Gratitude (43 page)

“How close are the Russians?” Marta thought of the poor souls still in the camp.

“Close,” Alfred said. “You have to wait a little longer.”

He was smiling, but there was a faint hunger in his eyes. As she gazed at him, Alfred brought a hand to his temple again to cover his birthmark.

“It hardly shows,” she said. “Please relax.”

He dropped his hand. “If you will, I will,” he said.

And then a platter of warm trout on a bed of cabbage and onions was brought in and set before them. Emilia served Alfred first and then the visitor. Marta ate with relish. She sucked the supple, succulent flesh of the fish as delicately and politely as her satin dress would allow. She cleaned every bone of every morsel so that not a milligram of this animal’s meat was wasted. She was done before Alfred had finished half of his, but he stopped, too, when she did, and he dabbed his mouth with his linen napkin.

Tea was brought in, along with caramelized bananas for dessert. How on Earth did bananas make it to Poland? Had a single bunch been flown in from the tropics through a war zone and delivered directly to this house marked with a “P”?

Marta was bursting, but she devoured the sweet treat until her stomach throbbed and she had to sit back to catch her breath.

Alfred said, quietly, “We can take our tea in the sitting room. I have a surprise for you.”

“You have a
surprise
?” Marta couldn’t help herself; she started laughing uncontrollably, a real belly laugh that threatened to disturb its contents. What could be next? Alfred smiled with her and waited patiently for her to settle down.

Then he led the way by wheeling himself toward the far door. He paused and turned to Emilia. “Has Judyta arrived with Tadeusz?”

“Yes, Mr. Paderewski. Karel went to get them.”

Marta understood enough of the Polish to be alarmed. Her heart thumped against her satin dress. Emilia pushed her master into the room, but Marta hung back, wondering, now, how she would escape. She looked around at the door, then the door leading possibly to the front.

And then Karel came in to fetch her. “Madam?” He was indicating the door through which Alfred had gone. Karel didn’t say more; he was not as confident in German. “The concert,” he managed.

“The
concert
?” Marta asked. She put her hand on her beating heart. Was this a joke? A ruse? She was trapped. She couldn’t run now.

The room she was led into was simpler than the dining room. It, too, had a blazing hearth, but the fireplace was fashioned out of basic black granite, and the whole was decorated with a rustic warmth. Colourful folk art and naïve art, like art done by children, adorned the walls. A great grand piano, cherry wood, possibly, or even walnut, sat opposite the hearth, and a single chair had been positioned to face the instrument. Beside it, Alfred was waiting in his wheelchair. Their tea was set out before them on a small walnut table. Extra caramelized bananas were heaped in an oval blue dish with duck’s feet.

A young woman and man came out from behind a velvet burgundy curtain, evidently hung for this purpose, and Alfred clapped enthusiastically. “Judyta!” he called out. He looked at Marta, and she clapped, too, if weakly.

The young man, dressed formally in black tails, arranged himself and his music at the piano. Judyta was wearing a white evening gown and black shawl. She shrugged off the shawl, which Emilia rushed to take from her. The woman’s shoulders were white and slender. She was slight—they both were. The woman gazed for a moment at Marta before she began. She announced in Polish that she was going to sing a Bach cantata, “Ich habe genug.”

Tadeusz played the first notes. He closed his eyes. The music was plangent, doleful. At first, Judyta clasped her hands in front of her, but when she began to sing, she raised them like slender wings.

The music was transcendent. Marta felt unworthy to receive it, her ears still grimy with human ash. She was struck by the unreality of the scene, sitting here as she was, in someone’s satin dress, her head shorn, her body tingling with nourishment, wanting to rise aboard the notes to enlightenment. It was too much. No soul could shuttle so quickly between these two poles.

