But she spoke first. “Oh no, you want to fix me.” She sat up abruptly. “You’re one of those.”
“No, I’m not,” he said, and it was true. He did not want to reform her. On the contrary, he wanted her to corrupt him. He didn’t want to hold a single thing back, yet he was letting loose in just the wrong way. Paul said, “You are just so right for me, but not just now. You are better than right for me. You make me feel as if I could take us to a place like Byzantium in its golden days.”
“Where is that?” she asked. She was looking less amused.
“It’s—I’m not—it’s not anywhere anymore. It’s like Jerusalem. I want to take you to a new Jerusalem, Ruth. I am baring my soul to you, my nakedness speaking to your nakedness.”
“I want your actual nakedness,” she said. She looked at Paul’s hair. “You got a thick red bush down there, too, or haven’t you begun sprouting yet?’ She giggled as she sat up, took Paul’s hands and pulled him by her side on the bed. She flung herself back. Paul was terribly aroused now and kissed her deeply. Her lively tongue snaked its way into his mouth. Her waxy red lips greased his mouth and chin. She placed his hand on one of her plump breasts, beneath the loosened brassiere. Her eyes were closed. He separated himself from her. His hand was memorizing her breast for future reference, and he was overcome with excitement and suddenly embarrassed himself—he could feel it. He could feel his hot cheeks, and she felt them, too. He pulled away from her and lay on his back. She hovered over him, sensing what had happened, sparing him by not laughing anymore.
“I can do it. I feel I can,” he said.
“What do you feel you can do?” She was serious, not mocking.
“You know.”
“What?” she asked.
He didn’t know how to say it. “I feel I can stand on my head.”
She brightened up considerably and she sat up and clapped her hands. “Show me.”
Paul bounded out of bed, shoved the armchair aside and reversed himself, unfurling his frame into a headstand in a single move. He had got a nine out of ten for the procedure in gymnastics, losing a point for excessive reddening of his face.
Ruth laughed again. Then she pointed and her laughing continued. “You’re all wet down in front. You’ve spilled all your long, thin children into your pants.”
Paul collapsed and climbed back into the chair, folding up, locking his elbows into his knees and staring into the shadows at his crotch.
Ruth scuttled on the bed toward him. “What is Jerusalem?” she asked softly. The crucifix swung now in the heaving valley of her breasts, bare now, pert and perfect.
“It’s where Jesus walked,” he said. He was breathless nearly. “It’s where he died.”
“Why would I want to go there? I like it here.” She pulled Paul by the hands onto the bed again and encouraged him to stretch out. She then ran her hand down his abdomen and paused as she kissed him tenderly. She looked into his eyes. “You think. That’s what you do. People who are good at thinking think. What else would they do?” She was staring at his red locks now, running her fingers through them. “I don’t want to think. I want to be with you just now. Why aren’t you wild like your hair?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t tonight. I’m so sorry.” He was a little in love with her, would have run off with her through the back door if she’d asked him.
“It’s all right.” She kissed Paul on the cheek. “I like you.” She gripped his hair again and tugged. “I get the feeling that, if I pulled hard, cords of this stuff would come out of that long body of yours. Like you’re a bell tower.” She laughed a throaty laugh and sat up to get a cigarette. She applied her sultry red lipstick flawlessly without a mirror and hung the cigarette from the fresh paste on her lips. Paul sat up to light it, taking her tarnished silver lighter from her. It was monogrammed “MM.”
“I thought your name was Ruth,” he said.
“It is. Someone left that here. A gentleman—Miksa somebody—I can’t remember. He left it for me, on purpose, I think, to light my cigarettes with and think of him when I do.”
Paul felt tears welling up in his eyes.
Ruth saw and ran her fingers through his hair again, gently this time. She blew smoke to the side, away from him. “When I was a little girl, I used to think that the thing that stood out about a person came from something inside.” She patted her own white abdomen. “I used to think a big tubby man would have a balloon maker inside of him, waiting to float him away somewhere.”
“Like Jerusalem?”
