A Guest In My Own Country Part 2

Swiss letters of protection, Schutzpa.s.se Schutzpa.s.se, were distributed in an operation organized by the Swiss consul, Carl Lutz. His name comes up less often than that of his Swedish colleague Raoul Wallenberg, though Lutz saved as many people as Wallenberg. Under the protection of the Helvetic Confederation we moved to 49 Pozsonyi Avenue, a building where my greatest respect went to three or four young men hiding out in the cellar, about whom people whispered that they were resistors and had defected from the military. There were perhaps eighty of us living in a three-room apartment on the fourth floor. At night we would stack up any furniture that could not be slept on. Not everyone got a bed or mattress, but everyone had at least a rug. The four of us boys slept on mattresses on the floor by the window behind a pile of furniture. It was like an ongoing house party. There was always someone to talk to. For two hours every morning we could leave the building, five children clinging to a beautiful young woman. Aunt Zsofi protected us, as perhaps we did her. Whoever asked for her papers was astounded. "Are they all yours?" The crush diminished as time pa.s.sed: some people moved down to hiding places, while others were abducted during spur-of-the-moment raids and shot into the Danube.

In the winter of 194445 I saw any number of dead bodies. I could picture myself among them, but the tasks of day-to-day existence obscured most of my imaginings. Danger makes you practical. Only at isolated moments do you face the possibility of death-when someone holds a pistol to your head, for example. Then you feel: yes, it could happen. You become an adult from the moment you face your own death, which means I have been an adult from the age of eleven. For some people it happens earlier, for others later, and there are those for whom the moment never comes.

Death is hardly pleasant, nor is mortal danger. But you can be standing on a rooftop terrace with fighter planes machine-gunning above and feel the whole scene is not all that serious. So let's just slide around in our hobnailed boots on the ice rink we have made with a few buckets of water. Not all that serious Not all that serious later saved me from succ.u.mbing to melodramatic moods. later saved me from succ.u.mbing to melodramatic moods.

I owe my life to a benevolent chain of coincidences. It has proved an enduring gift to recognize, at the age of eleven, the bald fact that I could be killed at any time, and to have learned how to act in such a situation. In the winter of 194445 I thought of death as I might have thought of, say, firewood: there was nothing unusual about it. It was outside my control, like drawing the wrong card.

Beautiful young women in ski boots and Norwegian sweaters were smoking cigarettes, their abundant hair combed smooth into a bun, their long legs crossed in ski pants. They laughed at all kinds of things I did not understand. They were different from the small-town beauties I had known: more malicious, more enigmatic, radical yet refined. They spoke of the French surrealists, German expressionists, and Russian abstractionists like old friends. They were artists, dancers, left-wingers-and they stretched so beautifully. They would sing for us children, sing the "Internationale" and "Dubinushka" in Hungarian.

But none amazed me more than Aunt Zsofi. I would have loved to perform some heroic act for her and did not dare to so much as scratch myself in her sight. Her slightly indolent voice would ask, "My knight in s.h.i.+ning armor, will you accompany me?" I would have accompanied her to the gates of h.e.l.l. For Aunt Zsofi's sake I was willing to hold thick novels under my arms to keep my elbows in while eating. The more fearful moved down into the cellar, but Aunt Zsofi was unable to separate cleanliness from human dignity. She would have found it repulsive for us to hide from the explosive and incendiary bombs, the cannonb.a.l.l.s and artillery mines, down in the bomb shelter, the putrid darkness, the chaotically congested company of so many ill-washed bodies. What if it did raise the level of risk a notch.

"Dignity means more than security," she would say. "We are not going to let the lice take us over." We did not go down to the cellar even when the sirens started. The most sensible choice was the rooftop terrace, where the winter sun shone brightly every morning even in January, though at temperatures of twenty degrees below freezing. We would pour out a few buckets of water and make a fabulous skating rink for ourselves. With a running start you could slide from one end to the other. Machine-gun rounds from Ratas, Soviet fighter planes, landed on the ice with a pop. We always looked up to see where the bombs pouring from their bellies would fall. A cloud of dust or smoke indicated whether the bomb was explosive or incendiary.

From the street below came the rumble of trams carrying trunks of ammunition to the front, now just a few blocks away, and the voices of Germans shouting to one another. The Russians were getting close, but the Arrow Cross was still goring Jews and Christian defectors in the neighborhood. The word "gore" was on every public poster; it meant kill on the spot and leave the body behind. With weapons exploding in the street, doc.u.ments meant nothing: only drunkenness and fear had meaning-and the sympathy or antipathy of the moment. The armed men in armbands had plenty of people to shoot, though they had begun to sense they couldn't execute every single Jew. They may even have had trouble getting into the man-hunting mood day in and day out. Filling the ice-flow-congested Danube with old ladies and young girls was an art whose charm was intermittent. Even the defenseless people they killed-and they could have killed as many as they pleased-even they expressed a modic.u.m of resistance in their eyes, reinforced by the gaze of pa.s.sersby, who watched the quiet winter coats being led down to the riverbank with some degree of empathy. Of course you needed to make time for other things too, like drinking and getting warm. It must also have occurred to the men in armbands that if the Russians were at the outskirts of the city-and with plenty of artillery too, judging from the din-they would hardly stop but forge on into the center. If they occupied the entire city, Arrow Cross troops could expect anything but decorations, not a pleasant thought by any means. The mood for murder flared up and flagged by turns.

