In place of the spectacle of marching soldiers Gizi sees the column marching towards Hegyeshalom, the dead bodies in the ditches and her own self bending over them in search of Bőzsi. And she also sees Károly’s face as he takes her hand and sits her in the car. He had laughed, Mother says. Gizi had told her that Gertrud laughed. Perhaps it was because of that, said Gizi, he took me on the trip to ease my depression. Gizi had been in a terrible state when he visited the hospital, says Mother, she was so worn out that your father and I agreed that the best thing for her would be for her to stay with us. Dr Temesváry would have permitted it. She just sat on my bed and cried. I don’t remember that, I say, and Mother glances at me but does not respond, although it would be nice to know what is running through her mind, but I don’t ask. Memories stay fresher if they are tucked away, and undoubtedly we share that awareness. Maybe she’s thinking what a good job it is that I don’t remember everything that she remembers. But Gertrud laughed, Gizi tells Mother while sitting on the hospital bed. She wanted to shake me up a bit, the dear, brave lady with those ‘no big deals’ she picked up from me. In the twilight, coming up to Bicske, we almost collided with a Russian tank, then we got caught up in an attack by a low-altitude plane, so the chauffeur slammed on the brakes and yelled at us to take cover in the ditch — we dropped flat on our stomachs among the soldiers. And when the attack was over Gertrud said, There you have it, darling, no big deal; let’s carry on, I want to take that slaughtered pig back home. But then it didn’t work out because the farmer with whom she had made the agreement had done a runner, although fortunately his neighbour, who you could tell just by looking at him was completely broke, gave her some potatoes, fat and even honey. And Gertrud said in the car on the way back, There you are, poor people are different, both here and back in Switzerland, and they can allow themselves to have a heart, whereas anyone who owns anything just grins like a hamster. And Gizi said that ‘grins-like-a-hamster’ to herself several times over, says Mother. She spoke very good German, but she didn’t know expressions like that, so Gertrud had to explain it, and when Gizi got the drift she finally burst out laughing, and both of them laughed on the way back, not at what could be seen through the car windows but at the way Gertrud tried to imitate a grinning hamster by pursing her lips, and that was something Gizi herself acted out at the hospital, says Mother. I don’t recall that, I say, nor that she went into a weeping fit. She sat on my bed, says Mother. I don’t recall that either, I say. For heaven’s sake, here’s me crying my eyes out to you, says Gizi, me crying my eyes out to you, and she made a fresh trip between the beds. She had a snapshot of Bőzsi, which she lit up with her torch and asked everyone all over again whether they had seen her. One of the women, barely able to speak, snatched at the photograph. My dearest, she whispered, and Gizi had trouble plucking it out of her grip.
Maybe Gizi never did come back and sit on the bed; maybe she did not talk about Bőzsi. Mother’s gaze may be switching between what actually happened and the imagined; such uncertainty is familiar ground for a gaze, and it guides my own, too. I do not visualize Gizi sitting on the hospital bed, but the hand gesture that Bőzsi makes comes to mind, only the hand gesture. I don’t see her, so that flutter doesn’t seem to be her hair. Might that change over time into a gesture?
Gizi went not long after that, says Mother. She had to get Vera’s name written into our papers. The only way of doing that is put it under yours as if she was your younger sister; so Vera was given our family name. Do you remember what she said when I told her that now she had to behave accordingly and say that we are her parents and you’re her elder brother?
I couldn’t remember.
She said, Mother says, But that would only be until my real parents returned, wouldn’t it?
Perhaps what Mother is thinking of is that Vera’s parents never did return.
But she couldn’t have known that then.
Gizi brought a new safe-conduct letter, she says. Lutz’s signature on it was genuine. That was on Christmas Eve. She also brought chocolates and recounted that Lutz had met a very high-ranking German officer at the Gellért Hotel. She and the Lutzes had dined in the restaurant because Gertrud had insisted that Gizi eat dinner with them. That’s something you weren’t in a position to remember, says Mother. There was a time your father and I had dinner at the Gellért with Gizi and Józsi. At that time Józsi could not wear his officer’s uniform, and Gizi had not as yet dyed her hair; it was dark brown and was shoulder-length; she had a tobacco-coloured evening dress, which she chose to go with Józsi’s worsted; mine was mauve to go with your father’s dinner jacket. We got the money from your grandfather, although your grandmother could not have known about that, of course.
Whatever happened, and however it happened, Mother’s gaze vanquished time. For her, whether I was approaching the fifteenth year of my life or three decades older, I was and always remained her little boy. When she was lying tucked up in the intensive-care unit with drips in her arm and sheets up to her chin, I bent over her and pressed the palms of my hands together — not the way Grandmother pressed them together during prayers but in order to move them left and right in front of her open eyes to see whether her eyelids would quiver, but they didn’t. She had only hours left, and I understood that I now had to take on the full weight of her look, which could no longer respond itself.
This assumption of responsibility was one of a number of occasions when I attempted to will myself across an unbridgeable gulf in unconscious preparation for my investigation.
It could be that there weren’t four of us at the Gellért; maybe it was more, maybe Bőzsi was there and others as well.
Gizi is sitting in the Gellért Hotel restaurant. Carl Lutz and Gertrud are seated opposite each other. A waiter brings in bowls of bouillon, having first, with a ceremonial flourish, placed on his tray the soup plates that had been set out on the table. Gizi is seated opposite the window, so she can see the barbed-wire barriers on the square in front of the hotel and the gun placed at the Buda end of the Franz Joseph Bridge. The food was brought in on silver platters. What time is he coming? Gertrud asks Carl Lutz. Soon, says Lutz. Gizi does not ask who they are talking about; because they were not sitting opposite a window that overlooked the Danube they were unable to see that armed men were shepherding a small group across the square.
Gizi smiles and tactfully glances at Gertrud; the two women can share the reason why she is glancing at her and not at Carl Lutz, and Gizi even bursts out laughing when Gertrud breaks into a laugh. Of course, darling, it’s no big deal. If you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. As if they were laughing over the fact that Gertrud can now say ‘it’s no big deal’ flawlessly in Hungarian, she gets up airily and heads off towards the ladies. There are military officers seated among the guests, the younger of them giving Gizi conspicuous glances, so when she feels that nobody is looking she races down from the mezzanine and, as she leaves the entrance, almost stumbles into a barbed-wire barrier. By now the group has crossed Gellért Square. There is a young woman walking in the back row, beside her a policemen with rifle; the woman’s hair is ruffling and she smoothes it down. Gizi reaches her and grabs her by the arm. The young woman breaks into a smile; there is understanding in the smile, dignity. Gizi smoothes down her hair and plants a kiss on her forehead, the policemen pulls her away and the procession carries on. Gizi would like to accompany them, but already as much time has passed as would have been necessary to hurry off to the toilet, so she returns to the restaurant and, as she again passes the officers’ table, she notices a general is arriving in great haste and giving instructions to the colonel seated at the head of the table.