Leah's Children

by Gloria Goldreich

  “Good.” She smiled. “I have my dossier with me.”

  “The very same dossier that mysteriously could not be found in New York.”

  “The same.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a folder, and held it out to him.

  “How fortunate that you did not drop this as you walked,” he said.

  She averted her eyes, and the camellia pallor of her skin was tinged with an underglow of rose color that petaled her cheeks with delicate blossoms of embarrassment.

  “I’ll explain that,” she said softly.

  “Of course you will.” His tone was dry, impersonal. It was the voice of his private office, dispassionate and unrelenting. He had to know the truth of their situations, he always told his clients. The truth was his only weapon. Their honest answers became his arsenal of attack.

  He sipped his coffee and read through the dossier with the detached preoccupation of his profession, searching out inconsistencies, lacunae that might raise questions, unexplained coincidences that would cause an immigration hearing officer to look up in puzzlement. One doubt begat others. It was his job to forestall that first hesitancy.

  The facts were quite simple. Lydia Goszman, née Englander, had been born in Budapest in 1922 to Dr. Joseph Englander and his wife, Lotte. She was the third child and the only daughter in a family of four children. Her two older brothers had been killed in the massacre of Jews at Novi Sad during the Nazi occupation. A third brother lived in San Francisco, where he practiced public accountancy. An affidavit had been obtained in which he declared himself willing to sponsor his sister’s immigration application and stating that he had the means to support her. Dr. and Mrs. Englander had both died in Budapest on the same date, March 20, 1944. Aaron penciled a light question mark on that line and read on. Lydia had spent the war years hidden by the nursing sisters of Saint Stephen’s Hospital, where her father had served as chief surgeon. After the war she had enrolled in the University of Budapest as a student of theoretical physics. She had married her professor, Ferenc Groszman, and for some years they had worked together in the field of radar technology. Her husband had died in 1954, and his widow, now on the faculty of the Technical Institute, wished to join her only surviving relation, her brother, Alexander, in San Francisco There was also a sworn statement from the chairman of her department that for the past two years Dr. Groszman had not been privy to classified information or involved in research that related to national security.

  “I think everything is in order,” she said, and he discerned a shade of defensiveness in her tone.

  “Perhaps. Your parents died on the same day?”

  “Yes.” She stirred her tea and added a lump of sugar but did not raise the cup to her lips.

  “What were the circumstances of their deaths?” His voice was steady, gentle but insistent. She answered in tones so soft that he had to lean forward to hear her.

  “The date is important. On March 19, 1944, a German officer named Adolf Eichmann came to Budapest. His name is forgotten now, and they say he escaped to some South American country, but we have not forgotten him. It was the beginning of the German occupation, and he was the German authority on so-called Jewish affairs. He ordered the leaders of the Jewish community to appear at a conference at his office the next day. March 20. Do you know that on every March 20 since then it has snowed in Budapest? God’s penitence, perhaps. A sign that He remembers. In any case, my father went to that conference. Before the Nazis came, before the Arrow Cross party began its campaign against the Jewish people, he had not had much to do with the Jewish community. But the war changed that. He was a man of standing in the community, and suddenly he was an active Jew, rushing off to meetings, organizing clinics. He knew, I think, that might happen, because he sent me into hiding very early and arranged for Alexander to go to America.

  “In any case, he went to the conference in Eichmann’s office, and he came to the hospital afterward. I met him in the visitors’ room. I wore the costume of a novice in the nursing order; it included a wooden beaded rosary and a wooden cross. My father had never been a religious man. He considered himself, at most, a cultural Jew. When my brother Jan married a Gentile girl, he and my mother did not object. They went to the wedding, which was held in a church. Their friends were almost all Gentile—until the war, that is. Then, of course, their friends deserted them. A man with whom he had played in a string quartet for two decades passed him on the street without nodding.

