Gratitude (27 page)

“She’s a lovely star,” Rozsi said. “She’s very good at sucking up the light.”

“Venus is not a star,” Istvan said, already the scientist. “Venus is like us, like Earth and the moon. We merely reflect the sun’s, our own star’s, light. We must look like that to the Venetians, too, except there aren’t any.”

No one made a sound, and when Istvan turned toward his young sister, he saw that she was crying. He looked at Paul on his other side, and he was still staring up into the sky. Istvan got up onto his knees and said to Rozsi, “Do you want me to turn Venus back into a star?”

“No,” she said. “You can’t. You were the one who took away her starhood in the first place.”

As he looked down again, Istvan wondered about his young sister. He wished he could ask her how she was doing this night in Budapest, if she wasn’t with Marta. Could they have met up wherever they were taken and introduced themselves? He gazed all around again at his street, felt momentarily exposed, but saw the window that beckoned. He didn’t want to be detected as he approached, and he was lucky. A weeping willow stood before the window, so he could hide under it. His breath left him as he looked in. A woman sat at a white dressing table with an oval mirror, brushing out her long russet hair, brushing languidly, unleashing the golden oil of her scalp into her hair. She had fleshy lips, pouty full red lips. Istvan found himself trembling inside his Alpine sweater. He was faint. Hunger and deprivation had made his appetites run together. He’d developed an Impressionist’s eye. The woman was suddenly half red lips and half red hair, the hair long as a garment. He saw now she wore a silk nightie, nothing more, one long leg slung over the other, the upper foot bobbing as if to music, urging its owner onto a dance floor. The woman ceased her operations, set down her brush on the dressing table, arrested her bare, rhythmic foot by planting it on the floor. She looked directly into the mirror, took a violet cloche hat that sat like a straw helmet awaiting her, and fitted it onto her head, wiggling the hat until the posy of straw flowers at its front stared straight back at her in the mirror. She shifted the flowers off to one side for a second, then tried the other. All that was missing was a flapper dress.

How could Istvan visit with her without setting off some alarm? Where could he have come from after all this time, and how must he look? Like someone dredged up from the bottom of the sea, full of seaweed and silt. If Istvan longed for a little lamplight and tea, if he tapped at the window, would she lunge at his throat, plunge a knife in his heart, lunge at the darkness and formlessness of night outside her window?

Was it too late to call? Was she getting ready for bed already? He knew the exact time, 9:13. He always did, now, without checking. With nothing but a cat and clock to tutor him over these months, he’d internalized the ticking as surely as the desire and need behind the scratching on the floorboards.

There might be a man. There was surely a man—she was surely not alone—not with so alluring a nightgown and so ardent an effort at brushing her tresses.

He would be neighbourly—not
too
neighbourly. If this neighbour was a surprise to him, imagine what he would be to her. And he couldn’t tell the truth. He didn’t want to implicate Marta, not after all she’d been through.

Istvan was at the door now, and he knocked. For a moment, he could not hear a thing and then the door opened a crack. A wedge of light fell out. The woman looked at him, just a nose and eyes, sizing him up. He peered in. She hadn’t bothered to conceal herself. She was still in her nightie, without shoes.

He said, “My car broke down a few blocks from here. May I come in?”

“Your car?” she asked. “I have no phone, not anymore.” She kept looking him over as she spoke. He took half a step forward, and she didn’t flinch.

Who would he have phoned if she’d had a working phone?

“May I come in for a moment?” She didn’t answer. “Would it be all right? Is your husband here?”

“No, he’s not. He can’t help you. He’s an officer, and he’s on duty tonight. He could come back any time. But even if he was here,” she continued, “he wouldn’t help. He’s not mechanical.”

“I can wait a little. Maybe your husband could help me push the car off to the side.” What was he saying? What if she agreed to his request? The car could have been stolen, then, gone from where he left it, that’s all.

The woman said, “I don’t know when my husband will be back. Marton’s his name. He’s a corporal.”

