by Anna Porter
“I guess Paul wasn’t so lucky,” said Judith.
Lantos gazed at the patch of linoleum floor between his feet. “No, he wasn’t.”
“They were taken off in trucks?”
Lantos shook his head. “No. They went into hiding at one of the peasant houses up in the north part of the town near the Donat cemetery. Nobody knew they were there, and after all the Jews had gone—1,600 people—no one thought of looking for them. Hell, they almost made it through the war. It was late summer of 1944, July, I think, when they found them. The Germans retreated in September. Another two months and they would have been safe. Life is so full of those missed chances, don’t you think?”
Judith nodded sympathetically. She knew he was referring to his own missed opportunity, not standing up to his mother about Harvey Singer’s fate.
“What happened when they found them?” David asked.
“They were all shot,” Lantos said with a sigh. “All of them. The Nazis lined them up in front of the house and just kept shooting till they were dead. Meredith was only twelve then. She was such a beautiful young girl. We were all in love with her. Every boy who ever spent summers around the Zimmermans’ pool. Feri asked her if she would marry him when she grew up.”
He held his forehead in both hands, fingertips tapping the skin lightly, then pressing into it. He bent forward, put his elbows on the table, and remained in that position for some moments.
“Nobody escaped?” Judith asked.
“Nobody. Afterward they locked the peasants inside their house and set fire to it. They burned them alive... My mother said how clever she was she didn’t let Harvey stay, because look what happened to them and they were only peasants. For sure. But I thought better to burn to death than think about what they done to Harvey...” He wiped the table with his apron, though it hadn’t needed cleaning. “More coffee?” he asked.
Judith shook her head. “We have to get on with life, you know.” Lantos added that homily for something to fill the silence.
David brought the photograph out of his pocket and put it on the newly cleaned spot. “Is this Feri?” he asked, pointing to the chunky boy with the blond hair, his chest pushed out to make himself seem bigger and stronger.
Lantos leaned over and studied the photograph for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “That’s him. I gave the picture to Harvey—he wanted it so very much. The other one’s Paul. They were always together. I remember Feri started talking about the Zimmermans’ coming, as early as April every year. He made plans for the things he and Paul would do. One spring he bagged a hundred butterflies for Paul’s collection. He didn’t have much to look forward to, Feri. The Baloghs lived in the west toward Bogács. He had to come a long way to school—when he came. Five kilometers, I think. Maybe farther. His father was a laborer in the vineyards. He died when Feri was still very young, ten or twelve. They struggled to stay alive. I thought that’s why Mrs. Zimmerman let him around their house so much. She felt sorry for him. She used to give him things to take home. You know, clothes, food. My mother sent a loaf of bread now and then. Afterward we wondered if that was why he did it. Envy, maybe. He had a lot of pride, Feri did, for a peasant boy. He didn’t like the handouts, but he took them because they needed to eat.”
“He told the Nazis where to find the Zimmermans?” Judith asked.
Lantos nodded. “He led them to the house. Some say he was there when they were shot. He watched. Afterward, the Arrow Cross guards decorated him as hero of the Vaterland. They pinned his picture up on the school’s noticeboard as example of true hero. They had a party for him in the old Park restaurant. They drank the last of the wine from the hotel’s cellars. They shot bullets through the plaster angels in the ceiling. Next day, I saw Feri riding around on Paul Zimmerman’s new silver bicycle. That was the last time I saw Feri.”
“What happened to him? Do you know?”
“He was killed when the Russians came in. Our liberators, you know.” He glanced nervously at Szabo again. The policeman registered the same lack of hearing as last time. He had finished reading the paper and was sitting back in his chair, his hands folded on his belly, staring into space. His orders, David concluded, must have been to keep in sight; they didn’t include trying to make sense of what they were talking about.