  “That afternoon, when he saw the cross I wore, he removed it from my neck and put it in the pocket of my apron. He told me then that Eichmann had told him he would have to become a member of the Judenrat, a council of Jews that would carry out German orders, inform on other Jews perhaps, draw up lists for deportations. ‘I cannot do it,’ he said. ‘Impossible.’ I nodded. I remember that my hand went into my apron pocket, and I began to move the beads of the rosary as though I might find some answer, some solution. The beads were so cool, so smooth. My father gave me the name of the Jewish organization that had taken my brother Alexander to America. When he left, he kissed me once on each cheek. That night, after dinner, he and my mother each drank a glass of plum brandy. They sat beside each other on our sofa holding hands. She wore her best maroon moiré dress with a lace frill at the collar, and he wore his black dinner suit with the satin lapels. He had perhaps played some music, because his violin was beside him when the neighbors found them the next day. Their hands were clasped, and her head rested on his shoulder. Our neighbors were very kind people, and they washed away the crystals of prussic acid that remained in the cordial glasses before they called the police.”

  “I’m sorry,” Aaron said, “but I had to know. The American immigration authorities would have taken note just as I did, and they might draw unfortunate conclusions that would prejudice your application. A double suicide might indicate a background of mental instability in your family.”

  “Suicide was a rational act under the Nazis,” she said. “But of course I understand that there is no room for those who are possibly unstable in your great country.”

  “Look,” Aaron replied evenly, “I do not condone my country’s laws and I do not justify them. I do work to change them, but until they are changed I must work carefully within them as competently as I can. I am here to help you, not to argue with you. And in order to help you, I must have the answers to any questions that I ask. Remember, I am acting for you, but there are those in authority who will be asking questions as adversaries.”

  “I know,” she said. “I apologize. I suppose we live in this country in such an atmosphere of distrust that it is difficult to have faith in anyone.”

  Her voice grew very soft and he was reminded of the tenderness in his mother’s voice when she spoke of David Goldfeder. Too often his own voice was harsh when he spoke of Katie.

  “Ferenc was a wonderful man,” she said. “Very kind. Very gentle. I was all alone after the war. I had no family, few friends. And Ferenc was also alone. His wife and daughter had died during a forced march in Austria. Only he and his young son, Paul, had survived the war. I was a student in his lecture class, and he asked me to assist him in his laboratory. We met occasionally at the synagogue on Dohány Street, where we both went to say Kaddish. He would walk me to my hostel. We were companions in loss and sorrow. He was a father who had lost his daughter, and I was an orphan.

  “Soon we began to meet and go to the synagogue together and share a meal afterward. It seemed only natural to have dinner together each evening, sometimes with Paul, sometimes just the two of us. Each Sunday we arranged to walk in the park together or to take Paul to the countryside. I made a cake for Paul’s sixth birthday, and we felt like a family. Paul even laughed. The laughter of a sad child is a small miracle, a wonderful sound. And Paul was—is—a wonderful child. A handsome boy with the singing voice of an angel. He sang at our wedding. We were so happy, the three of us. And then Ferenc became ill. Chest pains, fatigue, a terrible racking cough. A result of his
internment in a camp where the Jews worked in an asbestos factory, the doctors said.

  “He knew he was dying. He asked me to take care of Paul. He did not have to ask. Paul is part of my life. He is my family, my son, my brother, my friend.

  “Paul and I were with him when he died. And Paul sang the El Ma’ale Rachamim prayer at the funeral—‘God Who is full of mercy.’ And I thought to myself, Yes, God was merciful to my Ferenc. He let him die of disease and not by his own hand or the hand of others. He let him die in a bed. And He left me Paul, my sweet-singing son.”

  Her voice broke and tears slid down her cheeks. She made no move to wipe them away.

  “I understand,” Aaron said. All the deaths in his own life had also been violent. His natural father had been beaten to death during a pogrom in the streets of Odessa. His closest friend had died in his arms on an Ethiopian roadway. His wife had been crushed beneath the wheels of a taxi. David Goldfeder had been killed by a fedayeen’s bullet. None of those he loved had retreated gently into the waiting night.

