Leah's Children

by Gloria Goldreich

  He was fired by a new energy, by an intense personal excitement. Lydia’s battle had become his own. Her struggle for Paul had become his struggle. He had caught her fever, and by an effort of will, he had plunged himself into the history that was part of her life. He was tired this morning because he had stayed up half the night reading about the Budapest purge trials of 1949. He had been a student at Harvard Law School then, in love with Katie Reznikoff, the brightest and prettiest girl in his class. The shadowed courtrooms of Budapest had belonged to another world.

  And yet, while he and Katie studied torts, edited a law journal, and made love before a fire, Laszlo Rajk, one dissenter among many, had been arrested, tortured, found guilty, and hanged. His body had been tossed into a pit dug on an empty lot just off the national highway, twelve miles out of Budapest. The body was to have been covered with slaked lime and rendered unidentifiable, but there had been a bureaucratic error and quicklime had been used. When Rajk’s widow excavated the burial site, his corpse was found intact, although seven years had passed. Now the authorities, bewildered by the unrest of the people and influenced by the rumors of new liberalism at the Kremlin, had at last proclaimed the executed man “a martyr of the party.” They had agreed to an official reinterment on the anniversary of the execution of the generals who had been the heroes of the 1848 War of Hungarian Independence. The secret operation that Lydia and her friends in the Petofi Circle had planned had been transformed into an official ceremony with government sanction.

  “It’s a trick,” Lydia had told Aaron bitterly. “They want to deflate our efforts by legitimizing them. It’s an old Soviet technique. They will come to the ceremony and find a pretext to turn on us.”

  “But perhaps they are sincere.” He wanted them to be sincere. He had been raised by David Goldfeder, who sought out peaceful solutions, rational decisions.

  “No. They are all like Andropov. Calculating. Bloodless. He spits in your face and wants you to believe that it is raining. They offer token concessions and would have us believe that they are offering freedom. I’ll believe them when they release the political prisoners. I’ll believe them when they allow new elections with secret ballots. I’ll believe them when Russian troops leave Hungary.” She had spoken quietly, yet her voice trembled and her shoulders quivered.

  “If your group achieves its aims,” he had asked, “would you and Paul want to stay in Hungary?”

  “No.” She was firm. “There are too many terrible memories for us here. But I want to leave a free Budapest. For my parents’ sake. For Ferenc’s sake. And especially for Paul. I do not want him to feel that he deserted his friends.”

  He had not pressed her further. His marriage had taught him that there were boundaries that could not be crossed and questions to which there were no certain answers.

  They had arranged to meet on the Boulevard of Saint Stephen and to go to the reinterment ceremony together. Paul was going with a group of students. Aaron crossed the Margaret Bridge and braced himself against the harsh and unrelenting onslaught of the northern wind. Today he kept his face averted from the icy rain. He wondered if it had rained in Budapest on this same day in 1848. In point of fact, did the sun ever shine on this city of woodlands and bridges? Betty Hemmings thought not. “I should have forgotten about evening dresses and bought three raincoats,” she said ruefully one afternoon.

  Still, the weather had not deterred the people of Budapest from leaving their homes and offices, their factories and schools. Crowds of men and women thronged the bridges and streets with new groups surging forth on every avenue and boulevard. They wore the dark clothing of the bereaved, and black armbands were affixed to their sleeves. The government’s insistence that work continue as usual had clearly been disregarded.

  Children marched in solemn procession, holding torches fashioned of newspapers, which they shielded bravely from the falling rain. When the flames smoldered, they immediately rekindled the fire. The flames glowed against their faces, and they sang an ancient battle hymn as they marched, carefully protecting their blazing cornucopias.

  Lydia rushed toward him from the shelter of the cathedral rectory. Her delicate white skin was striated by the lashings of the wind, and her hair swirled in damp waves of darkness about her shoulders. But her eyes glowed and her voice vibrated with excitement and pride.

  “Look! We never anticipated such a turnout. The whole city of Budapest. Workers, students, housewives. Everyone. We were right, after all. We were right.”

