Fever at Dawn

by Fever at Dawn (retail) (epub)

  More important things were taking place. On Tuesday morning, nine girls who were convalescing at the Eksjö hospital, including the three Hungarians, were transported by bus to Smålandsstenar railway station. It was chaos at the station, and all the while it snowed.

  Most of the Smålandsstenar patients were already on the train. The arrivals from Eksjö hurried along the muddy platform carrying bundles and suitcases. Dr Svensson and the nurses in their black cloaks rushed up and down beside the train, like a benevolent military brigade, trying to calm everyone down. There was an abundance of tears, kisses and mud, all accompanied by rousing music played through a loudspeaker.

  Lili, Sára and Judit Gold managed to find the carriage where their friends from Smålandsstenar, whom they hadn’t seen for three months, were sitting. Screams of joy and much hugging followed. Then they pulled down the windows, leaned out and blew kisses to Dr Svensson. A nurse arrived on a bicycle with a bulky leather bag on her shoulder containing that day’s post—a nice touch of organisation. She had tucked her cloak up above her knees so it wouldn’t get caught in the spokes. People jumped aside when she rang her bell.

  ‘Post! Post!’ she called, getting off the bike in the middle of the platform, and letting it crash to the ground. She took a batch of envelopes from the bag and read out the names. She had to shout to be heard above the music.

  ‘Scwarz, Vári, Benedek, Reich, Tormos, Lehmann, Szabó, Beck…’

  Madame Ann-Marie Arvidsson, who was also fussing about on the platform and had a slight feeling of remorse about her treatment of Lili, pricked up her ears at ‘Reich’. She took the envelope from the nurse and set out to find Lili in the crowd. She ran along beside the train, thinking it must be a letter from Miklós. She was calling Lili’s name, but her chirpy voice was lost in the cacophony. Her coat was muddy up to the knees. Flushed and breathless, she held the letter above her head and shouted ‘Reich, Reich’.

  Then she spotted Lili hanging out of the window of a compartment a few metres away.

  Lili saw her, too. ‘Ann-Marie! Ann-Marie!’ she yelled.

  Madame Arvidsson was touched that Lili had called her by her first name. She held out the envelope and caught Lili’s hand, giving it a squeeze.

  ‘I expect it’s your friend!’ she said with a laugh, showing that she was on love’s side.

  But Lili glanced at the letter and blanched. The envelope had a Hungarian stamp and the address was written in a spidery hand. There was no mistaking it. Lili fell backwards into the compartment. Sára had to catch her to stop her falling to the floor.

  ‘It’s Mama’s writing,’ she whispered, clutching the letter and pressing it to her.

  ‘It’ll get terribly creased, let go!’ demanded Sára, trying to prise the envelope from her hand. But Lili wouldn’t let go.

  Judit stuck her head out of the window and shouted to Svensson, who happened to be going past the carriage, ‘Reich’s got a letter from her mother!’

  Dr Svensson stopped, along with his escort. The cloaked nurses surrounded him like a flock of crows, and they all clambered aboard.

  There must have been at least fifteen people crammed into the tiny compartment. Lili still hadn’t dared open the letter; she kept kissing and stroking it.

  ‘Go on, open it, Lili!’ urged Svensson.

  ‘I don’t dare,’ she sobbed. She handed the letter to Sára. ‘You open it.’

  Sára didn’t hesitate. She tore the envelope open and took out several densely filled pages, which she tried to give to Lili.

  But Lili shook her head. ‘You read it. Please!’

  Svensson, who was now sitting next to Lili, held her hand between both of his. Somehow, news had got round about the letter from Budapest. More people had gathered in the corridor and on the platform. If Sára wanted to live up to the occasion she’d have to declaim the letter as if this were a theatre performance. She was aware of the singularity of the moment, but her voice let her down. She, who could easily get through Schumann’s most difficult aria, now began to read in a scratchy, faltering tone.

  ‘“My darling, one and only Lili! I saw your notice in Világosság under the headline, Three Hungarian Girls in Sweden Are Looking for Their Relatives.”’

