Gratitude

by Joseph Kertes

  Paul walked across the pink marble floor toward the elevator. His assistant, Viktor, passed him going the other way. Why was he leaving so early? “I’ll be back soon,” Viktor said.

  “Did you get out the papers for the Meszaros case?”

  “Yes, they’re all on your desk. After you’ve looked them over, your stand-in, Mr. Kedves, will come by himself to chat and take the notes.” Viktor looked anxious.

  “You’ll be back?” Paul asked.

  “Of course,” the shorter man said, but then he hurried to the door.

  Paul continued toward the elevator. It was a grand old Elisha Otis with a walnut-panelled car and polished brass door, operated with pride by Hermann Nagy. He wore white gloves and a maroon tunic with brass buttons to complement his vehicle. The outfit was crowned by a military cap featuring a bold silver double-headed eagle of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hermann bid Paul good morning as he approached.

  Hermann pulled closed the metal gate, then looked straight ahead as he swung the brass lever to lift the car. He had his back to Paul. “There are some men waiting for you in your office,” he said.

  “What men?” Paul asked.

  Hermann shrugged. “They were speaking German.”

  “German?”

  Hermann didn’t say anything more.

  Paul felt the blood beating at his neck. “Where was Viktor going?”

  Hermann shrugged again. How glorious to be riding up and down all day in his carefree wooden box. If the men were German, was Paul not walking into the enemy’s lair? Was Hermann taking him to his deportation or arrest? The man piloted the elevator as though he were the captain of a spaceship, with a confident gloved hand on the brilliant lever, taking his rider to the moon and beyond. Did he truly not foresee the danger that might be awaiting Paul, or, worse, not mind either way? Was he not paid enough to mind? Paul felt like ripping the double-headed eagle from the man’s cap and ramming it down his throat.

  But if they were Germans, and Germans had been shadowing him, why had they not arrested him already? Why the charade?

  German wasn’t the language Paul heard when he walked through the door to his office. It was Swedish. Raoul Wallenberg stood to offer Paul his hand.

  “You’re back,” Paul said. He let out a big breath.

  “Not yet, not officially. I hope I’ll be back by the beginning of July, officially,” Wallenberg said. “Paul, I’m happy to introduce Per Anger.” The man was tall, like Paul, and had a warm hand and kind eyes. “He is the second-in-command at the embassy after Carl Danielsson, the ambassador, and I hope to become Mr. Anger’s deputy.”

  “And I hope to become yours,” Paul said.

  The Swedes laughed. Wallenberg said, “Mr. Anger’s German isn’t great, and his Hungarian and English are worse.”

  Anger said in broken Hungarian, “If I forget my Swedish, I’ll be a deaf-mute.”

  Paul chuckled as he gestured to the gentlemen to sit down.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Wallenberg said.

  Paul thought the Swede had aged in the short months since they’d met at Gerbeaud. Paul must have aged, too. The world had aged.

  Paul was happy to be speaking Churchill’s English. He said, “You’ve lost more hair.”

  “You’ve gained some,” Wallenberg said.

  Paul ran a hand through his thicket of curls. He needed a haircut.

  “You said you were going to come back, and you did,” Paul said, still amazed at the visitors in the room.

  “I needed to. I can be more useful here. I heard from Mr. Anger that the transports have begun. We can’t stop them, but we can impede them.”

  “I’m very pleased,” Paul said. “I thought our one meeting at Gerbeaud was—”

  “Forgive me for quoting the New Testament to you,” Wallenberg said, “but our Luke once said, ‘From those to whom much is given, much will be required.’ So, I—”

  Per Anger leaned forward to interrupt. “We can issue Swedish papers,” he said in Swedish, before switching, for Paul’s sake, to German. “Raoul is suggesting we issue official, colourful Swedish papers with our state seal and photographs. If the Germans round up Jews here in Budapest, as they have elsewhere, we’ll meet them at the stations and present the papers. We’ll ask the Germans to release people who match up with these fake papers we issue.”

  “And I can help you,” Paul said. “I’m a Swede already,” and he showed the men his new papers.

  They burst out laughing, and Paul joined them. Then Wallenberg said, “What other talents do you have?”

  “I can stand on my head.”

