Mrs. Tuesday's Departure: A Historical Novel of World War Two (23 page)

“For whom? For Anna, for Mila?”

“I am working for the good of our country.”

“And the good of your family’s business? Have the German’s promised to leave your father’s business unscathed if you provide them with information?”

Suddenly I was dizzy and sick to my stomach. “Did you have anything to do with Anna’s capture? Did you know where they have taken her?”

“I don’t know where Anna is,” Deszo said.

My heart turned cold. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Clearly, I needed Deszo in order to get Mila and Anna back. But beyond that, I didn’t believe I could trust him. I got up and moved to a chair across the room.

Deszo sighed, exasperated, “Natalie, have you considered Anna’s possible part in Mila’s capture?”

“When she left the apartment the plan to send Mila away hadn’t been created.”

“But she knew that Mila was being hidden.”

“Why would she do something to harm Mila? She’s her aunt.”

“Yes, but you’re the one who has the real connection to Mila. And Anna was furious with you because in her delusional mind we were starting an affair.”

“Anna is sick, not sadistic,” I swore, my knuckles were white underneath my grip on the arms of the chair. “And you knew where Mila was being taken. Anna didn’t.”

“Natalie, I have no motivation to harm Mila. Anna does.”

I looked ove
r
at the clock on the bookshelf. We’d fallen asleep on opposite sides of the room. I got up and shook Deszo’s arm gently and whispered, “It’s time.”

At the front door, we put on our coats and made our way down the stair and into the still dark pre-dawn streets.

We hurried along side streets until we reached the first building on the street designated as the Jewish ghetto. We stopped in our tracks at the sight of the empty buildings.

“It’s too late!” I moaned. “They’ve taken them to the train station.”

We raced to the train station. Deszo held my hand and I prayed that we wouldn’t be too late.

The station was a horror. Soldiers lined the platform herding the Jews into cattle cars. Their luggage was left in heaps, promised to be on the next train, though I doubt anyone believed this lie anymore.

I wanted to know why no one turned and resisted. The number of captives far out numbered their guards. Yes, the Nazis carried weapons and the Jews were defenseless, but that could not be the only explanation. Was it simply human nature to succumb when hope was lost?

Deszo pushed a path ahead of us. I screamed for Anna and Mila. The soldiers, laughs, and threats that we could easily join the passengers on the train if we insisted, met my pleas for help.

Deszo grabbed one of the men, demanded to be shown the officer in charge, and was pointed to a man further down the platform.

Deszo ran down the track. I followed and then stopped when I saw Gunter staring at us, smiling as he checked his watch.

“You’re early,” he said.

“You lied to us! You never meant to set them free,” I cried.

Gunter shook his head and motioned to the long lines, “There’s nothing I can do.”

“You’ll find them now or there will be no meeting,” Deszo said.

The two men stared at each other and finally Gunter relented. He called over two young soldiers with clipboards. He took the clipboards and flipped through the pages.

Gunter barked an order and the two soldiers jumped into action running from train to train screaming the names of Mila and Anna. Each closed door of each of the loaded cars was opened. The sight was a scene from hell. The people were crushed together, standing side by side no room to move. They stretched out their arms as the door opened and pleaded to be set free. A
soldier
holding a gun pointed at them was the only thing that kept the people from tumbling out.

Door after door opened and closed. One, two, three, five, six…where were they?

Another door opened and from the back, I heard Mila’s voice above the others.

“Yes,” I screamed. “Yes, Mila!”

The
soldier
screamed for the occupants of the car to move aside to let Mila step to the front.

Mila jumped down onto the track and I ran forward and held her. “You are safe now.”

Behind us, the
soldier
closed the door to the train car.

“But where’s Anna? Mila was Anna in the car with you?”
             
Mila looked at me and shook her head. “I don’t know where Anna is, I never saw her.”

“
Deszo, help me
!
”
I cried. “We’ve got to find Anna!”

We ran to the nearest open car and yelled for Anna. We went down the row to each car, calling her name. There was no answer. Behind us, each door closed.

We reached the final car, still no answer to our calls for Anna. I turned to the
soldier
that was next to me and said, “We must keep trying. Ask them to open the doors again.”

The young
soldier
looked at me and then to Gunter.

“Don’t you understand?” I pleaded. “She’s my sister. She doesn’t belong on that train.”

“Everyone in the ghetto is there for a reason.”

“It was your doing!” I grabbed the lapels of his coat and shook him, “Make them search the trains again.”

He shrugged me off and replied, “We have a schedule to keep.”

“No, please,” I pleaded. “Please you must give me one more chance to find her!”

The train’s whistle blew and Deszo yelled for me, “Natalie!”

I turned for one instant and met his gaze, looked at the train and then back at him. “I have to find her, help me, Deszo.”

He ran over to Gunter. Deszo pulled a wad of money out of his coat pocket. Gunter pushed the money away, shook his head and gestured toward the train. I could not hear their voices but the message was clear.

I ran over to them.

“Put me on the train!” I cried.

“Natalie, no,” Deszo said.

Gunter looked at me, studying my face. “Where these trains are going, there is no return. This is not a game.”

“I don’t care,” I cried.

“Natalie.” Deszo grabbed my arm and pulled me to his side. “You can’t help her now.”

“I can,” I cried. “I must.”

“It’s too late,” Deszo said. “Look.”

The train was beginning to move.

