Gratitude (16 page)

Rozsi said, “It’s hard to believe that what happens to the unfortunate of this country is of concern to Hitler.”

“No, it’s of no concern to that prick, but it is of concern to
them
, to the unfortunate themselves, and when they have their day, they will not be kind to us, many of them. How long could this country’s feudal system survive? We’ve turned farmers into paupers. Do you remember the journalist Gyorgy Olah? He called them the ‘three million beggars.’”

“How sad, in a country so rich,” Rozsi said. “And then the rumours start that we’re to blame. How terribly sad, for
everyone
.”

“Yes,” Zoli said, taking her face in his hands. “But saddest of all, rumours are truer than truth, because people
want
to believe them.”

A cool breeze blew up, and she put her arms around Zoli again. “I just got engaged. Most of the people I love are falling all around me. Zolikam, I need you—do you understand that?” It was the one thing she had to hope for, look forward to. She didn’t want to stand alone—
couldn’t
—she knew that.

“I need you, too,” he said.

“Then please don’t go everywhere that there’s trouble. I won’t get another wink of sleep until this war’s over.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said. They had to leave the Strawberry Gardens now, before curfew.

Eleven

Budapest – June 21, 1944

BEFORE LONG
,
there was almost no food left in Budapest. The supply lines seemed to dry up. As money became worthless, farmers were hoarding food for themselves and their families. The trains had been taken over by the military and were being used to deport Jews. The Becks had gone from eating cakes and marzipan squares, veal shank and sauerkraut, and drinking brandy and teas, to scrounging for sacks of beans or rice in outposts around the city and hoping that Robert’s patients who needed to come in from outlying hamlets would bring him food, prepared or not. But Robert’s patients avoided him as much as they could. They assumed he might not be there when they came back to have him check on their recovery after surgery. And he was losing cases to other physicians, who quietly took them without a word to Robert.

Simon went out with Lili to scrounge for food, but he’d been stopped twice, once by a squad of Germans, who looked over his Swedish papers, then at him, then back at the papers, while hardly glancing at Lili’s documents; and once by the Nyilas, who didn’t care about his papers and took him to the outskirts of the city, broke his nose and two of his ribs and threw him in a dump. He managed to make it home on foot by night, to the relief of his horrified parents and Lili, who had sat by the window, waiting and crying, and holding Klari’s hand when the older woman joined her.

Robert bandaged his son’s side and his nose, and with Klari and Lili’s help gently put him to bed. Lili sat by his side through the night, experiencing for the first time since she’d left Tolgy what it would feel like to lose someone close. Simon’s eyes were closed, but he put his warm hand out from under the duvet to hold hers. She cried again and kissed his knuckles.

From that day on, Lili went out on her own, insisting that the Becks stay put. She found all kinds of food. She brought home dandelion leaves, which her hosts had never eaten. She found tins of Spanish anchovies, a crate of them, for which she traded an ice-blue satin dress Klari had given Lili for the purpose of bartering. And she took a trip to a farmer’s field with another girl she met, a Catholic girl, Maria Nap, and together they harvested a sack of potatoes.

The scarcest commodity was meat. Chicken or goose had become a delicacy. One night, Klari said she was so hungry for meat she would eat a bat if it flew through her window. She’d clamp it into a pot and get it cooking before it had even calmed down. She said she’d eat a crow, if she had to, as soon as she had torn off its feathers. Robert said he felt like a wolf, and would
eat
a wolf, if it happened his way, even if he’d be branded a cannibal for his efforts.

Lili saw the desire in their eyes. They had never known hunger. Neither had she. Lili imagined if she had stayed in Tolgy, or could return to it, she’d find plenty to eat. She wondered what they were feeding her family, if her mother’s milk had dried up for little Hanna, if the baby was still enjoying the sensations of the world. Lili didn’t mind the world’s disintegration, in itself. She could hunt for food. She didn’t care about buildings, bridges, temples and cafés. She remembered the tales of Babel and Sodom and Gomorrah. It was only a matter of time before most civilizations were razed in favour of new and cleaner ones, until they too became tarnished. Lili didn’t need buildings. She could manage in a cave. But the thought of losing people—
her
people—
anyone’s
people—was abhorrent to her. And to what end? Knock down a building to show how mighty you are, but why would you have to make it impossible for a baby to drink her mother’s milk?