But what was reality anymore? The tears flowed down Marta’s face. Beautiful Johann. Beautiful. Of course,
Ich habe genug
. Of course you have enough. You have beauty. You have inspiration flowing in on beams of coloured light in your cold church in your cold time. And so you have enlightenment, floating on the voice of a human bird. You have your keyboard as the lovely Trieste first sings these notes in all their charm and sadness, the pure notes ringing out over the Thomaskirche’s stone floor. You have enough, Johann. You have a pudding in your belly, and you have beauty, you have transcendence, and not up the chimney in smoke. You have the girl with the slender shoulders and that voice, all the sadness of her charming notes lifting you both toward the beams of light.

Du hast genug
. You have life. But even that’s not enough. You want it all, don’t you, Johann? You want death, too. The ultimate beauty. The ultimate transcendence.

Marta wiped her wet cheeks with the palms of her hands. She stood up, and the singer stopped singing; the pianist stopped playing. “Please,” Marta said. “I have to go to bed. I’m much too tired. But please don’t stop on my account.”

“Of course you’re tired,” Alfred said. “You need rest.” He turned to the musicians. “Thank you for coming. Karel will take you home. Thank you.”

“Please don’t break up the lovely party,” Marta said.

“It’s not a party, just an entertainment, really,” Alfred said. “Enough,” he said to the musicians. “Thank you again.”

If he could have, Alfred would have stood with Marta. He seemed to want to scramble in his wheelchair to see to things. They watched Karel lead the musicians out, and then Emilia led the way to a lift Marta hadn’t noticed before. After Emelia had wheeled Alfred in, she told Marta to join them and they rode to the second floor. They escorted Marta to her room. “I have set out some flannel nightclothes for you,” Emilia said. “I hope you’ll find them comfortable.”

“Please make yourself at home,” Alfred added. “I’m glad you’re here with us and safe.”

“Thank you,” Marta said. She waved weakly and waited for the two to turn down the hall.

As Emilia wheeled Alfred to his room, Marta opened her door and saw that a warm fire was burning, a lamp had been switched on beside her canopied bed, and as promised a flowered flannel nightdress was folded on the bed waiting for her.

It just then dawned on her. This was the next day after her death. It was November 8. Where had Libuse got to? Marta brought the flannel nightclothes to her face and breathed. Libuse had held Marta’s hand as surely as she’d held onto life. Blind already and sick, she still spoke her mind, and she clutched Marta’s hand until she had to release it and press herself into the others in the chamber—the woman with the cloche hat, the Transylvanian boy, the young man with the erect penis which he concealed before entering the chamber, the last speck of shame before inhaling the broth of death.

Libuse played piano. She would have known this Bach that Marta had heard Judyta sing on November 8.

Oh, Johann, what did you do following your afternoon at the Thomaskirche? Did you come in for dinner, the girl with the slender shoulders still fluttering behind your eyes? Did you come in to your children and make them be still so that the song could go on? Did Anna Magdalena, pregnant again, always pregnant with another Bach, greet you with a peck, the sweat of the day on her cheeks and neck? Did she ask you how your day was, and did you say you’d written a little ditty for her and the children, one they could remember and be proud of? Did you tell her you called it “Ich habe genug”? And did the children romp and scramble and slap and kick and run all around the table as the mutton stew was brought in, because they’d quite lost that little box of pride you’d wrapped for them that afternoon?

Marta was suddenly afraid to get out of her dress and into her nightgown. She didn’t want to lose the dress and be trapped here in nightclothes. Maybe all the dresses and coats would be gone in the morning. She sat on the bed for a moment, then lay down on top of the duvet. She tried to smooth out the dress as she did so to preserve its freshness. She reached over and switched off the lamp, but the fire’s embers still illuminated the wood-panelled walls. She rested her arms straight beside her, not across her chest, which could wrinkle the top. She closed her eyes, but then a strange foul smoke crept into the room. She groped for the nightdress still folded on the bed and brought it to her nose again to breathe through the flannel. And then she knew what it was and shot up in bed. She threw aside the nightdress and gulped. It was not wood smoke she was smelling at all. Her nose knew the difference between wood and bone. How far was she from the camp? How far could she have run? The smell was indescribable, repulsive, something between charred fat and ash.