“Like that, maybe. I used to think a very hairy uncle of mine—hair all over his body—big tufts of it—and down his neck—you couldn’t even tell where his head ended and his neck started—and it went all the way down his back—I used to think about this Uncle Sebastian that he had a weaver living inside him.”
“I must have the same,” Paul said, holding onto his own hair now.
She laughed. “Yes, tall boy, you must have that, too, but maybe only up in your head, since you’re hairless everywhere else.” He was smiling. “And his wife,” she went on, “my uncle’s wife had purple eyes and purple makeup she spread over her eyelids—I used to believe she had a mulberry bush growing inside.”
“And what do you have inside?” Paul asked, poking at her abdomen and gulping. She blushed for the first time and didn’t giggle. She stubbed out her cigarette, kissed him warmly on the lips, a moist, tobacco-waxy kiss, and then pulled him to his feet. He helped her on with her gown, and she stood and stared at him for a moment.
Out front afterward, Paul learned that his kid brother had acted like someone about to sire a new race. He had managed every exercise known to the bedroom in just the couple of hours allotted to him. He’d climaxed six times. A second girl had to be brought in to lend a hand. Ruth told their uncle, “Tall boy is on the house. No charge for Jerusalem.” Both Istvan and Bela looked at Paul. Had she meant he was so good she’d fallen for him, or had she meant he was a flop? Paul remained mute for a week. His uncle Robert had to be called in to examine his throat and ears.
That was Paul’s Big Night. His first and last.
This woman in the Swedish embassy, who tried not to look at Paul, had Ruth’s green eyes, but she had Ruth’s youth, too, and Paul had met Ruth years before.
“Is the chargé really here?” Paul finally said. His voice bounced off the marble floor and walls.
“Yes, he’s here.”
“I need to speak to him.”
“I told him,” the young woman said, but she didn’t sound annoyed. She added, “I’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”
“I won’t,” Paul said. “Not until I’ve spoken to someone.”
“All right,” she said and stood again. “I’ll go see.”
“Please say it’s important.”
She wanted to say, “I will,” but her Hungarian was not perfect, and instead she said, “I have,” then went away again through the white door behind them.
Paul waited far too long this time. He felt under suspicion, disrespected. Was this his new lot? Was he to be among the dispossessed? His blood clanged against his neck. Soon he would have his right to vote revoked, too, and his property confiscated. Here he sat, in a Swedish chair in the heart of Budapest, for no good reason. He was not a lawyer anymore, not a complete Hungarian, not even a man, as Ruth’s youthful incarnation reminded him. All that time he’d spent becoming what he’d become, all that strain, that single-mindedness, neglecting even romance to avoid distraction. Many thought him the best in the whole country at casting doubt on evidence, a genius at calling into question what at first seemed self-evident. He could send the first autumn cloud over a summer sun, and then, subtly, the second and third, until the whole courtroom believed the sky was overcast. Truth was grey with intermittent sun, small sudden bursts of it.
What was he now? Was he the outlaw, awaiting his own day in court? And who would defend him, use the hidden dry-ice machine and launch the first cloud? And w
hat would be his defence? That he looked and acted like other humans, looked like a tall man, had curled russet hair like a red-headed man, but shorter hair than a redheaded woman, unless indeed she had shortish hair, had the same green eyes as either, and the same red blood, the slouch of the tall, a similar chuckle (though it is true his squeaked idiosyncratically on occasion), the same frown, but a whiter white—the white of the eye, eyes used to acting in self-defence.
Yes, he was dispossessed. Yet in the dust of this very place, this Sweden on Minerva Street, on Gellert Hill, in Buda and in Pest—in the dust of this place blew the molecules of his forebears. These indiscriminate particles as they commingled were more advanced, more civilized than the integrated whole they’d fallen from. Was there a better defence?
Paul had to challenge someone to act. They wouldn’t do so of their own accord. Though he didn’t know for sure what he wanted, he wanted someone to share his concern. A young girl had stumbled into Budapest after everyone had been taken from her town. Surely, someone could be stirred by such a revelation. It was true Hungary had gone about its business for five long years while much of Europe burned. Germany’s Jews had been evacuated; France’s; Poland’s; Czechoslovakia’s; Greece’s. It was true Paul was a slow learner. But the steel roulette ball had finally settled in its slot.