  He did not answer her. He had glanced up and recognized the man who stood alone on the parapet of Liberty Bridge, studying the crowd. Yuri Andropov smiled grimly. It seemed to Aaron that his gaze focused briefly on Lydia. Then, as though sensing Aaron’s recognition, the Soviet ambassador raised his hand in a tentative, warning salute and was lost in the swirling crowd.

  A group of children passed them, singing in a rousing chorus. Lydia translated the song for him.

  Stand, Magyar, your country calls you.

  The moment has come. It is now or never.

  “Do you believe that?” Aaron asked her.

  “I believe it,” she said, and he wished, with melancholy wistfulness, that he could share her faith.

  They were caught up in the crowd then, and they walked with arms linked, to the Kerepesi Cemetery. As they approached the wrought-iron gates, the crowd grew silent. In single file, they made their way across avenues of gravemarkers and tombstones, so covered with twigs and bracken that they looked like stunted tree trunks in an abandoned forest. Someone passed Lydia a silver torch, and she held it high, as though the tongue of flame were a banner, a fiery proclamation.

  Rajk’s widow, Julia Foldi, a tall and statuesque woman, her face scarred by grief, stood beside her husband’s coffin, her small son’s hand clasped in her own. Members of the government and party leaders had assembled near her. They watched the crowd with the hooded, cautionary gaze of supervisory personnel, and they stood close together, huddling like visitors in a strange and unfamiliar city, uncertain and frightened.

  Huge official wreaths, woven of roses and orchids, lavish gardenias and oversized gladioli, surrounded the coffins of Rajk and his three comrades, but each passing mourner dropped a single flower on the coffins, a small chrysanthemum in the muted, sorrowing hues of autumn. The small blossoms fell gently, silently; they blanketed the caskets and obscured the gaudy floral tributes of the government. A small and fragrant triumph.

  Hundreds of thousands of people had crowded into the cemetery, and yet a heavy, threatening silence prevailed. The children marched past the open coffins with pale, frightened faces, but they did not avert their eyes from the corpses—a small act of bravery, a glance of tribute. The crowd was quiet, as though sorrow had frozen their songs, stilled their laughter. Immobile, they stood through the funeral oration, delivered by a man named Antal Apró.

  “He is president of the Popular Front,” Lydia whispered. “Ferenc knew him well.”

  Aaron shifted uneasily throughout the speech. Later, he knew, Lydia would explain the context, but for the moment he absorbed its passion, the sorrow of the orator’s cadence, the mournful reaction of the audience. Men cried and women clutched the hands of small children. Had Ferenc Groszman also been so eloquent, so charismatic? he wondered, and felt ashamed because he begrudged a dead man his friendship with the leader who stood beside the open grave.

  The crowd stood silent, and then the voice of a boy tenor pierced the grieving quiet. Paul Groszman sang a sweet and mournful requiem. He stood alone, his blond hair glistening wetly, a single white carnation in his hand, which he placed gently on Rajk’s bier.

  Julia Foldi burst into wild sobs. Her son, a solemn-faced, flaxen-haired boy, stood on his toes and gently wiped the tears that streaked his mother’s cheeks with his blue cambric schoolboy handkerchief. A dark-suited man emerged from the crowd and embraced the weeping woman, who rested her head on his shoulder.

  “Imre Nagy,” Lydia said sadly. “How
he has aged. Poor Uncle Imre. I wonder if he recognized Paul.”

  Slowly, now, the crowd dispersed and went their separate ways. Aaron saw two familiar figures turn a corner. Yehuda and Reuven Greenstein trailed a group of demonstrators. The newspaper torches were dropped to the ground, where they glowed briefly in flaming flowerets.

  Aaron and Lydia made their way back to the Grand Hotel. Paul would be home late that night. He was spending the evening with Genia. Aaron was startled to see the businessmen calmly reading their newspapers in the lobby, their wives chatting over their bridge games. But of course the hotel guests were tourists. The Rajk funeral, the student unrest, the passion of the intellectuals—all were irrelevant to their careful itineraries. Probably tourists had played bridge in the lobbies of Berlin hotels during Kristallnacht, Aaron thought bitterly, as he guided Lydia into the elevator.

