Upon the Head of the Goat (7 page)

8

A
FEW DAYS LATER
we returned home from school to find Lilli alone in the kitchen. “Where's Mother?” we asked in unison as the door opened and Mother came in. She was dressed in her best clothes. Taking off her coat and handing it to Iboya, she sat down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs and began to speak. “I ran my feet off, going to all the places where people told me I could get visas to send you girls to America. People don't know what they are talking about. You can't get passage on a boat no matter what. There are all the Americans going home with their families. Then there are all the people who already have their visas and who have already applied. All I can tell you children is that I tried everything. I pleaded, I cried, I tried to bribe. Nothing made an impression. They hardly even listened. I guess they've heard it all before. You should have seen all the people waiting in lines to speak to the officials. Women with babies in their arms. Everybody with a story to tell and nobody to listen. One clerk told me, ‘Listen, lady, if I had any influence I would get myself on a boat to America. You think I like what's going on?'”

Mother bent down and picked up her purse. She took out a bulging envelope, and as she held it up I could see that it was filled with bank notes that Babi had sent Mother for our passage. “I'll have to try to get this back to my mother. Maybe she can buy back a piece of the land she sold. She's owned that land for as long as I can remember. It's not the rain that's made those fields fruitful, it's her endless, untiring love. She'll never understand that her land could not buy passage to America for her granddaughters.”

We all stood quietly, waiting for her to finish, hoping that she would feel better after she had told us everything. It was not like Mother to be so upset. She usually did not let disappointments bother her. “You bounce back like yeast dough,” Father used to tease her. “No punch can keep you down.” But Mother was down now. She sat in the chair and stared past us until Joli started to whimper. Then, with a start, she pulled herself up. “Who knows, maybe it is for the best after all? What would this house be like without my daughters?”

*   *   *

The spring of 1941 also brought some changes to our school routine. Instead of play during recess, we now had drills and group gymnastics like soldiers. We had to buy navy shorts and white shirts; they gave us large wooden hoops and batons, and we were taught to do tricks with them. We learned to do push-ups, to jump through the hoops, and to use the batons as swords in fencing exercises.

Ica Molnar and I were put into the same group and started walking back and forth to school together. But we did not confide our secrets to each other as we had before I went to Komjaty. Ica's parents and mine had been good friends, frequently going into each other's back yards to converse together. But since my return I had only seen our mothers exchange greetings on the street. Ica and I could sense the new limits to our relationship.

Just before Passover, Mother and Lilli received the first cards from the men in almost two months. Father's card seemed to jolt Mother out of a depression, and she cried as she read it over and over.

“When was that card sent?” Lilli asked.

“Almost three weeks ago.”

“Lajos' card is almost four,” Lilli exclaimed. She and Mother beamed at each other in spite of their tears and exchanged postcards.

The first week in June we received a surprise visit from a woman about Mother's age accompanied by a girl my age and a boy of seven. She introduced herself as Mrs. Gerber. “My husband wrote to me that he is in your husband's battalion,” she said as Mother walked with her toward the salon.

“He asked that I come and meet you so that if one of us gets mail and the other doesn't, we can check with each other and be in touch,” she said after she had seated herself on the chair in the salon. Mother introduced us to Mrs. Gerber, and she, in turn, introduced us to Judi and Pali. The women talked for a while, giving each other all the information they had received in the past months from their husbands. Then Mother went into the kitchen and brought back holiday cakes and tea. She was playing hostess again, a role that she loved, and she talked about Father without stopping. Mrs. Gerber invited us to visit her the next Saturday. “I have a cherry tree full of cherries, and they should be ripe by then.”

We all decided to call on the Gerbers the following Saturday. Judi Gerber and I climbed up into the tree with a basket and picked the ripe fruit for everybody.

“You realize that we are picking cherries on the Sabbath and nobody seems to notice,” I said.

“We are not religious,” Judi answered. “We don't bother with tradition and holidays, we are only Jewish by birth.”

