Yes, she was more afraid than us; even Vera was not afraid when we got back home.
Mrs Linnert steers Vera into the caretaker’s dwelling.
I set off on a voyage of discovery. I avoid number 78, the single-storey villa where we spent the summer and autumn. The back-door opening into the kitchen is open. Bed linen strewn about all over the Róberts’ bedroom, window-shutters lowered, a single wall light left on to provide illumination. It sends light over the decades.
The bookcase is open. A few volumes are lying on the floor. I pick up a copy of the 1927 Literary Encyclopaedia that Marcell Benedek edited. While we were living here I used to read it every day. A brown cloth binding with the lettering of the title picked out in gold. I wanted to read the lot, from A to Z; by 15 November I got as far as K. I stow the copy in my knapsack. I hear a soft whooshing from over by the cherrywood cabinet. A pink light. An enormous opalescent seashell. It belongs to Uncle Róbert. One is not permitted to touch it, but once I was allowed to hold it to my ear. Among the fingerprints on it must be my own. His grandfather had willed it to his father, his father to him, said Uncle Lajos. It preserves a century and a half of sounds; deep-sea shells like that absorb the sounds into them. Speak into it if you want. I said my name; nothing else sprang to mind.
I am holding it right now. I say my name into it this time as well. Is the one voice on top of the other?
When last week I described Carl Lutz’s steps at Keleti Railway Terminus I put on the record-player the ‘Adagio’ of Schubert’s String Quintet in C, which he had preserved from the playing of the two blind beggars standing by one of the exit doors that time he travelled to Berne to make his report in December 1944. Now I place the seashell close to the record-player; the music starts; I would like it to preserve the ‘Adagio’, the sound of which Lutz could never shake off.
It is dark. I carefully put the shell into my knapsack between the spare pullover and the warm socks.
I sneak out of the house.
I go across to number 76. The lilac tiles of its stairwell glitter in the dark. The door to the first apartment on the mezzanine floor is shut; that belongs to Vera’s family. The other door can be pushed open. I find myself standing in the Beifelds’ hall. In one corner is the card table; Mother and Father used to play here, although in the case of the ladies it was more a matter of playing rummy in one of the rooms inside. One of the cane chairs is placed exactly where, seated next to Father, I used to watch the slippery switching of cards in the deal.
The Persian wall hangings are missing from the dining-room, the paintings, too.
The second floor. The door to the Hirschs’ apartment opens if you push on the handle.
All the rooms here as well are familiar to me. I could almost taste the birthday cakes, but what now catches my attention is that a wall light has been left on. The curtains have been torn down, the doors on the wardrobes are wide-open, the chairs flung about; they must have stamped on the crockery in the kitchen and on the games in the children’s playroom, although a little figure of a cavalryman, my favourite, has remained intact, so I tuck that, too, in my knapsack.
I open the windows in the lounge. There is a full moon. The green velvet cover with the golden tassels has been swept off the piano; I set it back.
A flush door opens into the spare room. I find bed linen in the drawers of the divan bed. I tear the blackout paper off the window and don’t put the light on. I never did have a room of my own. I shall be able to read once it grows light: a good job I took the Encyclopaedia.
Bursts of submachine-gun fire are heard from close at hand from the corner of Korong and Kolumbusz Streets.
In the morning I wash in cold water. I choose one of the three coloured tooth mugs. I find half a tube of toothpaste, from which I squeeze some on to a finger. I give my socks and underpants a good wash and take clean ones from my knapsack. I go down to the mezzanine. Vera is drinking a cup of tea and eating bread and jam. The jam is cut off a block; I get some, too. I invite Vera to the Hirschs’ dwelling and show her how I’ve set myself up. We clasp hands in the stairwell, but once in the apartment she draws away from me and sits at the other end of the divan. I try to reach for her hand, but she won’t permit it. I ask her if she would like to move in here; I would relinquish my room — just the way it is, I say. I would find somewhere else to sleep. She says the Linnerts’ place is good enough for her for the time being.
In the summer my parents enrolled me to study music: out of the two-hour lifting of the curfew that was five minutes there and the same back. The woman who was teaching advised against the violin or the piano — they call for prospects, she said to my parents. The word was new to me, but I sensed that I understood what she was driving at. I would suggest the piano accordion, she said. You can learn the basics with ten or twelve hours of practice. She taught me Viennese waltzes and ‘Tango Bolero’.
