Gratitude (12 page)

Paul shook his head. Rozsi said, “I have my own, thank you.”

Simon looked at Lili and then took one. His face glowed amber as he drew in the first puff. Simon coughed and said it had gone down the wrong way. He took another drag and coughed again.

“What’s your name?” Lili asked.

“Zindelo.”

“You mean Zindel?” Lili asked. “It’s Jewish. Zindel. ‘Son,’ it means.”

“Zindelo is what my mother called me.”

Lili asked, “Where is she, and your father?”

“I don’t know.” He took a long, crackling puff of his cigarette. “I haven’t seen them for a couple of years. I play violin in the squares. That’s how I get by.” The boy said this cheerfully, and he smiled. “It’s the only thing I got from my mother: music—oh, and begging, two things—oh, and my name, Zindelo. Son. Big deal.” And the boy laughed a big, throaty laugh, like someone older.

“Your name’s all right,” Lili told him. “I like it.”

“Well, I guess it’s better than ‘daughter’ or ‘monkey.’” Zindelo let out another smoky laugh. The boat bobbed and slapped at the water. Simon threw his cigarette into the dark water and listened to it sizzle.

Paul was impressed by the boy’s charm. Clearly, charm was not restricted to the upper classes, not to the Hungarians nor the Jews, any more than any quality, any more than birth or death. It dawned on Paul, standing with his arms crossed in this dark little shelter with the rain sounding on the roof, with his uncomfortable sister by his side, this young couple already in love in a single evening and this charming Gypsy boy, that they might not make it out alive. It was not a profound truth, nor a brilliant observation, but it struck with the force of original thought. Paul remembered the day with Istvan out on Lake Balaton, an August day at their grandfather’s house. Istvan went under the water and didn’t come back up. Little Rozsi screamed from the strand that she could see only Paul’s head out there—“It’s just
your
head,” she screamed again. Paul put his hand on the back of his wet head as if to confirm what she’d said. A cold calm flowed down through his veins just then, Paul recalled, and he dipped under the surface the way a loon does, saw nothing all the way to the bottom, his eyes blazing open and scouring the rocks, greenery and sand. Then up again for a draft of air and down for even longer, until he felt a searing cramp on his left side, like a stroke. It coursed down his long, thin frame from shoulder to ankle, and it was in that very moment that he learned he would not live forever. He could see himself being lowered into a narrow bed in the earth, could see the end of things, the utter absence of things, the cool earth neutral against his numb skin. He knew in that airless moment that it would happen in a finite number of days, not infinite—finite. When Paul came up for air again, Istvan was screaming with Rozsi, both of them on the shore, and their father, grandfather and grandmother were pushing their way toward him like motorized swimmers. Death comes to all of us equally, whether we are cooked in oil or boiled in mother’s milk—death, the democrat—dimming all the animal sounds in this little hut, quieting this small, new alliance.

How vulnerable Paul felt after a single day of bad news. How much more could they endure—
all
of their family,
all
of their friends,
all
of them going down—or
up
, swinging from a lamppost like his father, a short clownish leap toward heaven, leaping after his wife, their mother, the day you feel your neck go numb, the day the cops and robbers are true, the day the bullet is true, the day the bullet breaks your
true
skin—you—the clipped advocate, ready to stand in the path of crazed hordes, knowing they need to devour you for their fuel, and for the first time you feel just a little afraid.

“My mother could read the stars,” Zindelo said. He pointed to the ceiling. “The stars spoke directly to her, like a telegraph.”

Lili was smiling. Zindelo said, “Do you know what my mother said?” Lili and Simon shook their heads. “Our sun is someone else’s star to wish on, someone living in another galaxy.”

“And someone who is not yet born,” Simon said. “I mean the sun may have extinguished itself by the time the light reaches someone else far away. It takes that long for the light to travel.”

They were looking at him intently, and Simon shrank into himself, not meaning to be giving a lesson. “I didn’t know that,” Lili said. “It’s very interesting.”

Rozsi said, “Why don’t I go check for Zoli?”

“I’ll go,” Paul said.

