by Mark Sarvas
But in classic Santos fashion, when he ventured beyond the safe limits of imitation, he failed. After all, second-raters run in the family. His banal landscapes were out of fashion before the paint dried, as kitschy as the gypsy music he favored, and so upon returning to Hungary from England, he opened the shop. Those few lean years of bohemian struggle had instilled in both father and son a terror of want and a subsequent practicality that my father would never forget. I’m sure that’s why my grandfather chose to return to Budapest a few years after the war ended. The idea of commencing a second, English-speaking life must have felt beyond him. My father would have to wait for the 1956 revolution for his own chance to quit Hungary.
But in those youthful days, he worked hard learning the family business, mastering the trade that he would bring to America. Years later, he would pause when we passed drying paint and sniff for a long moment or two, then shake his head and walk on. At first I assumed he was reflecting on the declining quality of paint, but I later wondered if he was trying to reach back through the years and smell her again, this unnamed bookkeeper. The coupling was frantic and rushed, unromantic, in a supply closet, the pair of them high on paint fumes. My grandfather was reliably absent in those days, pursuing his own paramours—another family trait, I am dismayed to discover—so my father had the run of the shop. He learned, it seems, a good deal more than the family business.
This and other stories, told many times before, had entered the family lore, so when we did speak on the phone, there was almost nothing left to say. Which was why that last phone call surprised me. When we came to the juncture to bid each other an eager farewell, my father inquired whether I had documented my key financial information in case something should happen to me, so that Tracy would be taken care of. He was concerned, given we were not yet married, and Tracy would have no legal rights, though what fate he expected to befall me he did not elaborate. Still, I was strangely moved. He’d always liked Tracy, approved of my choice of her in a way that he seldom approved of anything I did. She, in return, was fond of him, laughing at his dreadful puns and generally appearing to agree with his low estimation of my gifts, this done for his benefit, she assured me. I lied to him, as I had many times before, and told him that Tracy was my designated beneficiary in all financial matters. Now I wondered about the timing of his request, wondered if something the Australians were going to tell me had already come across his radar. I thought of calling him to ask, but it was midnight in New York. Such a breach of unstated protocol might well set off the poor bastard’s notoriously unstable ticker. I wanted to know, but I didn’t want to know that badly.
OF THE THREE CENTRAL FIGURES in the painting, the one I find most arresting is the man on the far left, the one who resembles my vigilant guardian. It’s the women we’re supposed to notice, one done up garishly in red, the other in electric blue, her head perched atop a high collar. They anchor the painting’s visual elements, center everything, but it’s the dandyish young man with them who draws my eye. His back is turned to us and the ladies, but he’s looking over his shoulder in their direction, giving them, and us, it seems, a second thought. There’s something about his apartness, his irresolution, that I cannot shake off.
Deeper in the background indistinct members of the Hungarian bourgeoisie hurry to the cafés, the opera, the parties that await them. The figures are a blur of activity, and although good cheer abounds, there’s something sinister about the picture. Perhaps it’s the fourth figure, a small, hunched man in the lower right, decked out in top hat and tails but, if you ask me, up to no good as he regards the ladies from afar. His facial expression is an indecipherable smudge, but I’d wager on a leer. The gray stone facades of the Andrássy út are only suggested as deep shadows, but they frame the action, proscenium-like, and there’s something almost malignant about the way they close in on the subjects and the viewer.
I have stared at this painting for months, thought about it incessantly. I’ve read everything I could find on the work, on the artist, Ervin Kálmán, who blew his brains out just hours ahead of the Nazis’ arrival in Budapest. I’ve read monographs, biographies, you name it. That’s my specialty, after all, throwing myself into my research, since one never knows where the useful note that brings a role to life will be found. I’ve imagined lives for each of the painting’s figures, this one a cabaret dancer or a jazz singer, that one a daughter of a well-to-do merchant. I’ve also imagined them dead, gone, everyone on the street wiped out within a decade. There’s nothing specifically Jewish about the painting or its subject, but Kálmán was a Jew, and anyway I don’t need facts to justify my imaginings. But the thing I imagine most often is that the dandyish young man, the one looking back, is my father. Impossible, I know. My father was not yet born when the painting was painted, but the leap isn’t hard for me to make. It’s easy to imagine him already beginning to make his move, taking that first step from the cataclysm that would sweep away the others.
