by Alan Lelchuk
Meanwhile, there was that weird woman of Budapest—a version of the Madwoman of Chaillot? He had to answer her, and maybe check her out too? Was it worth it, or was she just another crackpot?
On an urge, he opened his e-mail and wrote to her:
Dear Zsuzsanna W.,
Thank you for contacting me last week. Yes, I would like to be in touch with you. Perhaps on the telephone, or if I should get to Budapest, in person? I am growing interested in the lost or disappeared life of Raoul Wallenberg, well, the whole case, and understand from my graduate student that you may have some useful information.
Yours sincerely,
Prof. Emmanuel Gellerman
Be careful, he warned himself; you know your penchant for foolish goose chases, for winding up looking like a clown. It’s always been your Achilles’ heel. But still … it was an adventure, wasn’t it? And think back to your youth, when you cut out for Africa on a Norwegian freighter and everyone in the Brooklyn neighborhood thought you were out of your mind, looney. But it turned out be a great adventure, one that changed and broadened you, causing you to move into the adventure trade whenever the opportunity arose. Furthermore, Manny knew from grad school days that every lead needed to be followed, no matter how silly it seemed or where it led. Yes, let’s see what the lady says. Besides, going to Budapest, which he knew from having taught there, was essential anyway. Too bad Prof. Mosse was not around. He always spoke highly of that “Little Paris.”
Later in the afternoon, Angela showed up. He sat down with her and went through the draft, making sure his scribbled markings were clear. And after telling her to try to check out that unpublished manuscript from the Russian down in New York, he remarked that her Budapest lady had now answered him and invited him to meet with her. Angela beamed and said, “Believe me Professor G., it will be worth it!” She threw her blonde hair back from her eyes. “And I’m so glad you liked my pages. That pumps me. I really will work to lengthen and polish it for the next draft.” As she packed her Lands’ End attaché, Manny was glad he had put her onto the project—American youth serving Swedish memory.
Manny went for his constitutional, walking across campus and down along the river and across the bridge over to Vermont, squinting at the bright sun sparkling upon the water. The air was nippy but felt energizing, especially after he had warmed up. He walked all the way up to the general store in Norwich, maybe two miles, bought himself a newspaper, and retraced his steps, from commonsense Vermont to melodramatic “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire. What a comic pair. Well, one got used to anything, even the meshugenah. Legs still strong, he marched all the way back up to the inn and sat in the charming old-world lounge, relaxing and reading in a red leather chair, drinking his water …
“We should eat, sleep, and dream history,” Prof. Hesseltine had proclaimed, in Madison, and it had been a long while since he had lived according to that credo. His two books were from long ago, and since then, he had fooled around with history more than engaged it. Cold War America and McCarthyism were old hat—one was a revised thesis—and though he had written on those subjects, they had not really excited him—grabbed him and not let go, a long-term obsession. It was not that he had lost the necessary discipline, but rather, the riveting passion; and without that, history might have been any subject, just another career choice. God, he hated that path, and those types that trekked it. In academia, they littered and ruled the place. Now, with Wallenberg in his focus …
An older couple sat down near the fireplace and bookshelves, and a younger power pair, here for an interview perhaps, walked through the spacious lounge. He saw that the room was now bustling with salesmen, academics, alumni.
He couldn’t wait till the boy showed up, so that he might be regaled with the tales and woes of the school day. Nothing merrier than a lively boy with his own passion and school laments. This boy, and the other one away in college, had lifted him up in these past half-dozen years of being bogged down. Losing his interest in the profession, his old idealism, maybe his own powers … Was Raoul brought to him then as a kind of gift, a surprise lighthouse for his drifting ship? Could be. Once upon a time Oppenheimer had done that for him— given him a fine wind at his back, a sail with direction, with purposefulness. Was he feeling this surge again now? A breezy illusion, or a firm reality?
