Gratitude
Page 27
He was not finished as she raised herself off him, crumpling to the floor. He got to his knees and tried to lift her. “Please,” she said and raised her hand.
He slid to the floor beside her. He had used the last dram of fuel left within him. He lay exposed, still, as did she. He wanted to get them something to cover them, a coat, a shawl, but couldn’t see anything.
She turned her face toward him. “Where are you from?” she asked again as if they were just meeting.
“Why do you ask?”
“You’re missing something?” Her eyes had turned to ice with the rest of her.
He put himself together again, pulled up his pants, buttoned up. “Why do you ask?” he said. “Is there a place such a feature is required?”
“There should be,” she said.
He looked at her for a few seconds more. He used the chair to pull himself to his feet. She turned away from him and was crying. On his way out, he paused by the fruit bowl but felt he couldn’t take one in case she was counting.
When he got outside, he was half as sure about whose house he was going to visit as before he’d left. He hobbled around like a skunk ready to turn foul on any takers. He looked up again for Venus, but she’d hidden herself behind a cloud. He thought later he might catch rain. He kept gazing, happy to be able to look up into something other than a ceiling. For a moment, he thought he might have seen Mars, blushing through the clouds, but the light moved on, like an airplane, followed by its roar, followed by the lights and roar of another dozen planes flying—where?—northwest toward the Reich? He ducked into a bush, but couldn’t think why. If they’d spotted him, would they waste a bomb just on him? Would they brake in the air and descend to apprehend him?
He walked smartly out into the street again. He was better off holed up in his cellar awaiting his Marta, he decided, than a free Piroska awaiting her lover, complete with bowl of fruit—better to be Penelope than jilted Charles Bovary.
A single strong light turned a distant corner and came toward Istvan, beamed at him—a searchlight, it looked like—but as it approached, Istvan realized it was a car with one headlight out, past curfew, possibly a German, probably, the Cyclops approaching. Istvan fell to his stomach beside a bush. There was no time to scramble behind it. Maybe this was the broken-down car he never owned coming at last to collect him. He held his breath, buried his face in the grass.
Nineteen
Budapest – September 1, 1944
SIMON HAD BEGUN TO FEEL as useless as he was helpless. He had never returned to work after he was injured, and no one came looking for him, even though letters found their way to the Becks. He couldn’t go foraging for food with Lili, or Rozsi, who was becoming more daring and insistent lately. Paul wouldn’t have him on the campaigns with Wallenberg, because Simon wasn’t convincing as a Swede. He couldn’t write a great poem to Lili, though he certainly tried, and it wasn’t enough that he could recite poems to her, though that did impress her. He couldn’t invent anything, though he certainly tried that, too: he made drawings for a streamlined version of the innards of a butane lighter; he tried to concoct a mixture for an adhesive to be used by airplane manufacturers that would be strong enough to withstand high air pressure, but he couldn’t find the chemical ingredients to try out his hypothesis; he designed a disposable stomach for times of plenty, so chubby people could gorge themselves in cafés on meat and bread and cakes and then toss the full stomach in the bin on the way out; he tried to find a cure for something, anything at all, but couldn’t, even though, for a week, he pestered his father with questions about how various parts of the body worked. Why did the body attack itself with its green, cancerous army? he needed to know. What was giving the orders, and why? How could the orders be intercepted? Was surgically removing the conquerors as well as the conquered the way to go? If the heart was sending out the green soldiers, why couldn’t some kind of filter be installed to stop them, or a ditch to trip them up? If it was the brain that was to blame, why couldn’t it be sat down and persuaded to desist?
Simon began formulating a theory of evolution based on a group of humans confined to an office for ten thousand years. He made drawings. In the first set, the people had become as translucent as jellyfish and were vegetarian, sucking the ivy off the building’s walls and then the leaves from the potted plants, which had overtaken the top floor. Some were boxlike, and some had heads that craned over and took the shape of desk lamps. Some were flat as floors and striated, to suggest the grain of hardwood. In the next set of drawings, the humans were entirely transparent. Really, all one could see were the offices as they were now, with the occasional indentation apparent in a pillow and in the cushion of a desk chair, where people appeared to be lying and sitting.
