by Alan Lelchuk
In the stacks of mail from the post office, he found the long one-hundred-page essay from Vladimir, the Russian exile in New York, asking him to read it through carefully and help find a place for it perhaps, if Harvard didn’t want it.
Several e-mails arrived from Budapest, one from the intriguing lady herself, which said how much she had enjoyed their meetings, and when did he plan on returning, “to continue their discussions?” Another came from the historian Borhi, reporting that Mária Ember had been taken to the hospital, very ill, and had he had a chance to meet with her? (Manny scolded himself for not informing the good fellow!) Also, he cited a conference coming up on RW in the fall; did Manny want to submit a paper? And a third, from daughter Dora who wondered if it was really “in Mother’s best interests, your visiting again?” So, demure Dora was quietly shrewd and protective. Maybe she was right?
Where was Gellerman in all this? he asked himself, sitting at his desk and gazing out at the nearby mountains, the foothills of the Whites. He felt in the middle of things, between the long ordeal of Raoul and the gray pall of the past, and this America the Easy; where kids tossed their Frisbees and were wired to iPods, where a student’s education often signified a brand name ticket to his future, and sports stadiums had come to replace churches for millions, with sports stars and movie celebrities their true ministers. Where was moral insight or understanding to be found—in CNN or PBS or NPR wisdom, corporate bottom lines? The society as a whole had been so deluged by Internet culture and cable journalism that real thought was hard to discover, limited to a few journals and a few thousand souls. On top of all that mass thinning down, so much of current “thought”—especially in the universities—had been traduced, mutilated by political correctness, in all areas. In this mess, Manny felt somewhere in the middle, in a peculiar cultural exile. Journals that used to mean a lot to him, such as the New Republic or even The Nation, he now barely looked at.
In the Times he glanced through articles on the brutal Iraq war, a new damning report on the environmental oil disaster, more European fury at Israel—all surrounded by the big ads for wristwatches, leather goods, jewelry. No, this was not tabloid reality, but, rather, advertising chic, with an emphasis on stylishness for its readers. Or consider the latest journalist star, whose op-ed columns were bejeweled with “witty” references from pop culture, TV sitcoms, and whose moral judgments were straight out of Sunday school. Was the Times serious? Style ruled the day here; thus you had the intermingling of the important with the cute, the important flattened out by the glamorous. The New Decadence was displayed everywhere. When had all this happened? In the nineties? Turn of the century?
But now, here, Manny wondered, why serve the long lost cause of trying to find out the truth about the elusive Swede? And what would Manny do with it, once figured out? Was he on a journey of self-discovery as well as a historical pursuit? Would he be contributing any serious revision of history? Or was its chief impact to be felt by the present Wallenberg dynasty in Stockholm, and maybe the state memory, part of contemporary history? As for the personal journey, did Manny really need Raoul for that? Was there an unknown connection? At this, something in him stirred, an odd emotional wave, but what was it? …
The next day he sat on a bench on the large college green, looking out at the white-steepled Baker Library, waiting to meet with Angela. The air was soft, and the green was filled with students reading in the grass, hooked up to their iPods, tossing balls, and sunning with friends. Here and there a mother with a toddler passed by, letting the child run free. Cars moved slowly, pausing to stop for any pedestrian who showed any sign of crossing the street.
“Here you are,” Angela announced, smiling brightly, “and here it is, sir, my final words of wisdom about the man.” She sat down alongside, opened her canvas briefcase, and took out her thesis. “One hundred-forty-two pages. I hope it works for you!”
Charmed by her turn of phrase, “working” for him, he nodded and thanked her. “I look forward to reading it, of course.”
“And how was your trip to Budapest? Did you meet with Mrs. W.?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What did you think? Was she real?” she gushed. “I mean, did you buy her story, as I did?”
Taking note of her new headband, shorts, and running shoes, he asked, “Are you jogging today?”
“Oh, this?” she smiled animatedly, “Yeah, I’m training for the marathon. First, a local charity one, and then down in Boston. Do you run?”
