‘You’re welcome,’ he mutters, and quickly pushes open the heavy glass doors of the coffee house. As soon as he steps inside, he breathes in the aroma of freshly roasted coffee and the scent of vanilla and chocolate, smells that evoke the carefree pre-war world of Budapest café life that he yearns for.
Heading to the rear of the café, he makes his way past the three-piece band in their embroidered vests and baggy trousers, who are playing nostalgic czárdás melodies on their gypsy violins. He moves through the thick smoke of Havana cigars and Turkish cigarettes to the table in the far corner where Gábor usually holds court, makes deals, and arranges assignations. Watching him, cigar in one hand and apricot pálinka brandy in the other, leaning back in the high-backed Empire-style chair, you’d never guess he had a care in the world. Miklós envies Gábor’s ability to blot out future problems while enjoying present pleasures, whether it’s eating, drinking or womanising. He knows that his own sangfroid, the controlled voice and calm face that reassures others, is only a mask, a layer of ice no thicker than an eggshell that covers red-hot lava ready to erupt.
For the past year, he and Gábor, along with the other members of their Rescue Committee, have helped thousands of destitute refugees flooding into Budapest from Poland and Slovakia. He and Gábor make a good team: he has been the front man, talking to influential groups to arrange shelter and raise money, as well as sending parcels to Jews deported to forced labour camps, while Gábor and the others have been in charge of forging and printing false identity papers and finding accommodation.
He gazes appreciatively at Gábor. His friend is an affable bon vivant and a good poker player, but he is hopeless at chess because he’s incapable of thinking several moves ahead, and that’s why Miklós is convinced that he’s the wrong man to go to Istanbul. He can feel his blood pressure rising at the prospect of such a delicate and crucial matter being left in Gábor’s clumsy hands. Only a skilled negotiator should be in charge, but Eichmann has made his decision and it is irrevocable.
Miklós sits down, glances around to make sure that the Slovakian couple haven’t followed him inside, and orders black coffee from the pretty young waitress in a crisp white apron who is hovering around Gábor, enjoying his admiring glances.
‘Another apricot pálinka for me, Zsuzsi,’ Gábor says, and Miklós wonders whether the alcohol is an attempt to calm his nerves or to keep the girl in attendance.
He looks around the café. There is a war on, and in the past five years millions of people have been killed, but inside the Europa Café life goes on as it always has. The tables are covered with starched white linen cloths, there are rosebuds in vases of Venetian glass, and the patrons eat off fine Zsolnay porcelain with silver cutlery and drink from glasses of Bohemian crystal. In the background, the band is playing Hungarian melodies that make everyone feel patriotic and secure in the conviction that they and their beautiful city will survive.
‘When are you leaving for Istanbul?’ Miklós asks.
‘As soon as Eichmann organises our visas.’
‘What do you mean, “our” visas?’
Gábor sits forward and lowers his voice. ‘Didn’t you know? Eichmann has ordered Zoltán Klein to go with me.’
‘Zolly Klein? Are you serious? Why?’
Gábor shrugs. ‘No idea. That’s what he said: Herr Klein will go to Istanbul also.’
Miklós shakes his head. He can’t make any sense of this. Klein is a small-time crook with a shady past and an unprepossessing appearance. Small, skinny, with buck teeth and small eyes, he resembles a weasel, and his manner is oily and ingratiating. Everyone suspects him of being a spy, though no-one is sure who he is spying for. Some people think he is a double agent with a foot in both camps. Either way, he is the least trustworthy person Miklós knows, and he is shocked that Eichmann wants him to accompany Gábor on this sensitive mission.
They fall silent as the waitress sashays towards them, hips swinging. She beams her charming smile at Gábor as she sets down the coffee and brandy. Miklós waits until she has gone before asking again, ‘Why on earth is he sending Klein?’
‘He says he’s going to deliver messages and some cash.’
Miklós gives Gábor a shrewd look. It’s more likely that Eichmann wants Klein to spy on him and on the diplomats and Jewish leaders he will contact in Istanbul, but he is sure that this has not occurred to his friend.
