Fever at Dawn

by Fever at Dawn (retail) (epub)

  They sat and looked at each other, not wanting to speak. At times they smiled. They were waiting.

  Miklós took the suitcase onto his lap, undid the string and opened the lid. He had packed the coat fabric on top and now he smoothed it out. He lifted it up like a baby and handed it to Lili. ‘I brought this for you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Material for a winter coat. You just have to get it made.’

  ‘A coat?’

  ‘You wrote that they hadn’t given you a coat. Do you like it?’

  Apart from the set of clothes she was given on her arrival in Sweden, Lili had one folksy skirt, a spinach-green waistcoat and a rust-red turban-like hat—all presents from the Björkmans. As she ran her hand down the thick, dark-brown, woollen fabric it reminded her of peacetime. She held back her tears.

  ‘I took an hour choosing it,’ Miklós added. ‘I’m no expert when it comes to winter coats. Or summer coats for that matter.’

  Lili again fingered the material, almost as if she were trying to decipher a secret code woven into it. Then she held it to her nose. ‘It’s got a nice smell.’

  ‘I brought it in that old suitcase. I was afraid it’d get creased. But it hasn’t, thank God. I borrowed the suitcase from the head nurse.’

  Lili remembered everything. She had read each letter from Miklós at least five times. The first time hastily devouring it, then, escaping to the bathroom, twice more, thoroughly relishing every paragraph. Later, perhaps a day later, she would reread it twice, and behind each word she imagined other words. She knew a great deal about Márta.

  ‘Mickey Mouse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was so much my father wanted to tell her. The sentences piled up in his head. Where to start?

  He found a cigarette in his pocket. He took it out along with a box of matches. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course not. What about your lungs?’

  ‘They’re fine. All’s well here inside,’ he said pointing to his chest. ‘It’s just my heart! It wants to burst—it’s beating so hard!’

  Lili stroked the coat fabric with her fingertips.

  Miklós lit up. Soon a cloud of grey smoke swirled above their heads.

  At last they began to speak, eagerly, hardly finishing their sentences, cutting in on each other. They were excited and impatient, wanting to make up for everything all at once. But they never spoke about certain important things. Neither then, nor later.

  My father never told Lili that for three months he burned bodies in Belsen concentration camp.

  How could he have spoken of the suffocating stench that lingered over the mounds of the dead and clawed at his throat? Is there a word that could describe this work? A phrase that could describe the feeling as bare, scaly arms slipped from their grip, over and over, to land with a senseless thud on top of other frozen bodies?

  Lili did not tell Miklós about the day of her liberation from Belsen.

  It took her nine hours to drag herself from the barracks to the clothes depot, a distance of about a hundred metres. She was naked and the sun was scorching. The Germans had fled by then. All she could remember was that it was late afternoon when she made it. Then she was sitting in a German officer’s tunic, leaning back against a wall and bathing her face in the light.

  How did she come to be dressed in a German officer’s uniform?

  Miklós could never bring himself to tell her of his time, before he burned corpses, as an orderly in the typhoid barracks. In block seventeen, the most ghastly block in the camp, he doled out bread and soup to the half-dead. He had to wear the black band of the Oberpfleger on his arm. How could he possibly have told her about the time when Imre Bak knocked on the window? How Imre got down on all fours and barked like a rabid dog? Imre Bak was his best friend in Debrecen. He was hoping to get medicine from Miklós. Perhaps. Or at least a kind word. But he couldn’t even walk into the typhoid death block. Through the filthy window, my father watched him topple over. His handsome, clever head landed in a puddle. He was dead.

  And Lili never said a word—neither then nor later—about her twelve-day journey to Germany in a freight wagon. On the seventh day she discovered she could lick the condensation that had frozen overnight on the wall of the wagon. She was so thirsty, so dreadfully thirsty! Her friend Terka Koszárik had been screaming beside her nonstop for twenty hours. Perhaps Terka was the luckier of the two: she had gone completely mad.

