Searching for Wallenberg (48 page)

When Manny looked up, his heart beating hard, he saw her sitting there watching him, her shrewd cat-like eyes belied by a shy smile.

An old Jew wandered in and picked up a Sidur from the table. He looked at them and left. The room smelled of age and mustiness. Manny held the two pages in his hands, scratching his lower lip with his teeth.

“Naturally, I will want to see if I can get this handwriting analyzed here, and see what to make out of this. Or, I could send it abroad to my analyst in the Boston area?”

Zsuzsanna spoke softly. “You must do what you must do, Professor. You have been a doubter for so long now; I expected this. Please, may I read this letter?”

He slid it across the table to her.

She put on her spectacles and began reading, slowly.

But now, to his amazement, he found something else in the envelope, a small dog-eared black and white photograph. Brittle with age and faded badly, it showed an older man with a narrow face and goatee, in profile, playing a game of chess with another prisoner. Could it really be RW? Manny couldn’t actually tell. On the back, was printed, “Vörkuta, 1962.” He felt a bit dizzy.

She wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, “So now, Emmanuel, what is your decision, a final step in the puzzle so we begin serious work, or yet another delay tactic?”

He bit his lip. “You are a very determined woman, Zsuzsanna, and I respect you a great deal. But I … I really don’t know what to make of this. I shall have to—”

“Please.” She stood up and slid the letter back into the envelope, and reached her hand out for the photograph.

“Do you recognize him in this photo?”

She looked at it closely, wearing her spectacles, and nodded. “Poor father!” She sunk down, her head in her hands.

Gently, he said, “If you give me the original, I can have it looked over carefully, and we can begin our work.”

She smiled, weirdly. “All will be taken care of, in due time. The important thing is, Professor, that we have communicated with him and found his words and direction accurate.” She shook her head. “And now we have new evidence of how he ended.”

She started to pack up.

He asked if he could help her with anything.

She shook her head, now rather distant.

They retraced their steps to the outside. Gray and cool.

“I must go now,” she said.

“So, when shall we meet?” he asked, “I’d like to make a copy of the letter and the photograph. As soon as possible would be best.”

She thought a moment. “Yes, tomorrow morning at nine, at the Central Café,” she offered. “You have not yet said what you think of this … news?”

“Well, I must digest it, of course. And verify it. But thank you, and I will see you in the morning.”

He kissed her cheek, and they departed.

That night in his small hotel he e-mailed several friends about finding the right handwriting specialists, both in Budapest and in Stockholm. Also, he called Dora, telling her of the strange news and arranging a meeting. He wrote to his expert friend, the historian Berger, telling her too. He tried to tamp down his excitement by going out and taking a walk along Andrássy Avenue, which pleased him with its old-world shabby charm. He slept well, feeling, curiously enough, a burden being lifted from his shoulders. Of course, he knew he was jumping the gun, but …

At 8:45 a.m. he was seated at the large Central Café, ordering his juice, rolls, and coffee, and waiting. The square marble table and stiff wooden chair suited him.

At 9 a.m. he was drinking his coffee and peering up to see some of the famous artists and writers of Hungary of yesteryear staring down at him from the walls.

At about 9:20 a woman appeared, wearing the
Scheitel
(wig) and demeanor of the religious, and asked if he was Gellerman, the American professor. She handed him a note in an envelope and excused herself:

Manny sat there, in shock, at what had occurred. He saw the customers walking to and fro, heard the clattering sounds of dishes and silverware, barely heard the waiter asking if he wanted more coffee, and he nodded.

It had all happened so fast! Had he truly misplayed his hand? Had he missed the chance of a lifetime? Was he totally reasonable in his doubt, but stupid and insensitive in his wording to her yesterday? His eyes grew blurry, his chest heaved.

“Professor, are you alright? Sir?”

Dora was suddenly sitting at the table, wearing a simple cardigan and looking at him with her beautiful youthful face.

He shook his head and told her what had occurred. “The letter even spoke about ‘those very close to him in Budapest,’ or words like that. Of course, it could easily have been made up, but … who knows? …”

She ordered tea from the waiter.

She shrugged. “My mother is up and down, moody, you know that. She is very sensitive. Easily offended. I think she will come around, though it may take some time. But we have time, don’t we?”

He sipped coffee, looked at the trusting girl, wondered if he did have time, and smiled wanly. “I don’t really know what to believe, actually.”

“I understand that, sir.” She put her hand on his, for the first time. “If it was a genuine letter, she will let you have it, I think. It’s too important for her not to.”

“I am not clear any longer about what is genuine and what is not.”