  They laughed again, and Wallenberg translated for Per Anger, but the diplomat had understood. Much had changed since Gerbeaud. The atmosphere felt different. There was a tension in the room.

  “How did you know where to find me today?”

  “I didn’t. Your assistant said you’d be in, but I’ve had my driver look for you.”

  “Ah, the Alfa Romeo.”

  Wallenberg nodded. He noticed the lamp on Paul’s desk. It had been a gift from his mother when Paul opened his office. It had come from the Tiffany Company of New York. It featured brilliantly coloured dragonflies, pointed downward, like a winged bombs.

  “I was sorry to hear about your father,” Wallenberg said. “I never knew my own father—he died before I was born—but I suspect it would be worse to love a father and lose him, and in such a disgraceful way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We do want your help,” Wallenberg said. “Your network is probably extensive.”

  Paul shrugged modestly. Wallenberg looked at Anger. “It’s not enough just to issue papers. We’ll have to find safe houses around the city and raise the Swedish flag over them so that we can put the new Swedes out of harm’s way. We’ll annex places. Mr. Anger says the Dutch are game, and the Danish, the Spanish, possibly even the Italians. Ha, I wonder if Mussolini is still in charge of things!”

  “I have a photographer,” Paul said. “A good one. He’s eager to help. He’s a young man named Zoltan Mak.”

  “His parents were murdered, too,” Anger said in German.

  Paul was impressed by what the two men knew. Imagine doing what the two Swedes were proposing. Who did such things? Angels, possibly, but angels were invulnerable. They were better than angels. Paul knew he was doing good work, but it was for his own people. Wallenberg had come back to Hungary, to someone else’s cause, to someone else’s misery, to stand in front of the most formidable army in the world, and with what? Papers. Common sense. Law. Civility.

  And hope. Because that was the key. Hold papers up to barbarians, and what did they do with them? But the Germans believed themselves to be civilized. Hold papers up to them, and they’d know how to read them. They were educated. They had produced Goethe and Beethoven.

  Paul stared at the two Swedes. Wallenberg had chosen to return and was determined to do some good work here. What drove the man? What possessed him? Do we open the doors of our homes to shelter the Jews fleeing their own houses? Do we, what’s more, venture out on a stormy night to look for people to whom we could give shelter? It took a special species of person, one for whom enjoying life was not enough—success was not enough.

  Mr. Kedves came by to get the notes Paul was to give him, but Paul didn’t invite him to stay. He said they could talk later.

  Then the diplomats and Paul got out maps. Per Anger had brought a topographical map of the city with him. They spent the morning planning their moves, anticipating the moves of the invaders. Paul told the Swedes more than they knew about the Hungarian Arrow Cross. They would not be quite as predictable as the Germans, and while their aim was similar, the Arrow Cross would want to be in charge. “Insecurity is a fact of life,” Wallenberg said.

  Paul kept an ear open for Viktor, but Viktor didn’t come back to work.

  Nine

  Szeged – June 6, 1944

  ISTVAN FELT as if he’d had a feast. So did Smetana. Th
e two sat glowing together on the floor, digesting their sardines. Then Istvan said, “Time for some Dvorak, my boy.”

  He dug out Rusalka and selected his favourite aria, “Mesicku na nebi hlubokem.” He sat back down with Smetana, who stepped lightly into his lap and purred. Istvan closed his eyes and let the song fill his ears as full as the little meal had filled his stomach. The thorny cat made himself at home in the tangle of Istvan’s legs, and Istvan held his little neck. Istvan’s raw, crude voice rose to meet the singer’s. “Sing your song to the moon, my sweet Rusalka, sweet, plump angel. Beg the shining oaf for your lover’s return.” Istvan’s eyes were closed; his head swayed bonelessly; his fingers gripped the scrawny, purring neck. “It’s all your fault, isn’t it, my feline friend, my Smetana, with your Fatherland? Yes, it is. Switch off your purring motor, Bedrich; switch off your sentiment, my small companion.”

