The night was pitch black on both sides of the Swiss-Austrian border, Lutz was to note later, because the government had yielded to German pressure in ordering a blackout of the country. The Germans were seeking thereby to make it harder for British bombers to navigate over the occupied territories, including Austria. The route was Munich, Linz, Vienna. The next night everything was shrouded in the darkness of the war. We travelled first class, Gertrud said to Gizi, among high-ranking officers and Party leaders. We could see through the windows that at every station there were patrols and security people checking papers; many were the times when we had to wait on an open track to give priority to military transports. We could see they were moving guns, supplies of every description, tanks. It was all as if the war had burst its banks and covered everything. Carl said that at one point he started up and looked out of the window just as a train transporting tanks was passing by. I could never have put it so well. The train jolted, I’ll never forget it. Carl jumped up. Perhaps he had been dreaming. His look was one of alarm; that’s when he said it.
They chatted, Mother said, as if they had long been friends.
Lutz was standing by the train window. Alongside the train of carriages, now bumping together from the sudden braking, was another train with a cargo of tanks. On the tanks were soldiers, wordlessly smoking cigarettes. Lutz sat back down, says nothing to Gertrud, merely notes it down, decades later, that before being woken by the braking he had been dreaming that the two of them were standing on the canal bank, the German punt man and he, and the German kept repeating, With the blade of the spade, the bastard! By the time he had noted that down he had found an explanation for the dream, but at the point he had glimpsed the grim-faced, grey-uniformed soldiers smoking on top of the tanks he did not know as yet why he had been dreaming what he dreamed, but that filled him with such uncertainty it was as if not only was a spectre pressing on him but also everything he seemed to know and take in yet was baffling and unknowable, a feeling of uncertainty which verged on fear, and he wanted to protect Gertrud, who had been puffing on her Darling as she lay tucked up on the lilac velvet upholstery of the seat, from that feeling. We’ll see who receives us in Budapest, he says. It will be clear from that whether we can achieve anything or whether it’s just the coolie work customarily referred to as official duties that awaits again. Carl had already had experience of that, Gertrud says to Gizi, if they were looking for officials who would always conscientiously discharge official duties, then someone would utter his name, but he had had enough of that, enough, enough, says Gertrud altering her voice to a high pitch as if only now were she taking it on board that he had already long had enough of it.
She fell silent, Gizi says to Mother, virtually buttoned up, then she leaned over, even though there were only the two of us in the room at the time, and she whispered, You know there are times when he is unbearably sensitive? He feels so offended that others are always being appointed to positions that should rightfully have been his long before, but he calmed down when it was Ambassador Jaeger who met us off the train at Keleti Railway Terminus.
Gertrud is thinking: I talk too much to this Jewish woman, but the fact is I feel at ease with her. You’re very different, she says, from other Jews. In Palestine we were leery of the Arabs but also of the Jews — no offence meant — but Carl always said that he came out best with the Germans.
Gizi says nothing; now Gertrud also says nothing. Gizi finally says, We are very grateful for everything. She kisses Gertrud on the cheek and asks which perfume she wears.
Ambassador Jaeger waits for the train arriving at Keleti Railway Terminus. Also there was Kilchmann, the Consul, such an agreeable chap he is, says Gertrud; he’ll made a play at anyone in a skirt. What you Hungarians would say, hang on a tick, csápta a szólt (raises a storm). Gizi corrects her Hungarian, csapta a szelet — the brandy was making her sleepy, you see, she says later to Mother; both Józsi and Károly always laughed at how any time I have a drink I immediately feel sleepy.
In December 1942 Ambassador Jaeger writes to the Marcel Pilet-Golaz, a member of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs who was made head of the Political Department and thus in effect the Foreign Minister:
The government here is exposed to sustained and ever-greater pressure to rid Hungary completely of Jews. The Germans are demanding that the Hungarians should assemble all Jews and hand them over. These people should be delivered by train. The Germans assert that they will transport the able-bodied to the eastern territories; those who are not able-bodied will be disposed of ‘in a manner not specified in more detail’. To what extent the Germans will be able to fulfil their demands in the future depends on the outcome of the war.
Six months later Pilet-Golaz warns Carl Lutz by letter to refrain from assisting the escape of groups of children to Palestine. Actions of that nature were overstepping his authority and were not among his duties as a representative of foreign interests.
Gizi would like to sleep. Ever since, in searching for Bőzsi, she had peered into the faces of those dying in the ditches on the road to Vienna, Mother tells me later, she had been able to get little sleep; ever since she learned that Károly had been shot in the back of the neck, all she wanted was to sleep. Gizi listens to Gertrud, the leather sofa is deep, now she would be able to sleep, but she waits and drinks because she needs to ask Lutz for ten unfilled Swiss safe-conduct letters. That was when I wanted to get them for you, too, she says to Mother.
The telephone rings, and Lutz comes back in. He grasps the receiver in such a way, Gizi sees, that the fingers clenched round it turn white; that was how they looked on the bodies she had seen by the sides of the ditches. With fingers like that how was he going to sign the Schutzbriefe?
At the other end of the line Gerhart Feine repeats that an order has come in from Berlin that as long as Carl Lutz is in Budapest he should not consent to the Arrow Cross attacking the ghetto and Jews in protected houses. Lutz knows that in view of the current strategic situation in the war Berlin considered it to be important that relations with Berne should not deteriorate. Lutz does not advise Feine that, following Ambassador Jaeger, Sub-Consul Kilchmann had already left Budapest, and Berne did not care what the Arrow Cross did, nor did they regard as important whether he, the current chargé d’affaires, stayed or returned home to Switzerland.
Two young men bring in a large bundle of printed material. They place it carefully on the writing desk. Lutz takes a look at the freshly printed letters, checking his own forged signature on them. He finds it satisfactory.
Gizi pulls on a Red Cross armband. She asks Lutz for ten unfilled letters. She hides them under her blouse. She says farewell and hurries out with the two young men. In the stairwell one of them asks her whether she has anywhere to stay that night. She gives a name and address. On foot it’s an hour’s walk across town, says Gizi; it’s gone ten o’clock, so the general curfew is in force.
The lads seat her in a Red Cross car. Not a soul is to be seen on Andrássy Avenue. No lights filter out from behind blacked-out curtains. The city is a dark mass, consisting not of houses nor of streets but of darkness.