Nobody heard. Surprisingly nobody heard. Eva’s voice whined on and no sounds of movement came from upstairs. He sobbed into the door and then felt the old woman’s hand on his shoulder again.
“Leo.” The voice was the same, soft, gentle, the voice of Malie, his beloved and beautiful sister, and the voice destroyed all the fear and shock. He drew her into his arms, his heart filling with shame, swelling with pain. She was tiny now, his big sister was a little old woman, and gently, gently, he rocked her to and fro, crooning as though she were a child.
“Malie, Malie.” The smell of old clothes and dust and malnutrition. The feel of a small body, knotted with swollen joints, destroyed. What had they done to her? “Oh, God, Malie! My dearest, darling Malie! You’ve come home. You’ll be safe now. You’re home with your Leo and we’ll never let you go away again.”
He took the beret from her head. Thin, sawn-off hair, dirty white. Malie with her brown hair piled high for a party, then falling round her shoulders when she came to say good night....
“Leo, my sons—have my sons come home?”
“No, darling,” he wept. “No, no.”
“Karoly? Jacob?”
“No, darling! No!”
“Have you heard? Has anyone sent news?”
“No, Malie. No news.”
“Aaiee!” her head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth open, and she began to weep. “Aaiee! Aaiee!”
He could feel the pain of sobbing deep down in her body and he held her close, rocking and soothing. “Hush, Malie. Hush, my darling!” Malie, the young matron, stately, smiling, presiding over her husband’s table in a green silk dress....
He found they were sitting on the bottom stair and through the open door he could see into the courtyard—the sun pouring down onto the stones, the dust piled thickly where no one had had time to sweep. It was hours since he had walked through the courtyard and opened the door, hours.
“Hush, Malie. Quiet now. You are home, home with your family.”
“Who?” she whispered at last. “Who has come home?”
“Eva is safe, and Adam and the children—George and Terez. And young Nicky.”
She nodded slowly, with sad but fatalistic acceptance. “Nicky, yes. How pleased Kati would be, to know her Nicky survived.”
He had to know—to learn what had happened to the others, to her. She was old and tired and should be put to bed, but before the family came down he had to know.
“What happened to you?” he asked hoarsely. “To you and David and Mama and Papa. All of you?”
“You know what happened, Leo,” she breathed, staring out into the sunlight in a queer disorientated way. “Everyone knows what happened.”
“Where are the others?” Her face screwed into pain again.
“Dead, all except my sons.” Her eyes opened suddenly and entreated Leo. “If you have heard nothing, perhaps my sons are still alive!”
“Perhaps, Malie,” he said heavily.
“I saw Jacob,” she said, staring at nothing. “When we were going into Auschwitz, we saw men in prison clothes working on the electric cables. And Kati pulled me and said, ‘Look, there is Jacob.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘Jacob is in Germany. They took him straight to Germany.’ But Kati is sure it is Jacob. I shout to him and the S.S. guard with the dog tells me he will set the dog on me if I shout again. I say to him, ‘What sort of man are you? That is my son! Have you no feelings? You do not have a mother?’ I shout again and Jacob calls to me, ‘Go on, you will be all right.’” She stopped, and her hands dropped suddenly in front of her, down between her knees, and she stared at them.
“What happened, Malie?”
“What?” She looked at him, uncomprehending. “That is all.”
“What happened to Mama and Papa, to David, Kati, and all the others from the town?”
“Dead. Now I know they are dead. At the time I thought we were divided for different reasons: health, or for baths. Mama, Papa, David—they were sent away. Too old, you see? Kati and I—they kept us, first to Bergen Belsen, and then to the factory... Germany.”
“And Kati? What happened to Kati?”Malie stared into the air again. “She stole a tin of meat.”
“Yes?”
“Kati is dead.”
“Are you sure of this, Malie? Because of Nicky, you must be sure.”
“Kati is dead,” she said tonelessly.
He could ask her no more, but already he was thinking about the next thing that would happen. Nicky. Nicky would want to know if—how his mother had died.
