Mother is well. György and Elza are well. József is well. Your brothers are well. We are all well! That is what one must write in letters. But you know how we are, my love. We are full of apprehension. Our lives are shadowed by uncertainty. You are always in my thoughts: That, at least, is certain. The days cannot pass fast enough until I see you.
With love,
Your K
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN. The Snow Goose
ALL SUMMER he sustained himself with the thought that he’d soon be with her-close enough to touch and smell and taste her, at liberty to lie in bed with her all day if he wanted, to tell her everything that had happened during the long months of his absence, and to hear what had been in her mind while he’d been away. He thought of seeing his mother and father, of taking her to their house in Konyár for the first time, of strolling with his parents and his wife through the apple orchards and into the flat grasslands. He thought, too, of seeing Tibor, who hadn’t managed to get his student visa renewed after all, and was now stranded in Hungary with Ilana. But in August, when Andras’s postponed furlough was due, Germany gave Hungary the gift of Northern Transylvania. The Carpathians, that white ridge of granite between the civilized West and the wild East, Europe’s natural barrier against its vast Communist neighbor: Horthy wanted it, even at the price of a deeper friendship with Germany; Hitler delivered it, and soon afterward the friendship was formalized by Hungary ’s entry into the Tripartite Pact. The 112/30th, having completed its road-building assignment in Subcarpathia ahead of schedule, was shipped off by railway car to Transylvania. There, in the virgin forest between Mármaros-Sziget and Borsa, the company embarked on a tree-clearing and ditch-digging project that was supposed to last through the rest of fall and winter.
When the weather began to grow cold again, it occurred to him that it had been a year, a year, since he’d seen Klara. Of their married life they’d spent a week together. Every night in the barracks, men lay weeping or cursing over the loss of their girlfriends, their fiancées, their wives, women who had loved them but who’d grown tired of waiting. What assurance did he have that Klara wouldn’t tire of her solitude? She had always surrounded herself with people; her social circle in Paris had consisted of actors and dancers, writers and composers, people who offered her unstinting stimulation. What would keep her from making ties like that in Budapest? And once she did, what would prevent her from turning toward one of her new friends for more tangible comfort? The specter of Zoltán Novak appeared to Andras one night in a dream, walking barefoot through Wesselényi utca in his smoking jacket, toward the Dohány Street Synagogue, where a woman who might have been Klara was waiting for him in the gloomy courtyard. Surely, Novak would have heard that she’d returned; surely he would try to see her. Perhaps he already had. Perhaps she was with him that moment, in some room he’d taken for their assignations.
At times Andras felt as though the work service were causing his mind to float away, piece by piece, like ashes from a fire. What would be left of him, he wondered, once he returned to Budapest? For months he’d struggled to keep his mind sharp as he worked, tried to design buildings and bridges on the slate of his brain when he couldn’t draw them on paper, tried to sing himself the French names of architectural features to keep himself awake as he slung mud with his shovel or hacked branches with his axe. Porte, fenêtre, corniche, balcon, a magic spell against mental deterioration. Now, as the prospect of a furlough slipped farther into the distance, his thoughts became a source of torment. He imagined Klara with Novak or with her memories of Sándor Goldstein; he thought about the grim progress of the war, which had gone on now for more than a year. In a series of newspaper clippings that his father sent, he read about the brutal bombardment of London, the attack by Luftwaffe planes every night for fifty-seven nights. And as the war burned on in England, he and his workmates fought a smaller war against the ravages of the Munkaszolgálat. Gradually, man by man, the 112/30th was crumbling: One man broke a leg and had to be sent home, another had a diabetic seizure and died, a third shot himself with an officer’s gun after learning that his fiancée had given birth to another man’s child. Mátyás was in the labor service now, and Tibor had just been called. Andras had heard stories of labor-service companies being sent to clear minefields in Ukraine. He imagined Mátyás in a field at dawn, making his way through a fog; in his hand a stick, a broken branch, with which to prod the ground in search of mines.