Istvan said, “I was heading for an evening meal when my car conked out.” They both knew about the curfew. “It was hours ago. I tried to fix it myself but couldn’t.” She looked at his hands, his Alpine sweater, looked him over again, top to bottom.

He was ready to back off and maybe run. If she didn’t have a phone, she couldn’t have him pursued, not right away. He could make it away, but he didn’t want any authorities scrutinizing the neighbourhood. He would have to stay away for days. He had backed up several steps when she opened the door wide. “Come, sit with me. We can talk a little and maybe solve your problem. There’s someone a block or so away.” She stood absurdly exposed in the doorway, her long hair acting as a russet scarf as the night air flowed in. She rubbed her own shoulders. “Please, come in. I’m Piroska.” She offered a single warming hand to greet him, and when he took it, she tugged gently, and he was inside in a second with the door closed behind them.

It was warm in the little house and comforting. He saw a bowl of fruit on the wooden table beside them. He expected her to withdraw, put some more clothing on, allowing him to steal a pear, but she asked him to sit as they were in the parlour, a room not much bigger than his own, three ancient doors down the way.

He’d barely sat in a wooden chair opposite her, barely settled back, when she said that Marton would not be coming back that night. “He’s not on duty. He’s a gambler and a drunkard.” Her eyes welled up. He looked across the little room at the mantel. They had no clock. In its place stood a photograph in an ebony frame of an officer, a handsome young man with dark hair and eyes, proudly holding a rifle with a bayonet. She saw what he was looking at and made no remark.

“But he could come back, couldn’t he? He
could
be back any second.”

She shook her head. “He’s been gone three days.” She began to sob in earnest now, stood a moment, glanced through watery eyes at the mountains on Istvan’s sweater, came over to him and stood before him, her bare knees knocking against his knees as she swayed her distraught form. He thought she might faint. Her eyes were closed. He thought she might throw herself at him, throw herself at a chance, believing in his kindness the way he was hoping he could believe in hers. She was rubbing herself again as she swayed, rubbing her upper arms, then she let them fall to her sides. Was the warm heart of a mouse enough to give him potency? Before he knew it, he was on his feet and she was in his arms, both of them benefiting from Marta’s generous wool sweater.

She opened her wet eyes. They were purple in the honey light. He thought she might kiss him with those ample red lips. He glanced again at the fruit, toward the dark little room at one corner, then the other, the one where he’d first seen her. What a world away were these rooms, just three doors down from his own hideout, the table laden with food, the wayward officer, the friendly, needy woman Marta’s age. What house was this, centuries before? The home of a carriage driver? A stable hand? The royal florist? And whose ancestors creaked upon these little floors? Piroska’s? Marton’s? Did their ghosts still hover about the place in the hulking shadow of King Mathias’s ghost, the fragrance of fresh flowers awaiting arrangement and delivery?

He found himself plunking backward in a soft chair, Piroska on top of him, straddling him like a jockey her horse. She kissed him, and he felt himself sink into those luxuriant lips. He held back. “Please,” he said, feeling queasy.

She pulled her head back, her arms still around his neck. She looked at his eyes, lips and neck, as if she were sizing him up again. “What do you do?” she asked. “Are you from here?”

“Yes. I’m a dentist.” He immediately regretted telling her. What if she told Marton, or anyone?

“I don’t believe you,” she said. He was relieved. “You don’t look like a dentist.”

“Then I’m not,” he said. “I’m a car mechanic.”

She looked him in the eyes, surprised, but then she giggled. She got off him for a second and lifted her nightgown, exposing herself, the damp triangle of auburn hair, then mounted him again, began to fumble with the buttons of his pants. He didn’t want her to take off his sweater, didn’t want her to see how scrawny he’d become. How warm she was in the cool night air. They made love like crazed people. She bathed the whole lower half of his face with her mouth. Her hungry tongue jabbed at his throat. And then she became rigid and pulled her face away. Her eyes blazed at him. She concentrated all her energy below. From deep within her throat, she released a strangulated cry, chilling. She seemed to swoon away before him, and he clung to her, but the chill froze over her, too, as it had him, enveloping her.

