Gratitude (19 page)

They passed the primates: the “Ring-Tailed Lemur (
Lemur catta
),” a scrawny and curious-looking animal that had the most lively striped tail; the “Chimpanzee (
Pan troglodytes
),” but he or she, too, was hiding out somewhere, like the ostrich; and grandest of all, the “Eastern Lowlands Gorilla (
Gorilla beringei
).” The great beast was lying on its side, facing away from the visitors. It looked utterly still and silent.

“Is he all right?” Lili said. She wanted to stand up in the carriage as they passed. Patrik didn’t answer. Lili thought her little brother Mendi would have been thrilled to be here. She wondered what the chances were that she could ever come back here with him. Lili’s eyes stayed on the ape. She asked again, “Is he all right?”

Maria tugged on Patrik’s sleeve. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Is he
dead
?”

Patrik shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a hard time for them, like us,” he said. “It’s a hard time for all of us.”

Even before they turned the corner ahead of them, Lili could hear shrill, mocking laughter. She saw an expanse of sand and rock, a few trees, clumps of grass. She soon found the sign: “Brown Hyena (
Hyaena brunnea
).” She wished she could write down the names for Mendi.

Two hyenas were at the gate of their enclosure. Patrik dismounted. They were ready to jump on the fence when they saw him. They laughed and barked at Patrik. He placed his hand flat on the gate so they could smell him. One of the hyenas loped off, but the other one stayed. He looked like a large unkempt dog of some kind and seemed to like Patrik the way a dog might. Patrik pulled a key out of one pocket and a scrap of gristle out of the other. He let the hyena get a whiff of it, then reached back into the carriage for the bayonet.

He turned to the girls and raised his finger to his lips. “Don’t spook him,” he whispered. Maria turned to Lili and shielded her eyes as if from the sun.

Patrik entered the pen. Lili wanted to ask what was happening but stayed silent as instructed. Maria kept her gaze on Lili, one hand still shielding her eyes from the sight in the pen. With her other hand, she clutched Lili’s, much too hard. Lili was still protecting the wafers. She turned toward the animal just as Patrik slashed the hyena’s throat. The strong animal slumped to the dirt. The blood splatted out as far as the wheels of the carriage. Now Lili did feel she’d be sick. Maria loosened her grip. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered to Lili. The hyena that had run off now cackled from a distance at its fallen friend.

“She’s a good one,” Patrik said. He had blood all up his jacket and on one side of his face. “Meaty.” He raised the bayonet again and brought it down with the force of a guillotine, slicing deep into the hindquarters. “She’s a good forty-five—fifty kilos. We’ll each have a hunk. You too, Lili.” The hyena’s friend came a step closer and cackled again, then turned and ran off into a clump of bush. “Maria, toss me those sacks, three of them.”

Maria jumped down. She patted the grey horse on its cheek. “He’s a Lipizzaner,” Maria said. “Klaus. He’s from Vienna.”

Lili calmed down as she looked at Klaus. The horse threw his head back a couple of times and neighed. Lili said to Patrik and Maria, “I’ll help you if you want me to.”

Patrik said, “No, we can manage.” He worked the bayonet now like an expert butcher. The animal was chopped into front, middle and back. “I’ll give you the front,” Patrik said to Lili. “The head will make a good soup—the brain is good. The rest will make a hearty stew. And you can have some of the potatoes in the back there.” Patrik worked up quite a sweat as he hacked away at the animal. “I’ll bring an axe next time,” he said, grunting.

They heard a roar some distance away. “The cats,” Patrik said, as he wiped his forehead with his bloody sleeve. “That’s a panther. A beauty.” He smirked. “Another time.”

Lili smelled the iron of the blood. It filled the air. Maria and Patrik grunted as they hauled the sodden sacks back to the carriage and hoisted them into the back. Lili ran her hand over the wafers covered in the tea cloth.

Patrik steered Klaus expertly all the way back into the city’s core and to the Becks’ house on Jokai Street. Simon had evidently been looking out for her; he was outside by the curb in an instant. Lili saw Patrik taking in Simon’s black eyes and broken nose. Maria was transferring some potatoes into a smaller sack. “I can help you up with these,” Patrik said to Lili.

At the door, Simon asked, “Can we pay you?”