In December, when a string of blizzards scoured the mountains and the workers were often confined to the bunkhouse, Andras fell into a paralyzing depression. Instead of reading or writing letters or drawing in his damp-swollen sketchbook, he lay in bed and nursed the mysterious bruises that had begun to appear beneath his skin. He was supposed to be a leader; nominally he was still squad captain, and he still had to march the men to the assembly field and supervise the cleaning of the barracks and the maintenance of the woodstove and all the small details of their straitened lives; but more and more often he felt as if they were leading him while he trailed behind, his boots filling with snow. He hardly took notice when, one Sunday afternoon during a grinding blizzard, Mendel Horovitz conceived the idea of a Munkaszolgálat newspaper. Mendel scratched away at a series of ideas in a notebook, then borrowed a sheaf of paper and a typewriter from one of the officers so he could make the thing look official. He was not a swift typist; it took him three nights to finish two pages of articles. He typed at all hours. The men threw boots at him to stop the racket, but his desire to finish the paper exceeded his fear of flying objects. He worked every day for a week, every chance he had.
When at last he’d finished typing, he brought his pages to Andras and sat down on the edge of his cot. Outside, the wind set up a noise like the wailing of foxes. It was the third consecutive day of the worst-yet storm of the season, and the snow had reached the high windows of the bunkhouse. Work had been cancelled that day. While the other men mended their uniforms or smoked damp cigarettes or talked by the stove, Andras lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and pushing at his teeth with his tongue. His back teeth felt frighteningly loose, his gums spongy. Earlier that day he’d had a slow nosebleed that had lasted for hours. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. He didn’t care what was typed on the pages Mendel held in his hand. He pulled the coarse blanket over his head and turned away.
“All right, Parisi,” Mendel said, and pulled the blanket down. “Enough sulking.” Parisi: It was Mendel’s nickname for him; he was envious of Andras’s time in France, and had wanted to hear about it in detail-particularly about evenings at József’s, and the backstage drama of the Sarah-Bernhardt, and the romantic exploits of Andras’s friends.
“Leave me alone,” Andras said.
“I can’t. I need your help.”
Andras sat up in bed. “Look at me,” he said, holding out his arms. Clusters of blood-violets bloomed beneath the skin. “I’m sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Do I look like a person who can be of help to anyone?”
“You’re the squad captain,” Mendel said. “It’s your duty.”
“I don’t want to be squad captain anymore.”
“I’m afraid that’s not up to you, Parisi.”
Andras sighed. “What is it, exactly, that you want me to do?”
“I want you to illustrate the newspaper.” He dropped his typed pages onto Andras’s lap. “Nothing fancy. None of your art-school nonsense. Just some crude drawings. I’ve left space for you around the articles.” He deposited a modest cache of pencils into Andras’s hand, some of them colored.
Andras couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen colored pencils. These were sharp and clean and unbroken, a small revelation in the smoky dark of the bunkhouse.
“Where did you get these?” he asked.
“Stole them from the office.”
Andras pushed himself up onto his elbows. “What do you call that rag of yours?”
“The Snow Goose.”
“All right. I’ll take a look. No
w leave me alone.”
In addition to news of the war, The Snow Goose had weather reports (Monday: Snow. Tuesday: Snow. Wednesday: Snow.); a fashion column (Report from a Fashion Show at Dawn: The dreaming labor workers lined up in handsome suits of coarse blanket, this winter’s most stylish fabric. Mangold Béla Kolos, Budapest’s premier fashion dictator, predicts that this picturesque style will spread throughout Hungary in no time); a sports page (The Golden Youth of Transylvania love the sporting life. Yesterday at 5:00 a.m., the woods were full of youth disporting themselves at today’s most popular amusements: wheelbarrow-pushing, snow-shoveling, and tree-felling); an advice column (Dear Miss Coco: I’m a twenty-year-old woman. Will it hurt my reputation if I spend the night in the officers’ quarters? Love, Virgin. Dear Virgin: Your question is too general. Please describe your plans in detail so I can give an appropriate reply. Love, Miss Coco); travel ads (Bored? Want a change of scene? Try our deluxe tour of rural Ukraine!); and in honor of Andras, an article about a feat of architecture (Engineering Marvel! Paris-trained architect-engineer Andras Lévi has designed an invisible bridge. The materials are remarkably lightweight and it can be constructed in almost no time. It is undetectable by enemy forces. Tests suggest that the design of the bridge may still need some refinement; a battalion of the Hungarian Army mysteriously plunged into a chasm while crossing. Some argue, however, that the bridge has already attained its perfect form). And then there was the pièce de résistance, the Ten Commandments à la Munkaszolgálat:
1. IF THOU MAKEST A GRAVE MISTAKE, THOU SHALT NOT TELL. THOU SHALT LET OTHERS TAKE THE BLAME FOR THEE.
2. THOU SHALT NOT SHARPEN THINE OWN SAW. LEAVE THE SHARPENING TO WHOMSOEVER MAY USE IT NEXT.
3. THOU SHALT NOT BOTHER TO WASH THYSELF. THY WORKMATES STINKETH ANYWAY.
4. WHEN THOU STANDEST IN LINE FOR LUNCH, THOU SHALT ELBOW TO THE FRONT. OTHERWISE THOU GETTEST NOT THE SINGLE POTATO IN THE SOUP.