  “Do you?” Her voice was harsh and laced with disbelief. The American lawyer came from a land that had never known the marching boots of a marauding army. The bridges that straddled the rivers of his land had never been destroyed, like the bridges of the Danube during the dark days of the war. American soldiers crossed the sea to do battle, but their homes were unscarred, their cities intact. Americans did not starve. They had never eaten soups cooked of wild grass and acorns. She had gone to the cinema and watched American women shop in brightly lit, wide-aisled stores where they plucked groceries and produce from laden shelves and hesitated between cuts of meat at a gleaming butcher’s counter. No American could understand violence and loss, poverty and desperation.

  He ignored her question. This was no time for revelations or a competition in misery. It was necessary for him to know her story, but his life, he acknowledged, was irrelevant to her.

  “What were Ferenc Groszman’s political affiliations?” he asked. The question was crucial. Lingering filaments of fear and distrust, the residue of the McCarthy years, still hovered over his country.

  She hesitated.

  “Let me explain,” she said. “All during the war we were obsessed by our hatred for the Germans and our own Hungarian Fascist party, the Arrow Cross. It was the Arrow Cross that forced us to ally with Nazi Germany during the war, and it cooperated with the Germans in the deportations. The Soviet Army liberated us, and the Russians became our saviors. We were starving and they brought us food. Every bridge across the Danube had been destroyed, and they rebuilt them. There was inflation, and they introduced economic reforms. Slowly, we were seduced. The Communists formed alliances with the workers, with the peasants, and, of course, the intellectuals. Ferenc and his colleagues were ambivalent about the basic philosophy of communism. They were, after all, scientists, musicians, linguists, not political theoreticians. But they all saw the Communists as liberators and protectors. Ferenc was not a political person. He wanted only a benevolent and just government that would leave Jew s alone. When he finally joined the party, it was with a certain amount of naive hope.”

  “Then he was a known advocate of Communism and the Soviet Union? Aaron asked, frowning. The immigration authorities would love that, and the right-wing columnists would have a field day. He could see the headlines now: “Widow of Hungarian Communist Gains Entry to the United States! How? Why?”

  “Yes. He was a Communist,” she said impatiently. “But everyone was then. The Jewish intellectuals and artists, the concentration camp survivors, the true Hungarian nationalists—of course they flocked to a party that was totally opposed to the Arrow Cross, to the Nazis, to the killers. No one knew, then, that while the Soviets were courting the Jews and the liberals, they were also recruiting Fascists. It is a classic Communist ploy. They work two ends against the middle, and in the end they had a very efficient, neatly balanced seesaw. Only then did they show their true aim—the creation of a totally Soviet-dominated state in Hungary. Ferenc was among the first of the intellectuals to recognize the truth. He wept the night Cardinal Mindszenty was arrested. People came to visit us at odd hours to tell us of sudden detentions, interrogations. A key laboratory assistant disappeared, and it became routine for mail to be opened and for phone wires to be tapped. The AVO—the security police—became more and more powerful. Ferenc signed letters of protest. He made an official complaint when a letter from my brother, Alexander, was opened. He raised objections and made inquiries on behalf of friends. At first the authorities disregarded him, but soon they could not afford such a luxury. They made notations on his Kader Lopok.”

  “His Kader Lopok?” Aaron asked, puzzled.

  “Of course, you don’t understand what that is. There is no such thing in your country. In Hungary the government keeps a complete record on each individual—occupation and personal history, political and religious views, family secrets, professional skeletons. That is the Kader Lopok. Ferenc’s must have become suspect. He was denied an exit visa to attend an important conference on radar technology in Paris. The AVO visited us, asked questions. Twice we were certain that our flat had been searched in our absence, and once, at the middle of the night. They threatened him and released him, but he ignored the warnings. He became a member of the Petofi Circle, a group of intellectuals who were convinced that Russian influence in Hungary had to end.”

  “Did the authorities try to stop him?” Aaron asked.

