The Invisible Bridge

by Julie Orringer

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Szentendre Yard

  THAT AFTERNOON he told Klara about the cottage in Frangepan koz, and about Klein in his bedroom surrounded by the manila files of a thousand would-be emigrants. They were in the sitting room, the baby at Klara's breast, its hand clenching and unclenching in her hair.

  "What do you think?" she said quietly. "Do you think we should try to get out?"

  "It seems insane, doesn't it? But I haven't seen the things Tibor's seen."

  "What about your parents? And my mother?"

  "I know," he said. "It's a desperate thing to think about. Maybe it's not the right time. If we wait, things might get better. But maybe I should write to Shalhevet anyway.

  Just in case there's something she can do."

  "You can write," she said. "But if there were something she could do, wouldn't she have told us about it already?" The baby moved his head and released his grip on Klara's hair. She shifted him to the other side, draping herself with his blanket.

  "I wrote to Rosen from the labor service," Andras said. "He knew I couldn't have left then, even if I'd wanted to."

  "And now we have the baby," Klara said.

  Andras tried to envision her feeding their son in the cargo hold of a Danube riverboat, under the cover of a tarpaulin. Did people make escape attempts with infants, he wondered? Did they drug their children with laudanum and pray they wouldn't cry?

  The baby pulled the blanket away from Klara's breast and she arranged it again.

  "There's no need to do that," Andras said. "Let me see you."

  Klara smiled. "I suppose I got into the habit of covering up at my mother's house.

  Elza can't abide the sight of it. She considers it unsanitary. She'd be scandalized to know I do it in your presence."

  "It's perfectly natural. And look at him. Doesn't he look happy?"

  The baby's toes curled and uncurled. He waved a dark hank of Klara's hair in his fist. His eyes moved to her eyes, and he blinked, and blinked again more slowly, and his eyelids drifted closed. Intoxicated with milk, he released Klara's hair and let his legs fall limp against her arm. His hands opened into starfish. His mouth fell away from her breast.

  Klara raised her eyes to Andras and held his gaze. "What if you were to go?" she said. "You and Tibor? Get there safely and send for us when you can? At least it would keep you out of the Munkaszolgalat."

  "Never," he said. "I'd sooner die than leave without the two of you."

  "What a dramatic thing to say, darling."

  "I don't care if it's dramatic. That's how I feel."

  "Here, take your little son. My leg's asleep." She lifted the child and handed him to Andras, then fastened the buttons of her blouse. With a grimace of pain she got to her feet and walked the length of the room. "Write to Shalhevet," she said. "Just to see. At least then we'll know if there's another course of action to consider. Otherwise we're only speculating."

  "I'm not going anywhere without you."

  "I hope not," she said. "But it seems the wrong time for broad resolutions."

  "Won't you let me preserve the illusion that I have a choice?"

  "It's a dangerous time for illusions, too," she said, and came back to sit beside him on the sofa, laying her head on his shoulder. As they sat together and watched their son sleep, Andras felt a renewed pang of guilt: He was, in fact, allowing her to live inside an illusion--that she was safe, that the past was securely lodged in the past, that her fears of endangering her family by her return to Hungary had been unfounded.

  The illusion continued all that spring. A reorganization in the Ministry of Justice slowed the mechanisms of extortion, and the need to give up the house on Benczur utca was temporarily relieved. Andras continued to work as a layout artist and illustrator, with Mendel penning articles nearby in the newsroom. If it seemed surreal at first to have as their legitimate employment what had until a few months earlier been a covert and guilty extracurricular, the feeling was soon replaced by the ordinary rhythms and pressures of work. Tibor, once he had recovered his health and strength, found employment too. He became a surgical assistant at a Jewish hospital in the Erzsebetvaros. In March there was news from Elisabet: Paul had joined the navy and would ship out to the South Pacific in late April. His parents, in a fit of remorse occasioned by their son's enlistment and by the birth of their first grandchild the previous summer, had by now relented entirely and had insisted that Elisabet and little Alvie come to live with them in Connecticut. Elisabet had enclosed a photograph of the family in sledding gear, herself in a dark hooded coat, the muffled-up Alvie in her arms, Paul standing beside them holding the ropes of a long toboggan. Another photograph showed Alvie by himself, propped in a chair with pillows all around him, wearing a velvet jacket and short pants. The high round forehead and wry mouth were all Paul, but the ice-hard penetration of his baby gaze could only have been Elisabet's. She promised that Paul's father would speak to his contacts in the government to see if anything could be done to secure entry visas for Andras, Klara, and the baby.

