The Invisible Bridge

by Julie Orringer

  A terrible clang in Andras's chest, as though the bell of his ribcage had been struck with an iron hammer. "Oh, Matyas. No."

  "Yes," Matyas said. He looked up and grinned, but his expression was one of fear.

  "So you see, it's a good thing we ran into each other."

  "Can't you get a transfer? Have you tried?"

  "Money's the only way, and I've only got enough for small bribes."

  "How much would it cost?"

  "Oh, I don't know. At this point, hundreds. Maybe thousands."

  Andras thought again of Gyorgy Hasz in his villa on Benczur utca, where he was most likely sitting by the fire in a cashmere robe and reading one of the financial papers.

  He wanted to take Hasz and turn him upside down, shake him until gold coins rained out of him as if from a broken bank. He could think of no reason why that man's son should have a painting studio and a stretch of leisure-filled months ahead, while Matyas Levi, son of Lucky Bela of Konyar, had to go to the Eastern Front and take his chances in the minefields. He, Andras, would be a fool, worse than a fool, if he allowed his pride to keep him from applying to Gyorgy for help. This wasn't a matter of whether or not Andras could support Klara and their child; Matyas's life was at stake.

  "I'll pay a visit to Hasz," Andras said. "They've got to have a chest of kroner hidden somewhere, or something they can sell."

  Matyas nodded. "I don't suppose Jozsef Hasz has to go to the front lines."

  "No, indeed. Jozsef Hasz has got himself a nice atelier in Buda."

  "How timely," Matyas said. "The destruction of the Western world should make an interesting subject."

  "Yes. Although, strange to say, I haven't felt the urge to visit him and check the progress of his work."

  "That

  is strange."

  "In seriousness, though, I'm not sure Hasz the Elder has ready cash. I think it's all they can do to keep that house on Benczur utca and maintain Madame's furs and their opera box. They had to sell their car to get Jozsef exempted from his second call-up."

  "At least they still have the opera box," Matyas said. "Music can be such a comfort when other people are dying." He winked at Andras, then raised his glass and drained it.

  The next day, after Andras had seen his brother off at Nyugati Station, he went to call on Gyorgy Hasz at home. He knew Hasz came home every day to have lunch with his wife and mother, and that afterward he liked to spend half an hour with the newspaper before he went back to his office. Even in uncertain times he was a man of regular habits.

  In defiance of the change in his professional circumstances, he had retained the gentlemanly schedule of his days as the bank's director; his services were too valuable for the new bank president to prevent him from taking that liberty. As Andras had expected, he found his brother-in-law in the library of the house on Benczur utca, his reading glasses on, the newspaper butterflied in his hands. When the manservant announced Andras's arrival, Hasz dropped the paper and got to his feet.

  "Is everything well with Klara?" he said.

  "Everything's fine," Andras said. "We're both fine."

  Hasz's brow relaxed and he gave a sharp sigh. "Forgive me," he said. "I wasn't expecting to see you. I didn't know you were home."

  "I've had a few days' furlough. I'm going back tomorrow."

  "Please sit down," Hasz said. To the man who had conducted Andras in, he said,

  "Tell Kati to bring us tea." The man went out silently, and Gyorgy Hasz gave Andras a slow, careful perusal. Andras had chosen to wear his Munkaszolgalat uniform that day, with its green M on the breast pocket and its mended places where Major Barna had torn off his marks of rank. Hasz glanced at Andras's uniform, then put a hand to his own tie, blue silk with a narrow ivory stripe. "Well," he said. "You've got only three more months of service, by my calculation."

  "That's right," Andras said. "And then the baby will be born."

  "And you're well? You seem well."

  "As well as can be expected."

  Hasz nodded and sat back in his chair, crossing his fingers over his vest. In addition to the blue silk tie he was wearing an Italian poplin shirt and a suit of dark gray wool. His hands were the soft hands of a man who had always worked indoors, his fingernails pink and smooth. But he looked at Andras with such genuine and unguarded concern that it was impossible to resent him entirely. When the tea arrived, he prepared Andras's cup himself and handed it across the table.

  "How can I help you?" he said. "What brought you here?"

  "My brother Matyas has been deployed to the Eastern Front," Andras said. "His company left this afternoon to meet the rest of their battalion in Debrecen, and from there they'll go to Belgorod."

  Hasz put down his cup and looked at Andras. "Belgorod," he said. "The minefields."

  "Yes. They'll be clearing the way for the Hungarian Army."

  "But what can I do?" Hasz said. "How can I help him?"

  "I know you've done a great deal for us already," Andras said. "You've looked out for Klara while I've been away. That's the best service you could have rendered me.

  Believe me, I would never ask for anything more if I didn't believe it was a matter of life and death. But I wonder if it might be possible to do for Matyas something like what you've done for Jozsef. If not exempt him entirely, at least get him transferred to another company. One that's not likely to be so close to the action. He's got eleven months left."