“But I want to go,” she said, already at the door.

“I have some
kolbasz
,” Zindelo said. “Do you people want some
kolbasz
?” He was pointing somewhere at the boat. Lili and Simon shook their heads. “It’s nice and spicy. Horse.”

“
Horse?
” Simon asked.

“No, thank you,” Lili said. “We just ate.”

Rozsi felt a twinge of sympathy. “No, thank you, Zindelo.” And she went out.

“Do you people beg?” the boy asked, then broke out laughing again in answer to his own question. “Are you related?”

Simon looked at Lili. She was blushing. “You two don’t look alike,” Zindelo said. “I was just asking.”

Zindelo’s dark eyes saddened in the dim glow of the single light bulb hanging down from above their heads. He looked like a miniature man rather than a boy.

“Why don’t you play something on your violin?” Simon asked. “I’ll pay you.” He reached into his pocket for some coins.

“I don’t want you to pay me,” the boy said solemnly. “You’re my guests here.”

Lili said, “We can’t have violin music today. Your uncle just passed away.”

“Of course we can,” Paul said. “These are not regular times.”

His sister came back in just then with Zoli. He looked wet and slightly alarmed, though he didn’t say why.

“We’re having some music,” Paul said.

“Oh,” Rozsi said. She took Zoli’s hand. “That’s all right.” Now she looked at the floor to check its suitability for sitting, and Zoli made the decision easy by spreading out his jacket. He had his camera with him, wrapped in a linen cloth.

Zindelo fetched his violin, the floorboards creaking where he stepped. As he came back, he held the instrument up to his ear and plucked the strings. “Would you have some kind of cloth with you by any chance?” Zindelo asked.

Simon reached into his pocket and pulled out a white handkerchief. Zindelo seemed to be examining the handkerchief. “It’s clean,” Simon said, rolling his eyes.

“I wasn’t looking at that. I was looking at the letters.” The handkerchief was monogrammed. “These are nice letters,” Zindelo said.

The visitors realized the boy couldn’t read. “Yes, ‘SB,’” Simon said.

“Oh, ‘SB.’ Fancy.” He rubbed the handkerchief against his cheek and smelled it. Then he wiped the violin as if it were a small child’s body, folded the handkerchief and placed it on his shoulder against his neck. He set the violin under his chin and, like a sigh, drew the bow along the strings, the instrument humming dolefully in response.

Zindelo played “Brahms’s Lullaby” and then, his face brightening, his own rendition of “The Blue Danube”—“My own lullaby,” he said, laughing over the melody. He started with a single sustained note to draw in his audience, the note clear as sunlight beaming through the string. “The Danube rocks me to sleep like a mother,” he said.

He played for what seemed like an hour—Haydn, Sarasate, Irving Berlin—melodies Paul and the two couples recognized right away, songs the people would call out for in the squares around the city, tunes anyone could hum, helped along by the jingling of coins tossed into Zindelo’s upturned hat. The greatest miracle was that he could pull such sad old sounds out of the instrument with a child’s fingers. The boathouse was transformed into a dance hall and then concert hall and then saloon with the notes the young Gypsy drew out of his instrument. So the visitors had their concert after all. Simon took Lili’s hand and looked at his cousin Rozsi with Zoli. Lili squeezed his hand back. A warm current ran through him.

Zindelo finished with the famous waltz from
The Merry Widow
, and Simon whispered to Lili that it was his mother Klari’s favourite tune. “She hums it all the time but never plays it on the piano, for some reason.”

Lili shrugged and smiled. She tried to think what her mother’s favourite song was. There was a Czech song she sang to them—Helen’s own mother, Lili’s grandmother, was from Prague. It was about chocolate and cherries. And there was a Yiddish song that got her up on her feet, dancing and clapping, “
Chiribim, Chiribom
,” about the rabbi who finally took a wife.

When Zindelo was finished, Simon insisted on giving the boy the coins he’d originally offered, but Zindelo held up his hand. “Please,” he said, “not this time,” and he bowed.

“Take half,” said Simon.

Zindelo looked him in the eye and accepted the smaller fee. Simon bowed, too, as he backed out.