He shook his head. “I do all I can to walk, regularly.”
She nodded. “It’s a blast; you should try it, really.”
“Well, I may be a bit too old for a marathon.”
She hit his arm. “Don’t pretend you’re too old! You look in shape; you can still do it, with some training. C’mon, get into a program. I can start you up, and before you know it, you’ll really be with it.”
He was impressed with Angela’s enthusiasm for him, and smiled at the kindly young woman. He’d remember to tuck in his belly when he stood up.
“So, sir, what did you think? I know she’s a bit weird, but …”
“Yes, I think your catch-all word is a good one here. To tell you the truth, I don’t quite know what to think. How to take her. And you?”
She angled her head, shrugged. “If it’s a fantasy, it’s a great one. But her tale may be too strange to be fictitious.”
“You put the matter well. On the other hand,” he smiled, reflecting on the matter, “her fiction may be her life.”
Angela paused, and she said, “Well, I never thought of it that way, sir.”
He stood up, said he’d read the thesis with interest, and they hugged.
“My dad is taking me out for graduation, to Simon Pearce, and he asked if you wanted to join us.”
“A nice invitation, thanks. Let’s see where I am, both in geography and in the thesis. But the food is good there, I understand. I’ve only visited the glass-blowing shop.”
“Oh, Dad says it’s the best around, and worth the pricy-ness. And he’d love to chat with you about your views on RW. Being half-Swedish himself, and from that generation.”
“It’s a bit warm for running, so take care.”
“Oh, I’m prepared, thanks!” She displayed her hip bottles of water.
Left alone, Manny went for his regular walk, striding first across the green and then over to Occom Pond and around to the golf course, and back again. The area was surrounded by trees, pond, lawns, fine homes. He began feeling firmer, walking quickly, checking his wristwatch to make it real exercise. When he read the thesis, he’d pay attention to the documentation, and the writing, since the content would be familiar and predictable; but maybe she’d have picked up a clue or two of some use. Young energy could do that. And maybe the father would supply a fact of interest…. Should he indeed get into his own long-distance training, as Angela had suggested? But wasn’t he already in some sort of training, though he wasn’t sure what its nature was, just yet? … A wired-up jogger ran past, oblivious, and a group of youngsters emerged from the golf course with clubs and bags. Maybe heading to the river now? College had been different for Manny, back in Brooklyn. Classes, library, study, and then work. Hard to figure this world of sports leisure at the college, even here. Yet, just last year the college had hired a new football coach (ex-quarterback), who declared that the old stadium needed a facelift to attract new recruits and crowds; so ten million was raised to remove one half of the stands, build a new field house, and lay down new turf. How did this happen so swiftly, so easily? Especially when the college was proclaiming huge cutbacks in humanities departments, secretaries and janitors were laid off, and adjuncts dropped. And Dartmouth was Ivy League, not a juco or state U. football factory.
On his return route, Manny recalled, out of the blue, the great Holocaust historian up in Vermont, who, curiously enough, had almost the same first name as RW. Amidst the tall maples, he made a mental note to contact the fellow.
He finished up the hearty walk, feeling heady in the wonderful sunshine, and met his son on the green. They drove over to The Jewel of India for their ritual dinner. Over their standard fare—curried lamb and tikka masala chicken, vegetable pakora and garlic nan—Manny listened to the brown-eyed boy describe, with bubbly excitement, his desire to try out for a Young Artist Orchestra in Tanglewood, where he might play for six weeks. “And, Dad, we would get to go free to all of the BSO performances. Can you believe it?!” I reminded him he was still a bit young for that. No matter. His fervent emotion was matched by his anticipation of the music to be played—Sibelius, Mozart, Beethoven—and the fact that he would get to see his regular teacher, the third cellist in the BSO, throughout the summer. As the boy wolfed the lavish dishes with familiar gusto and spoke about Mozart’s deceptive surface simplicity and underlying intricacy, Manny attended with interest and amazement—how had the boy turned out this way? How had this meteorite of talent and energy descended upon him? (From trying to match his older brother?) Manny wrote down the dates of the three orchestral performances and promised to go to every one. “But you have to be there on time, remember!” the son warned, knowing the father’s terrible habit of tardiness.
