When the Summer Was Ours

by Roxanne Veletzos

  Setting down his supplies, he sat on his old stoop at the base of a dilapidated walk-up across from the small cemetery. Ah, but how good it felt to be home! This building with a fire escape zigzagging four floors of grime-crusted windows, where he and Rudolf had spent their first five years in New York, would always be home. Five years of scrounging pennies and eating only slightly better than they had in those last days of the camp, making do with whatever Rita, Rudolf’s cousin, could spare from her own meager means. Even after they came into some money, real money, after they’d paid Rita back every penny, after he managed to sell his first Dachau piece with Rudolf’s help and secured an exhibit in a small gallery on Fifty-Seventh, after they began dining in the restaurants where they used to wash dishes, Aleandro refused to move. Perhaps, he thought now in retrospect, they might have never moved at all and would be living here still had Rudolf not met Marlena. But Aleandro couldn’t get in the way of first love, not he of all people, and so it was decided that it was time.

  Rudolf installed himself in Marlena’s loft five blocks away, and he, in the first apartment that had been shown to him. After collecting his keys, he stood on the terrace overlooking Straus Park, stunned at the view as much as the realization that Rudolf would not be here to share it with him.

  But he couldn’t concentrate in that apartment, despite the large sunny room that was his studio, despite the tranquility of the oak-lined street. A piece of himself had remained right here on this stoop, where he and Rudolf would share a beer in the sweltering New York summer nights, counting their tips.

  Now, as he did each time, he scanned the street for some activity that would spark his inspiration. This time, it was a gaggle of kids running in the middle of the street through the spray from a busted fire hydrant, dodging the trickle of intermittent cars. Digging out his supplies from the case, he began with a rough sketch of the neighborhood boys, deepening the shadows and accentuating contours as he went along with his oil pastels, which were, after dabbling in other mediums, still his favorite. A second later he disappeared inside his work, humming a melody.

  “Are you Aleandro Szabó?”

  He looked up, slightly annoyed by the interruption. The only downside to coming to work here was that the entire neighborhood evidently knew him, and people would creep up on him unexpectedly, startling him, disrupting his momentum. But this time, it was just a young girl with pigtails and a beret, licking the glaze from an enormous sugar pretzel.

  “I guess so,” he said, smiling.

  “Are you making a painting of the cemetery?”

  He shook his head. The cemetery was the one thing he would never paint, that he had no desire to paint. It was life that was his sole interest. Only life now.

  “Would you like to see? Here, come sit.” He scooted himself over to make room for her, and the girl sat.

  “Would you like a bite of my pretzel?”

  “No, thank you. That’s very kind.”

  “Well,” she began when he resumed drawing, “my mommy says that your pictures of the war camp are disturbing. She saw them at the gallery over on Madison, and she said it made her want to cry. And art is not supposed to make you want to cry. Art is supposed to make you feel happy.”

  “Is that what she says? Well, please give her my apologies.”

  “Don’t worry. She’s not upset with you.” She leaned in closer as if sharing a secret. “She says you’re handsome. But I’m not allowed to repeat that in front of my daddy.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Aleandro said. “If you hang around just a bit longer until I can finish this, you can take it home with you. To give to her. With my compliments.” He took one of the charcoal pencils from his supply case and scribbled at the bottom of the unfinished piece: There is beauty in tears. Then he signed his name underneath and went back to the finishing touches.

  * * *

  It was nearly dark by the time he headed home, close to eight o’clock if he had to guess. Time had slipped away from him after the little girl left and he’d begun a new piece. A young woman this time, who had appeared on a stoop of her own three buildings down in bare feet and hair in curlers, caught his eye. She smoked a cigarette, tapping the ash with a long, bloodred-varnished fingernail, her expression nondescript, bored. She looked in his direction for a few seconds, then, to his surprise as much as relief, she finished her cigarette, ignoring him before going back up the steps and slamming the door shut. He hadn’t finished the drawing, not so much because it was hard to see now, but because the act of drawing her stirred him with restlessness, rousing the memory of drawing a different face, a different woman of that same age. It was his own fault, he should have known better; he’d waltzed right into his own trap. And as he walked up Second Avenue passing groups of early evening enthusiasts, he suddenly had no desire to flag a cab, no desire to be back in his empty apartment, where he would regress back into that tunnel of daydreams that would lead him to empty another bottle of whiskey. Instead, he headed back the way he’d come, in the direction of the Bowery Hotel.