  And my father never described the murderous fight in the Belsen general hospital after the camp was liberated. He weighed twenty-nine kilos at the time. Someone had put him on the back of a truck, which took him to hospital. Afterwards, for weeks, he just lay on a bed. Three times a day a strapping German nurse picked up his featherweight body and poured cod-liver oil down his throat. Lying beside him was a dentist, a Polish Jew. He was thirty-five and spoke several languages. He could talk about Bergson, Einstein and Freud. Six weeks after liberation, this dentist beat an even more unfortunate Frenchman almost to death for half a kilo of butter. My father never spoke about that.

  True, Lili never talked about the Belsen general hospital either. It was May, springtime, the war had just come to an end. She was lying there, not far from my father, as it happened, in the women’s section. Lili was given paper and pencil. The task was to write down her name and date of birth. Lili thought hard. What was her name? She couldn’t remember. Not for the life of her. She was devastated by the thought that she might never again remember her own name.

  They didn’t speak about any of these things.

  Two hours later my father stroked Lili’s hair, then got up awkwardly from his armchair and kissed the tip of her nose.

  It was past midnight when a nurse took up position at a discreet distance, and Lili realised that it was time to say goodnight. The nurse accompanied Miklós down to the first floor and took him to a four-bed ward where he was to sleep for the next two nights.

  Miklós undressed and got into his pyjamas. He was flooded with such happiness that for hours he paced the short distance from the window to the door and back again. Still exhilarated at 3.30 a.m., he had to force himself to get into bed. But he couldn’t sleep.

  After breakfast, at nine the next morning, they were sitting once more under the palm. When Judit Gold hurried down to the caretaker’s office at 11 a.m. to bring up the mail for the women’s section, she caught sight of Lili and Miklós in the alcove, their heads together, whispering. She turned away, ashamed of the spurt of breathless jealousy that took hold of her.

  Lili was preparing to reveal her deepest secret. She took a breath. ‘I’ve a terrible sin to confess. No one knows about it. Not even Sára, but I’m going to tell you.’

  Miklós leaned forward and touched her hand. ‘You can tell me anything. Everything.’

  ‘I’m so ashamed…I…I…’ Lili faltered.

  ‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of,’ my father said confidently.

  ‘I can’t explain it…it’s awful. When we had to give our personal details, before we got on the Swedish ship…I can’t bear to tell you…’

  ‘Of course you can!’

  ‘I…I…Instead of my mother’s name—her name is Zsuzsanna Herz—instead of her name, for some reason I can’t understand, I was incapable of saying her name. I lied! I just couldn’t give them my mother’s name.’

  Lili grabbed Miklós’s hand and held it tight. Her face was so pale it seemed almost luminous. My father freed himself and lit a cigarette as he always did when he wanted to think hard.

  ‘It’s quite clear: you wanted to change your fate.’

  Lili thought about this. ‘That’s right. What a lovely way of putting it! Changing one’s fate. A solution presented itself on the spur of the moment, without my really preparing for it. To be different. Not Jewish. With just one word I was transformed.’

  ‘From a frog to a princess.’

  My father always loved images from fairytales. But, perhaps because he felt this was a bit tr
ivial, he added, ‘I felt the same way. But I was too much of a coward.’

  ‘Lying on the stretcher there on the quay, I said my mother’s name was Rozália Rákosi. Where on earth did I get that name from? Rákosi? I haven’t a clue. Rozália Rákosi. That’s what I said instead of my mother’s real name.’

  Miklós stubbed out his cigarette in the tin ashtray. ‘Don’t worry. It’s over and done with.’

  Lili shook her head. ‘No, it isn’t. You see, I also said that my father was a Jew but my mother was Roman Catholic. Not only that, I told them I was Catholic, too. Do you see? I wanted to be done with the whole thing. The Jewish business. Once and for all.’

  ‘Quite understandable.’

  Lili started to cry.

  Miklós took out his precious handkerchief.

  Lili hid her face in her hands. ‘No, no, it’s a terrible sin! Unforgivable! You are the first person I’ve ever told. And, if you want to know, every Sunday I go to a Swedish family for lunch. The Björkmans. Everyone thinks I go there because I want to. But that’s not true, I go there because they are Catholics, too. And I go to church with them. I’ve even got a cross!’

