Mrs. Tuesday's Departure: A Historical Novel of World War Two (20 page)

“Deszo, you must,” I urged. “Or I will go alone.”

Jozef looked at his feet. “They will be sent to the camps.”

I felt the floor move beneath my feet like quicksand. I reached out and grasped Deszo’s arm to keep from falling. “Deszo,” I whispered. “They won’t survive the camps.”

Deszo pulled me into his arms and held me tightly. “When is the meeting?”

“Tonight, I’ll give you directions,” Jozef replied. “We’ll meet together before and I will take you there.”

“What is your reward for this arrangement,” Deszo hissed. “I imagine the prize is quite large.”

Jozef’s jaw worked, bunching the muscles in his face. “I work for both sides. The information I get from the Germans I supply to certain groups who are trying to save the Jews.”

“Do they pay as well as the Germans?”

Jozef waved away the question. “Sometimes they pay better. And with them, I can sleep at night.”

“How well will you sleep tonight?”

Jozef stared at Deszo and responded, “I’m going to speak with one of them before I pick you up. I’ll try to find out where they are holding Mila and Anna, find out if there is any way to smuggle them out if things don’t go well tonight.”

Deszo held m
y
hand and led me along the narrow steps that climbed up the back of the old hotel. The lights in the building were shut off during an earlier air raid and had yet to come back on.

“Why didn’t Jozef show up?” I whispered to the dark shape of Deszo’s back. We had waited nearly thirty minutes for his arrival at a designated location a block from the hotel. 

We waited, following every shadow that crossed the path of the alley we stood in. Each time, the hollow echo of footsteps carried away the hope of his arrival. He’d told us the location of the meeting, in the event that he was unable to come. However, he had not told us who would be there only that they were high-ranking officers who were willing to negotiate an exchange.

Deszo didn’t answer my question, because there were only two possibilities. Either Jozef had been detained and was probably now in danger himself, or he had served us up like Judas. Both weakened our position, the latter would be fatal.

The stairs were old iron waffled steps hung against the wall by rusting bolts that shuddered under the weight of our every footfall. What once allowed staff of the hotel to scurry between floors undetected, had been abandoned to rot. I imagined Jozef flying up these steps on his errands of so-called business with the enemy. Betrayer or savior, I imagined he was capable of either if the price was right. I believed he chose to whom to protect and to sell according to an internal compass that had nothing to do with politics or money, but some idiosyncratic logic that only he understood.

The Germans had chosen this rendezvous wisely. It was an old private hotel, small enough so that they could capture, police, and inhabit all of its rooms easily. In my mother’s day, it was a place where the literati met artists from Paris or London or Moscow. The lobby had been well appointed in those days, a small bar off the lobby provided a discreet meeting place for adoring women to meet a ‘friend’ before retreating upstairs.

At the third landing, Deszo stopped in front of a closed door.

“This is it,” he said.

“Should we wait?”

“We’re late already.” Deszo slowly opened the door revealing more darkness.

“Are you sure this is the right floor?”

He took my hand and we slipped through the doorway. Our footsteps were muffled on the carpet that ran down the length of the hall.

There was no sound coming from the closed doors that lined either side of the hall. The heat had been turned off ages ago and temperature felt colder than the outside air.

Deszo stopped in front of a set of double doors at the end leading to what I guessed would be a suite. He rapped lightly and waited.

After a moment, we heard steps approaching the door on the other side. A man’s voice asked us our business in German. Deszo responded in kind saying that we were expected.

The footsteps retreated and then returned and the door was unlocked. The person who opened it stood behind the door in the shadows so that we were unable to see his face. He gestured us forward and then followed behind as we walked down a short foyer that lead into the living room of the suite.

We stopped on the threshold. I held my breath wondering if this was what hell would look like.

Pools of ligh
t
from ancient candelabras, cast irregular shadows around the room. The candelabras were placed haphazardly on a desk, a grand piano, a bar, and the side tables on either end of the couch that sat in the center of the room faci
ng us. Heavy velvet curtains
covered the windows and cascaded in bloody pools on the floor. The room was oppressively warm and smoke-filled from cigarettes, and the remnants of an unsuccessful fire in the fireplace. Still I shivered.

The air stank of the sweet musk of sweat that comes from fear and torture, from those receiving and inflicting. In a corner of the room a broken chair lay on its side wounded in some battle, its frame scavenged to feed the fire.

“Welcome.” The words came not from the sullen German who sat on the couch observing us with disdain as he cleaned his gun. I turned and swallowed the breath that threatened to escape from my mouth in a whimper.

Deszo stepped in front of me. “Our escort never showed up.”

The German shrugged and gestured toward one of the three closed doors that stood like sentries on either side of the living room.

“The two on the left are currently occupied. We’ll go to my room.” He gestured to the single door on the right, which I guessed lead to the master bedroom. I looked back at the other two doors and wondered who or what was held behind them. The other soldiers had managed a brief ironic smile at his comment.

As he stepped out of the shadows, I gasped. He smiled at my recognition. Taking my hand in his he bowed over it and raised it to his lips, kissing the back as he held it firmly in his grasp.

He straightened up but did not release his grip. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You were in the café,” I said, pulling my hand away. He was more handsome than I remembered. He was wearing cologne that was familiar, I recalled the man who’d passed me on the street, after I’d left the café. He’d been wearing the same scent. It had reminded me of Max. I felt its impact in the small of my center, like hot melting wax. Gunter.

