My Bridges of Hope (2 page)

Daddy will be surprised to see how quickly we made the house habitable. My brother Bubi's injured leg is sore, and Mommy urges him to rest on a bed of straw. Instead, he decides to go into town to find Daddy.

A number of young men and women have returned. Officially we are called “repatriates,” deportees who have returned to their homeland. Some found their homes uninhabitable, and they are camping out in an abandoned building the government officially granted to the repatriates as shelter. But Daddy is not among them.

Bit by bit more survivors arrive. Daddy has not yet come. Where can he be? What is taking him so long?

We have been home for over two weeks when we finally receive news about Daddy. Some of the arrivals have seen him somewhere in Austria, making his way home in the company of a man named Weiss from a village fourteen kilometers from Šamorín. Thank God, in a day or two he will be home!

When another week passes in futile expectation of Daddy's arrival, Bubi hitches a ride in a cattle dealer's wagon to Mr. Weiss's village to inquire about Daddy. I want to go along, but Mommy worries about Russian soldiers roaming the countryside. We hear many rumors of rape and theft committed by our Soviet occupiers.

“Elli, this is too hazardous a journey for a girl,” Mommy warns. “It's safer for you to stay home with me. Try to wait just a bit longer for news about Daddy. By evening Bubi will return. We will wait together, you and I.”

An hour later Bubi walks into the house, his face deathly pale. As I stare at him, icy fingers stop the beating of my heart. In a barely audible tone Mommy asks: “Bubi, what happened?”

“I did not go. The cattle dealer gave me the news.”

Time stands still. In the dead stillness the world begins to spin around me so rapidly that I must hold on to the back of Mommy's chair. From somewhere in the depth of the void Bubi's voice reaches me: “Daddy's not
coming home. He died in Bergen-Belsen two weeks before liberation. ...”

My scream is like the howling of a wounded beast. I run out of the house. Bubi comes after me and gently leads me back into the kitchen.

“Elli, I have to rend a tear in your dress,” he says, and the sadness in his voice tears at my wound. “And then we'll sit
shiva
for an hour. That's the law. When news of death reaches the family beyond the thirty-day mourning period, they sit
shiva
only for an hour instead of a week. Daddy died in April, and now it's July.”

I continue shrieking while Bubi's fingers rip into my dress at the collar, and his hands gently push me down on the floor next to Mommy. Mommy, her beautiful features white and lifeless like a china doll, sits frozen, staring into the vacuum.

How are we going to face the future without Daddy?

Šamorín, September 1945

The long, hot summer days are over, and the leaves on our acacia tree have turned golden bronze. As I hurry down Main Street, clutching notebooks under my arm, I inhale the melancholy message of autumn deep into my lungs. The lingering aftermath of summer with its splashes of sunshine obscures a secret, bittersweet sense of passing. A canvas school-bag Mommy made from remnants of a knapsack is proudly slung on my shoulder. I am back at school.

I am the only one among my fellow survivors who decided to go back to school, and now I am enrolled in my old school, Šamorín's public secondary school. I am back in the graduating class, in my old classroom. The smell of stale oil permeates the room just like before. The blackboard is cracked in the same places. The squeaking of chalk against the
freshly washed board gives me goose bumps just like before. And the sudden buzz of the bell at the end of the session still has a startling quality.

And yet, not everything is the same. Different classmates. Different teachers. Different language of instruction. Our town and the entire region are no longer part of Hungary. They have become part of Czechoslovakia once again. Many of my Gentile friends and their parents, old Hungarian farming families and landowners, have been expelled to the other side of the Danube. New people were settled in their places. Czech and Slovak teachers came in place of the Hungarian teachers who had taught me. And whom I had loved. There is not a single familiar face in school.

Mrs. Kertész used to be my homeroom teacher. I thought of her longingly when I was in the camps, on work details, on endless roll calls, and in crowded cattle cars. In absence of pen and paper, I composed long letters to her in my mind, divulging my fears, my pain, and my panic. And I prayed that one day I would return and hand her all the letters,
like chapters of my soul. In my mind I saw her smile and heard her praise.