Shooting at Russians was dangerous; Jews were fish in a barrel. Life is a matter of luck, and death bad luck. You can do something for yourself, but not much, and sometimes pride keeps you from doing even that. Several people had been taken from the apartment the previous night. From the next room, not ours.

I watch the Germans. Can they really believe they will drive back the Russians, just five blocks away? Intelligent as they are, they have no idea what they are and are not allowed to do. The Arrow Cross, on the other hand, are the bottom of the barrel, the school dropouts. Their only talent is for torturing cats. A child has to grow up to understand just how underdeveloped adults can be. A fourteen-year-old kid with a gun accompanies unarmed people down to the bank of the Danube. Instead of grabbing the gun from his hand, they go where he orders them. Most victims call it fate, but fate should cause fear and stir them to self-defense whether the threat be sleet falling on their garden or death at the hands of an enemy. Yet people much like pets get used to seeing their companions cut down around them. You can't feel outrage and empathy every half hour. Standing out on the roof terrace, we hear the occasional sputter of shots. Someone (armed) checks the papers of someone else (unarmed). The former doesn't like the latter's face or papers, stands him against the wall, and shoots him dead. The people taken down to the Danube have to stand in a row, their faces to the river. The shots come from behind.

Even so abundant a variety of violent deaths could not obscure the beauty of those dazzling winter mornings. In the shadow of our mortality bread became more like bread, jam more like jam. I gladly chopped all kinds of furniture into firewood. We even ventured down to the riverbank, where we chopped up a small pier. It was good dry pine that burned wonderfully with its white paint.

We knew that the Russians had come in great numbers with tanks and heavy artillery. They had relatively fewer planes than the English and Americans, whose bombers arrived mostly later, in the summer of 1944; in the winter it was still the Ratas that thundered though the sky.

Klara often stood out on the roof terrace, adjusting her black ponytail, tying and untying it. I would give it an occasional yank. She had a little birthmark at the base of her nose and a mole at the tip. In exchange for my services I was granted permission on that very terrace to plant a quick kiss on that mole. It was forbidden to tarry on the nose. Klara liked to speak of parts of her body without possessive p.r.o.nouns, as if they were independent beings: "The nose has had enough," she informed me. We spent a lot of time wrestling. It was no easy task to pin Klara down: one of us, then the other would end up on top. Once in a while I managed to pin her shoulders to the horsehair mattress on the floor and lie on her belly, but I would get such a bite on the wrist that the rows of teeth left a lasting mark. "Do you have what it takes to hold your hand over the candle?" asked Klara. I did, and got a burn mark on my palm. Klara kissed it. I carefully slid my fist into my pocket, as if holding a sparrow.

Klara could not stand being shut in and was incapable of spending the entire day in the safe house. The curfew for Jews did not apply to her. I would try to detain her. I was worried, but did not dog her heels. She would make the rounds of the neighborhood, then boast of what she had seen. When an officer asked for her papers, she lacked the nerve to answer his skeptical questions; she merely held her peace. They led Klara down to the Danube together with a long line of Jews. There she recognized one of her aunts and squeezed in next to her. The were all told to empty their pockets and stand with their hands up, facing the bare trees of Margaret Island, the freestanding piers of the bombed-out Margaret Bridge. Her aunt pitched forward into the river, but Klara was not hit. "You're lucky my magazine ran out," said the machine-gunner with a friendly laugh. "Now move it-and be good at home!" Thus did the junior (though no longer all that young) officer send her on her way.

I opened the street door for Klara, having recognized the sound of her footsteps through the planked-up door. "Let's stand here a minute," she said. "Hold my hand. And don't let me out tomorrow. Stay with me all day. Don't tell Mother they shot Sari dead right at my side."

The next morning I squatted in the courtyard in front of a stove-three bricks and an iron grill-on which bean soup was cooking painfully slowly. My duty was to keep it well stirred, taste it from time to time to see if it was softening up, and stoke the embers with pieces of sawed-up chair legs. Klara stood next to me and talked about her first two years in school, when she couldn't bring herself to say a word. She would do her work, but not utter a single syllable. She would have liked to say at least h.e.l.lo to the other children, but could not open her mouth. I was more interested in whether the soup was ready. I lifted the cover and stuck in a wooden spoon.

The roar of a Russian fighter plane. Klara pressed against the wall. When she screamed "Come here!" there was such rage in her voice that I spun around in astonishment. The fighter sprinkled the interior flagstone courtyards of the block with machine-gun rounds, hitting no one. The reason Klara was so angry was that I was always playing the hero, which was a decided exaggeration. Suddenly I heard the embers sizzling and looked down to see soup pouring out of a hole in the pot: a bullet had pa.s.sed through the bottom of the large red enameled vessel. Had I not turned around, it would also have pa.s.sed through my head, which had been bent over the soup. Finding another pot was no easy task.

"Why did you scream at me?" I asked Klara that evening.

"I don't know," she answered, unsure of herself by then.

We stood on the rooftop and heard a famous actress singing. Coming from the Russian military's speakers, her voice took on a deep, threatening thrum. The goal was to plant fear in the faltering hearts of the Hungarian soldiers pointlessly defending themselves alongside the Germans: "You cannot run, you cannot hide. Your fate, it cannot be denied." The Russians had entered the city and advanced all the way to the Angyalfold district. The speakers were just a few blocks away. A Stalin-candle shot up, illuminating the rooftops. Hand in hand, we watched, squinting. "It's beautiful," whispered Klara. We both laughed at her whisper.