  Gyorgy Hasz raised an eyebrow, then sat back in his chair. "You'd like me to buy his freedom," he said.

  "At least his freedom from working on the front lines."

  "I understand." He steepled his hands and looked at Andras across the desk.

  "I know the price isn't the same for everyone," Andras said. He set his cup in the saucer and gave it a careful turn. "I imagine it would be a great deal less for my brother than it was for your son. I have the name of Matyas's battalion commander. If we could arrange for a certain sum to be transferred to him through an independent agent--a lawyer of your acquaintance, say--we might accomplish it all without revealing to the authorities the connection between your family and mine. That is to say, without compromising Klara's security. I'm certain we could buy my brother's freedom at what would seem to you a negligible sum."

  Hasz pressed his lips together and brought his steepled hands against them, then tapped his fingers as he looked toward the fire. Andras waited for his answer as if Gyorgy were a magistrate and Matyas in the seat of judgment before him. But Matyas was not, of course, before him; he was already on a train headed toward the Eastern Front. All at once it seemed a folly to have imagined that Gyorgy Hasz might have the power to stop what had already been set in motion.

  "Does Klara know you came to me?" Hasz asked.

  "No," Andras said. "Though she wouldn't have discouraged me. She's confident of your help in all matters. I'm the one whose pride generally prevents the asking."

  Gyorgy Hasz pushed himself up from the leather chair and went to tend the fire.

  The previous day's soft heat had blown away overnight; a sharp wind rattled the casement windows. He moved the logs with the poker and a flight of sparks soared up into the heights of the fireplace. Then he replaced the tool and turned to face Andras.

  "I have to apologize before I speak further," he said. "I hope you'll understand the decisions I've made."

  "Apologize for what?" Andras said. "What decisions?"

  "For some time I've been operating under a rather heavy financial and emotional burden," he said. "It's entirely independent of my son's situation, and I'm afraid it's going to continue for some time. I can't imagine what the end of it will be, in fact. I haven't spoken to you about it because I knew it would be a source of worry at a time when your greatest concern was to stay alive. But I'm going to tell you now. It's a grave thing you've come to ask of me, and I find it impossible to give an answer without making you understand my situation. Our situation, I should say." He took his seat across from Andras once again and pul
led his chair closer to the table. "It concerns someone dear to us both," he said. "It's about Klara, of course. Her troubles. What happened to her when she was a girl."

  Andras's skin went cold all at once. "What do you mean?"

  "Not long after you went into the Munkaszolgalat, a woman came forward and informed the authorities that the Claire Morgenstern who had recently entered the country was the same Klara Hasz who had fled eighteen years earlier."

  His ears rang with the shock of it. "Who?" he demanded. "What woman?"

  "A certain Madame Novak, who had returned from Paris herself not long before."

  "Madame Novak," Andras repeated. In his mind she appeared as she had that night at Marcelle Gerard's party, quietly triumphant in her velvet gown and jasmine perfume--on the verge of effecting a twelve-hundred-kilometer separation between her husband and the woman he loved, the woman who had been his mistress for eleven years.

  "So you know the situation, and why she might have done such a thing."

  "I know what happened in Paris," Andras said. "I know why she has reason to hate Klara--or why she had reason to, in any case."

  "It seems to have been a persistent hate," Gyorgy said.

  "You're telling me that the authorities know. They know she's here, and who she is. You're telling me they've known for months."

  "I'm afraid so. They've compiled a great dossier on her case. They know everything about her flight from Budapest and what she's done since then. They know she's married to you, and they know all about your family--where your parents live, where your father works, what your brothers did before they entered the military, where they're stationed now. There's no chance, I'm afraid, that we could arrange an exemption for your brother at the common rate. Our families are connected, and the connection is known by those who have power in these matters. But even if we could convince your brother's battalion commander to name a price--and that in itself is not at all certain, considering how many of those men are terrible anti-Semites--it might be impossible to produce the money. You see, I've had to make a financial arrangement to preserve Klara's freedom, too. The chief magistrate in charge of her case happens to be an old acquaintance of mine--and happens, as well, to be intimate with my financial affairs, due to my removal from the bank presidency and my efforts to protest it. When the information about Klara emerged, he was the one to offer a kind of solution--or what one might call a solution, in the absence of any other source of hope. A sort of trade, as he put it to me. I would pay a certain percentage of my assets every month in perpetuity, and the Ministry of Justice would leave Klara alone. They would also see to it that the Central Alien Control Office renews her official residence permit each year. They don't want her deported, of course, now that they've got her back in the country and can use her to their advantage."

  Andras drew a breath into the constricted passages of his lungs. "So that's what you've done," he said. "That's where the money's going."

  "I'm afraid so."

  "And she knows nothing about it?"