I returned, but Mrs. Kertész is no longer here, and no one has even heard of her.

No one has even heard the name of Mr. Apostol, the former principal, who like a mighty citadel had towered above the school. Neither have they heard of Mr. Kállai, the popular science instructor, nor of Miss Aranka, the peculiar little spinster who made the teaching of math synonymous with terror. I am the only one who remembers them. And I have no one to share these memories with.

The time I spent away from here was not just a year and two months—it was an eternity. And the place where I was, the empire of death camps in Poland and Germany, belonged to another planet.

When I was taken away, I was an impetuous thirteen-year-old with long blond braids, brightly anticipating life's surprises. I returned a knowing, chastened adult, shorn of my braids and my bright anticipation.

My hair has begun to grow. And I have acquired two new friends. On the third day of school, Yuri and Marek approached me as I
stood apart during recess and asked who I was. When I responded in Slovak, they literally jumped for joy. They did not expect me to understand them. Yuri is from the Soviet Union and speaks Russian; Marek is from Bohemia and he speaks Czech. Both languages are related to Slovak, and so we are able to communicate. All the other classmates speak only Hungarian, a language totally alien to Slovak. They are children of ethnic Slovaks born and educated in Hungary, and recently “repatriated” from there by the government. Having been born here, I am familiar with both Hungarian and Slovak. In a very short time my language skills have earned me instant popularity as the class interpreter. And of course, the friendship of Yuri and Marek. We have become virtually inseparable.

Although I have lost a year of school, my classmates are either my age or somewhat older. During the Hungarian occupation I took advantage of the option to enter secondary school after four years of elementary education. In Czechoslovakia and in the Soviet Union, five years of elementary are mandatory.

Part of me has trouble believing I am a student again, living in a world of classes, homework, teachers, classmates, and examinations, just like before. My school friends are concerned over math problems, Russian grammar, and Slovak composition, nothing else. How I wish I could be like them.

Two Russian soldiers pass, emitting little shrieks of approval. They certainly cannot be accused of indifference to girls, these Russians. One of them attempts to block my path, but I swerve around with practiced speed and continue my race down the street. All the storefronts are shuttered, although it's almost eight o'clock in the morning. Ever since the war the shops no longer open at eight. There is barely any merchandise, and many shops remain closed all day.

A huge Soviet flag with a brilliant red star flutters above the school entrance, partially obliterating the much smaller flag of red, white, and blue, the Czechoslovak colors. The school bell sounds just as I reach the wide front stairs. The front is deserted; all the pupils have gone inside. Oh, God, I must be
very late. What time is it? I can't see the clock tower from here. Whatever happened to the eight o'clock chime of the church bells?

With suffocating tightness in my stomach I approach my classroom. The teacher looks questioningly toward the door as I enter the classroom. Pan
Č
ernik's rugged square face and soft blue eyes seem amused rather than annoyed as he nods acknowledgment of my arrival. The floor squeaks as I tiptoe to my seat in the last row and squeeze awkwardly past Yuri and Marek. Yuri always seems slightly embarrassed when I come late. He clears his throat with disapproval, and whispers under his breath: “Where's your assignment? I'll hand it in.”

“Have you submitted yours?”

“Yes. He's already collected the assignments.” Yuri snatches the sheet of paper from my hand and walks up to Mr.
Č
ernik's desk:

“Pan u
č
itel.
Teacher, sir. Friedmannova's assignment.”

Pan
Č
ernik nods again with a hint of a smile and begins his lecture, Health Study. Although Slovak sounds are relatively new for me, Pan
Č
ernik's succinct pronunciation is easy to understand. He conducts the class
with special consideration for the Hungarian-speaking students, pausing after every sentence, asking questions, explaining key points, and waiting patiently while we take notes. We have no textbooks, and every lecture has to be copied into our notebooks.

