by Alan Lelchuk
Budapest, Nov. 25, 1944.
Manny commented:
This situation was changed, however, when Raoul visited Veesenmayer later in November, and told him that he, and not the Arrow Cross leaders, would be held accountable for these crimes by the Russians and Americans when they took control of Hungary, if the German governor did not immediately put a halt to the forced marches now that he held in his hands the formal report by Wallenberg. The next day, the intelligent but frightened German chief, aware that the Russians were closing in on one side and that it was likely the Allies were soon going to take the country, gave an order to the Arrow Cross to stop the daily marches immediately.
Once again, Wallenberg had found a way to stop the brutal torture and killing of Jews, this time making an end run around the (vicious) Hungarian Nazis, and again defeating Eichmann’s will.
The gentleman was very clever in his tactics, his strategies, marveled Manny, and very bold.
CHAPTER 13
In the heat of the day, the terrace of the Hanover Inn was a pleasant meeting place, especially in the twilight. Maybe twenty tables covered by linen tablecloths, with big green umbrellas providing shade, gave the place an old-world atmosphere. Before a larger dinner meeting, Manny met with his old buddy Richard Mackie, the chair of his department. A robust fellow with short hair and ruddy cheeks who loved boxing and movies as much as literary criticism, Mackie was hosting a small group to meet and discuss the summer’s program of institutes and conferences focusing on American cultures. Richard and Manny met to chat privately, to discuss what Manny would teach in the coming year, and his salary, which they got through quickly; and then Richard asked about the Wallenberg project. Mackie, whose intelligence when focused was acute, probed Manny with several sharp questions, and he answered with voluminous answers. At one point Manny noted something humorous, and Richard erupted with his patented raucous laugh, causing many diners at nearby tables to turn and stare. As he went on, Mackie nodded and said, “I got it now—it’s an ongoing mystery, isn’t it? With a series of traps along the way. Well, if I can dig up any more research and travel money, and you need it, let me know. Maybe you’ll come up with some original interpretation, or something new, eh? Sounds like you have already … But”—and he leaned over with his cranberry soda drink—“just be careful you don’t get lost in the chase, know what I mean? Leave that part for the FSB and CIA hounds.”
“You mean I should watch out for polonium-210 in my tea, huh?”
Another raucous laugh! Mackie was at his best when letting loose.
He asked, “How was that student’s thesis, by the way—was it Angela?”
“Yeah, it was hers. And not bad.”
“So are you writing an article, a book? Academic or trade publisher?”
Manny shook his head. “Just notes right now, a few scenes … I’m not sure what it is, maybe a shadow thesis.”
A broad smile. “I like that. Sounds like the subject deserves a ‘shadow’ argument or thesis.” He laughed again, this large and generous human volcano of Irish wit with a touch of Native American rebelliousness mixed in.
“Hey, here’s our group,” Mackie said and waved for them to come over. “Let’s see if we can make headway on defining that new track …”
Yet, all through his braised venison dinner, in that polite and elegant setting, Manny replayed Richard Mackie’s cautionary words, tossed at him as an aside. Don’t get lost in the chase.
Later, at home in the country house, Manny put on his basic (three) radios and took up his current reading, Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Wonderful book, which he always enjoyed rereading a chapter or two from. Here, amidst the chaotic piles of books and notebooks, amidst the wonderful photos of the boys when they were little, he felt at home, yet also, paradoxically, in exile. An outsider. A good distance away from events—and people—in spoiled, rich, Teflon-America. (Well, two and three Americas.) A country more violent, more decadent, more packaged than when Hofstadter was writing about it. An empire now, a dark one too, run by Texan clowns and neocon goons. What a state of affairs! Oh, well, he figured, reading part 2, “The Religion of the Heart,” let the empire have its fun with its chest-pounding wars and excessive rhetoric and pretend feel-good humanism. Manny preferred to stay with his old favorites—his historians, his memories, his mysterious Raoul. Enough pleasures and labors to fill his remaining years.