  The phone was ringing as they entered his room. Struggling out of his sodden coat, he answered it.

  “Aaron, it’s Tom Hemmings. There’s a new development in the Groszman case.”

  “Yes?” At once his voice became cautious.

  “I’ve had a call from a friend with contacts at the Soviet embassy. Yuri Andropov has intimated that it would be wise for you and Dr. Groszman to leave Budapest now. I can arrange that special hearing, and I think we can even manage to include the boy. Your friend Joshua moved quickly.” Tom’s voice was admiring.

  “I’ll talk to Dr. Groszman and let you know,” Aaron said.

  “Andropov doesn’t fool around,” Tom said softly.

  “I know. Thanks.”

  He looked across the room to where Lydia sat on a green velvet armchair. She had removed her wet shoes and stockings, and her feet were pale and slender on the thick dark carpet.

  “Who was that?” she asked.

  “Tom Hemmings at the American embassy. He advises us to leave Budapest now. The Soviet ambassador suggests it. My friend Joshua Ellenberg has pulled some strings and made it possible.”

  “We can’t leave now,” she said. “Not when we are almost there.” Her voice had the plaintive querulousness of a child who has worked on a project and is told that she cannot see its completion. “Besides, after today we don’t have to be afraid of the Russians. What can Yuri Andropov do to me?”

  He sat on the floor beside her chair and took her bare foot into his hand. No one would do anything to her. He would not allow it. And she was right. That afternoon, in that rain-swept cemetery, Russian power had been neutralized. The people of Hungary had asserted their will. He believed now, with absolute certainty, that freedom was just around the corner, and he wanted to be in Budapest when it arrived. If there was any danger, Yehuda would have warned him. He thought of the phone number and immediately decided against using it.

  “Are you frightened?” she asked. Her hand rested lightly on his head.

  “No,” he said.

  He turned and looked at her. Her eyes were closed and her lips were curved in an odd, childlike smile. She had surrendered herself to his care, his vigilance.

  *

  THE OPTIMISM AND CALM of that afternoon persisted for the next two weeks. Aaron and Lydia no longer conducted their elaborate charade at the Grand Hotel. The need for concealed documents and clandestine meetings had vanished. The furtive whispers, the nervous, hushed rumors, of his first days in the country, had become clearly articulated statements, ringing shouts.

  The students who had once lurked in the darkness, secretly distributing their handbills and hanging posters, now openly handed out their material on broad avenues, in parks, and in busy squares.

  Aaron saw Paul Groszman on a street corner, giving handbills to passersby. A pretty girl, whose dark curls clustered about her upturned cheerful face, stood beside him. Paul and Aaron smiled hesitantly at each other with the tacit restraint of men who share an acknowledged but undefined intimacy. But Paul is only a boy, Aaron reminded himself. On impulse he invited Lydia’s stepson to a nearby café for a snack. Paul hesitated and glanced at his companion.

  “This is Genia Lucas,” Paul said, and Aaron gravely shook her hand.

  “I am Aaron Goldfeder. I hope Genia can join us.”

  “Genia’s English is not very good,” Paul said swiftly. He spoke softly to her in Hungarian, and she nodded in assent.

  “Yes. She would like to join us,” Paul affirmed, although Aaron had known that Genia Lucas would follow Paul anywhere at any hour. Her hand clutched his and her eyes were riveted to his face. He wondered if they had slept together. Did teenage boys and girls sleep together in Budapest?

  The café was crowded, but they found an empty table and Paul suggested that they all have blinis.

  “This café makes them better than any other place in Budapest,” he said.

  Genia waved to friends at another table and flitted over to speak with them. Aaron and Paul looked warily at each other.

  “I think you will miss Budapest,” Aaron observed.

  “It is my city. The only city I know.”

  “But you will be happy in America,” Aaron persisted.