My silent Virgil glances my way, chewing his pungent tuna sandwich, sour like urine. Have I spoken out loud? Hard to say. Tracy advised me that I’d developed a habit of muttering all sorts of things. Names, for example. Who is Rachel, she asked me when my mind drifted as we passed Olympic Boulevard Synagogue. She scrutinized me like a poker player as I steadily explained that Rachel was Jacob’s wife. Genesis, I think. Those half-truths again. Apparently, at that moment, I’d muttered her name, in a tone Tracy characterized as pleading. Thankfully, she did not think to ask how I had come by what must have seemed to her a piece of Jewish arcana, but I could feel her questioning eyes upon me for the rest of the drive. What else have I been saying out loud?
* * *
MY MEMORY OF ANYTHING to do with my family’s religion is limited to two episodes. In the first, I was taken to synagogue by my father’s father on one of his rare visits to New York. I was a reluctant if dutiful sidekick, eight years old, awkward in my navy blazer and stiff gray slacks, the extent of my formal wear. My father made a show of not attending, though my mother suggested this was an opportunity for some special time with my grandfather. But his extreme age—I remember thick black and gray hairs curling from his ears—and foreign tongue separated us as we trudged the eight blocks to the neighborhood temple. When we arrived, my grandfather took his half-smoked cigar from between his teeth and set it out of view on the lip of the synagogue’s foundation stone. I gestured curiously, and he explained in broken English and gestured that the cigar was still good and he would be reunited with it after the service.
Inside, the first thing I noticed was the absence of women. Had I missed a sign coming in, instructing all women not to proceed further? Were they all outside, waiting in their cars? They had to be somewhere, and I spent much time fretting about them, only gradually becoming aware of the possibility that, absent women, some strange power was about to be exercised. My grandfather handed me a kippah, and when I looked at it uncomprehendingly, he scowled and slapped it atop my head. Until he shoved my hand away, I could not stop fussing with it, wondering whether it would slip off and what punishment would befall me if it did.
Sitting on the cold polished bench, I went first for the prayer book, fascinated by the mysterious language that filled its pages. It resembled the Civil War cipher I had memorized for passing notes in class. I tried to connect the symbols on the page to the musical sounds coming out of the rabbi’s mouth, but couldn’t. I turned my attention to the simple but striking stained glass above the ark, within which a worn Torah slept. My grandfather placed his hand on my knee to stop me from tapping my foot when the cantor sang.
Toward the end of the service, the rabbi pointed at me and indicated I should join him. My first thought was that my kippah had slipped off, but it was secure, pressed into place, it seemed, by Yahweh’s long finger. Dear old Béla-bácsi looked down at me and, with the kindest look I would ever see from him, bade me to join the rabbi. I walked up nervously, the eyes of the congregation upon me. The rabbi leaned down and whispe
red in my ear. “Would you like to try some wine?” This was new and exciting, and I understood at last what these men were doing here, hiding from their women. I nodded eagerly. “I’ll bet,” he said, and handed me a tarnished silver goblet. He indicated I should wait as he recited a prayer, and then, following his signal, I sipped the wine. It was sweet, like cough syrup, but I loved it, loved the simultaneous sense of transgression and initiation. I took another sip. “Not too much now.” He smiled and took the cup from me. I returned to my grandfather, my head buzzing, whether from the wine or something else, I’m not sure. I clutched his hand until the service was finished, and we stepped outside, to recover his cigar, where it smoldered untouched. We walked the eight blocks home in the cold Queens darkness, and he died the following year. I would not set foot in another synagogue for nearly twenty-five years, until I slid into the back row of a Chicago temple to have a look at my antagonist Rabbi Wolfe, giving her last sermon before chemotherapy took her from the pulpit.