I try to play ‘Tango Bolero’ for Vera on the piano. I hit the wrong key a few times.
She brings a chair, sits down, puts her elbows on the piano and cups her chin in the palm of her right hand. She is mimicking actresses such as Katalin Karády in Halálos tavasz (Deadly Spring) László Kalmár’s 1939 film based on the book by Lajos Zilahy.2 A good job she did not light up a cigarette. Her way of walking is just like Karády’s. I leave off ‘Tango Bolero’, step behind her and bend down to her neck. She doesn’t smell good; she can’t have washed, probably not for days by this time. She darts off to the bathroom; I hear the sound of the WC flushing. She comes back but not stepping like the actress and singer Katalin Karády. She says she is hungry, she’ll go downstairs; perhaps there’s something to have for lunch there. She takes my hand and pulls me along.
We eat in the kitchen — a thick brown soup of roux then a stew of boiled beans, both from the same dish. Vera leaves half of the beans in the dish. ‘Uncle’ Linnert is in his fifties; he has a silvery moustache, which droops into the spoon when he eats. He says they’re drawing closer, by which I suppose he means the Russians, although I can’t hear any guns. His voice is just like that farmer at Szilasliget, just to the north-east of Budapest, almost at Gödöllő, at whose house we spent a summer holiday when I was six. He would look up at the sky over the walnut tree and say, It’s going to rain, sod it! even when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Even when there was absolutely no danger of hail knocking down his orchard; even when he was waiting for a storm to break the long dry spell.
That afternoon I find blackout paper and drawing pins. I place the paper over the window, and by night I read by the light of a table lamp. I can hear bursts of submachine-gun fire from the same direction as yesterday. I switch the light off and open the window. Flames are shooting up from over by Kolumbusz Street.
I place in one of my folders a copy of the documentation:
One of the actions by Arrow Cross shocktroops which sought the greatest number of victims was directed against the Kolumbusz Street camp, which was under protection of the International Committee of the Red Cross. They broke into the camp despite the protests of the ICRC representatives who were present. The camp’s doctor was also shot dead when he protested in defence of the patients. The elderly were lined up and sent off to the ghetto; those aged between sixteen and sixty were herded off to Józsefváros railway station and packed into trains that were going to Bergen-Belsen.
I lean out of the window.
I can hear the bursts of gunfire.
I do not know what is happening.
Every day I pass the plaque that was unveiled twelve years ago in memory of Dr Kanizsai, the commandant and the other victims.
For supper we are given bread and a mug of tea. Mr Vespi says that the children cannot stay here because they will endanger the lives of the residents of the house. He doesn’t say that to us but to Uncle Linnert, Mr Vespi being the warden for the block. He has gingery hair and blue eyes and was a sergeant in the First World War. He was wounded in one leg and walks with a limp.
I go up into my room and make the bed. I take off my boots and britches, drape my shirt round the back of a chair.
Friedrich Born, the authorized ICRC representative, reaches Józsefváros railway station at a time when he is no longer able to prevent the loading into cattle trucks of those dragged away from the Kolumbusz Street camp.
I am freezing under the coverlet, so I put my shirt on anyway. I later find out that Mr Vespi has reminded Mrs Linnert a second time of her duty to report shirkers, as he puts it. What business does Mr Vespi have with the two kids, says Auntie Linnert, adding that she is well aware what the law says, and she’ll take care of it tomorrow. She doesn’t know what she and her husband ought to do, and what is the sergeant going to tell the Russians, she asks?
I warm up under the coverlet. I think of Vera. In the brickworks and the Dohány Street Synagogue, though, despite curling up tightly pressed to each other, what was happening as I was thinking of her just now had not happened then. I leave it to my hand to gratify the urge. The first time it had happened had been last summer on the night of an afternoon when we had kissed while sitting on a pile of bricks in the garden. I had in my nose still the smell of the perfume she had been wearing in the summer.
The night passed by.
The next day passed by.
Vera says that she saw their coffee service in the Linnerts’ kitchen cupboard.
On the third day Auntie Linnert opens the door.
Quick …!
I dress hurriedly. She leads me to the cellar. Vera is already there.
Through the grating over the window I can see a truck pull into the yard. Boys of about my age and wearing Levente caps jump down from it; a few older boys. Mrs Linnert calls out for us through the window. We have to go out. All the residents are made to stand outside the door to their apartments. Anyone not Jewish is allowed to go back inside. Wearing a fur cap, Mr Vespi salutes and reports that he has carried out all orders.