  Andras wrote to Shalhevet, and a reply came four weeks later. She promised to speak to the people she knew in the Immigration Office. Though she couldn't foresee how long the process might take or whether she would succeed, she thought she could make a strong case for Andras and Tibor's being granted visas. As Andras must know, the department's main concern at the moment was to extract Jews from German-occupied territories. But future doctors and architects would be of great value to the Jewish community of Palestine. She might even be able to do something for Andras's friend, the political journalist and record-breaking athlete; he, too, was the kind of exceptional young man the Immigration Office liked to help. And if Andras and Tibor came, of course their families must come with them. What a shame that they hadn't all emigrated together before the war! Rosen missed his Paris friends desperately. Had Andras heard from Polaner or Ben Yakov? Rosen had made dozens of inquiries, to no avail.

  Andras sat on the edge of the courtyard fountain and reread the letter. He hadn't heard from Polaner or Ben Yakov, not since the missives he'd received during his first Munkaszolgalat posting. If Ben Yakov was still with his parents in Rouen, he would be living in occupied France under the Nazi flag. And Polaner, who had been so eager to fight for his adopted country--where would he have been sent after his discharge from the French military? Where would he be now? What hardships, what humiliations, would he have had to face since the last time Andras had seen him? How would Andras ever learn what had become of him? He trailed his hand through the cold water of the fountain, released now from its winter ice. Beneath the surface, the shapes of the fish moved like slender ghosts. There had been coins at the bottom of the fountain last fall, five- and ten-filler coins glinting against the blue tiles. Someone must have removed them when the ice thawed. Now, no one would throw coins into a fountain. No one could spare ten filler for a wish.

  In the darkness of the barracks in Subcarpathia and Transylvania and Banhida, Andras had forced himself to consider the possibility that Polaner might be dead, that he might have been beaten or starved or infected or shot; but he had never allowed himself to think that he would not someday know what had happened--not know for certain whether to search or hope or mourn. He could not mourn by default. It ran against his nature. But it had been twenty-three months since there had been any word of Polaner--soft-voiced Eli Polaner, hidden somewhere within the dark explosive tangle of Europe.

  He dared not follow the thought around to its other side, where the image of his brother Matyas waited, a white shape glimpsed through the veil of a blizzard. Matyas, still lost.

  No word from his Munkaszolgalat company since last November. Now it was April. In Ukraine the steady cold would have just begun to relent. Soon it would become possible to bury the winter's dead.

  He had left Klara with the baby, the rest of the mail in a jumble on his desk. He would go and see if he could help her; it would only make him feel worse to sit at the e
dge of the fountain and consider all the things he could not know. He climbed the stairs and opened the apartment door, listening for the baby's lifted voice. But a film of silence had settled over the rooms. The kettle had ceased to bubble on the stove. The baby's bathwater stood cold in its little tin tub, still awaiting the addition of the hot. The baby's towel lay folded on the kitchen table, his jacket and pants beside it.

  Andras heard the baby make a noise, a brief two-note plaint; the sound came from the sitting room. He entered to find Klara on the sofa with the baby in her arms. An opened letter lay on the low table before her. She raised her eyes to Andras.

  "What is it?" he said. "What's happened?"