“That was the first time.” He reached for my elbow and escorted me toward the door to his room. The wool of his jacket rubbed against my breast as he led me. The scent of him surrounded me now. I looked up and saw the lightest shadow of blonde growth on his chin. “The second occasion was on the road. You were walking with your young friend.”

“You were in the car?”

He cocked his head to the side, and offered the proof I didn’t need to hear. “My assistant spoke to Jozef. I was sitting on the other side of the car. I doubt you could see me from where you were standing.”

I thought back to that evening. I’d been so frightened that I could barely recall the face of the German that Jozef had spoken to. I remembered he had consulted with someone else sitting next to him.  I’d never considered how unlikely it was that we’d been let go so easily.

Gunter stopped at the closed door and released my arm. “You were lucky that I was in that car. Your evening might have turned out much worse if I weren’t.”

He leaned toward the door and opened it, stepping aside so that Deszo and I could enter first, and he could observe our reaction.

The room was as large as the living room, but as opulent and neat as the other room had been disheveled.

Tears of anger pricked the edges of my eyes as I entered the room of the trespasser.

Against the far wall a large bed sat on a pedestal, its frame draped with an overstuffed duvet most likely stolen from a rich man’s home. Beside the windowed doors leading to a small balcony overlooking the street, were two chairs covered in maroon damask silk.

Gunter lead us to a long narrow table covered in starched white linen with three place settings of fine china arranged around one end, a bottle of red wine decanting. The centerpiece was a cande
labrum holding new tapers. The
light danced under a breeze coming from some unknown source.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll sit at the head of the table,” he said moving to a tall ornately carved mahogany chair. “Please join me. Natalie, sit on my right, Professor Eckhart, you will take the seat on my left.”

I hesitated waiting to take my cue from Deszo. He didn’t acknowledge my gaze but took the seat he’d been offered. Gunter held my chair and both men waited until I was seated.

“
Let’s begin,” Desz
o
placed his hands on either side of his plate. “You want information from me and we want Natalie’s sister and niece.”

Gunter picked up a small silver bell next to his plate and rang it. Instantly a young
soldier
appeared carrying a large tray holding three covered serving dishes. He set them on the table and the
soldier
stood back, waiting. Gunter waved him away and the
soldier
departed as wordlessly as he’d entered.

Gunter lifted the silver domed lids from each plate with a flourish. “I hope I’ve chosen dishes you’ll enjoy.”

My anger rose in my throat as I looked at meats and vegetables I hadn’t seen or been able to purchase at any price in the past year. Saliva filled my mouth at the memory of their taste. The injustice of the meal and its circumstances twisted my stomach and sent a shiver of wretchedness traveling the length of my spine.

What fine cuisine awaited Anna and Mila tonight? When was the last time they’d eaten? Perhaps that was the point of Gunter’s gesture, to show that he could provide what others could not.

“Excuse my manners,” Gunter picked up one of the dishes and deftly placed a thick slab of roast meat on my plate. “You don’t have a problem with pork do you?”

I ignored his reference and reluctantly savored the smell. I was so hungry. My hands remained in my lap. He offered the plate to Deszo and then repeated the motion with the other two dishes.

I looked to Deszo for guidance. His silence bothered me. Why hadn’t he raised an objection to this grotesque charade? How could he sit here as comfortably as if he were dining with colleagues from the university? He smiled at me, looking relaxed and enjoying the prospect of a well-cooked meal at the end of a hard day. All of the apprehension he’d shown when we were waiting in the alley was gone.

“Forgive me, you’re Catholic aren’t you?” Gunter said to me. “Perhaps you’d like to pray before we eat.”

I nodded and crossed myself. I prayed silently.

“Ah to be a mind reader,” Gunter sighed, picking up his fork.

I thought of the book of Genesis. There are two versions of Eve’s meeting with the serpent. I contemplated the disguises of the devil as I looked at Gunter’s handsome benign face.

“I understand you are a widow.” He took my ha
nd in his and clasped it as if
in understanding. His skin was warm and surprisingly smooth. In other circumstances, I might be his lover. Were we really so different? He was a man. I was a woman. Had this not been war, he would simply be a German, perhaps a businessman in town to close a deal. Maybe we had things in common, a love of literature, or music. We would go to Buda to visit the old castle. We would dine together after seeing a performance of La Boehme at the Opera.

“I never married,” he sighed. “You must find it difficult to be alone at a time like this?”

His tone surprised me, so comforting. “Yes,” I said.

His eyes were a translucent green, like the warm shallow waters of the ocean Max and I had visited on our honeymoon on the French coast. Perhaps he was a reluctant participant in this war. Certainly such an un-furrowed brow could not have worried over atrocities, he must have found a way to avoid being a party to them. It was late in the war everyone said that. He’d not been a party to the worst. He’d been drafted late, not willingly of course.

“You’re not eating.”

I looked at Gunter and then at my plate. Dutifully I picked up my fork cut a piece and raised the succulent meat to my lips.

“That’s better,” he smiled reaching for the bottle. “Will you join me in a glass of wine?”

After her granddaughte
r
left, Mrs. Tuesday went to her bedroom, put her suitcase on her bed, and began to pack. She hadn’t been back in over seventy years. Now that the envelope had arrived, now that the end of her life was in sight, she was finally free to go home.

Not here, not this city where she’d lived since the age of twelve, hoped for years, given up hope, married, bore a child, made a career, grown old, this had never felt like home. Budapest was where she’d felt truly loved and now she would return. It was ridiculous to go at this time of year, but she didn’t have the luxury of putting off the trip until summer.