Mrs. Tuesday's Departure: A Historical Novel of World War Two

by Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson

  If it had been Marie, the devoted housekeeper we’d had during my years of marriage, she would still be with us, and trust would never have been an issue. As the war drew closer to our boarders, she returned to her village to help her brother’s family.

  Since Marie’s departure, I’d hired and fired another four housekeepers, for incompetence or suspected thievery. In years past, I would have overlooked a housekeeper who took a few of our foodstuffs for her own kitchen. As supplies grew more difficult to purchase, I could no longer accept the loss of food that was becoming impossible to replace.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I MADE MY way down the street to the small shop owned by Mr. Nyugati. I was surprised to find the metal gate drawn down in front of the doorway leading to his shop. I knocked and called out his name.

  “We’re closed,” answered his wife. “Go away.”

  I yelled through the seams in the gate. “It’s me, Natalie. Let me in. I just need a few things.”

  “We have no more food to sell.”

  “Please,” I pleaded. “I’ll take whatever you have.”

  I heard Mr. Nyugati arguing with his wife and then the gate rolled up half way and I quickly ducked under the door.

  The air was dark and warm inside the shop. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that Mrs. Nyugati had spoken the truth. The shelves were barren of all but a few cans.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The Arrow Cross soldiers were here this morning. They came in and took everything we had and didn’t pay,” Mrs. Nyugati cried.

  “How could they?”

  “They said we were selling to Jews,” Mr. Nyugati replied. “So we were to be closed down. In the meantime, they would stop us by taking everything.”

  “You must report them!”

  Mrs. Nyugati scoffed, “To whom? The police? It’s your kind that are getting us into trouble in the first place!”

  “Be quiet woman,” Mr. Nyugati warned his wife.

  “It’s true!” she cried.

  “They’re getting worse,” he said. “Now anyone caught helping a Jew faces severe punishment.” He gave me a knowing look.

  “One of the men said they will pay us to give them names,” Mrs. Nyugati leaned forward and smiled.

  “It’s just me and Anna now. Ilona and her family are gone,” I replied.

  “When?” she asked.

  I looked at this small round woman who I’d know all my life and was surprised by the change in demeanor. When Mila was a child she would come to this store and Mrs. Nyugati would give her a handful of candy. “They left this morning.”

  “Not likely,” Mrs. Nyugati sneered. “The borders are closed.”

  “Enough,” Mr. Nyugati pushed his wife toward the back of the store. When she’d left, he turned to me. “If they are in hiding, make sure it’s not your apartment. They’ve begun to increase their searches.”

  “No, they are gone. But what will you do now?” I knew the small income they made from this store was barely enough to support them.

  “I’ve sent my son out to talk with their commander,” Mr. Nyugati sighed. His son had been denied service in the army as the result of a clubfoot. “I’ve given him the small amount of money I had and he will try to make a bribe that will allow us to re-open.”

  “Is there anything left that I could buy?” I walked down the aisle picking up the cans of vegetables. “I’ll take whatever you have.”

  “Here let me help you,” Mr. Nyugati took my basket and began to fill it. He carried it behind the counter and reaching beneath pulled out a loaf of bread, a short string of kielbasa, a wedge of cheese with bits of blue mold clinging to the edges, and a couple handfuls of potatoes.

  “I greatly appreciate this,” I opened my purse to pay him. “Will you be able to get more?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Here, please go out the back way along the alley. It’s safer that way.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I FOLLOWED HIM down the long hall that bisected the storeroom and the stairway that lead to the small apartment where they lived with their son, Stephen, and his wife and child.

  He opened the door for me and looked out to make sure the alleyway was clear before stepping aside to let me pass.

  Pausing, I asked, “Can I come again?”

  “It’s not safe,” he said. “I’ll send my son to your apartment in a few days.”

  “Thank you Mr. Nyugati,” I pressed money into his hands.

  I hurried into the alleyway and heard the door shut behind my back. The alley was nearly as dark as the store and stank of rubbish. I stepped gingerly around piles of rotting food and stifled a scream as a rat, shiny with filth, ran across my path.

