Searching for Wallenberg

by Alan Lelchuk

  “But what about the other problems, the more serious ones, like why didn’t someone get him out? Or trade for him? The family, the country?”

  Tom said, “Hmmm. Hadn’t thought much about that. You have a point. What’d the Soviets have him locked up for, two years or so? Yeah,” he nodded, “that is strange, and may be worth looking into. I don’t know much about him personally, actually. Was he an interesting fellow?”

  As Manny went on to explain a little about Raoul, he understood how much he had taken in, in recent months, about the man, and yet how much there was left to know. Yes, he was interesting, but exactly how? His identity was still a mystery.

  “Was he Jewish?” Tom asked. “I always wondered that, because of what he did.”

  “Oh, he was one sixteenth or so Jewish on his mother’s side, from way back. But he wasn’t raised Jewish and didn’t feel that way.”

  Tom circled the rim of his glass. “Gelly, you always were skeptical of the conventional lines given on stories, so maybe you are sniffing up a trail that will lead you somewhere interesting. So, let’s see what you turn up.”

  Soon, driving home, listening to the frustrating three- or four-minute news segments on frustrating NPR, Manny replayed the conversation with Tom and felt a certain stirring. What was it? Did Manny himself, a totally secular fellow, feel Jewish? Well, he had always felt culturally Jewish, but was that a polite defense mechanism of sorts? And in recent years, hadn’t he felt, more and more— maybe subconsciously?—the hangover wounds of the Holocaust? Wounds that had been transformed into certain emotions, attitudes, that were complex and undifferentiated. Had these now been raised more to the surface, like an injury causing blood vessels to discolor the skin, by his Wallenberg reading? … Manny bounced along his dirt road, bumpy with early frost heaves, and tried to understand these inchoate feelings.

  How interesting was this legendary Swede? Who knew, who really knew? But certainly it was a real and intriguing question. And how many of those big figures in history were truly interesting, rather than standing out by means of an important circumstance? … In other words, History carried so many pipsqueek figures on its shoulders, and made them seem like little giants.

  On an impulse, Manny hopped on a plane to Ann Arbor, where Raoul had gone to the School of Architecture for three years, in the early 1930s. There on the campus Manny moseyed around, walked into the outdated Lorch Hall, with its wonderful staircase and its studios, where Raoul had done his drafting. Found the old architecture library in the West Engineering Building, and visited the large skylighted room on the fourth floor of the north end, where the freehand drawing and projection drawing was done. (It had been cited by Raoul.) He walked to the pleasant house on tree-lined Madison Street, where Raoul had lived for his three years. Visited the archives and found several items of interest, including a small notebook with his clear handwriting and a humorous photo of Raoul kidding around at the Architects’ Ball, wearing pantaloons and holding his hand over his face in feigned shame. (One note of interest in the notebook: how he wanted to visit the Southwest and see the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin West project, and also one of the Indian reservations. Did he ever get there?) Raoul graduated with honors in 1935, and received a silver medal from the American Institute of Architects, given to the student with the highest scholastic standing. (Manny saw the citation.) Finally, he came across a later clipping from the Detroit Jewish News, of all places, from his professor, Jean Paul Slusser, describing Raoul as one of his brightest students in his thirty years of teaching there. (Had Raoul known that his favorite professor was Jewish?)

  Manny had taken along the Letters and Dispatches volume and the letters to the grandfather, and he put a few relevant letters together with bits and pieces from the archive to get a fuller picture of the young man: how popular a student he was among his peers; how much he preferred the students here to the snobbish Swedish kids; how he loved wearing his sneakers and eating hot dogs and wouldn’t join a fraternity because it would isolate him from other student strata; and how he loved hitchhiking all around the country on school holidays. As he explained to his grandfather, “When you travel like a hobo, everything’s different. You have to be on the alert the whole time. You’re in close contact with new people every day. Hitchiking gives you training in diplomacy and tact.” What a perfect training for his later role as diplomat.