Four days later, on a cloudy Tuesday morning, Manny was knocking on the door of a small white cape in a town twenty minutes north of Burlington, sent there by Raul Hilberg, the historian, who said, “If you want to know what Wallenberg meant, go visit Sándor, a survivor.” An elderly man, in his late seventies with a curling mustache, opened the door, and after hearing Hilberg’s name, Sándor Torok welcomed Manny in. After lemonade, served by the wife, and some introductory chat, Manny asked what he remembered about the great Swede.
Torok shrugged his shoulders, gave a small smile, and spoke slowly, with a heavy accent. “Remember him? Well, he saved my life, so, yes, I do remember him. I was nearly fifteen, had lost my parents and my sister, and was hiding out wherever I could, when one evening he ran into me in an apartment building in Pest. I had made myself a little nest under the stairwell, and somehow we met, as he used that apartment building sometimes to sleep in, and when he understood that I was a Jewish boy, he asked me, in German, about myself. Soon, he asked if I wanted to work for him, and when I said, yes, of course, he brought me upstairs, created a safe pass for me, and”—he got up now and went to a bureau, brought back a small wooden box—“and he handed me a small crucifix and told me to wear it around my neck, not to take it off, until the war was over.” He opened the box and lifted out a silver crucifix along with the safe pass. “My souvenirs from the war. And from Mr. Wallenberg.” I handled the simple cross, and looked at the teenager in the photo. (Not too different from Manny’s Joshua at that age.) He sat back down and went on. “I worked for him, sometimes for the legation, sometimes for the agency, doing errands of all sorts, mostly as a messenger boy on a bicycle. And whenever I was stopped, I made sure my crucifix showed, first thing. For the Arrow Cross, this was an important sign.” He shrugged, meaning it wasn’t much. “So, what else would you like to know, sir?”
Manny noted two small black and white photos of Budapest bridges in frames on the mantelpiece. “Did you know anything about him personally? For example, did you know his driver, Langfelder?”
“Oh, yes, I saw him quite often. A big fellow, witty, and very decent. Always brought me a licorice twist or a chocolate.”
“Ever see him with any of his women friends?”
Drinking his lemonade, Sándor shook his head. “Except for his female secretaries, like Countess Nako or Hedda Kattai, I don’t recall any … But, remember, I didn’t socialize with him in the evenings, and mostly saw him if he came to sleep in our apartment building; you know he changed places to sleep every night or two, as a precaution.”
Manny got up and went to the mantelpiece and held up the bridge photos, old postcards, trying to find a new avenue of interest, or a new path of chance.
“If you are asking did he ‘womanize,’ no, I don’t think so.” He smiled kindly. “For example, I do remember that once I had to deliver a message to him at night in a nightclub, of all places, and even there he was not womanizing. There were only men at his table, in fact. So you see,” he shook his head, “you are going up the wrong tree.”
Manny nodded, and looked at the old man with the grand mustache and full memories.
“No one could really imagine what it meant to be with him in those days. He was like a god, or a moshiach, if you know what that is, a real moshiach.”
“Yes, I do know,” Manny said, more interested in what the old man, a graying walrus, had given me inadvertently. I nodded and said, yes, I understood, and we chatted for another twenty minutes or so. Then he walked me out to the car, in the driveway of his cape.
“Looks like a nice little neighborhood,” Manny remarked, seeing the row of well-kept houses and suburban lawns.
“Oh, yes,” he smiled broadly, “Nice and dull, just the way I like things nowadays.”
“So your past life is unknown to all your neighbors?”