“No, some other time, maybe,” Patrik said.

He handed the bloody sack to Simon, who took it against his white shirt and winced as it met his ribcage.

“Thank you so much,” said Lili. She kissed Maria, avoiding a drop of blood on her friend’s cheek.

Maria winked and departed with the burly Patrik.

Simon grunted and asked, “What’s in the sack?”

“Mine?” Lili asked. “Potatoes.”

“No, this one.”

“Hyena.”

Simon almost dropped the sack, but grunted again as he heaved it higher and headed quickly for the Alhambra. “I hope we have the laughing end,” he said.

“Yes, with potatoes.”

Twelve

Budapest – July 1, 1944

ROZSI WAS TO MEET ZOLI
at the place he thought was safest: the boathouse where they had found Zindelo, the Gypsy violinist. It was their new rendezvous. The Strawberry Gardens had become too risky. Zoli had seen a young woman and her father being beaten there by the Arrow Cross. He had managed to get a single photograph of the incident.

Rozsi arrived early, looked in and called Zindelo’s name, but there was no response. The boat was there, the
Petofi
, and Rozsi searched it to be sure. She saw the wooden scroll of Zindelo’s violin peeking out of the bag he kept it in. Where would he go without his violin? She shivered and felt cold. The rain had started again, just like the last time she was in this hut, and everything felt damp.

The boat bumped against its mooring, and Rozsi jumped. She was skittish these days wherever she went and nervous even around their house. Though Paul was spending more time at home than he used to, she was anxious when he left her alone, even though she had her Swedish papers at the ready. He was out always with the Swede, Raoul Wallenberg. They were trying to set up “safe houses,” as they kept calling them, because the Jews they were saving from the transports had no place to go. Many of their homes had been confiscated and were now occupied.

Zoli was rarely late, but this morning he was. He said he’d be there by nine, and now it was almost a quarter after. What could have happened? Zoli and his camera. It was worse than a weapon. It was a weapon you might as well turn on yourself. And she had told him so. Was this to be the new pattern? He’d be late, she’d worry; he’d arrive, she’d plead; he’d calm her down, and then he’d be late again.

Rozsi woke each day wondering how this could have happened to her beloved Budapest. All of her thoughts centred on the perpetrator, this Adolf Hitler she had rarely considered until he sent that other Adolf—Eichmann—to torment Hungarians. What was it about her land that was so offensive that they wanted to topple the lovely theatres and cafés and bridges? What did Adolf Number One think, each night, before he drifted off to sleep with his Eva Braun—that everything was right with the world as he bulldozed its buildings on one front and evacuated certain of its citizens on another? How could he appreciate it all in a single head? Did he think, Now I’ve wrecked Poland, and that was a very fine
Jagerschnitzel
, my darling, as he patted his tummy? It didn’t make sense, even to Rozsi, who rarely tried to make sense of such things. Did he surround himself with adjective-makers who called him Great and Glorious, Magnificent and Brave, Brilliant and Powerful, Blessed and Noble, Eloquent and Tough?

And why did her Zoli feel he had to capture the man’s far-fetched deeds on celluloid? What would we want to remember it for? Rozsi didn’t want to be part of an exhibit about their lives. She wanted to continue her life.

That was what Zoli told her he was doing: fighting for the lives they had. She looked at her ruby ring. She wondered now where Istvan had got to. She felt she could show him her ring and the note that ended with “
I love
.” He was more in his gut, like her, and could have understood why she’d fallen for Zoli. She’d shown Paul the ring, and he said it was nice, but he seemed to be examining the gem itself, holding it up to the light, rather than considering its implications. Was Istvan long gone now? Was he listed among Adolf ’s daily tallies? We’ve moved this many now, like so many head of cattle. We like to level buildings and move residents, then settle down to
Jagerschnitzel
. Rozsi felt closer to Istvan than she did to her eldest brother. Rozsi had come to Budapest because she needed to, for her own sanity—she didn’t want to be the first lady of Szeged after her mother had died, didn’t want to entertain her father’s windy friends. Besides, Paul had needed someone to look after and to keep him company.

