So quick?
I did say that I’m a photographer, sir. There is a handy room and equipment here.
I thank him and say nothing about the fact that everything in the pictures is bright and sunny, in contrast to my memories.
I stand for a while at the entrance.
Where could Györgyi have travelled to so unexpectedly?
I read the prices on the menu displayed next to the entrance.
On the wall is a marble plaque:
To the memory of Lajos Gidófalvy, 1901–1945, and men of the 1st Battalion 13th Regiment Military Police, saviours of the Jewish boys’ orphanage which stood on this site under the International Committee of the Red Cress and on 24 December 1944 came under Arrow Cross attack.
Vera and I were no longer there by that time.
Three or four days after we had been lined up the Red Cross admitted a new group into the building. The Arrow Crossers and gendarmes came for them, too, on that Christmas Eve.
I read through the text on the plaque once again.
I set off along the route that our own procession had started along: Délibáb Street, Bajza Street then turn right along the Alley towards Lövölde Square and the city centre.
VII
At Lövölde Square I tell Vera that we’ll skip off when we get the chance. Right now we are not required to run; we are not being forced so much as herded into the square. From time to time there is a shout of ‘Close ranks!’ as the column spreads out and the smaller ones become detached. Our escorts seem to be less vigilant, taking care only that those who cannot keep up and are left at the back do not get behind the two gendarmes who form the rearguard.
The third person in our line is the boy with the clown face. He has latched on to me ever since I gave him the square of chocolate.
In Lövölde Square I see no signs of interest in the looks of the passers-by watching us. They must have got used to seeing columns like ours. Clown-face does not have a knapsack nor a suitcase or satchel; he dangles a small bag in which there are handkerchiefs, a scarf and a pair of socks.
Vera, standing on tiptoe, tries to make out where Edo and Judy are. The smallest children are walking in a separate group in front of us; there must be about twenty of them, surrounded by carers with Red Cross armbands, some of them resting as they are carried in their arms. I spot Edo and Judy and wave to them.
Vera seems to be getting ever smaller and more pallid. I don’t know where her beret is; maybe it’s in her little suitcase. She has pulled the warm headscarf right down to her eyes — that is what is making her head look smaller.
Clown-face woke up every night and went to the window. The first time I got up and went over to him, but then I contented myself with watching from under my blanket. I have no idea why he stood by the window, nor do I know why I woke up each time he woke up.
Ack-ack guns in Lövölde Square. Barbed-wire obstacles have also been positioned, and children are jumping about around them. A squad of gunners to man the guns; a pile of bayonets and rifles. The soldiers allowed the children to throw snowballs at them, and one of the bigger boys can scramble on to one of the guns. The others would like to do the same, but the commanding officer, a sergeant, forbids that.
Clown-face steps out of line, seemingly just drifting, but he looks back at me and winks. He is swinging his bag as if his mother had sent him to do some shopping. By now he is by the pavement, behind the back of the Arrow Cross lance-corporal on the left flank. He needs to pass between two men at the edge of the pavement, but one of them catches him by the arm and calls out to the lance-corporal. The lance-corporal beckons to the gendarmes, and from now on he has to walk between them. He grins and pulls himself up straight, although even so he only reaches their shoulders, and the gendarmes occasionally jostle him.
The Riegler boys are two rows in front. The bigger one looks back as if to urge caution; he may have guessed what I am preparing to do. It is necessary to keep an eye not only on the armed men but also on those standing about on the pavement. I put an arm round Vera and try to help her straighten up and again stand on tiptoe. She says she can see her cousins among the little ones, but I don’t think they can see us even though they have turned several times to look back. Edo is walking in the middle of the row; Judy has one hand being held by a Red Cross lady who is carrying a very small girl in her other arm.
We reach Rózsa Street. Then Izabella Street. A burst of noise. Riegler calls back to say that over there is the gate of the ghetto.
I stop after Hársfa Street, from where, to the best of my recollection, I caught a glimpse of the gate.
Vera’s steps are more determined, which is encouraging; she will need to be self-reliant. Again I catch a warning look from Riegler. The column is bunching up; the armed men are directed to positions by their commanding officers; Clown-face is pushed by the gendarmes into the back row. A policeman is stationed next to our row on the right; before us and on the left is an Arrow Crosser with a submachine gun. We close up to the group of tots. Another group is now marching at the front of ours. We are so close to the Outer Circle that I can now see on the far side the huge entrance gate; the guards level their weapons at the approaching procession.
The officer at the front shouts out orders. We march. I clutch Vera’s hand. Edo and Judy are now quite close, and Vera calls out their names. They look back, and Judy would like to stop but is not allowed.
I shall have to backtrack a lot in order to recapture the look on her face. A description acquires gravity if it allows something beyond what can be expressed or preserved to materialize in it. If I try to conjure up Judy’s face to myself I need to move beyond the stretch between Király Street, Hársfa Street and the Outer Circle, where she turns round on hearing Vera’s call, and go back to a summer afternoon in 1944 when, sitting on a pile of bricks in the yard of number 78 Amerikai Road — at the time littered with building materials — Vera and I first exchanged a kiss and instantly separated. Judy was tottering towards us from over by the spot where the sacks of cement were lying, clutching a pinwheel, the paper vanes of which the two of us had cut out with scissors, and our arms touched while we were pinning it to a sausage stick. Judy had raced with the vanes of the pinwheel spinning in the breeze, her cheeks flushed with delight. Vera had snatched her up and hugged her, then the two of them, hand in hand, had resumed running. Judy’s delight, therefore, was part and parcel of the kiss and also of the thrill which went through me afterwards while they, laughing merrily, had raced around. It was decades later that Judy’s face first appeared among my memories, bidden by another face, also that of a little girl, albeit a slightly older little girl, a face not unlike the close-up shots of the face of a young girl in Ingmar Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute as she intently watches, happy and excited, conveying the changing moods of the music with which both Mozart and Bergman express a knowledge of something more than itself, of wonderment over the many aspects of life it is possible to know. I squeeze Vera’s hand and watch the armed escort and so have to withdraw my attention from Judy. I have no choice, and I cannot be aware that it is for that reason her look becomes imprinted in my memory.
The first lieutenant marching at the head of the column reaches the other side of the Outer Circle and comes to a halt at the gate. The two gendarmes bringing up the rear were, at that point, near Hársfa Street. The children at the front had also crossed the Outer Circle by then. A number 6 tram was approaching from Wesselényi Street. The policeman who had been marching on the right-hand side hurried to the front, stopping where Király Street crosses the Outer Circle to take over directing the traffic. With a raised hand he warns pedestrians to halt. With the rails being slippery from slush the driver is unable to brake, so the policeman beckons that he should carry on, as, with the other hand, he bids the group of children in front of us to halt. The column is split in two.