Under a Red Sky

by Haya Leah Molnar

  THE CLOCK THAT STOPPED

  “IF GOD IS ALL-POWERFUL,” my father says, his eyes twinkling with delight, “could He create a mountain that is so big that even He could not move it?” I look at Tata, not knowing how to answer, but just from the twist of his smile I know that this is a trick question.

  My father believes in scientific proof. “If you can’t see it, hear it, touch it, or smell it, it’s probably only your imagination,” he tells me. “Thank God, the Party doesn’t preach religion on top of their propaganda.”

  “What does propaganda mean?” I ask.

  “Never mind. Never utter that word again.”

  Tata looks ridiculously serious as he says this, and it makes me nervous, so I start to giggle.

  “You hear me, Eva?”

  THE MOST CONSTANT sound in my life is made by the swinging pendulum of the mantel clock that my father keeps on top of the Biedermeier chest of drawers in our bedroom. Tick tock, tick tock. I am so used to it that, for the most part, I don’t notice it. Tata found the clock upon his return home from a Russian labor camp. It was one of a handful of other objects that once belonged to his parents. He was thirty-one years old at the time, having spent the previous eight years in various lagers, concentration camps: four years in Nazi work camps, and then four more years after the war as a prisoner of war in the Russian gulag. I’ve only been told the historical facts, not the personal details.

  TATA IS HOME this Sunday, having just completed a film shoot on location. He is taking advantage of his rare free time by cleaning out the two drawers that Mama has allocated to him in the Biedermeier chest. Under a bunch of folded socks is a tin box filled with old papers and photographs. I am not allowed to touch any of my father’s belongings, but I watch as he fishes out a dog-eared postcard and reads it in silence. I ask him what it says since I don’t read or speak Hungarian. His face hardens before he answers, “It says goodbye.”

  “Who says goodbye?”

  “My mother. Your other grandmother.” He points to a faded signature beneath a few carefully scripted lines in black ink.

  “Why?” I have a feeling I shouldn’t be asking this, but I can’t help it.

  “My mother knew it was unlikely that we would ever see each other again.” Tata’s voice is barely audible.

  I don’t know what to say. Tata looks at me, as if suddenly remembering that I am here. “Someone must have found this postcard on the train station platform and placed it in our mailbox,” he tries to explain. “See, it doesn’t even have a stamp,” he says, pointing to the spot where the stamp is clearly missing. “This postcard waited in our mailbox for four years, Eva, from April 1945, when my parents were deported to Auschwitz, until late in 1949, when I came home from Russia.” Tata looks up at me. “A small miracle,” he says, forcing a smile.

  “How come you are so sure that they died in Auschwitz?” I’m pushing my luck. “Maybe they’re still alive somewhere and you don’t know it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Eva,” Tata says, his smile fading. “I know. Believe me, I know.” I notice that the muscles on his forearms are twitching.

  “Have you searched for them?” I am relentless.

  “Look,” Tata answers, raising his voice slightly, “I’m one hundred percent sure.” The tone of his voice lets me know that this conversation has ended. “Why don’t you run along and play in the yard?” he says, turning back to his tin box. “They’re dead. Believe me.” His voice trails off as I skip out of the room. “Dead.”

  IN THE AFTERNOON I tell my mother about Tata’s postcard and she gets upset. “Why in the world did he ever show you that?” she asks. “Promise me never, ever to ask your father about the war or about what happened to his parents in Auschwitz. It depresses him, and you must respect that.”

  “But why, Mama? Grandpa Yosef and Grandma Iulia talk about the war all the time,” I point out.

  “My parents weren’t deported to a concentration camp in cattle cars like your father’s parents. None of us were murdered, thank God,” she adds, looking at me helplessly. “Promise me you won’t bother Tata about any of this anymore. Promise?”

  “Okay, I promise, only if you tell me about Tata and the war.”

  “I know almost nothing,” my mother answers, “because he doesn’t like to talk about it, but he did take me to see the house in Cluj, where he used to live before the war.”