  “My mother will be happy in America,” Paul replied cryptically. “It is different for me. Here I have my music, my friends, my chance to work for a new Hungary.” He watched Genia now as she bent to take a sip of someone’s coffee and laughed. Relaxed, mirthful, her small face was like a flower bepetaled by the chestnut clusters of her curls.

  “Genia’s very pretty,” Aaron said.

  “She’s beautiful.” Paul blushed. He had both embarrassed and betrayed himself.

  Aaron thought of all the sensible replies he might make. You are seventeen and there will be many pretty girls, many beautiful women m your life. You are too young to be looking at a girl with such determined passion. America is full of girls as pretty as curly-haired Genia.

  Instead he stirred his coffee and told Paul that it seemed probable that the emigration process could now be swiftly accomplished.

  “I must think about it more,” Paul said. “So much has happened in such a short time. It is hard to leave when Hungary is on the edge of a new beginning.”

  “But Lydia is determined to leave,” Aaron said.

  “We will talk more, my mother and I,” Paul answered, and then Genia joined them. Their blinis were served, and Aaron assured Paul that he was right—the small crepes were light as air and melted in buttery drops on his tongue.

  They parted on the same corner where they had met. Genia shook Aaron’s hand, but her eyes scarcely left Paul’s face.

  Aaron looked back at them. Paul’s arm rested lightly on her shoulders; her hand touched his cheek. Would Lydia leave Budapest without Paul? Aaron wondered, and he walked slowly on.

  *

  LYDIA’S university colleagues now met openly. They spoke of their plans in cafés and wine taverns, where they met to drink raisin wine in the late afternoon. They held small dinner gatherings, and Aaron accompanied her. He, too, lifted his glass and drank to their extravagant, enthusiastic toasts.

  “To peace!”

  “Hungary for the Hungarians!”

  “To freedom!”

  “An end to the Warsaw Pact!”

  The impromptu parties reminded him of the gatherings of his undergraduate days, of his friends in the Young People’s Socialist League. They, too, had lifted their glasses to peace and freedom. A brief sadness swept over him, but he saw the flush on Lydia’s cheek, the glint in her eyes, and struggled against it. He willed himself to believe in her beliefs.

  “Szabadságra és békéra! To peace and freedom,” he called, and they clapped because he had saluted them in their own language.

  They made enthusiastic plans at those gatherings, which were held in faculty flats and in student apartments and studios along Museum Boulevard. Aaron thought their demands modest. He and his friends had worked for a universal campaign against hunger and illiteracy. They had dreamed of an egalitarian society. The Hungarians were more realistic. They wanted Russian removed as a c
ompulsory language course from the university curriculum. They wanted freedom of expression for Hungarian writers and the release of political prisoners. They wanted freedom for Cardinal Mindszenty and guarantees that Hungarians would be allowed to worship as they pleased.

  “Let the Angelus ring again,” a bearded graduate student called.

  “And let the people resume control of Radio Budapest.”

  “We might as well call it Radio Judapest. Gero and his Jew cronies control it,” someone else said.

  An embarrassed silence filled the room. Aaron moved closer to Lydia. He had not understood the speaker’s words exactly, but their impact was clear.

  “No offense, Lydia,” their host apologized. “A joke. Unfortunate and in bad taste, but still just a joke.”

  Angry patches of red blotched Lydia’s cheeks, but she nodded. They left the party early, and Aaron took with him the remainder of the bottle of vodka that he had brought.

  “I suppose one can’t escape it,” she said wearily. “The anger. The hatred. The insidious mockery. One expected it from the Nazis, from the Arrow Cross. It is harder when it comes from friends, from comrades.”

  “I know.”

  “I suppose the only place a Jew is safe is in Israel.”

  “Israel is not the place to go for safety.” He thought of his sister who slept with a rifle beside her bed; of Rebecca’s husband, Yehuda, who haunted street corners and cafés in distant cities, scavenging scraps of intelligence; he thought of his sister’s children, who slept underground in a fetid air-raid shelter; of David Goldfeder, killed by the bullet of an enemy who stole across the border to spread terror and hatred.