  So Raoul got a full robust education in America, just as his grandfather had hoped when he sent him here and not to Swedish or European architecture schools. (And he sent him to a public and not an Ivy school.) Here he learned up close about the land, about democracy, about different ethnicities, and maybe about who he was, at heart. For Manny perceived quickly that all his best pals were male; when he traveled about, to Chicago or Mexico, it was always with his male friends. Nary a woman was mentioned in his three-year sojourn here, let alone one dated on a regular basis—circumstantial evidence, to be sure.

  In his honor, now there was a plaque and a distinguished lecture series, by architects, some of whom, it turned out, hardly knew who he was. Well, that was about par for the course. In fact, it seemed that no one at the school, or the university, knew much about RW (including a humanities dean, who had never heard of him). Several faculty were skeptical that he had ever attended Michigan. (“Are you sure it was the same Wallenberg?”) Well, why not? After all, he had made his mark in the world beyond Michigan, beyond architecture. And beyond the classrooms in the streets of humanity.

  One memorable incident stood out, when Raoul was hitchhiking and was kidnapped and in real danger, taken into in the back of the car of three young gangsters, who brandished a loaded revolver. He gave them his wallet, made a casual joke, and convinced them to leave him in a deserted ground—not bad for the young lad. Raoul tossed off the whole thing, to his grandfather, as nothing to fret over. He had escaped any real injury, and exhibited supreme cool and calm—perhaps preparing him for his future adventures with larger gangsters: the Arrow Cross Nazis of Budapest. Manny came to realize how playful and witty was this Raoul, how adaptable, brave and dedicated, back in his late twenties. And how highly talented. He was a figure in the making, to himself, to Grandfather perhaps, and later, to the world. A singular soul. Was it Manny’s job to complete the making of that unfinished identity, with his own vision and the facts as they were given? Well, he surmised, let that be part of my task, my mission. Help him out, in history at least. Though that was a long way off, just yet.

  Manny returned home, strangely fortified, feeling he had been in touch with the real man behind the legend, the thin, darkly-complected figure hidden within the clouds of history. Even Raoul’s small but clear handwriting, in the one notebook there, gave Manny a surge of intimacy. Oh, he knew, driving back from the Manchester airport, that he had only scratched the surface of who Raoul was, but that was enough. A modest breakthrough. Maybe he’d try to stop in Sweden sometime during the spring trip? He had a friend in Lindingö, a suburb of Stockholm, and he’d write him. A young architect no less. Perfect.

  At home he took care of all the immediate needs—his part-time handyman, Russ, had done a good job of house-watching—and then went through the snail mail and the few dozen e-mails. He wanted to get to sleep early, but his head was still filled with the trip, with thoughts, impressions. So he sat down by his computer, checked some of his notes, and got ready to compose a new little scenario. As he felt a bit sleepy, however, he put on an Ella Fitzgerald CD and sat back with a drink listening to the velvety smoothness of her voice.

  But a stranger came in silently, a gentleman in a dark suit; he nodded, as though familiar, and sat down on the leather chair in Gellerman’s study. He removed his fedora, and spoke in a quiet, slightly accented voice:

  “Ella and Louis, my favorites, and no one had her wonderful clarity,” he began, and crossed his leg. “But now, Professor, here with me, do you really think there is a point in this pursuit? What’s done is done. The past is the past. What happened to me wi
ll never really be found out, or completely understood. I was alone through it all, please remember. Well, almost alone; my driver was with me for a time. Suffice it to say, I managed to help a good number of Jews, and they in turn gave me a sudden sense of purpose. So we each benefitted from the other.” He gazed at Manny. “Isn’t that enough of a story?”

  Gellerman responded calmly. “I understand your views, sir, but I am determined to push forward and find out the truth. Well, if not the whole truth, a piece of it, or perhaps several truths.”

  The gentleman fiddled with his hat. “I see you are one of these ‘stubborn’ Americans that I used to know back in Ann Arbor—stubborn in their pursuit of any adventure of interest. Even off-limits.” He flickered a smile. “Well, do me one small favor then. If you should find out anything too dark in my ‘case,’ don’t be afraid of exposing it. Even if it might hurt me personally.”