  “What was it like, Mama, was it beautiful?”

  “It was empty,” she says, clearing her throat. “The walls had turned yellow beneath the torn blue wallpaper. Your father pointed to where the dining room table had stood. It was the only polished patch of oak flooring in the room. He showed me where the crystal chandelier had bounced rainbows off the ceiling. A giant hole with a tangle of disconnected electrical wires gaped at us, like a decaying tooth. It was getting dark, but we were too exhausted to move. We dropped to the floor and fell asleep in each other’s arms. When we awoke, the house was pitch black. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. The sound of a clock beckoned through the empty house. Your father rose to his feet and searched for the clock through the thick darkness.” Mama’s voice trails off as she gazes across the room at the clock on our Biedermeier chest. “We never figured out who wound it.”

  THAT EVENING I ask my parents if I can sleep on the terrace. The wide-open space of the sky above feels so good in contrast to my narrow bed behind the bookcase. There is a slight breeze, and the sky is filled with stars. I fall asleep quickly and dream a dream so clear, it doesn’t feel like a dream at all.

  The night turns to day as my father’s mother, Grandmother Hermina, visits me. I recognize her the moment she appears, even though we’ve never met. She is young, beautiful, and vibrantly alive. I am aware that she died before I was born, but her presence is quite real. Grandmother Hermina knows instantly who I am, just as I know her. She takes my presence in and murmurs, “Your father is all right.” She repeats this to herself more definitively, “Your father is all right.” Her words penetrate the space between us until they light up my consciousness so deeply that I wake up.

  What does Grandma Hermina mean by “Your father is all right”? Tata is not all right. He’s always worried about something or other. He’s not nice to me, and none of that is all right by me. I try to think through my dream logically, but it doesn’t make sense. Yet in my heart I know that what Grandma Hermina has just told me is as true and as real as the stars that hang in the night sky above me.

  This dream stays with me until a few days later I ask Grandpa Yosef about it, and he thinks for a while before answering.

  “Dreams always reveal a hidden truth. The problem is not with the dream but with the interpretation.”

  “What do you mean, the interpretation?”

  “Just that—what the dream means.”

  “But, Grandpa, I don’t understand what Tata’s mother meant when she said ‘Your father is all right,’ because I don’t think he is.”

  “Aha, now I see.” Grandpa smiles. “Try looking at it from your Grandmother Hermina’s point of view.”

  “How can I? It’s my dream!”

  “Of course it’s your dream, but since your grandmother visited you and spoke to you, she obviously has her own mind, so why not consider what she’s saying?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Grandpa.”

  “Try to see it through her eyes, if only for a moment. Before she died, did she think that her son was all right? If you were a mother, Eva, and now I know I’m asking you to really use your imagination because you are far too young even to think about being a mother, but let’s just suppose you are much older and you have a son who is somewhere in a concentration camp where millions of people are dying.” Grandpa stops abruptly and looks at me before continuing. “And you don’t know if your son is still alive. What would your dying wish be?”

  My words spill out. “I’d want him to live!”

  “Precisely.” Grandpa takes in a deep breath. />
  “Grandpa, I know what Grandma Hermina was trying to tell me. She saw me sleeping and she realized that Tata is alive, that he’s all right!”

  Grandpa Yosef nods. “Your grandma Hermina probably never rested until she visited you.”

  “But, Grandpa, why didn’t she just visit Tata?”

  Suddenly, the creases around Grandpa’s eyes are deeper than I’ve ever noticed. “God is merciful and wise. He gave your grandmother Hermina a gift that would not tear her apart. She had suffered enough while she was alive.”

  “It was only a dream, Grandpa.”

  “Dreams are as real as life, Eva, because they contain seeds of the truth. Just like you can’t see the seeds from a plant because they’re buried in the ground, you can’t always see the meaning of dreams right away. But just as surely as a plant grows, the truth of dreams eventually emerges. Most dreams are hidden in plain sight, waiting for us until we are ready to discover their meaning and heed their message.”

