Searching for Wallenberg (17 page)

Four days later, on a cloudy Tuesday morning, Manny was knocking on the door of a small white cape in a town twenty minutes north of Burlington, sent there by Raul Hilberg, the historian, who said, “If you want to know what Wallenberg meant, go visit Sándor, a survivor.” An elderly man, in his late seventies with a curling mustache, opened the door, and after hearing Hilberg’s name, Sándor Torok welcomed Manny in. After lemonade, served by the wife, and some introductory chat, Manny asked what he remembered about the great Swede.

Torok shrugged his shoulders, gave a small smile, and spoke slowly, with a heavy accent. “
Remember him
? Well, he saved my life, so, yes, I do remember him. I was nearly fifteen, had lost my parents and my sister, and was hiding out wherever I could, when one evening he ran into me in an apartment building in Pest. I had made myself a little nest under the stairwell, and somehow we met, as he used that apartment building sometimes to sleep in, and when he understood that I was a Jewish boy, he asked me, in German, about myself. Soon, he asked if I wanted to work for him, and when I said, yes, of course, he brought me upstairs, created a safe pass for me, and”—he got up now and went to a bureau, brought back a small wooden box—“and he handed me a small crucifix and told me to wear it around my neck, not to take it off, until the war was over.” He opened the box and lifted out a silver crucifix along with the safe pass. “My souvenirs from the war. And from Mr. Wallenberg.” I handled the simple cross, and looked at the teenager in the photo. (Not too different from Manny’s Joshua at that age.) He sat back down and went on. “I worked for him, sometimes for the legation, sometimes for the agency, doing errands of all sorts, mostly as a messenger boy on a bicycle. And whenever I was stopped, I made sure my crucifix showed, first thing. For the Arrow Cross, this was an important sign.” He shrugged, meaning it wasn’t much. “So, what else would you like to know, sir?”

Manny noted two small black and white photos of Budapest bridges in frames on the mantelpiece. “Did you know anything about him personally? For example, did you know his driver, Langfelder?”

“Oh, yes, I saw him quite often. A big fellow, witty, and very decent. Always brought me a licorice twist or a chocolate.”

“Ever see him with any of his women friends?”

Drinking his lemonade, Sándor shook his head. “Except for his female secretaries, like Countess Nako or Hedda Kattai, I don’t recall any … But, remember, I didn’t socialize with him in the evenings, and mostly saw him if he came to sleep in our apartment building; you know he changed places to sleep every night or two, as a precaution.”

Manny got up and went to the mantelpiece and held up the bridge photos, old postcards, trying to find a new avenue of interest, or a new path of chance.

“If you are asking did he ‘womanize,’ no, I don’t think so.” He smiled kindly. “For example, I do remember that once I had to deliver a message to him at night in a nightclub, of all places, and even there he was not womanizing. There were only men at his table, in fact. So you see,” he shook his head, “you are going up the wrong tree.”

Manny nodded, and looked at the old man with the grand mustache and full memories.

“No one could really imagine what it meant to be with him in those days. He was like a god, or a
moshiach
, if you know what that is, a real
moshiach.
”

“Yes, I do know,” Manny said, more interested in what the old man, a graying walrus, had given me inadvertently. I nodded and said, yes, I understood, and we chatted for another twenty minutes or so. Then he walked me out to the car, in the driveway of his cape.

“Looks like a nice little neighborhood,” Manny remarked, seeing the row of well-kept houses and suburban lawns.

“Oh, yes,” he smiled broadly, “Nice and dull, just the way I like things nowadays.”

“So your past life is unknown to all your neighbors?”

“Of course!” he said, rather proudly. “Why bother them, or burden them, with my unpleasant past?” He hit me in the shoulder. “Why bother myself?”

Manny asked him to call or write if he remembered anything else of interest, and he said he would, most definitely.

Manny added, “There’s a woman in Budapest who claims her mother was Wallenberg’s lover or mistress, maybe even wife, and she was the product of that union. What do you think? Can this be true?”

He tugged at his mustache. “Could be. But please remember, people idolized him then; his name was whispered on all Jewish lips; he was the
moshiach
, a real savior, as I said. Probably now he has become a sort of celebrity, you may say, and people may develop fantasies about him, I don’t know. But you know what? I’ve learned one thing in my life:
anything is possible.
” He looked around, held out his hands wide, “Look, Sándor Torok—a boy hiding in Budapest, now a man alive and well in Vermont!” His smile was large, and somewhat mirthful. “So, to me, anything is possible, my friend.”

Driving back south through the wonderful green hills on empty Highway 89, Manny retraced the interview and recalled Hilberg’s words: “Yes, see this Torok; he’s trustworthy.”

Back home in his study, Manny felt stirred, his imagination revved up:

The scene was an evening at the Arizona Mulatto, a cabaret nightclub on Nagymezo utca in 1944 during the siege of Budapest, where German SS and Wehrmacht officers mingled with British spies, counterintelligence agents, Hungarian VKF2 (military intelligence). The place was packed, tables full, clients two deep at the bar. At a corner table four men sat, one in military uniform, and Wallenberg, in jacket and tie. A band was playing, waiters were scurrying back and forth, and the smoke from cigarettes and cigars was billowing upward to the high ceiling. The noise was deafening, but it did little to quiet the rumors, spreading all over the restaurant, of the Russians landing, or the Allies bombing, or the SS coming. A burlesque show was onstage.

“Perhaps this is what Dante meant by hell,” mused a young man, in German.

