“Is everyone all right?” I asked anxiously.
Babi folded the letter and put it into her apron pocket. Then she wiped her eyes with the hem of her apron, stood up, and answered, “Everything is fine, Piri. Come, help me catch the biggest chickens in the yard. They are all coming for Passover.”
“Who is coming, Babi?”
“Maybe we better take one of the geese, too. There will be so many of us.”
“How many?”
“Let’s count,” said Babi, taking my fingers as though we were going to play a game. She looked down at me and I realized that her small coffee-bean eyes were sparkling for the first time since last fall. Taking my little finger, she counted in a playful, singsong manner. “Your mother, your stepfather, Iboya, and Sandor.”
“But Father is in the army.”
“Yes, but he is home, he has a leave.” I was overjoyed and began to skip around Babi. “Don’t you want me to finish counting?” she asked, catching my fingers again. “Lilli, Lajos, and little Manci are also coming. Go call Rozsi, and we’ll catch the birds.”
In the house, Rozsi was still standing at the window and looked as though she might have been crying.
“Babi sent me to call you. We got a letter from home. They are all coming for Passover.”
“Everyone?”
“Yes, Father and Lajos both have leave from the army.”
Rozsi’s expression brightened; she picked me up under my armpits and swung me around. “When will all this take place?”
“The day after tomorrow. We had better go help Babi catch some chickens and maybe a goose, too.”
As we came out onto the porch, Rozsi stopped for a moment and laughed when she saw Babi luring the chickens. Babi was hunched over, holding an ear of corn in her hand, calling, “Here, pretty; here, pretty.” As soon as a hen got close enough to peck at the kernels, Babi snatched it up and, holding the bird up in the air, blew its feathers apart to check the skin for fat. If the skin wasn’t yellow enough, she put it down and began all over again.
“Fine helpers you are, letting me do all the picking myself,” Babi scolded as she reached into her pocket and gave the letter to Rozsi. “Don’t read it now. Help me find two decent birds.”
Rozsi looked over the chickens with calculating eyes. “How about that one with the short tail?”
“No, she is one of our best layers. We’ll need lots of eggs, too.” Finally Babi and Rozsi chose the chickens and Babi tied red rags on their legs.
“Now I am satisfied that we’ll have a big pot of chicken soup.”
Rozsi nodded her head in answer and started to read Mother’s letter as she walked back to the house.
“Can I read it, too?” I asked.
“Come, I’ll read it out loud,” said Rozsi, sitting down on the porch bench. I sat beside her and listened to her soft voice reading Mother’s words. Mother sounded happy because Father had walked in unexpectedly that morning. Lajos, Lilli, and Manci had gone to visit Lajos’ parents in Salánk and would come separately.
Babi was in a frenzy all of the next day. While preparing the bedding she explained, “Your mother and father can sleep in the spare bedroom, and you children will sleep on the floor. We’ll stuff some straw mattresses. Rozsi can sleep in your bed so that Lilli and Lajos can have Grandpa’s bed.”
“You mean Rozsi’s bed.”
“To me it will always be your grandpa’s bed.”
The next day we kept bumping into each other, as we stopped in the midst of our chores to go out and look for our arriving family. In the late afternoon I spotted them and dashed off the porch. Mother and Father walked together. Father bent over his bicycle, which was loaded down with a large suitcase and several packages. He was wearing an ugly flannel uniform. Mother had changed—her usually smooth skin all puffy. I pulled away from her.
“Didn’t you miss me?” she asked, sounding hurt.
“What about me? Will I get a kiss?” Father asked as he bent down to me. I put my arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. He still had his bushy sideburns.
Iboya put down the packages she was carrying and hugged me tight. When she let go, I picked up Sandor. He had grown from a baby into a little boy and kept repeating, “This is my sister Piri, this is Piri,” as I held his chunky body in my arms.
Babi and Rozsi came up to us. Rozsi took Sandor from me and kissed him over and over again. Trying to put her short arms around Mother, Babi sobbed, “Why didn’t you mention anything in your letters?”
“I didn’t want you to worry,” Mother answered.
“So how far are you? It looks close.” She looked Mother up and down. “And you walked all that distance; I could have sent someone with a wagon, but I didn’t know which train you would be on. You just said Friday in your letter.”
“We walked slowly,” said Father, trying to move us in the direction of the house.
Mother released Babi and put a heavy arm around me. “You have grown prettier. Wait until your friends see you.”
“Am I going home with you?”
“Don’t you want to?”
“I’m not sure. You said everything changed. Have Ica, Vali, and Milush changed? Will they still like me, even though I am Jewish?”
“You were always Jewish.”
“I know, but everything is different.”
Mother kissed me and told me not to worry. She looked tired, and when we got to the porch, she sank down on the bench. “I must sit for a while.” Rozsi put Sandor down and told Mother she would bring her a cool drink. As Rozsi went into the kitchen, everyone began to speak at once. When Rozsi returned, she handed Mother a large glass of water, which she drank down. Then Mother took off her shoes, and remained sitting on the porch while we took in all the packages.
“What happened to Mother?” I asked Iboya when we got inside.