Little news streamed into the safe house on Ulloi Street, except what arrived second-hand from Paul or Zoli or, occasionally, Lili. Sometimes the lack of news suited Simon fine. He was content to cocoon himself with his family and with the nuns. He allowed himself to feel immune for hours at a time, sometimes days. And even when there was news, Simon didn’t want to know about personal stories. He wanted to hear where the Russians were and how the Americans were doing; he preferred not to think of what had become of his frail cousin Janos, the mathematician—he couldn’t bear even to hear his name—he’d wince and turn away—or even Istvan, whom he’d written off, or his uncles and aunts, even Hermina and Ede, who had been kidnapped mysteriously years before. He hoped they were taken for a reason other than for execution, but he didn’t want to imagine what it was.
One day, Klari played a record Lili had brought for her, Brahms’s Clarinet Trio in A Minor. The honey-dark music was the essence of regret, and Simon had to leave the room or be stricken with it for the rest of the afternoon.
That same day, Lili brought the news that Horst Immel, the lieutenant who’d walked Maria and her to the Church of St. Margaret, was gone and was probably dead, one of his comrades had said. Simon said, “Good riddance.”
Lili didn’t respond.
“Isn’t it a good thing?”
“I don’t know. He seemed like a decent man. He had family back in Germany.”
“So it’s not a good thing? I don’t recall sending him an invitation to visit us in sunny Budapest.” Simon’s ears had turned crimson. “He’s an invader. He’s deporting Jews somewhere. Your family’s been deported.”
Lili ran to the washroom in tears, and the subject never came up again.
Simon tried to speak to the nuns, but they would turn away. They behaved sometimes like deaf-mutes. He asked a couple of them questions about the Church in Rome and what the Pope’s position was on Hitler and Mussolini, but they looked offended and walked away from him. He encountered a young nun one morning by accident in the washroom, and was surprised at how curvy she was. He had accepted, as completely as they themselves had, that they were without shape and appeal. The nun screamed, and Simon ran out of the room.
Simon was least like his former self when it came to food. He paced the floor like a dog, Klari had told Lili, all the time Lili was out on her scavenging expeditions. His anxiety was such that he carried it with him to the door when he kissed Lili goodbye each day. When he finally did have the food in hand, say a piece of bread, he tore at it and seemed to swallow it whole, or, if the Becks were fortunate enough to get butter for their bread, he’d slap a lump of it on one corner before gulping the whole piece down. He had to be eating immediately, his mouth working, as he got ready for the next morsel. And then he would be calm again, his stomach having received its reward, calm and ready to talk about love or poetry or evolution—but not until.
One of the cleverer nuns, the young one Simon had caught half-undressed in the bathroom, began growing African violets from seeds someone had given her. When she showed her colleagues and the Becks that the flowers were coming up, pink ones and purple ones, Simon yelled, “What good are those? Grow tomatoes or peppers or cabbage. What the hell are you growing flowers for?”
“Just as long as we don’t become jelly people,” she said affectionately.
Zoli happened by that day with a bag of fruit for them all, and the four young people sat together. Simon asked Zoli about his plans with Rozsi, and he said he didn’t know—he lived from one assignment from Wallenberg to the next, relieved when he made it to the end of each one, glad he could report back that he’d made it. He looked stern and serious.
“What do you mean?” Rozsi had said. “Don’t we have plans, like Simon and Lili?” She wiggled her ring finger. “What happened to our plans?”
“You know nothing would make me happier,” he said, “but right now we have what we have.”
“Look,” said Simon, “I have been rendered little more than an eater of scraps and a wearer of clothes. Let us dream a little, if we may.”
“Of course,” Zoli said, but he didn’t add anything else.