  At the end of the building, I stepped onto the sidewalk just as a troop of Arrow Cross soldiers crossed on the other side of the street.

  The leader of the group screamed, “Halt!”

  I jumped backwards into the shadow of the alley my heart pounding as I pressed against the grimy brick wall. I held my breath and strained to hold the basket in my shaking hands.

  I was not their prey.

  An old woman wearing a faded yellow star on the breast of her coat stood three paces in front of them. She froze.

  “Why are you on the street and not in the ghetto?”

  I saw her flinch and offer her basket.

  They laughed and knocked it out of her hands. “Show us your papers!”

  She pointed to the star on her coat and then began to fumble with her purse, searching to produce the documents.

  “Who are you buying food for? Where is the rest of your family hiding?”

  Sobbing, she denied their charges. They screamed at her calling her a “filthy Jewish whore”. They surrounded her, pushing and shoving her against the building. A young soldier raised his fist and brought it down. Her head snapped back against the blow and she stumbled but remained upright.

  Others passed by this scene with heads bowed, making a wide circle or crossing the street. Before the war, these thugs would have been banished like a pack of dogs.

  Yet, no one uttered a word in protest as the soldiers joined their comrade in the beating. The woman slid to the pavement with her arms raised in futile defense against the rain of blows. Her pleas for mercy met with laughter and insults and steel-toed boots that punctured her stomach and broke her ribs.

  My stomach churned in disgust. Dropping my basket of food, I pushed myself from the wall and ran across the street.

  “Stop it! You’ll kill her!”

  I threw myself on top of the woman, holding her bleeding head in my arms. Her hands grasped the back of my coat as if she were drowning. Strong arms grabbed me; I continued to scream as they threw me to the side.

  My hands scraped against the concrete as I tried again to enfold her in my arms. I felt the skin of my knuckles tear. I held her. My face pushed into the collar of her coat. I smelled the sweat of her fear mingled with my own. When I raised my face to hers, our eyes met. I looked into weary brown eyes, creased with pain, of not this event, but the years that preceded it.

  “No,” she whispered. “Go.”

  A young brute pulled me away. He threw me onto the sidewalk and I grabbed his leg to regain my balance. Instinctively he swung the butt of his rifle, striking me in the face. As I slid into darkness, I heard someone calling my name.

  Excerpt from Mrs. Tuesday’s Departure,

  written by Natalie X,

  published by the General Directorate of Publishing, 1952

  THEY LINKED ARMS and began a slow walk up Park Avenue toward St. Catherine’s, the little Catholic Church where Mrs. Tuesday attended the evening mass, daily, for the last fifty years, of her married, and now widowed life in New York. They bowed their heads against the cold and followed the fresh tracks in the snow-covered sidewalk. When she peered forward there was little to see, the apartment buildings formed an ochre-brown canyon of hunch-backed beasts with light-speckled hides. The falling snow dimmed the s
treetlights and cast a dull steel pall. Little had changed in this part of the city. The shops that occupied space at street level reflected the fashion and economy of the times. The grocer on the corner had changed its name three times over the years, but remained a place to buy eggs. The most disturbing change was the atmosphere. There was something uncomfortably metallic; an electric hum replaced the drone of air conditioners that years ago adorned every window in the city. There were more people now, there were always more. Though the storm had thinned vehicular and pedestrian traffic, quieting the neighborhood, Mrs. Tuesday still perceived the annoying grating the layers of snow muffled, but could not hide.

  As her heel slipped on a patch of ice, Joseph’s hand tightened around her arm. “It’s a good thing I came along,” he said.

  She agreed, reluctantly. Mrs. Tuesday treasured her independence, hated the aches and pains and need for help from others that had come gradually and then swiftly, after she’d turned eighty. “Do you have plans for New Year’s Eve?” she asked.

  “I’m taking my girlfriend down to Times Square. She wants to see the ball drop. I told her she was crazy, but this is her first year in the city.”