“Of course!” he said, rather proudly. “Why bother them, or burden them, with my unpleasant past?” He hit me in the shoulder. “Why bother myself?”
Manny asked him to call or write if he remembered anything else of interest, and he said he would, most definitely.
Manny added, “There’s a woman in Budapest who claims her mother was Wallenberg’s lover or mistress, maybe even wife, and she was the product of that union. What do you think? Can this be true?”
He tugged at his mustache. “Could be. But please remember, people idolized him then; his name was whispered on all Jewish lips; he was the moshiach, a real savior, as I said. Probably now he has become a sort of celebrity, you may say, and people may develop fantasies about him, I don’t know. But you know what? I’ve learned one thing in my life: anything is possible.” He looked around, held out his hands wide, “Look, Sándor Torok—a boy hiding in Budapest, now a man alive and well in Vermont!” His smile was large, and somewhat mirthful. “So, to me, anything is possible, my friend.”
Driving back south through the wonderful green hills on empty Highway 89, Manny retraced the interview and recalled Hilberg’s words: “Yes, see this Torok; he’s trustworthy.”
Back home in his study, Manny felt stirred, his imagination revved up:
The scene was an evening at the Arizona Mulatto, a cabaret nightclub on Nagymezo utca in 1944 during the siege of Budapest, where German SS and Wehrmacht officers mingled with British spies, counterintelligence agents, Hungarian VKF2 (military intelligence). The place was packed, tables full, clients two deep at the bar. At a corner table four men sat, one in military uniform, and Wallenberg, in jacket and tie. A band was playing, waiters were scurrying back and forth, and the smoke from cigarettes and cigars was billowing upward to the high ceiling. The noise was deafening, but it did little to quiet the rumors, spreading all over the restaurant, of the Russians landing, or the Allies bombing, or the SS coming. A burlesque show was onstage.
“Perhaps this is what Dante meant by hell,” mused a young man, in German.
“But which circle, do you think?” inquired a second.
The young man, in German uniform, looked at him. “Ninth?”
“My god, no,” Raoul retorted, “closer to the third or fourth, no more.”
A hearty laugh.
“So tell me, what will happen when the Russians come in?”
“Oh, I don’t think anything unusual—for them,” the fourth man, Gábor, said. “Rapes, pillage, theft, lawlessness. The usual delicacies offered by the Red Army—each man for himself, whatever he can take, grab, or steal.”
“And if the Americans should come first?”
“Oh, they won’t, don’t worry. Their bombs, yes, but not their tanks or soldiers.”
“And it’s better that way, for my side,” put in Raoul. “Trials and lawful procedures are not for the Soviets. Which means, if I were a German officer, I would w
orry seriously.” He smiled amiably.
A waiter came by, bringing more drinks.
“So what is new with your highbrow reading?” asked the military officer, Klaus. “Is it still Musil, or another degenerate?”
“Arthur Schnitzler, his novellas.”
The German smiled. “Schnitzler? I understand he is rich—richly perverse!”
Everyone smiled. “Actually, he is rather interesting,” observed Raoul. “Especially if you know the old Vienna.”
“Do you?”
“Not really. But I have a good imagination!”
Lean Gábor gripped Raoul’s forearm playfully, “For the perverse, do you mean?”
“For old Vienna,” Raoul responded, to the jocularity of his group.
The waiter brought over a new round of beers.
“Everything is watered down, though they charge you the same,” noted Klaus.
“No, no, they charge you more, now, for the delivery service under stress!”
Wallenberg leaned in, “Tell me frankly, Klaus, did they hunt down and prosecute homosexuals in Germany as hard as they did Jews?”
“Why, Raoul, what do you think? Our Führer was an egalitarian when it came to his killing—once you made his favorite lists. Jews, homos, gypsies— they were all highly and equally deserving!”
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Gábor, “it is time to drain out my beer,” and he stood.
“Make sure you don’t get detained unnecessarily in there,” advised Klaus. “Those restrooms are gaining a reputation as high—or low—as the baths!”