  “Why do you say this, or rather, sir, think this way?”

  “You should call me Raoul.” A pause. “I lived so long with truth as my only bedfellow, that I became devoted to it; it was the only thing I had, you see. So, if you should by accident find out anything resembling it, feel free to reveal or expose it.”

  “Sounds a bit dangerous, sir.”

  “Dangerous? Well, the real truth always is, I suppose, to one or another. But in my case, it would be something like Sicilian revenge, served up nice and cold.”

  Gellerman was quietly stunned, and also somewhat confused over what was being said. And who was saying it. He felt the heat from the fire.

  “Let me caution you, if I may, about certain things. You will find in your path false leads, varieties of disguise, appearances of truth that are in fact untruths or semi-truths. Are you prepared?”

  Gellerman opened his palms in uncertainty.

  “And beware the Swedes—their government dispatches, subsequent covering statements. And beware my family. They both have an interest in concealing the past, brushing it clean, leaving no marks, protecting it from outsiders, whom they view as unpleasant intruders. All of this will pose a problem for you, Professor, an obstacle. Not to mention the usual zealots and cult followers, harmless though most of them are, in Stockholm, Budapest, maybe Moscow. They also will cloud your vision.”

  Manny felt uncomfortably chided, and nodded. “Why are you telling me all this, sir?”

  The stranger crossed and recrossed his leg. “To prepare you, to warn you, so you do not waste months or years on this pursuit.”

  Manny stared at the strange, formal figure.

  “Please remember, Professor Gellerman, what I said earlier: that if you come upon something of importance, or if you are avenging me in some way, you must not worry about my personal feelings, but ‘go full steam ahead!’ as my Michigan friends used to say”—he smiled—“and reveal it to the world.”

  Presently, as the gentleman departed, Ella also finished. Manny poured himself a scotch and reflected. Did that chat really happen? Or, if not, why had he conjured it up? “Avenge him” in some way, Raoul had said. Like Hamlet’s old man, eh? Go forward then, and full steam ahead! Just watch out for the pitfalls, disguises, traps. Paradoxical wisdom …

  The strange conversation lingered in Manny’s head for weeks, and haunted him with its words, its hallucinatory credibility. And the closeness he felt with the presence of that ghost. Was this the way the real RW had to be discovered, he mused, by invention? Like his true history?

  Spring came, and suddenly all the outdoor fields sprang up—not merely with flowers, but with sports. The little college town suddenly was blooming with tennis matches, track runners, jousting lacrosse battlers, joggers with headbands, Frisbee tossers, baseball players, fierce bicyclists, canoeists and kayakers—sports players popping up like Dutch tulips. The town waited to play, to rise up from winter interiors and gray weather and enter into the sunlight and soft winds. Yet, through all this sudden spring sprouting, Gellerman tried to keep his concentration focused back there and then: Budapest 1944 and Moscow 1945. A bit difficult, sure. But soon he would be heading over there—and it would be easier to enter into memory and history, while walking around amidst the dour streets of scarcity—instead of staying here, amidst the fields and greens of pastel plenty.

  “Why do you have to go there now? Why not wait till June and take me, Dad?”

  “Well, first of all, you have school, my boy, and secondly, if I have a successful trip, I return in June or July, and then you could be freer to perhaps accompany me.”

  The boy shook his head in sharp disappointment. He exaggerated all the gestures of an adult, and the result was the fondest (for Dad) comic mimicry.

  “Now, why don’t you practice, okay?”

  “All right,” he muttered, and picked up his cello and began to tune up.

  “What’s on for today?”

  “Oh, some Schroder and then a Bach prelude.” He practiced with his back to the windows in the living room.

  Gellerman nodded, and soon felt the boy’s cello pleasing his senses. How had he been ignorant for so long of this form of beauty?

  Now, looking out through the windows, he saw what looked like a wild turkey out by the far end of the oval pond, and he wished he had his binoculars right there. The sun went in and out. He pointed to the outside, and the boy turned about and stared.

  “What is it, Dad, a turkey?”

