Horses are standing motionless beside abandoned artillery carts.
By Margit Bridge two Hungarian Bofors guns are firing in the direction of Western Railway Terminus. There are two dead bodies by the wheels.
On ringing the bell at number 5/a Tátra Street a man in a leather coat opens the door. He is not wearing a yellow star and so is not a Jew; he is the warden for the house. An hour ago fifteen people were taken away in the direction of the river by Arrow Crossers, he says. I was able to conceal two small children; the fifteen were picked at random, and they included women.
Gertrud photographs the warden. She had also taken shots on the Chain Bridge and in front of the Parliament building.
Carl Lutz has the sense of having seen and heard before everything that he sees and hears; everything he feels and thinks repeats itself, the way Charles looks at him like a soldier at his com mandant. He indicates to Charles with his eyes to turn into Pannónia Street, as directed by Gizi. Also repeating themselves are the way the street empties out around them, the way the bombers drone above them, always these repetitions: armed Arrow Crossers in front of 36 Pannónia Street allow people to enter; an army corporal with an Arrow Cross armband gives orders. He shoots into the air. A man with a military bearing in a short fleece-lined coat is standing in front of him. Also repeated is the way Lutz climbs out of the car, orders Charles to take care of the women and the way Gertrud reaches for the camera, but Gizi warns her that now is not a good time to take photographs. He had also seen these faces many times before, the faces of those who have been lined up, even if he had never before encountered these particular women, children and elderly men who are standing in lines of three between men carrying submachine guns, while one can clearly see through the open door that other women, children and elderly men are jostling on the stairs. He can hear shots coming from the third or fourth floor; the people are falling over one another — by now there must be fifty of them on the street and perhaps twice or three times that number on the stairs. What is happening right now might be repeated in an hour’s time. He displays his diplomatic pass and commands the ensign to return the column to the house. The warden steps up to Lutz, salutes and says that under the regulations he is responsible for all the people who hold protective papers, so there are not only Jews living there.
Charles steps over next to Lutz and undoes his holster.
Despite Gizi’s warning Gertrud takes photographs.
Lutz asks the warden whether there is a working telephone in the house. It is not working. Lutz tells the ensign that he is there with an order from the chief of the metropolitan police force that the residents of buildings that are under the protection of foreign embassies are subject to a higher authority. Let him be clear about that. At a time like this it can quickly become a case of holding people responsible, to say nothing of the retribution that will swiftly come with the changing fortunes of war.
Gizi interprets for him. Her voice is sharper than Lutz’s. Lutz is astounded by the ensign’s uncertainty. Gizi says to the ensign that the Herr Consul had told her that a photographic record was being made and if he did not allow people to return to the house they would go straight to the supreme command and show them the photographs, but if people were allowed to go back the Herr Consul was willing to destroy the film on the spot.
The people who had been stood in line returned silently to the house.
Gizi asks Gertrud for the camera, takes the film out and tramples it into the nearest gutter.
The people are directed by the warden.
Charles buttons up his holster.
Gizi tells Lutz that she wants to look for someone and will be back in five minutes. She presses through the crowd of people at the entrance. Gertrud links arms with Lutz.
After ten minutes Lutz goes after Gizi into the house.
On the right is a flight of steps to the upper floors; on the left steps down to the cellar. Children press up to the wall; old people are sitting on the steps. The warden orders everyone to return to where they were before. Those who had found places in the apartments should go back there; those who were in the cellar should return there. Lutz asks him to shout for Gizi. In response to the call others start to cry out other names. The warden attempts to clear a way for Lutz. They reach the first floor. Now Lutz also calls out Gizi’s name and again on the second floor. They go up to the fourth floor and come back down again. Lutz every now and again gazes into a pair of eyes, sometimes strokes a child’s head. They descend into the cellar, with the warden shining a pocket torch. Lutz grasps the stair rail. It is quiet in the cellar, and that helps to gain a sense of the expanse of the space. The silence seems to strike against the walls, to squeeze into the cracks. The cellar must be enormous. He treads on bodies. It crosses his mind that he had had to reach here, the very depths of existence, in order to understand where he had got to. ‘It was as if the darkness had become the face of the world,’ he would write in his diary. ‘At the time I submerged myself into it I would not have been able to define it that way, but now I know that it was the face of the world that was staring at me from that invisibility.’
XII
There are no clouds over Lake Maggiore.
The yellowed leaves of plane trees fall on to the promenade beside the shore of the lake.
Luxury cars roll away from hotel parking lots.
Boats shipping tourists from Italy are putting into Locarno harbour from the south.
It is as if I were watching familiar pictures from travel films. The lake is pristine blue in the sunshine, the woods on the mountainsides emerald green, the peaks snow-white and there are flowerbeds of yellow, pink and lilac in front of the terraces.
Everything is slowed down — steps, the movement of cars, the drifting of boats on the water — as if the second hands on clocks in the windows of the shops in the bazaar were also running more slowly.
At that moment I was sitting in silence with Ágnes Hirschi, Carl Lutz’s stepdaughter, on a terrace of the Muralto Hotel which overlooks the lake. The seats and the tables are white, the tablecloths and chair cushions striped white and blue.
I had received telephone messages in Budapest: there were several on the answering machine, some in foreign languages.
They raise questions, digging into shared locations, shared events.
Z, an editor from Swiss television, turns up at my residence and records a two-hour interview about what I remember of Carl Lutz. I consent to use being made of it only on condition that they do not skip over the parts about the times Swiss diplomacy left him to his own devices and on more than one occasion obstructed him in his work in Budapest and even after the end of the war censured him for overstepping the bounds of his authority.
A few months later I receive an invitation to attend the shooting in Locarno.
I am cited to appear, evidently along with others. I had not prepared for that when I set to work on the book.