We had an unexpected visitor at the safe house: Nene. She brought a small aluminum medallion of Mary on a chain. Nene asked us to wear it around our necks. She wanted us to convert to Catholicism. If we did-or merely declared our willingness to do-she would take us to a convent where they protected and hid converted Jewish children. We thanked Nene for her offer, but told her we would rather not.

We children had agreed on a plan in case we were driven out in a large group, which would most likely end with our being shot into the Danube: we would drop our knapsacks at the corner of the park and run off in different directions. Even if they shot at us-and plenty of guards would be on hand if hundreds of Jews were turned out of their building-some might make it.

The next morning four or five Arrow Cross men and gendarmes burst into the room, screaming at us to get dressed and turn over all weapons, including kitchen knives and pocketknives, plus anything of value, and then line up obediently and quietly on the sidewalk in front of the building. They had a rabbi with them, who gently counseled us to obey and specifically recommended that we hand over all necklaces, mementoes, and engagement rings. I took my time putting my socks on.

Down in front of the building Rebenyak's red hat stood out. Rebenyak was the house's bad boy. He would have liked to belong to our gang, but we never let him in. He speculated that the rabbi would get his cut of the items, a.s.suming they didn't shoot him. We looked at one another inquisitively, wondering whether this was the time to implement the plan and whether we should let Rebenyak in on it, when two loud-voiced men came along, one wearing a gendarme's uniform, the other a German officer's. They were shouting-not at us but at the Arrow Cross men and the two gendarmes with us-and ordered us back into the building. They might have been communists in disguise or two Jewish actors. The better actor played his role less effectively; the worse actor was more convincing. Soon we were back in our room again, still in our overcoats, clueless.

The lobby was our clubhouse. Kids would alternate looking out while the rest of us slid down the marble ramp along the bottom flight of stairs. Rebenyak showed up in his red cap. He was fourteen or so and was always pestering me with his stamps, knowing I had brought my stamp alb.u.m from ujfalu. I always traded smaller, more valuable stamps for larger, nicer-looking ones. I had trouble understanding him: his language was full of city-tough words. Instead of "p.i.s.s" he would say "drimple," or "w.a.n.kle," or "slash." He spoke obscurely of some p.u.s.s.y or other, by which I finally realized he meant the s.e.xual organ of one of the older girls. He would punctuate his sentences with "You dig, buddy? No? Then suck my d.i.c.k!" Klara said he was just throwing his weight around; she had more brains in her shoelaces than Rebenyak under that red hat of his. He liked to boast he could no longer even look at the broads, the tomatoes, the merchandise-in short, at women-who were supposedly all over him down in the cellar. Klara reviewed my trades, checking the stamps' value in a catalogue. "That lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d is constantly getting the better of you. Don't you mind?" I didn't really. Ultimately I gave Rebenyak my entire stamp alb.u.m for a hunk of bacon which, when roasted with onion atop a dish of peas, became the envy of the apartment house. Rebenyak had pinched the bacon from under his mother's bed in the cellar and crept back with it, weasel-like. He slept in the same bed as his mother, a strong-smelling corpulent woman with hair sprouting from her chin.

I ran into Rebenyak decades later. He was lame and living in a cellar again: he had ceded three apartments to three wives, who would come home with lovers more muscular than he and announce that for the time being Rebenyak would be sleeping in the next room. In his bas.e.m.e.nt flat Rebenyak bought and sold girls from orphanages to rich tourists, instructing the former to steal the latter's pa.s.sports. Rebenyak delighted in the possibilities: Swedish, Brazilian, Australian...

In the safe house Rebenyak would venture upstairs despite his mother's warning that fire was more likely to hit the building there: he was attracted by our cosmopolitan ways. Longingly, he would study the Rosenthal soup cups we ate beans from at the long black table, holding them up to the light: translucent. He stole one.

"Don't be a creep," I said. "They might shoot you tomorrow."

Rebenyak was superst.i.tious, and my remark got to him. "Know who they're going to shoot tomorrow? You You, you wooden-d.i.c.ked ujfalu crybaby!"

Klara twisted his arm. "You take that back!" She was superst.i.tious herself.

"Just see if your wooden p.u.s.s.y ever gets my j.i.s.m!" But after whimpering a while in his agony, he brought it back.

More shots penetrated the apartment. Shards of gla.s.s made the beans in the Rosenthal cups inedible. The iron stove, whose exhaust pipe we had aimed out of the window, was buckled over like a man kicked in the stomach. Machine gun fire ricocheted off the outside wall. Klara suddenly turned childlike, sitting underneath the table and directing a sumptuous wedding of a clay lamb and a wooden mouse. Rebenyak crouched under the table next to her. I made him nervous.

"Are you really in love with that dodo? I mean, he doesn't even know the difference between allegory and paregoric."

"What's...allegory?" I asked suspiciously.

Rebenyak changed the subject to the pot with the hole: "You saved that hick's life. Isn't that enough? Now fall in love with me."

A depraved smile appeared on Klara's face.

"Fine. Just give me your stamp collection and fill my hat with sugar cubes."

Rebenyak blushed, but did not reach for the hat, whose wheat-blue ta.s.sel had dangled before my eyes from morning to night.

That night a young fellow named Mario, who lived in the next room, came back from the Danube. The shot had hit him in the arm, and he'd managed to swim out. The only hard part was to free himself from his father, to whom he had been tied. His father had been hit in the chest and held him fast for a while, but finally let go. Clinging to a block of ice, Mario had drifted down the Danube under the bridges. He was afraid of being crushed between blocks of ice. Ultimately he had climbed out onto the stairs at the foot of the Elisabeth Bridge and made his way home, wet and b.l.o.o.d.y. He was stopped on the way, but was by then indifferent to everything.

