Searching for Wallenberg

by Alan Lelchuk

  Birds twittered; Manny read:

  It has been my fate to have my life intertwined with history, and I will try to tell my tale with as much accuracy as my memory and my notes allow. Mine has been an unusual story, in many ways, and I can only hope that I will do it full justice. My father was Raoul Wallenberg, the notable Swedish diplomat, and my mother was Klara Esther Frank, another noble soul from Budapest. Few people knew of their union, or of me, their sole child. Their story has never been told before. I hope I have the skills, and the courage, to tell it well.

  Two people I wish to thank in advance here. First, my daughter, Dora, a psychologist, who has always helped me with her support and faith. The second is the professor of history from Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, America, Emmanuel Gellerman, a wise and generous professional who has guided me in my narrative …

  Manny looked up, not amused but amazed, at this premature expression of gratitude in her manuscript. Why? Why had she proceeded this way?

  This memoir has been a labor of twenty-five years of gratitude and memory, for an unusual person and family, and also to give some light on a dark period in history. The Cold War contributed strongly to the suffering of my family and the death of my father, and I hope my tale will contribute to understanding that history from a personal point of view. (I want to add that is why, in part, I chose Prof. Gellerman as my guide here, as he is a specialist in that period of history.)

  Now, before I begin the story as I—

  She interrupted his reading with a gleaming smile, standing before him. “Dinner is ready, and it is best while hot, if you don’t mind.”

  Dazed and even stunned, he got up and was led to the round wooden table in the next room, the table set with a linen tablecloth. He sat and faced the bowl of soup.

  “I made it without too much hot paprika, so please don’t worry!”

  He carefully tried the first spoonful, a sort of gazpacho. “It’s tasty.”

  “I am so glad!”

  He tasted his soup, debating his words, and raising his appraisal of her ingenuity.

  “Is the translation suitable?”

  Slowly he nodded. “Yes, it is fine.” He broke a piece of bread, took another few spoonfuls. “But why did you already insert my name in the text? At this very early stage? I don’t understand the need for—”

  She stopped him, by handing over a sheet of paper across the table.

  He shook his head. And read the note. It was an e-mail printout, with a Yale University Press return address, and he perused the body, a single paragraph:

  Yes, we are very interested in your project, Ms. Wallenberg; it sounds promising indeed. We certainly hope that the writing will be equal to the great subject. And I am delighted that you have secured the services of Prof. E. Gellerman to help you here; I have looked up his work online and in our library, and he is a very credible historian. As soon as you can get me a proposal and a sample chapter, we will send you a contract. Do you have a date yet for the delivery of the manuscript?

  It was signed by the editor in chief, Jason Margolis.

  Gellerman read it over three times, to try to digest the full import. He scratched his beard, stood up, and went to the window looking out at the green hillside and the birds landing at the bird feeder. “Swallows?” he asked?

  “Ah, let me see. But it is Dora who is the bird expert.”

  Presently she was standing by his side, her white blouse brushing his shoulder, and they gazed at the hungry birds. “Yes, perhaps swallows.”

  They stood for a moment, looking at the happy birds eating and chattering. The twilight was filtering the yellow light with a yellow-green beauty.

  “You like it here?” she asked, smiling at him.

  He took a breath. “It’s the countryside, and I feel at home in it, yes.”

  “I am glad.”

  He waited, and presently she asked him to return to the table for the dinner.

  She served him the roast chicken dish, with kasha varnikas and carrots, and he watched her perform the simple tasks with careful skill. Clearly, he understood now, she was also skilled at the more complicated tasks, and with planning as well.

  “Would you like some music?” she chirped.

  “No need, thanks. I can hear the birds.”

  She smiled.

  He ate a bite of chicken, with the old-fashioned ribbons of kasha noodles, and took a carrot too. Sweet. He drank some wine. She was waiting for his verdict, and he said, “Very tasty.” To which she nodded happily.

  “Why and how did you choose Yale to write to?”

  “Oh,” she beamed, “I learned they have a special series devoted to Jewish questions.”

  “I see,” he said, seeing little, understanding less, but knowing this was a sly, formidable madwoman, not simply a freakish nutcase. And if tomorrow was a surprise, what was this, here tonight? An early reward? Or an early warning?

  That night he slept fitfully, alert at every noise, wondering if he could possibly be locked away there, kidnapped in some Edgar Allen Poe thriller …

  The next afternoon they were back on the train, chugging back to town. At Zsuzsanna’s apartment, she excused herself and refashioned herself, dressing up in a rather formal suit when she reemerged from her room. When it became clear that they were going out, he nodded and asked where? She put her finger to her lips, silencing his request, and ushered him outside. Soon they were waiting by a tram stop, chatting, and next they were on the tram itself, number 7, zigzagging in and around the town. The heat was sticky, twilight had arrived, and he hoped they would reach their destination soon.

  In twenty minutes they alighted, taking care with the sharp steps of the tram. She led him to a small old building, just around the corner from the large celebrated synagogue. Taking his hand, she led him through a long dark corridor and into a plain room—“the real shul,” she beamed—where a small group of participants was waiting, mostly older souls. A slender rabbi wearing a blue suit and gray tie welcomed them graciously. Soon a few others filed in, totaling maybe a dozen altogether, and they got ready for the service.