Miklós takes out his monogrammed silver cigarette case, lights a cigarette, and leans towards Gábor. ‘Listen, your only hope is to stall. There is no way they’re going to agree to this outrageous offer, but if you even hint to Eichmann that they’ve refused, that will be the end. We’ll have nothing to bargain with, and he’ll go on with the deportations until not a single Jew is left in Hungary or anywhere else in Europe.’ He can hear himself speaking faster than usual, but he can’t slow down. He feels he is a bowstring about to snap.
‘You must make them understand that they have to make it look as if they’re genuinely considering his offer,’ he continues. ‘That’s our only hope, to keep stalling Eichmann.’
Gábor’s usually cheerful face looks glum. Knowing his friend so well, Miklós can imagine what is going through his mind. He didn’t volunteer for this mission, and its magnitude is weighing him down. The price of failure will be catastrophic, and he will be held responsible. He lets out a loud sigh. ‘How long can we go on stalling him?’
‘As long as necessary. The war must end soon. They’ve been defeated in Russia, North Africa and Italy. It can’t go on much longer. But they’re not going to stop murdering Jews until the last moment even if it means deploying all their soldiers, trains and ammunition. That’s how fanatical the Nazis are. They’d rather kill Jews than enemy soldiers. That goes for Eichmann too.’
He isn’t usually so voluble, but he is too worked up to stop, and he is looking at Gábor with such intensity it’s as if he has grabbed him by the collar. ‘So don’t forget, it’s up to you to string this out, whichever way you can, make him believe they’re eventually going to supply his bloody trucks.’
Gábor shifts in his chair and looks into his friend’s eyes. ‘You’ve been coaching me what to say and what to do from the moment we found out I was being sent to Istanbul. Don’t you think I know how much hinges on this mission? Is it because you think I’m stupid, or not up to the task? Maybe you think you’re the smart one who should be going to Istanbul instead of me?’
Miklós shakes his head, embarrassed that Gábor has seen through his advice. Gábor rarely takes offence, but no doubt the enormity of the task was making him unusually anxious. No wonder.
‘It’s just that knowing what an uphill task you’ll have trying to convince the leaders of the Jewish Agency, the American Joint Distribution Committee and the British Embassy how drastic the situation is, puts me on edge,’ he replies. ‘None of them have lived in Nazi-occupied countries, so they won’t be able to grasp how drastic our situation is in Budapest. How can they, when even most of the Jews of Budapest don’t realise that their lives are hanging by a thread?’
He doesn’t need to remind Gábor what Eichmann has already gloated over, that Baky and Endre, the Hungarian leaders, have needed no persuasion to enact the Nazis’ anti-Semitic laws, and that Ferenczy, the Hungarian police chief, has even offered to speed up the process by providing his own men to deport the Jews.
He glances at his friend’s gloomy face and feels contrite. ‘This whole business is driving me crazy,’ he says. ‘Of course I have faith in you.’ He hopes he sounds sincere.
Gábor finishes his brandy and looks into his empty balloon, obviously contemplating a top-up. ‘Eichmann said that my wife has to stay in Budapest as a hostage in case I don’t come back. What will happen to Ilonka if something happens while I’m in Istanbul and I can’t get back?’
At the mention of Ilonka, Miklós can feel his heart beating faster. He is sure the blood has rushed to his face, and he studies the menu so that Gábor can’t see his expre
ssion.
‘Why should something happen to you? You’ll be back in Budapest before you know it,’ he says, speaking to the tablecloth.
Gábor looks dubious. ‘Will you make sure she’s all right until I get back?’
Suddenly everyone stops talking and looks at the door. Three SS men have walked into the café, and one of them, a tall blond officer with a round pink face, surveys the restaurant and approaches Miklós.
It’s Kurt Becher, the SS officer who was in Eichmann’s office the previous week, and he greets Miklós with a friendly smile.
‘Guten tag, Herr Nagy,’ he says, and clicks his heels. ‘The coffee here is sehr gut, nicht war?’