"Shoot me into the Danube again if you want."

"Jews are like cats," said an old Arrow Cross man. "They keep coming back to life." He sees it all the time. That's why they're so dangerous. Here he's hardly out of the river and he gets cheeky. When it's all over, they'll have the nerve to blame it all on us. "Hey, weren't you our guest once?"

Yes, he had been-he and his father. They had grilled him about his younger brother, who had taken part in a weapons heist. His father didn't know anything. They said that if he didn't tell them they would take care of his other son, Mario. The father gave a false address. The Arrow Cross men came back enraged, then shot someone else instead of the brother they were after. As long as they had him there, they subjected Mario's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es to their boot heels. Finally a gendarme officer came into the Arrow Cross building and dragged them off. A good thing.

Dr. Erds and a group of other elderly Jews had been pulled out of 49 Pozsonyi Avenue to build a cobblestone barricade on the corner: the younger Jews had long since been taken away. Six stones high and four deep, the wall was impenetrable. The T-34 tanks that had made it all the way from Stalingrad would certainly be stopped dead here.

We children watched from the entrance as the old men, stooping against the cold, hacked at the stones with pokers and hammers, separating the blocks stuck together with pitch, then lifting them into their laps and lugging them over to the roadblock. Young men in hunting boots, black trousers, and green s.h.i.+rts watched over the work, prodding the old men on. One of them cracked a whip, once used by a cabby on his horses, over the old Jews' necks. They could in fact have worked with more vigor.

It was probably the fellow with the whip who outraged an older gentleman from the next building, a building inhabited by Christians. Sometimes old men stick together, even if it means crossing congregational boundaries. In any case the old gentleman pulled out his hunting rifle and wounded the young whip-cracker. The Arrow Cross men thought that one of the Jews had taken the shot, and started shooting back blindly. The twenty barricade builders ran for cover and fell. Dr. Erds himself made for the main door of the building, though taking his time so as not to draw attention to himself. I was the only one still standing in the doorway: the other children and the doorkeeper, an even older Jew, had dashed up the steps upon hearing the shots.

I opened the boarded-up entrance door. Dr. Erds darted inside. I wanted to shut and lock it before the tall young man pursuing him could shove his way in, and the two of us, child and graybeard, pushed from the inside, but our besieger, who was twenty-five or so, took a running start and rammed us back enough to make a crack for the tip of his boot. The game was his. There he stood, pistol in hand.

He was taller than Dr. Erds, and his lip was quivering from wounded pride: Jews slamming the door in my face just like that? A slight smile, the smile of the vanquished, flashed over Dr. Erds' face. The young man held up the pistol and fired into the doctor's temple. Dr. Kalman Erds fell, his blood flowing over the muddy, pink imitation marble. Then the young man took aim at my forehead. I looked at him more in amazement than in fear. He lowered his pistol and headed out of the door.

By this time the trams were delivering ammunition crates ever more desperately to the front, that is, the immediate vicinity, yet courageous women would leave the building and still manage to forage bread. On the night of 1718 January 1945 we moved to the inner room to sleep, since the outer one, damaged by a bomb, lacked a windowpane. Instead of going to bed, however, we crouched by the window, where we could watch the fighting. By the light of the Stalin-candles whizzing into the sky we saw a newsreel scene in all its glory, unbounded by the screen: a tank rumbling through the barricade, sweeping aside the basalt blocks, with more tanks and infantry in its wake; German soldiers, who had been on their bellies with machine guns behind the stone-piles, das.h.i.+ng for the park as the front moved on toward the Saint Stephen Ring.

As dawn came up on 18 January I watched the historical turning point of the war (liberation for me, defeat for others) with my own eyes. A few excited young women-teachers, fas.h.i.+on designers, dancers-hummed the "Internationale." Magda, a tall, strawberry-blonde dancer, taught us to sing with them. She was a communist and said we should be communists too, because they were the only party in the underground; the others were collaborating with the government. At four o'clock on that morning we gave ourselves over to the spirit of liberation.

In time Magda lost her enthusiasm. She tried to slip over the border in 1949, wearing the same ski boots she had worn during the winter of the siege. The border guards shot her dead.

At ten in the morning on 18 January 1945 I stepped out of the front door of 49 Pozsonyi Avenue. Two Russian soldiers were standing on the sidewalk in their torn coats, slightly scruffy and more indifferent than cordial. People spoke to them. They did not understand, but nodded. It was obvious they were not much interested in us. They asked whether Hitler was in the building. I had no information suggesting that Hitler was living with Budapest Jews under Swiss protection at 49 Pozsonyi Avenue. Then they asked about Szalasi, head of the Arrow Cross: no, he wasn't living there either. After a moment we caught on that "Hitler" meant Germans and "Szalasi" meant Arrow Cross. They were fairly simple boys. They went down into the shelter with a flashlight, prodding people with the barrels of their machine guns and s.h.i.+ning their light into every nook. They found some military defectors in civilian dress, whom they let be. They did not particularly care that the building was inhabited by Jews: if you tried to explain to them you were a Jew and expected to get some kindness out of them, you didn't get very far. But they were friendly enough to us boys, and we got used to their poking around in the bas.e.m.e.nt looking for Hitler. There was a man down there who spoke Slovak and could understand them a little. He immediately offered to interpret for them, and as they went through a pa.s.sageway, which had been opened with a pickaxe, to the shelter next door, this Slovak-speaking Jew started barking out instructions like a commander in mufti, newly appointed from the ranks of the blanket-clad. Eventually, having conquered his last vestige of hesitation, he bade farewell to his family and ran off after the Russians.