Paul was the last to leave. He told Zindelo, “You should go. You won’t be safe here.”

Zindelo said, “I’m never safe anywhere. I’m used to it.”

“You might have more trouble than usual. Come see me. I have an office. I can get papers for you.”

Zindelo held up his hand. “Come see me in the square,” he said, “and I’ll play something for you.”

Paul tipped his hat and he bowed, too. He watched the boy as he climbed into the boat to retire his violin. When Zindelo had his back turned, Paul took a gold coin from his vest pocket and placed it on the wooden floor by the door before slipping out.

Seven

Szeged – June 6, 1944

ISTVAN’S BODY
had begun to turn on him. He was sure he had developed a bladder infection, because he had crawled to his pail in the corner to urinate a dozen times in a single morning, only to find the passage too tight and painful to emit anything but a few drops. He wished he could tell whether the drops were tinged with blood, but he would have to drag his bucket out of the corner into the dim bars of light, and he could not bear to keep company with his toilet. That same night, his left eye developed an uncontrollable twitch, which spread eventually to the other eye. Then in the darkness, both sockets became sphincters, straining to eject their occupants. He was not without knowledge in medical matters, and when his straining detonated blinding flashes of pain in his skull, Istvan speculated about an aneurysm and awaited the call to judgment.

Where had Marta got to? Had she decided to make off with Dr. Cuckoo? Was the good doctor not infinitely preferable, after all, to Istvan? Was the sanctimonious doling out to Marta of the food he earned in place of wages not a ploy to make her smile while he spread her legs? What better game could there be, in the middle of this madness? Was there such a thing as morality left? Why should there be? Did Dr. Cuckoo know about Istvan? How could he blame the poor sod even if he did? Did it not make the game all the more wickedly delicious? What more successful devil was there than the one dressed as an angel?

But what about Marta? What about his raven-woman? Would she have abandoned him without at least leaving him provisions to prolong his foolish hope for a few days, stoke up his insanity? Never mind him, what about the silly cat? Clawing overhead, clawing at the floorboards, whining, scratching. Adorable little vampire. Who would devour whom in the coming days and sip dispassionately on the tepid blood?

Istvan thought frequently about Miklos Radnoti. He’d often sifted through his friend’s verse as he sat waiting for the world to settle down.

You see, now fear often fingers your heart,

and at times the world seems only distant news;

the old trees guard your childhood for you,

the memories turning ever more ancient.

Do the trees still stand guard over our childhood, my Miklos, my dear poet, or have they been deported too, their lush branches stripped and piled in the temple on Jozsika Street? And where are you, poor soul, poor songbird? Did you find cover for yourself?

Poor Rozsi, poor Paul. What fate awaited them? Was Istvan not better off in his den than they were? But surely they saw the writing on the wall—on the
sky
—if they cared to look. It was worse to believe yourself safe, as did his Budapest kin. Poor Aunt Klari, still thinking about him, her nephew Istvan, and not herself. Dark days lie ahead, dear sister of my mother. Get yourself to higher ground.

Morning came. Blessed morning. And it was quiet overhead but bright. No oil left for his lamp. Istvan could at least light the candle. He would treat himself to a little light, a small repast for his eyes. Should he read in the light, visit another country with the musketeers? Spend the light on reading rather than seeing? Was there a single particle of dust he’d not turned over and studied? What was there new to see? Where was Smetana? No hungry scampering above. No hungry floorboards. Was it over for Smetana?

Istvan thought he heard someone tapping at the door. He held his breath. In the darkness, all his senses rushed to his ears and huddled there. Nothing. Then,
bang! bang!
Now he heard the cat move after all. Could the visitor hear the cat?
Bang!
Possibly not. This tight, thick little cabin had withstood the centuries. Who was calling? Surely someone friendly. The first taps said it all. Istvan sat still as a portrait.

The knocking stopped, but the hammering in Istvan’s chest persisted. The cat was silent again. The world was silent. Istvan could hear the velvet thud in his ears. Where had the caller gone?

