by Gaby Koppel
Chapter 25
We are booked on a late flight back to London the next day. So at eight-thirty in the morning we rendezvous with the two men outside a building, its neo-classical façade smothered in grime. Schmulli presses the buzzer, and we enter a brightly lit, tiled corridor, off which are several signposted doors. Disinfectant lingers in the air. We enter the first office, to find ourselves in front of a polished, mahogany counter. Behind it, long rows of shelves crammed with files disappear towards a distant wall. To our right are several large reading desks, some of them already occupied. In one corner is a microfiche reader and a photocopier.
A clerk is speaking to a customer. He’s wearing a name badge on the kind of brown overall jacket grocers used to wear in 1960s Britain. A woman waits her turn, we sit next to her. The clerk fusses around, bringing one file and then another. The woman looks at each, shaking her head as she gives them back to him. Their conversation seems to drag on and on, the customer increasingly irritable. The clerk looks as though he’s taking it all as a personal insult. Then, just when things look as though they are going to turn nasty, the customer snatches a file, and tramps over to one of the desks. The clerk scoops up the remaining ones, muttering to himself. I look at my watch. It’s taken him twenty minutes. We’ll need to get back to Pension Eszterházy to collect our bags before we head out to the airport. I start tapping my foot on the floor. Mutti nudges me, and shakes her head disapprovingly. The woman steps forward.
Without waiting for her to say anything, the clerk scuttles off and returns with a single file. The customer accepts with a wordless nod. At last.
Schmulli gets up and asks a very long question. The clerk replies in a curt, sullen sentence. Schmulli turns back to us.
“Upstairs.”
A flight of stone stairs, another, smaller office, lined floor to ceiling with ancient leather-bound ledgers packed tight into venerable oak bookshelves. Their custodian is another brown-jacketed clerk. Seeing our file, he takes a pair of wire-rimmed glasses out of his breast pocket like a professor of classical history examining a parchment scroll. As Schmulli is speaking, the clerk adjusts his glasses, and examines the documents in our compensation file. He stops at the address of the factory, taking out a battered map book from underneath the desk, leafing through it looking for the right page. Then he stands upright and looks at me and Mutti.
“You come, please,” he says in English. We all go over to the shelves. He runs his hands over the ledgers, talking in Hungarian.
“He says these books list all of the property in Budapest,” explains Schmulli. “With the names of the owners.” He pauses to listen. “It runs up until 1948 when the communist regime took hold.” The clerk now walks along the row, stopping at the end, and selecting a volume with 1930 embossed on the spine in black, gothic lettering. He lowers the heavy volume onto a desk, and starts leafing through it, the three of us peering over his shoulder. It’s all swirling copperplate handwriting and sepia coloured ink – addresses on the left, followed by numbers and names across the page. He turns over the heavy pages, sometimes going back and forth, and keeping up a commentary in Hungarian, addressed to Schmulli. Who replies every now and then, just one word,
“Igen.” Yes. Then they stop. They nod. They look at Mutti and me.
“I think we have something, ladies,” says Schmulli.
The brown ink, the lacy handwriting make it difficult to read. But it is there all the same. The address of Grandfather’s factory in the Budapest VIII district.
And even I can make out what’s written in the second column.
“This,” I say, “is my grandfather’s name. And this,” I move my hand across the page “is the family apartment in Szent Istvan Korut – it’s the one overlooking the river.” I turn to Schmulli, “Does this mean what I think it does?” He nods.
“It means that your grandfather certainly owned the factory in 1939 – it’s pretty much proof.” He puts a hand up. “But we have to carry on going through the ledgers to see what happened later. Mutti squeezes my hand very tight. Then she rummages in her handbag.
“I go out for a cigarette, ja?”
“You want me to come with you?”
“No, I’m fine. Really.” She does that thing of pulling herself in which is like she’s shaking all the pieces back into the right place. I watch her going along the parquet floor, her tall, bulky frame dwarfed by the room’s vast, echoing space. In this setting, she looks small, shrunken, vulnerable. But I’m soon distracted by the physical effort of moving the ledgers about. Together, we heave one, then the next, tracking grandfather’s ownership of the property across the years from the 1930s. He’s there in 1935 and 1936. In 1937, he’s still there, but has been joined by another name, Ferenc Kovács, which is still there with his in 1939.
“Who the hell is Ferenc Kovács?” I ask. Schmulli, and Aaron look blank. “Is there some way of finding out?”
“I think this person,” the clerk points to grandfather’s name, “is Jew. No?”
“Er, yes,” I reply, wondering where this is leading. “This person,” he points to Kovács, “not Jew.”
“Probably something to do with the anti-Jewish laws,” says Schmulli. The clerk nods fiercely. “From years of nineteen-twenties, government make difficult for Jewish,” he says.
“Yes,” I say, “I know.” He ignores me and carries on.
“No vote for Jewish, few doctors, few lawyer. Numerus clausus, also in university.”
“Academic quotas, and in the professions too,” I say. “No cars, boats, trains, radios. I’ve read about that – but how does that relate to the factory?”