  “Actually, I think a wild peacock. Look—see the fantastic tail with those iridescent feathers?”

  “Wow!” Josh stared. “Amazing!”

  “You’re right, and wait till you hear the mating call sometime. Fierce! But now go back to Bach. Remember, you have math homework as well.”

  So the boy played, and a pair of swallows flew by, and Manny wondered why he would ever want to leave this place, this sanctuary of boy, cello, and birds? Wasn’t it comfortable to the point of perfection?

  As the musical intricacies developed, Gellerman read through the revised pages of Angela’s competent thesis, and considered the pale tenacious Swede. Manny felt he was getting to know him, from the inside, not from the pages of historical material after the fact. Partly from his own words in his Letters and Dispatches, partly from his footprints at Ann Arbor, and lastly from Manny’s own inquiry and imagination. Who was he? A private soul. A subtle man. An outsider, both within his conservative family and his country. And maybe a lost soul too, until he received the commission from K. Lauer, the Hungarian businessman in Stockholm, to help the Jews of Budapest, an offer augmented privately by Iver Olsen, who worked for the US War Refugee Board. The commisson that evolved into a life mission. And the little office in the Swedish legation building in Buda—with Vilmos on hand—became an ideal sanctuary. Where saving Jews became his calling, not a job.

  To the world at large he was a figure of political turbulence and heroism; to Manny, he was becoming a personal puzzle, and probably a puzzle to himself!

  “Dad, the phone’s ringing. Don’t you want to get it?”

  Manny answered it—a local nursing charity asking for his annual contribution. Afterward, he was back in his living room chair, with a glass of red wine, listening, contemplating. This boy had come to Manny when he was fifty, and he had been a mighty bundle of work, and a little human blessing. All that high maintenance had been channeled into his curved wooden instrument of energy and devotion. In a similar way, Manny, in his middle age, had channeled his devotion and energy toward the boy. You needed something serious in your fifties to lift you up from complacency or melancholy for the final few decades. But maybe now, a dozen years later, he needed a new channel and a new challenge—like RW. One with as much unpredictability as the boy, but with high risk, professionally. Was this turning into his mission?

  “Hey, Dad, how long have I been practicing? What’s for dinner?”

  “Well, lamb chops with potatoes.”

  “Can I make mashed, please? I’ll use the Cuisinart, but I won’t make a mess, I promise! It won’t be like last time.”


  He remembered the last time, with bits of mashed potatoes shooting out from the whirring machine over pots pans and dishes onto kitchen shelves and walls, like a July 4 shower of potato stars. Manny winced, smiled, and gave in. Spoiling the boy had become second nature, and he felt fine with it, just fine.

  On the river, on a sixty-degree sunny day that felt like eighty after winter, Gellerman canoed with Jack Littletree, a graduate student and pal, carrying sandwiches and coffee. They canoed upriver, the current light and the sun glinting off the greenish-blue water. A single sailboat was out, and a pair of kayakers.

  “Out here spring is different from back home.”

  “Yes, I imagine.”

  “We sure could use a river like this.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  They headed upriver about forty minutes, and chose a small island on the New Hampshire side to have their lunch. They pulled the canoe onto the shore, tied it to a rock, and found a flat patch to sit on, by the shade of a maple.

  “I read on Yahoo that the Danube’s flooding right now,” Jack observed.

  “Yeah, that happens over there periodically, and it can be pretty bad.”

  Jack smiled, revealing yellowing teeth. “Still, we’d take a river anyway.”

  Manny nodded, remembering his several visits out to Hopi land in southern Arizona, where the land was dusty, arid, a moonscape without rivers or lakes breaking up the monotonous brown landscape.

  “Warmer than last year, remember?” Jack said. “And do you remember that wind, going back?”

  “Yeah, I do, actually.” Manny laughed. “Almost turned us over!”

  Shielded from the high sun, they opened their co-op tuna salad sandwiches and began eating, watching the smooth water.

  “So, how did you do this quarter, tell me? How was the work?”

  “Not too bad,” Jack replied. “A couple of high passes in Globalization, Oral History.”