  Manny followed the others in removing his shoes; candles were lit, and everyone sat on the floor. Along with a yarmulke, Manny was handed a slender prayer book for the Tishah B’Av service, which was printed in both English and Hebrew. The room was squarish and simple, reminding Manny of the Brownsville basement where he had learned Jewish history and language some fifty years ago in a Sholem Aleichem Bund school; the atmosphere was plain too, except for the flickering lights of the candles. How strange! he thought.

  The rabbi spoke in Hungarian but directed Gellerman to the appropriate page and asked if he would read a section, in Hebrew or English. Manny nodded.

  As the rabbi began his low chanting. Manny read to himself:

  Tisha B’Av, the Ninth Day of Av, is the day on which the Jewish people recall the catastrophes which it has suffered and which have influenced its life and character. The historical events which Jewish tradition has associated most closely with Tisha B’Av have been the destruction of the First Temple of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE—events which were fateful in their consequences.

  Because of the destruction of the First Temple the Jews went into exile for the first time—and the awareness of galut remained a constant in the subsequent life of the people. With the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jews lost their independence, were scattered to the four corners of the world, and began their career as an “eternal minority.”

  Manny was nudged by Zsuzsanna, and he looked up to see the Rabbi asking him to lead off the reading, a graceful courtesy amidst the group sitting around him, like old Indians at a camp fire. So Manny began, in English, in a neutral voice, chapter 1 of the Book of Lamentations:

  How desolate lies Jerusalem that was once full of people! She that was once a power among nations is now like a forlorn widow! She who was once a princess among people is now a vassal!

&n
bsp; Tears upon her cheeks, she weeps pitifully in the night; of all of her allies there is none to comfort her; all her friends have betrayed her and have become her enemies.

  Judah is gone into exile; she dwells upon the nations in poverty and servitude; she finds no peace. On the narrow roads, her pursuers overtook her.

  The atmosphere was of quiet and spareness; and the long-ago written words, and the sniffling of Zsuzsanna beside him, worked a surprising sense of uncertainty into Gellerman; he paused. Restraining his tension, he started up again:

  The highways to Zion mourn; none come to assemble for the festival; all the gates of her cities are desolate. Her priests despair and her maidens are grieved. Ah, bitter is Jerusalem’s lot.

  Her foes now rule, her enemies prosper; for the Lord has punished her for her manifold transgressions; her young people are led into captivity before the foe …

  Gellerman concluded his page-long portion; his friend Zsuzsa sobbed lightly; the group was quietly waiting. Privately he wiped his brow. Though he had read poetry aloud, always in the same neutral voice, the stuff had never really affected him as this selection did.

  Next came a yarmulked octogenarian reading in Hebrew, and the hour of reading from the Book of Lamentations ensued. Just as moving as the text of loss and mourning was the intense emotion triggered in his friend, sitting alongside him on the floor; Zsuzsa cried and shook all the way through, though trying to restrain it. As much as Gellerman admired the ongoing rhythmic chant, he had little idea that a text would affect her that way; she used a small white handkerchief constantly at her eyes and nose, but at an angle, away from the sight of the others. Oh, the Jews had lost much, much, and seemed to memorialize and remember each and every blow. Suffering was displayed, honored. The Book of Lamentations was direct, evocative, monstrous in its news, its powerful history urgent and consuming. Near the end of the dark hour, Manny found himself caught up in the grim memory, and his head ached. Probably the plain room, the old Jews, and the simple ceremony contributed to his disorder, he felt.

  The hour ended with the Aleinu prayer recited. Zsuzsanna stood and chanted, and he followed her.

  Walking out afterward into the soft night air, Manny remarked to his friend that he had never realized how much this holiday of collective remembrance meant to her.

  She shook her head. “My father, that’s what it means to me. My father! In this room, where he once recited the Lamentations with my mother; it’s terrible, terrible! I remember and honor him, and what I’ve lost. Can you imagine?!” She walked unsteady for a dozen steps or so, and suddenly she began shaking, and nearly fell, sagging onto a black iron fence bordering a park, where she began shaking violently, and crying, hugging herself in paroxysms of pain and torment.

  Gellerman was so startled that for a few seconds he stood his ground, stunned, before moving to help her, holding her around, clasping her for the next four or five minutes, holding her to his chest and rocking her for comfort. It was maddening, and bewildering.

  Her disturbing performance, especially after the hour and a half in that room of ancient despair, shook his equilibrium and easy assumptions about what was going on and even how to read her. He must give her more delicate sympathy, he told himself, and her whole situation too. Obviously she was as frail and stressed as she was obsessed.

  Ahead on the main street, the cars darted back and forth, along with the circling yellow trams, and this simple reality flashed for a moment to his overheated brain like some sort of children’s toy game, played out here in the night of Budapest. He helped his newfound patient up onto the trolley, and held her hand all the way back to her apartment, where he made sure she was home safe, and then he bid her adieu, saying he would call later.

