The Angel Makers

by Jessica Gregson

  CHAPTER NINE

  It’s August 18th, 10 in the morning, and Lujza is at the door, holding what looks to be a telegram.

  Sari’s mood has been buoyant for the past few weeks, and she’s only properly able to appreciate how happy she has been when she feels it all drain out of her at the sight of the telegram. She looks from it, to Lujza’s face, and then back again. Lujza is white, even her lips are pale, but her eyes are dark and burning.

  ‘Lujza – come in.’

  Lujza doesn’t move. ‘I can’t read, you know,’ she says, and her tone is almost conversational. ‘So I need you to tell me what this says.’

  She presses the telegram into Sari’s hands, and just the touch of it makes Sari feel nauseous. The village has been lucky with deaths so far, and the few that they’ve had news of haven’t made too large an impact: mainly husbands from loveless marriages; younger sons from large families. It’s been easy to pretend that the war’s not real, that something happening so far away can’t touch the village; in the middle of a long, lazy, beautiful summer, and in a climate of unprecedented freedom, it’s easy to choose to forget why that freedom has come about.

  ‘Lujza—’

  ‘Sari. Just tell me.’

  She knows, of course they both know, but Sari forces herself to look down at the paper she’s holding, and she’s right, they’re both right, Dear Mrs Tabori, it is my unfortunate duty to inform you that your husband, Péter Tabori …

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he,’ Lujza states; it’s far from being a question.

  Sari nods, and with that the strength seems to go out of Lujza’s legs. She doesn’t faint, but sits down heavily on the rough wooden steps, and Sari sits down beside her, not knowing what to do. If Lujza were crying it might be easier, but she’s not. Her eyes are blank and tearless, but her breath is coming in ragged bursts, and she’s rocking slightly, arms crossed in front of her, hands clutching convulsively at her elbows.

  ‘Sari?’ To Sari’s enormous relief, Judit appears on the porch behind them, and seems to take in the scene at once – the telegram, Sari’s white face, Lujza’s tense, shuddering back. She looks at Sari searchingly.

  ‘Is it Péter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Judit brings szilva, which Sari has often derisively remarked to be her answer for everything, but she’s never been more grateful to Judit’s plum brandy than she is now.

  Judit sits down on the other side of Lujza, old knees cracking, and puts the cup to her lips, uncommonly gentle.

  ‘Drink this,’ she says, and uncommonly pliant, Lujza obeys, coughing sharply as the taste hits the back of her throat.

  Sari closes her eyes, feeling sick. She tries to imagine what it would be like losing Ferenc, and then wishes she hadn’t: the thought provokes no more than mild regret, while Lujza’s bitter grief is so sharp that she can almost taste it. Time passes, and all Sari is conscious of is the warmth of the sun on her face, and the tightly-wound tension wafting off Lujza next to her. She wonders vaguely whether they should do something more for Lujza, take her home, or fetch her family, but perhaps silent company is all she wants right now. There’s a shadow of a movement beside her, and Sari opens her eyes, almost afraid to look at Lujza, but a faint tinge of colour has returned to her cheeks, and something has come back into her eyes, some sense of life.

  ‘All right,’ Lujza says quietly. ‘All right,’ she repeats, louder this time, and Judit and Sari look at each other, concerned.

  Lujza’s eyes are far from blank now, but there’s something lit in them that Sari doesn’t like at all. She’s come to like Lujza a lot over the past couple of years, but she’s never come to trust her, and this is why: she’s always had a sense that Lujza, with her recklessness and her violent unpredictability, is just a couple of twists away from insanity, and right now there is no sense, no rationality in Lujza’s face, just a bleak, desperate sort of zeal.

  Lujza gets to her feet, and the brandy cup falls to the ground, sending up a disconsolate puff of dust. Sari and Judit stand up beside her.

  ‘Why don’t you come inside?’ Judit entreats. Her voice is cajoling in a way that Sari’s never heard before, not even when talking to mothers in the throes of labour, which just serves to make Sari more anxious. ‘Have a sit down, something to eat maybe – Sari can go and get your mother, if you want …’

  But Lujza doesn’t seem to hear, and takes a couple of unsteady steps away from the house.