The house waited. Istvan felt ready to expire. He
wanted
to expire, take a couple of days off from—what? He felt the first shiver of death course through him. Oh, God, if people weren’t faced with death, what would become of their faith? But You knew that all along—didn’t You—You Clever Little Omniscient? Otherwise, why would You have planted the Tree in the Garden? It was all part of the Grand Design. Fall and we shall Love You. Fall and we shall Worship You. Fall and we shall bring Burnt Offerings. What’s a Little Creation Party without Burnt Offerings? They were too easy for You, weren’t they, All-Knowing One? No sport in that. All part of the Plan. The honeymoon with Your creatures was over. They’d become dull. The Creation was a Bore. A Grand Bore, albeit—Spectacular in Spots—Thunder and Lightning, the Thunder and Lightning Polka—but it was Nothing beside the Floods, the Vermin, the Seas Opening, the Angel of Death passing through. Ah, the Angel of Death. Then what? Someone in a Whale. Someone on a Ladder. Someone in a Lion’s Den. Something in Leopard. Something in Herringbone. And then: Oh, my God. The Pièce de Résistance: The Crucifixion. How Delicious. Let’s hear it for The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost. The Crucifixion. The Resurrection. The Salvation for All. Does It get any better than That? Oh, yes, oh, yes, the Honeymoon is over. And now we have the Marriage. Succulent Fruit. Fruit Verboten.

Oh, Forget Forgiving Them, Dear Lord God, Creator of the Universe.
Baruch Ata Adonai
. Forgive
Me
, Please, Dear Lord. You know Me. I have arguments with Myself and almost always Lose.

I have waited for you, oh, Paul, oh, my brother. Where have you got to? Have you no armies to send to me from Budapest? Can you not sway the courts to pass new laws, make outlaws of the invaders, not the invaded? Oh, what a coward am I—what a rogue and peasant slave.
I
have forsaken my Father, my brother, my sister, my mother’s grave. Oh, my father’s grave. Did anyone think to give you a proper burial after they let you down from the lamppost, you dear foolish man, standing up for—what? For the triumph of German education and culture, for Mendelssohn, for music, for sweetness and light, for reason, for sanity? Did they at least give you a place to lie, out of the way of traffic and buzzards, where peace resides, and civility?

How I loved my brother and my sister—worshipped Paul—who else could defend the most powerful Jew, the most powerful Manfred Weiss, against the powerful Hungarians who wanted to share his lands and wealth, wanted a small piece of the Big Jew’s dominion, and Paul defended him and won against the state, as only Paul could, and then Paul persuaded Monsieur Weiss, as only Paul could, to hand over some of what they were asking for. Weiss’s Hero, the People’s Hero, Our Hero, Our Paul. Even he could not unclench this cellar and liberate his lowly dental brother, shrinking each day, dissolving into a Jew.

Is it a symptom of the disease that we transfer our shortcomings to remote bystanders, hold them responsible for what ails us, find a locus outside of ourselves for our demons, fail to recognize that it’s neither their shortcomings nor ours that have altered grand social and economic forces which have darkened this century—any more than it’s their shortcomings or ours that fan a typhoon or crack the earth? It’s not personal, in short, not individual, not idiosyncratic to groups, not racial.

To whom does the land belong? To whom does Hungary belong? To the invading Tartars or Huns or Magyars or Turks? After World War I, it was sliced up at all its borders and the slices handed to its neighbours, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Romania, a good portion of it, and now our friend and ally Hitler has given the lands back in a gesture of magnanimity, before himself finally drawing Germany’s borders around the continent and around the planet and, God willing, around the solar system and the universe.

Imagine that moment—imagine the first glimmer of its possibility. Imagine the moment when the light of possibility gurgles out of the darkness of your nightmare, like the moment just before you hear your own neck snap and, while you can no longer breathe in air, you breathe in calm, your ears buzzing, your eyes bubbling over with remembered sight. You still feel your fears, faintly, but can spy the light burning through them. Yes, France can be yours,
and
Italy,
and
Poland,
and
Czechoslovakia,
and
Hungary, and, yes, your tormentors will be defanged, your hook-nosed Jews who deny you your genius, your beggar Gypsies who beckon at your hoary door, your Homo-Ss—can it be, Adolf, that you once desired a protrusion, not a recess, a rump, not a front, a m—, not a w—? Imagine. A moment as powerful as the splitting of the atom. A moment in which all other selves fuel the conflagration of the single self, the Only Self.