Lantos leaned forward, his face mere inches away from David’s. “They weren’t much better than the Germans, you know. They were angry because the Germans had blown up the bridges and the railway lines. They had taken all the live animals they could find, and every last bit of grain they could threaten from the peasants. So when the Second Ukrainian Army marched in, victorious and hungry, there wasn’t anything left for them to eat, and they couldn’t bring foodstuffs in too easily because the bridges and the railroads were gone. They wreaked their own version of chaos, they shot their share of the population, and moved on toward Budapest. Feri was killed by them. So was his mother. She had been hiding a bit of wine in a cellar and the Russkies found it. They used to get awfully angry if you didn’t give them everything you had.”
“When Harvey was here, did you talk about all that?” Judith asked.
“Oh yes. He wanted to know everything about everyone. I’d saved some old pictures of him and his family from before the troubles started. And a few things from the Zimmerman house. An old book of Paul’s. A silver locket. That was Harvey’s first time back home since the war. Never wrote me or anything in all those years. Hell, I don’t really blame the man, after what happened to his family, but I sure would have liked to know he was alive. He did so well for himself in America.” He shrugged. “The way it goes. Kept this drawing of him, too. In the kitchen here. About the same place where his old living room used to be. You know their house was here?”
“Why did he take all the Zimmermans’ things?” Judith asked.
“He said he’d read about some Zimmermans in the papers. He now thought they might be relatives, and they would like to have them. He showed them to you?”
“Yes,” David lied. He had been about to tell him about Harvey’s death, but Lantos was depressed enough already; he decided to save it for a while. Instead, he asked Lantos what he meant when he said so many people wanted to know about Paul Zimmerman all of a sudden.
“There was Harvey and Gloria in December, the woman in January, and now you—all in a few weeks, it seems. For 40 years no one so much as mentioned him around here, and then all this interest. We don’t like to talk about that time. Doesn’t look good for the town. Feri Balogh was one of us.”
“Who was the woman in January?” David asked.
“I don’t know her name.” Lantos shrugged. “She was just passing through, she said. Didn’t stop in Eger.”
Judith dug around in her handbag where she kept her research pieces and took out a folded page from a magazine. She smoothed it out on the table and pushed it over toward Lantos. “This woman?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s her,” he said with a smile. “A beauty she was.”
Thirty-Seven
THERE ARE NO DIRECT flights between Budapest and Bermuda, and no easy connections. That’s why it was eighteen hours before David Parr and Judith Hayes finally made it to Xanadu.
Staff Sergeant Graham bestowed on them both his official blessing and his unofficial cruiser escort, but he stayed outside among the hibiscus while they entered behind the uniformed maid. She gave Judith a shy smile of recognition and bobbed her head in David’s direction. This time, though, she didn’t welcome them to Bermuda. All she said was that they were expected in the conservatory.
Brenda Zimmerman was wearing a long-sleeved navy blue dress with a severe high collar that hid her slender neck. Her blond hair fell in straight lines to her shoulders. Her skin was even paler and more translucent than the last time Judith had seen her. The lines around her mouth had deepened, the darkness about her eyes made her face seem skeletal. She sat upright in one of the green and pink chairs near the pool. She was reading a fat leather-bound book tha
t she reluctantly lowered to her lap when David and Judith entered.
Philip Masters stood close to the windows, looking out at the lush greens and purples in the garden. He turned slowly when David wished them a good afternoon, stuck both hands into his pants pockets so his pinstriped jacket flared out behind him and his black waistcoated belly stuck out in front like a raven’s feathered crop. “It’s taken you long enough,” he said belligerently.
Judith mumbled something about it being difficult to make plans from such a remote place as Eger.
“That isn’t what he meant,” David said. “He’s talking about coming to the end of the investigation, aren’t you, Mr. Masters?”
Philip nodded almost imperceptibly.
The white cane canary cages had all been covered with dark green woven cloths. The room, lit by the soft amber light of the late-afternoon sun, was still.
“When did you find out that your husband wasn’t Paul Zimmerman?” David asked.
Brenda looked up at him slowly, as if the movement of her head was painful in the extreme. Her violet eyes were clouded, unfocused; they reminded Judith of Eva’s unseeing eyes.