  Lili pulled a creased envelope from the pocket of her gown. She unfolded it and took out the silver cross.

  Miklós turned it over in his hand. ‘That makes things clear.’

  ‘Makes what clear?’

  ‘Why your mother hasn’t been in touch yet. Why she hasn’t written to you.’

  Lili took the cross, slipped it in the envelope and put it back in her pocket. ‘Why hasn’t she?’

  ‘The list! The one that appeared in so many Hungarian newspapers. The official list. You would be on it as Lili Reich, mother’s name Rozália Rákosi. That would be a different girl, not you. I imagine your mother read the list in Budapest and saw your name but didn’t realise it was actually you. She was looking for a Lili Reich whose mother’s name was Zsuzsanna Herz.

  Lili stood up and raised her arms high, like a classical statue. A moment later she fell down on her knees in front of Miklós and started to kiss his hands. He stood up and hid his arms behind his back in embarrassment. Lili stayed kneeling, but she calmed down a little.

  ‘This warrants a celebration!’ she said in a whisper, looking up at my father. ‘What a clever man you are!’

  She was already flying down the corridor. ‘Sára! Sára!’ she shouted.

  Ten

  AT MIDDAY, in the cavernous and ugly yellow-tiled canteen where the girls ate their lunch half an hour after the men, Miklós felt that at last the hour had come for him to give an unforgettable account of his view of the world.

  That winter twenty-three women were being treated on the third floor of the Eksjö hospital. They were all gathered around Miklós, including the three Hungarian girls, Lili, Sára and Judit. Using a small, sharp, wooden-handled knife Miklós sliced the three little chocolate cakes—gems of a confectioner in Avesta—into pieces. He first cut the cakes in half, then into quarters, then eighths. Soon twenty-four tiny pieces of cake were laid out in front of him, each one hardly bigger than a woman’s fingernail.

  Miklós stood on a chair—he was in his element. He removed his broken glasses. ‘I will now explain communism to you,’ he declared in an elevated form of German. ‘At the core there is equality, fraternity and justice. What did you see a moment ago? Three small chocolate cakes. Three of you girls could have wolfed them down in no time. Instead, I cut up the three cakes—which, let’s say, could stand for bread, milk, tractors or oil fields. I cut them into equal pieces. And, lo! Now I’ll divide them among the people. Among you. Help yourselves.’

  He pointed to the cakes on the table. It didn’t really matter whether or not Miklós’s wit had penetrated. Roused by the performance they reached for the plate, and everyone picked up a piece of cupcake. Lili looked at my father with pride.

  The morsels of cake disappeared down their throats like breaths of air.

  ‘No one has ever explained the essence of communism so beautifully,’ remarked Sára, growing emotional.

  Judit was the only one not to eat her now symbolic portion of cake. She turned it over in her hand until it had melted and the sticky, dark-brown goo dripped from her fingers.

  In the early evening of 3 December, under the supervision of the cloaked nurse, Lili escorted my father to the railway station. When the train set off, Miklós was hanging off the last step of the last carriage, and he didn’t stop waving until the station had vanished.

  Her eyes glistening, Lili remained on the snowy, frozen platform for a long time.

  Miklós shut the door of the carriage behind him. He was on his way.

  On the second night of his visit to Eksjö, in the four-bed ward, he had composed a love poem. On the following day, if he was on his own for a moment in the bathroom or the lift, he polished and corrected it. He hadn’t dared recite it to Lili. But now, as the wheels of the train knocked against the joints in the tracks, the quickening clatter drew forth the music of his poem.

  It yearned to come out of him. It wanted to burst out with such force that Miklós, even if he had wanted to, couldn’t fight against it. He walked the length of the train, carrying his suitcase tied up with string. The newspaper jammed in his glasses was by this time in tatters; this didn’t worry him in the slightest. He was reciting his poem. Out loud. In Hungarian.

