‘You can’t blame people in the street, some of them children, for what the people in power do. Probably most Germans didn’t even know what was going on,’ says Monica, who is also supposed to be my friend.
‘Ordinary people aren’t to blame for the atrocities and the concentration camps.’ This is Mary again.
‘I don’t agree.’ My voice is calm, entirely calm. ‘Of course they’re to blame; the Germans didn’t fight the system, most of them didn’t help Jews. If they had been on the Jews’ side, Hitler couldn’t have done what he did.’
‘I think most Germans wouldn’t even have known what was going on.’ A girl called Jackie, who scarcely knows the difference between democracy and dictatorship, enters the conversation.
‘They’d all been indoctrinated, especially the young people; they can’t be held responsible.’ This comes from Jackie’s friend Meg, someone who thinks fascism consists of your father complaining about the amount of eyeliner you put on before a date.
‘Of course the Germans weren’t to blame,’ says Jackie.
‘Well then, who was to blame?’ I ask in a high, tight voice. ‘Was everybody following orders? Were all the crimes of the Nazis the responsibility of half-a-dozen men? Of course not.’ I’m shouting at them all. ‘The German people were right behind Hitler and they approved of all that he did. I hate them.’
‘It’s immature to hate,’ says Mary in her smug little voice.
‘Yes, it’s immature,’ says Monica.
‘You’d all turn into Nazis quickly enough if the conditions were right.’ My face feels red and hot, but I hope that my voice is collected and cool.
‘What an ignorant thing to say. You’ve no right to say that,’ says Mary.
‘Yes I have.’
‘No you haven’t.’
I reach for the drink bottle in my bag and, pausing for a moment by Mary’s desk, pour the contents of the bottle all over her stupid grinning face.
‘Tempus fugit, as the po…,’ says Miss Bentley, coming back into the room. ‘Heavens above you two, what’s going on?’ She is staring at Mary, who has orange cordial dripping steadily from her nose and hair onto the School Bulletin still open on her desk.
‘I’m worried about her,’ says my mother. ‘The blood flow is too heavy, far too heavy.’
‘I can find nothing wrong,’ Dr Steiner says. ‘Perhaps a little more outdoor exercise.’
‘And her moods are so strange, Doctor.’
‘Eva is a perfectly healthy young girl.’
‘Perhaps some tests, in case there is…’
‘What tests, she doesn’t need tests.’
‘I read about a girl whose ovary…’
‘It’s your nerves, Kati. You need to relax. Get a hobby, or a dog. Go for a walk.’
‘Doctor Steiner, the pain is here, on the left side. I looked it up in the book. Also Eva’s periods are not better.’
‘Kati, listen.’
My mother thinks she has something wrong with her liver, and I am supposed to show Dr Steiner the evidence of my little problem – my soiled period pads. My stomach churns at the thought. Both the colour and texture of the blood is significant, my mother believes. I avoid looking at Dr Steiner. If I did, I would see a fat, balding man with thin glasses who is not going to get a look at what’s between my legs if I have anything to do with it.
‘Listen, Kati, have I already told you this story?’ he says.
My mother shakes her head.
‘A very proud woman said to her friend, “My son the doctor is such a marvellous doctor. You must go to him.”
‘“But why, there is nothing wrong with me.”
‘“Believe me, with my son, go only once and he is sure to find something!”’
‘And why are you telling me this, Doctor Steiner?’
‘To assure you that I’m not that kind of doctor.’
‘Dr Steiner, the pain, it could be an infection – bacterial, not viral.’
‘Just hold on a minute.’
‘I’m not a fool. I know when something is not right.’
‘Kati, I will examine you. You go wait outside, Eva.’
When he has finished, he joins me in the other room while my mother is getting dressed in his room.
‘No, Eva, I don’t need to see your menstrual pads, you’ll be pleased to know. Heavy flow in the early years is quite normal. Nothing to worry about.’
‘What’s wrong with my mother?’