“But which circle, do you think?” inquired a second.

The young man, in German uniform, looked at him. “Ninth?”

“My god, no,” Raoul retorted, “closer to the third or fourth, no more.”

A hearty laugh.

“So tell me, what will happen when the Russians come in?”

“Oh, I don’t think anything unusual—for them,” the fourth man, Gábor, said. “Rapes, pillage, theft, lawlessness. The usual delicacies offered by the Red Army—each man for himself, whatever he can take, grab, or steal.”

“And if the Americans should come first?”

“Oh, they won’t, don’t worry. Their bombs, yes, but not their tanks or soldiers.”

“And it’s better that way, for my side,” put in Raoul. “Trials and lawful procedures are not for the Soviets. Which means, if I were a German officer, I would worry seriously.” He smiled amiably.

A waiter came by, bringing more drinks.

“So what is new with your highbrow reading?” asked the military officer, Klaus. “Is it still Musil, or another degenerate?”

“Arthur Schnitzler, his novellas.”

The German smiled. “Schnitzler? I understand he is rich—richly perverse!”

Everyone smiled. “Actually, he is rather interesting,” observed Raoul. “Especially if you know the old Vienna.”

“Do you?”

“Not really. But I have a good imagination!”

Lean Gábor gripped Raoul’s forearm playfully, “For the perverse, do you mean?”

“For old Vienna,” Raoul responded, to the jocularity of his group.

The waiter brought over a new round of beers.

“Everything is watered down, though they charge you the same,” noted Klaus.

“No, no, they charge you more, now, for the delivery service under stress!”

Wallenberg leaned in, “Tell me frankly, Klaus, did they hunt down and prosecute homosexuals in Germany as hard as they did Jews?”

“Why, Raoul, what do you think? Our Führer was an egalitarian when it came to his killing—once you made his favorite lists. Jews, homos, gypsies— they were all highly and
equally
deserving!”

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Gábor, “it is time to drain out my beer,” and he stood.

“Make sure you don’t get detained unnecessarily in there,” advised Klaus. “Those restrooms are gaining a reputation as high—or low—as the baths!”

As he departed, Miklös offered, “So tell me, are we to be forgiven for our sins because of this special time of chaos?”

“Oh, I thought we would be charged doubly for our current immorality, until I met a few priests the other evening, with their collars, and pants, off!”

Everyone laughed and toasted that quip, though Raoul barely smiled.

Gellerman got up, walked from his study, came back, read through his pages. Was he being too blunt, too coarse? Was he overreaching, moving beyond what his evidence had suggested? After all,
what and where was his hard evidence
? … Yes, he had surmised something of that gayness himself, and built on that supposition with the confirmation from the historian and the words of the trusted journalist Mária E. But still, nothing hard existed … He pondered his text, his imagined scenario. Supposing it were true, more or less, what he was inventing. Would Manny want to go on record with it? If he were writing a shadow thesis or drama like the one he was perhaps creating in this series of invented scenes, would he choose to go public with these radical findings, unsettling conclusions? Probably not. After all, which world did Raoul W. deserve? That vulgar, amoral, sensation-crazed media world that dominated the masses, or that hypocritical government and family world that had abandoned him in the first place? Which Raoul? The idealized Raoul who was pure and saintly, or the truer Raoul who was flawed and tainted? (Both existed.) The choice was hardly a choice; for Manny had grown steadily closer to Wallenberg, as he understood him more, climbed inside his skin. No, he would not really want to betray him to that larger world. But in doing that, would he not be betraying
the historian Gellerman
? And going against the request of the intrepid ghost?

The interpretation of Raoul through that franker lens gave him even more of an outsider status, Manny realized, which in turn fit in well with his abandonment in Soviet prison by the Wallenberg family; after all, he was more useful tucked away in Lybianka than alive and well in Sweden. Through his reading and research, Gellerman had learned a good deal about the family dynasty of that time. It wasn’t a pretty story. The Enskilda Bank in Stockholm, a Wallenberg institution for centuries, had been the main banking institution in Scandanavia for the Nazis; there they were free to to use their various accounts, transfer monies, etc. Their European laundering machine. From the Wallenberg SKF mines in the north, the Nazis were able to purchase coal and iron ore, and from their factories, wheel bearings for their airplanes and tanks. In other words, the Nazis and the Wallenbergs were intertwined and mutually dependent, financially and practically. Without them and their resources, the Nazi war machine would have had a much more difficult time proceeding across Europe. Unfortunately for Raoul, he knew a good deal about that murky activity, which was borderline legal, brazenly unethical.

And later after the war, that wartime marriage of convenience, in “neutral” Sweden, created a practical problem for the Wallenbergs in the Allied countries. In America, they were put on the FBI list of about fifty banned companies that were off-limits to do business here. This occurred in 1945, just when Raoul was taken to Lybianka by the Soviets, and it was decided by cousins Marcus and Jacob that one of them had to go to the States and make a lobbying pitch, which would include a bribe, to get the Wallenbergs off of that list. It would not help much if Raoul—a loose canon, a man of morality and a family outlaw, as well as a figure of growing international reputation—were around and available to be called upon as a witness, to speak to the FBI, the media, American political leaders. On the outside, Raoul might be a dangerous figure for the Wallenberg dynasty. On the inside, in a Soviet prison, however, without voice or presence, armed only with a noble reputation for the family name, Raoul could be very helpful. So if he were to linger there, invisible, unheard, until his end, Marcus and Jacob would not mind too much, and could lament his misfortune.