  Are there ancient sounds, too, which we confuse with modern ones, sounds that drift down to us like the ancient light of the stars, some of them long gone? Time is really our only captor, isn’t it, Smetana? In the ice age before us and the ice age after, there is no trace of us. Time has no dominion over us. It has a beginning and an end only in a flat world. We don’t exist in this time any more than the dead or the yet unborn live in it. We are mere examples of the original design, nothing more—I, a dentist, a Hungarian, resident of Szeged, brother of Paul and Rozsi, now orphans, all of us, the lover of a Catholic girl, caged on this day in who I am in a house where, at one time, peppers were ground into sweet paprika—you, a scrawny grey cat, named after a Czech composer of the nationalist period, domesticated, beyond hunting for your meals, sharing sardines with the human example of humanity beside you. We are not individuals. We mock individuality, and we reprise the themes of intolerance and love. And then we join the dead, Smetana, with the leaves fluttering down on us and then the snow, leaving behind us, some of us, sometimes, other examples of the next epoch ambling about until they, too, join us. Let us charge forward to the end of the flat Earth, some of it in night, some in day, some summer, some winter, all at once, like a sphere. Spheres have no perspective, young Smetana. They are examples of balls. They join the hunks and colours of the universe, examples of red, examples of rock. It’s not the colours that pass on, merely the individuals sporting them. Creations outlive their creators.

  Marta, the ancient light of extinguished stars shine down on our present love. It is our Marta we love—isn’t it, you and I—don’t we—little instance of cat? We yearn for her and her alone, no other example, no other time or season, just Marta. I, time’s minister, need a single moment more with her, before we are out of time.

  Miklos, my friend, my poet—Radnoti—help me with these feelings:

  For a long time only the burned wind spins

  Above the houses at home.

  Walls lie on their backs,

  Plum trees are broken,

  And the angry night is thick with fear.

  If only I could believe that,

  If the things of value are not inside me yet,

  I could have a home to go back to.

  If only I could hear again the quiet hum

  Of bees on the veranda, the jar of preserved plums

  Cooling with the summer, the gardens half asleep,

  Voluptuous fruit lolling on branches dipping deep,

  And she before the hedgerow standing with sunbleached hair,

  The lazy morning scrawling vague shadows on the air…

  Why not? The moon is full, her circle entire.

  Don’t leave me, friend—shout out—I am still standing.

  Istvan had begun to grip the cat’s neck too tightly, had not heard the squeak, felt the motor turn off before he gasped and let go. The cat looked meekly up at Istvan but stayed in his lap. Do the old trees guard your childhood, too, young Smetana? Look at us. We sit here like beautiful still lifes, the two of us, awaiting our Marta. Memory sits like a still life, safe and quiet.

  We once had lead soldiers, Paul and I, when we were young. Our Uncle Bela surprised us with two regiments of soldiers, one in brilliant gold and white and the other in red and blue. Paul’s were cavalry, mine were infantry. My brother had an impressive clay mountain from which his general and mounted men could look down on my green field of fighters, not well disguised, on account of the red. It took hours to set them all up. They occupied the whole of the floor of our playroom. Little Rozsi was upset about it, so we let two of her smallest dolls join the men on the floor. One of the dolls had Shirley Temple curls, like Rozsi, and the doll even got to sit on one of Paul’s lead horses, but in the back, out of harm’s way, looking like a curly giant on a horse.

  When we were done, making certain with a straight edge that our men formed perfect lines, which Rozsi’s dolls could admire, we both stood up finally like the Colossus Brothers of Rhodes and looked down on our work. The soldiers were sparkling, exquisite—fierce in what they were capable of—but we didn’t want to get them dirty. We didn’t want to see them piled like scrap metal in the middle of our green field, not that day, so we looked at them for some time more, let them stare one another down, and then turned off the lights on them and quietly exited the room, taking Rozsi with us, whispering to her that they needed some rest now.

  The light was receding on the little cottage in Szeged, but Marta was not home. Istvan took Smetana down to the cellar with him, replaced the planks above them, and they waited.

  Ten

  Budapest – June 16, 1944

  ROZSI WAS TO MEET ZOLTAN promptly at 6 P.M. in their favourite spot off Andrassy Street, in the Epreskert, the Strawberry Gardens, though of course it was already past strawberry season, and it had turned suddenly cold this late spring night. The Epreskert was located a stone’s throw from the State Puppet Theatre and the Academy of Fine Arts, sprawling out in its Neo-Renaissance splendour.