“Hi, Dad. Have you been waiting long? I had to stay and talk to Mr. Soames again, about the history paper …”
At the college he attended a department meeting of several hours, akin to an army inspection. This, despite the fact that Manny liked his liberal arts graduate department very much, in theory anyway, and also enjoyed the good-hearted lion-leader, Richard Mackie, who ruled the department with magnanimity, power and crusader passion. An intellectual dynamo, he had built an autonomous and furtive empire from this marginalized graduate department, a closet hideaway in the undergraduate college. Every now and then, maybe once every year or two, Mackie called a faculty meeting, attended by a wide variety of professors from various disciplines, most of whom hardly knew each other. Richard seemed to prefer it that way. A few were even lively creatures.
“Well I still don’t know why we aren’t pursuing a fifth track in the department,” began Marsha Kepler, a slender lady in her late fifties who had just entered the department several months ago. “A graduate degree in gender studies would seem to be essential in today’s world. Especially since we have an undergraduate major now …”
As she proceeded on in her casual dogmatic fashion, Manny recalled an incident many years ago, when she had first come to the college, and Manny, who had met her briefly at a conference, had invited her for a dinner at his country place. She arrived with a newly baked challah for him, and he was touched, and the evening was pleasant enough, though Manny felt she was interested in a romance. But Manny was not, not in the least. And soon thereafter, she began to snub him publicly, and in the next year or two, she instigated rumors and became his open enemy. No good deed goes unpunished, he learned first-hand. Too bad, as the challah was tasty.
Why in the world had Mackie invited her into the department? “Well, she asked to teach a course,” he told Manny, “and she can be useful to us.”
That phrase summed up Mackie’s weak spot: it was hard for him to say no even to those he scorned (the vulnerability of a political animal). Again, as she prattled on, Manny stared out the window, across the green to the redbrick administration building … and realized that this could go on and on, with the parrying, and the underlying politics of personal egos playing their part, on top of the ideological politics. Such was the petty nature of academic meetings too often, if they weren’t strongly monitored, and why Manny had avoided them at all costs. The humming of the overhead fluorescent eased him to daydreaming, starting with playing baseball as a twelve-year-old in the sandlots of Lincoln Terrace Park in Brooklyn … Moving on, for no clear reason, to an incident when he was a boy of sixteen, and traveling in the South, selling magazines in Texas. One of a group of four, he had pedaled Collier’s, Ladies Home Companion, Saturday Evening Post, and there had been a problem with a contract, and a woman complained, and the police showed up and put the four of them against a wall. When Manny gave his name and address, the policeman drawled, “Oh, so you’re from New York, and a Jewboy to boot, I’ll bet. Right? And I’ll bet you’ve come down here to show us Southerners how dumb we rednecks are? And maybe take a few extra dollars from the lady of the house? Yeah, son, you New York kikes are one clever bunch, aren’t you? Well, boy, maybe we can surprise you, but first let’s see some identification.” As Manny carefully handed over his wallet, the bulky policeman with the high black boots stood right before him, less than a foot away from his face, and Manny felt himself shaking, anticipating a slap, a punch in the gut … Manny stood frozen from the open anti-Semitism, as the policeman eyed him like a biologist eyeing a microbe, waiting for him to move…
Why had he thought of this now? Was Wallenberg already operating in his unconsciou
s, roaming through his life? Arousing wounds and insults of his past, small incidents of anti-Semitism buried in obscure niches … Gentile pressures making him feel more Jewish …
The politics of gender and ego rattled on exhaustingly, a sharp contrast from the real politics of Budapest 1944, Manny figured, feeling trapped in this academic version of Sartre’s No Exit. He let his mind wander, and furtively jotted down notes for a new scene to explore and speculate on. Interesting how he seemed to be composing a sort of fictional historical narrative, reinventing a mystery character from the past, in an attempt to find out what had happened and how RW had acted. A narrative running counter in time to his own life. Were they meant to intersect, somehow?