‘Probably nothing. But I will send away for testing her specimens and samples. I know she won’t rest until I do.’ He sighs. ‘They’re the same, you know, Eva, the survivors. His bowels don’t work, nor do her kidneys. Her head aches; his gums bleed; the blood pressure is too high or too low; he can’t fall asleep; she wakes up too early; they all have nightmares. Yes, your mother is right. A sneeze might mean pneumonia; a cough could be asthma; a stomach ache might point to kidney trouble. But usually they don’t mean these things. In my opinion, my child, the only thing wrong with your mother, and the others, is life – is the war.’ He wipes an eye with the back of his hand. ‘How can I help? I can’t. I can’t undo suffering. I can’t bring back the dead.’
Opening the front door, I stumble over my grandmother lying in a crumpled heap on the floor in the hall. Beside her is a pool of vomit.
‘You found her just in time,’ the doctor in the emergency room says. He gives her an injection to settle her stomach.
‘Why did you not let me die?’ My grandmother opens her eyes and shuts them again.
I want to give her a hug, but cannot because too many tubes are encircling the bed.
‘What happened? What happened to her?’ My mother bursts into the room, clinging to my father.
‘I am so sorry, so sorry,’ said Judit in a voice full of pleading. ‘I got in a muddle, mixed up the pills. I am so sorry for bringing trouble. Dr Steiner, he prescribed too many, too many pills. I just got mixed up, because there were too many.’
My mother strokes her forehead. My father puts his arms around my mother and me and gives us each a clean handkerchief to wipe our nose and eyes. His eyes too are full of tears.
‘So sorry, so sorry, please forgive me,’ sobs my grandmother.
A holiday will help lift her spirits, my mother decides. It is to be Brents Hotel again in Rotorua, where the food is almost palatable to the continental stomach and there is dancing and other entertainment in the evenings. The other families in the circle are joining us too. Brents reminds them of continental spas and holiday resorts, and of vacations in Europe before the war.
‘I don’t want to go this year,’ I protest. ‘Mary has asked me to go tramping.’
‘Speak in Hungarian,’ my mother says. ‘We speak Hungarian in this house. And you are coming with us. No tramping.’
‘And no arguments,’ adds my father.
This is exactly what I have come to expect. They are entirely city people, unable to appreciate what New Zealand has to offer.
Counting the four in my family, there are finally thirteen of us assembled in the Brents lobby, waiting to be allocated rooms. Thank goodness Tomi has come. I notice that each of the men has a neatly folded copy of New Life under his arm.
‘Very limited company,’ my grandmother says to my mother, not bothering to lower her voice. ‘Not the type of people I am used to. There is no one with any depth, class or real intelligence.’ Judit gloomily surveys the faces of the other guests in the lobby for quality Europeans. She would not be shy about introducing herself to anyone who looked likely to fit the bill.
‘Not enough Jews at this hotel,’ she mutters.
‘There are too many for me,’ I tell her, but in such a quiet voice that she doesn’t hear.
Stephen Lucas says that there are even enough to make a minyan for a Sabbath service.
Stephen is still on the lookout, as he keeps saying, for a soothing young woman to ease his loneliness in the strange country. But so far, my mother says, he has had more succes
s with making money than love. After only six years in New Zealand, he owns a number of properties and is on the way to becoming wealthy. Stephen’s other great talent is for assimilation. A Kiwi twang sits on his heavy Hungarian accent. And he wears shorts and long socks, topped by striped shirt and neck tie.
There are also too many Hungarians here, I think. I hear several people I do not even know shouting in that language.
At least I have plenty of good books to read. The time at the hotel will pass quickly enough.
The first week does go by uneventfully. At the start of the second week, I am startled by a fluty, cultured voice in the corridor behind me. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I recognise the voice. It belongs to Miss Bentley, my Social Studies teacher. There is no way to avoid a meeting. She greets me with a cool smile. Will Miss Bentley realise that I belong with these people, with their bowing and hand-shaking, who are speaking loudly in unfathomable and sinister languages on the terraces, dining rooms and lounges of the hotel?
