Miklós talk about books and the weather, annual rainfall in Buenos Aires. This quiet man with blue shadows under his eyes is in danger of being dismissed from his position. The Argentine president distrusts university teachers and despises higher education. Shoes, yes, books, no, is a popular government slogan, Zita tells them.

  Before eating, Professor Dray wipes his fork on his table napkin. He drinks water but not coffee or wine.

  After lunch, Miklós goes through the iron gate with Professor Dray, and they continue their conversation in the professor’s library.

  Everything in the garden shimmers with an extraordinarily clear, luminous light: the sky, the magenta bougainvillea, the floribunda roses. Plants with leathery, spotted leaves, vining plants with orange flowers like small ecstatic trumpets. It doesn’t matter what you’ve been through, Natalia thinks, such profusion gives you hope. She’s forgotten her dark glasses in the house, and the bright sun hurts her eyes. Her eyesight is poor, from those years of malnutrition, of starving, of sickness. She has regular prescription glasses too, but there’s something appealing, salutary, about seeing the indistinct, hazy otherness of objects and landscapes.