“Early January, I think,” Brenda said quietly. “I can’t remember the exact date. Late afternoon. I was on my way somewhere—funny how I can’t remember where I was going and why, don’t you think, Philip? It’s so strange how everything has faded into these vague sepia colors. It’s as if my life had always been bright pinks and definite greens and blues, and suddenly the color drains out of it all. Nothing is as it seemed before...” She slammed the book shut and put it beside her on the chair. “I remember he stepped out in front of the car when I was halfway along the Bridle Path on the way to... It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“No,” David said. “He stopped the car. He told you his name was Harvey Singer. Told you about Feri Balogh and Paul Zimmerman.” David spoke as if to a child, gently, cajoling.
“Let her tell it her way,” Philip said. He had come to stand behind Brenda’s chair, his hand resting on the top of its pink cane back.
“I don’t know why I stopped the car, really,” Brenda continued. “He seemed such a harmless little man. Well dressed. Had a hat with a feather in the band, a briefcase, big fur-collared overcoat. Respectable. I thought he lived along the street. Maybe he needed help starting his car. January, the batteries die. He seemed distraught. Shaking. So I let him into...my life.” She was rubbing and intertwining her fingers, turning her rings. “That sounds rather dramatic, don’t you think? Yes. Very dramatic. Death is very dramatic, though. Have you read very much Shakespeare, Inspector?”
“Not for a long time,” David said.
“A pity,” Brenda pronounced sadly. “I didn’t believe him at first. No one would have. It was such a fantastic story. I was married to a man called Balogh, who had once been Paul Zimmerman’s best friend, but had betrayed him for a bicycle. Watched while he died. Would you believe that? About someone you know and love? That he was a Nazi, a killer?” She looked imploringly at Judith. “How would anyone believe that? Paul had been so generous to all those Jewish causes.
“I had rolled down the window and Singer was standing there in the snow. He had a bunch of faded old photographs and a yarmulke; he said they were the real Paul’s. Harvey Singer begged me to ask Paul myself. I told him he was nuts and I drove off. But I did. Later that night, after he’d had one of his terrible nightmares, shouting in Hungarian, as he so often did. He used to wake shaking and sweating, crying sometimes. He was so frightened. And I had begun to think maybe the crazy guy had been telling the truth. You know how it is, sometimes, in the night, even your worst fears seem plausible. I felt guilty for even allowing myself to think it. I blurted out the question to Paul, all at once. God, I wanted him to deny it so much. But he didn’t. He got up and he left. Didn’t say where he was going. Didn’t come back for days.”
“And you told Philip then?” David asked gently.
“I had to tell someone. Philip loved him as much as I did. Or so I thought. Good old faithful Philip. He tried to convince me I was an idiot to give any credence to Singer’s ravings. He told me he would make inquiries about Singer. The man must be an escaped lunatic. And about Paul’s reaction, he said how would I feel if Paul accused me of being a murderer? Wouldn’t I leave the house? Wouldn’t I feel hurt and astounded? But Paul didn’t seem either hurt or astounded, he seemed angry. He left me without a word. It was early morning, still dark. We were in his bedroom. He was covered in sweat from that horrible nightmare. I had held his hand as I had so often done before. When he got out of bed, I tried to hold on but he pulled away. He dressed in the dark. I kept asking him again and again. He didn’t reply. When I turned on the light he was pulling on his overcoat. Never even glanced at me when he left. No matter how hard Philip tried to convince me, I couldn’t put it out of my mind.
“That’s why I went to Hungary. Saw the man in Eger who had given Singer all those pictures and things of Paul’s. Lantos. He runs the sweetshop. But you know that already, don’t you?” She looked from Judith to David and back again, her eyes pleading for understanding. “I visited the graves afterward. The Zimmerman graves that the priest from the little chapel had dug himself. He dug for days before he had enough of them. He dragged the bodies there, one by one, alone, in the summer’s heat. No one would help him, you see. They were all afraid to be seen touching Jewish corpses.” Her voice caught. She swallowed hard.
“I had some relatives who died that way. Shot. In Germany where my family came from before the war. No one buried them. I met the priest. A small man, hard to imagine how he did it. They weigh so much, dead bodies.” Her voice caught again. She brushed her face with her fingers.