Miss Bentley and her female companion, whose nose is as long as Miss Bentley’s, glide with polite condescension amidst the foreign guests cluttering the hotel. When I slink past, Miss Bentley acknowledges me with a raised eyebrow or a wave of her gloved hand.
Meal times are the worst. I can hardly believe my rotten luck when Miss Bentley and her friend are given seats at an adjacent table. As the circle are not accustomed to conversing in modulated tones, how can Miss Bentley help hearing the strange talk at my table?
Gábor Ranki announces that he will order pork chops for dinner.
‘You have to assimilate to your surroundings,’ he explains. ‘For the same reason, I promised a subscription to the cricket club last week.’
‘Of course I do not play,’ he says crossly to my grandmother who is expressing astonishment about his starting a new sporting venture at his age. ‘The gesture means my neighbours think me such a good fellow.’
On my left, my father is recounting, ‘I had to choose between two paths through the bleak, snowy landscape. One was a trap; the other meant survival. I took the right path. I am here today. Many were not so lucky.’
Stop, please stop.
Maria Ranki is saying in a loud voice, ‘The New Zealanders, they do not care about their houses. They don’t mind the naked bulbs and ugly colours.’
Zsuzsi, Zsuzsi, if only you were here.
‘I agree,’ says my mother in an even louder voice. ‘The worst thing Jews can do is stick together. It causes anti-Semitism.’
This is a subject about which my mother is utterly contradictory. She insists on one point of view one day and renounces it with fervent conviction the next.
‘And the ugly roofs,’ says my grandmother. ‘Rusty yellow and green corrugated iron.’
‘You realise why the Farkas family have not come, don’t you?’ Maria Ranki asks. ‘They’re in Melbourne checking out the real Jewish girls, they don’t want semi-shiksehs like Zsuzsi and Eva mixing with their precious Joe.’
My mother is furious. Her daughter, unlike Maria’s, is not almost a shikseh. Does Maria actually believe that conversion to Judaism makes her really Jewish? She is ready with a scathing reply but Paul Szép interrupts.
‘What are we all going to drink?’
‘Water,’ says Krisztina Szép firmly.
‘We can’t have water. There must be some wine here that is fit to drink.’ Paul scans the list.
Are they going to fight already?
‘Personally, I prefer it quite well done,’ comes from Miss Bentley’s table.
‘Water,’ repeats Krisztina.
Paul and Krisztina Szép disagree about everything because Krisztina is Jewish and Paul is not, my father says. ‘Don’t make the same mistake,’ he warns often. ‘When things go wrong, they are quick to call us “dirty Jews”.’
The Széps have come to Brents Hotel with their small daughter Anna. Anna, who was born in New Zealand, is being brought up to speak Hungarian, with the memory of what Paul Szép calls her homeland kept alive before her. Anna is supposed to return to Hungary when she grows up. Krisztina Szép insists that Hungary is not her homeland, nor will it be her daughter’s; Anna is going to be a New Zealand child if she has anything to do with it. Poor Anna’s upbringing is only one of the Széps’ many disagreements.
As the diners become engrossed in conversation, their voices rise still more and their hands wave around excitedly. I can hear that Miss Bentley is engaged in discussing the prospects for favourable weather in the next few days.
‘Perhaps it will be rather nice,’ her companion ventures.
‘I witnessed it – corpses, sticks of skeletons…’ Klára Kunz shrieks.
My father’s expression stiffens into horror.
‘Eat, eat,’ he says. ‘There is plenty here.’
Stephen Lucas orders lamb and mint sauce.
‘How can you stand that type of food?’ Maria Ranki asks.
‘The mere smell of lamb makes my stomach churn,’ confides my mother.
‘As for the bread you get in this country, and the boiled vegetables, ’diculous,’ says Klára Kunz.
Maria Ranki uses her knife and fork to punctuate her words. So does my mother. The cutlery comes to near collision in the space between them. Miss Bentley is placing the peas onto the back of her fork with a neat little motion. Her companion is commenting on the tastiness of the lamb.
Over ice cream and peaches, the conversation turns to Israel. I look beseechingly at Tomi. Will he be willing to skip dessert and escape with me? But he is engrossed in the conversation.