  Rudolf and Marlena were home. Their lights were on, and he went up the short flight of stairs to their loft, but just then, the door swung open, and people spilled out onto the landing, and he scrambled quickly down the steps and began walking away. Behind him, he heard Marlena’s voice in the swirl of laugher. He kept walking quickly, until at the end of the block he heard steps behind him and his name being called out.

  “Aleandro! Hey! Wait! Hey, my friend! What are you doing here? I thought that might be you. Marlena thought she saw you just now.”

  Rudolf looked as he always did when wearing a shirt and tie—like an overgrown child eager to get out of his Sunday church clothes. His suspenders hung down over his trousers, his tie slightly askew, as he beamed with the glow of wine and company cheer. Rudolf seemed incapable of aging, had lost none of that youthful mischievousness, while he, despite being just thirty-five, felt as though he’d already stepped firmly into his middle age. Or maybe it was just that he felt old, tired. God, he felt so very tired.

  “Ah, don’t worry about it, I was going to drop in to say hello, but you have people over, so I didn’t want to intrude.”

  “Intrude? Hell, if we knew you were coming, we would have delayed dinner. Why don’t you come up now? I’m sure we can pull together a plate for you. Marlena made her legendary spaghetti and meatballs, and I know you can’t say no to that.”

  “Thank you, Rudolf. That’s all right. But tell Marlena thank you. I will see you guys next week, right?”

  “Aleandro, don’t be silly. Come on, now. You know you don’t need an invitation. Our home is your home, for God’s sake. Let’s go.”

  He went up, only because he couldn’t say no to Rudolf. Marlena, huge in her seventh month of pregnancy, her reddish hair and porcelain skin glowing in a way that matched Rudolf’s, bustled around him with astounding energy, introducing him to her friends, who, despite her casual, easy demeanor, seemed to withdraw within themselves as though he were a principal walking into an unruly classroom. In the end, he ate his pasta in the kitchen while Rudolf sat on a chair across from him, sipping a glass of white wine and watching him with the usual concern.

  “What’s going on with you, Aleandro? What’s new?”

  “New? You mean in all the five days that you haven’t seen me?”

  “No, I mean with you in general. You look like hell. You look… I don’t know. Out of sorts.”

  “I’m just hungover, Rudolf. I drank too much last night, and I did something… well, from what I can recall of it, a pretty awful thing. Don’t ask. I’m not proud of it. And today, you know, I was out on our stoop and this little girl sat next to me and told me that my paintings were disturbing. And, let’s face it, they are disturbing. They have nothing to do with today’s world or New York; they are just the concoctions of a man on the edge of madness. Why does anyone want to see all that misery? Why should I now, ten years later, insist on inflicting that on everyone? It’s all r
ubbish.”

  Rudolf shot up from the table, disappeared for a moment, and returned with a newspaper in hand.

  “No, sit down, Aleandro. Don’t you dare move. I want you to sit there and listen while I read this to you. Then you can go if you want. Because this just came out in today’s paper while you were nursing your hangover and feeling sorry for yourself.”

  As Aleandro Szabó emerged with no formal training or pedigree in New York’s competitive art scene, many questioned more than one gallery’s willingness to sponsor his reproductions of one of the grimmest episodes in modern history. Yet Szabó’s works of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau have not only sold in record numbers, they have deeply stirred the public and critics alike. Rendering in heartbreaking detail what the Hungarian-born artist witnessed in his year of captivity, Szabó spares nothing, forgives nothing. Ultimately, what hits one squarely in the chest when observing his works is not the horror of what has come to be known as the Holocaust but his moving depiction of the quest to survive, the beauty and fragility of life, and the perseverance of the human spirit.

