VI
The post brings two photographs with no letter enclosed and no sender’s name on the envelope.
In one of my truly old files I find a few lines about a time I visited Luca Wallesz in 1976, and there was a young girl there:
She hopes to be able to learn from me something about what happened to her family in 1944. According to Luca, my mother and grandmother were taken in together to the brickworks on the same day as her mother, to whom I apparently spoke, advising her to join the same line of people over sixty and under sixteen years old that I was standing in. According to Luca, a woman friend of the girl’s mother was also with them, and later the girl’s mother married the fiancé of the by-then-dead woman friend, but in the late fifties they had parted … I have forgotten the girl’s name, and anyway Luca asked me to keep it strictly confidential …
I had forgotten all about that note. The file had slipped behind the accumulation of other files and had become crumpled. It did not come to mind when that teacher had followed me, not even when she said that we had left Luca’s together.
Maybe I did have a tendency, let me put it like this, in the recesses of my self, to take refuge from things that Luca said, although I am certainly not the sort of person who wishes to endorse the wiping of memories.
I was always ashamed whenever anyone gave me to understand that they would like to forget certain events, while I assured them that I understood.
I was ashamed even when anyone gave me to understand that they were unable to free themselves of the memory of certain events, and I assured them that I understood.
The teacher speaks softly — not timidly or even cautiously. It’s rather as if her declarative sentences were to come out as interrogatives. I sense an edge of hopefulness in her voice, notwith standing the fact that her words seem to be building protective walls. She does not wish to let the person with whom she is talking get close to her yet she is ready to supply answers to inquisitive questions.
When did I feel that way about her voice? During that first encounter? When we got off the number 1 tram together?
Will it be possible for me, with the assistance of the voice that I conjure, to get to the roots of the story about which she would have liked to interrogate me?
I put Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major on the record-player.
Ever since I learned from Carl Lutz’s diary that he felt a sense of infinity in its sound I always listen to it when I reach a hairpin bend while working.
I place a telephone call to the Zsuzsa Kossuth Health Gym nasium and ask what the surname is of one of their teachers with a given name of Györgyi. I am put through to the head. I start by clari fying the reasons for my request. I make a note of the address in Abonyi Street, look up the telephone number in the phonebook then dial.
Is it she who picks up the receiver?
Do I hear a man’s voice?
At least it becomes clear she has a husband or partner; I am bound to admit that I am curious.
She herself wanted to call, she says. She wanted to ask if I had received the two photographs. I thought it was you, I want to say, but she does not permit me to respond. You know, she cuts in, sometimes he does not even come to mind. How did she recognize me in front of the school, remember me from more than twenty years before, I ask. It’s such so long a time as all that, she says. Do you really think it’s been such a long time? Really, when you stood there, by the memorial column, it all started over again. What do you mean by ‘all’? I ask. Well, that I really ought to know everything; that’s why I sent the two pictures, on the off-chance. What off-chance? I ask. So why did you not even add a sender’s name on the envelope? She has no answer to that, and I also run out of things to say. I listen to the silence. Neither of us wanted to spell out what we were actually talking about; perhaps it’s precisely on that account that it is clear to me what she may be thinking, and I sense that for her, too, it is clear what I am thinking. I have a few questions about the photographs, I finally say. Fine, that’s all right, she says, not mentioning that she ought to be accompanying her child to a special class, not mentioning that they are expecting guests. She just says, Half a mo’, while she checks her schedule.
We agree on a time.
Where, though?
I say.
Oh, there …
I arrive at the Andrássy Hotel a quarter of an hour before the time we have agreed.
I walked across the City Park along roughly the path I took with Vera.
It is not December; there is no Aréna Road. It is late winter, and it is now named György Dózsa Avenue.
In my imagination I chalk a circle on the pavement of the corner of Mihály Munkácsy Street and Délibáb Street. That is where Soproni lay in my bloodied windcheater. Since we were able to return to the Red Cross home, I had slipped out with the supervisor, who had given me to understand that now it was all right for me to wear the ankle-length duffel coat, and he showed me where the two bullets had hit Soproni. I wonder if they had been taken out.
What had been the Red Cross home during the war is now the five-star Andrássy Hotel. On the façade I can make out only a few minor alterations; even the entrance is where it used to be. There was a time when the door that opened on to the hall was not a glass door. On the right is the reception; to the left a passage to the dining-room and coffee room.
Györgyi cannot imagine why I suggested we meet here. I shall not tell her straight away; I want to watch her face as she comes to discover the hotel’s past.
A young man at reception greets me. I have to disclose why I wish to look about upstairs.
Which newspaper are you from?
He does not wait for an answer but introduces himself and tells me, without being asked, what his duties are, how long he has been working at the hotel; he asks that in my report, that is what he calls it, I should mention his name as it would assist him in his professional career, as he calls it.
The red carpet in the corridors is held down with brass rods. The wallpaper is cream-coloured. Hanging on the wall are reproductions of Impressionist paintings. I go up to the second floor with the young man courteously coming with me. The doors are where they used to be. I come to a stop at the second door to the left of the stairs. In response to a request from me the young man hurries off downstairs to fetch a door key. Fortunately it is not booked, he says; trade is only moderate, but by Christmas it will, with luck, be full.
Ash furniture. On the double bed is an azure silk coverlet; the curtains are cream-coloured with a pattern of a colour similar to that of the coverlet.
On the wall is a reproduction of a Klee painting. The Playground. I say, one of his most interesting arabesque traceries. The young man’s expression changes. I think it’s from the late twenties, he says. I take photographs, sir, and I also draw, although I’m probably not talented enough as I was not accepted for art school, but I’ll try again next year.
There was a time when I happened to be staying here. I tell him. I’m not a newspaper reporter, I’m not writing an article, so I can’t write your name in anything, I’m sorry to say. That’s no matter, sir, I’m glad to hear that you stayed here. Klee is extraordinary, isn’t he? I think you share that view; there are times when he leads me to make connections where I seem to identify something which lies beyond the picture.
I tell him that I have an old document which carries a signature, the lettering of which resembles the squiggles of arabesques that can be seen in the print.
Would that be some kind of work card?
I tell him that it is a forged identification document which was produced in this very room during the war. The stamp was brought out from a hiding place under the parquet flooring here, and this was where somebody wrote in a name that was not the real name … and that lettering was like the arabesques …