Simon and Lili talked about where they’d live, what they’d do, whether they’d stay in Hungary. He said no—he wanted to go to America or Canada—but she said they couldn’t leave his family behind, and Dr. Beck would never leave.
“Then Dr. Beck should stay,” Simon said. “He’s stuck in this place, physically and mentally.”
Simon said it loudly enough for his father to hear. Robert had not returned to work, either. He’d been told his services would not be required any longer.
“Do you think other places are better?” Robert asked Simon. “Don’t you become a missionary too, please.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Simon asked.
“Leave it,” Lili told Simon. “Please leave it. It’s his home you’re describing.”
Then Klari was there, too, to ward off evil spirits. “Please, boys. Every time this subject comes up, there is a battle. It’s not your fault, Simon, darling, that you were born when you were born, any more than it’s ours, as you seem to think. People live where they can live. They can’t be criticized for it.”
But Simon continued. “Father, are you calling Paul a missionary? Is that what you think he is, just because he has strong feelings—justifiable feelings?”
Klari tugged on Robert’s arm. He didn’t answer.
“Who’s a missionary? Zoli? Wallenberg? Lili? Regent Horthy? Me?”
Klari escorted her husband out into the hall. Just then the front door burst open and several police walked in. Simon was relieved to see they were not the Arrow Cross, but they startled Klari and Robert all the same.
“We’re looking for Simon Beck,” one of them said.
“We haven’t seen him,” Klari said, looking at the wall.
Simon stepped out to join his parents and identified himself. Lili was by his side.
“What do you want with him?” Robert asked.
“He’s a skilled worker.” It was only the one officer who spoke. “We’re taking him for the war effort. We need him.” Everyone looked at Simon. “He’ll be at a labour camp in Transylvania. We understand he has some skills as a tool and die maker, and we need those. It’s not a death camp, unless he misbehaves.” They all looked at Simon as if at a boy. “If he behaves,” the man went on, “then he’ll come back to you, most likely.”
Robert said, “Please tell me, what can I give you?”
“Not much, it looks like,” the officer said. “How about a nice desk chair, boys?” They laughed.
Simon couldn’t stand to see his father humiliated. He looked at Robert, believed he would take this as a failure, his own personal failure, and the failure of his country. Everything would be all right for Robert just as long as they could hang on, wait this through.
Simon put his hand on his father’s shoulder and thought Robert might cry.
Even the intruders seemed touched. “He heals people,” Simon said. “It’s what he knows. He doesn’t contribute well to a war effort.”
“Too bad,” the officer said.
“Wait,” Klari said. She dashed into the office, dug out a necklace she’d been hiding under the base of a lamp and returned. “Take this instead, please. Don’t take our son.”
The policeman took the necklace and looked it over. “Thank you, ma’am. I’ll take both.” And he pocketed the necklace.
“But we’re Swedish nationals,” she said.
“And we’re Martians,” the Hungarian said.
“Leave it,” Robert said. He looked defeated.
Klari looked around her, as if to seek help. Rozsi was in a corner in the office, cowering on her cot. The nuns were nowhere to be seen. Simon had begun to perspire. Robert could see his son’s heartbeat at his temple. What would he eat? he wondered.
“When are you bringing him back to us?” Lili asked.
The officer smiled at her. He looked lascivious rather than kind. She shrank back behind Simon’s arm. The man said, “He’ll come back when we all do.” He smiled again.
“Please let me give him something to take with him,” Klari said.
The policeman impudently took Klari’s chin in his hand. “He’ll have everything he needs where we’re sending him. Don’t give it another thought.”
“Enough,” Robert said.
The policeman looked around, as did his men. “Nice place,” he said.
And then they were gone. “Oh, poor Lili,” Rozsi said, and now she followed her Aunt Klari to her cot to comfort her.
But Klari said to her, “He’ll be safe in Transylvania. It’s safer than Budapest, safer than taking forbidden pictures.” It wasn’t a kind thing to say, and Klari knew it. She didn’t know why she’d come up with the remark. She sometimes wished her niece could be Paul. She gazed through her tears at Rozsi. Rozsi offered to get Lili, but her Uncle Robert was there first.