The soldiers broke into a pharmacy and drank a bottle of Chat Noir cologne. They reached for it confidently, as if familiar with the brand. It was the closest thing to liquor there. We-soldiers in mufti, locals, Jews and Christians alike-flocked after them. The more resourceful took along knapsacks. I picked up a harmonica, which I later traded to Rebenyak for a bag of sugar cubes.

We could now leave the building at will, the building whose neutral status had protected us, though it had not been enough to keep the other half of its residents alive. A few markings in Cyrillic had begun to appear. The yellow star had come down from the front entrance and lay on a snow heap. As I stepped out as a free man for the first time, I was perhaps also stepping out of my childhood, the years when prohibitions of all sorts hemmed me in. The shooting and bombing were over, and it was safe to come out of the cellar. There were still the occasional stray shots, but now it was the Germans shooting from the Buda side. At times an entire round of machine-gun fire showered the street, and I learned just how flat I could press myself against a wall.

Given that the apartment had been hit by gunfire and we were sharing it with thirty others, thought it best to leave for Aunt Zsofi and Uncle Gyula's apartment in Szep Street, which might be empty or at least not so crowded. We felt a sudden urge to take leave of the people in the cellar and break free of the seven-story Bauhaus ghetto into which we had been squeezed.

The hard-trampled snow had iced over the asphalt. We all wore knapsacks, clutched quilts, and pulled the rest of our meager belongings on a sled behind us. The wind was kicking up snow-dust. It was well below freezing, and as we had no gloves our fingers were purplish-red. We pa.s.sed burning buildings in the darkening evening. Through black windows we saw dying flames painting the ceilings a rusty red. They were like a cross-section revealing the building's naked innards after a bomb had torn its facade off: a bathtub dangling, but the sink still in place; a heavy mahogany cupboard on the wall, but the dining table three flights down. It was the shameless, twisted humor of destruction.

Exhausted, but reviving, people were carting their belongings from place to place, going home, going in search of their loved ones, going just to go: after all, someone might be baking bread somewhere. People trudged through the streets weighed down with their goods and chattels while soldiers sat around on tanks or moved around in squads. Tongues of flame soared out of windows; people and horses lay scattered on the ground. Survivors did not carve meat from people, though they did from horses: elderly gentlemen crouched inside horse corpses sc.r.a.ping frozen shreds of meat off bones with their pocketknives.

Our bundles of bedding were falling apart; we hung onto the quilts in desperation. I would have liked to earn Aunt Zsofi's praise. Once she called me her "little mainstay," but my joy at this mingled with the disappointment of being called "my little hypocrite" again for another of my attempts at pleasing her. That slightly chilly but still flirtatious irony was in Aunt Zsofi's face now too, curious to see how I would manage a bundle that was threatening to disintegrate.

The building on the corner had been razed to the ground, but 5/a Szep Street was miraculously still standing. It had taken a few cannon shots here and there, but they were patchable holes. The marble fountain in the courtyard, untouched, had icicles hanging from the stone-rumped nymph's jug.

The bra.s.s nameplate had disappeared from the front door of Dr. Gyula Zador's apartment, and Aunt Zsofi's key would not turn the lock. The buzzer would not ring. She had to pound on the door. Out of the darkness of the long foyer a little circle of light emanated, and as the tiny grille-protected window in the door opened we saw a gray-haired woman sizing us up in a manner less than friendly.

Zsofi was wearing a light-colored fur coat, and her black hair was bound in a light-gray silk kerchief. The five of us children were standing behind her. We were curious and determined to reclaim the apartment.

"Good day, madam. I am Zsofia Vago, the wife of Dr. Gyula Zador, owner of this apartment and the possessions therein."

The gray-haired lady answered as follows from behind the grille: "I am Mrs. Kazmer Dravida, rightful tenant of this apartment. Your apartment, madam-inasmuch as it was in fact yours-has been officially granted to us as refugees from Transylvania."

To which Zsofi said: "Madam, the legality of your procedure is subject to several objections."

To which Mrs. Dravida replied, "I trust, Madam, that you wish to impugn neither our good faith nor our patriotic obligation to observe the spirit of our thousand-year-old state as it is embodied by the authorities in power at any given time."

Zsofia: "You might, however, let us in, Madam."

Mrs. Dravida: "My conscientious observation of recent developments leads me, Madam, to do so. I note that you have of your own initiative removed the distinguis.h.i.+ng emblem from your overcoats, trusting that the days of discrimination are over. Well, I do not discriminate against you, Madam, and out of patriotic sympathy do hereby bestow the use of two of the apartment's five rooms to you and yours."

Zsofia: "Madam, I have no wish to deceive you into thinking that I would not have been happier to find my apartment uninhabited, but then, of course, you yourselves must find refuge of a winter's day. How else might I put it? Kindly make yourselves at home in my rooms and with my furniture to the extent that propriety allows."

We watched motionless as these two elderly people, Dr. Kazmer Dravida and his wife, deftly salvaged their vital reserves-several bags of potatoes, beans, flour, bacon and sausage on spits, sugar in a large paper bag, pork lard in a red-enameled pot, and crackling in a large pickle jar-from pantry to bedroom, lest the invading horde make short work of them.

Not until then could they bring themselves to ask, panting, whether we had brought any food with us. Well, no, we had brought nothing at all. Good will moved the Dravidas to give us enough potatoes, flour, and bacon to hold us for dinner and the next day. For the third day we got nothing, but they did not hide the news-the most useful item of all-that there was a German storehouse in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Realtanoda Street school perpendicular to Szep Street, and though the locals had carried off most of the inventory on that day, 18 January, there might still be something left.