My second childhood brush with religion came three years after that, when … No. Later, Virgil. There’s too much death in this tale already.
* * *
I MET MS. MOCKLEY the following morning at the Australian consulate. As I was escorted into her small, drab office, she held out her hand. She was stout and ruddy with limp straw hair. Her palm was dry and flaky.
“Mr. Santos. Joanne Mockley. Thank you for coming.”
I nodded, friendly but wary. A slim, buff file lay on the desk before her.
“Please sit down. Would you like some coffee? Tea?”
“Nothing, thank you.”
She nodded briskly as though she appreciated my thrift and directness of purpose.
“Well, I will get right to it.” She slid the file before me and began to speak. Of the many scenarios Tracy and I played out the night before, nothing could have prepared me for Ms. Mockley’s next words:
“Have you heard of the Arrow Cross, Mr. Santos?”
I hate leading questions such as these; they always seem intended to either diminish the responder or to establish a false kinship between those in the know. “Of course,” I said. “Hungarian Fascist party. Sort of a homegrown Gestapo.”
She nodded, continuing unnecessarily. “Precisely. When the Germans invaded Hungary in 1944, the Arrow Cross went above and beyond the call when it came to rounding up and killing Hungarian Jews.”
“As I said, I know. What does this have to do with me?”
A good deal, as it turned out. After the war, Ms. Mockley went on to inform me, some former members of the Arrow Cross made Australia their home. Among their numbers was one Ferenc Halasz, who had lived out the remaining years of his life in relative peace and comfort in a Melbourne suburb called St. Kilda, until he was discovered and outed by an enterprising researcher from the Wiesenthal Center. The remaining years of his life froze into a stalemate as the Australians tried and failed to return him to Hungary, which was less than eager to receive him. He filed legal brief upon legal brief, and managed to run the clock out in his favor, dying in his sleep at ninety-one. As he had no heirs or family, his body was discovered by his landlady, who could scarcely contain her relief at being rid of him. His effects had been cataloged by the authorities, which was the reason for this meeting. Ms. Mockley indicated, via a curt tilt of her head, that I should open the file.
The file contained an eight-by-ten color photograph of the Budapest Street Scene, and as soon as I saw it, I felt the tickle of a distant memory. There was something familiar about it, though I was unable to place it. The file also contained a document written in Hungarian, which I couldn’t read, but appeared to be some sort of receipt or bill of sale. It was followed by photocopied pages of what looked like a personal journal or ledger, row upon row of precise handwriting. Fascists, it seems, have always been diligent record keepers.
“I can’t read Hungarian,” I said.
“There’s a translation attached to the back of the file.”
I slid the contents aside and began to read the documents as Ms. Mockley explained to me that the first was, indeed, a bill of sale, a receipt for the painting in the file. It was signed by my grandfather and dated April 12, 1944, and recorded a tiny sum—350 pengő, about twelve dollars. There was a lot of this sort of thing going on during the war, Ms. Mockley explained, as though I didn’t already know, Jews forced to sell their art at a fraction of its real value, and the ludicrous mania for documentation accompanying these sales to somehow legitimize them as something other than the thefts that they were. I nodded dumbly as I studied my grandfather’s signature, his expansive, elegant cursive.
But it was the journal entries, Ms. Mockley explained, warming to her tale, that told the real story. In fact, my grandfather had traded this painting to Halasz in exchange for transit documents to get his family out of Budapest to London. Here, Ms. Mockley grew somber.
“Halasz writes in his journal that the documents did not arrive in time to save your grandmother’s life.”
I would like to say I performed well, that I held her eyes with appropriate solemnity, but in truth, I knew almost none of this. The story of my family’s escape had always been a well-kept secret, and here at last the mystery was almost casually revealed. My repertoire of gesture was too limited. I could think of no interesting choices, and so I gazed blankly at Ms. Mockley.
My shock must have been apparent. “I’m very sorry,” she said in that remorse-free fashion unique to bureaucrats.
“Is there anything else?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, quite a bit more.”
