Searching for Wallenberg (32 page)

Dora sipped tea and nibbled at a roll, while he ate a full breakfast of eggs and toast. They—mostly he—made small chat. Her small cheeks had just a touch of pink blush, whenever he said something slightly unusual, and her shyness was made more attractive by her occasional laugh.

Presently, they took the number 4 tram over the Margaret Bridge, and walked the few hundred yards to Margaret Island, festive in the summer. They walked in the sun, rented a bicycle cart for two, sat on a bench at the far end of the island.

“So,” he asked, “what are you here for this time?”

“Please be careful in looking through the papers of Mother,” she began. “She has spent a long time collecting them, as you may know. And they are very, very private; even I have not seen them.” She looked at him. “What I want so say is this: Please judge the papers, and her, with much care.”

“Of course.”

“I am not sure if she understands what they may mean, or ‘represent.’”

“What? What do you mean?”

A boy of six wandered over and stared. Dora touched the boy’s cheek and said something in Hungarian. She dug out of her handbag some jellybeans and handed them to the boy, getting the okay from the mother. The boy tasted one. Not smiling or speaking, he tasted another, and Dora touched his face again.

“I think she has never allowed herself to see them in the open, if you understand me. They were always hidden or buried away. So this will be new for her too.”

Now she turned to Manny, removed her large dark glasses, and stared from close proximity, asking for a promise of his complicity in
understanding.
Half of her face was covered by her swirling hair.

“You always seem to be protecting her,” he noted, “and wanting me to protect her too.”

“Maybe she needs it.”

“Why do you say this?”

She paused, in deliberation with herself. “Sometimes I think she is not sure of herself, of who she is exactly.”

He took this in and waited. The wind blew softly, mussing her hair more.

“You mean she has multiple personalities?”

“No, not that.” She smiled. “Here, let me show you an old card of introduction of hers.” She took out from her shoulder purse a business card. It read: “Zsuzsanna Frank, Medium.” With a phone number.

He held the card and stared at it, trying to absorb its full meaning.

“I see,” he said, seeing nothing. “Well, this is … something.”

Her brown eyes checked on his understanding. “Mother has achieved many amazing things, I assure you. I have witnessed some for myself. Even when it was dangerous and illegal during the days of Communism, and she was maybe the only non-Gypsy, real medium practicing the art.”

He nodded.

“But she has not practiced professionally in a long while, though her services are always in demand. Especially by friends.”

He
felt
her strong sincerity, her youthful beauty. “Why did she stop?”

“She stopped years ago because it exhausted her too much. She’d be ill from it. Also, she wanted to devote her energy to focus on her own personal needs, contacts.”

Families walked by; two lovers were kissing; ice cream was being hawked.

“Would you like one?” he asked.

“Yes.” Searching the fellow’s wagon, she chose a vanilla and chocalate swirl cone. “My weakness.”

“I am glad to know you have one,” he said, and paid.

She pulled down the paper cover and began to lick it.

“Why didn’t she, or you, tell me about this before now?”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t relevant. All that was years ago, when she did it for a profession.”

She was licking the cone all around the edges, with blissful care.

“Tell me, was she able to communicate with her father, after his death?”

After finishing one side, she licked vertically, in a routine. “That you will have to ask her.”

He felt the soft wind, the sensuous girl; saw the strollers walking by.

“Do you think she could have
imagined this whole experience
through the eyes of a medium?”

She shot him a look. “You mean as the daughter of the famous man?”

Sensing her accusatory glance, he modulated, “Maybe part of it.”

“If you are proposing that my mother is delusional,” she retorted, “I reject that. If you are saying that you have doubts about her powers as a medium, I can understand that.”

She had a perfect small tongue, he observed, as it darted deftly like a baby snake at the receding cone. And she also made for a perfect intermediary, with her reasoned responses and deft omissions, white blouse and wraparound skirt.

Were they playing him, in unison? Was he a kind of double sucker, one in service to the mom and the other to the daughter?

“I will be careful in how I handle her papers, and her, I promise.”
And you too
, he thought.