“Malie, listen to me.” He took her hands between his and tried to infuse steadfastness into her body with his eyes and hands. “Nicky is very ill. He has tuberculosis and he must rest all the time and not be upset. He refuses to believe his mother is dead; he has been convinced, right from the beginning, that she would come back here. Malie, are you listening?”
She was. At last he knew he had her attention; she had begun to listen to him at some point after he said Nicky was ill.
“Malie, if you know how Kati died—and if it was bad—I beg you not to tell Nicky.”
“She was beaten to death by the woman S.S. guard,” Malie said dully.
He gripped her hands again and whispered, “Malie, you have suffered so much. It is cruel to ask you to have to pretend, to make up lies to protect others, but tell Nicky his mother died... easily. Later, when he is cured, you can speak the truth.”
“What can I say?” she cried. “What can I tell him that will make it any better? What can I say to any of them?”
“Nothing, my darling. I will tell them. I will tell them everything.”
“Yes, yes!” she began to cry again. “I’m so tired, Leo, so very tired...”
“I will say to Nicky that his mother died of a heart attack—at night—and you were with her. She didn’t wake and it was over in a second. All you have to do is say yes when Nicky asks you if it was so. That is all.”
She nodded, crying quietly into her hands. He kissed her, stroked her, fondled the sparse hair and the coarse-grained skin of her neck.
“I want you to wait here, Malie,” he whispered. “Just for one moment while I go and prepare them. Then you can go to bed. We will make some water hot for you to bathe, and you will sleep.”
She was slumped against the wall as he pushed past, up the stairs, with a heavy heart. The happiness of Malie’s return was tempered by her ravaged body and by the news she had brought with her.
Later, when the evening of gladness and sorrow had passed, when Nicky and Malie had been talked away into sleep and when everyone else—shocked, stunned, tearful, afraid—had finally been tired into silence, he lay on his bed, closed his eyes, and tried not to see the memories that Malie had given him.
She lay on her bed for a long time, staring up at the ceiling and then turning her face into the pillow and weeping. They could hear her all over the apartment when she wept. It was terrible and it was worse when it happened at night. It didn’t sound like a woman crying, it was like the noise of an animal in pain.
Within a few days of her return the old women began knocking on the door, dreadful old women with ravaged faces and stained hands. “Did you see my sister? My brother? My parents? My child? What happened to the Maryk family, to the Jacobys, the Kohns?” Old women who all looked the same, who had huge eyes and trembling mouths. And every time they came Malie would drag herself from the bed and sit quietly, listening to names and descriptions, shaking her head. “No, no, I didn’t see them, I don’t know what happened to him—” and on one occasion, after a pause, “She is dead. I know that one is dead.”
Sometimes, with no prompting or questioning, she would begin to talk. They would be eating their meal or cleaning the apartment and she would begin talking about Lili or Marta or Suzi—women they did not know but who were intimate friends to Malie because she had shared misery with them.
“On the train.... Going to the factory... one morning there is an explosion. We hear bombs droppi
ng and the guard is shouting. And the bombs grow worse. It is hot and Lili falls on her knees and begins to pray: ‘Let the doors open. Oh, God, let the doors open.’ We push, it is a cattle car, and together we push from inside until the bar breaks open. The factory is in flames, the Germans lying dead, and in the sky are noises of cannon—”
She stopped then, abruptly, the way she frequently did. “Yes, Malie, what happened then?” and her blank puzzled stare.
“What happened?”
“Yes, Malie. What happened when you saw the factory burning and the guards dead?”
“We hid. Until the Red Cross came in three days later.” Said without interest, as though it had happened to someone else. And again: “When the guard beat Kati I tried to help her. I was beaten too.” She remembered then and looked at Leo, afraid. “I’m sorry, Leo,” she whispered. “I forgot.”