  John Gott, for the New York Times Art Review

  “So no, not rubbish, Aleandro,” Rudolf said, slamming down the paper, “not rubbish! And I never want to hear you say that again. We’ve worked too hard and for too long to get here, and I will not let you turn around now and throw it all away. Now go home and clean up. Sleep and have a good breakfast, and stay off the booze, goddamn it. Because in two nights, we have a new opening. And you, my dear friend, have got to rise to the occasion.”

  * * *

  He did go home. And poured himself a Jack Daniel’s while he took out the portrait of the girl on the stoop, determined to finish it. But now the eyes no longer seemed right; the mouth was not set at the right angles. And he, pushing the paper under a lamp, began to reconstruct the eyes, elongate them, tilt them up just slightly at the outer corners, to make them wider, more direct, less indifferent, yes, more direct. Then he moved to the chin, which was also not right—it was too wide, too soft—and the pencil then moved to the hairline, which he lowered from the exceedingly high forehead and diffused with a gold pastel, rubbing the paint with his finger until it burned. He held it up against the lamp, tossing the shade aside; then, realizing what he had done—again, for the hundredth time—he poured himself a new drink and crumpled the unintentional likeness of Eva into his fist and tossed it out of the window. He watched it float down to the street, land in a gutter, where a bicycle rode over it, dragging it into the darkness.

  25

  Budapest

  Spring 1956

  BIANCA! BIANCA! PLEASE OPEN THE door, darling. Don’t do this now. We are late—more than late—we may not make it in time for your own recital. Darling, you cannot miss your own recital. Think of all the people who are coming to see you play.”

  “I don’t give a fart.”

  Eva closed her eyes, breathed out, letting her forehead drop against the door. Her daughter was exasperating her. Exasperating her as she loved doing, especially in moments such as this, when she needed her to cooperate the most.

  “Bianca,” Eva began again. “You’ve been practicing for months. This is your chance to shine. You’ve worked so hard for this, darling. Come on, now.”

  “I don’t want to play for those bureaucratic pigs. I won’t! So go away, Mama. Just go away.”

  Another long breath came through Eva’s gritted teeth. The “bureaucratic pigs” was in fact a new development. The husband of Bianca’s violin teacher worked for some ministry or another, and at the last minute, invited half a dozen colleagues to see the fruit of his wife’s relentless efforts. Eva herself was not exactly thrilled about it, but God, who taught this child to speak this way? It was unbecoming for a girl of twelve. And knowing Bianca’s tendency to blurt in public whatever came to mind, it was downright dangerous.

  Perhaps it was her own fault. She and Eduard had never done a good job of hiding their late-night banter about what was happening in Budapest, what had been happening since Bianca was a baby. But Soviet occupation or not, she couldn’t allow her daughter to put them all in danger. Nor could she allow Bianca to throw away years of hard work—years during which the violin was the only thing that kept her interest and grounded her in a calmness she was otherwise incapable of displaying.

  “Bianca!” Eva rapped on the door, trying now to reason with her. “You know your father is leaving work early to come see you play, and he may already be there. I left work early, too, if you’ll recall, young lady, to help you get ready. You can’t do this now.”

  “It’s not about you! Must everything be about you?” The door opened just a crack. “If you and Papa don’t mind working for a Bolshevik-run hospital, that’s your business. But I will not play for some fat, smelly, vodka-swilling Russian swine. I will not.”

  “Bianca, please, dear God! You can’t say stuff like this!”

  “Then don’t make me go.”

  The door slammed in Eva’s face.

  * * *

  Eva sat in the kitchen, sparking a cigarette as she watched Dora frost the post-recital cake, creating a swirling pattern with a butcher knife and sprinkling it with some colored sugar granules. Buying regular sugar alone in Budapest these days had become a near impossibility, and yet, somehow, Dora always managed.