We boys set out with empty knapsacks to see what we could find. We heard a machine gun ratatatatting from the direction of the Danube. There would be trouble if the Germans came back: the Dravidas would have us removed from Aunt Zsofi's apartment and our feet would never again cross the copperplate but long unpolished threshold.

A well-worn path led from the front gate of the school across the snow-covered courtyard to the back staircase and down into the cellar. We saw German corpses sticking out of the snow and shone our flashlight in their faces. I had always thought the dead grimaced, but every one of the faces was peaceful, including the one lying on his back on a wooden crate in the cellar next to a depleted bag of beans, his head hanging in a rather uncomfortable position. The only possible explanation was that there had been another crate under his head. And if they didn't leave it there, it must have been worth taking.

We filled our knapsacks with beans, peas, wheat, and dried onions, which was all that remained by then, but were still interested in the crate lying under the young German. He was a tall, handsome young man with a powerful brow and a light-colored stubble on his narrow face. His deep-set large eyes were open, and he observed us with interest.

"Forgive us," we said to him as we tried rolling him off the crate.

"I will not not forgive you," the soldier responded coolly. "I have no idea why I had to die on this crate after taking a bullet on the bas.e.m.e.nt staircase and dragging myself over here. In fact, I have no idea what I am doing here. You will find this crate to contain fairly high-quality sausage, and though it has turned white on the outside with mold, after a bit of sc.r.a.ping you will find it perfectly edible. I have turned stiff, and you will take the crate out from under me and steal away with the goods, but I will remain here in the dark, in this cellar of death, until the corpse-removers take me to an even darker place. No, I will not forgive you." forgive you," the soldier responded coolly. "I have no idea why I had to die on this crate after taking a bullet on the bas.e.m.e.nt staircase and dragging myself over here. In fact, I have no idea what I am doing here. You will find this crate to contain fairly high-quality sausage, and though it has turned white on the outside with mold, after a bit of sc.r.a.ping you will find it perfectly edible. I have turned stiff, and you will take the crate out from under me and steal away with the goods, but I will remain here in the dark, in this cellar of death, until the corpse-removers take me to an even darker place. No, I will not forgive you."

But we persevered. "O unknown German soldier, we understand your sense of injury, since, to put it bluntly, we are not allowing your earthly remains to rest (however uncomfortably) in peace, though it might be said in our favor that by removing the crate of sausage from under you we may actually straighten you out. Still, we hasten to observe that you have come a great distance from your permanent place of residence, by command to be sure, but not by invitation. Moreover, it is probable that when the bullet hit you you were engaging in activities of which we do not approve. May we point out that it would not have occurred to us to shoot at you, but the issue of whether or not you shot at us was a function purely of the random circ.u.mstances of the commands you received. From your perspective there would have been no obstacle. You shot your innocence dead, whereas we are still innocent-though understandably cynical-young boys."

The moment we lifted the crate, we were filled with disappointment: it proved mournfully light. And what remained of the ten scrawny sausages once we had sc.r.a.ped off the white and chopped it into the beans on the little utility stove would not hold us for very long. Two weeks later we were resigned to the wheat, grinding it up and boiling it for hours to soften it. While it cooked, we stood around it to keep warm, dipping dried onions in mustard to trick our hunger in the meantime.

Mr. Dravida, a fur cap on his head, sat in a rocking chair wrapped in a blanket up to his waist, squeezing a tennis ball in each hand. "It works the muscles, very soothing, and helps you think." He wore a winter coat with ta.s.sels and hiking boots with gaiters. His mouth, thin but sharply delineated and outlined by an equally thin mustache, had the sour twist of scorn and pride. From Uncle Gyula's high-backed reading chair he cast an occasional glance at us noisy ghosts. "Just because you've won, you've no right to come snooping around." Next to him sat his old dog, slapping its tail back and forth. Now and then Mr. Dravida touched the tennis ball to the dog's head. "I brought Bella's food inside because you ate her baked potatoes. There are a lot of you, and you make noise, and you eat my dog's potatoes. Don't stand in the door! Either come in or get out! What's this? Garlic sausage? You've got it good. You people always have it good."

We were hungry. We ate the dog's food and stole garlic from Mr. Dravida's kitchen cabinet. Nibbling away on a clove was almost like eating. Outside, the popping of a machine gun. We exchanged glances, then looked over at Mr. Dravida, who seemed encouraged: "The game isn't over yet. If things turn around and our troops come back, you'll need my protection. You might get it, but that depends on you. If you're nice and quiet and don't eat up Bella's food, I'll put in a word or two on your behalf. Though to tell the truth you are a bother. I keep finding the bathroom door closed. Have you so much to eat that you're constantly on the toilet, you locusts?"

We boys, the four of us, lay side by side on the double couch, talking about what was to come. Once the lights were out, I imagined myself at home with my parents as if nothing had changed. I would have been ashamed to speak of this to the others, though I was curious to know what they were imagining. It was cold and dark in the large apartment, and we wore socks in bed. The fire in the utility stove died early.

Once some Russians came. They checked Aunt Zsofi's papers and eyed her and my sister like cats eyeing sour cream. My sister pulled her clothes under the covers and got dressed. Aunt Zsofi went into the bathroom. One of the soldiers followed her in, but a minute later tiptoed out, as if signaling that no youth on earth was as tactful as he. After s.h.i.+ning his flashlight on our four deeply attentive young faces, they praised Zsofi. "Good Mama, nice Mama, many children. Good!" They growled at us not to make a racket, though we had been quiet anyway. They took a can of meat and three eggs out of their pockets and put them on the table.