  Lili could see their building with its long balconies in Hernád Street, their dark-green front door and Mama’s shabby dressing-gown. The bell rings. Mama opens the door wide. Her neighbour Bözsi is there, waving that day’s Világosság above her head and shouting. Lili wasn’t sure what she was shouting, but it didn’t matter. There was no doubt, though, about the shouting—the muscles in her neck were tensed, and she was tapping the newspaper on the last page where the framed notice had been set in bold letters. Mama snatched the newspaper out of her hands, took a quick look at the notice, saw the name, her name, and fainted.

  Lili distinctly heard what she said either before her collapse or after she came round. ‘I always knew our little Lili was a clever girl!’

  After her initial nervousness, Sára got her voice back.

  ‘“Your miraculous news arrived after a dreadful year! I can’t possibly describe to you what it means to me. I can only thank the Lord that I lived to see this day.”’

  Svensson was still holding Lili’s hand.

  Bözsi dashed into the larder muttering to herself. ‘Vinegar, vinegar, vinegar.’

  She found it on the second shelf, drew the cork out with her teeth and sniffed it. Then she rushed back to Mama, who was still lying in the doorway, and splashed some vinegar on her face. Whereupon Mama sneezed and opened her eyes. She looked at Bözsi, but she was whispering to Lili.

  ‘“I’m afraid your dear, good papa isn’t home yet. After he was freed he was taken to hospital in Wels in Austria with enteritis. Since May I’ve heard nothing. I hope that with God’s help he will come home soon so that we can live our lives together in happiness again.”’

  Lili wasn’t sure which bits Sára was reading, and which bits she was hearing in her mother’s own voice, as if Mama was sitting in the stuffy compartment and taking over at the most important parts.

  ‘“Since 8 June, when the husband of our dear cousin Relli came home from Auschwitz, I’ve been living with them, and I’ll stay here until one of you returns. God willing, I hope it won’t be too long now!”’

  The penetrating smell of vinegar filled the flat. Mama wiped her face and got to her feet with Bözsi’s help, then staggered over to the kitchen tap and washed her face. After that she sat on a stool, spread the newspaper on her knees and read the notice seven times running, until she was sure she’d remember its words as long as she lived.

  ‘“I don’t even know where to begin. What do you do all day? What do you get to eat? What do you look like? Are you very thin? Have you got enough underwear? I’m afraid we were robbed of everything. We got back nothing of what we sent to the country—no bed linen, no material, no winter coat, no clothes, nothing. But don’t you worry about that, my girl.”’

  Lili heard that last torrent of words in her mother’s voice. Mama said ‘my girl’ in such an unmistakable way. My girl, my girl, my girl. God Almighty, how good that sounded!

  Svensson didn’t understand a syllable of the letter, but his face shone with as much happiness and pride as the faces of all the Hungarian girls in the compartment. Sára looked around, swallowed and went on reading.

  ‘“Now for some good news. The new piano that you got from your dear father on your eighteenth birthday is safe and sound! I know you’ll be very pleased about that, Lili.”’

  Mama sat on the stool. She smoothed out the copy of Világosság, already composing the letter, smiling to herself. She started writing it down straightaway. In fact she had composed it in her head every night for the past ten months, so it was no effort now to put it on paper. She knew every comma and had checked the spelling over and over—she wasn’t going to make mistakes in such an important document. She muttered and hummed while she wrote.

  ‘“If you get the chan
ce, my darling, use a sunray lamp on your hands and feet, even your head, because I suspect some of your beautiful wavy hair might have fallen out from lack of vitamins. You might even have had typhoid. So don’t forget about that, sweetheart. When, with God’s help, you come home, I want you to be just as radiant as you were before.”’

  Someone, probably one of the nurses from Svensson’s team, rushed over to the stationmaster warning him not to let the train depart while the doctor was still aboard. Svensson himself didn’t move. He was squeezing Lili’s hand. The girls’ bodies were pressed against each other in the compartment, their eyes shining. Sára’s voice floated out through the open window onto the platform.