“Get me on the train!” I screamed.

“We’ll send a message up the line and tell them to take her out of the line at the camp,” Gunter said.

“NO! I must go with her!”

“How can you get on this train, knowing where it is going?”

“She is my sister,” I cried. 

Gunter shouted to one of the soldiers, who in turn, blew a whistle and the train halted. The
soldier
walked up to the train and slid open the door.

I looked at Deszo. “Take care of Mila. Keep her safe; make sure she gets through this. Will you?”

“Please no Nana” Mila cried.

I touched her cheek and quickly kissed her. I reached up and ran my fingers along the rough lines of his face. “I must do this. You understand don’t you?”

“No you don’t! Let someone else take care of Anna, you have to stay here and take care of me!”

“Mila,” I crooned caressing her tear-stained cheeks.

“You said God would be with us. Where is He now?” she cried through her tears.

I pressed my lips together in a tight-lipped smile and looked from her face to the train behind me. “He is there, on that train, with His children. God’s love will never leave you, Mila. And now I must go to be with my sister, she won’t know what to do without me.”

Deszo looked at me and nodded. “I will see you soon, Natalie. I’ll do whatever I can from this end to get you out of there.”

I walked to the track and a man held out his hand to help me up. I turned to thank him and looked in the eyes of my beloved, Max.

Behind us, the door slid shut, thrusting us into darkness.

Mrs. Tuesday walke
d
down the long row of graves. In the far corner, she found the one she was looking for. She laid a fresh row of dried breadcrumbs along the top of the stone marker and stood for a moment breathing in the cold air.

“Hello Uncle Max,” she said. “It’s good to be home.”

There was no reply to her greeting. She understood that she did not have the special communion with the dead that her Aunt Natalie had possessed.  But she continued to talk, because it was easier, and because she needed to hear her own words.

“I’ve been to our old apartment. They’ve divided it up into three apartments now. There are shops on the ground floor. One’s a little bakery that makes the nut rolls. They’re not as good as Mrs. Szep’s but they taste better than anything that I could get in the States.

“The letter I received explained everything that happened after I was sent away from Budapest. Jozef survived the torture of the Nazi’s but the Communists killed him two years later. Deszo’s family business met the same fate. And Nana got on the train.

“Oh those stupid breadcrumbs. Do you recall the favorite verse of the sisters?
‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’
  We all believed that was our basis in hoping for love that would never be reciprocated. We didn’t understand that the verse pertained to faith in God. Not in each other. I am as guilty as the rest, how many years have I hoped for my mother’s love? How many years after that fateful day at the train did I hate God even more than the Nazis for taking away the only woman who ever loved me, as a mother should?

“I’m so tired, Max,” Mrs. Tuesday said. She lowered herself onto a bench near the grave. She rocked back and forth, rubbing her hands over her arms to warm herself.

“So Nana got on the train.” Mrs. Tuesday unfolded the letter she’d carried in her coat pocket since leaving New York. She put on her reading glasses and continued to rock back and forth as she read the pages that had been folded into that overstuffed envelope, for the tenth or twentieth time.

“This report was made by talking to eyewitnesses who were there. Not really them, but their children. And bits pieced together from records that were found later.

“Nana got on the train and got off the train when it reached the camps. She searched for Anna. But when she found her it was too late. Anna was already gone. Her mind had escaped the horror that surrounded them; she thought she was still in Budapest. They say that she was always on her way to the opera. That she sat staring at a wall that she claimed to be a mirror where she’d smear her face with dirt and claim it was makeup. But they say she was happy. She acted like a prima donna, and often got up to give lectures to the other women, or recite poetry. And while Natalie tried to shield Anna from the cruel taunts of the guards, they say she spent many hours talking out loud to God. Literally talking to Him as if he was right there with them in the camps.

“They say that Natalie and Anna were inseparable. Natalie did her best to take care of Anna. She explained to anyone who would listen that there had been a mistake, they were not meant to be there. But then again, no one was meant to be there, were they? They say that the Nazi’s were very interested in them when they realized they were identical twins, that one had gone insane while the other remained intact. They wanted to use them in medical experiments.

“But you see they ran out of time. The Allies were coming. So they did what all bad children do, they tried to hide their sins, to clean up the mess before they were caught. Some were lucky; they were sent to other camps and survived. Some years later, Natalie’s diaries were discovered and then the story she wrote as she imagined my future. As a tribute to her death, the Hungarian State Publishing Cooperative published a heavily edited version of her diaries along with her story about Mrs. Tuesday. I’m told that for years they even tried to find me, luckily without success. Now, all these years later, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the ease of finding someone on the Internet, the journals and story found their way to me.”

Mrs. Tuesday leaned forward and patted the top of the gravestone. “And now I have finally come home.”

She bowed her head and closed her eyes and folded her hands in her lap. She recalled all the pain she’d carried for the many years after that fateful day, how she swore God could not exist if He’d let such horror go unchecked. And then after the package arrived, she’d begun to read Nana’s journals, of her love for Jesus, of His willingness to die to save others. She began to understand that her aunt was able to get on that train with the knowledge that no matter what happened God was truly with her. Slowly Mila’s heart opened to the salvation He offered and the peace that came for the first time in her life.

“Dear Jesus, They say that when Nana and Anna were sent to the showers, they were holding hands, smiling. They say that Nana was talking to You, as they were led into the building. Were you with her then, dear God?