Gradually, a blossoming smile lighted her small face—that response a clear signal that he understood the ship’s fragile journey, and that he would not seek to sabotage it, along with the captain, the mother.

“One last question: Do you believe Mr. Wallenberg was your grandfather?”

Her mouth tightened. She spoke sternly. “I have already answered that question for you. Have you forgotten?”

Yes, she had, and no, he had not forgotten, but he just thought, at the height of this cross-examining section, she might answer it differently.

He tapped her shoulder, a kind of apology, and she relaxed at the touch, and stared at him with her brown eyes.

The papers. He read them in the countryside over a period of three days. He insisted that she be out of the room entirely during his study of these six piles, each of which she had carefully described with a label for purposes of order. She was allowed to bring him a coffee at the beginning, and if he needed anything else, he would go to the kitchen and get it, or ask her. If he had questions, he would also call her over, and she could explain. Having her there, hovering over him, was impossible, he knew. And of course he was dying to ask her whether she had spoken to her father recently.

He sat in the smallish living room, drank his strong coffee, and read.

And what he discovered, or felt, upon a read-through, was that the material broke down into three sections: “Speculations and Inferences” were the nutty hand-scribblings of the madwoman, tiny squiggly penmanship filling the pages with melodramatic and unfounded conclusions; second, “Letters Wife and Daughter,” purported to be letters from prison, RW to Zsuzsa and her mother, which Manny read with fifty-percent interest, fifty-percent skepticism; and third, “Fragments from History,” which contained several documents and notes from other figures during the historical period. Were the last two categories authentic? He doubted it. What he would have to do, he knew, was to get a handwriting analyst to study a few of the letters, and see when they were written, the quality of the paper, and if possible try to match them up with original RW handwriting, wherever that could be found.

But how to handle the woman here and now, in the country cottage? She hovered in the wings, bringing tea and sandwiches during the days, dinners by evening, waiting with eager anticipation and fervent zeal for him to give the word to start the editing process, not at all to question the materials. This was clear from her general remarks, suggestions for working hours, questions about how much rewriting she would have to do, and the strategic distribution of the overall narrative. Her hairstyle changed every day, one day upswept with a kind of teenage scrunchy, the next done in a French twist. Her attire shifted also, from pretty peasant skirts to out-of-date designer jeans. Zsuzsa seemed permanently flushed with excitement, waiting for the launching of her great project.

“So,” he said, as she passed by with her eager glance on the third day, “tell me about this life of being a fortune-teller?”

Stopping in her tracks, she faced him, fiercely. “I have never been a ‘fortune teller!’ I am not a gypsy!”

He put out his hands to comfort her, “Well, a medium.”

“Are you ignorant, Professor? Do you not know the great, the profound, difference?”

Feeling ignorant, he said, “Well, yes, I probably don’t.”

Her stiffened face relaxed slowly. “Yes, I used to help friends be in touch with loved ones whom they couldn’t leave off in their mourning. Is that what you mean?”

He nodded, with sympathy … “Oh, I didn’t quite understand that. Tell me, why did you stop?”

She shook her head and took an armchair opposite him, across a coffee table. “I had too much personally revolving in my own mind. There was little extra space for others who might have needed my help, my powers.”

He drank a local ginger ale. “Do you have such powers?”

She adjusted a cushion behind her, and her eyes narrowed, measuring him. “I won’t say I have general powers, only my own qualities.”

“What does this entail?”

She smiled. “Are you trying to trap me somehow? ‘Reduce’ me?”

“Of course not,” he immediately responded.

“Well, perhaps you are … but … Dickens has a short story, whose name I forget—maybe ‘The Signal-Man’?—where a man can see a ghost. And obviously in Shakespeare, Hamlet can see the ghost of his father. So there are great writers who do suggest that certain people do have certain powers, wouldn’t you admit?”

Clever woman! “Yes, you are right. So please do tell me, what can you see?”

She smiled girlishly. “I would prefer, first, to hear your report on my papers; it has been three days, you realize.”