Sometimes, before sleeping, Lili imagined talking with her mother. She imagined sitting with her, once Helen had put Hanna down, and telling her how she was getting on, what had happened since the last time they’d seen each other, how she’d lost her appendix, how she’d travelled in the wedding dress Helen had made, how these nice people had taken her in without question, insisting that she stay, be a member of their family until hers returned. What would her mother do when that day came? Would she present the Becks with something, her thanks at the very least, invite them for a country holiday, thank God for the goodness of strangers, thank God for the good that these bad times brought out in people?

Lili tried to imagine the man who had caused all this to happen to her and to everyone she knew. The conditions had to be right, for sure, for such a man to succeed, but it also took a certain kind of daring, like madness, surely, like Captain Dobo throwing the leaves back up to the branches that had dropped them. A certain kind of daring in dark times, so that everyone behind you said
yes
, this will surely set us free, and they all took flight behind you without once checking your wings.

Hitler was so powerful, he had turned the dial on every personality within his range, so that cheerful people turned melancholy, mad people turned criminal, melancholy people became suicidal, courageous people turned heroic, charming people became irritable and dark—all so that the maddest hatter at the front could turn himself into something mythic.

Lili saw this change in herself, saw her own optimism flicker, and she saw it in Simon. When she’d first known him, she’d thought he looked a little hungry around the eyes, but now he looked ravenous, like a stray dog. And once, he found her sitting alone in the corridor beside the hall table with its silver eagle carrying a clock in its beak, flanked by silver griffin candlesticks. She was wiping her nose and eyes. He asked what was wrong, and she said she thought she might be getting a cold. He said, “If I hold you a little, you might feel a little less rheumy.”

Still, people were not fundamentally changed, not changed at the core. Klari and Robert, for instance, happily stood in as her parents, treating her with as much love and respect as they did their son. She felt herself clinging to the Becks every bit as much as they clung to her.

Lili even got to learn the tallest of the family tales. One evening, after eating a good plate of salami and beets, which a colleague of Robert’s had given him, Lili asked about Klari’s younger days and about some of the people in Klari’s family.

Klari said, “Let’s start with my cousin Sandor, who’s one of my favourites.” Klari took Lili into the parlour and brought out a bundle of letters and photographs tied with a red ribbon. Simon, who, after his beating, had two black eyes to go with his swollen, broken nose, sat with his favourite women.

“Who are those from?” Lili asked excitedly.

“They’re from Sandor Korda—
Alexander
Korda, the film producer,” Simon said.

Klari looked annoyed, as if her son had spoiled a surprise.

He said, “Mother was a little in love with Alexander—with
Sanyi
, as she used to call him.”

“Oh, be quiet,” Klari said, and swatted at her son. “And don’t be impertinent.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be,” he said, and appeared to fold up his limbs where he sat.

Simon seemed extra sensitive these days, and Klari saw it right away. “Go ahead, tell Lili more, then,” she said.

He sat up straighter. “They’re cousins, all of them—my mother, Aunt Hermina, Aunt Mathilde and Alexander Korda. My mother’s father, Maximillian, and Alexander Korda’s mother were brother and sister, except they all had an unfortunate falling out.” Simon looked directly at Lili. She couldn’t fathom what she was hearing. The movies were so otherworldly to her, so magical. She hadn’t thought that anyone made them.

“Alexander Korda founded London Films,” Simon went on. “He was really the father of the British film industry. He’s still there, and he still writes to Mother.”

Klari blushed. “He does sometimes.”

“Yes, but
only
to her,” Simon put in. “He seems to hold the rest of the family responsible for what happened.”

“What happened?” Lili asked.

“He practically came to blows with our father—that’s what happened,” Klari said, “and then Father disowned him. They disowned each other, I guess.” The room lit up with the sun again, brightening Klari’s auburn hair.

“Maximillian’s sister, Ernesztina, married beneath her station. She settled down with a handsome but wayward sort by the name of Kellner. They had three sons, and when the eldest was thirteen, their father died. As time went on, Ernesztina, Alexander’s mother, asked her brother Maximillian in Budapest to please set her son up in some kind of profession.

“Alexander Korda, or Sandor Kellner, as he was then known, came to Budapest at his Uncle Maximillian’s behest. My father established an office for Sandor right next to Odon Grunwald so that his nephew could study law with the best of them. It was not easy for my father to extend such a hand. When others in his family faltered, he let them fall—that’s how he was. When his brother Gyorgy gambled away his inheritance, night after night, over a backgammon board, he came to his elder brother for help. Maximillian would not meet with him at first. He’d barely come down to say hello to Gyorgy. He would not visit Gyorgy when his brother took a fall and broke his ankle. He would not respond to any of the notes Gyorgy sent him. He wouldn’t even open them. Finally, an appeal on behalf of their brother by Ernesztina, the only sibling for whom Maximillian had a soft spot, weakened Maximillian’s resistance. He arranged to meet Gyorgy at the Japan Café, an establishment Gyorgy also cherished for its bohemian character.