And your tormentors will be stilled forever, the nightmares washed over with celestial light—oh, come to me, Jesus, come, Sweet Jew Jesus, and throw your good dry kindling onto the pyre, with you still nailed to it. Fan the flame with your heavenly Jew wind to confound hell and outwit Lucifer. You are our King now, the Jewblood boiling out of your nail holes into the flame, the blue Aryan rain soothing, feeding the rivulets of your resurrection.

SUDDENLY SOMETHING SLAMMED
above Istvan. The cat cawed like a crow. And it began. A record. The cat had set off the gramophone! The last record Istvan had asked Marta to play. Still on the turntable. Friedrich Flotow’s
Martha
, of course. Why not drama to accompany death? The opera was in English as befitted the words of Thomas Moore. Lady Harriet Durham singing “The Last Rose of Summer” from Act II. Now here was the voice, sweet as heaven, sweet as Mother. He wished he could know all the English, strained to recall the Hungarian lyrics. But the music was enough. The music told him what he needed to know.

’Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone;

All her lovely companions are faded and gone;

No flow’r of her kindred, no rosebud is nigh,

To reflect back her blushes, to give sigh for sigh.

I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one, to pine on the stem;

Since the lovely are sleeping, go sleep thou with them.

Thus kindly I scatter thy leaves o’er the bed,

Where thy mates of the garden lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow, when friendships decay,

And from love’s shining circle the gems drop away!

When true hearts lie wither’d, and fond ones are flown,

Oh! who would inhabit this bleak world alone?

Now he knew—even a sleeping bird has a song waiting within its breast. Istvan reached through the floorboards for the beautiful voice, reached for the verse, and sobbed. It was the first time. It came now from the great gulch within him, wrenching him. The tight little house shuddered from roof to root. Act II whirled on at seventy-eight rotations per minute, but Istvan could no longer grasp it nor even hear it. Where was his lovely Marta? What bleak world would he re-enter—
could
he re-enter—alone? Was she dead now and gone forever? Had they tortured her, then killed her? Had she suffered long? For what? For
him
—for Istvan? Oh, misguided, misspent beauty—how could he have allowed it—his raven rosebud dashed by this German summer? Oh, please do not suffer—lie sleeping—lie dead.

Istvan rose in his dark cellar. He boldly mounted the creaky ladder for the first time in two months, slapped open the boards above and emerged into the afternoon house. The scrawny cat’s paw was still jammed in the controls of the gramophone. Istvan approached calmly, switched off the power and liberated Smetana, who looked meekly up at his champion and emitted a vowel. The cat rubbed itself against his hand. Istvan stroked the bony creature and glanced up above the console to behold himself in the mirror, withered as the cat, his cheekbones pushing their way through the skin, his shirt dingy, grey and rumpled, its glorious old white ghost fled.

The sky grumbled with rain, which pattered now on the sturdy roof. Istvan stepped intrepidly to the window and looked out onto the day—the sky’s laundry line hung out with grey. And right by his hand on the kitchen’s wooden counter was the tin of sardines.

His hands trembled as he found the opener and summoned his strength to cut the tin’s silver lid. The cat dropped down to the floor and whirled around Istvan’s ankles like a furry snake. The cat choreographed Istvan’s life now, whatever life remained in his spindly bones. Istvan’s days danced around him where he stood. Let all the linens and cakes and goblets, let all the newspapers and arguments, let the surf of the fields and lakeland pontoons of his youth rejoice and dance around this tin! No silver was ever so dear as the supple, silver-coated flesh of these four small fish in their silver coffin.
Baruch Ata Adonai
.

Into Smetana’s grey, polished dish on the floor, Istvan placed two of the fish, slid to the floor beside the cat and ate his share, morsel by morsel.