“She is going to have a baby.”
“When?”
“In June. Maybe on your birthday.”
Later in the afternoon, Lilli, Lajos, and Manci arrived. Mother called, “Here they come,” and we all ran out to meet them. Lilli walked beside Lajos, and Manci clung to her father’s back. It seemed so long since I had seen them. Like Sandor, Manci had grown up. When she saw Sandor running toward her, she urged Lajos to put her down. Lajos lowered her to the ground just as Sandor came up and they immediately started chattering. We all stood in the road for a moment watching them.
I was puzzled by Lajos’ Hungarian officer’s uniform and turned to Iboya to ask, “Why is Lajos wearing that kind of uniform when Father has to wear such an ugly one?”
“I don’t know,” she answered in a hesitant tone.
“You’ve grown so, Piri,” said Lilli as she put a long arm around me. “Wait until you see the globe Lajos brought for you and Iboya,” she added.
Later, in the house, when Lilli hugged Babi, she looked like a mother bending over a child. She was by far the tallest female in our family. “And how is my sweet Babi?” she asked in broken Yiddish. Looking up at her, Babi smiled. “You have forgotten your Yiddish.”
“I don’t have much chance to speak it and he doesn’t help,” Lilli replied, pointing toward Lajos.
“Why? I speak Yiddish,” Lajos said, carefully pronouncing each word with a heavy Hungarian accent. We all laughed.
“That is the way your father-in-law spoke Yiddish when he married my daughter,” said Babi.
“And it was a lucky thing that I learned to speak it well,” said Father. “There are several young men in my platoon who have trouble speaking anything but Yiddish.” Pulling his hands out of his trouser pockets, he began to adjust his tie. There was sudden quiet in the large bedroom.
“Well, old man, you carried an officer’s responsibilities long enough. Time for the younger men like me to do some work,” said Lajos, breaking the silence and coming over to pat Father on the shoulder. “And anyhow, now that things have quieted down, there may just be some pleasant changes.”
�
��When did all this happen to you? No one told me about it,” Father questioned as he touched a finger to the first lieutenant’s insignia on Lajos’ lapel.
“As soon as they found out how good I was,” Lajos answered with a salute.
“Come, girls, let’s go set the table; it’s almost time for seder,” said Babi.
After sundown, we were seated around the big mahogany table in the bedroom. Babi and Mother rose, each lighting her own set of candles at either end of the table, their heads covered in lace, their faces glowing in the candlelight.
Looking at them, drawn together by the same ancient tradition, I began to understand the meaning of the expression I had often heard grownups use, “You can graft the branch of a cherry tree onto a peach tree, but it will still bear cherries.” Mother had gone a long way from Komjaty, but she was still Babi’s daughter. I had seen them together many times before, when a gesture or a nod from one of them rekindled an old memory between them; they could giggle or grow sad together without uttering a word.
After they sat down, Father started the ritual recitation of the Passover story from the Haggadah. He had changed into his regular clothes and was wearing a gray suit with a light blue shirt and dark tie. His blue eyes shone as he called for the four questions traditionally asked by the youngest male child. Sandor, prompted by Mother, asked the questions.
The seder continued and we drank the four glasses of wine at the appropriate places during the reading. The meal ended with tea and the honey cake signifying a sweet year. We sang the traditional songs together, feeling lighthearted as our voices blended in the familiar words. By the time Mother kissed me good night, I had gotten used to her appearance, and my fears about her having changed had vanished.
The next day, while Iboya and I were sitting on the porch, Mother’s voice, choked with tears, reached us from the kitchen, “No, I could never do that.”
“I loved your brothers and sister, but I sent them with blessings when they wanted to go. What do you think the future holds for these girls, the way things are now?”
“I have thought about it a lot. I can’t break up my family. If it were peacetime, maybe I could, I don’t know, but with all that is going on right now, I can’t send them away. I want them here with me. Whatever comes, we’ll face it together. I’m not like you, Mother, I can’t be by myself. Not everybody can.”
“You were never lonely enough to come back to spend time here with me.”
“It’s not you, Mama, it’s … this backward existence. I could never live with it again. I feel alive in the city where people are more civilized. I can talk with them, they understand me.”
“Rise, you are fooling yourself. You are living among goyim and you think they are your friends. I just hope you never have to depend on them. They are neighborly, but there is a big difference between neighbors and your own. Only your own can feel your pain.”
“They have helped me when I needed them. You were not there when Mayer died; you did not see them look after my little ones for me.”
“That kind of crisis is familiar to them: a husband dying, they can understand that. But this is a Jewish problem we are facing. They will not understand.”
Iboya and I were shocked by what we were hearing; Babi and Mother were so involved in their discussion that they had forgotten about us on the porch.
“They are talking about sending us away,” Iboya said, puzzled.
“They are talking about sending us to America,” I answered the question in her voice, as Rozsi and Father turned the corner at the side of the house and came up onto the porch.
“Who is sending you where?” Father asked.
“Babi wants Mother to send us to America.”
“You too, Rozsi,” said Iboya.
“Nobody is sending you girls anywhere. The war is almost over.” Father sat down on the bench beside us. A few moments passed in silence and then Mother came out to call us in for lunch.
