Mrs. Tuesday's Departure: A Historical Novel of World War Two
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Authors: Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson
Mrs. Tuesday’s Departure
Suzanne Anderson
Henry and George Press
Mrs. Tuesday’s Departure
By Suzanne Anderson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Suzanne Anderson
ISBN-13: 978-1468170542
ISBN-10: 1468170546
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Cover Design ©
2012 Tinashe Designs
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For my mother
Adeline Lucas Anderson
Her love and encouragement makes everything possible.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen.
~ Hebrews 11:1 King James Version
Suzanne Anderson
Chapter One
“
I can’t slee
p
Nana.”
Mila’s skin was clear and pale; like the antique German porcelain dolls I’d bought for her when she was a child. Long dark lashes shaded her almond shaped blue eyes.
I released the doorknob that I’d been ready to close, entered her room and settled into an overstuffed chair with a sigh and a smile that belied my worry. Candlelight silhouetted Mila’s face in a halo of pale yellow. The book she held created a shadow that fell across her chest making the pink roses on her nightgown glow and float in the shadows of her long dark hair. In the five years that Mila had lived here, there were few nights when I did not find her with a book.
When Mila first arrived, I placed this chair next to her bed to read aloud one of the children’s books that provided me with my living and my reputation. Over the years, the chair remained, I wrote more books, and read each one to Mila until she outgrew them and began to read the novels she found in my study. The ritual of our time together before bed, our discussion of books, remained. Even during these years of war.
She propped the book against her chest and watched me expectantly. “You’re coming with us aren’t you?”
“Of course.” I turned from her gaze and smoothed the edge of the comforter wishing our conversation could skim the surface as lightly as my fingers.
“And Aunt Anna?” Mila’s eyes searched my face for signs of deception.
“Yes, she seems to understand.”
“But she forgets things so quickly,” Mila added anxiously. “You know what she’s like when she becomes confused.”
“We’ll sort it out in the morning,” I folded my hands in my lap and leaned back in the chair. “She’ll come with me.”
“Mom’s worried she’ll slow us down.”
“She said that to you?” my voice tightened as I finally looked into her eyes.
Mila looked away. “I overheard Mom and Bela in the kitchen before supper.”
“I’ll make sure that Anna reaches the station on time.”
Chapter Two
With that w
e
sat among the shadows of the bedroom, neither of us willing to enter the overrun province. My younger sister and her husband resented my care taking of my twin sister. A year ago, Anna had moved in with us. A nervous breakdown made it impossible for her to continue living alone in her apartment near the university where she had been a poet in residence.
Mila began again. “When I try to talk to Momma she snaps at me.”
“She’s just concerned about the arrangements for our trip,” I offered.
“Sometimes she looks over at Bela before answering me.”
“Bela’s a difficult man.”
“I think she’s afraid he might leave without her. Would he do that, Nana?”
“No. He wouldn’t leave without her.”
I rubbed my hands down the length of my wool skirt to warm them. This room resisted warmth despite the clanking radiators that sat like plump cats hissing and spitting against two of the bedroom walls.
I disdained my younger sister’s choice in men. Ilona effortlessly used hypochondria as a defense against any form of housework or childrearing labors. She’d picked her husbands accordingly. Men willing to care for her in exchange for total control of her movements and her affections. Jealous masters. As a result of Ilona’s disposition, and the low wages Bela received as a legal clerk, they’d come to live with me after my husband died. They insisted they were concerned about my living alone. Though I surmised my spacious apartment was a greater priority to them than my welfare. My husband and I lived in a large three-bedroom apartment in the center of Pest. I kept the master bedroom that I’d shared with my husband, which still held his clothes, and his scent. There were two smaller bedrooms. Mila slept in one, my sister Anna in the other. Ilona and Bela felt those bedrooms were too small for them, and when they realized that I was not going to relinquish the room I’d shared with my husband, they claimed the living room as the only room large enough to accommodate them comfortably. As a result, my study became both a library and a living room. The dining room and kitchen remained, as they were when my husband and I lived alone here. I maintained the truce with Ilona and endured the angry outbursts of her husband to keep Mila near. She was the daughter I’d always wanted. She was an inquisitive and beautiful young girl.
“What are you reading?” I leaned forward and gestured toward her book, hoping an old routine would bring comfort and distract us from our separate worries.
“Aunt Anna’s poems,” Mila said, turning the cover toward me. “I can’t believe that she wrote the words.”
“Before her illness, Anna was a brilliant poet with an enormous gift for making the mundane sublime. She was a remarkable woman. She still is.”
“I wish I could talk to her about the poems,” Mila said.
“Try,” I said. “There are moments when she still understands a great deal.”
Mila pushed herself up in the bed and leaned toward me. “What does she remember?”
“For her, the poems that were written a decade ago are the freshest in her mind. That’s some of her best work. She can still tell you exactly what she was trying to achieve in each line. Ironically, it’s her inability to process what she did yesterday, or a moment ago, that keeps her from creating. It’s sad. I know she has so much more to say.”
Mila leaned back against the pillows and chewed her lip. “Does she realize what’s happening to her?”
I took Mila’s hand in mine and gently squeezed it. “She knows.”
A year ago, Anna had handed me a stack of leather-bound books. The journals contained Anna’s notes on poems that she had struggled through, political skirmishes at the university, and embarrassingly detailed notes on her love life. Anna asked me to edit them and publish them for her. It was one of the first things she asked for when the doctor concluded that her delusional bouts would become more frequent over time. She wanted some testimony to survive as her real self slipped away. I’d begun working on them when my own writing stalled. I was piqued, discomfited, and touched by what I read. In the long sloping lines of confession that covered the pages of her journals, I realized a depth to her I’d never imagined.
“How long will she recognize us, Nana?”
“I hope forever.”
Some things a young girl should not have to learn too quickly. The irony of life, that insanity should take the one thing that allowed Anna to express her greatest gift. I shook my head. No, that was the least of it. There was so much more I was trying to protect Mila from. Outside her windows, four floors above the street, the March wind moaned. The windows rattled and whistled softly as cold air seeped through cracks in the warped wooden frames. The streets were unusually quiet. Even at this hour, Budapest should have been alive with the sounds of the city. But there were no cars on the street or pedestrians making their way home from the opera house or the cafe. What a sharp contrast to the celebrations held just days before.
On the fifteenth
,
the National Opera premiered “Petofi”, its opening coinciding with our national holiday. The Regent Horthy and his wife attended the event and there was a collective opinion that this was a good omen. So many happy memories belonged in that hall. Then in the last two days, the lightness and hope vanished. The streets were alive with rumor and fear. Increasingly, it became clear that we would be drawn into the same hellish pit that had swallowed our neighbors. Budapest was the last morsel for the Nazis to devour before their own demise.