By now the other patrons are turning to stare at Miklós and whispering. He doesn’t have to hear what they are saying to know they are wondering how a Jew has come to be on such good terms with one of Eichmann’s top Nazis.
After exchanging a few pleasantries, Becher rejoins his colleagues, and Miklós says in a low voice, ‘This fellow might be useful to us. I’ve heard he’s in charge of appropriating Jewish paintings, jewellery and cash. They say he’s been amassing a fortune all over Europe, wagons full of stuff. I heard he’s Himmler’s protégé, but I don’t think he’s a fanatical anti-Semite like the rest of them. He might be able to help us if we can wave enough cash in front of him.’
Gábor doesn’t reply. He is fiddling with his glass and looks preoccupied, and Miklós realises that he is still thinking about Ilonka.
‘Don’t worry, of course I’ll make sure she is all right,’ he says and tries to sound matter-of-fact despite the twinge of guilt he feels. After all, this situation isn’t his fault. He hasn’t manoeuvred for Gábor to be sent away. He has never believed in fate, only in the power of the individual, but it does seem as if fate has conspired to throw him and Ilonka together. He prefers not to acknowledge that what fate promises, it can also take away.
He knows he should behave honourably and resist the temptation, but he suspects that his passion for Ilonka may triumph over loyalty to his friend.
He looks at the Doxa watch his father-in-law gave him when he and Judit became engaged, and pushes away his coffee cup. ‘I’d better go home,’ he says. ‘Judit is expecting me for dinner.’
He leaves a few pengos on the plate for the waitress, picks up his hat and coat, and pushes open the glass doors of the café. Outside the air is cold and damp, and the Danube looks grey. As he walks home along the embankment, he wonders what will happen in Istanbul and what stories he will have to invent to keep Eichmann on the hook while Gábor is away.
His thoughts turn to Ilonka, and fantasies quicken his pulse. As he turns the key in his apartment door, he is already calculating when he will be able to visit her. As the door closes behind him, he hears Judit’s voice, and he wonders if somewhere, sometime, there will be a price to pay for this.
CHAPTER FIVE
May 1944
A week later, Miklós is pacing up and down in front of Ilonka’s building in Király Street, flowers in hand, like a nervous suitor. He bought the posy of lilies-of-the-valley from a woman sitting on the street corner bundled up in a brown shawl and a headscarf tied low over her forehead, like the village women back home. Thinking of his village evokes thoughts he has tried to push from his mind on this bright spring day. Already Jews in some of the provinces have been rounded up and placed in ghettos prior to being deported, and a rumour from a sympathetic Hungarian politician has warned him that the Nazis were planning to create a ghetto in Budapest. The situation was growing desperate and he knows he will have to talk to Eichmann again about the Jews he has promised to release, but here he is, bringing flowers for the woman he can’t get out of his mind.
Already the dark green spear-shaped leaves have lost their sheen and the exquisitely scented miniature white bells are drooping on their short stems, probably from the heat in his hand. Several times as he nears the entrance, he is about to press the buzzer but continues walking. He has waited so long for this opportunity to be alone with her, but now that the moment is approaching, he is wracked by doubts. What if he has misread the signs and she is offended or shocked? What if she rebuffs him?
Despite his anxiety, he can see the black humour of the situation. At the age of 40, with Allied bombs now falling on Budapest, and the entire Jewish community of Hungary threatened with destruction, he is behaving like a smitten schoolboy. His heart is thumping, his palms are sweating and his mind is churning with hopes, doubts and erotic fantasies.
He has had affairs in the past. For as long as he can remember, women have thrown themselves at him. But when he looks in the mirror, he sees a man of middle height with broad shoulders, a head of wavy brown hair, and a level gaze. Nothing remarkable.
Women are drawn to you because you are strong. They like powerful men, his mother once told him. You see the world with your own eyes and you seem indifferent to their charms. Women like a challenge.