The minutes passed. Rozsi would have asked Lili to come with her, but Lili was on a scavenger hunt, as always. Lili, the miracle worker; Lili, the
wunderkind
. Rozsi was so tired of being the overlooked
kind
, the forgotten
kind
, the
kind vergessen
. A tall new tree had moved into the woods to stand among the others—Paul, Istvan, the spectre of her father, the spectre of her mother, and now that Lili—all of them overshadowing her, blocking out the sun. Lili was so extraordinary that, when Rozsi had said her house was drafty in the evenings and she was always cold, Lili had broken into someone’s abandoned place and stolen a good lambswool coat for her, even though Rozsi had a perfectly nice lined suede coat. Two other coats and several dresses they had traded for meals. Rozsi should have worn one of the coats today, even though it was summer.

Rozsi was close to her uncle and aunt. If part of the reason she moved to Budapest was to be with Paul, then another part was to be near her Aunt Klari. She reminded Rozsi of her mother—looked like her, reacted to things in a similar way. Mathilde would have taken to Zoli right away, as Klari had. Rozsi often talked with Klari about Zoli’s dangerous work with his camera, and Klari told her, “You wouldn’t have it any other way, Rozsikam. His ambition and integrity are what make him who he is, but he’s more than a romantic figure in your life. His passion excites you, too—doesn’t it—and his integrity?”

ZOLTAN MAK HAD INTENDED
to be on time for Rozsi, but he’d been delayed, first by Paul, who’d needed extra pictures done that morning, and then again by an incident on the Liberty Bridge.

Zoltan had been held up for some time. He’d been shadowing a small group he had come upon on the Street of the Martyrs, four Arrow Cross officers of the Hungarian special police. They’d taken a Jewish man and a young boy, a one-time journalist Zoli recognized and his son, and hustled them—dragged the hysterical boy—all the way to the Liberty Bridge. The Arrow Cross tied father and son together with rope thick enough to secure stallions. They slapped the boy to shut him up. When the father protested, they slapped him, too. Zoli watched as the boy whimpered. One of the guards had a machine gun, another a rifle. They wore leather gloves. Zoli stood close by, but managed to keep in the shadows behind a stone brace. He snapped his seventh photo, and an eighth.

The one who seemed to be the leader said, “We have a little game we like to play.” As he spoke, he stepped right up to the man and boy, tied back to back. Now he spoke only to the boy. “There’s a rhyme you must remember from when you were a toddler.” From the tone of his voice, you’d have thought he was a kind uncle, a gentle guardian. He said, “Even Jewboys learned the national rhymes, didn’t you?”

The boy continued to whimper.

“Am I wrong?
Didn’t
you?” The officer’s mouth came within an inch of the boy’s ear. They were standing by the railing of the bridge, pressed against it. Zoli took a photograph.

“Yes, we did,” the father said.

“Well, then,” said the officer, adopting the avuncular tone again. “Let’s repeat the rhyme, shall we?”

Now a couple hurried across the bridge toward the men. They were rushing to get out of the rain, which had just begun to pock the Danube. The man held on to his fedora, the woman to her plastic rain bonnet. They slowed as they passed the small clutch of people. Zoli heard the man ask what was going on. He took a photograph:
A man with his wife on a rainy bridge, his hand held out in inquiry
. Then a shot rang out, launching the fedora skyward, then all the way down to the river. Another photo:
Flying fedora, blurring against a wet sky
. The man was dead even before his body buckled to the bridge. Snap:
The woman wails
. Snap:
She drops to her knees over her fallen husband
. Snap:
She takes a bullet to the back of the neck.

Iron drops of rain fell now. The father stood in horror as he watched the Nyilas officers. Zoli hid behind his camera. Snap:
They fling the woman first, then the man after her, into the darkening river
. “Your hat went that way!” one of the junior officers yelled, pointing into the water.

Now there could be little doubt as to what was coming. The father pleaded for the life of his son. “Just the boy at least,” he was saying. “Please.”

Zoli couldn’t think what to do. He gazed into the lens at the scene before him, a small black and white square cut out of a nightmare. His heart no longer beat, it seemed, but gushed within him, sending hot currents to his cheeks and extremities. What was he to do? What could he do? He could rush at the men to stop them, or rather delay them, for that’s all he could accomplish, surely. He could aim his camera well and click as often as his film would allow him. He could hold absolutely still so that he could live to tell the tale someday. Or he could flee and never look back, never think back—just take nothing and vanish.