He was not finished as she raised herself off him, crumpling to the floor. He got to his knees and tried to lift her. “Please,” she said and raised her hand.

He slid to the floor beside her. He had used the last dram of fuel left within him. He lay exposed, still, as did she. He wanted to get them something to cover them, a coat, a shawl, but couldn’t see anything.

She turned her face toward him. “Where are you from?” she asked again as if they were just meeting.

“Why do you ask?”

“You’re missing something?” Her eyes had turned to ice with the rest of her.

He put himself together again, pulled up his pants, buttoned up. “Why do you ask?” he said. “Is there a place such a feature is required?”

“There should be,” she said.

He looked at her for a few seconds more. He used the chair to pull himself to his feet. She turned away from him and was crying. On his way out, he paused by the fruit bowl but felt he couldn’t take one in case she was counting.

When he got outside, he was half as sure about whose house he was going to visit as before he’d left. He hobbled around like a skunk ready to turn foul on any takers. He looked up again for Venus, but she’d hidden herself behind a cloud. He thought later he might catch rain. He kept gazing, happy to be able to look up into something other than a ceiling. For a moment, he thought he might have seen Mars, blushing through the clouds, but the light moved on, like an airplane, followed by its roar, followed by the lights and roar of another dozen planes flying—where?—northwest toward the Reich? He ducked into a bush, but couldn’t think why. If they’d spotted him, would they waste a bomb just on him? Would they brake in the air and descend to apprehend him?

He walked smartly out into the street again. He was better off holed up in his cellar awaiting his Marta, he decided, than a free Piroska awaiting her lover, complete with bowl of fruit—better to be Penelope than jilted Charles Bovary.

A single strong light turned a distant corner and came toward Istvan, beamed at him—a searchlight, it looked like—but as it approached, Istvan realized it was a car with one headlight out, past curfew, possibly a German, probably, the Cyclops approaching. Istvan fell to his stomach beside a bush. There was no time to scramble behind it. Maybe this was the broken-down car he never owned coming at last to collect him. He held his breath, buried his face in the grass.

Nineteen

Budapest – September 1, 1944

SIMON HAD BEGUN TO FEEL
as useless as he was helpless. He had never returned to work after he was injured, and no one came looking for him, even though letters found their way to the Becks. He couldn’t go foraging for food with Lili, or Rozsi, who was becoming more daring and insistent lately. Paul wouldn’t have him on the campaigns with Wallenberg, because Simon wasn’t convincing as a Swede. He couldn’t write a great poem to Lili, though he certainly tried, and it wasn’t enough that he could recite poems to her, though that did impress her. He couldn’t invent anything, though he certainly tried that, too: he made drawings for a streamlined version of the innards of a butane lighter; he tried to concoct a mixture for an adhesive to be used by airplane manufacturers that would be strong enough to withstand high air pressure, but he couldn’t find the chemical ingredients to try out his hypothesis; he designed a disposable stomach for times of plenty, so chubby people could gorge themselves in cafés on meat and bread and cakes and then toss the full stomach in the bin on the way out; he tried to find a cure for something, anything at all, but couldn’t, even though, for a week, he pestered his father with questions about how various parts of the body worked. Why did the body attack itself with its green, cancerous army? he needed to know. What was giving the orders, and why? How could the orders be intercepted? Was surgically removing the conquerors as well as the conquered the way to go? If the heart was sending out the green soldiers, why couldn’t some kind of filter be installed to stop them, or a ditch to trip them up? If it was the brain that was to blame, why couldn’t it be sat down and persuaded to desist?

Simon began formulating a theory of evolution based on a group of humans confined to an office for ten thousand years. He made drawings. In the first set, the people had become as translucent as jellyfish and were vegetarian, sucking the ivy off the building’s walls and then the leaves from the potted plants, which had overtaken the top floor. Some were boxlike, and some had heads that craned over and took the shape of desk lamps. Some were flat as floors and striated, to suggest the grain of hardwood. In the next set of drawings, the humans were entirely transparent. Really, all one could see were the offices as they were now, with the occasional indentation apparent in a pillow and in the cushion of a desk chair, where people appeared to be lying and sitting.