  Budapest at night did possess that toy-like quality, he concluded, at least here walking across the Liberty Bridge toward the Gellert Hotel and Palace Hill. Lit up at night, the series of four bridges crossing the Danube made for a pretty sight, with the big white Elisabeth Bridge just up the river to the right, along with the occasional boat gliding down river. You could see the parliament buildings festooned with light in the soft black night. Manny was reminded of his first trek, as a teenage boy, across the Brooklyn Bridge toward the skyline of Manhattan, and feeling the sense of transport to a new world. Now, walking toward the hills of Buda, he thought what a new territory of strangeness this current situation presented, the way the adventure kept taking turns this way and that, so that apparent fact merged with subtle fantasy and sure assumption was toppled by new event. Just ahead, up here in the first district, was where Raoul and his legation had operated, where Vilmos would have the Studebaker ready for him to hop in at a moment’s notice, to race to an urgent rescue point.

  Meanwhile, the roller coaster ride of the emotions roared on, taking neutral Manny up and down with sudden turns and twists. This was not Dartmouth predictability, or a professional historian’s usual journey in foreign turf; this was something else. But what?

  He had a quick drink at the hotel and then walked back across the bridge, where he took a tram back to the Oktagon station area and his rented apartment.

  In the morning a phone call came from Dora, who explained that Mom had to go to a doctor’s appointment, so would he join her for breakfast at a café, and perhaps a walk in the Margaret Island?

  Only slightly surprised, Manny accepted, and soon was meeting up with Dora in the New York Café, not far from his place. Was this to be the pattern, a fantastic night with the strange mother, and then a consoling visit from the dutiful, practical daughter? To calm him down?

  “This seems like a repeat of how we met last time,” he observed.

  She smiled lightly. Brown curly hair, white blouse, trim figure, the same lovely young face with the small upturned nose.

  Dora sipped tea and nibbled at a roll, while he ate a full breakfast of eggs and toast. They—mostly he—made small chat. Her small cheeks had just a touch of pink blush, whenever he said something slightly unusual, and her shyness was made more attractive by her occasional laugh.

  Presently, they took the number 4 tram over the Margaret Bridge, and walked the few hundred yards to Margaret Island, festive in the summer. They walked in the sun, rented a bicycle cart for two, sat on a bench at the far end of the island.

  “So,” he asked, “what are you here for this time?”

  “Please be careful in looking through the papers of Mother,” she began. “She has spent a long time collecting them, as you may know. And they are very, very private; even I have not seen them.” She looked at him. “What I want so say is this: Please judge the papers, and her, with much care.”

  “Of course.”

  “I am not sure if she understands what they may mean, or ‘represent.’”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  A boy of six wandered over and stared. Dora touched the boy’s cheek and said something in Hungarian. She dug out of her handbag some jellybeans and handed them to the boy, getting the okay from the mother. The boy tasted one. Not smiling or speaking, he tasted another, and Dora touched his face again.

  “I think she has never allowed herself to see them in the open, if you understand me. They were always hidden or buried away. So this will be new for her too.”

  Now she turned to Manny, removed her large dark glasses, and stared from close proximity, asking for a promise of his complicity in understanding. Half of her face was covered by her swirling hair.

  “You always seem to be protecting her,” he noted, “and wanting me to protect her too.”

  “Maybe she needs it.”

  “Why do you say this?”

  She paused, in deliberation with herself. “Sometimes I think she is not sure of herself, of who she is exactly.”

  He took this in and waited. The wind blew softly, mussing her hair more.

  “You mean she has multiple personalities?”

  “No, not that.” She smiled. “Here, let me show you an old card of introduction of hers.”
She took out from her shoulder purse a business card. It read: “Zsuzsanna Frank, Medium.” With a phone number.

  He held the card and stared at it, trying to absorb its full meaning.

  “I see,” he said, seeing nothing. “Well, this is … something.”

  Her brown eyes checked on his understanding. “Mother has achieved many amazing things, I assure you. I have witnessed some for myself. Even when it was dangerous and illegal during the days of Communism, and she was maybe the only non-Gypsy, real medium practicing the art.”

  He nodded.

  “But she has not practiced professionally in a long while, though her services are always in demand. Especially by friends.”

  He felt her strong sincerity, her youthful beauty. “Why did she stop?”

  “She stopped years ago because it exhausted her too much. She’d be ill from it. Also, she wanted to devote her energy to focus on her own personal needs, contacts.”

  Families walked by; two lovers were kissing; ice cream was being hawked.

  “Would you like one?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Searching the fellow’s wagon, she chose a vanilla and chocalate swirl cone. “My weakness.”

  “I am glad to know you have one,” he said, and paid.

  She pulled down the paper cover and began to lick it.

  “Why didn’t she, or you, tell me about this before now?”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t relevant. All that was years ago, when she did it for a profession.”

  She was licking the cone all around the edges, with blissful care.

  “Tell me, was she able to communicate with her father, after his death?”

  After finishing one side, she licked vertically, in a routine. “That you will have to ask her.”

  He felt the soft wind, the sensuous girl; saw the strollers walking by.

  “Do you think she could have imagined this whole experience through the eyes of a medium?”