From the cyberuniverse of e-mails, he received one from Stockholm, a friend who alerted him to the National Archives and Intelligence at Riksarkivet. And another from a lost soul in Ektarinburg, Russia, who had heard about Manny’s search and claimed he knew something of the Gulag whereabouts of Raoul in the 1970s. But how had he heard about Manny? Was he, or his project, on the Internet now? Circling through cyberspace with dizzying speed, and reaching all portals around the world? Manny going viral?
And another from Budapest, from the intriguing daughter:
When will you return, Professor? Do you have a definite date yet? Mother has been crazy, running to the countryside always, finding and preparing her papers for your project together. She is very excited, I may say.
Your friend, Dora
A stirring tapped in his chest, but he wasn’t sure what it signified … Manny found his old vinyl set of János Starker, which his son had rediscovered, set a record on his turntable, listened, and read. The wind blew slightly outside, fluttering the trees at the end of the meadow, and the sky soon darkened into a bluish violet. A subtle purplish light, to be sure, but one that also suggested a possible thunderstorm. Manny recalled when there had been animals on the property, two horses and a cow, and the horses always stayed apart from the cow—enemies, save when a T-storm hit, and they would band together in a small circle, twenty feet apart, sudden friends in the midst of fear and doubt. While the rain poured and lightning struck wildly, they stayed right there, in a new union, three strange bedfellows waiting it out. When it passed over, they returned to their former roles, two horses and an outsider cow.
When three of the Bach suites were finished, he shifted to Dylan. Now reading the chapter “The Evangelical Spirit,” he listened to Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” and “Queen Jane.” Unlike many others, Manny thought fondly of the sixties. A time of agitation, social urgency, and visceral alertness. The country was alive, the citizens bewildered but excited, and democracy opening up. The nightly news counted. Those daily protests in college towns like Madison, Berkeley, Cambridge, created vibrant street theater, filled with new actors, kids working on improvised acts of revolt. And in the background—or forefront?—was the music of the minstrels and the rockers, the folksingers and the bluesy southerners. Dylan, The Band, Joe Cocker, The Stones, Richie Havens, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell—those were the poets of the era. (Not the high poets, but the folk poets for the aspiring rebels.) An ongoing jam session of the national consciousness, with Dylan in the front marking the new roads. An American-style revolution, in which kids played mischievously and public theater mingled with ideas of the New Left. It had the effect of shaking up the nation, every which way, from bodies to body politic. Inexorably, in the years since, the fires of the sixties had been tamped down, and the citizenry had been steadily tranquilized, Valium-ed, furtively turned into willing sheep, by the political Right and frightened media servants, including the popular PBS culture. And many of the new historians (and journalists) had gone to work, helping all that along, rescripting a new narrative about how dangerous those times were, how immoral, how un-American!
Ah, history, as it is remade by the mainstream historians.
Record over, Manny set the vinyl Dylan and Starker back into their sleeves. In the Indian Room, named for his Curtis photographs, he turned on the television to see the Red Sox score. Winning, once again; but there was still plenty of time in the season to fall apart. Without sports, the country had little to offer him now. Except for his sons, of course, and some of the students. A phone call came
, and it was Jack, his Hopi pal, who said he was returning home to Arizona for a while, and maybe they could have a coffee or lunch before he went? “Sure,” Manny responded, and they made a date. He watched the ballgame, read Hofstadter, and set Raoul on the back burner. Made a note to answer the lost Russian soul and the Budapest lady.
The next morning he drove over to the adjacent town, Lyme. On the back way, he followed the narrow tree-lined dirt road that wound eight miles or so past the Skiway and through the small town itself, with a manicured green in the middle; then he headed down on Route 10 to the River Road, driving on the winding macadam and passing through rolling fields of green, with houses dotting the landscape every few miles. Adorning the pastoral scene were cows grazing. And at the same time, he saw Raoul with Vilmos on the road to Hegyeshalom, driving slowly and tossing some chocolates and socks to the rows of Jews marching. This running montage was bizarre … On the road, alongside the Connecticut River, Manny stopped at the Mill Gardens greenhouses to pick out flowers for his departing department secretary. The place was mostly empty, only a few shoppers and a young grower/salesman; he meandered among the several greenhouses and open rows of flowers—bright colors, aromas, plumages—and thought how the greenhouse business would be a good one for an ex-historian to hide out in. Read and write amidst the orchids, zinnias, gladiolas, African lilies. He settled on a pink fuscia hanging basket and two geranium pots, and went on his way.