Little news streamed into the safe house on Ulloi Street, except what arrived second-hand from Paul or Zoli or, occasionally, Lili. Sometimes the lack of news suited Simon fine. He was content to cocoon himself with his family and with the nuns. He allowed himself to feel immune for hours at a time, sometimes days. And even when there was news, Simon didn’t want to know about personal stories. He wanted to hear where the Russians were and how the Americans were doing; he preferred not to think of what had become of his frail cousin Janos, the mathematician—he couldn’t bear even to hear his name—he’d wince and turn away—or even Istvan, whom he’d written off, or his uncles and aunts, even Hermina and Ede, who had been kidnapped mysteriously years before. He hoped they were taken for a reason other than for execution, but he didn’t want to imagine what it was.

One day, Klari played a record Lili had brought for her, Brahms’s Clarinet Trio in A Minor. The honey-dark music was the essence of regret, and Simon had to leave the room or be stricken with it for the rest of the afternoon.

That same day, Lili brought the news that Horst Immel, the lieutenant who’d walked Maria and her to the Church of St. Margaret, was gone and was probably dead, one of his comrades had said. Simon said, “Good riddance.”

Lili didn’t respond.

“Isn’t it a good thing?”

“I don’t know. He seemed like a decent man. He had family back in Germany.”

“So it’s not a good thing? I don’t recall sending him an invitation to visit us in sunny Budapest.” Simon’s ears had turned crimson. “He’s an
invader
. He’s deporting Jews somewhere. Your family’s been deported.”

Lili ran to the washroom in tears, and the subject never came up again.

Simon tried to speak to the nuns, but they would turn away. They behaved sometimes like deaf-mutes. He asked a couple of them questions about the Church in Rome and what the Pope’s position was on Hitler and Mussolini, but they looked offended and walked away from him. He encountered a young nun one morning by accident in the washroom, and was surprised at how curvy she was. He had accepted, as completely as they themselves had, that they were without shape and appeal. The nun screamed, and Simon ran out of the room.

Simon was least like his former self when it came to food. He paced the floor like a dog, Klari had told Lili, all the time Lili was out on her scavenging expeditions. His anxiety was such that he carried it with him to the door when he kissed Lili goodbye each day. When he finally did have the food in hand, say a piece of bread, he tore at it and seemed to swallow it whole, or, if the Becks were fortunate enough to get butter for their bread, he’d slap a lump of it on one corner before gulping the whole piece down. He had to be eating immediately, his mouth working, as he got ready for the next morsel. And then he would be calm again, his stomach having received its reward, calm and ready to talk about love or poetry or evolution—but not until.

One of the cleverer nuns, the young one Simon had caught half-undressed in the bathroom, began growing African violets from seeds someone had given her. When she showed her colleagues and the Becks that the flowers were coming up, pink ones and purple ones, Simon yelled, “What good are those? Grow tomatoes or peppers or cabbage. What the hell are you growing flowers for?”

Lili was the one who saved him every day and gave him hope. He and she talked often about starting a family the day the war ended. “And we should come back to this building,” Simon said, “so our first child can be a real Swede.”

“Just as long as we don’t become jelly people,” she said affectionately.

Zoli happened by that day with a bag of fruit for them all, and the four young people sat together. Simon asked Zoli about his plans with Rozsi, and he said he didn’t know—he lived from one assignment from Wallenberg to the next, relieved when he made it to the end of each one, glad he could report back that he’d made it. He looked stern and serious.

“What do you mean?” Rozsi had said. “Don’t we have plans, like Simon and Lili?” She wiggled her ring finger. “What happened to our plans?”

“You know nothing would make me happier,” he said, “but right now we have what we have.”

“Look,” said Simon, “I have been rendered little more than an eater of scraps and a wearer of clothes. Let us dream a little, if we may.”

“Of course,” Zoli said, but he didn’t add anything else.

Simon and Lili talked about where they’d live, what they’d do, whether they’d stay in Hungary. He said no—he wanted to go to America or Canada—but she said they couldn’t leave his family behind, and Dr. Beck would never leave.