Budapest Street Scene, it appeared, had recently been added to a database of unclaimed war paintings, following the death of one Cassian Yuhaus, its last owner, who acquired it under murky circumstances, presumably from Halasz, although no further documentation could be found. He subsequently lost it to the IRS as part of a tax settlement. The painting was in storage at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., due to wartime gaps in its provenance, but, Ms. Mockley explained, the Americans were responsive to legitimate claims put forward, and the documentation found in Halasz’s apartment appeared sufficient to award the custody of the painting to me, assuming there were no competing claims to sort out. She paused for effect, an amateur in these matters, but her material was strong enough to survive her earnest, drama club delivery.
“The present estimates suggest it is worth anywhere between two and three million dollars.”
She sat back, satisfied with her performance, and my hand trembled as I picked up the photo and regarded the painting, quite certain now where I had seen it before. After a moment, I set the picture aside and met Ms. Mockley’s eyes.
“Look, my father is the one you should be talking to, not me. Béla was his father. Why aren’t you giving this to him?”
Ms. Mockley delivered her last surprise, her iron eye contact with me never wavering.
“We tried. He didn’t want it. He wouldn’t even come and discuss it with our New York office. Do you have any idea why that might be?”
Well, my first answer would be that if my father were to say no, it was because he had determined that there was nothing in it for him. But that was clearly not the case here. In fact, the opportunity seemed tailor-made for him, a man who reveled in getting something for nothing. Whether he was submitting family vacations as tax deductions to the IRS or screwing over the union painters who worked for him, nothing gratified him more than the idea that he had gotten away with something. He was a man who viewed getting too much change from a purchase as free money. No, Ms. Mockley, when it comes to my father, I can offer you nothing useful, not a glimmer of understanding or insight. I did not realize that sitting there in your office, but that’s been the truth all along.
MY FATHER TAUGHT ME NOTHING.
There is no judgment implied in this, merely observation, though I know how it sounds. On a practical level, he never taught me to fish (though we went fishing), to throw a ball (though we attended ball games),
to change a tire, to tie a knot, or whatever it is that fathers seem to pass on to their sons at one time or another. He also never taught me the more essential things—right and wrong, how to read a stranger, how to love. That this omission went unnoticed by me for so long is, in itself, telling.
I suppose there is one thing he taught me, though I am certain he did so without meaning to. When I was a child, I built plastic models of World War II airplanes. I had no real interest in aviation—I couldn’t tell a Spitfire from a Messerschmitt, and I still can’t—but there was something irresistible about the promise of the photos on those little boxes. If you were patient enough you could, with the right paint and decals (sold separately), create a marvel of simulated flight from dull gray pieces of plastic. But I was neither steady nor patient and my planes all resembled the air force of a banana republic. One afternoon, I was putting the finishing touches on a Messerschmitt Bf 110 Zerstörer. I was oblivious to the fact that it was a German plane; I was captivated by the distinctive shark’s teeth decal, which, because I’d placed it askew, now appeared to smile unthreateningly. My leg began to cramp and I leapt to my feet, upending a small bottle of hunter-green model paint that spread over the edge of the newsprint I had laid down and soaked into the carpet like an alien bloodstain. At almost the same moment, my father knocked at the door. I never understood why he knocked, because he never waited for permission. He just entered, as though every room in the house were his birthright, and he summoned me to assist him in some task about the house. At the sound of his knock, I had reflexively kneeled into the stain, hoping to cover it from view with my pant leg. I nodded and said I would be along in a moment, a time frame that never suited my father. He studied my unnatural position—I was contorted like some crippled beggar—and must have seen the paint bleeding out from beneath my knee, because he grabbed me by my collar and hoisted me upright, exposing my folly. What did you do, he roared, with a rage out of proportion to the offense. He didn’t wait for my answer, which was, after all, unnecessary. Snarling, he brought his own paint-stained work boot down hard upon the Zerstörer and crushed it. My mother pleaded from the doorway for him to calm down but, his fury unspent, he raised his hand high—I still remember the paint flecks beneath his nails—and brought it down hard repeatedly on my backside until I wet myself and he released me in disgust and disappointment.