  "You've been called again," she said. "You've been called back to work duty."

  He scrutinized the letter, an abbreviated rectangle of thin white paper stamped with the insignia of the KMOF. He was to report to the Budapest Munkaszolgalat Office two mornings hence; he would be assigned to a new battalion and company, and given orders for six months of labor service.

  "This can't be," he said. "I can't leave you again, not with the baby."

  "But what can we do?"

  "I still have General Marton's card. I'll go to his office. Maybe he can help us."

  The baby twisted in Klara's arms and made another sound of protest. "Look at him," she said. "Naked as a newborn. I forgot all about his bath. He must be freezing."

  She got up and brought him into the kitchen, holding him against her. She emptied the kettle into his little tub and stirred the water with her hand.

  "I'll go tomorrow morning," Andras said. "I'll see what can be done."

  "Yes," she said, and lowered the baby into the tub. She laid him back against her arm and rubbed soap into the fine brown fluff of his hair. "And if he can't help, I'll write to my solicitor in Paris. Maybe it's time to sell the building."

  "No," Andras said. "I won't have you do it."

  "I won't have you go back to the service," she said. She wouldn't look at him, but her voice was low and determined. "You know what goes on there now. They're sending men to clean up minefields on the front. They're starving them to death."

  "I survived it for two years. I can survive it for six more months."

  "Things were different before."

  "I won't let you sell the building."

  "What do I care for the building?" she cried. The baby looked at her, startled.

  "I'll speak to Marton," Andras said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  "And Shalhevet?" she said. "What did she write?"

  "She knows some people in the Ministry of Immigration. She'll try to make a case for our being granted visas."

  The baby kicked an arc of water into Klara's hair, and she let out a sad laugh.

  "Maybe we should pray," she said, and covered her eyes with one hand as if she were reciting the Shema. He wanted to believe that someone could be watching in pity and horror, someone who could change things if he chose. He wanted to believe that men were not in charge. But at the center of his sternum he felt a cold certainty that told him otherwise. He believed in God, yes, the God of his fathers, the one to whom he'd prayed in Konyar and Debrecen and Paris and in the work service, but that God, the One, was not One who intervened in the way they needed someone to intervene just then. He had designed the cosmos and thrown its doors open to man, and man had moved in and begun a life there. But God could no more step inside and rearrange that life than an architect could rearrange the lives of a building's inhabitants. The world was their place now. They would use it in their fashion, live or die by their own actions. He touched Klara's hand and she opened her eyes.

  ...

  General Marton's powers, though considerable, could not exempt Andras from work service. They could not even get his service postponed. But they prevented his being posted to the Eastern Front, and they won the same reprieve for Mendel Horovitz, who had been called at the same time. Andras and Mendel were assigned to Company 79/6 of the Budapest Labor Service Battalion. The company had been put to work in a rail yard so close to Budapest that the men who lived in the city could sleep at home rather than in barracks at the work site. Every morning Andras rose at four o'clock and drank his coffee in the dark kitchen, by the light of the stove; he slung his pack over his shoulder, took the tin pail of food Klara had prepared for him the night before, and slipped out into the predawn chill to meet Mendel. Now, instead of reporting to the offices of the Magyar Jewish Journal, they walked all the way to the river and crossed the Szechenyi Bridge, where the stone lions lay on their pedestals and the Romany women in black head scarves and cloaks slept with their arms around their thin-limbed children. In that blue hour a mist hovered above the surface of the Danube, rolling up from the braided currents of the water. Sometimes a barge would slide past, its low flat hull parting the vapor, and they might glimpse the bargeman's wife standing at a glowing brazier and tending a pot of coffee. On the other side of the river they would take the tram to Obuda, where they could get the bus that would take them to Szentendre. The bus ran along the river, and they liked to sit on the Danube side and watch the boats glide south. Often they would pass the time in silence; the subject most on their minds could not be discussed in public. Andras had received the news from Shalhevet that the Immigration Office had responded favorably to her first inquiries, and that the process was moving along more quickly than expected. There was reason to hope that they might have papers in hand by midsummer. But what then? He didn't know whether or not he should dare to hope Klein might help them, or how much it would cost to make the journey, or how many visas Shalhevet could muster. And though spring had arrived in full force now, there was still no word from Matyas. Gyorgy's most recent inquiries had proved fruitless. It seemed impossible to think of leaving Hungary while his brother was lost in Ukraine, perhaps dead, perhaps taken prisoner by the Soviets. But now that spring had come, Matyas could materialize any day. It wasn't beyond reason to hope that in three or six months they might all emigrate together. A year from now, Andras and his brothers might be going off to work in an orange grove in Palestine, perhaps at one of the kibbutzim Rosen had described, Degania or Ein Harod. Or they might be fighting for the British--Mendel had heard that there was a battalion of soldiers that had been formed from members of the Yishuv, the Jewish community of Palestine.

