The cross-eyed lad, who’s slumped against the wall, once more starts the game of pretending he is masturbating. He again begins clutching the air in front of his buttoned-up fly. Howls of laughter. Forget him, says Riegler; that prick has never had a real orgasm in his life, you can take it from me.
We sit back down on my palliasse. I slowly start to unpack my haversack. At the bottom of it is the shell that I took from the Róbert family’s apartment. I show it to him; he takes it and presses it to an ear. Nice, he says. Is that yours? It is now that it sinks in for the first time that I have actually appropriated the shell, although I feel that is not of very much significance, given that everyone is swiping stuff, and I had simply borrowed it and would give it back to ‘Uncle’ Róbert after the war was over. Every sound is there in the shell, I say, including what we are saying right now. He gives it back then ruffles my head like adults do. Watch out that none of the lads pinches it. Does that happen often? There have been some cases, not here but in the other room. That’s when a shake-down is ordered. And what’s that? Two of the orderlies for the floor come in, and you have to lay all your stuff on the palliasse. They search everything, and if they come across anything that’s been stolen they take it away and you’re punished by being given so many days on bread and water.
After breakfast Soproni says that I should go next door. There are still two there, the seniors. It’s possible they don’t even live in the home. One of them takes leave of Soproni after giving him my papers. Soproni lifts up one of the pieces in the parquet floor; a hollowed-out area contains a stamp and an ink pad. He stamps the papers, puts the ink pad back in its tin box, the stamp is wrapped again in greaseproof paper and put back in the hollow, and the parquet piece is replaced. The messenger’s papers state that Iván Károly Seres, RC by religion, born at Kiskunhalas on 11 March 1930, mother’s maiden name Rosa Imrey, is authorized to remain on the streets during air-raid warnings. Signed József Bakos, ARP Commander for VIth District.
I hear my name being called from the corridor. I have a visitor; go into the hall.
Jolán Bors’s big black headscarf also covers her shoulders. I had not noticed before now that there are sentries at the gate — a police-man with a sidearm and a man with an ICRC armband. I am asked if I know the visitor. Jolán unpacks from a shopping basket; she has brought me a clean shirt, clean socks, two bars of chocolate, a link of savoury sausage, a kilogram of apples. She says she’ll take way my dirty clothes. She is pleased to be able to sit in the hall on a bench by the wall; she has a long journey ahead of her. My parents are better. I’ll be able to pay them a visit at the Alice Weiss Hospital in a week or two, so I should stay where I am. I am not clear on whether that is a message from my parents or her advice.
I go up to the office, ask for two sheets of letter paper and write with them resting on my knee. I’ve kept a pencil in the back pocket of my trousers, although there’s only a stump and it is blunt, so I keep digging into the paper. It would have been better to ask for a pencil as well, but I haven’t the nerve to go back. Jolán’s face is white. Presumably it is always is, but now it is markedly so. She says that she was with my parents yesterday, and she set off from Kispest, on the outer south-eastern fringe of the city this morning. Now she will take my letter to my parents before she gets back home this evening. Had I met up with Aunt Gizi? I don’t understand why I ought to have done. It’s just that she is also there if needs be.
He takes her leave; she has to press on. She wraps herself up in her black scarf. I take my things upstairs, breaking off two squares of chocolate on the way up the stairs; I shall give the other bar to Vera in the evening. I give the two Riegler boys two squares each. Every time I go to the office there is somebody else there. This time it’s a young woman in her twenties. I tell her that I’ve heard my aunt is here somewhere (Aunt Gizi is Mother’s aunt, but I don’t feel this is the place to go into details). She is back five minutes later and, leading me by the hand, takes me up to the third floor. She indicates one of the doors and tells me to knock.
There is no response. I count up to fifty before carefully turning the handle. There is a dense pall of grey cigarette smoke over everything — purplish rather. The curtains, too, and also the figure standing in front of the curtains in her dressing-gown. It’s lilac silk with a white floral pattern. The figure does not turn round. I don’t recognize her from the voice, which is hoarse. The figure turns round. Her face has also changed. Maybe she has spread cream all over the skin; it’s glistening. Lots of blood vessels are showing in the whites of her eyes. The last time I saw her she was not blonde. The dressing-gown is not buttoned. She has a black brassiere. It would be good manners to avert my gaze, but in the brickworks men and women had to relieve themselves in front of one another and no one turned away. Her voice is like a soldier’s. She recognizes me and gives me a hug. She doesn’t smell of cigarettes. It’s not a sweaty smell, more a body odour. A smell of eau de cologne. She says my parents were very weak but starting to pick themselves up. She asks if Jolán Bors had been to see me yet. This was a good place; I needed to be patient. Did I want to send a letter to my parents? I tell her I have just written one, and Jolán Bors was taking it.
She combs and asks me to turn the other way. I sense from the swishing sounds that she must be taking off the dressing-gown. I take a cautious peek at her. She is sitting with her back to me. She has black panties. She stands in front of me in a twill skirt and green blouse. Her hair has been smoothed down with a parting in the middle. She asks whether I have encountered her younger sister Bőzsi any where. Her voice is again husky, like when she called out after my entry. She must be somewhere here, surely somewhere. The network of capillaries in her eyes again dilates. I say that from what I’ve been told there are only children in this building. I know, sweetheart, but promise me that if you chance to see her you’ll tell her that I am well and she can leave a message for me here, at the home. I try to pick words that I think will be of reassurance. She kisses my brow. Come tomorrow. Knock three times so I know it’s you. Where is she going? She says she has lots of things to attend to. She puts on her fur jacket, white headscarf, Red Cross armband. We go along the corridor together, all the boys staring in wonderment at her — at me, too, for walking with her. I ask her what the date is: 8 December.
I go over the glass door. I have to knock there, too. General János Kiss, Lieutenant-Colonel Jenő Nagy and Captain Vilmos Tartsay, who were among a group of General Staff officers leading the army sector of the Committee for National Uprising and Liberation, the Independence Front, were executed on 8 December 1944. The head of the committee, Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky of the Smallholders’ Party, had his immunity as a Member of Parliament suspended by Parliament, and on Christmas Eve he, too, was he was hanged at in the Sopronkőhida prison on 23 December.
On 8 December the total forces available to General Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch number only seventy thousand men, with Hungarian units comprising the regular army, reserve troops and the police force. The worst bloodshed is that inflicted by Eichmann’s Sonderkommando and the SS units of mainly ethnic-German Hungarians.
Where, I wonder, could Mother, sitting on a mattress in the basement of the Alice Weiss Hospital, have put my letter after she was given it by Jolán Bors? In her haversack? Under the blankets? She read it out to Father. She folded the sheets in four. Grown thin with age, sixty years later the paper is still crossed by the folds.