“He’s still at the same chapel. Now and then he puts flowers on the graves, when he collects more than he needs for food from his congregation. Lantos saw to it the graves were kept clean. Weeded. A little grass on each. Four graves, side by side, each with a single headstone the priest brought over from the walls of the old castle. They never had any visitors. Though the whole town knew. They were ashamed, the priest thought. Then they forgot. Paul—no...that other man I married—he knew where I had been and why. When I came back, he was waiting for me at the airport. Geoff Aronson stood outside the car and waved me in. He told me then. He told me everything. Only part he left out was why he had done it. He never understood that himself. He had been very young. Just 16, in 1944. He was a child. I hardly remember being 16, do you, Officer Parr? He had wanted that silver bike so badly; he never wanted anything so badly in his life. He had grown up without love—a hardworking man’s son, the only support for a silent widow. Do you remember all the mistakes of your childhood? All the envy, the little acts of personal revenge? There was a girl called Millie I went to school with. She was such a beauty, so popular, so cute, athletic, you know... I used to fantasize that she died. Violently. In Hungary in 1944 such fantasies could become real. ‘Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act...’ ” She stopped talking, lowered her head, her shoulders slumped forward.
They all waited in silence.
When she lifted her head, she looked straight at Judith, as if she had just remembered Judith was there. “You know about love, don’t you?” she asked.
Judith nodded.
“He was in love with Meredith Zimmerman. His first love. At 16 love can seem so desperate. Do you know, Romeo and Juliet were only 15? Meredith was 12, but she knew her mind. She told him she could never love a Gentile, it was against her religion. She rejected him. Years later, he wondered if that was why he had to prove over and over that he could be attractive to women. He was angry at her. At all of them. They had seemed to be his friends, and now they were telling him... she was telling him...he wasn’t good enough for them. Maybe that’s what it was. I don’t know. Oh God...how I’ve tried to understand why...as if that bit of understanding would lessen the horror.”
She buried her face in her hands for a second. Whe
n she resumed she was steady, her voice a monotone. “He told the Nazis—the Arrow Cross—about the Zimmermans’ hiding place, before he’d had a chance to think. It all happened too fast. They were heading for the farmhouse, with him running behind them. Too late to change his mind. It was over in seconds. Afterward, he was a hero. And proud, somehow—the only time in his life, till then, that he’d felt important. People looked up to him. No longer the poor laborer’s son, the kid who didn’t have the right clothes, who couldn’t bring his lunch to school, the object of charity. Briefly, he was somebody. When the Germans left, he headed for the hills. He changed his name and his identity. Joined the flood of refugees from Eastern Europe.”
“Why did he take Paul Zimmerman’s name?” Judith asked.
“On the spur of the moment. He ended up in an American camp. They grilled everyone and you had to have the right answers or you could be sent back. He could never go home again. The whole town knew what he had done. And he couldn’t be Feri Balogh—there were trials for war crimes, and recriminations. He needed a new identity. He knew everything about Paul Zimmerman, it was easy to take his place. That’s what he told me.”
“Did you know then he was going to kill Harvey Singer?” David asked.
Brenda shook her head. “He didn’t mean to do that. It was an accident. You have to believe me. What more can I lose now? Why would I lie?” She twisted around so she could look up at Philip, who clutched her shoulder and squeezed it hard enough she winced.
David sat down on the chaise longue facing her. “How did it happen?” he asked, his voice gentle as before.
“I let Geoff go after the Griffithses’ dinner and picked Paul up half an hour later at the corner near their house. I was driving the Jaguar. Singer had asked for a meeting with Paul, and I wanted to go along. To help him, if I could. I didn’t hate him, you know, Inspector. I couldn’t ever hate him, though I knew what he had done. He was good to me and to my little girl. Do you remember in Julius Caesar, when Mark Antony is talking about the dead Caesar who had been a killer but was also an honorable man, and he says, ‘The evil that men do lives after them, / The good is oft interred with their bones.’? It’s very easy to forget the good he had done, as Paul Zimmerman, and remember only what Balogh did.”