Beginning with that Sabbath, Judi and I became friends. We waved and talked to each other on the playground. She didn't have many friends because the other girls said she was odd and standoffish, but she really wasn't once you got to know her.

“Funny we never talked before,” I said to her one day.

“You were always with your friends.”

“I'm not so friendly with them any more. I feel closer to you now.”

Judi had come from Budapest when her father's company transferred him to Beregszász before the army drafted him. She lent me some of her books from the school in Budapest and told me that the school had been a progressive one where the students discussed all kinds of ideas and where there were no rigid routines.

I told Iboya some of the things Judi had said. “Don't pick up too many of her ideas,” Iboya answered, “or you will become as unpopular as she.”

Mother and Mrs. Gerber continued to see each other, and they often talked about Budapest. “My daughter Etu is there in the Gymnasium,” Mother said to Mrs. Gerber one afternoon when we were all sitting in our back yard. “I have asked her to come home, but she wants to finish the year.”

“Don't ask her to come back here,” Mrs. Gerber replied. “She would be much better off there in an emergency. There is less conflict in the big cities because people are not that easily influenced by propaganda. What can she do here? I wish I were back there. We went to the opera and the theater and had marvelous friends.”

“Yes,” said Mother. “I lived there for a while when I was a young woman; I stayed with one of my sisters who is now in America. How I loved the theater! That was what I missed most of all when I came here. What a long time ago all of that was!”

“But she still remembers all of the plays she saw,” said Lilli. “My mother would have made a good actress. You should see her play out some of the parts.”

Mother and Mrs. Gerber's conversation turned to food rationing, and Lilli excused herself to take a walk to the tobacco store. She returned with a newspaper, holding up the front page for Mother and Mrs. Gerber to read. The headlines were twice the usual size:
HUNGARY JOINS GERMANY TO INVADE RUSSIA.
Judi and I left the shade of the chestnut tree and read over our mothers' shoulders.

“Lucky for us that Mr. Kovacs is past forty,” Mother said. “He will be able to continue to run the store for us. Without him, we'd lose our weekly income.”

“With this general draft in effect, there won't be many men left,” commented Mrs. Gerber. “Hitler has come to claim his payment for helping the Hungarians take back Ruthenia and the Czechoslovak and Ukrainian lands. He's going to leave Hungary a country of old men, women, and children.”

9

I
N SEPTEMBER
I entered the fifth grade. Gymnastics were extended to two hours a day. “Soon you won't have time to learn,” Mother commented when I told her about it.

“They are training them for the army,” said Lilli.

“Bite your tongue,” was Mother's quick reply.

Iboya joined a subdivision of the Red Cross in charge of individual street detail. They enforced blackout drills by inspecting all of the windows, and they were also trained in first aid.

Toward the end of the month a postcard came from Father saying that his company was being transferred and would pass through Beregszász on or about October 6. Mrs. Gerber appeared with a similar postcard from her husband. She and Mother pooled their rations over the next few days and bought as much flour, sugar, eggs, and butter as they could. They made us pick the walnut tree clean. We peeled the outside green covering off the nuts until our hands were stained jet black. Mrs. Gerber and Mother sat on the porch, cracking the hard shells and chopping up the walnut meats, which were still moist with milk. There was no time to let them dry out.

Lilli's hands became busier than I had ever recalled seeing them. She rolled and filled strudels with nuts and sugar and grated lemon peel from morning until dark. Mother piled the split logs into the bread oven, lit them, and after they had burned down, filled the oven with all the pastries they had prepared.

At dawn on the morning of October 6, our two families went to the main railroad station at the other end of Beregszász, to sit on the benches with our bundles and wait for the train that would pass by with Father and his men. Jumping up every time a train moved over the tracks, Mother talked to all the conductors and attendants, hoping to get some information. They had none. When it grew dark, Lilli, Iboya, Judi, and I took the children and went back to our houses while Mother and Mrs. Gerber continued their vigil, taking naps in turn and watching the bundles. We returned to the station in the morning with breakfast for them. They looked tired but refused to go home to freshen up while we remained at the station. We went through the same routine for three more days until, disheartened, Mother and Mrs. Gerber were finally persuaded by the train officials to return to their homes.

