Gratitude (14 page)

“My Judaism has informed my sympathy, but my Jewishness is not diminished by my sympathy for other people and causes, the repressed and exploited Hungarians, for instance.”

“We are not guilty of creating the hardships endured by Hungarian peasants.”

“But we’re
also
guilty. We don’t help, most of us.”

“Oh, here we go,” Klari said. She brushed a crumb from her forest green dress.

Zsuzsi said, “My parents invite a beggar to our dinner table every single night, and he sleeps under our roof and under a warm blanket, and in the morning eats a hot breakfast.”

“Of course he does,” Paul said, “and of course your family does these things. I didn’t mean to make you defensive.”

“What I’m saying is that being religious doesn’t make us less sympathetic to the misfortunes of others, I assure you.”

“Maybe not, but it draws a circle around you and makes you less tolerant of others, of differentness.”

“You’re doing the very thing you’re criticizing, assuming things about people you don’t know personally.
I’m
not less tolerant of anybody.”

“Then why would you define yourself so rigidly?”

Hermina glanced at her sister and rolled her eyes. What had they done?

Zsuzsi was now as red in the face as the blushing Paul. “We are not responsible for what ails the world and shouldn’t be held responsible.”

“You couldn’t be more right, Zsuzsi—Miss Rosenthal. But the sick thinking of the rest of the world doesn’t indemnify us, any more than it indemnifies anyone else who contributes to the misery of humanity.”

“You are blaming victims.”

He had taken his silver napkin ring in his hand and was gripping it so hard it was bending. His aunts looked on, helpless.

“I am not blaming victims, per se. I would never. I am a Jew, too. My ancestors have been victims, too, but being victims does not necessarily make us right, either. Victimization and rightness aren’t always connected, nor are history and the present.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive either.”

“No, they’re not.”

“What a speech,” Hermina said, “and over summer soup no one is having.”

Zsuzsi looked as if she was getting ready to stand. “Be a Neolog, by all means, Mr. Beck, be a reformer, but don’t be an anti-Semite.”

“Why do you insist on defining me?” Paul asked. “I’m—I’m—”

“I guess we’ve done that to each other, shown our prejudice.”

Zsuzsi laid her thin white hands on the table on either side of her bowl of cherry soup, getting set to push herself to her feet.

“Please,” Klari said, “don’t leave. Stay a bit. You and Paul can play a duet. That way you won’t talk.”

Paul said, “You can experience my cello. I sound like a cat with a bad stomach.”

“You’re not that bad,” Klari said. “You’re tolerable.” Paul took this as a reference to his character as well as his cello playing.

Zsuzsi didn’t get up. Paul looked at his mischievous aunts, whose experiment had gone so badly. How could he be angry, really, when they had taken aim at his own heart—and with such dazzling accuracy? Paul wanted somehow to hold on to Zsuzsi’s image. He knew as he studied it that it would hang in his mind for months to come like a portrait in a gallery, the lights going down on it, the lights coming up, the eyes waiting serenely to see who was visiting today.

Neither young person wanted to leave things as they were. Their ears buzzed. The air coming in through the window smelled green.

The housekeeper came in to clear away the dishes, and Paul’s aunts helped out. Paul and Zsuzsi, still stinging from their chat, watched as the others fussed. Paul believed he was the most obnoxious suitor who ever lived and hoped this young woman had a great capacity for forgiveness and tolerance.

Later, in the parlour, as he rode his cello, he gazed at his musical partner sitting before the keys of the cream piano. They played sad little Schubert together, whose beauty that afternoon was as sad as could be. Paul couldn’t help but smile. The smile caught on with his aunts as they digested their lunch in their soft chairs. But no such sentiment travelled to Zsuzsi. After a time, she began to play hard, as if she were playing Beethoven, as if she wanted to push her way through the piano to get to the other side. Even though she imposed her own mood on the piece, Paul could tell she was a much better player than he was.

Later, at the door, Zsuzsi said, “Is this what you do, Mr. Beck—attack your guests and then play bad music together?”

Hermina said, “He also stands on his head,” but Klari dragged her sister off again to the parlour.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said. “I couldn’t be sorrier.” And then he asked, “May I walk you home?”

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s not far, and I like walking alone sometimes. I have a big family.”

“Oh,” he said.