Twenty
Szeged – August 25, 1944
IT WAS 10:08 WHEN ISTVAN ARRIVED at Mr. and Mrs. Brunsvik’s house, a mere fifty-five minutes since he’d knocked on Piroska’s door, not too late to call under the circumstances. They were old patients who’d once come to him for help, could pay him only with chicken and dumplings or baked beans. Now he was coming to them. It was not too late. He’d recovered some of his confidence, felt he could tap sharply on the dark window.
The light came on quickly. Istvan met Mrs. Brunsvik at the door rather than greet her at the window where she naturally went first. When she opened the door, she shrieked and slammed it in Istvan’s face. A second later the light was out. Istvan rapped again on the wooden door. No one answered. Now he slapped at the door. The light flashed on again.
He heard her voice through the door. “Dr. Beck. You’ve been gone. You’re dead. Marta told us.”
“Mrs. Brunsvik—”
“You’re a ghost. You…” She couldn’t finish. He could hear her gasp. He was afraid he’d harmed her, made her faint.
“Mrs. Brunsvik, are you all right?” She didn’t answer. He heard more footsteps, agitated shuffling inside. “Mrs. Brunsvik, I need to speak to someone. I need to come inside, but I won’t stay.”
“You can’t come in.” It was Mr. Brunsvik’s voice now.
Then hers again. “Oh, saintly Mary, what have I done to deserve this? What have I done to bring the Angel of Death upon us. Praised be your name, sainted Mary; praised be your blessed incarnation.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Brunsvik, I won’t stay. I’m hungry. It’s been—” he stopped himself. “I’ll go right away, I promise. No harm will come to you.”
Mrs. Brunsvik wailed with Mr. Brunsvik by her side. Istvan waited. He glanced all around him at the dark windows. He felt a wind blowing; he sensed the dampness now in the air, even through the warm sweater. He checked his appearance, looked down at himself foolishly to see the wind yodelling down his Alpine valley, wanted to be sure he was presentable—Istvan, the friendly ghost
, Istvan, the amiable Angel of Death.
The door still didn’t open. They were quiet now, waiting for him to go. He could feel their anxiety, was a greater criminal for drawing attention to their house than a burglar or kidnapper would be, a criminal who could bring death to people who hadn’t intended to finish life so abruptly.
He was about to withdraw, had resigned himself to their verdict, when the door flew open again and old Mr. Brunsvik was upon him with an iron skillet, banging him on the shoulder, hitting hard. Istvan fell forward to the ground and covered his head. He took another blow to the back, which clanged, and another to the fingers covering his head. The blows rang around the neighbourhood.
Istvan wanted to throw off sparks like flint. He wanted to become the preternatural creature Mrs. Brunsvik had thought he was when he first knocked, wanted to dissolve from this dimension rather than take blows from the very skillet the couple had used to cook up the dumplings and beans they brought to him in payment for repairing their smiles, brought like offerings from supplicants.
The blows ceased. The door slammed. The light went out again. His breath had been knocked out. He hoped a rib hadn’t been broken, felt a sharp pain in his back as he tried to move. He looked all around. A light had come on in a house two doors down. Istvan would have scrambled away, but he needed to get back his breath. One minute more, that was all.
The Brunsviks’ door opened swiftly and two objects were flung at him, one striking his tender back. He lifted his head to see that one of the projectiles was an apple. He groped around and found the other, something gritty. A potato. New offerings. He put these in his pockets.
He pulled himself to his knees. He needed to get away. He could feel jagged pain at the end of each breath and knew he couldn’t run. He checked the light in the neighbour’s window and saw a figure there but doubted he or she could see him. He didn’t want the authorities called. He had to move on. He could feel the Brunsviks still on the other side of their dark door, listening for his next move. He rose and tottered over several front yards and a hundred steps away he slowed to catch his breath.