“When they brought in laws ‘Aryanising’ Jewish property,” says Schmulli, “thousands of people could apply for anything owned by Jews, from apartment buildings, industrial plants, even wedding rings.”
“That’s legalised theft. And people just went OK, here you are?”
“It’s a damn sight better than being gassed and burnt in an oven like the Polish Jews, you know, so people just put up with it and I think they hoped one day the tables would turn again. As they always had before.”
“So what’s happened here? Why the two names in the ledger, and then one?”
“This is just a guess, but maybe your grandfather could see the writing on the wall. A couple of years before the full-scale Aryanisation laws he brings in the non-Jewish partner. Probably he was trying to stay one step ahead of the game. At first, they share the ownership of the business, and then in 1943 your grandfather steps back, and from the outside it looks like an Aryan company. But he’s running it behind the scenes.”
“But then his luck ran out,” I say.
“Do you know what happened to your grandfather?” asks Schmulli.
“Not really. They hid. Mutti told me he was shot, but never went much further than that. She sort of seizes up and can’t get the words out. It’s hardly surprising. But I’ve managed to fill in the picture myself and you must know. Things were pretty chaotic, death squads rampaging around the city pulling people out of so-called safe houses. I just assume…” Schmulli and the clerk nod.
“Ja.” I hadn’t heard Mutti slip back. She must have heard what I just said. The click of a lighter, the whoosh of air being dragged through a cigarette, and we’re all engulfed by a cloud of smoke. “Every night we sat in the cellar, listening out for Russian shells. For footsteps, shouting. In the dark, in the cold. But when they came, it was…” She draws deeply on her cigarette and no one tells her this is a no-smoking zone. “It was early in the morning. Bashed down the door. You, you and…” She falters. “They took him. They… my mother tried to use connections, you see. We knew people, contacts. We had a letter, was supposed to save him. But I didn’t find… couldn’t see. I left him – to die.”
“But you were fourteen, Mutti.” She nods. “It wasn’t your fault.” The clerk crosses himself, and we fall silent.
“But tell me now, who’s this?” I ask quietly, pointing at
the name Ferenc Kovács in the ledger. The others part to make room for her at the desk. She lifts up the glasses that are hanging on a gold chain around her neck, puts them on and cranes forward to see.
“I can’t believe it,” she bolts back upright, her face red. “The bastard, the bloody, the…”
“What can’t you believe?” She takes another drag of her cigarette.
“My father’s chauffeur was Kovács – to us he was Kovács bácsi.” She flicks ash onto the polished parquet tiles. The clerk watches it fall. “Uncle Kovács.”
“It’s not necessarily the same person,” I say. “After all, Kovács seems to be a common Hungarian name. You see it all over the place.”
“But it makes complete sense, Elizabeth,” says Schmulli. “A servant is just the kind of person who you’d choose to put down as the nominal owner of your property. Just the kind of person who might feel some kind of obligation, and who you’d trust to give it back afterwards. That’s exactly what people did.”
“But I don’t think he returned it at all,” says Mutti. “Did he?”
We have to turn the heavy pages to see what happens after 1944. The name Kovács continues, year after year until the sequence runs out.
“So that’s it?”
“Yes, and I’m afraid though what your grandfather did was a clever move at the time, it leaves you with a bit of a problem,” says Schmulli.
“What do you mean?”
“It looks as though the property was legally transferred to someone else and wasn’t confiscated. He did it voluntarily, before compulsory Aryanisation came in. You can’t really claim it was theft, unless you can find some paperwork in which Kovács undertakes to return the property at a certain time.”
“That’s ridiculous. Of course he wouldn’t have just given it away to some bloody driver.”
“But how can you prove intention on the part of someone who is now dead?”
“I’m not giving up on it.”
“What else can you do?”
“I’ll look through those other ledgers, for a start.”
“It’s a waste of time. I’m sorry.” I turn round to pick the next ledger up, but it’s too heavy. The clerk helps me, and together we lever the tome up onto the desk.
The new tome has a repeat of the same information, but has an additional column with amounts of money listed. The clerk shakes his head, unable to explain what they are. We turn the page, and at the bottom of the column there’s something new. Another address.
Outside, we’re assaulted by a burst of morning sun. Schmulli is leaning up against the wall. I walk towards him, waving my notebook. He shrugs.
“What have you got?” asks Schmulli.
“The address,” I reply. “I’ve got the address for Kovács.”
“But it’s nearly fifty years old. He won’t be there. The building probably doesn’t even exist anymore. ”
From the terrace of a café overlooking a square, we can see leaves on the trees turning dry with the intense summer heat. I heap sugar into my espresso, and gulp it down, craving the caffeine.
“Who says the address doesn’t exist?” I say. “We might as well try it.”
“And what if he is there? What are you going to say?”
“I’ll find out what’s happened.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know, I’ll work it out.” I look at Mutti. Impassive, she turns her head to blow smoke away from us.
