Burning Cold

by Lisa Lieberman

  Zoltán had no idea that we’d met his wife, and that she was the one who sent us out to bring him back. He’d tried to keep us away from his house, and yet we’d ended up going there not once, but twice, putting the people he loved in danger. This paled, however, in comparison to József’s murder. József, his companion in hell. I dreaded telling our brother the news of how he’d died. How long could we put off breaking it to him? Watching him and György, the warmth of their reunion, was almost unbearably moving. Each of them had lost so much, but now they’d revived their connection and I just thought they deserved time, the consolation of shared memories and shared tears unencumbered by the ugliness of reality. We could dole out reality in small doses, couldn’t we? Save the worst for morning, allow the two of them their sweet reminiscences. It soothed me to think that this one gift was within our power, that we could do something to stave off pain for a little while, provided we kept away from dangerous topics.

  Jakub and Gray had their heads together, talking over our route to the border, leaving me to make conversation with our brother. I cast about for an innocuous opening.

  “Where did you learn to speak English so well? Did you spend time in London?” Father spoke English fluently, almost like an American, with just a trace of a Hungarian accent, but he’d lived in Hollywood for close to forty years. Jakub had picked up English from the US soldiers he’d befriended in Italy after the war and spoke a delightfully French- and Polish-inflected American English. Zoltán and György both spoke proper British English, but unlike József, neither displayed a Hungarian accent.

  “I was sent to the Calvinist college in the neighboring town, Sárospatak,” Zoltán answered between spoonfuls of goulash. “An old, old school, it’s been around for centuries. Uncle György went there.”

  Our host was just coming back into the kitchen. “Yes, centuries ago.” He laughed. “All the best Jewish families sent their sons to Sárospatak. Your father went there too.”

  “He did?” said Gray. This was news to me as well, first because Father sounded like an American, but also because, as far as I knew, he hadn’t gone to college.

  György explained that Sárospatak was a college in the British sense, a prep school for academically talented high school students who would proceed from there to university. “But it’s closed now,” he added.

  “Closed?” Zoltán paused in his eating. “Since when?”

  “The government shut it down in ’52. You hadn’t heard?”

  “I was in prison at the time. We didn’t get news of the outside world.”

  “In prison! Zoli, I had no idea. Where?”

  “Recsk.” Our brother’s tone was matter-of-fact, dismissive. I had the impression he regretted having brought the subject up, but it was too late.

  “Recsk!” György was devastated. “Why? No, it doesn’t matter. They didn’t need a reason, did they?”

  “It was my own fault, Gyuri bácsi. You told me I’d end up paying for my allegiances.”

  “I spoke in anger. I wouldn’t have wished that punishment on my worst enemy.”

  Zoltán smiled. “You called me Stalin’s henchman, if I remember correctly.”

  “So many times, I’ve regretted those words of mine.”

  Seeing the dreadful look on his face, I felt his agony as if it were my own. It was because I cared about him already, as well as Zoltán, and it caused me torment to observe the grave wounds they’d inflicted on one another. All I could do was watch as they worked through it.

  “I was a fool, blind to the evidence in front of my own eyes. Sanctimonious and ungrateful besides,” said our brother vehemently. “I’m ashamed of the way I behaved. You were kind enough to take me in when I returned from France. There I was, lecturing you, singing the praises of the brave Russian soldiers who’d liberated Hungary when they’d taken everything you had.”

  “No,” said György quietly. “The Germans did that. The Russians just took what was left.”

  Our brother hung his head. “Yes, of course. Gyuri bácsi, will you forgive me?”

  György went over to where he was sitting and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You had good reason to despise me. I sacrificed nothing in the war. Believe me, if I could go back and relive those years, I would have stayed here with my loved ones.”

  Beside me, I felt Jakub flinch. My poor darling. The others had no idea of his history, he hid his sorrow so well.

  “Then you’d have died along with them,” Zoltán said.

  “I might have preferred that,” murmured György, taking a seat at the table. He poured himself a glass of wine and drank it, looking straight at our brother the entire time. The two of them seemed to be carrying on a silent exchange; the rest of us might as well not have been in the room. I almost wished we weren’t. I felt like an intruder, watching a private drama unfold between these men, and had it been possible, I would have left the room with Jakub and Gray, to give them space. Such pain, on both sides—pain over the traumas each had suffered in the long years they’d been apart—but what really hurt me was seeing how much they still cared for one another. They were like father and son, they were that close, and yet their political differences had prevented them from finding solace together until this very moment. What a waste of years.