Before the war, there was a separate teacher for each subject. But now Mr.
Č
ernik teaches every subject, except Russian. He does not know Russian. A Slovak from the hill country in the north, he is a tall, rugged man, with wide shoulders and a kind, swarthy, tired face. Miss Drugova, the Russian teacher, is pert and plump, with light brown hair swept up in a bun. Comrade Drugova has a firm, no-nonsense approach to teaching. She makes no allowances for the humorous effect of Russian language peculiarities, such as her reference to Hitler as “Gitler,” and to Hans as “Gans,” and she considers the ensuing hilarity in class as a personal affront.

Comrade Drugova's eagerness to teach is matched by my eagerness to learn. I am like a musician in her orchestra, learning Russian with almost the same relentless tempo as Miss Drugova directs. Poems by Pushkin and
Lermontov, short stories by Gogol and Lazechnikov, plays by Chekhov. For me Comrade Alla Drugova's unrelenting, humorless blitz transforms the Russian class into a love feast of learning.

The Russian class has brought Yuri and me together. Our friendship has helped me learn Russian and Yuri practice his Slovak. His primary handicap was the script: Unlike the Slovaks, the Czechs, or the Hungarians, Yuri had to familiarize himself with Latin characters before he could take notes in class. Coming from distant Moscow, the adjustments in lifestyle were also much greater for him than for the Slovak nationals from neighboring Hungary, or for Czechs from indigenous Bohemia. I have sensed all along an invisible wall around Yuri created by the differences.

And I believe Yuri senses that while I relish the thrill of learning and the excitement of new friendships, in reality I belong to another world, a world far from the classroom. He knows that the gulf that separates me from my classmates cannot be bridged. Not by him. Not by any one of my new school friends.

Šamorín, July 1945—July 1946

My secret world beyond the unbridgeable gulf is the Tattersall. The Tattersall is the communal home of our new family, our town's few survivors. Out of Šamorín's more than five hundred Jewish citizens, only thirty-six returned, mostly young men and women. Those who did not—our children, parents, grandparents, siblings, husbands, wives, aunts uncles cousins friends and lovers—have been replaced by an abyss.

This abyss is like a moat around the Tattersall. I am not sure who gave this bizarre appellation, the name of an English horse trader, to the abandoned building the authorities allocated for us “repatriates.” The spacious house, with a cobblestoned courtyard, a large kitchen, and several sparsely furnished rooms, was abandoned by its owners, who fled from the advancing Soviet army. The town's
leadership then designated it as a shelter and retreat. Here we created a niche for ourselves, an island of togetherness.

The world beyond the Tattersall belongs to “them,” the former neighbors, friends, classmates, and colleagues who violently eliminated us from their ranks and robbed us of our loved ones, and our homes. The world beyond the abyss has lost its relevance for us. Our birthplace, the motherland that brutally expelled us from its womb, has lost its reality.

The Tattersall is our only tangible world. Here we are real: We have dreams of future happiness as young men and women, we have desires of emotional and physical fulfillment. The thirty-six of us spend our days in the Tattersall sharing those dreams. We talk as intimately as close family members, revealing our innermost fears, plans, and hopes. We talk about life far from here, far beyond the abyss.

I understand my Tattersall family's disapproval of my participation in the outside world. It is myself I do not understand. Why do I have such a passion for learning, such a compelling urge to reach out and touch that
world? To be a teenager like other teenagers?

Miki is the only one who understands.

Miki is the secretary of the Tattersall, the most prestigious position in the family. He administers our food and monetary allocations from the government and serves as our representative to the authorities. Miki is tall and slim, with sloping shoulders and enormous light blue eyes shaded by drooping eyelids. I find drooping eyelids and shoulders romantic and exciting.

Miki approves of my returning to school and singles me out for attention during group discussions. He invariably turns in my direction and asks for my opinion in front of everyone: “And what
do you
think, Elli?” The others fix their eyes on me in surprise and patiently anticipate my stammered response, out of deference to Miki. Afterward Miki always strolls by my chair and inquires about my studies, his clear blue eyes locked onto mine.

Every afternoon at around 4:30
P.M.
Miki has his tea in the dining room, where I do my homework. As 4:30 approaches I listen for his slow, nonchalant footsteps across the yard. I listen, and my heartbeat accelerates.