  When the bus reached Szentendre, they climbed down with the other men--their workmates who had boarded at Obuda or Romaifurdo or Csillaghegy--and walked the half mile to the train-loading yard. The first trucks pulled in at seven o'clock. The drivers would roll up the tarps to reveal corded cubes of blankets, crates of potatoes, bolts of military canvas, cases of ammunition, or whatever else it was that they happened to be shipping to the front that day. Andras and Mendel and their workmates had to move the goods from the trucks to the boxcars that waited on the tracks, doors yawning wide in the growing light. When they had finished loading one car, they would move on to another and another. But the operation wasn't as simple as it looked. The cars, once filled, were not sealed; they were left open to roll into a shed where they would be inspected. At least that was what Andras and Mendel had been told when the foreman had set them to work: After the cars were loaded, they would be inspected by a corps of specially trained soldiers. If anything was missing, the work servicemen would be held responsible and punished. Only when every item had been tallied would the trains be sealed and sent to the front.

  The inspectors came and went in covered trucks. Soldiers drove the trucks directly into the inspection shed and parked them beside the train. Through the broad rectangular doors, Andras could see the soldiers moving quickly between the train and the trucks. The inspectors didn't bother to conceal what was going on; they oversaw the operation with the confidence of their privileged place in the chain of command.

  Overcoats, blankets, potatoes, cans of beans, guns: Every day, a tithe of it drifted from the boxcars to the trucks. When the soldiers had finished with one boxcar, the inspectors w
ould seal it and the train would roll forward so the soldiers could get to work on the next. They had to work fast for the trains to run on time; the railway schedule made no allowance for black-market siphoning. Once the soldiers had done their work, the inspectors would declare the trainload complete and sign the paperwork. Then they would send the train off to the front. The covered trucks would roll out, the siphoned goods would slide into the black market, and the inspectors would share the proceeds among themselves. It was a tidy and profitable business. In their shed, the inspectors smoked expensive cigars and compared gold pocket watches and played cards for piles of pengo. The guards must have been getting their share of the profits, too--at lunchtime, instead of standing in line at the mess tent, they drank beer and grilled strings of Debrecen sausages, smoked Mirjam cigarettes, and paid the work servicemen to polish their new-looking boots.

  Andras knew what the skimming would mean to the soldiers and laborers on the front. There would be too few blankets to go around, too few potatoes in the soup.

  Someone might not get new boots when his old boots fell apart. The work servicemen would be the hardest hit: They'd be forced to write promissory notes for hundreds of pengo to buy the most basic supplies. Later, when the guards and officers went home on furlough, they would present the notes to the servicemen's families, threatening that the men would be killed if their wives or mothers didn't produce the money. But the labor servicemen at Szentendre Yard seemed to regard the practice as a matter of course. What could any of them have done to stop it? Day after day they loaded the trains and the soldiers unloaded them.