  The poem soared above the noise of the wheels. Miklós, like a cross between a troubadour and train conductor, marched the length of the carriages. He left half-empty compartments behind him without regret. He had no intention of sitting down. Instead he wanted to form some sort of bond with his fellow travellers, strangers who were staring in astonishment or sympathy at this passenger holding forth in an unfamiliar language. Maybe some of them could sense in him the lovesick minstrel. Maybe some thought he was a harmless madman. Miklós didn’t give a damn; he walked on, reciting his poem.

  For thirty hours of endless trails

  My life has run on glowing rails

  I looked in the mirror seeing how

  Wonderfully happy I am now

  Thirty hours—the minutes don’t linger

  Yet with each minute, my love grows stronger

  Promise to hold on and never let go

  Of my hand that you found thirty hours ago

  Arm in arm each storm we’ll weather

  Smiling as in the alcove together.

  You’ll be my conscience; you’ll urge me to fight

  To stand up bravely for all that’s right

  Justice bids me to battle for all

  I’m one of millions to answer the call

  With ease and conviction to each task I’ll rise

  Helped by two stars, your beautiful eyes!

  This was the poem that Miklós had been preparing for all his life. Yes, this was poetry itself. It had looped its way out from the pit of his stomach, spiced by the music of his heart and the precise mathematics of his brain. Once he had got to the end of the poem, he went back to the start. He recited it three times and the end flowed into the beginning. The Hungarian lines burning inside him flowed over the icy Swedish tracks.

  Later, when he had calmed down, he settled into an empty compartment. He was convinced that the fire inside him was burning him up. Did he have a fever? Even his bones were hurting, and it was as if his skin had thinned, just as it had at dawn every day. He always kept his thermometer with him, in his pocket, in its handsome metal case. He took it out, put it in his mouth, shut his eyes and started counting. He was surprised to find that his symptoms had deceived him. The mercury stood at 36.3—there was nothing to be alarmed about.

  Miklós looked through the window. Dark snowy fields and slim pine trees flashed by.

  My dearest, dearest Lili,

  How can I thank you for those three wonderful days? They have meant more to me, much more, than anything else ever did.

  All he had to do was shut his eyes to see himself and Lili shielded by the palm in the alcove
of the corridor. The two armchairs with their worn upholstery. The overcoat lying over the back of one of the chairs, the fibre suitcase on the stone floor. The awkward silence of the first half-hour as they looked at each other, not wanting to speak.

  My darling little Lili,

  Now I’m going to tell you about the impressions you left in me.

  First picture: the evening of the first of December. The palm, that indiscreet tree, waving its greenery as you smile and close your eyes. You’re such a good person and so awfully charming!

  Lili had suddenly thought of a question. If my father had had any talent for music he might even have been able to determine the tone.

  ‘Is that today’s paper?’ she asked, as if she were a schoolteacher. Miklós wasn’t sure what she meant. What paper?

  Lili reached across and took off his glasses. She held them up and tried to make out the words on the scrap of scrunched-up newspaper. The awkwardness between them evaporated.

  The next day: your eyes beneath your red turban as we walk arm in arm along the street. Oh, for that little backstreet where the cinema is!

  They had walked down the Kaserngatan in a howling wind, Miklós in the middle. Lili and Sára linked arms with him while he tried to explain things above the noise of the gale. He talked about his mother’s special poppyseed pudding and the anthropomorphism of the German philosopher Feuerbach, and he finished up with the Swede Linnaeus’s classification of plants. At last he could put to good use all those hours spent perched on the top rung of the ladder in the Gambrinus bookshop.

  They were freezing by the time they plunged into the cinema. The remnants of Uncle Henrik’s eighty-five dollars were nestled in Miklós’s pocket. A soppy American film was playing, and my father felt the title was symbolic—The Love Letters. There was hardly anyone in the cinema. The three of them sat in the back row, Miklós between the two girls. He looked at the screen only for a moment or two. The Aftonbladet lens now proved a huge advantage: he could stare at Lili’s profile, almost unnoticed, without employing any particular artifice. In a brave moment, when the dumb hero slipped on a patch of oil and slid on his bottom to the feet of his giggling love, Miklós tentatively touched Lili’s hand. She squeezed his fingers in return.