Much later, at home, he opened his mailbox and found two messages of interest, among the many, one from an old friend inviting him to a conference in Moscow, and the other from the Budapest lady again. Setting Bach on the hi-fi—Gould playing the Goldberg Variations—he sat down with a glass of red wine, and took up Macauley’s long John Milton essay in the eleventh edition of the Encylopedia Britannica, where he read with pleasure a few pages of the master’s formal, translucent prose. (He had the original edition, with the very fine India paper and several columns per page.) His head still filled with that famous prose style, he skimmed again the nefarious article in U.S. News & World Report, composed by the two journalists. He appreciated the irony: the man who had saved Jews in Budapest, the diplomat captured by the Soviets, the prisoner abandoned by the Swedish family and state, now being turned, via yellow journalism, into a spy! A good example of how history, even this cheap history, could become the final and most exquisite executioner.
(Or was it true somehow? Gellerman wondered. Could he have been a double agent? Anything was possible, right?)
At his computer, he read through the two e-mail messages. From Budapest he heard from the familiar lady again, asking if he was soon planning a trip. And from Prof. Eli Kushner at SUNY Albany, he read an invitation to a May conference on “Recent Responses in East Europe to the End of Communism.” How serendipitous. Might the two converge?
He meandered among his books, piled up everywhere on tables, chairs, the floor. He knew where to find each: Hegel and Kierkegaard and Gibbon in old Modern Library editions; assorted paperback histories by DeVoto, C. Vann Woodward, Foner, Hofstader, Orwell; favorite fiction by Bellow, Svevo, Euclides da Cunha, Stendhal. Sometimes he wondered if he shouldn’t have gone into the literary trade, not the history profession. It seemed so much more fun, inventing things, rather than researching them. In the next life, he would try it.
He built a fire, sat down, and wrote notes to the lady in Budapest and the inquiring professor over in Albany, and considered plans for a trip next spring to Budapest and Moscow, to see what was going on over there, in the eastern region. Maybe there were green shoots growing in that former wilderness that were worth noting?
Now he went back to his valuable note-taking from the department meeting, and setting his drink down, began to compose:
They were driving on the road to Debrecen, followed by their Russian Army escort. Props of the war zone passed on the sides of the road: rolled over cars, burned jeeps, patches of black ground. Occasionally refugees wandered, in small groups, gazing up bleakly at the passing car.
“What will happen to them?” asked Vilmos, his driver. “They’re like packs of stray, hungry dogs.”
Raoul nodded, patted his friend’s large arm. “It will take a while, yes.”
“Poor devils. Now they are all Jews …”
A pause, as Raoul checked the glove compartment. “It will be sad to give up our old Studebaker, if we are forced to. She has served us well.”
Vilmos nodded.
“I still am not sure whether we’re going to be taken as guests or prisoners.”
“Well, we will know soon enough; but with the Russians, I would not be optimistic.”
“Yes, I should know better. Still …”
They smoked, and drove, the two Russian motorcycles tailing them closely. Raoul had always enjoyed the driving with his trusty friend, the hefty fellow being an excellent driver and chauffeur. And though Raoul was used to uncertainty, this was a little different, driving to Soviet military headquarters.
“I had no time to get rid of my bag, and there is a good deal of cash in it. Plus my black book. This could be a problem.”
“Or a blessing. They are not unknown to accept cash for favors.”
Raoul smiled wanly.
They drove.
“Look, Willy,” he patted the friend’s wrist, calling him by his private nickname, and trying to say something, but not sure what. “Whatever happens, you have been a great comfort. Always there when I needed you, no matter what the circumstances. So, thank you, Willy.”
Vilmos glanced over at him, his dark face staring, half-embarrassed. He uttered, “Have you forgotten that you rescued me from a forced labor camp? Among other small favors.”
Raoul nodded. He was thinking of something else, but still couldn’t get the proper words out. Did he even know them? He stared out the window, saw someone waving a white flag, and said, “You’ve been a good friend, a close friend, and that’s meant a lot. Personally, I mean, as well as professionally.”