  "Nothing. I want her to have the illusion of safety, at least. I think it's best to say nothing to her unless the situation changes significantly for the better or the worse. If she knew, I'm certain she would try to stop me. I don't know what form her attempt might take or what its consequences might be. I've informed my wife about the arrangement, of course--I've had to explain to her why it's been necessary to dissolve so many of our assets--and she agrees it's best to keep the whole thing from Klara for now. My mother disagrees, but thus far I've managed to make her see my perspective."

  "But how long can it go on?" Andras said. "They'll bleed you dry."

  "That seems to be their plan. I've already had to place this house under a second mortgage, and recently I've had to ask my wife to part with some of her jewelry. We've sold the car and the piano and some valuable paintings. There are other things that can be sold, but not an endless supply. And as my assets diminish, the percentage inches up--it's a way to keep the arrangement lucrative for this magistrate and his cronies in the Ministry of Justice. I believe we'll have to sell the house soon and take a flat closer to the center of town. I dread that--it'll become increasingly difficult to explain to Klara why we have to do these things. It's not possible to claim Jozsef's exemption as a continual drain of that magnitude. But Klara's freedom may be infinitely dear. Now that the government has found a way to siphon away our assets, I'm sure they won't stop until there's nothing left."

  "But the government is the guilty party! Sandor Goldstein was killed. Klara was raped. Her daughter is the evidence. The government was responsible. They're the ones who should be paying her."

  "In a just world, it might be possible to prove their guilt," said Hasz. "But my lawyers assure me that Klara's accusations of rape would mean nothing now, particularly considering the fact that Klara fled justice herself. Not that they would have meant much at the time, mind you. Her situation was desperate from the beginning. If she'd stayed, the authorities would have pulled every dirty trick to demonstrate her guilt and hide their own. That was why my father and his lawyer decided she had to leave the country, and why they couldn't bring her back. My father never stopped trying, though--until his dying day he hoped it might still be done."

  Andras rose and went to the fire, where the logs had burned down to glowing coals. The heat of them seemed to reach inside him and send a bright wave of anger through his chest. He turned to look into his brother-in-law's eyes. "Klara has been in danger for months, and you didn't tell me," he said. "You didn't think I could bear to know. Maybe you thought I didn't know what existed between Klara and Novak in Paris.

  Maybe you're afraid yourself that something's happened between them here in Budapest.

  Did you plan to keep making these payments until the problem went away? Were you going to leave me in the dark forever?"

  The furrows of Hasz's brow deepened again. "You have a right to be angry," he said. "I did keep you in the dark. I didn't feel I could trust you not to tell her. You have an uncommon relationship with your wife. The two of you seem to confide everything to each other. But perhaps you can understand my position, too. I wanted to protect her, and I didn't see how the knowledge could help either of you. I imagined it could only bring you pain."

  "I'd rather have worried," Andras said. "I'd rather have had the pain than been kept ignorant of any problem that concerns my wife."

  "I know how Klara loves you," Gyorgy said. "I wish you and I had gotten to know each other better before you were conscripted. Maybe if we had, you'd understand why I felt it was right to act as I did."

  Andras could only nod in silence.

  "But as to the question of Klara's fidelity, I can assure you I've never felt the slightest uncertainty in that quarter. As far as I can divine, my sister adores you and you alone. She's never given me reason to believe otherwise, not in all the time you've been away." He took the poker in his hand and looked toward the fire again, and his shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. "If I had anything like my former property or influence, I might be more certain of being able to do something for your brother. The military has become increasingly greedy regarding bribes and favors. But I'll see if I can speak to someone I know."

  "And what about Klara?" Andras said. "How can we be certain she's safe?"

  "For now, apparently, the payments protect her. We can hope that the authorities will lose interest before my assets are exhausted. If the war goes on, they'll have more pressing worries. As for taking the course we took before--in 1920, I mean--Klara's leaving the country is an impossibility, particularly in her current state. Her comings and goings are too closely watched. In any case, it's impossible to get entry visas now to the countries where she might be safe. We'll have to persevere, that's all."

  "Klara is an intelligent woman," Andras said. "Perhaps she could help us see a way through this."

  "I have the most profound admiration for my sister's intelligence," Hasz said.

  "She's managed br
illiantly in adverse circumstances. But I don't want these concerns to weigh upon her. I want her to feel safe as long as she can."

  "So do I," Andras said. "But, as you observed, I'm not in the habit of keeping secrets from my wife."

  "You've got to promise me you won't speak to her about it. I don't like to place you in a position of incomplete honesty, but in this situation I find I have no choice."

  "You mean to say that I have no choice."

  "Understand me, Andras. We've invested a great deal in Klara's safety already. If you were to tell her now, it might all have been in vain."

  "What if it were my wife's wish not to bring her family to ruin?"

  "What else can we do? Would you prefer that she turn herself in? Or that she risk her own life and your child's in an escape attempt?" He got to his feet and paced before the fireplace. "I assure you I've considered the problem from every angle. I see no other course. I beg you to respect my judgment, Andras. You must believe that I have some insight into Klara's character too."