  ‘Lujza, where are you going?’ Sari goes to take her shoulder, but Lujza shakes her off. The unsteadiness vanishes from her steps, which become strides heading unmistakeably downhill, in the direction of the camp. Sari shoots a desperate glance back over her shoulder towards Judit.

  ‘Go with her, foolish child!’ Judit shouts, and so Sari does, half-jogging to keep up, some vague, superstitious inkling warning her not to try and touch Lujza again. She only pauses when they reach Anna’s house, banging hard on the door, grabbing Anna’s arm when she appears, tousle-haired, dragging her along with them.

  ‘Sari – what’s happening?’

  ‘It’s Lujza. Péter’s dead.’

  By the time they reach the gates to the camp, Lujza is a stride ahead of Anna and Sari. One of the younger guards, Werner, slouches by the entrance, looking bored as usual, but something in Lujza’s frightening, pale face seems to alert his interest and he gets up out of his chair as Lujza pushes through the gates.

  ‘Wait – hold on – what do you—’

  Without even turning her head to look at him, Lujza’s right arm flashes out and punches him hard in the gut, and he crumples with a short yelp of surprise as much as of pain and fear. Lujza walks on into the yard, where the men are sitting, talking or reading or writing, and they’re swamped by silence, every eye on the white faced woman who is familiar to many of them yet, at that moment, utterly unfamiliar.

  Anna moves to go after her, but Sari grabs her arm and points to the vicious-looking scissors that Lujza is clutching in her right hand. A man she doesn’t know seems to notice the scissors at the same time and shouts a panicked-sounding warning in Italian. A couple of the men who have started to get up and move towards Lujza freeze where they are, in positions that would be comical under any other circumstances. Heads swivel in unison to where Werner is still slumped on the ground, blood like a scarlet blossom on his shirt.

  That’s when Lujza starts to scream.

  At first it’s just a litany of meaningless invective, as if Lujza’s purging herself of every horrible word and phrase that she can think of. Sari hears Anna sob beside her, and it brings her partially back to her senses.

  ‘Run and get her mother,’ she hisses, and Anna goes, but even as she leaves Sari is wondering why she sent Anna rather than going herself. She can’t do anything here; this is far beyond her knowledge or control.

  Almost reflexively, she starts towards Lujza, who chooses that moment to take the scissors and use them to tear open her bodice. Some of the watching men shrink back in response to the suddenness of Lujza’s movement, and one man grabs Sari’s arm and pulls her back, halting her steps. She doesn’t bother to fight, not knowing what she would do even if she could reach Lujza, whose screaming has changed. Barebreasted, Lujza seems to have become conscious of the men around her, and is turning on them one by one: ‘Do you want to fuck me now? Do you? Do you want to fuck me?’ Her voice is hoarse and half-lunatic, and the men can’t understand Magyar anyway, but they recognise the tone of her voice, and their horrified incomprehension starts to take on an air of pity, which intensifies as Lujza seems to lose her grip on words again, and screaming incoherently, drags the nails of her left hand across her face, drawing blood.

  Someone moves.

  It is Marco.

  The man standing next to him, who Sari recognises as Marco’s friend, Bruno, the man who was with him in the courtyard that first day, tries to stop him, but Marco shakes off the restraining hand impatiently. Walking with a gentle but certain grace that is almost
animal, he approaches Lujza straight on. Her eyes are screwed shut and she is oblivious. He stops when he is about a yard in front of her and catches Sari’s eye, raising his eyebrows in a silent question.

  She understands. ‘Lujza,’ she mouths.

  ‘Lujza,’ he says firmly. He looks completely unafraid. Her eyes open, and he extends a hand, his movements slow and smooth. ‘Give them to me.’ He speaks in Italian, but his meaning is clear. She falls suddenly silent, her eyes on his outstretched palm. ‘Give them to me, Lujza,’ he says again, his voice gentler this time.