  A rapid staccato that sounded like gunfire followed by a thunderous boom reverberated suddenly through the apartment-lined canyon. Joseph’s gentle hand tightened around her arm. “They’re starting the fireworks early this year.”

  Fireworks didn’t scare her. It was the memory of bombs, the flames that consumed the buildings and their inhabitants. It was the scream of the rockets that sounded so much like the last shrill warning of the trains that filled the station before their departure, taking all she loved.

  Mrs. Tuesday remembered the fresh excitement of the city in the early years after her arrival. She’d been twelve then, spoke little English, an orphan of the war sent to live with strangers. She’d always imagined her exile would be temporary, that one day her mother would rescue her and they would return to Hungary together. She eventually realized being assigned the role of mother did not insure reliability or the reciprocation of love. The years passed and she grew up and put away childish wishes, taking a job, getting married, having a child, and then growing old.

  “My husband and I watched the ball drop for the Millennium. We weren’t actually down on the street, we watched from a friend’s apartment. But that was fifteen years ago.”

  “Fifteen years, I was just a kid,” Joseph laughed.

  Mrs. Tuesday paused in front of the church doors. “Thank you for walking me here.”

  “I’ll come back and pick you up after Mass, how long do you need?”

  Mrs. Tuesday sighed knowing she had no choice in the matter and secretly grateful for his insistence, “About an hour, I appreciate your kindness.”

  She’d stopped in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the church. She looked up at the heavy wooden doors and the darkened entrance that emitted only the faintest twinkling of candlelight. Perhaps she should go back for the package.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I TRIED TO gain my bearings through the fog but my vision clouded, I saw only my husband’s face. His serene gaze focused on my own. It was not the face he’d had when he died. This one was no longer ravaged by illness, thinned because he was no longer able to eat. These eyes were not lifeless, but vibrant and clever. In death, my husband had returned to the beauty of the days of our early marriage.

  “How could they let an old woman be beaten?” I asked.

  “Because she is not their old woman, Natalie,” he soothed. “Why are you so naive?”

  “Have we come to this?”

  “This is only the beginning,” he replied.

  “I have to save Mila,” I said. “Ilona has abandoned her.”

  He nodded. “I know, but you must be more careful.”

  “Is this a dream?”

  His eyes twinkled and he smiled. “No, not really.”

  His eyes, so brown. Like those of the old woman. “But you’re not real.”

  His eyebrows rose in surprise, “Of course I’m real.”

  I searched for his hand. “Am I becoming like Anna?”

  “You’re stronger than you think.” His breath was warm against my hand, his mouth so soft.

  “Take me with you,” I begged.

  Swallowed in a yellow filmy haze, Max’s face faded from my view. “No, not yet, my darling. Not yet.”

  “Come back!” I cried, coughed, and reached into the emptiness but found nothing.

  Blinking back the throbbing in my skull, I slowly raised myself and slid up the wall. The sun had set below the buildings casting long grey shadows down the street. A man leaned over, helped me to my feet, and then scurried away before I could thank him.

  “Max?”

  My head swam with pain. I stumbled forward and then saw the old woman sprawled on the sidewalk. I knelt and touched her face. It was cold and lifeless. I looked up as people walked by, avoiding my stare. Raising my head I whispered, “Dear God, have mercy on her soul and on ours for our sins.”

  Pushing myself up I managed to cross the street to the alley. There I found my basket of food untouched.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  SOMEHOW, I FOUND my way home. Mila and Anna met me at the door. The worry on their faces turned to anger when they saw the wound on my head.

  Anna touched my cheek. “What happened?”

  I handed Mila the basket of food as Anna took off my coat. “An accident,” I replied.

  “Who did this to you?” Mila demanded. “Were you robbed?”

  “No, it was the soldiers.”

  “I heard their bull horn, they were announcing another curfew,” she said. “I was coming to look for you.”

  The thought of Mila alone on the streets, confronted by the Arrow Cross...meeting the same fate as the old woman. Suddenly the full assault of the day’s events caught up with me.