  ‘“We’ve had no news of poor Gyúri, but all four of the Kárpátis are fine. Bandi Horn is apparently a prisoner of war in Russia. Zsuzsi isn’t mentioned in your notice. What do you know about her, darling girl? You all set out together, after all.”’

  The lump in Lili’s throat began to swell. She and her cousin Zsuzsi were lying in each other’s arms on the floor of the putrid barracks when Zsuzsi passed away—on butterfly wings, with a smile on her lips and a body scarred by millions of lice. When did she actually die? Lili would never speak to anyone about that.

  In her kitchen smelling of vinegar, Mama seemed to sense that she had touched a raw patch. She became quiet: a drop of water fell from the tap. She looked at Bözsi and sobbed. Bözsi hugged her, and they cried together.

  Lili could hear clearly what Mama said through her tears and with her head buried in Bözsi’s neck.

  ‘“If only I could hug you both. I’ve no other wish in life, but to live for that day. I’m longing for you and send you a million kisses, your adoring mama.”’

  Lili was almost in a trance. She didn’t notice Svensson and the nurses leave. Apparently they all hugged her and kissed her before they climbed down from the train. Later, Dr Svensson and his flock stood in the snow like statues on Eksjö platform until the train disappeared.

  My one and only darling Lili!

  I can’t tell you how utterly happy your news made me! I told you so, didn’t I? I knew you’d get a letter from your mother this week. I love you more and more every minute. You’re such a sweet girl, and so good. And I’m such an uncouth boy. You’ll make me better, won’t you?

  Twelve

  TWO DAYS later, Miklós disappeared. No one noticed his absence until midday. The first to miss him were Harry and Frida, who were used to him slinking into the caretaker’s office before lunch to buy his two cigarettes for the afternoon. When he didn’t turn up, Harry asked Jakobovits when and where he’d last seen him.

  By one o’clock, Dr Lindholm, too, had been informed that his favourite patient had evaporated like camphor. They counted the bicycles, but none was missing. When Miklós didn’t show up for lunch, they started to worry.

  Dr Lindholm despatched a car to town in case Miklós had gone to the post office and been taken ill on the road. In the meantime he phoned all the possible places Miklós could have been—the post office, the café, the railway station. No one had seen him. In the late afternoon he notified the police and ordered a curfew.

  Everyone linked Miklós’s disappearance to Tibor Hirsch’s suicide. Miklós had discovered the body, and he was there when they cut Hirsch down from the rope. In the days following he had sat silently on his bed. No one could cheer him up. Later, Harry suggested that he might have wandered off to escape Christmas, which was approaching fast. There was much talk about the festivities, though many of the patients, being Jews, had never observed Christmas. On the other hand, Jenö Grieger claimed Miklós was a socialist and couldn’t care less about Christmas—there was no way a man like him would be undone by a religious holiday.

  Márta came into the barracks and questioned everyone individually. She spent a long time in Miklós’s corner, trying to decide whether she should sift through his correspondence. He kept all his letters in a cardboard box. There were about three hundred envelopes in it, in perfect order, including Lili’s letters, which were bound separately with a yellow ribbon. Márta picked up the box, then resisted the temptation. She decided it was too soon. She would give him until the next morning.

  At that moment, my father was wandering in the pine forest, lost in thought, seven kilometres away. He couldn’t explain to himself why feelings of anxiety and depression had overwhelmed him that morning. It was no different from any other morning. He took his temperature at dawn, and then had breakfast. He wrote a letter to Lili. He played a game of chess with Litzman and then walked to Dr Lindholm’s office for a quick check-up and to pester him about Lili visiting at Christmas.

  Maybe that was it. The offhand glance with which Lindholm sent him on his way. The doctor listened to his lungs and shrugged. Shrugged!

  Miklós stopped in the forest. There was a gentle breeze. Yes, it was Dr Lindholm’s thoughtless response, like the first domino falling, that had set the whole thing off. He had come out of the doctor’s office with a sinking heart. He had never believed in this stupid diagnosis. He’d always brushed it off as a mistake. Let the clever guys talk—he knew better!