Women obviously did see something that eluded him because they continued to make themselves available. On the dance floor, they pressed their soft bodies against him so that he could feel every curve. In the salons, they sat close to him, their lips parted, their low-cut dresses falling open as they leaned forward, flaunting their full white breasts. Some made risqué jokes about men’s sexual prowess and gave knowing smiles to indicate they were experts on the subject. He didn’t love them but he enjoyed the game. He would appear noncommittal and aloof until the very last moment. And when the chase came to its inevitable conclusion, they played the ingénue, pouted and accused him of being a heartless seducer while they were rolling down their stockings, unfastening their corsets and unbuttoning their blouses. The interludes were pleasurable but brief. There was no conquest and no elation.
But this was different. Ilonka wasn’t one of those empty-headed coquettes, and she has never flirted with him. What’s more, she was married to his friend, although from the openness with which Gábor carried on with other women, and the matter-of-fact manner in which he and Ilonka conversed, Miklós suspects that their marriage is based on friendship and familiarity rather than passion. Hovering near her front door, he hopes he is right.
If he was to sum up his own marriage, he would describe it as amicable and comfortable. His life with Judit is smooth and easy, and what he feels for her is affection and respect. Admiration, too. She was an accomplished pianist when they met, a dainty blonde with a rose-petal complexion who turned heads in the street. She had turned his as well, but his ardour wilted soon after they married. Her fear of becoming pregnant suppressed her enjoyment of sex, and the nightly effort of trying to evoke a spark of desire or a sensual response eventually stifled his own lust.
She told him from the beginning that she didn’t want to have children, and his efforts to change her mind had been futile. War was coming, she argued, hardly the right time to bring children into the world. Besides, children and music didn’t mix, and she didn’t want babies to interfere with her career.
Disappointed and frustrated, over the years he found the physical release he needed with other women, and if Judit was aware of his liaisons, she ignored them. He supposed that, like many married women, she accepted the fact that husbands played around. He recalls a conversation he once overheard between his mother and her friend who was complaining about her husband’s philandering. ‘Don’t worry,’ his mother had said. ‘It’s not made of soap, it won’t wear out.’
Miklós has watched Ilonka with growing admiration ever since he and Gábor Weisz formed their committee to help the destitute Polish and Slovak refugees flooding into Budapest the previous year. While they arranged shelter, raised money and forged documents, Ilonka had donated some of her own clothes and household linen.
When that was gone, she had importuned all her friends and acquaintances for clothes and bedding for the refugees. When she had exhausted all her contacts, she got hold of a sewing machine and set up a workshop in their apartment making shirts, blouses and dresse
s. She discovered a flair for converting the used clothes she was given into new styles, and her designs were so original that word soon spread and women from all over Budapest came to buy clothes from her. Her business grew, and before long she was able to employ some of the female refugees to hem and stitch the clothes.
‘I’ll never be out of business because war or no war, the women of Budapest are the vainest in the world. They’ll go without food rather than go without new clothes,’ she told Miklós once as he watched her cutting up used garments on her dining-room table. He liked listening to her low, musical voice, admired her resourcefulness and generosity, and always left in better spirits than before. Being in Ilonka’s company was like walking into a sunlit room after spending hours in a damp, dark basement.
He knows the exact day, the exact hour, when his admiration flared into desire. Three months before, he had come to talk to Gábor about a problem they were having with the forged documents. Ilonka was sitting at her sewing machine on the other side of the room when he saw her looking at him. There was no mistaking that glance. It wasn’t demure or casual but it wasn’t flirtatious either. She was looking at him with a deliberate, intense gaze, and their eyes locked like magnets, neither willing to disengage. Then she looked away and continued sewing, and he continued talking to Gábor, and the moment passed, but in that instant he knew his world would never be the same again. It felt as if a secret declaration had been made, an unspoken promise now hanging in the air between them. The memory of that shared glance thrilled and tantalised him and he was convinced that one day she would be his.
But now, standing at her door with his confidence wilting along with the flowers, he wonders whether his overheated imagination has exaggerated the significance of that moment. He takes a deep breath to steady his nerves and presses the buzzer. Whatever happens, he has to know if she shares his feelings.
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