  There is an agonising pause, during with no one seems to breathe, all eyes fixed on the tableau in the centre of the yard. Then, tortuously slowly, Lujza raises her shaking right arm, and drops the scissors in Marco’s hand. He swiftly throws them to one side where they land, harmless, in a patch of dry grass, and just in time, because Lujza gives a broken, painful sob that chills the entrails of everyone who hears it. Her knees buckle, and it’s only Marco slipping his left arm under her shoulders, his right hand holding her bodice closed, that stops her from falling. All heads turn again in response to a shouting and a pounding of feet which halt by the gate, and thank God, Lujza’s mother and brother-in-law arrive, both weeping, and gather her up.

  When she is out of his hands, Marco approaches Sari, his face grave. Around her, people are starting to move again, and a buzz of noise is starting up. ‘Her husband?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispers, not trusting her voice to remain steady with any more volume. He nods, his expression sad and thoughtful, before looking at her, suddenly businesslike.

  ‘Come on,’ he says, and leads her over to where Werner is still lying by the gate, seemingly forgotten by everyone else. Sari kneels down beside him, swiftly unbuttoning his shirt, and finds to her enormous relief that the wound is just a shallow, glancing cut, tracing the edge of his abdomen, and that Werner’s silence and stillness is just down to shock, rather than anything more sinister.

  ‘He’s fine,’ she says to Marco.

  ‘Good,’ he replies, before turning to Werner. ‘Listen to me,’ Marco says, this time in German, and Werner’s head turns. ‘She pushed you. You fell. You cut yourself on a stone. Do you understand?’

  Werner looks blank, and Marco shakes him slightly. ‘Do you understand? You fell. You cut yourself. Do you understand?’

  Werner nods his head: yes.

  ‘Good,’ Marco says again, and turns back to Sari. ‘Patch him up.’

  Sari binds Werner’s wound with agrimony to stop the bleeding, and with the help of some of Judit’s brandy, he’s soon back to a quiet and chastened approximation of normal. As a gesture of goodwill, to thank him for keeping quiet about how he really got his injury, Sari and Anna offer to wash and mend his shirt that is torn and bloodstained after Lujza’s attack.

  Although it’s only really a one-person job, both of them go down to the river to do it. Sari doesn’t feel much like being alone, and Anna doesn’t seem to either; she’s uncharacteristically quiet, but Sari can imagine what she’s thinking – that if she could swap Péter’s death for Károly’s, she would do it in a heartbeat.

  ‘I knew she was a bit odd, you know,’ Anna says tentatively, plunging Werner’s shirt into the water, ‘but I never would have thought she’d be violent like that.’

  ‘She didn’t mean to hurt anyone,’ Sari says.

  ‘Why do you say that? She stabbed Werner!’

  ‘Yes, but – think about it. If she’d gone down to the camp meaning to hurt someone, she could have taken something far more effective than a pair of scissors. She’s got a whole kitchen full of knives. The scissors – I think they were probably just in her pocket, and she pulled them out when she thought she needed them.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Anna is unconvinced, and Sari changes the subject.

  ‘Did you know Péter well?’ she asks.

  Anna gives a one-armed shrug.

  ‘Not really. He wasn’t originally from the village – I think his family moved back here when his father died, because his mother was from here. She’s my mother’s cousin, or something like that. He always seemed nice, though.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She doesn’t really remember Péter much; he was always somewhat overshadowed by the force of Lujza’s personality.

  ‘Do you think Lujza will be all right?’ Anna asks. She’s still slightly pale from the shocks of the morning.

  ‘Physically, I think so. Otherwise – she’s always been – she’s a bit – you know.’ Sari can’t quite think of the words

  she needs without sounding uncharitable, but Anna has no such qualms.

  ‘A bit of a loon,’ she supplies, and Sari gives a half-hearted laugh.

  ‘Yes. I don’t know how this will affect her in that way.’

  They slip into silence again, and for a few minutes there’s nothing but the repetitive slop of cloth on water.

  ‘Marco did well today,’ Anna says with feigned casualness, watching Sari out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘I suppose,’ Sari says. She hardly wants to admit, even to herself, quite how impressed she was at the ease with which Marco took control of the situation.