That night after we had all fallen asleep, Mother was awakened by a knock on her window. By the time she had wrapped her robe around her and looked out the window, Father was knocking on the guest bedroom door at the back of the house, waking Lilli and Manci. Soon we were all crowded around him. Mother picked Joli up so she could meet her father for the first time. In spite of the hour and the confusion, Joli seemed to understand that this was her moment. Mother handed her to Father, and she snuggled into his arms and stroked his prickly face. Wanting to be held too, Sandor began to call, “Daddy, Daddy,” to get Father's attention. Still holding Joli, Father sat down on the divan next to a sleepy and confused Manci, who sat and chewed on her nightgown in silence while Sandor climbed onto his lap. Iboya and I approached the divan shyly, waiting our turn to be held.

Mother was wide awake and filled with concern. “You ran away? What can happen to you? You must be hungry. Where are they taking you? How is Mr. Gerber?”

Father smiled and answered her last question. “I left Mr. Gerber in charge. Rise, don't worry. We are not sure where we are going, but it could be the Russian front. Do you have my brother Srul's address just in case?”

“Yes, I do. Ignac, take care. I want you home again.”

“How are you and the children getting along?”

“No problems. Mr. Kovacs is being generous, he gives us enough to live on.”

“Are you getting my army pay checks?”

I could see the sudden question on Mother's face, but she quickly smiled and answered, “Yes, no problem, we are managing very well.”

“It won't be for much longer,” Father said. “The Russians are very strong. And even if we are captured by the Russians, I am sure that would be better for us than Hitler's succeeding.”

As he spoke to Mother, he kissed us each in turn and got up. He embraced Mother, pulling her close. For once she did not pull away from him and scold, “Ignac, the children!” She remained very still for a few seconds and then drew away. “You must not stay longer.”

Lilli stepped down from the threshold and flew into his arms with a cry, “Oh, Ignac.” As she looked up at him unashamed of her flowing tears, I realized that Lilli loved Father in a different, grown-up way—not Mother's way, but not our way either. They were like very close friends.

“Do you think Lajos will be going, too?” she asked as she separated from him.

“No, Lilli, I think they have forgotten that he is a Jew. Hold fast and we'll soon be home. Look after your mother.”

Mother was standing with the bundles. Father shook the contents of his backpack out on the divan—a few slices of dry zwieback—and refilled it with the strudel. “Now I must run.”

We all went with him to the gate and watched as he and Mother embraced. Then Father was gone. Slowly Mother turned back from the gate. Her cheeks were wet with tears, but she spoke to us firmly, telling us all to go back to bed. She picked up Joli, who was still repeating, “Daddy, Daddy,” and carried her off, not turning around toward us again. Startled by her abruptness, we all went back to bed.

10

A
S
I
WAS WALKING
home alone from school one day late in October, a woman with an infant in her arms approached me and asked in a wavering voice, “Do you speak Yiddish?”

I nodded.

“I'm running away from Slovakia, and we are hungry. Can you point me to a Jewish door?”

“Follow me, I'm on my way home. I'm sure my mother will give you something to eat,” I said in Yiddish.

The woman followed me, walking close to the houses. When we reached our kitchen, I started to explain to Mother, but she pushed me aside and lifted the infant out of the black peasant shawl around the woman's shoulders.

“The child needs water,” she said, cradling the infant in one arm, while with her free hand she scooped up a small cup of water from the bucket and forced a little of it into the child's mouth. Lilli spooned some of the vegetable soup simmering on the stove into a dish and set it on the table.

“God bless you, pretty lady,” the Slovakian woman said in Yiddish as she sat down on a stool and began to gulp down the steaming soup. Mother asked Lilli to fill a washbasin with water so she could wash the baby. We watched the infant come back to life, kicking and enjoying the sensation of the warm bath. Then Mother lifted the infant out of the basin, wrapped her in a towel, and left the kitchen, taking the baby with her.