  But that morning, Lindholm’s casual gesture had been like a blow to the stomach. It took his breath away. He was going to die! He was going to disappear like Tibor Hirsch. His cupboard would be emptied, his bed stripped. And that would be it.

  So he left. He trudged through the gate and walked to the crossroads where, instead of turning left to go to town, he turned right towards the forest. He’d hardly ever walked that way before. The paved road soon gave way to a track, which narrowed into a path that had probably been made by deer. After a while it widened out into a large snow-covered meadow. By this time Miklós was completely lost. Not that it worried him. It felt good to walk, and he rather enjoyed keeping company with death. The Grim Reaper. So what if he was going to snuff it? He had lived and loved, and this was it. He’d fade away like the deer tracks. He repeated poems to himself, silently at first, then aloud and then at the top of his voice. He walked on between pine trees that reached towards the sky, reciting poetry the whole way—Attila József, Baudelaire, Heine.

  By late afternoon, after a coughing attack, he began to feel sorry for himself. He was cold, his boots were wet through, and he was so tired that he had to sit down on a fallen tree trunk. He might have been reconciled to his fate, but he had no desire to freeze to death. So he set out north, imagining the barracks was in that direction, but not at all sure he was right.

  At eight in the evening Lindholm phoned his colleague Svensson in Eksjö. He didn’t know that the Smålandsstenar patients had been moved to Berga two days earlier. Svensson was surprised to hear of Miklós’s disappearance; he couldn’t imagine the reason for it but he, of course, gave Dr Lindholm the telephone number at Berga. Lindholm waited until 11 p.m. to call the Hungarian girl, who probably knew more about Miklós than anyone else. For some reason he phoned from the caretaker’s office, perhaps because it allowed him to keep an eye on the road, down which he hoped Miklós would come any minute.

  It was the girls’ second day in the Berga rehab hospital. They were housed in a long, stark barracks like the one at Avesta. They were already in bed when a messenger came to summon Lili to the telephone in the main building. Lili got up, found a spare coat, and set out. Sára called after her. She had her misgivings, so she put on her boots and followed.

  At the exact moment that Lindholm heard Lili’s thin voice issue a hesitant ‘hello’, he caught sight of Miklós dragging himself towards the gate.

  ‘Is that you, Lili? I have Miklós here on the line for you,’ he yelled into the phone, though he reckoned it would take my father at least five minutes to shuffle up to the caretaker’s lodge. ‘Hold on. He’ll be here in a moment.’

  My father didn’t think he would ever get back. He was trying to retrace his steps but it felt like he was going in circles. The imprint of his boots in the snow had faded; then his footprints seemed to double up. For a terrifyi
ng period he could have sworn he was following the tracks of a bear, but then he somehow found his own boot prints again.

  He was completely flummoxed when the tracks he was following came to an end in the middle of the path. They were there one moment and gone the next, as if the track-maker had taken flight.

  The sun had set and it was unbearably cold. Miklós was suffering. His feet were blistered; his head throbbed. He kept coughing. The thin sickle of a moon barely lit the forest. He often fell, sinking to his knees in the powdery snow. He lost all hope. But he knew he mustn’t stop. Gathering up his remaining strength, he concentrated on nothing but walking—one-two, one-two, one-two. But it felt hopeless. He could hear the call of an animal—a hoot, he imagined—but were there owls in Sweden in winter? ‘The owl screeched death’—that was a good line, a good first line, but when would he get it down on paper? Never. Never more.

  And then Miklós saw the caretaker’s lodge, the fence and, behind the bars on the window, Lindholm holding the telephone. Perhaps he was dreaming.

  It took him a good ten minutes to make the last fifty metres. He stumbled into the lodge. Lindholm looked at him and pressed the receiver into his hand. ‘Lili Reich. You want talk to her, no, Miklós?’

  Lili had no idea what to make of the long delay. Since the unknown man from Avesta kept reassuring her that he was about to connect Miklós, she assumed there must be some problem with the line. The receiver hissed and crackled in her ear.

  After an eternity, she heard my father’s faint voice: ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine. Great.’ What could he say?

  Lili was relieved. ‘We’ve made a little corner for ourselves in the new place at Berga.’