He couldn’t wait any longer. He stood and turned, adjusted his suit and shirt cuffs. A Swedish guard wearing a white cap and gloves appeared by the door the receptionist had passed through, but Paul merely smiled at him. Elegant as he was and mannerly, Paul hardly looked the part of the assassin, so he simply went on smiling, opened the guarded door gently and stepped in.
The young woman, the receptionist, was nowhere to be seen inside. Was there a back door? Had the man sitting at the imposing cherry-wood desk conspired with her to keep Paul out?
The man stood and offered his hand. “I’m Tomas Holmstrom,” he said in German.
Paul shook the man’s hand and told him his name before taking a seat opposite him.
“Ah, yes,” the man said. “The distinguished lawyer.”
“Now a distinguished outlaw,” Paul said and smiled. But then he jumped right in before explaining. “I met a man a couple of days ago at Gerbeaud, a Swede, Raoul Wallenberg.”
“Oh, yes,” Tomas Holmstrom said. “I know him. He stopped by here, too. He comes from a well-to-do Swedish family. He seemed concerned about the government the Germans are about to set up in Budapest, maybe as soon as tomorrow. Wallenberg asked our Mr. Anger quite a few questions.”
Paul found himself staring at a formidable letter opener on the desk. It stood like a dagger sheathed in a black onyx pedestal, with an ornate ivory handle carved with writhing jackals and a lion at its crown.
“It’s from the Belgian Congo,” Holmstrom said. “A gift for the ambassador. On his visit there.”
“Nice,” Paul said. He rubbed his hands together.
Then the Swede said, “You said you met Raoul Wallenberg in town.”
“Yes, I did. Mr. Wallenberg mentioned that your government might be willing to convert Hungarians into Swedes, if their lives were in danger.”
“What sorts of Hungarians?”
“Jewish ones.”
Holmstrom sat back. “I don’t know if that will be necessary or possible.”
“It will certainly be necessary, but I’m here to ask about your willingness to help. Mr. Wallenberg’s idea is ingenious. The Germans obey rules. They’ll leave Swedes alone.”
“Who knows?” Holmstrom said. “It seems to me more fanciful an idea than ingenious. Who knows if the Germans would fall for such fakery?”
“Yes, who knows? What I’m asking is whether you think it’s worth a try.”
It occurred to Paul just then that he might walk out of this building empty-handed. He realized how easily he might hate this man across from him. The era of civility in Hungary had come to an end. Paul could convert his fear and anger into strategic disobedience, or he could go underground and become a killer, at least as long as his own life lasted. He found his hands trembling and gripped the arms of the chair.
Paul moved quickly. Holmstrom flinched. Paul reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a small photograph of himself. He’d removed it surgically with a razor from his own Hungarian documents. He handed it to Holmstrom. “I’d like to be your first Swedish convert,” he said and took a deep breath.
The two men both looked again at the dagger, and for the first time Paul wondered whether it might be put to use.
“I know you’re an accomplished man, Mr. Beck, but I do not have the authority to grant you Swedish citizenship.”
“Oh, you have the authority. What I’m asking is, are you willing to do it?”
Holmstrom thought for far too long. He glanced at the dagger, then took a walk around the spacious office, over the silk Persian carpet behind the desk.
“There will be no real Hungarian authority in power soon, as you yourself said, Mr. Holmstrom. If you’re here to make yourselves helpful in any way, this way would be marvellous. And the idea came from one of your own prominent citizens.”
“I’d have to speak to the ambassador,” Holmstrom said.
“My father and brother have gone silent. They may be dead, but they may not. I’m not asking you to rescue them. I’m asking you to give me the means to do so. I’ll go to Szeged myself.”
“Then you’ll be passing battalions of Germans coming this way.”
“Yes, but I’ll be passing them as a Swede. And I speak their language, as do you.”