Vilmos tapped Raoul’s leg with the back of his hand. “No need. I know.”
Did he know, really know? wondered Raoul. He pondered whether he himself knew. And knew what? Who understood anything about personal relations? He knew how to save Jews, how to stay calm in difficult and tense situations, how to stand up to authority. But about his own personal or intimate relations, what did he know or really understand? Very little—maybe nothing?
“They will probably try to turn us into spies, if we are not made honorary colonels—in the NKVD.”
“I will be happy enough to be a simple engineer again,” Vilmos remarked.
“And I, an ex-diplomat with architectural ambitions.”
They drove through the bleak landscape, Raoul catching fleeting images of his mother in Stockholm, and half-brother Guy, half-sister Nina. They hadn’t been in his thoughts in a long time. When would he see them again?
“There is the landmark, less than a dozen kilometers now.”
“If we should be split apart,” Raoul offered, “we must find a way to stay in touch. If it is prison for a while, we will use that same knocking system as we used for our entrances in Pest, yes?”
“Perfect. Yes.”
They drove, and Raoul said, “You must survive, Willy, that is the most important thing.”
Vilmos looked over at him, with his dark grin beneath his longish nose, and replied, “Oh, I know how to do that. It is you I am worried about, Raoul. They may want to press you for information, which …”
“Which I may or may not know, I understand. But remember, I have important friends, both in Budapest and in Sweden, so they will probably go easy on me. And besides, I am sure our cells will be airier than our home in the Hazai Bank vault.”
Vilmos laughed and nodded, remembering.
“Well, the motorcylist friends are signaling us, so we are almost there.”
Almost there—but where? thought Raoul—and still he had not gotten to say what he wanted to say. Better left unsaid anyway, he figured; not a good time or space for the intimate. There were more pressing matters at hand. Like where to hide that bag if possible …”
Was there enough evidence to warrant the subtext of baffling intimacy here? Was Manny making certain emotions too obvious for the evidence? Well, he’d have to continue his investigating and research for sure, but from what he understood now, it seemed to fit. At least the basic material facts were real enough: the trip down to Debrecen under the Soviet overseers, the uncertainty of what awaited them; all that he had added was an interpretation. And the personal was as important as the historical.
Again, what sort of hybrid genre was he seeking to create with these little scenes? A shadow history, a docu-fiction, a what-if n
arrative? Well, who cared for now? Manny thought, getting out his workout mat for his yoga exercises. Just proceed ahead and figure things out later, especially when he had more to go on. If the whole thing blew up in a comedy of smoke and illusion, a fog of wishful thinking, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time, he thought, bending forward in Sun Salutation, neck and back stretching, feeling familiar body-joy.
CHAPTER 4
For the next several months Manny taught, read, researched, walked, saw his son, and listened to him play regularly. He learned a bit about pizzicato and pitch and intonation, and about three classical cellists, Feuermann, Fournier, Piatigorsky. (Josh had put a photo of Feuerman, his favorite, inside his cello, the way Manny used to collect cards of baseball heroes.) The weather was better than in the old days, when minus twenty degrees at night would last for two weeks; freezing pipes and snowstorms would arrive late in spring, weighing down flat roofs and blocking walkways. Now, there were milder temperatures, less snow, and reports of disasters elsewhere. Apart from his class work and the newspapers—for the news, the sports, the obits—he read all he could about Raoul and tried to absorb the many parts, the odd gaps, the accepted information, conventional wisdom, attempts at interpretation. The mysteries remained, even deepened, it seemed to Manny.
Yet, when he brought the matter up to a British colleague at a local restaurant one day, the fellow said, “Forget it; it’s ancient history. The Rooskies knocked him off; so where’s the mystery? Standard operating procedure—you know what Stalin said, ‘Where there’s a man, there’s a problem.’” Coughlin smiled, drank his beer. “So they got rid of him.”