“When Gyorgy got there first, the proprietor hugged him and offered him his favourite table. ‘No, Max’s table tonight, please, Attila,’ Uncle Gyorgy told him. ‘The dark Munch.’

“They both laughed just as Maximillian walked in. Attila snapped to attention. ‘May I get you something, a drink, some fresh cherry strudel?’ Attila asked him even before he sat down with Gyorgy.

“My father wanted only
palinka
. Then he told Gyorgy it was time for him to leave Budapest because nobody would trust him here even if he did succeed in slaying his demons.

“Gyorgy asked my father, ‘Why do you hate me?’

“My father told Gyorgy he didn’t hate him, but they’d both started out of the same gate. Uncle Gyorgy was wounded. ‘So is that what this is?’ he asked. ‘Some kind of race? Some kind of competition? I didn’t even notice the starting gate until you came charging out of it.’

“My father was exasperated. He implored Gyorgy to take whatever he had left and start a new life in France or England or Austria. But Gyorgy had nothing left, so my father offered him enough money to make a start elsewhere but not enough to return. He wanted Gyorgy to earn his way back.

“My uncle asked my father, ‘Take me in with you, Max. Take me into your business.’

“‘You’re joking, surely,’ Father said. ‘I don’t want you near my business, let alone in it. If you don’t want this money, I’ll take it back with me. I don’t part with it willingly, because I don’t trust you, Gyorgy. I don’t know what you’ll do with it.’

“I can imagine how Gyorgy felt. He must have looked my father up and down for a good while before he took the money and stormed off.

“And now, years later, came his other sibling’s request, Ernesztina’s appeal, this time on behalf of her eldest son, Sanyi. It was easy to see why the young man who came to Budapest was thought to be wayward. His mentor at the law firm, Odon Grunwald, made some effort to get Sandor to appreciate the law. Instead of hearing him out, though, the young man made Grunwald listen to him as he prattled on about
The Birth of a Nation
or about the pratfalls of Fatty Arbuckle. Grunwald certainly would not have played along if he hadn’t been asked by Maximillian Korda himself and, oddly, if he hadn’t found the young man so captivating.

“Sandor stayed for a short time at our house on Kaldy Street, off Andrassy. When he first approached the house, he asked if he was being taken to temple, so grand was the walkway leading to the entrance. ‘Goodness!’ he said, looking at the frieze above the door and colonnades holding up the roof. ‘Is there an Ark of the Covenant inside?’

“My father didn’t answer but spoke only to Lajos, his aide. ‘Take his things upstairs to the green room, the guest room.’ Then he turned to his nephew. ‘You have time to dress for dinner if you like,’ he told Sanyi.

“At dinner, Sandor cast a spell over us Korda girls, Hermina, Anna, Etel, Mathilde and me, and even over our mother.

“Oh, where are they now?” Klari said, interrupting herself. “Where is Hermina? Where is Anna, and Etel—and their boys, Bela, Janos—poor frail Janos—”

“Mother, please,” Simon said, and Klari looked up at the young couple.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but these times—you know…”

Lili nodded sympathetically. Klari went on. “Sanyi was tall and awkward, but his dark brown eyes gleamed with cheer. The boys and Father seemed less moved. Sandor asked us over dinner, ‘Have you read Karl May?’ When no one answered, he said, ‘What about Jules Verne? Are you familiar with
Around the World in Eighty Days
?’ I said I had read it. ‘How about
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
?’ He said if he were being tested he thought he could describe every single detail of Captain Nemo’s quarters on the
Nautilus
.

“‘Unfortunately, there is no test for such a thing,’ my father said. We all glared at him, even my mother. ‘Is that what you want to do, Sanyi?’ Father asked. ‘You want to travel in a balloon or crawl along the floor of the sea?’

“‘Not at all. I’m afraid I’m not quite heroic enough for that. But I love the stories about people who do want to do those things. I’d love to capture such adventures myself, if I could.’

“‘
Capture
them?’ my mother asked good-naturedly.

“‘Yes.’ He leaned forward. ‘Imagine capturing such a thing, such an adventure, on film, so the whole world can join in.’

“Sanyi did not last long at our house. He preferred living with a poor cousin called Miksa, from his father’s side of the family. Miksa was a poet who supported himself as a
hordar
, a porter.”