Clever again. He scratched his beard. “Oh, I think there are certain issues that we—”

“Do you mean that we are not yet ready to proceed with our project?”

“There are certain things I would like to check out first.”

“Such as?”

Should he delay the moment of truth? “Well, for purposes of historical accuracy, I will need to confirm the authenticity of those letters. That is the first thing.”

She smiled, happily it seemed! “And what else?”

“Well, then there are the surrounding documents from the period that I will need to verify, like those notes from Stockholm, say.”

To his surprise, she put out her hands to him, palms up, for him to take hold of, and he could do nothing but accept them, out of courtesy. “You are a true historian, and I am grateful for that. That is why I have chosen you for this sacred partnership. Now, can we proceed to our working schedule?”

More than surprised, he was amazed. She wanted to go on, and was accepting his terms! “Well, I am very glad to hear that, really. This will make things … smoother, easier.”

“Of course.” She looked at him, locking him with her gray eyes.

“Now perhaps you can answer my earlier question: What can you see with your special … qualities?”

Holding his hands still, she stared for a full minute. “There are times when I can visualize my father, hear him, feel him, smell him. Yes, I will acknowledge this.”

He breathed hard, listened to the birds, the big clock ticking … There were so many areas to ask about and dig into. “And when was the last time? And what did you see or feel?”

“Please, let me explain to you, Emmanuel.” (Her use of his first name startled him!) “Do you know the term
Umkehr
?” When he shook his head, she went on. “This is Buber’s translation of the Hebrew
t’shuvah
and means return. The noun can be found in the Bible, but not in the sense that it is found commonly in Jewish literature and liturgy. The verb is frequently used in the Bible with the connotations that are relevant here; what is meant is the return to God. You can find examples of this in …”—she paused and checked a small notepad—“Isaiah 10:21 and 19:22, Deuteronomy 4:30 and 30:2, and Jeremiah 4:1.” She held his hand and looked at him, like a parent with a child. She smiled. “Do you understand yet?”

He shook his head, dumbfounded, transported into a whole new space.

“If you substitute my father for God, you will understand how I have been able to search for him and find him. This
act of return
is what has connected us, through the years. In the Judaic tradition the idea is very simple; at any time a man can return and be accepted by God, one to one. Organized religion has nothing to do with this. And this is how I have been able to reach and touch my father. For my father is God—God to me.
Fahrstay
?”

Exhausted himself, he gently withdrew his hands. “And how often do you speak to Raoul?”

“I cannot tell you this, because it does not happen according to any routine. Our meetings occur at random times and moments, though some of those moments are already filled with high feeling, emotion. For example, when I was collecting these papers, which included Father’s letters and memorablia, he came to me, late one night, and offered himself for dialogue; as I explained
you
to him, he understood, and offered his full approval; this was a blessing of sorts for our project. I would not have proceeded with you otherwise.”

He listened carefully, trying to make sense of the bizarre reasoning, and saw the breeze shift through curtains of the mullioned window. “Very interesting,” he said, wanting to return kindly to the former track. “So you do have ‘powers’ or ‘qualities’—good. Tomorrow, let us go back into town, and I will try to hunt down the experts who can verify our papers here.”

She smiled, nodding. “Tell me, please, Emmanuel, do you understand what I have been saying to you?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

Her smile turned weary. “I hope so too. Mine is a sacred trust; do you understand this?”

Feeling coerced, he said, “Yes, I do.”

“I will feel betrayed if you forget or betray our covenant.”

What did this mean? “I will try not to betray you, or our covenant, but I will also do my job, my professional job. After all, that is my role.”

She nodded, soberly.

He did not add, as the moment was too charged, that if his professional role contradicted her “sacred trust” and “covenant,” he knew which agreement or contract he would have to honor. If it were to turn out, crazily, that there was some wild kernel of truth embedded somehow, somewhere deep in her accounts and papers, he would have secured a special cache, no doubt. One that would put him back on the historian’s map, for sure; and one that would excite his full energies too. But the odds of that happening were about as long as discovering another planet.