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.
They are vacuuming carpets in the lobby of the Hotel Astoria. There is a group of Japanese tourists at the reception desk.
This is the first time I have been here in something like fifty years.
The location of the swing door is unchanged. The hotel’s coffee room on the right — which has a view on to both Lajos Kossuth Street, the continuation of Rákóczi Avenue inside the Inner Outer Circle, and Magyar Street, the first turning on the left — as well as the restaurant on the left are similar to what they had been fifty years before, and on the evidence of contemporary photographs that was also the case before the war.