5. ON THE WAY TO WORK, THOU SHALT DISAPPEAR. LET THE FOREMAN FIND SOMEONE ELSE TO REPLACE THEE.
6. IF THOU COVETEST THY NEIGHBOR’S THINGS, KEEPEST THINE OWN COUNSEL. IF THOU DOST NOT, THY NEIGHBOR’S THINGS MAY DISAPPEAR BEFORE THOU CANST STEAL THEM.
7. IF THY WORKMATE IS NAÏVE, THOU SHALT BORROW EVERYTHING FROM HIM AND NEGLECT TO RETURN IT.
8. WHEN THOU COMEST IN FROM THE NIGHT WATCH, THOU SHALT MAKE A GREAT NOISE. WHY SHOULDST THOU LET OTHERS SLEEP WHILST THOU WAKEST?
9. IF THOU FALLEST ILL, THOU SHALT LIE ABED AS LONG AS THOU CANST. IF THY MATES SUFFER FROM OVERWORK THEREFORE, THEY MAY GAIN THE PRIVILEGE OF ILLNESS TOO.
10. FOLLOW THESE RULES THAT THOU MAYST HAVE TIME TO PREACH CONSIDERATION.
Grudgingly at first, and then with growing enjoyment, Andras illustrated The Snow Goose. For the weather report he drew a series of boxes, each more thickly swarmed with snowflakes. For the fashion column he drew a likeness of Mendel himself, his hair raked upright, his torso swathed toga-style in a ragged gray blanket. On the sports page, three perspiring labor servicemen dragged gravel wagons up a steep hill. The advice column sported a sketch of the saucy, bespectacled Coco, her legs long and bare, a pencil held to her lips. The travel ad for Ukraine showed a beach umbrella planted in the blowing snow. The architecture piece called for an image of the architect pointing proudly at an empty gorge. And the Ten Commandments required only the background sketch of two stone tablets. When he’d finished, he held the work at arm’s length and squinted at the drawings. They were the lowest grade of caricature, rendered in haste while the artist lay in bed. But Mendel was right: They suited The Snow Goose perfectly.
That single copy of the newspaper made its way through the hands of two hundred men, who could soon be heard quoting the Fourth Commandment in the soup line or speculating wistfully about vacations to Ukraine. Andras couldn’t keep from feeling a certain proprietary satisfaction, a sensation he hadn’t experienced in months. Once it was determined that the illustrator who signed himself Parisi was actually Squad Captain Lévi, men began to approach him to ask for drawings. The most frequent request was for a nude version of Coco. He drew her on the lid of a man’s wooden footlocker, and then in the lining of someone else’s cap, and then on a letter to someone’s younger brother, holding a sign that said Hi, Sugar! The drawing of Mendel spawned another fad, this one for likenesses; men would line up to have Andras draw their portraits. He wasn’t a very good portraitist, but the men didn’t seem to care. The roughness of the lines, the charcoal haze around a subject’s eyes or chin, captured the essential uncertainty of their lives in the Munkaszolgálat. Mendel Horovitz, too, began receiving requests: He became a kind of professional letter-writer, penning expressions of love and regret and longing that would slip into the turbulent stream of the military mail service, and might or might not reach the wives and brothers and children for whom they were intended.
When the first issue of The Snow Goose finally disintegrated, Mendel wrote a new one and Andras illustrated it again. Emboldened by the popularity of the earlier edition, they brought their newspaper directly to the office, where there was a mimeograph machine. They offered the company secretary fifteen pengő as a bribe. At the risk of punishment and loss of position the company secretary printed ten copies, which were quickly subsumed into the ranks of the 112/30th. A third issue of thirty copies followed. As the men read and laughed over the paper, Andras began to feel as if he had awakened from a long, drugged sleep. He was surprised he’d been so weak, so willing to allow his mind to be overtaken by miserable thoughts and then hollowed to nothingness. Now he was drawing every day. They were absurd little sketches, to be sure, but they oxygenated him, made the effort of breathing seem worthwhile.