"It's cold," said the Soviet soldiers, whose faces were of various shapes. They got the fire going, one of them pulled a bottle of brandy out of his pocket. They bit off pieces of bacon, red onions, and black bread to go with it and even gave us a piece or two while they regaled themselves. On their way out they offered everyone their hands. I took hold of the magazine on one of the soldiers' machine guns. "And what do you you want?" He pressed his fur cap down on my head, then set it back on his own. They took nothing and left a smell of warmth, onions, and boots. They also left us with an uneasy feeling, since Dravida muttered something to them in the front room in Slovak. want?" He pressed his fur cap down on my head, then set it back on his own. They took nothing and left a smell of warmth, onions, and boots. They also left us with an uneasy feeling, since Dravida muttered something to them in the front room in Slovak.

The next day I waited in line outside the baker's, if only for the smell wafting out. The quicker ones had taken their place early in the morning, though bread didn't go on sale until ten. It was not often I managed to get there early enough to avoid coming away empty-handed. But at least I didn't have to drop down onto my belly or press against the wall as machine gun fire strafed the street. At this point the real fighting was over, even in Buda. Newsboys shouted out the name of the newspaper: Szabadsag! Freedom! Szabadsag! Freedom! In the parks graves surged up in mounds, and in the streets people went around in search of their loved ones. In the parks graves surged up in mounds, and in the streets people went around in search of their loved ones.

Aunt Zsofi kept expecting her husband. One day she went down to Nyugati Station in a light fur because she had dreamed he was lying in a field, his still-open eyes staring at her. She had also dreamed of a village, which she now sought. She turned to a Russian officer for help, explaining that she wanted to travel west. At first the officer didn't follow what she was saying, but when Zsofia continued in French he gave her a seat on his train and told her that no one would bother her there and she should let him know when she wanted to get off, because he would be in the next compartment. And in fact she did find the village she had seen in her dream. She inquired whether there was a ma.s.s grave within the town limits. There was. They opened it. She found her husband.

Aunt Zsofi and Uncle Gyula had last spoken on the sixth floor of 49 Pozsonyi Avenue on the balcony facing the courtyard used for carpet-beating. It was there they had kissed for the last time. In 1953 Zsofia jumped from that balcony onto the cobblestones below.

The day after our liberation I went with Aunt Zsofi to the Wesselenyi Street ghetto hospital, where we found her mother, still alive, on the third floor. Her head had been shot through, the bullet entering the right side of her face and exiting the left side of her skull under the ear. She was a slight woman, still in late middle age, and even in her state could manage a bit of a smile upon seeing her daughter. A few sugar cubes were all we could take her, though we couldn't bring ourselves to put one on her lips. The ghetto hospital had once been a school and is now a school again. On that day in January 1945 I looked out onto the school courtyard and saw a hill of bodies rising to the level of the second floor. Zsofi sat next to her mother. They were holding hands. Neither asked the other what had happened since they had last seen each other. When I accompanied Zsofi there again the next day, her mother was on her way to the pile in the yard. Aunt Zsofi sent me home and tried to arrange for her mother's body to be identified and removed from the ma.s.s grave.

I didn't much feel like wandering around Budapest, as I found the city inhospitable and yearned for the familiarity of home, for our house in ujfalu. It felt miserable to come back from the baker's empty-handed and stand around stirring the wheat in the pot, the fire almost out. Even dazzling winter days can be miserable when you look out from a dark room with nothing to hope for. Nor was there anything left to steal. Those elegant gentlemen who three weeks earlier had sat in their galoshes on the ribs of a dead horse lying in the snow had now acquired the status of a comical memory: there was nothing left to hack.

By now we were just a nuisance, extra mouths to feed, and there was no immediate danger to save us from. The smartest thing would be to go where we belonged. There would certainly be something to eat there. So my sister eva and I decided to return to ujfalu and wait for our parents. Istvan and Pali were heading for Kolozsvar: their paternal great aunt had survived the barely survivable year and invited them there. We would go home to the village and manage somehow. Homesickness for Berettyoujfalu and our house was hard at work inside me. If my parents didn't return, then we, the inheritors, would open the business. I would invite all the old shop a.s.sistants back and behave exactly like my father, free of all Budapest arrogance and scorn. But if my parents did return, I would give my father the keys and the cash books and accept his handshake and thanks for what I had done to keep the business going.

The role of guest was not to my liking; I felt much more at home in the role of host. Once I had grown up, I would bring a woman into my father's house and make lots of babies using the method described to me by the Gypsy Bucko one day on the way to Herpaly. I had once gone to visit him to see how Gypsy children of my age lived. A boy came up to me, only slightly smaller than I, wearing absolutely nothing but a cap. You need a woman in the house, with a nice-smelling wardrobe and a nice-smelling m.u.f.f. And you need children for the swings and ping-pong tables.

If during abnormal times you act according to notions born in normal ones, you owe the Devil a trip. This requires a train ticket. The news in the bakery line, which the Dravidas had also heard, was that tickets were available only at the Rakosrendez? Station, a good couple of hours on foot from the center. It was a long trip, with Russian and Romanian soldiers everywhere. At times I was a bit afraid. My sister couldn't accompany me, as the city was dangerous for young girls. I had no gloves and tried to protect my hands from the cold with-heaven knows why-a hair net. The thought that I was now truly hungry and truly cold gave me a certain pride, but I also kept my eyes open, there being plenty to see.