“It’s all right. Nicky is in his room. He cannot hear.” But he was afraid that this maddened and melancholy woman would one day forget and speak the truth in front of Nicky, who had grown thinner, more feverish, more flushed since he had heard that his mother was dead.
The day following Malie’s return, Janos Marton walked into the house with Terez. It was the first time he had been there since—as a child—he had visited the kitchen. Now, with cool disinterest, he walked through the shabby rooms to stand by Nicky’s bedside.
“Why did you bring him?” Leo hissed furiously at his niece. “Why did you bring him at this of all times? Strangers in the house with your aunt just returned to us and Nicky shocked and ill. Why did you have to let him come here?”
“I asked him,” she replied, “because of Nicky.”
“What do you mean, because of Nicky?” Already the familiar angry spasm twisted through his chest. Janos Marton was part of his life outside the family, part of his work, part of the town and government. He had no right in this house.
“Nicky loves him.”
“Don’t be foolish, Terez. Nicky is grateful to Janos for hiding him during the war. He doesn’t love him.”
“Nicky loves him.” She shrugged. “I thought you knew that. And Janos loves Nicky, in his funny, cold way.”
He hurried into Nicky’s room and saw the pair of them there, Nicky’s eyes bright with unshed tears and Janos, sitting by his bed, cold, expressionless, not saying anything at all.
“Nicky is ill,” he said hurriedly. “He is upset and he must not talk or be disturbed.”
“Oh, Uncle Leo, let him stay! Let Janos stay!” The boy’s voice wobbled unhappily, tears nearly ready to unman the slight composure.
“I have come to talk about the election,” said Janos distantly. “Nicky lies here in bed all day. It is time he learned what is happening to his country—the first free election in the history of Hungary, the first time we have a secret ballot. Nicky should learn of these things and be proud.”
“Let me listen!” Nicky cried, and Leo, strangely miserable, left the room without answering.
“You should not have brought him in!” he whispered again to Terez. “He is nothing to do with us, nothing to do with Nicky or you and me.”
“Nicky’s mother is dead, Aunt Kati is dead,” she said tonelessly. “And whether you like it or not, after his mother, Janos Marton is the most important person in Nicky’s life.”
“No, no, that is not true. Why should Nicky like him better than his own family?”
“Because he is strong, loyal, and because”—a slow flush spread up from the collar of her dress—“because he is a poet and understands about—”
“About what?”
“About how Nicky feels about his mother.”
“And I—we don’t understand?” he asked bitterly.
“Not in the same way.”
He felt again the sour twist of jealousy. He had accepted that Marton was more successful than he at administration, at cool planning and mathematical precision. But now Terez was trying to pretend that the man was also a dreamer, a visionary, the very things that Marton had accused Leo of being.
When Janos came out of Nicky’s room he nodded politely to Leo. “How is your sister?” he asked.
“She will be all right,” Leo replied curtly. He wanted no more of Janos Marton’s interference in his family life.
“I will come again, to see Nicky. I will come as often as the elections allow,” he said, and strode down the stairs without waiting for an answer.
“How young he looks from the back,” he heard Terez murmur beside him, and he stared at the retreating figure, noting the bony shoulders and the dark blond hair curling in at the back of his thin neck. “He looks rather sad from behind,” she continued dreamily. “He doesn’t look important or strong when you see the back of him, does he, Uncle Leo?”
Leo didn’t answer. His heart was too full of wild and varying emotions.
40
He came to see Nicky two or three times a week, and all he ever did was talk about Hungary, the election, the future of which Nicky must, one day, be a part. To Nicky, trying to escape the sound of his Aunt Malie’s weeping, the visits of his friend were an escape from his own misery and from the misery of those around him.