On Route 10 again to town, he listened to the Vermont FM station, where they were playing Puccini. A selection of opera music. He recalled when the boy used to sing in the local opera company, over in the next town, Lebanon … Yes, opera was the music that should accompany his own personal journey, the music of high melodrama, unexpected comedy. Was he playing in his own version now? Perhaps what he thought noble was really comic?
Passing the golf course, sighting a group of men in Bermuda shorts alongside their carts practicing their swings, Gellerman stirred with a thought, envisioned a scene, and suddenly felt a direction. He drove over to the classic Baker Library, one of the oldest Ivy libraries, and parked.
Presently he was sitting on the third floor of the library, at a small desk near the old American Indian sculpture overlooking the green. A formidable figure. Manny had his laptop, which warmed itself up with little beeping sounds. Stretching inside.
He began writing an inspired scene:
Ambassador Söderblom, a tall well-dressed man in his fifties wearing a wide-brimmed hat and charcoal-gray suit, shook hands with Tage Erlander, and said, “Thank you for calling me in, Mr. Prime Minister.”
“Please sit, Ambassador. Will you have a drink or sandwich?”
“Perhaps a coffee, yes. Thanks.”
Tage called to his secretary, who brought in a pair of coffees on a tray.
“So, tell me, you saw this chief of security fellow, yes? How was it? And will you get to see the ‘Great Leader’ himself, do you think?”
Söderblom nodded. “I did see Abramov, the chief of counterintelligence, called SMERSH, as I wrote you. They are the ones who supposedly would be in charge of Wallenberg, if he were there, and considered a spy.”
“If, you said. They are still claiming ignorance?”
“Yes. Abramov says he knows of no Wallenberg in their prison. Or his whereabouts.”
“Tell me, is this Abramov as bad as the other monster, Beria?”
“They are in a competition, I believe.”
The prime minister smiled wryly. “Did you press him on this issue?”
Söderblom considered. “I did, yes, as much as an ambassador can in such a case. Remember, I do not want to make them hostile toward us, as we have much business to complete with them.”
The prime minister nodded. He stood up, and walked around his desk to an easy chair, carrying a notepad, to sit opposite from Söderblom. “I am very concerned about Mr. Wallenberg, and I fear if we don’t find out something very soon, it will be too late.” He paused and lit a cigarette.
“Well, there is some news; I will get to see Stalin himself very soon.”
Tage Erlander leaned forward. “How do you know this?”
“I pressed Abramov, and he agreed to set up a meeting in a few weeks.”
Erlander relaxed. “Well, that is something.”
“Of course, this meeting will be in the context of larger issues, you know.”
“Larger issues? Like business and economics and politics? Yes, they are larger issues, but not more important. The more I learn about this Wallenberg situation, the more disturbed I am. I take my responsibility in this too, believe me. I should have paid closer attention.”
The ambassador pursed his thin lips. “We cannot attend to everything, Prime Minister. There are many issues and many problems on the table with the Soviets. Our immediate business dealings, for example, and their desire for a large line of credit.”
“I accept that—and the fact that, on top of being a very difficult group to deal with, they don’t trust us too much. Not after our position of neutrality.” He paused. “They must not be too pleasant to deal with?”
“Oh, they have been polite enough with me.”
“If I may say,” said Erlander, “you don’t seem too perturbed by the unknown whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg.”
“That is not true, Prime Minister. It’s just that, so far, we have very little evidence to suggest where he is, or that the Soviets may be holding him.”
Erlander checked his pad. “What about the Americans? They are asking if we want their help in pushing the Russian Bear on this case. What is your opinion?”