She smiled. “That is true; sometimes it is hard to tell. In people too.”

“You should call me Manny, while we are waiting for her.”

Dora nodded dutifully, accepting the porcelain teacup and saucer set on the table. “Where should we wait, do you think?

He gazed at her and tried to focus on the question.

She smiled softly, “Budapest? Stockholm? New Hampshire?

“How about Vörkuta—do you think they’ve opened it up yet to foreigners?”

She raised her eyebrows, wondering if he was serious.

He looked up, and saw through the big windows, and figured, for now, this new piece of “evidence” was as good as any in the giant RW conundrum. And maybe Vörkuta was the right place to start the next leg of the hunt?

“Come, let’s walk down by the river and see what we think.”

Gellerman paid the bill, and they went outside and walked across the traffic to the old law library, and down toward the Elisabeth Bridge. They walked along the river—she had taken his arm—like a couple strolling. The air was cool and windy. They walked on, and on.

What to do now? he wondered.

They came to the Parliament area and the Margaret Bridge, and a small area that was set with a striking memorial on the river embankment at the edge of the Danube—a stark grouping of a dozen or so bronze shoes, a testament to the Jews who were shot by the Arrow Cross and tossed into the river.

The bronze shoes stopped Manny.

He thought of the brave soul who had saved so many but who remained such a personal mystery. How much had Gellerman entered into it, shed light on it?

“Imagine if that letter was real,” he said aloud. “In any case, either way, he was quite grand—either as your grandfather or as a grand illusion or mystery.”

She looked up at him. “And you are perhaps grand, for searching for him the way you have been and continue to do.”

“Well, he’s become a friend, actually, a friend who comes and goes, sometimes with advice, sometimes with cautions. I’ve become his invisible shadow, you could say.” He smiled. “Or he mine.”

They stood a while looking at the roiling river, with the Margaret Bridge nearby, at the randomly set shoes symbolizing the dumped, murdered Jews. Manny peered at the hilly area of Buda across the river; and beyond, above the hills, he saw a configuration of cumulous clouds, forming architectural shapes in slow motion. He was reminded of a Wallenberg sketch in a notebook, and they created in him a kind of dense music, which resonated mysteriously. Without thinking, he took the young woman’s hand—this Dora who may or may not have been related to his heroic friend, and who stood alongside him and stared silently.

And now he began to feel something, some motion within that mirrored the wind outside, and he tried to discern its meaning. Here, beside the choppy blue-gray river, not far from the bronze shoes of memory, he began to understand, or
feel
, what Zsuzsanna was furious about—his lack of faith in
her
Wallenberg. Why of course. In truth there were several Raouls, some imagined, some real.
For didn’t all complex souls require several selves and demand multiple interpretations?
Wasn’t
his
Wallenberg just as mysterious, just as much a matter of faith, speculation, as hers? Hadn’t he created
his Wallenberg, his living ghost
, through his own deepening faith, based on his knowledge of the evidence at hand? He half-smiled. In fact, the same means were often, maybe inevitably, used in the writing of history, when crucial facts were missing and one interpreted—or even unconsciously invented—based on a collection of other, circumstantial facts. So why shouldn’t Manny should give credence to Madame Z.’s version of the family Wallenberg, as strange as it might seem, with its mystical reasoning, its medium’s sightings, callings? Deliverance could be reached along very different paths. The clouds shifted, a bit of dusk light escaping through the edges.

“Yes, we have work to do,” he offered, “but I feel promising vibrations.”

The young woman looked up at him and squeezed his hand, in concert.

Alan Lelchuk, novelist, professor, and editor, was born in Brooklyn in 1938. He received his BA in world literature from Brooklyn College in 1960 and his PhD in English literature from Stanford University in 1965. He is the author of seven novels:
American Mischief, Miriam at Thirty-four, Shrinking: The Beginning of My Own Ending, Miriam in Her Forties, Brooklyn Boy, Playing the Game, and Ziff: A Life?
For young adults he wrote a memoir,
On Home Ground.
His short fiction has appeared in such magazines as
The Transatlantic Review, The Atlantic, and Partisan Review.

Lelchuk has taught at Brandeis University, Amherst College, and, since 1985, Dartmouth College. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, such as Guggenheim and Fulbright awards, and visiting professorships and writer-in-residence appointments in the US, Israel, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Russia.

He served as associate editor (with Philip Rahv) of
Modern Occasions
, and was a cofounder of Steerforth Press. He co-edited
8 Great Hebrew Short Novels
in English.

Alan Lelchuk lives in the countryside of New Hampshire, and has two grown sons.