She dashed to the window and looked out into the darkness. Not a light shone in Oswiecim, though she couldn’t have said which way her window faced. A rain fell as lightly as snow and brushed against her window. She heard a faint creak. Could it be that he was coming to Marta? The sound stopped and she caught the distant clink of a latch being lifted or a key turned, so far away it could even have come from downstairs, deep within this big house.

Marta waited quite a while longer. Not another sound came. She heard the wind buffing her window, but nothing more. She didn’t want to be heard, either, so she crept back to her bed and resumed her orderly repose on top of the duvet.

But it was Istvan, now, who came to visit her. Where was her Istvan? Where was her man, without his keeper, with just small Smetana to keep him company? How could they possibly have managed? Maybe she would find them dead, both of them likely, curled against one another in that pose of the transcendent.
Ich habe genug
. Surely, the two of you have had enough, without your hunter-gatherer, your jailer, your lover and mother. Surely, surely—how wonderful it must be, finally, not to need to eat or breathe or hide. The grave forgives all its occupants. The grave absorbs the passions—the protagonist’s, the antagonist’s, the artist’s, the demagogue’s, the servant’s, the master’s.

But Istvan stirred. Marta could sense it. What if he’d managed to cling to life for her? What if his passions had not been extinguished? She had to leave. She had to know.

Marta was up again. She stole to her door, turned the knob, was relieved to find it opened. She crept to the servants’ staircase and, a step at a time, waiting to hear a reaction after each one, she made her way to the first floor and toward the front, she hoped. It was dark, but Marta had to be deft, had to plan her exit carefully. She realized that, by feeling her way along the walls, she eventually had to come upon a door.

She was as quiet and as careful as could be, holding her breath some of the time, using her hands and feet as eyes. When she found the door at last, a light came on. Emilia said, “Oh, Marta, Mr. Paderewski will be disappointed.”

“I’m sorry,” Marta said. “I know he will be. He’s a dear man. And you’re a dear woman. But I have to leave. Can you understand that?” Emilia stood in her nightgown with a brown cardigan pulled over her shoulders. She clasped her hands in front of her. “Won’t you stay just a little longer?” she said. “You’re weak—you’re skin and bone.”

“I’m strong enough. I’ll manage, just as long as you don’t mind my taking this dress. If I make it, I’ll return it to you, cleaned and pressed and nicely packaged.”

“Don’t return it,” Emilia said. “Just let us know you’ve arrived safely. I’ll give you a coat and proper shoes and some food for the way.” Emilia led Marta down the stairs to the kitchen. She set to wrapping bread in a linen tea cloth, as well as some cheese and sausage. “You’ll have a struggle, my dear. You can’t just hop on a train. I’ll wake Karel. Mr. Paderewski won’t mind if he takes you out of harm’s way, at least.”

“Don’t wake him, please,” Marta said. “I’ll manage. I’ve managed worse.”

“Maybe not.”

“Maybe not,” Marta repeated.

“Your fate is in other hands.” Emilia crossed herself and waved at the heavens through the ceiling.

In the vestibule, Emilia dug out a trench coat lined with sheepskin and some clunky lined leather shoes. She hugged Marta, ran her hand along her brush cut and went back to the closet to find a fur hat. “It’s sable. It was his mother’s.”

Marta felt a chill come over her again, as she had upstairs.

“Go with God,” Emilia said, and she released Marta.

Twenty-Eight

Budapest – December 8, 1944

BY THE TIME
Lili and Simon arrived back at the Dutch insurance building, 243 people had taken up residence there. Lili could see Paul looming above the heads of people milling in the centre hall, and he saw Lili, too, and smiled. She smiled back, and Simon waved.

Rozsi and Klari spotted the newcomers and rushed at them. “You brought him back!” Klari said, squeezing her son hard.

Rozsi did the same to Lili. “I was worried to death about you. I didn’t know if you’d come back to us.” Her eyes were bloodshot. “There’s been no word of Zoli.”