After Iboya and I finished up the dishes, Iboya went to her mattress to lie down for a while, and I decided to go call on Molcha. I came to the kitchen threshold and was about to step onto the porch when I overheard Babi speaking in a low and serious tone of voice, her back to me as she faced Father, who was sitting on the bench. Neither of them noticed me standing in the doorway.
“Ignac, I know that you love the girls, and God knows what a wonderful father you have been to them. But you are also a smart man, so I’m going to ask you to let them go to America. They have no future here. Nobody does.”
“It isn’t as bad as it looks to you, Mama,” Father said gently. “The Hungarians have refused to give in to Hitler’s demands.”
“Ignac, you are an intelligent man. Be realistic. How long can they fight him? No, if they stay…” Babi’s voice trembled; she turned and saw me on the threshold. “Piri, what are you doing there?”
“I was just going to look for Molcha, Babi.”
Babi nodded and walked past me into the main room. She closed the door. I settled myself beside Father on the bench.
“Where did everybody go?” I asked.
“They are walking to the Rika.”
“Aren’t you going?”
“No, I’m going to take a nap.”
“Father, can I ask you something?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why didn’t they take away Lajos’ officer’s uniform? He is Jewish. They took yours away.”
“They didn’t take mine away because I am Jewish; they took it away because I was a Czech officer. Lajos was never part of the Czech army; he was drafted into the Hungarian army. The Hungarians don’t trust the Czechs, especially in this war. I don’t have the uniform, but I still train the new recruits,” he ended with a forced chuckle.
In the afternoon we had company. A number of the Jewish families came to say hello to Babi’s guests. The men asked Father political questions, and they seemed suspicious of Lajos, who was wearing his Hungarian officer’s uniform.
I joined Iboya, who was listening to the women talk about the food Babi had prepared and the city clothes that Mother was wearing. Mother became very talkative and gay, making them all laugh. Then she turned to me and suggested I bring out the globe Lajos had given to Iboya and me.
I went into the spare room, and brought the globe back to a corner of the porch. The teen-agers all gathered around and took turns rotating it. At one point the men came over to trace out the border questions they had been discussing. Hitler and Germany were mentioned many times before they all left.
That night at our second seder, Lajos became solemn and fidgety. “Don’t you feel well?” Babi asked.
“He is just upset at the way the guests felt about his Hungarian uniform,” Lilli tried to explain in her best Yiddish.
After dinner we decided to go to bed early so that everyone would be rested for the day of travel ahead. Mother came over to us on our straw mattresses, and as she bent to kiss me, I asked, “Anyuka, am I going home with you tomorrow?” But I already knew the answer. I had heard her tell Rozsi that she would need her help with the new baby because Lilli was going to spend the rest of Lajos’ leave at his base in Prague. When Rozsi objected to leaving Babi at the beginning of the spring planting season, Mother said that I would stay on to finish my school year in Komjaty. Rozsi protested that I could not do her chores, but Mother reminded her that I was now just two years younger than Rozsi herself had been when she first came to Komjaty.
“No, I need Rozsi at home,” Mother said to me. “You must stay here to take care of Babi and finish school. You will come home when Rozsi comes back.”
I accepted Mother’s statement although I was feeling very confused. Part of me wanted to go home, but another part liked the thought of taking Rozsi’s place with Babi, and still another part did not want Rozsi to leave, either.
When I woke up in the late morning, everyone was packed and ready to go. A neighbor came with his wagon to take them to the train station, but Mother refused to get int
o it. “I would rather walk than ride on this bumpy road.” Father put his bike up into the wagon and said that he would walk with Mother. Babi asked if I wanted to go with them part of the way.
“No,” I said firmly, surprised by my own decision.
“All right,” said Babi. “We’ll stay.”
They all took turns kissing me goodbye.
“School will be over before you know it,” said Mother, “and then a few weeks after that you’ll come home.”
Father picked me up and whispered in my ear, “Don’t forget, you are still my little girl.”
Iboya was the last one to say goodbye to me. She left me the globe and promised to write. Watching the wagon go down the road with Mother and Father walking behind, my eyes clouded with tears. I ran back into the empty house, closed the bedroom door behind me, fell onto my bed, and started to sob.
A long time later, Babi knocked on the door instead of just walking in. “Come, Piri,” I heard her say, “let’s have something to eat.” It was already past noon, and I realized that I had not eaten any breakfast.
“That is how it is after the house is full of people and then they all have to leave,” she said as I ate the matzo brei she had made for me.
5
A WEEK LATER, I twisted my ankle while Molcha and I were climbing the rocks on the bank of the Rika. I did not go to school the next day, but took my schoolbooks out onto the porch after Babi left for the fields, propped my leg up on a chair, and was busy writing my lessons when Ferenc stopped at our gate. He tied his horse and came up to join me on the porch. After examining my swollen ankle, he asked how it happened. I answered that I had twisted it and told him that I was alone. “Babi is in the field, and Rozsi is in Beregszász. My mother is going to have a baby, and Rozsi has to stay with her.”
Upon the Head of the Goat Page 3