  ‘Why do you think she listened to him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it was just that he was the only one to approach her. Maybe she would have been the same with anyone. Or maybe—’ and suddenly she finds that she wants to talk about him – ‘have you noticed he has this – this kind of stillness? Not quite calm – he’s too intense to be calm – but there’s something that, I suppose, draws attention? And also,’ she adds, not quite knowing what she’s going to say until it’s out of her mouth, ‘he was the one person there who wasn’t afraid of her. He’s never afraid.’

  She stops. Anna is staring at her, unabashed, and Sari feels her cheeks flushing; she’s terribly conscious that she’s probably never said so many words about Marco to anyone since she met him.

  ‘Well!’ says Anna, with the irritating air of someone who has just made a fascinating discovery. ‘Well, well, well. How interesting.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Anna.’

  Anna clearly has no intention of doing any such thing. She pulls shirt out of the water – now showing only a faint hint of a stain where Werner’s waistline would be – and sits back on her heels, surveying Sari in a maternal way that is profoundly annoying. ‘You know, you just about had me convinced, before. All those innocent excuses: oh, no, of course we’re not interested in each other like that; I just want to learn from him! Yes, I really was starting to believe you.’

  ‘Anna. Shut up.’

  ‘You’ve been very discreet, I must say. So, how long have you been …?’ Anna wiggles her eyebrows suggestively. Oh God.

  ‘We’re not! Nothing’s happened, all right?’

  Anna looks downcast for a moment, but then brightens.

  ‘All right, maybe nothing’s happened yet … but you admit that you want it to?’

  ‘God, Anna! No!’

  ‘Liar!’

  They pause, staring at one another. Sari is grinning now, a brittle sort of hilarity running through her, a powerful surge of exhilaration that although something bad has happened, it hasn’t happened to her.

  ‘Just because you’re a fallen woman doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to go the same way!’

  Anna gasps at that, mock-shocked. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Sari. I am a dutiful married woman.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ is all that Sari says, her tone disbelieving. She waits until Anna’s guard is down, and then pounces.

  ‘Sari! What do you think you’re—?’

  Sari yanks down Anna’s bodice as far as the top of her the

  breasts, and there they are, a series of five elegant little love bites, just below the line of her clothing. Anna blushes a deep red, but doesn’t look displeased.

  ‘Not so much of a dutiful married woman now, are you?’

  Sa
ri asks, smirking.

  ‘Mosquito bites,’ Anna says, straight-faced.

  ‘Oh, now who’s the liar?’

  There’s a tussle then, the sort of silly, fun fight that neither of them have had since they were children, with pushing, and playful, open handed slaps, and a bit of gentle hair-tugging – all of which is fine until Sari pulls the ribbon out of Anna’s hair and drops it in the mud, to which Anna retaliates by grabbing Werner’s shirt off the bush where it has been drying, and flinging it into the river.

  ‘That’s Werner’s shirt! You can’t just throw it in the river!’

  Sari kicks off her shoes. Two minutes later, Anna is wheezing with laughter, as Sari, dressed only in her chemise and petticoat, steps gingerly into the water. It’s warmer than she expected; the current is not strong, there, and the sun’s been heating the water all day. The bottom is uneven though, and Sari curses to herself when she stubs her toe on a smooth, hidden stone and lurches sideways, only to be engulfed suddenly in water up to her waist.

  The shirt has caught on a rock, about two arms’ lengths away from where she is, and she boldly wades out further, the water tickling the bottom of her ribcage, then lapping up over her breasts. Arms rearing up out of the water to grab the shirt, she’s nearly there when Anna cries out ‘Sari!’ in a voice that’s both shocked and amused.

  ‘What?’ Sari says, irritated, turning in Anna’s direction, but Anna’s looking past Sari, up the bank on the other side of the river. She’s looking at Marco.

  Well, of course, Sari thinks crazily, before shooting a horrified glance down at her front, to find that, yes, it’s as she suspected, the cream cloth covering her breasts has become almost entirely transparent. She bends her knees sharply, plunging below the water so that only her head is visible, and calls out, in a shrill, shaky voice that sounds utterly unlike hers, ‘What are you doing here?’

  Marco is not even bothering to suppress his grin at Sari’s scandalised expression. ‘I was looking for you,’ he says, and behind Sari, Anna, who evidently understands a bit more German than she lets on, says, dryly, ‘Well, you found her.’