Lili felt guilty to have left Rozsi behind. Since Paul had become so occupied with the deportations, Lili had been the one to sit with her, console her, reassure her.

“Mr. Wallenberg’s here,” Rozsi said. “I asked him myself about Zoli.”

“Mr.
Wallenberg
’s here?”

Klari answered for her niece. “They all came at once. Yesterday. The embassy on Minerva Street has been blockaded by the Germans. They’ve moved here, now. Per Anger is in another building on the other side of Pest.”

“Who are all these people?” Simon asked. “Where’s Father?”

“These people came from a ghetto building that was bombed by the Germans. Half the people didn’t make it. The other half are here. There’s nowhere else to put them. Mr. Wallenberg and Mr. Anger are already sheltering thousands of people—I heard someone say thirty thousand—in buildings around the city. And your father is tending to those who were injured in the blast. He’s upstairs. He’s glad to have been pressed into service, I think. Many of the people who’ve moved here are crowded into the upstairs offices. The nuns are helping, too, especially that young one, Beata.”

Paul and Wallenberg walked by them now. “Mr. Wallenberg,” Lili said right away. “I saw you at the railway station. I saw what you did.”

“How did I do?”

“You did well, sir.”

“Thank you,” he said, looking up at Paul.

“And you, too, Paul,” Lili added. Paul shrugged.

They headed to the back of the bank of offices, where the Becks and Lili used to sleep.

“Those are the new Swedish offices,” Klari said apologetically. “We’re relegated to sleeping on the floor, now, all of us. But it’s not terrible. We’re still here.”

Simon held up the fur sleeping bag. “Well, I’m all set.” He smiled, but he’d been hoping to share his bed with Lili that night. He could see it wouldn’t be possible.

A bomb fell in the distance, and everyone ducked instinctively and looked all around.

Wallenberg had managed to transfer funds from his family’s accounts in Sweden and had arranged with an old candy factory in Budapest to bring in a dozen pots of soup and pans of brown rice speckled with pieces of pork. He apologized to the Ulloi residents but said that it was all that was available. Some would eat only the soup, and Wallenberg, certainly, was not offended.

Another bomb fell, and everyone ducked again. “The Russians are here,” Wallenberg told Simon and Lili. “They’re pushing the Germans back. The Germans are blowing up the bridges as they retreat.”

Still another bomb fell, this time shaking the building. Plaster fell from the ceiling. Everyone looked up again. A tank cranked through the street in front of the building, and they all stopped to listen, their heads turning toward the door.

THAT NIGHT
, before going to bed, Lili sat with Rozsi, who still had a cot. She was the only Beck who did. “I missed you terribly, Lili.” Rozsi took the younger woman’s hand and kissed it, and then wouldn’t let it go.

“The Russians are here in the city,” Lili repeated to Rozsi. “It can’t be long now. Then people will come back. We’ll have people coming back.”

“I don’t know,” Rozsi said. “I think I’m going to be a ghost bride of China.”

Lili looked at Rozsi. “I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t sound good.”

A ghoulish look came over Rozsi’s face as she lay back on her cot, still clutching Lili’s hand. Lili was frightened. “When I was a young girl, my parents took me to China. Up in the northern provinces, in Shanxi and Shandong, there are ‘ghost marriages.’ Husbands and wives are buried together in a single plot, but if a man dies a bachelor—if he’s killed in a coal mine, for instance, before he can be married—grave robbers are hired to get him a bride out of someone else’s grave.” Lili took her hand back and held it up to her mouth, but she stayed where she was. “Then a ghost marriage is held between the freshly dead miner and his dug-up bride. If she’s freshly dead, she’s still ‘wet’ and fetches a good fee. If she’s long dead, they call her ‘dry,’ and she’s worth no more than the price of a chicken. That’s the kind of bride I’ll be. A ghost. Maybe I’ll be lucky and be a wet one.”