  While Grandpa tries to explain these things to me, I wonder—how could a dead person come and visit her sleeping granddaughter? I agonize over this, but I do not question Grandpa Yosef further, since he clearly believes in miracles. And even I know that miracles are events you do not question.

  I PROMISED MY MOTHER not to bring up Tata’s parents to him again, but I can look at our clock ticking away on top of the chest to my heart’s content. Grandpa Emile’s thin pencil markings keeping track of the dates on which he wound the clock can still be found etched on its back panel. How could things survive yet people, who are irreplaceable, perish?

  The clock is the first thing my father looks at when he gets home from a film shoot. He goes through the ritual of winding it every thirteen days. He begins by opening the back panel and slipping his hand into the small space that houses the mechanism and the brass pendulum. It is only during these moments, when Tata is barely aware of my presence, that I feel him connect to a past that has included a family other than my mother and me. His fingers search for the metal key stored in the clock’s base. He inserts the key in place and starts to wind, holding his breath and counting each turn of his wrist in his head. One … two … three … four … five. Exhale. He is careful not to overwind. When he is finished, Tata secures the clock’s crown, making sure that none of the brass fittings on the ebony surface are loose. Finally, he shuts the door to the inner mechanism as if he has just left another realm; then he dusts the clock before returning it to its central place on top of our chest. For a moment, he listens to the back-and-forth movement of the pendulum while gazing at the three brass cherubs playing a lyre on the clock’s front panel. He completes his ritual by checking to see that the clock’s hands are synchronized with those of his Russian-issue wristwatch. Then he turns around and is back in our little room as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. In the two weeks that follow, the clock resumes its ever-present background sound of our daily life.

  TATA’S FRIENDS

  MY FATHER INSPIRES GREAT LOVE and loyalty from a small but important group of friends who gather regularly in our bedroom. Most of them work closely with him at Romania’s government-owned film studio, where Tata is the leading cinematographer. They call him Zimmy, short for Zimmermann, his last name. His friends are film and theater directors, actors, artists, writers, poets, and composers—all of them part of Bucharest’s talented elite.

  The one exception is Victor, a short man with thick, black-framed glasses, who survived all of the lagers, including the Russian POW labor camp. While all of these friends are close, none are as close to Tata as Victor. The two of them talk, laugh, smoke cigarettes, and drink uic, strong Romanian plum liquor, often until daybreak. As the evening wears on, their laughter grows louder, their stories more colorful. These get-togethers usually take place on an evening when my mother has rehearsals, though Mama regards Victor as family.

  “HEY, VICTOR.” Tata’s voice booms from the other side of the bookcase. “Remember when we got that shipment of aspirin in the labor camp in Siberia and you decided to dispense it to the entire prisoner population? You tried so hard to convince us that you had discovered the magic cure-all for every disease known to man.” Tata laughs. “Hey, guys, no breakfast? Why not pop one of Victor’s Vitamins instead? It’s guaranteed to bore an even bigger hole in your stomach than you’ve already got.”

  I crawl to the bottom of my bed and peek from under my covers. Victor is waving his shot glass at Tata. “Look who’s talking about holes in his stomach. You had a hole in your head, Zimmy, carrying a volume of Shakespeare around as if it were the Bible. Here’s to you, Mr. Hamlet”—Victor raises his glass—“may you make up your mind if you want to be or not to be!”

  “Watch your mouth, Herr Doctor.” Tata’s words are slurred from the liquor. “You’re mocking the greatest writer the world has ever known. You’re not fit to lick Shakespeare’s boots.”

  “Your performance is impressive tonight, Mr. Hamlet,” Victor snaps. “Shakespeare has no need for boots, because he’s dead. And he isn’t God.”

  “He’s dead to you, you idiot, because you don’t read! As far as Shakespeare being God, he comes in a close second, if there is a God,” Tata answers.