They stepped outside. She turned toward him as if she were about to change her mind.

“We’re going to Philadelphia,” she said.

“Philadelphia?”

The word hung in the air between them like exotic fruit.

“What’s in Philadelphia?” He felt like a perfect ass, as if he’d been responsible for her wanting to leave the country. Their faces shone red again in the sunshine.

“My father has a brother there, but it’s not what’s in Philadelphia so much as what’s here, what’s been happening. Hungary’s changing. Europe’s changing.”

It was 1934. Her family had more foresight than most.

And then she said, “Your aunt tells me you speak English.”

It sounded unmistakably like an invitation. He saw the whole of his future determined by what he said in reply, as surely as the Rosenthals’ future might be determined by their decision to leave Hungary behind.

She was looking away from him, over her shoulder at the walk ahead. He said, “My work is here. I have a lot I want to do.”

“If you can visit sometime, we would be happy to have you.”

Did she mean here, in Komarom? Could she have meant Philadelphia? She couldn’t have been more candid and yet more ambiguous. He would revisit this conversation a thousand times to guess at her intention.

And on this sleepless night, ten years later, in his bed in Budapest, he was convinced she had just been asking him over for tea, perhaps to prove to him how wrong he’d been about the good people who lived in her house. What hurt was that he’d appeared to lose an argument rather than a chance at love, and he’d been conducting the argument only to give him the chance at love. He wished he had not spoken at all. He would have fared better as a deaf-mute. Zsuzsi became the measure for him of all things comely and sympathetic in a woman, this elegant white calla lily, now turned away from him to the light. He’d often thought of writing to her in Philadelphia, possibly even a letter in English. He did write a card a few years later to say he’d looked in again on Mercury and found the fleet-footed messenger of the gods still earthbound and standing on his poor dog. But he didn’t mail the card. How corny and how transparent, he thought at the time, as he stared at the sealed envelope, wanting to ask his aunt for the Rosenthals’ address in America, fearing she would write to Zsuzsi herself instead if he waited too long.

Yet he could not dam up the river of hormones raging within him.

“Come away with me,” he now said to the darkness.

“Where?”

“Come away with me nowhere—
anywhere
.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean nowhere. Zerowhere. I’m not going anywhere and I want you to come with me.”

“I can’t.”

How easy Zoli and Rozsi made it seem, down the hall, and even young Lili and Simon, across town. What an utter ass he was, what an ass.

PAUL GAVE UP
, finally, by dawn and got himself ready to go out. He set off to his office to send out some letters to clients whose cases were now being managed by other lawyers. He was still providing advice on the side, and the new lawyers were glad to have it and pay for it. Lately, though, he felt his movements were being watched. He had twice, in the past few days, seen the same cream-coloured Alfa Romeo outside his townhouse, and now here it was again, across the street from his office building. They could have tried to be more subtle, or maybe that was the point. He had, after all, been the son of a prominent Jewish mayor, and was a prominent lawyer himself. Was it his inquiries about Istvan that interested the men in the Alfa Romeo? Had they followed Zoli? He knew, now, that Istvan had not been taken away and was not listed among the dead of Szeged. Paul just didn’t know where his brother was, and maybe that was best. If he didn’t know, probably no one did.

Paul walked across the pink marble floor toward the elevator. His assistant, Viktor, passed him going the other way. Why was he leaving so early? “I’ll be back soon,” Viktor said.

“Did you get out the papers for the Meszaros case?”

“Yes, they’re all on your desk. After you’ve looked them over, your stand-in, Mr. Kedves, will come by himself to chat and take the notes.” Viktor looked anxious.

“You’ll be back?” Paul asked.

“Of course,” the shorter man said, but then he hurried to the door.

Paul continued toward the elevator. It was a grand old Elisha Otis with a walnut-panelled car and polished brass door, operated with pride by Hermann Nagy. He wore white gloves and a maroon tunic with brass buttons to complement his vehicle. The outfit was crowned by a military cap featuring a bold silver double-headed eagle of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hermann bid Paul good morning as he approached.

Hermann pulled closed the metal gate, then looked straight ahead as he swung the brass lever to lift the car. He had his back to Paul. “There are some men waiting for you in your office,” he said.

“What men?” Paul asked.

Hermann shrugged. “They were speaking German.”