Lili took Rozsi’s hand back. “It’s been very hard for you,” she said. Lili moved the ruby to the front of Rozsi’s finger. The ring had become quite loose. “But people
are
coming back. I have to believe people are coming back, and you do, too.”

Rozsi smiled and said, “I’m tired.” Then she turned away from Lili and fell asleep quickly.

Lili managed a minute alone with Simon, and they kissed. He was wearing fresh pyjamas the Red Cross had provided for everyone in the building, together with lined leather slippers. She told him what Rozsi had said. “Do you think people will come back?” she asked.

“We were on the deportation train. It wasn’t an encouraging scene.”

“Do you mean people were being taken to their deaths?” Tears were filling her eyes.

“I don’t know. Who knows anything? Is it possible they could have killed all the people they took? It doesn’t seem possible. Paul told me three and a half million people were taken from Poland, three million of them Jews.”

She gave in to her sorrow, and he held her for another couple of minutes. Then she said, “Where are you sleeping?”

“I’m all the way over there, by the door, with some of the other young men, but my mother insists I keep the fur sleeping bag until I regain my strength. Can you sneak over later?”

“I don’t think so,” Lili said. “We have to be respectful of your parents.” She was still wiping away tears. She remembered how the night before they’d made love, and then Elemer was taken out and shot. Poor soul. She thought of Elemer’s sister and a shiver ran through her. Simon kissed her again, and she left him.

In the back, Paul sat up with Raoul Wallenberg. They were at Wallenberg’s new desk. “I could use an espresso,” Paul said.

“That would be a trick.”

“It would.”

“So we have to start thinking about reconstruction,” Wallenberg said. “The war is finally grinding down. Eichmann is becoming more and more desperate.”

“He has a job to do,” Paul said. “He wants to finish.”

“He’ll finish us, or we’ll finish him. He knows that it will all happen soon. And then there will be a city in shambles, buildings to rebuild, lives to restore. Look around this building at the faces. Look at your own life: the people you lost, the career you lost, the house you lost. What will you do, stand in the street and look cheerful?
Lie
in the street?”

Paul said, “But the Germans have confiscated all the properties.”

“Whatever the Germans have confiscated, the Russians will confiscate from them. Then the question will become: Do you think they’ll hand it all back to you?”

“And you’ll stay here for all that?” Paul asked. “Assuming you’re right and Eichmann flees, and we’re still left standing, you’ll stay to help rebuild?”

“What else can I do? I’ve got to finish what I started. At least that much.”

A knock came at the door and Wallenberg opened it. It was Lili. She had two cups of espresso in teacups. “Oh, you blessed creature,” the Swede said. He took her face in his hands even before she’d had a chance to set down the cups and kissed her cheeks.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t find the right sized cups.”

“But you found espresso, Lili?” Paul asked.

“The candy factory sent a small packet of coffee,” she said. “No one else can know.”

The two men drank with relish. It was two more hours before they themselves retired to the pallets set out for them on the floor by the desk. Wallenberg had asked that the few cots be reserved for the old and the infirm.

SIMON WOKE
to a cool stream of air flowing in from under the large front door. He could feel it on his face; inside his fur bag he was quite warm. He wanted to breathe the pre-dawn air, so he climbed carefully over the people sleeping nearby and crept to the front entrance. He opened the door quickly and stepped outside.

It was snowing. Blossoms of snow were falling straight down. The city was asleep. The warriors were resting. It never ceased to amaze him the way the world could be in upheaval and yet most people would silently agree that, at a certain time, they would all sleep, or try, or they’d all eat, or try, or they’d take turns doing these things, in order to replenish their bodies’ resources. The whole building behind him was quiet, and the streets before him just as quiet, the gentle snow respecting their repose. He knew it was premature to take an accounting, but he couldn’t help marvel that he stood here at all, that history had deposited him on these steps, and that, after all his family had been through in a few short months, they might now just make it, those of them who were left. He watched the snow clump on the pavement. He wondered how many layers of people below it future generations would count, whether the rubble of this building and its human contents could still be applied to the top to create a fresh layer, the way this snow was doing.