“I think you have to be at the airport by six, so you probably haven’t got enough time anyway. What you should do is find a Budapest attorney who can carry on the search when you are back in London, using the new information.” He’s right, of course. We thank Schmulli and bid him goodbye. But there’s a lot we can do in four hours. We’ll sort out the attorney later.
Soon we’re on a tram, rattling north along the Danube. Mutti’s quiet, gazing over at the water, as if she’s trying to see something below the surface. I wonder if the bodies are still lying down there, silted over by fifty years’ worth of accumulated debris. Or perhaps the pounding current has washed the bones along the winding river bed towards Romania’s border with Ukraine. Where the Danube splinters apart across a vast delta, its separate streams tumbling out into the murky depths of the Black Sea.
“You all right?” I ask.
“Ja, ja,” she snaps on a bright smile.
“Tell me what it is, Mutti.”
“It would be so nice to go on one of those boat rides on the river. Such lovely views. Nice glass of wine.”
“Yes,” I say. “It would be lovely.” The tram makes a rumbling noise, kerdunk, kerdunk, kerdunk.
“I wanted to stop them, you know. I… I tried my best.” Kerdunk, kerdunk, kerdunk.
“You did, Mutti, you did.” That’s it. We’ve reached our stop, and stumble off the tram, hands clasped together. We can’t find the right bus for the next part of our journey. It should stop here. I let Mutti sit for a while on a bench smoking, while I study the map. It looks as though we need to cut through to the adjacent main road to pick up our connection. We set off, walking at a pace she can manage. The reserves of energy she discovered yesterday have dissolved, and despite her evident determination, her walking is laboured and slow.
“What were you about to say, on the tram?” I ask. We walk on for a few minutes while Mutti is composing a reply. She nods to herself, as though she’s trying out different forms of words in her head. She swallows, and looks away.
“I watched them – take my, take my father.” Her voice fades away to nothing. “My mother was like a child, paralysed. I had to take charge, decide what to do. I ran to father’s old colleagues. If I’d been stopped by the militia they would have shot me too. No good anyway. And then I remembered that Kovács bácsi knew them all. He was supplying all the black market nylons and booze for the – those people – he made sure they needed him. He introduced us to some of his contacts, we went round the city from one to another and finally we got a letter requesting my father’s release.”
We come to a junction and wait for the lights to change before we cross. Mutti looks at me. “I couldn’t believe it – I had the precious letter addressed to a Colonel – what was his name? Something beginning with F – ach what was it?” She’s holding her hand up as though the letter was in it now, she’s remembering exactly what it felt like to hold the piece of paper that could spell life or death. “No matter what his name was anyway, I’d never met him, didn’t know what he looked like, but he was supposed to be the man with the influence. Kovács bácsi still had my father’s car, and he took us down to the river. But when we got there we didn’t know who to give it to – what to do. We didn’t know if we were even in the right place, Anyway, no good. Too late.” Her shoulders slump as though she’s reliving the impotence all over again.
“It wasn’t your fault though,” I say. “You were just a young girl – how come you had to bear the responsibility for saving your father?” She shrugs and we walk on until we arrive at the bus stop. Mutti throws her cigarette butt on the floor and grinds her foot into it until it’s pulverised into dust. We get on the bus, and sit very close together.
Our journey continues through the traffic-clogged city. As we head north, the streets get narrower and smaller. Elegant old buildings with their ornate mouldings give way to irregular square, modern blocks, blackened with grime, and stacked together. Looming shadows make the road dark, as we bump along. Every now and then the bus catches a slice of sunlight, cutting between the stern edifices.
Mutti wobbles up to the front of the bus to ask the driver if we are near our destination. She comes back waving three fingers in the air. We count the stops, like children on a day trip. Then we’re out on the pavement, looking round for landmarks. Grandfather’s factory was built in the 1920s, but nothing we can see looks as though it has been here more than about forty years. We are surrounded by squat, Stalinist tower blocks, a crushing memorial to the post-war era.
We scan the roadside, looking for signs, but there aren’t any. Along the monotonous road each corner looks just the same. Solid concrete: buildings, satellite dishes and washing bursting from crumbling balconies. A small shop selling cigarettes and lifeless vegetables. I give Mutti the map and hover behind as she goes into the shop and buys a pack of cigarettes as an excuse to ask the shopkeeper for directions. He looks at the map and an ancient business card Mutti has been keeping in her precious folder. He shakes his head, and says something. Mutti turns to me.
“It’s not here anymore. The road we are looking for, it’s not here, doesn’t exist anymore.”
“But it’s on the map.” The shopkeeper is now serving someone else. We wait, then Mutti speaks to him again.
“He says the map must be old.” I look at the man in his blue overalls. A black five o’clock shadow on his weaselly face.
“Bastard,” I say loudly. He may not speak English, but he’ll have got the message.
We pause on a low wall outside the shop.
“It’s as though the entire Hungarian nation is against us. They’ll do anything they can, even take down the street signs.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Why don’t you sit down here, and let me have a look around?” I say.
“But how can you ask for directions?”