Zoli felt ready to vomit. He could not move. He must not vomit. He raised the camera yet again to his eye. Was it light enough still to get a picture? He heard the boy’s voice cut the rain with the childhood song, cut it as sharply as cut crystal.

Brightly coloured moocow,

Without ears or tail, cow.

We are going to live where

We can get our milk there.

Boci boci tarka,

Se fule, se farka.

Oda megyunk lakni

Ahol tejet kapni.

A pistol rose, as did a lens. A shot punctuated the song. Shot:
The boy begins again as his father’s head bobs forward lifelessly, then backward against the top of his son’s head.

Brightly coloured moocow,

Without ears or tail, cow.

Snap:
They lift the dead man onto the railing, still tied to his singing son
.

We are going to live where

We can get our milk there.

The one with the machine gun said, “The trout need a song.”

“And the carp,” his comrade added, the one with the rifle. Snap:
He butts the two into the blueblack river, the singing boy secured to his dead father
.

By the time Zoli made it to the boathouse, he found Rozsi sobbing. She was sitting on the floor. He drew her to her feet and sobbed with her. He didn’t have to say a thing; his eyes showed their horror. She felt the bulge of the infernal camera beneath his wet jacket.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Where were you?”

“I can’t say.”

“What pictures did you take?”

“I can’t say. I never want you to see what I just saw.”

She looked up at the horror still registered in his eyes and shuddered. “We’ve got to leave this place,” she said. She held his face in her hands. “We’ve got to leave Hungary.”

“I won’t,” he replied. He spoke calmly now. “I can’t.”

“Then we’ll never get away from here,” she said. She pressed her face against his chest, expecting to hear a caged bird flapping wildly. But she heard nothing.

He raised a steadying, even warm, hand to the back of her neck. “I can’t. I need to take pictures.”

She pulled back from him. Her fingertips were cold and numb. “Do you know what’s going on? They’ll kill you!”

“Do I know what’s going on? Yes, I do. They can kill me, but the photographs will be secure—I’ll make sure of it.”

“What are you, insane?”

“Possibly. I have a job to do, a cause.”

“What
cause
?” she cried, then hit his chest. “We have no cause. Survival, that’s our cause. We cannot afford other causes. You sound like my fool brother. What possible cause? Do you know who these Germans are? Do you want to take pictures of the world gone mad?”

“No, I’d rather take pictures of picnics and swans, but the world has gone mad, as you say, and I want people to remember just how mad. It’s the only thing I can contribute.”

“But why can’t you just let people’s memory glue things back together? Destruction is destruction wherever it happens. Who’s ever going to say it was pretty, even without pictures?”

“Please,” he said.

She cried some more and he held her. After a time, he asked, “Where’s Zindelo?”

“Who knows?” she screamed. “Probably shot or transported or drowned. Who knows these days?
I
am going mad,” she said. “Do you understand that?
I
am part of this, too. Aren’t you? Can you look into your lens and think you’re invulnerable? There’s a person connected to that eye—a soul—
my
soul—
our
soul.”

Her voice lost its force. They swayed together like the boat. The rain beat down hard now on the little roof, so the couple stayed put, waiting for it to pass. Rozsi asked, “Do you think we can go to the Strawberry Gardens, just for a bit?”

“No, not today,” Zoli said. “It’s not safe.”

“Why won’t you tell me where you stay?”

“I’ll show you sometime.”

“Show me today.”

“All right. Tonight.”

ZOLI SOMETIMES STAYED
at Rozsi and Paul’s townhouse, but most often he went somewhere else. When he did show up at the Becks’ home, Zoli always tried to bring food. Once, when Klari’s family was visiting, he arrived with a pan of roast potatoes, still hot from the oven. He’d persuaded his old friend, the owner of Lekvar, to hand it over just as he was going to serve it. The restaurant had been his favourite bohemian haunt until just months before, when it became too dangerous to visit regularly. Zoli set the pan down before them in the kitchen and made a grand gesture with his hands, like a magician, inviting everyone to partake.

Robert nodded his appreciation as the frenzy began around the pan, but Zoli took Rozsi aside. “Look what else I have for you,” he whispered dramatically as he pulled a kilo of smoked ham from inside his coat.