  Now the stories emerged of how each had spent the war, and of their painful reunion in its aftermath. Survivors had begun trickling back to the village in the spring of ’45. Some, like György, had been living in Budapest and were spared the fate of Hungary’s rural Jews. Others, notably the Communists, had gone into exile, driven out by Horthy’s right-wing policies or motivated (as in Zoltán’s case) by their political convictions to fight the fascists in Spain and elsewhere. They came home at last, expecting to be reunited with the families they’d left behind, but very few Jews returned from the death camps. Not Zoltán’s mother, Zsuzsanna, who had been sent directly to the gas chambers upon arrival, nor György’s elderly parents. They’d been locked in the synagogue with the rest of Mád’s Jewish community for three days without food or water, then herded into a cattle car, where they reportedly perished on the way to Auschwitz. One nephew had simply vanished, drafted into a labor detail and sent into Ukraine to clear minefields, while the boy’s parents, György’s sister and her husband, were thought to have died in Lippstadt, a Buchenwald sub-camp. Uncles, aunts, cousins—the Fleischmann clan had been quite large, as was György’s mother’s family, the Teitelbaums—none survived the cataclysm. The only relatives he’d succeeded in locating were some cousins who had emigrated to Palestine before the war.

  “Stragglers” was the word György used when referring to himself and his fellow returnees. “We stragglers were not fit company in those days. We kept to our homes, those of us who still had homes”—here he nodded solemnly toward Zoltán—“and we nursed our grief in private.”

  “Why did you stay here, Gyuri bácsi? You had a good life in Budapest. You could have gone back to your job in the museum, surrounded yourself with beautiful things.”

  “I lost my taste for beautiful things,” said our host. Looking at György’s sorrowful expression, I understood that the clothes he wore, the state of his house, were outward manifestations of the terrible shame he felt inside, the wretchedness of his soul. Such a long time to be repenting for having survived. I couldn’t imagine how he’d borne this burden, but in some small way, I believed, his lonely Friday night ritual in the ruined synagogue must have helped.

  I’d met a good number of Italians when I was in Sicily who’d survived the war. Not all of them had resisted fascism or fought with the partisans to retake their country from the Germans, but so much work was required to rebuild Italy that people managed to put their grudges aside. The nation had come together and, in the postwar spirit of reconciliation, Italians partook of the illusion they had belonged to some collective effort. Nor had the Allies cared to disabuse them of thi
s illusion. Aid poured in, and Mussolini’s exploits were forgotten.

  The spirit of reconciliation had quickly soured in Hungary, as we’d learned from József. The Soviets made Hungary pay in myriad ways, as a nation, for Horthy’s wartime alliance with Germany, and once they’d installed their puppets, talk of a common effort was little more than hollow propaganda. Even those like Zoltán, who had been battling fascism for a decade, were isolated and excluded, and it was worse for Hungary’s Jews.

  Our brother had made his way back through war-torn Europe to find another family occupying the home where he and his mother had lived with her parents since Father abandoned them. Both grandparents had passed away while he was still at university in Budapest, his grandmother succumbing to cancer, his grandfather suffering a fatal heart attack later in the same year. To make ends meet, his mother had taken in borders, and the woman who opened the door was one of these. He even remembered her name: Vera. Newly married then, she and her husband had moved into his grandparents’ room and in one of the letters he’d received from his mother while he was volunteering in Spain, she’d mentioned that they’d had a baby. He saw a couple of children in the house, and Vera was heavily pregnant, but there was another man living with her. The first husband had fought with the Hungarian Second Army in Voronezh and died on the battlefield, she informed him in hushed tones, all the while looking nervously over her shoulder. Zoltán sensed she would have invited him in, but the new husband barred his way, coming to stand menacingly at the door with his arms crossed.

  “He claimed that they owned the house,” said Zoltán. Peering around the man, he’d recognized several pieces of furniture in the living room. A mahogany sideboard and the gilded mirror that hung above it. A Chippendale sofa upholstered in a lemon-colored silk. His mother had been wild about the fabric, the pale yellow a pleasing contrast against the blue drapes that hung in the room, but the drapes hung in tatters and he identified the sofa mainly by its shape, it was so heavily soiled.

  György made a face. “You could have taken it up with the town authorities, Zoli. I told you that before. Zsuzsanna owned the house outright. After her death, the property belonged to you. Nobody would have disputed your right to reclaim it.”

  “How could I stay here?”

  That single glimpse into the living room of his grandparents’ house had been enough to convince him that his future lay elsewhere. He’d cast his lot with the forces of progress ages ago. The Party would take care of him. He’d find work as a translator for one of the publishing houses in Budapest and write poetry on the side while working to rebuild Hungary. His country needed him! Such were his thoughts as he made his way on foot back to the train station.

  Trains ran infrequently. Most of Hungary’s rolling stock had been confiscated outright by the occupying forces and the main railroad lines had been severely damaged in the fighting that raged throughout the country during the final months of the war. Our brother was stuck in Mád for several days, sleeping rough in the ravaged fields and scrounging for food, until he happened to run into György on the street.

  “He didn’t recognize me. ‘Gyuri bácsi!’ I said. He stared straight in front of him as if I were invisible.”

  “You looked like an anarchist! I had no idea who you were, underneath that beard.”

  Zoltán ran a hand over his smoothly shaven cheek. “You’re one to talk. What happened to the dapper fellow who used to visit the barber in Andrássy út every single day? I’m surprised Magda lets you go about dressed as you are.”