Then, on a raw, wet day in March, Andras and Mendel were summoned to the office of the company commander. The summons came from Major Kálozi’s first lieutenant, a scowling, boarlike man by the unfortunate name of Grimasz. At dinnertime he approached Andras and Mendel in the assembly ground and knocked their mess tins from their hands. He held a crumpled copy of the most recent Snow Goose, which contained a love poem from a certain Lieutenant G to a certain Major K, and made other insinuations as to the nature of the relationship between them. Lieutenant Grimasz’s face burned red; his neck seemed to have swollen to twice its normal size. He crushed the paper in his blocky fist. The other men took a step back from Andras and Mendel, who were left to absorb the full force of Grimasz’s glare.
“Kálozi wants you in the office,” he growled.
“Right away, Lieutenant, sir,” Mendel said, and dared to wink at Andras.
Grimasz caught the tone, the wink. He raised his hand to cuff Mendel, but Mendel ducked the blow. The men gave a muffled cheer. Grimasz grabbed Mendel by the collar and half shoved, half dragged him to the office, while Andras followed at a run.
Major János Kálozi wasn’t a cruel man, but he was ambitious. The son of a Gypsy woman and an itinerant knife-grinder, he’d been promoted through the Munkaszolgálat himself, hoping for a transfer to the gun-carrying branch of the military. He’d been given his present assignment because he had actual knowledge of forestry; he had worked the forests of Transylvania before he’d emigrated to Hungary in the twenties. Andras had never before been called to his office, which was located in the only barracks building that had a porch and its own outhouse. Kálozi had, of course, appropriated the room with the largest window. This had proved to be a mistake. The window, a many-paned affair gleaned from the south-facing wall of a burned farmhouse, smelled of carbon and welcomed the cold. Kálozi had been obliged to cover it with army blankets of the same kind touted in the Fashion Column, rendering the office dark as a cellar. Beneath the smell of carbon was a distinct odor of horse; before the blankets had been put to their current use, they had been stored in a stable. Kálozi sat in the midst of this pungent gloom behind a massive metal desk. A coal brazier kept the place just warm enough to suggest that warm rooms existed and that this was not one of them.
Andras and Mendel stood at attention while K
álozi glanced through a near-complete set of The Snow Goose, beginning in December 1940 and ending with this week’s edition, dated March 7, 1941. Only the disintegrated inaugural issue was lacking. The major had grown visibly older in the time he’d directed the 112/30th. The hair at his temples had gone gray and his broad nose had become cobwebbed with tiny red veins. He looked up at Andras and Mendel with the air of a weary school principal.
“Fun and games,” he said, removing his glasses. “Please explain, Squad Captain Lévi. Or shall I call you Parisi?”
“It was my doing, sir,” Mendel said. He held his Munkaszolgálat cap in his hands, his thumb working over the brass button at its forward-tilted peak. “I wrote the first issue and asked the squad captain to illustrate it. And we went on from there.”
“You did indeed,” Kálozi said. “You gained access to the mimeograph machine and printed dozens of copies.”
“As squad captain I accept full responsibility,” Andras said.
“I’m afraid I can’t give you all the credit, Parisi. Our man Horovitz is so very talented, we can’t let his efforts go unrecognized.” Kálozi turned to an article he’d bookmarked with a bitten pencil. “Change of Leadership at Erdei Camp,” he read aloud. “The veteran potentate Commander Jánika Kálozi the Cross-Eyed, at the behest of Regent Miklós Horthy himself, was deposed from his military appointment this week due to gross ineptitude and disgraceful behavior. In a ceremony at the parade ground he was replaced by a leader deemed more worthy, a male baboon by the name of Rosy Buttocks. The commander was escorted from the parade ground amid a deafening chorus of flatulence and applause.” He turned the newspaper around to reveal Andras’s drawing of the major, cross-eyed, in full uniform on top and ladies’ underdrawers beneath, mincing on high heels beside his first lieutenant, an unmistakably boar-headed man, while in the background a florid-assed monkey saluted the assembled work servicemen.
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