“We’ll be implicated,” Holmstrom said. “This embassy will be implicated very quickly.”
Paul got to his feet, and Holmstrom paused on his own side of the desk. “If I’m caught,” Paul said, “I’ll say I stole the papers, which you and I are going to forge tonight. If you don’t issue them to me, I’ll forge them myself, one way or another. But this way I’m less likely to be caught because the forgery will be more convincing.”
“So you’re giving me no choice.”
“Do I have a choice in what is going on in my country, my home, my office, my courtroom?”
“What I’m going to do,” Holmstrom said, “is leave the building right now and not return until tomorrow. You do whatever it is you have to do. I’ll tell the guard to leave you alone. I’ve never seen or met you.”
Holmstrom’s eyes fell on the cabinets to one side, and Paul understood. After he watched the man go, Paul got quickly to work.
When he left, he took extra blank papers and an embosser, marked by Sweden’s three crowns.
BY THE TIME Paul got home, he felt like a beggar and a thief. Rozsi was giving a piano lesson when he walked into the parlour, so Paul took a seat and waited until it was over. He heard nothing. He could not have said, on pain of death, whether the young pianist had played Chopin or just scales. The boy of no more than ten then embraced Rozsi.
Rozsi asked if Paul had eaten and told him that Magda had made a nice meatloaf for them, but Paul shook his head. He could see that the table had been set for the two of them, so he sat nevertheless at his place in the dining room and poured some brandy into a snifter.
“I did what you asked me to,” Rozsi said. “I called that friend of yours at the paper who knows Zoli, and he said that Zoli was staying with him. He said something terrible has happened, so I took the liberty of inviting Zoli over right away. I hope he comes.”
Paul didn’t react. He just took a breathy sip of his brandy and set the glass down. He said, “Getting your hair right and smelling delicious won’t be the point from here on in. We won’t need to create a drama for ourselves. Life will supply plenty for us.”
“What are you talking about now?” Rozsi said. “I don’t create drama. Oh—” she added, but didn’t go on.
He merely looked at her.
“Please don’t be cruel,” she said. “You can leave that to others now.” She looked as if she was getting set to cry and pulled extra hard on a
curl.
“You’re right,” Paul said. “I’m sorry. You’re right and I’m wrong.” He stood up. His look had softened and she stood to accept his embrace.
Just then, Zoli walked in behind them, startling them. “How did you get in?” Rozsi said. Despite her question, she was relieved to see him.
“I’m so sorry. The back door was open, and I didn’t want to be seen at the front. I don’t want you implicated. I’ve been stealing around like a cat lately.” Zoli was wearing a North German seaman’s cap pulled low over his eyes, but he now removed it.
Rozsi took a fresh snifter from the sideboard. “Why don’t you want to be seen?” She poured Zoli some brandy. “And why would we be implicated in anything?”
Zoli accepted the brandy and followed Paul out to the front room. “Please,” he said and took the liberty of closing the curtains on the tall bay windows before sitting. Rozsi switched on the lamp beside him, and he looked around the impressive room. He glanced at the old portraits of distinguished Beck forebears. One of them looked out from the picture’s deep frame as though he were regarding the room from a casement window.
“What’s going on?” Paul asked.
Zoli told them about his parents. Rozsi gasped.
“I’m so sorry,” Paul said.
“Yes,” Zoli said. He took a swallow of brandy. He tried to speak again but couldn’t for a couple of minutes. He got to his feet. He looked as if he were going to excuse himself. Rozsi stood, too, and hugged him lightly, gently. He could smell her hair.
Then he said, “Please, sit down. I’m afraid I have bad news for you, too.” He stayed on his feet, set his glass down. “Your father has met the same fate.”
“What?” Rozsi said.
“He was hanged in Szeged. By the Germans.”
Rozsi began to sob, and Paul took her into his arms. Zoli explained what had happened. “I heard it from my editor at the paper. We’re not going to run a story until we have instructions from the authorities.”
“The authorities,” Paul said. He released his sister, who continued crying.
“Yes, the new authorities.”
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