  “They were reluctant to interfere with his work. Ferenc had been responsible for a major breakthrough in radar technology. He had an international reputation. It was more convenient for them, after a while, to ignore him; to allow him to continue his scientific research, even to display him to visiting foreign scientists at state functions. We would go together to a reception at Gero’s home and then, still in our evening clothes, to a meeting where we discussed how Gero could be overthrown. Ferenc lived this double life until he died. And he died with the hope that we could win, that communism could be overthrown in Hungary. A few months later, Imre Nagy was removed from power. I have always been relieved that Ferenc died before that happened. He had loved Nagy and believed in him.”

  “Then in the end he was known as anti-Communist?” Aaron queried with relief. Nothing in that for Joe McCarthy’s political and journalistic heirs to seize on. He rewrote his imagined headline. “Widow of Hungarian Resistance Leader Admitted to the United States!”

  “Yes.”

  “And you?”

  “I am a scientist. I continue Ferenc’s research in radar technology.”

  “And do you continue his political work as well?”

  She did not answer, but he persisted.

  “That envelope which you dropped—is it relevant to our discussion? Madame, I remind you that I have come to Budapest to help you.”

  Delicately, with great care, she buttered a croissant and painted it with strawberry confiture, all the while studying his face. At last she sighed and wiped her fingers on a napkin.

  “I suppose you must know about that envelope,” she said. “It was, after all, important, as you guessed. It contained information that will be passed on to my comrades in an organization that is working toward the end of Russian domination of Hungary. I am continuing Ferenc’s work, and so is Paul.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Aaron said. “My Israeli contacts told me that you wish to leave Budapest and immigrate to the United States. They persuaded me to come here on your behalf. Now you tell me of your involvement in what I am sure must be an illegal organization. Isn’t this a foolish undertaking if you plan to leave the country? It could jeopardize your position, endanger you.” His voice was edged with professional impatience, reproof.

  She toyed with the remnant of her croissant, arranging the golden crumbs in small piles on the brown-and-white pebbled marble table.

  “It may be unwise, but in a way I feel I have no choice. I do want to emigrate. And I want to take Paul with me. Hung
ary is full of unhappy memories for me. But I promised Ferenc before he died that I would continue his work with the Petofi Circle, his efforts to see freedom and democracy restored to the country. I think now, at last, that it is possible. Stalin’s death has changed many things. There are reforms in the Soviet Union. There have been many changes in Poland. We think that the same thing can happen in Hungary, and already we have seen a relaxation. We are moving toward new times. Only this past winter, the nine men who were on trial with Cardinal Mindszenty were released.”

  “But Mindszenty himself is still interned,” Aaron reminded her.

  “And in the spring some of our more liberal leaders were released from prison.”

  “And yet a man as important as Imre Nagy has still not been readmitted to the party.”

  “Our journalists are openly demanding freedom of the press.”

  “And their demands have been rewarded with expulsion from the party and the loss of their jobs.”

  They were caught up now in a fierce game of verbal Ping-Pong. She parried her claims of progress against his perception of political reality. Tom Hemmings had briefed him well. The Soviets would not so easily relinquish their dominion over Hungary. They would follow their established pattern; they would distribute a few crumbs and claim that they had granted a cake. They would give with one hand and take back with another.

  At last she spread her hands out on the table as though acknowledging defeat.

  “You may be right,” she said. “There may be no hope of change. But how could I live with myself if I deserted my country when there was a possibility that my help might make a difference? I want to live in the West, but I can only go with a clear conscience if I know that I have fulfilled my obligation to my husband’s memory. Can you understand that?”

  He remembered suddenly a fierce exchange with Katie just before she died. They had been arguing furiously about vacation plans, and Katie had screamed that there was no time for vacations—there was too much for them to do. “We’ve got to make the world right!” she had shouted at him. Was that the obligation he paid to her memory, with his self-imposed crusade of endless work? The tyranny of the dead was a grim one. Corpses cannot be deposed; the dead cannot make rebuttal. Their victory is automatic.