His grief for his mother was not assuaged by the kindness of his family. Aunt Eva’s sentimental tears—“You still have us, my darling boy! You have lost your dearest mama, but you have your old aunts who love you just as well!”—served only to emphasize his loss. His Uncle Leo’s admonishments to “try not to grieve too much, Nicky” and even George and Terez’s silent sympathy did nothing for him, only served to refresh the memories of the woman who had been his one tie with warmth and love for the early and most important part of his life. Only his friend, Janos Marton, gave him brief respites of peace from his memories: Marton’s dispassionate greetings and casual farewells, his impersonal discussions about the election (which were emotional, but in a safe and abstract way), these things gave him hope, lifted him from his misery—made worse because of his forced inactivity—and encouraged him to believe that there was a future without pain, a future in which he could take interest and heart.
After a few such visits it became the custom for first George, then Terez, to join the little parties in Nicky’s room. It was as though Janos Marton was holding a youthful seminar, lecturing on the future of their country, on the new emancipation and legislation that would soon take place. Leo, joining them once, had been filled with such rancour that he was never part of them again. Everything that Marton had said to the children was right and true—he could not have said it so well himself—and therefore he could not argue or correct. But his resentment was such that he needed, in some way, to remove the adoration from Nicky’s eyes and the interest and warmth from Terez’s. There was nothing he could say, nothing that would not bring disrepute upon himself, for any criticisms he levelled at Marton would have to be personal. Even in his jealousy he was not small enough to ridicule the many things available to ridicule—the clothes and accent, the mannerisms of the country that Marton had not entirely succeeded in throwing off.
The election consumed them both, in time and energy and emotional endeavour. Leo’s articles and editorship of Liberation became more ardent. There were constant meetings in which he was by the side of—but slightly subservient to—Janos Marton, and even while his own enthusiasm was keen, he was able to observe that Marton’s became almost frenzied. The man was tireless, his thin body hurrying from one meeting to the next, organizing, directing, giving his heart to a cause as he had never, since childhood, given it to a living person.
The Party did not get in. In their town they were successful, and in fact their defeat made little difference to the overriding power of the Party—the Russians were there to see the Party was never... overlooked—but the defeat was a strongly psychological one. Could it be that Hungary did not want a Communist government?
When the national results of the election were known he watched Janos Marton crumble, and though he should himself have been sorry, his fi
rst reaction was one of deep gratification.
“So,” he said, trying to hide his satisfaction, “your prognostications have not come true. We shall have to wait a little longer for your perfect Hungary.”
The blue eyes turned to stare at him and he was suddenly ashamed. They had both worked hard. Was his dream, his ideal, so much less than Marton’s that it could be swept away in momentary revenge?
“Perhaps... next time,” he mumbled, but Marton’s blue eyes continued to stare, cold, calculating, and in their depths something of hurt, the betrayal of a child.
“Next time, or the time after that,” he said slowly. “It must be so.”
When he came to talk to Nicky after that there was no more of the election. But still the talks were of the future, of the proud new Hungary that was going to emerge.
They got through the winter of ’45–’46 somehow, as everyone else did. There was only just enough food, just enough fuel, just enough money. The gutted downstairs apartment was requisitioned by the authorities and given to a refugee family from Pozsony. George went back to school, an unheated and thinly staffed school, and Nicky continued resting—and coughing. The worst of that winter was Malie.
After the first weeks of madness and isolation from them all, she began to eat... and eat... and eat. There was little except black bread, potatoes, and beans, with sometimes a few eggs and a small ration of cheese, but Malie ate everything that came her way and then went out and found—somewhere—more rations, extra food. Automatically they saved the best for Malie and Nicky. The rest of them, even Eva, left the biggest portions, the few delicacies, for these two who by their very condition needed more than the rest. Malie ate, and still it was not enough. In her room she kept a tin containing bread that she sprinkled with sugar from their joint rations and ate throughout the night. His room, that he shared with George, was next to Malie’s, and at night he could hear the lid of the tin being removed, or the rustling of paper if she had won some special treat during the day. Throughout a winter of thin, tired, sallow-looking people, he had to watch his sister (she had been so graceful) swelling with the unhealthy fat of a badly balanced diet. The thin, stick-like legs changed within months, feet swelling over her cracked shoes, clothes straining across her bulging stomach and thighs.
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