“German?”

Hermann didn’t say anything more.

Paul felt the blood beating at his neck. “Where was Viktor going?”

Hermann shrugged again. How glorious to be riding up and down all day in his carefree wooden box. If the men were German, was Paul not walking into the enemy’s lair? Was Hermann taking him to his deportation or arrest? The man piloted the elevator as though he were the captain of a spaceship, with a confident gloved hand on the brilliant lever, taking his rider to the moon and beyond. Did he truly not foresee the danger that might be awaiting Paul, or, worse, not mind either way? Was he not paid enough to mind? Paul felt like ripping the double-headed eagle from the man’s cap and ramming it down his throat.

But if they were Germans, and Germans had been shadowing him, why had they not arrested him already? Why the charade?

German wasn’t the language Paul heard when he walked through the door to his office. It was Swedish. Raoul Wallenberg stood to offer Paul his hand.

“You’re back,” Paul said. He let out a big breath.

“Not yet, not officially. I hope I’ll be back by the beginning of July, officially,” Wallenberg said. “Paul, I’m happy to introduce Per Anger.” The man was tall, like Paul, and had a warm hand and kind eyes. “He is the second-in-command at the embassy after Carl Danielsson, the ambassador, and I hope to become Mr. Anger’s deputy.”

“And I hope to become yours,” Paul said.

The Swedes laughed. Wallenberg said, “Mr. Anger’s German isn’t great, and his Hungarian and English are worse.”

Anger said in broken Hungarian, “If I forget my Swedish, I’ll be a deaf-mute.”

Paul chuckled as he gestured to the gentlemen to sit down.

“It’s good to see you again,” Wallenberg said.

Paul thought the Swede had aged in the short months since they’d met at Gerbeaud. Paul must have aged, too. The world had aged.

Paul was happy to be speaking Churchill’s English. He said, “You’ve lost more hair.”

“You’ve gained some,” Wallenberg said.

Paul ran a hand through his thicket of curls. He needed a haircut.

“You said you were going to come back, and you did,” Paul said, still amazed at the visitors in the room.

“I needed to. I can be more useful here. I heard from Mr. Anger that the transports have begun. We can’t stop them, but we can impede them.”

“I’m very pleased,” Paul said. “I thought our one meeting at Gerbeaud was—”

“Forgive me for quoting the New Testament to you,” Wallenberg said, “but our Luke once said, ‘From those to whom much is given, much will be required.’ So, I—”

Per Anger leaned forward to interrupt. “We can issue Swedish papers,” he said in Swedish, before switching, for Paul’s sake, to German. “Raoul is suggesting we issue official, colourful Swedish papers with our state seal and photographs. If the Germans round up Jews here in Budapest, as they have elsewhere, we’ll meet them at the stations and present the papers. We’ll ask the Germans to release people who match up with these fake papers we issue.”

“And I can help you,” Paul said. “I’m a Swede already,” and he showed the men his new papers.

They burst out laughing, and Paul joined them. Then Wallenberg said, “What other talents do you have?”

“I can stand on my head.”

They laughed again, and Wallenberg translated for Per Anger, but the diplomat had understood. Much had changed since Gerbeaud. The atmosphere felt different. There was a tension in the room.

“How did you know where to find me today?”

“I didn’t. Your assistant said you’d be in, but I’ve had my driver look for you.”

“Ah, the Alfa Romeo.”

Wallenberg nodded. He noticed the lamp on Paul’s desk. It had been a gift from his mother when Paul opened his office. It had come from the Tiffany Company of New York. It featured brilliantly coloured dragonflies, pointed downward, like a winged bombs.

“I was sorry to hear about your father,” Wallenberg said. “I never knew my own father—he died before I was born—but I suspect it would be worse to love a father and lose him, and in such a disgraceful way.”

“Thank you.”

“We do want your help,” Wallenberg said. “Your network is probably extensive.”

Paul shrugged modestly. Wallenberg looked at Anger. “It’s not enough just to issue papers. We’ll have to find safe houses around the city and raise the Swedish flag over them so that we can put the new Swedes out of harm’s way. We’ll annex places. Mr. Anger says the Dutch are game, and the Danish, the Spanish, possibly even the Italians. Ha, I wonder if Mussolini is still in charge of things!”