“Then Dr. Beck should stay,” Simon said. “He’s stuck in this place, physically and mentally.”

Simon said it loudly enough for his father to hear. Robert had not returned to work, either. He’d been told his services would not be required any longer.

“Do you think other places are better?” Robert asked Simon. “Don’t you become a missionary too, please.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Simon asked.

“Leave it,” Lili told Simon. “Please leave it. It’s his home you’re describing.”

Then Klari was there, too, to ward off evil spirits. “Please, boys. Every time this subject comes up, there is a battle. It’s not your fault, Simon, darling, that you were born when you were born, any more than it’s ours, as you seem to think. People live where they can live. They can’t be criticized for it.”

But Simon continued. “Father, are you calling Paul a missionary? Is that what you think he is, just because he has strong feelings—
justifiable
feelings?”

Klari tugged on Robert’s arm. He didn’t answer.

“Who’s a missionary? Zoli? Wallenberg? Lili? Regent Horthy?
Me?
”

Klari escorted her husband out into the hall. Just then the front door burst open and several police walked in. Simon was relieved to see they were not the Arrow Cross, but they startled Klari and Robert all the same.

“We’re looking for Simon Beck,” one of them said.

“We haven’t seen him,” Klari said, looking at the wall.

Simon stepped out to join his parents and identified himself. Lili was by his side.

“What do you want with him?” Robert asked.

“He’s a skilled worker.” It was only the one officer who spoke. “We’re taking him for the war effort. We need him.” Everyone looked at Simon. “He’ll be at a labour camp in Transylvania. We understand he has some skills as a tool and die maker, and we need those. It’s not a death camp, unless he misbehaves.” They all looked at Simon as if at a boy. “If he behaves,” the man went on, “then he’ll come back to you, most likely.”

Robert said, “Please tell me, what can I give you?”

“Not much, it looks like,” the officer said. “How about a nice desk chair, boys?” They laughed.

Simon couldn’t stand to see his father humiliated. He looked at Robert, believed he would take this as a failure, his own personal failure, and the failure of his country. Everything would be all right for Robert just as long as they could hang on, wait this through.

Simon put his hand on his father’s shoulder and thought Robert might cry.

Even the intruders seemed touched. “He heals people,” Simon said. “It’s what he knows. He doesn’t contribute well to a war effort.”

“Too bad,” the officer said.

“Wait,” Klari said. She dashed into the office, dug out a necklace she’d been hiding under the base of a lamp and returned. “Take this instead, please. Don’t take our son.”

The policeman took the necklace and looked it over. “Thank you, ma’am. I’ll take both.” And he pocketed the necklace.

“But we’re Swedish nationals,” she said.

“And we’re Martians,” the Hungarian said.

“Leave it,” Robert said. He looked defeated.

Klari looked around her, as if to seek help. Rozsi was in a corner in the office, cowering on her cot. The nuns were nowhere to be seen. Simon had begun to perspire. Robert could see his son’s heartbeat at his temple. What would he eat? he wondered.

“When are you bringing him back to us?” Lili asked.

The officer smiled at her. He looked lascivious rather than kind. She shrank back behind Simon’s arm. The man said, “He’ll come back when we all do.” He smiled again.

“Please let me give him something to take with him,” Klari said.

The policeman impudently took Klari’s chin in his hand. “He’ll have everything he needs where we’re sending him. Don’t give it another thought.”

“Enough,” Robert said.

The policeman looked around, as did his men. “Nice place,” he said.

And then they were gone. “Oh, poor Lili,” Rozsi said, and now she followed her Aunt Klari to her cot to comfort her.

But Klari said to her, “He’ll be safe in Transylvania. It’s safer than Budapest, safer than taking forbidden pictures.” It wasn’t a kind thing to say, and Klari knew it. She didn’t know why she’d come up with the remark. She sometimes wished her niece could be Paul. She gazed through her tears at Rozsi. Rozsi offered to get Lili, but her Uncle Robert was there first.