He wondered how the march to Budapest, led by Sergeant Erdo, was coming. He thought of Miklos Radnoti in his trench coat, wondered if it was lined. He wondered about Commandant Fekete and the group that went with him. Were they all holed up and sleeping somewhere now, too, before having to resume their winter march in the morning? Was there a barn somewhere for them, or a farmhouse?

A single gunshot rang out. Then another. A German soldier leapt out of the wet shadows at the side and grabbed Simon by the throat. He had a pistol aimed at his temple.

The German pushed Simon back in through the unlocked doors, startling the sleepers inside. Two young girls stumbled out of the bathroom and scurried up the stairs to their parents. A lamp came on in one of the offices. People sat up or stood. They saw Simon and the German, the pistol. They huddled up against the walls, clearing a path. Simon glanced toward the door to Wallenberg’s office, but it remained closed. He couldn’t spot Lili or his parents, but they were around the corner. It would take a minute for the message to get around the building. Someone, a teenager, saw that the German had a grenade strapped to his belt, and he called out. The German aimed his pistol at the boy.

A woman said, “We’re Swedish.
Schwedische
.”

The man turned his pistol back on Simon.

“Everybody, shut up!” the soldier shouted. “Quiet!
Sei still!
” The soldier couldn’t have been more than twenty.

The building fell utterly quiet. The German dragged Simon to the stairs at the back of the building, then up the first flight, people clearing a path for them as if they were royalty. They worked their way to the next floor and then the next. Simon had to pull on the German’s fist a couple of times or be choked to death. Surprisingly, the soldier eased up when he did. Simon could see the insignia of the Reich at his shoulder. The two of them were at the roof. They couldn’t go farther, and then the soldier threw Simon aside and burst out on the roof itself, slamming the door behind him.

Simon listened at the door but heard nothing outside. Below him, he heard nothing. He could have been alone it was so quiet.

But the building’s ears were open. Simon’s ears were alive and wide open. And then a bomb went off outside. The building rocked. Simon fell to his stomach, covered his head. He heard debris raining down. The door had held. Had the building been bombed? Had the roof withstood the explosion? Simon had heard no plane overhead. Where was the German? Had he hurled his grenade at someone on another roof?

He waited patiently now, but full of apprehension, half expecting the soldier to come running back past him, down the stairs to the door below and the street. He would have to do something if the soldier did come back through. He’d have to surprise him, trip him up.

Simon waited a few more interminable minutes. No one came. Not another sound from below or above. He owed it to himself to give it another minute or two, owed it to his parents and Lili. But when the soldier didn’t return, Simon felt confident it would be all right to seek him out, speak to him. He knew it was bold, but he’d been held in a labour camp during a bad winter and had survived Sergeant Erdo. Could anyone be worse than Erdo? The German at least hadn’t shot him. He’d certainly had his chance.

Simon had to know what it was like to be a German, overrunning the planet, beating his chest and getting set to rule. He needed to look at a man of pure blood, just find out about him, not admiringly necessarily, but to satisfy his curiosity. He would stay calm, not threaten him, and he wouldn’t be threatened in return. Surely that was the way these things worked, even with a lion or a snake.

Simon was at the door. He pressed his ear against it. No sudden moves. A sudden move would attract a bullet. He gingerly undid the latch and edged open the door. In came the winter air, and with it not a whiff of smoke or molten lead. He smelled only the air, damp with the Danube, heard nothing but the flapping of the Swedish flag, with its companions, the flags of Hungary, the Netherlands and the Dutch insurance company.

As Simon opened the door halfway, he felt suddenly exposed on the winter roof in his pyjamas. Dawn was breaking, and the snow had stopped falling.

He was ready to retreat, but he still had not seen what had become of the German. He got down low and pushed the door open the rest of the way, and then he saw. The chimney was splattered with blood, as was the gravel all around the roof. In the middle was a crater where the soldier had stood to blow himself up.