‘My brother and his wife have gone on aliyah,’ begins Stephen. ‘According to them there is no life for Jews outside Israel – an outlook I find totally ridiculous.’
My father rises to the bait.
‘It is a tough life over there, to be sure. I couldn’t do what your brother is doing now, but I admire them. If I were twenty years younger, I would be off tomorrow.’
‘I agree with Gyuri,’ my mother joins in. ‘Israel needs us all.’
What a hypocrite, I think. We could have gone to Israel after the Revolution but my mother said she was no pioneer.
‘Tempus fugit, as the poet says,’ comes from Miss Bentley.
‘I don’t believe in armchair Zionists,’ says Gábor Ranki.
‘Neither do I,’ says Maria Ranki.
My mother is searching for a reply to squash the shikseh when my father says:
‘How different life would have been if Kati and I had taken the plunge and gone to Israel. Maybe Eva would have turned out a different child.’
There is silence as they all turn to look at me. My mother sighs. The Rankis nod. Zsuzsi too might have turned out a different child if… if… if…
I slump in my seat. I’m aware of a silence from Miss Bentley’s table.
‘I think it may be fine enough for a swim now,’ I mutter, rising. As I walk out of the dining room, I am relieved to see that Miss Bentley and her companion have already gone.
The next day brings an outing to the mud pools. Stephen, Tomi and I are dressed in shorts. The others wear tropical suits topped by winter coats and hats.
‘You cannot rely on the weather in this country,’ Klára Kunz is saying, looking anxiously up at the cloudless sky.
Maria Ranki is wishing herself back in the hotel. ‘Here I am blinded by the harsh light.’
My father is worried about the smell of sulphur. ‘But is it healthy?’ he asks Stephen.
When the circle have had enough of the boiling mud, it is time for lunch. Stephen has arranged for us to eat outdoors, Kiwi style. We walk a short way along a bushy track to the chosen spot. My father is lashing at the leafy ferns hanging gracefully over the track.
‘So where do we sit?’ asks my mother when we stop.
Maria, swatting at the sandflies, warns, ‘Don’t risk that log. It looks damp.’
Stephen is spreading out a rug, while Klára dabs at spots of mud on her shoes. My father i
s unpacking the provisions from Wellington. There is salami and pickled cucumber from Fuller Fultons and coffee from Faggs – Royal Espresso, ground one before powder. When the thermos is opened, the aroma of the coffee fills the air.
‘Yes please, I will certainly have some,’ says Sándor, holding out his cup.
The sun is warm. The winter coats are lying in a heap on the ground. Everyone is staring at Stephen, who has boldly taken off his shoes and socks.
‘Don’t,’ says Klára to Tomi who looks about to follow suit.
My mother is still not sure where to sit. My father leads her to a tree stump that is dry, smooth and flat.
‘Just for you, madam, the perfect place.’
She laughs and kisses him.
Sándor is enjoying his coffee. ‘New Zealand can never be Europe but it is not a bad little country,’ he says.
How pathetic they are, I am thinking, munching the peanut butter sandwich specially prepared for me by my grandmother.
After Miss Bentley’s arrival, I stay as much as possible away from the hotel. The adults are busy walking in the gardens and soothing their aches and pains in the mineral baths. Tomi and I go swimming at the Blue Baths.
Late afternoon, after our swim, I enter the lounge in the middle of a scene. Paul Szép is sitting close to my mother on the sofa, telling her she has beautiful hands.
‘Everything about you is so very fine,’ he smooches. He takes her hand and raises it to his lips. ‘You know how much I admire you.’
‘Hush, people will hear,’ my mother says.
‘I would want all the world to know,’ says Paul, not lowering his voice.
My mother sees me standing in the doorway. Paul, who has not noticed me, is now trying to put his arms round her shoulders. My mother pushes him away, saying, ‘Go away you silly man.’
Krisztina Szép walks into the lounge. The Kunzes, Rankis and my father also stroll in, looking for supper. Krisztina sees Paul’s red face and knows he has been acting the fool again.
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