“I think we Swedes can and should take care of our own affairs, sir, without any help from others, especially the Americans. If you recall, Wallenberg was given aid by the OSS, a secret service organization of the Americans.”
Erlander peered at his ambassador, whom he found reluctant and unhelpful, and increasingly unpleasant. “As I understand the matter, it was the War Refugee Board that gave financial aid to Mr. Wallenberg, in pursuit of helping the Jews of Budapest.”
“No need to quibble, sir. The point is that I am in the midst of an ongoing discussion with them, and so far, I have not encountered any major obstacles.”
The prime minister tapped his pad, the secretary knocked and entered, and announced that the expected guests had arrived.
“I have asked the Wallenbergs to come in and meet you, Ambassador.”
For a fleeting moment, Söderblom looked miffed, before his face returned to its imperturbable mask. He stood and waited for the surprise guests to enter.
After the initial introductions and shaking of hands, Marcus and Jacob took their chairs. The prime minister brought them up to date on what had occurred.
“Now, would you like to inquire of the ambassador?” he invited. “Please ask anything. Or even, make any suggestions concerning your cousin.”
Marcus spoke up. “I am sure that the ambassador is doing all he can on Raoul’s behalf.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wallenberg. I will try my best.”
“And that it must not be easy dealing with the Bolsheviks.”
“Not so easy, true. But I believe they have been searching for him.”
The two cousins nodded and looked sympathetic.
Erlander spoke. “The ambassador’s meeting with Stalin will likely be in a few weeks, and he’ll be bringing the matter up with him personally. Do you have any suggestions for Ambassador Söderblom?”
Jacob played with the golden chain of his pocket watch on his black vest. “That is very good of you, Ambassador. Our entire family appreciates that, since we know you have much more significant dealings to talk over.”
The prime minister waited for something more to be said, something stronger. But Jacob and Marcus only looked on quietly.
Prime Minister Erlander was puzzled; maybe they thought they had been asked there pro forma? “Naturally, I have asked the ambasador to press for urgency, as much as he can.”
“Thank you, Prime Minister,” said Marcus. “That is much appreciated. We realize how difficult this must be, to press for urgency on a single individual. Any news at all will be welcomed by us, by his mother, and by his two half siblings.”
Söderblom nodded sympathetically.
“Naturally, if there is anything we can do to help, we are at your service.”
“I will remember that,” offered the ambassador. “I am sure your name and your high business affiliations will mean something to the Field Marshall.”
The ambassador finished his cup of coffee; Jacob fingered his gold chain; Marcus sat quietly, staring ahead.
The prime minister, baffled, looked around at his group of guests, jotted a few notes down, and finally stood up and thanked the Wallenbergs for coming in; his heart was stirring. They shook hands all around, and the two men departed.
“You can see what gentlemen they are,” offered Erlander. “They are not presuming to put too big a burden on you and your discussion with Stalin.”
“Yes, I can see that. They are most definitely gentlemen of honor.” He paused. “They are converted Christians, yes?”
“Born Christians. Conversion happened in the last century.”
“And Raoul too?”
“I don’t know his religious convictions.”
With that, the prime minister went back around to his side of the large oak desk, thanked the ambassador for coming, and advised him to keep him posted on any development in this case.
Söderblom assured him he would.
After the ambassador departed, Erlander sat disappointed at his desk, not quite understanding what had gone on. He jotted a reminder to himself to check on the diplomatic notes that had been passed in the year since Wallenberg’s disappearance, including those from Foreign Minister Günther, and to check on Söderblom’s background: what sort of man he was, his origins, his diplomatic biography. He seemed oddly undiplomatic, the prime minister judged; and the Wallenbergs, noted for their business aggressiveness, seemed strangely unaggressive. Was it politeness, timidity, fear? Why hadn’t they pushed harder? Everything was upside down in this case, Erlander decided; he half wished to meet the Stalin monster himself, to deliver a few straightforward messages regarding the return of Raoul.