  “I can’t get her to budge, Dora. This girl is going to put me in an early grave,” Eva said, getting up to run what remained of her cigarette under a stream of water at the sink. “Maybe you could… well, could you go see if you can make some progress? Because otherwise, there won’t be much need to finish this gorgeous dessert you’ve worked so hard on all day.”

  Dora gave her a questioning look. “I’m happy to do it, Eva, of course. But I thought we decided that you would be sterner with her, that you wouldn’t rely on me as much with… well, with the disciplinary part. You are her mother. I can’t fill in those gaps forever.”

  Eva sat back in her chair, feeling the usual defeat. She tugged on Dora’s hand. “You are the only person who can reason with her. So please, Dora, please. Will you go talk to her? Besides, you know well enough that you are her mother just as much as I am.”

  It was all true. Eva could still recall those early days after the war, when Dora had come to Budapest with Bianca, not on a train but in the Red Cross car that Eduard had sent for them. How she’d cried seeing them, alive, in one piece, how they couldn’t let go of each other for hours, for days. They’d set up home in Budapest, in the apartment on Andrássy, which Eva and Dora had repaired with their own two hands while Bianca toddled around their ankles, still somewhat stunned that they’d survived, that they still had each other, that there was yet another chance for life, for hope and happiness. Although not quite entirely as before.

  Eduard became a constant presence in their lives, often dropping by for dinner, bearing gifts from the hospital for Bianca, sometimes no more than an old stethoscope that no longer worked. And on the day when he bounced Bianca on his knees and she reached up to his face with her tiny fingers, regarding him for a long moment before she began to giggle, Eva knew that her life could be complete again.

  They’d married on a Sunday the year following. In the courthouse, Eva stood across from him in a simple blue dress, with Bianca whimpering in Dora’s arms in the first pew. She wept. She wept not only out of gratitude for this new beginning, but also because she’d never wanted this life more. And she entered into that new life minutes later, into the honey light of an October afternoon as Eduard scooped her up in his arms and shouted to the stream of pedestrians below the courthouse steps: “This is my wife, ladies and gentlemen! My wife!”

  That recollection still made Eva smile. A decade passed, a decade during which they’d worked together side by side, embracing work that they both loved, easing into a life that had not been simple for either of them but was in many ways exactly the way Eva had envisioned before that fateful summer in Sopron. But then again, for years, she woul
d get startled out of sleep with a sensation so searing, so hollowing, that she couldn’t breathe. She’d sit up in bed and try to force air into her lungs, gasping, until Eduard would wake and put his arms around her.

  “It’s just the war. That goddamn war. You are here now. You are all right.”

  She would fall back onto her pillow, into the crook of his arm, nodding, a tear sliding down her cheek. It was not the war. It had nothing to do with the war. But this she could never tell Eduard. And she never did. And by then, it seemed already that she could no longer reach Bianca, who, despite being just a tiny bundle, regarded her suspiciously, as if reading her deepest thoughts, as if reading right through any lingering thread of deception that constituted her feelings for Aleandro. And more often as time wore on, it was Dora to whom Bianca turned, Dora whom she joined in the kitchen for a late-night lemonade, Dora who filled in the spaces Eva never could while she plunged deeper into her work.

  Now, Eva followed Dora toward Bianca’s room as was the usual routine. The other woman pounded on the door.

  “Bianca. It’s me. I want to talk to you, sweetheart. I’ve made this beautiful cake for you, chocolate, which I know is your favorite, and I’d hate to throw it away. Which I will if you don’t open this door in ten seconds and do what your mother says. Besides, you know well enough that if you don’t play tonight, someone else will just take your place on that stage. Now, do you really want to have that happen? Just think of someone else sitting in that chair, taking your accolades, and you here locked in this room with no cake. Now, please, darling, don’t make this difficult.”

  Instantly, the door opened, Bianca standing on the threshold in her pink taffeta dress, her lips rouged with a lipstick she must have lifted from Eva’s dressing table, her eyes lined in heavy kohl.