  Meeting at all was becoming problematic, but at least Rozsi and Zoli did not wear cloth Stars of David. They carried their Swedish papers everywhere. It was in the Strawberry Gardens, especially, that they liked to take in the fragrant breeze and speak their hearts. Rozsi had insisted on meeting Zoltan at their favourite bench, even though the bench had been—how had he put it?—deboned or pitted or shelled, she couldn’t remember which. She would have wanted to meet at that spot even if the bench had been removed altogether; if a building had been erected in their favourite gardens, she would have arranged to meet in the room where their bench had stood.

  How selfish she felt. How could she want just one thing, day and night, how could she care only that she saw her Zoli? Would not wanting to see him make things right? Would starving herself of him make her virtuous? Should she abstain until she went to her grave? She wished, in fact, she could take flight with him—land on top of the Matterhorn and wait until all the smoke beneath them cleared. Avalanches fell downward—that much she knew. They should have headed for the Alps when they were able and not come back. Rozsi would have traded all of Hungary for Zoli—all of Europe—as long as there was a single peak they could alight on together unharmed.

  She would happily have answered for it all later. She had been placed in a difficult time and situation. Surely, allowances could be made when the time came to answer. How simple the choices were, ironically, in extreme times: survive or perish, do this job or none, be with Zoli or no one.

  Rozsi’s father had once set her up with a young man, Lorant Cukor, treasurer of Szeged, who was elegant, if a little too stocky. He was ravenous for her, thought Heinrich was arranging their marriage, the way it had been for Heinrich and Mathilde and for his own parents. Wherever they went, Rozsi felt Lorant was ready to drop to one knee in front of her and present her with a ring as he wetly kissed her hands with altogether too much saliva and innumerable sucking sounds, as if he were going at a plate of chicken wings. Much as she would have liked to please her father, and much as she appreciated Lorant’s parents, who’d held a lavish dinner and dance party in her honour in
their white chateau in Szeged, she couldn’t go through with the arrangement. Her friends were already picking out a gown for her and a tiara decorated with subtle pink pearls, but she called them off.

  For his part, Zoli was on a mission. His parents’ death compelled him to do a job he believed no one else would do now, the job his father alone had been willing to do. His Hasselblad was his primary companion, and it took him away to document things Rozsi barely wanted to hear about, let alone witness what he witnessed. And it was the camera that often came between them.

  Today, Zoli was meeting with Gyula Halasz, a Hungarian photographer who’d made himself famous in Paris as Brassaï. It was Paul who’d told Zoli that Brassaï was briefly returning home. “I’ve seen his work. He’s very special,” Paul said, then sipped his drink. They were at Paul and Rozsi’s townhouse, polishing off what Paul had said was “the last bottle of brandy in the city.” “Brassaï’s work has begun to appear now in American magazines,” Paul said. “I came across Halasz in Harper’s Bazaar. The naïfs of the New World want to know what Decadent Old Bitch Europe looks like, and Brassaï gives it to them. I met him once, way back when.”

  “I’ve seen some plates of his work,” Zoli said. “A friend of my father’s had a portfolio of Halasz’s photographs—Brassaï’s, excuse me. His ‘Lovers in a Café’ is masterful.”

  Rozsi couldn’t understand how someone could be so captivated by a photographer. He was not a painter, not a musical composer. “How can a photograph be masterful?” she asked. “The work is all practically done for you by a machine.”

  “Hardly,” Zoltan responded. He was sitting at the edge of a plush scarlet armchair, rolling his brandy glass between the tips of his fingers. “Photography is about vision; it’s never about a single moment but all such moments, if I can put it that way. The photographer composes with his eye the way a painter does.” Zoltan set his glass on the table beside him. “I know it sounds pretentious, but Brassaï’s photographs have illuminated not just a street corner or the shadowy room of a brothel. They have illuminated the whole world.” Zoli sounded to Rozsi like someone in love. “He caught the world of overheard conversations,” Zoli went on, “the world of spyglass intimacy. How else can I put it?” Zoltan was tensely rubbing his hands together now. “Brassaï had his own secrets within the dark chamber of his camera. He unearthed my own secrets, Paul’s—yours, possibly.”