Her fellow teacher had not been sick; she did not have to substitute for anyone. She had merely taken time off and joined the class excursion at her own expense. Twenty-two students had travelled to Ravensbrück — fifteen girls and seven boys — with two teachers to lead the group. Where are you off to, her fellow teachers had asked at the railway station? That’s brilliant, at least you’ll be able to keep the kids in order.
She had had no expectations of the trip, she says. What could I have expected? But she had had a feeling that there was some business she was holding inside her that had to be attended to, and I did not dare ask what that was because, although her voice is cool, I reckon I can see in her look a plea for me not to ask her what business had to be attended to, as if her look was saying that she could not explain it anyway.
The Germans watch as we down our drinks. As far as I can tell they are satisfied with us — we were getting on pretty well, they must have thought.
Before her mother died she had asked that if a gravestone were to be ordered she should also have engraved on it her own mother’s name with the date and place of her birth and the date and place of her death, which was Ravensbrück.
Her mother had never before disclosed the name of the camp. She did not hide the number tattooed on her arm, but she not willing to mention the name of the camp.
When we got near the gates to the camp the other two teachers stood at the back of the group and behaved as if I were the leader, even though they, too, could speak German well.
The students had made their way towards a whitewashed building.
On the left there is a memorial column and an artificial lake, I say to Györgyi, the glass of vodka in my hand.
On the left there is a memorial column and artificial lake, Györgyi says.
The crematorium is not far from the entrance, on the right, I say.
The crematorium is on the right, she says.
Two chimneys, five viewing apertures with shutters over them.
That’s right, she says.
I see that she would now attempt to set off in the direction of my gaze.
Two lines of a dozen barracks facing each other, between them the Appellplatz. Six ten-metre posts, each carrying two floodlights, I say.
They must have lined up on the Appellplatz I don’t know how many times each day, she says, so when I was standing there what went through my head was that I could have paid a visit long ago, but I did not want to.
She stands on the Appellplatz, takes a few steps. She is walking in the footsteps of her mother, her grandmother and her mother’s friend, I muse. I do not tell her that I too have stood on the Appellplatz in the footsteps of her mother, grandmother and mother’s friend when I still had no idea that among the many thousands and tens of thousands of traces were some belonging to someone I would one day come to know. I did not stand between armed guards and students there but between two faceless GDR officials. They hesitantly allowed us to leave the prescribed route and to enter the former camp, accompanied us silently to the Appellplatz. Because Györgyi had stood there it was now her story; as I stood there at that time I had the feeling that it was rather the story of the two faceless East Germans.
I don’t tell Györgyi that no more than fifteen years after the crematorium had been in operation I had asked a young woman of twenty-five — who was selling small collections of photographs labelled ‘Acht Fotos KHZ Ravensbrück’ (‘Eight Photographs of Ravens brück’) for two marks at the entrance to the camp — where she lived, and she said in the next village.
That village was 800 metres from the camp.
Did your parents live here during the war?
Yes, they did.
What did they say about you getting a job here?
Nothing.
Did you ever ask them what they recall of how the camp operated?
They knew nothing about it.
Have you heard about it from other people?
Nobody.
But it’s only half a mile away.
No, nothing from anybody.
Didn’t they see the smoke from the crematorium chimneys?
I’ve already said, they knew nothing …
Eight photographs:
A transport to Auschwitz
Prisoners at work
Women building roads
A view of the camp
The Appellplatz
The crematorium
A firing squad
The memorial by the lake
I bought a packet of the eight photographs.
We might have spent an hour inside there, Györgyi says. The Appellplatz was muddy. It was drizzling, and anyone whose coat was hooded pulled that over their head. One of my colleagues said we should go because the kids were freezing. As we were heading for the memorial, past the artificial lake, one of the girls came over to me and linked arms with me, tears in her eyes. I didn’t know what to say to her, Györgyi says. It wasn’t easy to stay quiet, but it would have been even more difficult to say something. We set off the two of us to walk round the lake, and when we were far enough from the others she stopped. Miss, one of the boys said that this was only put up at a later date, that there’s no truth in the whole story.
Györgyi is speaking in an icy voice. I cannot imagine the tone in which she replied to the teary-eyed girl. Her look is the same as Mádi Róbert’s when she said what, on the morning of 15 November 1944, I could not have seen from the other room. Yes, Györgyi’s look is familiar, like the look of those who speak about rationally incomprehensible events in similarly frosty tones. I told the girl that my mother and grandmother had been brought here, and my grandmother and a woman friend of my mother’s had been incinerated in the small whitewashed building with its two chimneys and five viewing apertures with shutters over them.
The group sets off towards the waiting special coach.
Go, says Györgyi to the girl, or you’ll miss the coach.
She waits until everybody has boarded.
She waits in order to keep the others waiting.
The two Germans at the next table pay their bill.
Would I relate to her my recollections of the camp?
My hosts, or rather my East German escorts it would be more accurate to call them, did not budge from my side. I would have liked to have been left alone for at least a few minutes, but they did not budge while I measured the span of the opening to the furnace of the crematorium. It was just wide enough to swallow up a body lying horizontally. The Appellplatz was muddy on that occasion, too. It had been raining then as well, and I caught a bit of a cold.
And did you write about it?
No. What I felt at the time was so insignificant. I caught a slight cold, my throat tickled. It may well be that if I had not coughed and worried about not being able to change my sodden socks until the evening I would not have written about it even then, because I could not find the right words in which to record it. Although I did write down that much.
What do you mean, that much?
The fact that I could not find the right words in which to record it.
This is the right moment for me to slip across the table a folder in which I have placed a typescript. It is a novel, I say, the chapters that have been completed so far.
Her look is that of an accomplice; she feels she has become a part of something to which it may be hard to pin a name but involves the two of us.
We leave the Gellért’s tearoom — I’ll write up what happened next later — we then go out in front of the entrance to the hotel.
We start to walk in step with one another. When we reach the pedestrian crossing to Szabadság Bridge I look back. Before my eyes there appear trestles, barriers made of rolls of barbed wire, the cannon guarding the head of the bridge and the hotel.