  My eyes filled with tears and I reached out for Mila’s arm. “I need to sit down.”

  “You need dinner.” Mila grabbed my arm and I leaned against her, resting my face on her head. Her hair was smooth against my cheek, so soft, I turned and kissed the top of her head.

  Anna came to my right, placed her arm around my waist. She guided me to a chair and gently pushed me down into it. “Sit and I’ll be right back.” She hurried down the hall to the bathroom and I could hear her rummaging through the cabinet.

  “Mila, it’s not safe for you to leave the apartment,” I said. “We have to make arrangements to hide you. To get you to safety.”

  Mila placed the basket on the counter and began to take the food out. “I want to stay here with you.”

  I rubbed my head wearily. “Max said I should find someone to help us.”

  “Uncle Max?” Mila turned and looked at me, she furrowed her brow in concern.

  I saw the fear in her eyes and immediately recanted. “No, I’m confused. It was just a thought that occurred to me.”

  She shook her head, not ready to believe me. “We should call a doctor.”

  Anna came in and knelt by my side. With tender concern, she dabbed the wound on my forehead with a cotton swab and antiseptic. I flinched at the burning sensation.

  “I’m sorry, Natalie,” Anna said. “Mila’s right, we should call a doctor.”

  “No, I’ll be fine. We can’t invite anyone to come here it’s too dangerous. Just bandage it, Anna.”

  Anna’s eyes met mine as she placed the bandage on the wound. “Tell us how this happened.”

  “I was stupid,” I said. “Coming home from Mr. Nyugati’s store, I saw an old woman assaulted by the Arrow Cross. No one would help her.”

  “So you did.”

  “I tried,” I sighed.

  “And you got this for your efforts?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What happened to the old woman?” Mila asked.

  I remained silent; Anna looked at me and shook her head.

  Mila persisted. “What happened to her?�
�

  “It was too late to help her.”

  “They took her away?”

  I shut my eyes, seeing the old woman’s battered face before me. “When I woke up she was dead. They killed her. For what? Because her papers weren’t in order. Because she was a Jew.”

  Mila turned back to the stove, but her body shuddered. I pushed myself up from the table and embraced her. “I’ll just go to bed. We’ll sort this out in the morning.”

  Exhausted I went to my room, closed the door, and shed my clothes, too tired to bathe. I pulled on a nightgown and slipped between the covers. I looked at the picture of Max that sat on my nightstand. I picked up the heavy silver frame and clutched it to my chest. I heard him sigh from a corner of the room and I gently laid the frame on the pillow next to me. I turned on my side and let my fingers trace the edge of the sheets where he had lain next to me for so many years. “Come back to me, darling.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I FLED, PURSUED down streets slick with icy rain, luminous against overhead streetlights. I tripped and fell scrapping my knees on broken glass. I struggled to my feet and threw myself forward. I rushed toward the familiar buildings of the university.

  “Nana, help me!”

  Mila’s scream. Where? Ahead the street was deserted.

  “Nana!”

  Her cry. I saw her face in my mind, anguished in pain and fear.

  “I’m here, Mila.” I spun around desperately trying to locate the sound of her voice. I’d reached the courtyard between the Economics and Physical Sciences buildings. Under the spotlights, shrouded in mist, I saw two men dressed in full fencing uniform, faces covered, engaged in aggressive battle. Their attack and parry were interspersed with grunts and harsh laughter that belied the friendly competition.

  “My point!” exulted the man on the left.

  “I’m still ahead,” gasped the other man, regaining his balance and launching into an attack.

  “Max, Deszo?” I shouted. “Where is Mila? Didn’t you hear her cries for help?” I rushed toward my husband, reaching out for his arm. At the same instant, Deszo leapt forward, his saber moving toward me carrying the full force of his weight. A searing pain ripped through my chest, knocking me backward. I coughed and knew my lungs were filling, drowning me with my own blood. I touched my lips and the warm liquid oozed over my hands. I tumbled down a tunnel surrounded by hideous screams.