  “Your Mr. Shakespeare nearly got us all killed,” Victor continues. “Need I remind you that your best friend, Yoni, would still be alive today if he hadn’t run back for your Shakespeare? It took us weeks to plan our escape from hell, and Yoni blows it by running back to retrieve a book!” Victor’s rant now sounds like machine-gun fire. “He paid with his life, poor schmuck, for your immortal ‘auteur’—he got it square in the head over an English book!” Victor uses his hand as a gun. “Bang!” Then his voice goes flat. “Yoni’s gone. And the rest of us are running for our lives like a bunch of rats straight into the arms of the Bolshevik bastards who deported us to Mother Russia.” Victor’s voice trails off. “Zimmy! Are you listening? We’re just ghosts who refused to die, cigarettes still warm after they’ve been stubbed out on frozen Russian soil.” When my father doesn’t respond, Victor stops. “Hey, Zimmy my friend, you look like you don’t feel well. Do you want me to get you an aspirin?”

  “Don’t be funny,” Tata whispers. “I wish you wouldn’t keep ranting like this. Every time you have a drink in you, your tongue gets loose about the camps.” Tata grabs the Shakespeare off the shelf from the other side of our bookcase, and I slide under my covers. “How could I forget? This book was so important to Yoni, it cost him his life.”

  “Too high a price,” Victor answers flatly.

  “Look,” Tata mutters, tapping the Shakespeare volume, “it’s got Yoni’s dried blood on some of the pages.” Tata leafs through the book. “I also risked my life for it when I ran back to get it after Yoni died. Only I got lucky. I lived. Why? I have no clue. I certainly don’t deserve that privilege any more than Yoni. Maybe he was luckier.” Tata’s voice is controlled. “Don’t kid yourself, Victor. Yoni didn’t run back to retrieve the book for me. He wanted the Shakespeare for himself. You can think what you want, and you can blame me if it makes you feel better, but Yoni and I are not the only two crazy people in the world who love Shakespeare so much we’d risk our lives for a book. You forget what’s important, Victor,” Tata says, dropping the Shakespeare on the bed with a thud. The room turns silent except for the sound of our clock.

  “Nothing’s as important as your life, Zimmy. You ought to know that better than most.”

  “I’m not sure anymore,” Tata says, half talking to himself. “What’s life without books, art, or music? Or without the people you love?”

  “Don’t get maudlin and poetical on me,” Victor snaps. “I remember how terrified you were when that Nazi bastard played Russian roulette with your life. You almost shit in your pants when he waved his gun in your face. I bet you would have sold your mother just to stay alive, but they had already finished her off.” Victor’s laugh is a dry bark.

  “Don’t bring up my mother, you drunken fool! What’s wro
ng with you?”

  “Zimmy, we’re all capable of terrible things, but at least I admit it.”

  “You talk too much,” Tata snaps. “Come on, Victor, you’re out of here,” he says, helping his friend up. “Next time, less booze and more Radio Free Europe. Maybe we can catch the BBC news on Thursday night. Go home, Victor. I love you, but I need to sleep.”

  TATA’S FILM DIRECTOR PARTNER, whom Tata refers to as Beard, is his closest friend and collaborator at the film studio. Beard earned his nickname by risking jail for growing a beard. The Party considers growing facial hair a subversive activity. Beard plays cat and mouse with the authorities by shaving before every official meeting with Party members. The moment the meeting is over, however, he starts to grow his beard again. Everyone is aware of this, including the Party officials, since Beard bribes them with free tickets to the film premieres. They laugh, enjoy the free movies, and refer to Beard as an “eccentric artist.”

  On cold winter nights after they finish work at the Studio, Tata and Beard show up at our house and hide themselves in our bedroom so they can discuss the day’s shoot without being overheard by the rest of the crew. When Mama is home, she brings in a tray with tea and lemon and a few slices of cozonac—Romanian coffee cake—and goes out to the dining room to spend time with my grandparents. Tata never asks me to leave our bedroom because my curfew is 8:00 p.m. I’m tucked in bed in my makeshift little corner, and they forget I’m there. Most of the time, I read and ignore their conversation, but there are times when I pretend that I’m asleep and I listen.