What I saw were second-line troops, the front line having moved on from Budapest toward Vienna. These young men had collected all kinds of clothing and were not beyond wearing skirts over their trouser and women's turbans on their heads to keep warm. They were a wild bunch, making derisive remarks from their trucks. We didn't understand them, but they were always laughing. When they urinated from the trucks, they enjoyed seeing the women turn their heads, which of course made them shake their c.o.c.ks with all the more gusto. I saw one of them jump down from the vehicle and offer a woman a square loaf of black bread cut in half. The woman stepped back, but the soldier sidled up to her, stuffed it into her pocket, and left the woman trembling.

I took an interest in these round-headed boys, wondering at their rag parades, their antics, their sudden impulses. As natural as it all was, it struck me as strange. Yet they did have a sense of humor. Watching the rouge-lipped Romanian officers in white gloves swinging their cameras like proper gentlemen, they hunched over and laughed up their sleeves like village girls looking at polished city ladies.

Then there were soldiers with machine guns who escorted men to do a little work, just over to the neighboring town, or country, or continent, or the other side of the Urals-"Davai, davai!" (Come on, come on!). Promised a b.u.mazhka b.u.mazhka-an ident.i.ty doc.u.ment-the men obediently followed them out of town to the Tisza, there to continue by rail to camps and the distant cold, and all for the illusory security of those papers. A mirage.

The number of escapees per thousand was quite small, among Jewish and Christian Hungarians alike. Many more could have escaped than did; many more could have remained alive. As for their freshly arrived solider escorts, whether ruthless, indifferent, or humane, they were always unfathomable, unsusceptible to understanding. They were not as natty, disciplined, or angular in their movements as the Germans; they were less soldierly and more relaxed. Nor were they predictable: one would give the locals gifts; another would rob them. The same man often did both. There was no particular need to fear that the Germans would rape a woman, whereas these boys couldn't wait to unb.u.t.ton their flies. Yet they did not kill on principle, and even if they looked glum while spooning out their mess tins, they also were happy to smile at someone, just like that, for no reason. What they would have liked more than anything was clear: a warm room, a woman, and a meal. They would have pulled the moon from the sky for the woman who could give them that. Davai Davai, moon, davai! davai!

The railway station on the outskirts of town was a pile of rubble. A long line toward a temporary ticket window snaked its way under an overpa.s.s that had remained intact. Well, well, it turns out we weren't the only ones who knew this was the place to get a train ticket! Word had got out that the window would eventually be opening up. Long hours pa.s.sed and darkness was falling when a railway employee announced there were no tickets-nor were tickets necessary. Whoever fit into the train would go, and whoever did not would not. A train would be heading east from Nyugati Station the following afternoon at three. All aboard who's going aboard.

We were there at noon, standing petrified, my sister and I, amidst the crowd elbowing its way up and down the train. We let ourselves be swept up by the flow. There seemed to be no way for us to get on. People were sitting on the roof, standing in the entryways, clambering onto the couplings. Some had even curled up into the luggage nets above the seats. We couldn't get our feet onto the steps; we were just not good enough at shoving. Our situation seemed hopeless.

And suddenly who did we see but Zolti Varga, the ujfalu photographer, wearing a fur-lined overcoat and pelt hat with earflaps. Varga had taken pictures of us from the time I had entered the world. I had to lie p.r.o.ne on a platform at three months, practically without hair and clothed with only an angry look, my ankles the rolls of fat of the well-nourished infant. Then there is the picture from perhaps three years later in which I am sitting on my father's knee in a sailor s.h.i.+rt, my hair long; my sister is sitting in my mother's lap, her head flirtatiously c.o.c.ked.

Once Zolti Varga had stuck his head into that black, harmonica-pleated, waxed-canvas cone-the jaws of darkness, almost-we would wait (who could tell if the master's head was even in there still?) for the promised birdie to pop out. We imagined it as a canary of sorts, but then all there was was a click and no bird at all, just Zolti Varga pulling his head from out of his gla.s.s-eyed box, like a magician who, slightly flushed and perspiring, rightfully expects applause for his trick.

And now Zolti Varga stood before us. He gave us a hug and said how glad he was to see us safe and sound: How splendid. His wife and two children were with him, and he invited us to join them. I was pleased at Zolti's kindness, though I seemed to recollect he had been expecting a German victory the previous year. After fleeing ujfalu for Budapest and sitting out the siege there-they did not go further west, as they wished to avoid the war-he and his family were homesick for the old house, no matter what shape it was in. My sister and I knew we would not find our mother and father at home, but we too looked forward to seeing our house and somehow beginning our old lives again.

Our voluntary travel companion managed to squeeze my sister through a window into the baggage net of one of the pa.s.senger cars. He pressed me into a cattle car, where we were packed so tightly that an old man gave me a piece of his mind: "Stand on one leg, boy. You're a kid, you can do it. There's no room for both. Switch off."

That was my first long trip: it took a week. But it was no departure; it was a return. We were not fleeing; we were returning, returning to the scene of a questionable paradise lost. A house is always unfaithful: either it goes before you do or it survives you and offers shelter to anyone or anything. Who was living there now? Who had the key? I dared not imagine we would find things as they had been. Maybe the furniture had been rearranged; maybe the clothes would be gone; maybe it would be completely empty. There was one possibility that had not occurred to me, however: the filth. In my thoughts the house had always been so attractive it never entered my mind that my first view of it might be repulsive.