He reports to a Home Guard leader with an Arrow Cross armband.
The lads, I can see, are still sleepy. It’s 6.30, and it’s snowing. Vera lets me put an arm round her. The lads are ordered by the lance-corporal of the patrol to strip the contents of any apartments that are not occupied. Mrs Linnert is obliged to dig out a trunk to hold the more valuable items. One of the lads asks the lance-corporal what is deemed to be a more valuable item; he is tow-haired with brown eyes and is in a blue braided coat and, rather than a Levente cap, is wearing a grammar-school cap. He looks at me while he asks the question. Mr Vespi reports that there are still two Jews in the building. The boy in the grammar-school cap comes across to me and whispers, You should scarper.
What qualifies? I’ll tell you what, the lance-corporal bawls.
Suits, women’s dresses, hats, tablecloths are carried out to the truck; I even see two tennis racquets. One of the older youths asks if they should bring down a piano from the second floor. The boy in the grammar-school cap chips in, Don’t bother; it’ll put it out of tune.
The lance-corporal is tall. On his belt are two bulging ammunition pouches. His boots are worn; he is holding a bayoneted rifle.
I’ve heard that you know where they hid the soap. Somewhere here there are three crates of soap.
We are standing in the apartment where I have spent the last few days.
The cupboards have already been emptied. The lads are trampling articles that have been swept on the ground. In the playroom is large pile of board games, model cars and dolls; a few of the tin soldiers are slipped into their pockets. Two of them are tossing a big sleeping doll backwards and forwards.
The lance-corporal bawls, We haven’t come here to play games, bugger it! Now then, my boy, let’s be having those three crates of soap.
He tosses his peaked cap on to the piano — it’s the sort of cap worn by border guards; the flash on his collar patch is green, which means he’s infantry, whereas border guards also have a red stripe on the edge of the flash. My elder brother and I used to paint the insignias of rank and branch of service on our tin soldiers. My brother was called up for forced-labour service at nineteen years of age; he joined up at Bustyhaza, where they had to lug bags of cement on the military airfield. Two were allowed to carry a sack if an individual was unable to carry fifty kilograms on his own. We got the last postcard from him back in October, at which time they were on the march, heading for Germany.
This isn’t where I live, I tell the lance-corporal. I haven’t got a clue about any soap.
A likely story, squirt!
In my form at school there was a lad from Kőbánya, the Xth district, and he spoke the same way: Watch it, squirt! I’ll box your ears!
Speak, or I’ll smash your face in!
The boy in the grammar-school cap comes over. He observes the others. I’ve seen in films how the white-gloved footman gives that sort of snooty look to all the guests who are ignorant of the rules of etiquette. He sits down at the piano and plays.
The lance-corporal thumps me with his fist. It’s a hard blow, but I don’t feel much pain — it’s more as if I were watching him thump someone else.
He thumps with the other fist.
I want to say again that I know nothing about any soap, but the sound just won’t come out, and I just flail with my hands.
He goes out. He has a word with Mr Vespi in the corridor.
The youths just gawp at me; two of them sidle off. The lance-corporal returns. I hope you’ve come to your senses, he says quietly, or shall we begin again from the beginning?
He does not wait for me to protest but kicks me in the groin. I crumple slowly to the floor.
Give it a rest, boy …
I am able to get back to my feet.
Schnell! Schnell! he yells at the boys. They no doubt have lots still to do.
Who will remember, as time passes, this particular house on Amerikai Road when there are many just like it?
The lads will get back home after a full day’s work: one brags, another forgets where they had been, some stay silent when their parents ask, one complains of having a headache, another sits down to play the piano, yet another reads the newspaper:
Levente Alert Across All Greater Budapest. The enthusiastic army of our Levente sons will have to fulfil a most important task which calls for many industrious young hands. The chief treasure of a Levente is his honour, says the Levente law. Now our Leventes are again being called on to prove that they are the staunchest guards and defenders of the nation’s fortune.
I am standing in the stairwell; the tiles are the same as they were, although several are missing and the gaps have been painted over with lilac oil paint. Three generations have left their fingerprints on them since then. My own were also left there that time I fell against it.
Vera is in the cellar now, squatting in a corner, a black scarf covering her face.