  “She knows better than to argue with an old man.”

  We were, by this time, well into the second bottle of wine and I was growing drowsy. “Excuse me.” I stifled a yawn.

  “We should get some sleep, children,” said György. “You’ll be wanting to make an early start tomorrow.”

  “You seem to be under the impression that I’m leaving,” said Zoltán.

  “Of course you’re leaving, Zoli. The fight is over.”

  “You’re wrong. The struggle will continue even after the Russians come back. It continued under Rákosi. Even in Recsk it continued.”

  Jakub, Gray, and I looked at one another and I could tell we were all thinking the same thing. The moment had come to raise the question of Dr. Szabò and Zsuzsi. Whether or not Zoltán was aware that his wife had sent us to Mád, he ought to be thinking of their future and not only of his own.

  “What about your wife? And your daughter?” said Gray. “Zsuzsi’s worried sick about you.”

  “Zsuzsi,” said Zoltán. He sounded confused. “You’ve spoken to Zsuzsi?”

  Wife? Daughter? György mouthed the words, too astonished to speak. If I hadn’t left my purse in the bedroom, I’d have fished out the photo to show him. I couldn’t believe that Zoltán hadn’t mentioned his family during the time they were upstairs. György, who was practically a relative, the sole link to his past? I’d have thought he’d have told him about Anna and Zsuzsi first thing, but even now he seemed reluctant to talk about them. Was he so angry that we’d ignored the clue he’d left and gone to his house that he didn’t trust himself to speak?

  Jakub took it upon himself to explain. “Dr. Szabó—that’s Zoltán’s wife—runs an orphanage in one of Budapest’s outer districts. She told us we’d find him here.”

  “Anna sent you, did she?” Our brother folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. He wasn’t angry, I realized, he was dismayed by the news that his wife had given his hiding place away. Had he sworn her to secrecy?

  “Well, not right away,” I said, rushing to Dr. Szabó’s defense. “It took two visits before she trusted us enough to tell us where you were, and even so, it was like pulling teeth. But I think she wanted us to find you and bring you back so we could get the three of you out of Hungary.”

  He pondered this for a moment. “Interesting, but highly unlikely,” he said. “I didn’t tell Anna I was coming here.”

  “You didn’t tell your own wife?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “I didn’t tell a soul.”

  Gray slammed his palm down on the table. “What the hell! How did you expect us to find you? Telepathy?”

  “I was counting on good old American ingenuity.” Zoltán looked him right in the eye and smiled condescendingly, as if addressing a bright but overeager pupil, the sort who could stand being taken down a peg or two.

  “In other words, you expected us to ferret out your hiding place on our own,” said Jakub.

  Our brother clapped his hands slowly, in a parody of applause. “Bravo.”

  “But why?” my husband persisted. “Why lure us all the way to Mád if you never had any intention of leaving the country with us?”

  “Oh, come now. You’ve made it this far. You’re clever enough to figure out the rest.”

  “Stop taunting them, Zoli,” said György, his voice quite stern. “You’re behaving abominably. This isn’t a game, you know. You’ve put them in danger.”

  “I’m well aware that this isn’t a game.” Impatiently, Zoltán got up from the table and went to stand by the stove. “I needed someone I could trust, and that meant someone from outside Hungary. This country is so byzantine, it’s hard to tell your friends from your enemies. So often it turns out that they’re the same people.”

  “Are you saying that you don’t trust your wife?” asked Jakub.

  György put up his hand to get our attention. “This conversation is moving much too quickly for an old man. Would someone please start from the beginning?”

  “I’m sorry, Gyuri bácsi,” said our brother. “Let me explain. These three contacted me last week through an acquaintance. They’d somehow learned who I was—I’m not clear on all the details—and wanted to meet me. Naturally, I was curious. As you know, my father left my mother and me when I was still an infant. We never heard a word from him, once he got to America. Now,
here were my brother and sister, offering to come to Budapest, with a revolution raging all around, and bring me out with them if I chose to go. My first impulse was to avail myself of their help and get my family to safety. But Anna made it clear she would never leave her work. During the years I was in prison, it became quite important to her, which has baffled me, I will confess—but of course I didn’t know everything.”

  Gray was still irritated. “Give us a hint: what do you know now that you didn’t know then?”

  “The day before we were supposed to meet, I got hold of my kader, the secret files the ÁVH was keeping on me, going back for years. I learned the names of the people who’d informed on me. Colleagues, neighbors. The editor at the newspaper I worked for, before he shot himself. There were dozens of names. People I’d trusted. People I loved. One of them was Anna.”

  “Anna! No, that’s impossible.” I didn’t want to believe him, but even as I was voicing the denial, I could see from Zoltán’s face that it was true. He still loved her, and I realized he’d have given anything for his wife to have been innocent of the betrayal.

  “Anna,” he repeated. His voice was flat. “So, you see, I had nowhere else to turn. I needed your help.”

  “How exactly did we help you?” said Gray, unwilling to let him off the hook.