His wife is standing beside him. She is as tall as him with the same ashen features, her wrinkles just as deep.
You can count on us, Father declares. My wife cooks, my son will lend a hand with the wood chopping, and I’ll go for bread when it’s my turn.
Gizi says to Vera, And you’ll do your bit to help as well, won’t you, with washing the dishes and cleaning? Terrified, Vera nods.
I can’t guarantee a bed, says the woman. Even the cellar is overcrowded. You can take your pick. Either you can go downstairs into the cellar corridor, where you can sit on a haversack or else you go up to the fourth floor where one of the apartments has been cleared out, but it’s as cold as out on the street.
Father and Mother consult. I just hope they won’t opt for the cellar corridor because Vera is afraid of the dark.
Gizi takes leave; we have no idea where she is going. She says something to the warden, and he raises a hand to his officer’s cap in salute. I haven’t seen the physicist since we entered the house. Gizi gives all four of us a kiss. Mother is crying, but why now of all times?
A four-room apartment on the fourth floor. The bathroom alone, tiled all the way up to the ceiling, is as big as one of the smaller rooms. All the windowpanes have been shattered by the bomb blasts. Father and Mother spend the night in easy chairs in the dining-room, Vera on a settee in the middle room, while I sleep in a corner room on a divan. Father rustles up two blankets and spreads one over Vera, the second over me.
The carpets must have been carried away; the cupboards are wide-open, the shelves are empty, clothes hangers are scattered all around. A bomb has torn a hole in the ceiling of the fourth room. The next morning Mother finds a crust of dry bread, which she shares out, and opens one of our last remaining tins of liver pâté. Father goes downstairs, although I don’t know where. He comes back then goes off to queue for drinking water. The duffel coat is wrapped round Vera’s shoulders with the collar pulled up as well, so only her forehead and eyes can be seen. Father looks for the warden then comes back. He says he is going downstairs to chop firewood, so I go, too.
The yard is huge expanse of concrete — it must be about ten by fifteen metres in size. The inner balconies of the house next door can be seen from it. The two of us chop the wood, and two other men carry it away. The warden says that retreating soldiers had left their cauldrons in the street, and it was from there they had been brought in. The wood is green and only catches light with difficulty. Some women bring out cooking pots. At noon we stand in line for a helping of beans. There is a shortage of mess tins and mugs into which to serve it. Anyone who has eaten their ration wipes out the vessel with a sheet of newspaper before handing it on. Mother goes up to the fourth floor to wash plates and spoons in the bathroom, having been warned that even if the water is running it is not drinkable. Vera ate the beans now, whereas she left half of what was dished out to her by the Linnerts on Amerikai Road.
I rearrange the things in my haversack. My hand comes across the shell, but I don’t pull it out, not wishing Father or Mother to spot it, as they would know it belongs to Uncle Róbert.
Despite that they do see it. Mother tells me to take care of it. Aunt Bőzsi was very fond of it and will be delighted that I have held on to it.
I have not seen the physicist since we arrived. I visit a few of the apartments. I recognize nobody and do not ask around. There are six to eight people in each room, with places for bedding down even in the kitchens and bath tubs. We prepare methodically for the second night. Mother and Father decide that they will lie on the settee where Vera slept and will take the blanket she had. Vera comes to lie next to me, and we spread my duffel coat and Vera’s winter coat over the blanket for both of us.
We are used to the drone of aircraft, the detonating bombs and the sound of anti-aircraft batteries, and we no longer even notice the sirens sounding air-raid warnings and the all-clear.
Mother tidies the blanket on us and tucks the coats under me just as she used to do with my coverlet when I was a small boy. Vera, before she goes to bed, pulls on another pullover and an extra pair of warm knickers.
Mother says that tomorrow night we may go down into the cellar after all.
I have a dream about walking with Vera along Francia Road. Two men with submachine guns are coming the opposite way from Thököly Road and they fire a burst at us. I grasp her hand; she has been hit by at least three rounds, with holes as big as a fist in her winter coat, in mine, too, not the windcheater nor the braided duffel coat but a pale-grey herringbone spring coat of English cloth. My grandfather had a coat like it, and I am sorry that I have ruined it. Vera laughs as she looks at the holes. I am now moving along streets with Vera that I had not previously been in. There are many people on the pavements, some watching with interest, some unconcerned, some who follow us, and when that happens we disappear only to carry on somewhere else.
Vera turns so that now we are lying face to face, and she places her head on my shoulder.
Jolán Bors makes an appearance and gives me a square from a bar of chocolate; Mrs Ulbert then comes and guides us into a corner of a cellar, which is just like the workshop on Francia Road. We make our bed on the bag-gluing table, with Vera leaving only her petticoat and knickers on, breathing heavily on my shoulder. She pulls my hand down between her thighs and jiggles it while holding on to my wrist. Do that, she pants, more, now. Oh! Never before have I heard her give such a cry of dismay. I am scared that it will wake my parents up, and they will rush in from the next room. It wasn’t so much that her voice was terrifying, more that it broke off. She sat up as if she were looking for someone, for the person who had stifled her cry.
In the morning we have a hard job disentangling ourselves from under the blanket and coats. Vera avoids my look. I stand in front of her. What’s up, then? she asks. Did you sleep well? You didn’t wake up even once?
Father says that we’ll all freeze up here; it’s better we go downstairs after all, so we pack.
In the stairwell there are shouts.
They’re here! They’re here! Line up!
XI
From Pannónia Street I started off by heading for the Comedy Theatre, Gizi told Mother, but there were guns down by the Outer Circle, one of them at the theatre’s entrance, so I went back to Sziget Street.9 Gizi wanted to cross the Outer Circle and get back to Szabadság Place by the Parliament building, says Mother.
No light was filtering out of windows. A few people were racing towards the Outer Circle, bursts of submachine-gun fire from Pozsonyi Road. At the corner with József Katona Street a group was being escorted by three Arrow Crossers with submachine guns. Gizi wants to cross to the other side of the road, but one of the Arrow Crossers grabs her by the arm and thrusts her into the line of captives. Gizi points to her ICRC armband and produces her papers. She is placed next to two elderly men; the others are herded away toward Pozsonyi Road, two streets closer to the Danube. One of the men gives a wave of exasperation and, on the orders of the Arrow Crosser, sets off after the group. Gizi tells the machine-gunner to take her to the officer in command; he has violated diplomatic identification papers and will be answerable for that. On the orders of Herr Carl Lutz, the Swiss Vice-Consul, the man standing beside her had to be taken to the Swiss Legation. That very afternoon Carl Lutz had negotiated with Major-General Gyula Sédey, the police commissioner for the city, she says to the young Arrow Crosser, and Herr Lutz’s actions were taken with the commissioner’s consent.