When the Summer Was Ours

by Roxanne Veletzos

  * * *

  “They know, Eduard. The Secret Police know,” Tamara said, her face pale and stern in the weak light by the kitchen window where they’d retreated to speak. Tamara had insisted that they turn on the radio to drown out their conversation from any neighbors who might overhear, and now Eva’s irritation was replaced by an acute pang of panic. “They’ve already questioned several of the medics who were in the hospital with us, and they know somehow that you arranged to have supplies smuggled from Saint John’s. They are trying to get others to sign confessions. It hasn’t happened yet, because, Eduard, you are loved, truly loved by so many, but they will continue to harass and press until they get what they want. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Her eyes shifted directly to him, grazing past Eva. “Do you understand what this means for you?”

  “How could the Secret Police possibly know such a thing?” Eva chimed in, trying to take in all that Tamara was saying. Grabbing a glass from the cupboard, she filled it with water from the sink and took a gulp, aware that her hand was shaking. “The medics are loyal to Eduard; they would never cave, certainly not this quickly. So how could they possibly know about the smuggled supplies? No, it’s just not possible. It’s not possible to charge him with anything without proof.”

  Tamara shot her a look, her brown eyes zoning in on her in a challenging way that went through Eva like cold water. “Well, Eva, somehow they do know. I don’t know how exactly. But the fact is: once they confirm that Eduard was at the center of it, that he organized the whole thing, he will be declared a revolutionary. It may be just days, hours perhaps, before they come to arrest him. It’s why I’m here.”

  It connected then. Everything connected in a formidable clash, and it left Eva light-headed, grabbing for the back of the chair in which Eduard sat glumly, staring at the floor: The vision of Eduard on the phone, recruiting the medics. Ana’s caved, humiliated face at the end of the recital. The unpleasantness with her husband as they were leaving.

  It does make one wonder where those ideas come from. What precisely she hears in that apartment of yours.

  “Oh my God,” she cried out in the silence. “Oh God, Eduard.” She fixed her eyes on Eduard, who looked up at her, ashen.

  Yes, they did have proof. And they would come for him. Tamara was right. It was only a matter of time.

  29

  New York

  Autumn 1957

  THE GALLERY OPENING DID NOT take place, as it turned out, for another year. One year during which Aleandro checked his mail daily, checked his messages hourly, and did his best to refrain from calling Marta more than once a week. An uprising for independence that had begun as a peaceful protest had shaken Budapest the past November, Marta explained gravely, and the city had sustained significant damage. Thousands of people had been wounded, killed, or arrested by the Hungarian Secret Police for doing nothing more than coming to the aid of the freedom fighters. At the moment, no one in Hungary was in the mood for art. The capital was once more rebuilding itself from the ashes.

  “But the good news, Aleandro,” Marta said. “The good news is that you are one of the few Western artists who’ve been granted entry into the country. Now it would seem, more than ever, just as I told you before, your art is pertinent there. So it is no longer a matter of if, but when. Just be patient.”

  It had not occurred to Aleandro in all the long months of waiting that Eva might have been harmed. He refused to believe it. All that mattered now was getting there, to seize this small chance that would never be offered to him again.

  And when at last Marta announced that the opening was just a month away, Aleandro fell on his knees and shouted like a madman in his apartment, and made a new portrait of Eva, two, three, five, ten—drew them for five days and nights with the same fervor he’d drawn his Dachau pieces. Everything seemed possible again. And at some point, because it could no longer be postponed, he decided that it was time to tell Rudolf.

  * * *

  Marlena’s mother’s house in New Brunswick looked exactly like every single one in the three-mile stretch he’d traversed from the train station: a tiny cottage with an overgrown, unfenced yard, strewn with Hula-Hoops and plastic tricycles. Marlena and Rudolf were spending two weeks here with Hans, and Aleandro had waited so long to break the news that he’d had no choice but to leave the island and venture into this suburban oasis, which to Aleandro might as well have been a safari.

  He wore a suit that not only seemed completely out of place but was also impossible to endure in the relentless late-September heat. By the time he reached his destination, his tie had come off, and he was carrying his coat on his arm, praying that someone would answer before he was forced to unbutton all the buttons on his overstarched Egyptian-cotton shirt.

  On the third ring, which croaked like a morning rooster, Marlena’s mother appeared in the doorway, her reddish curly hair shorter than Marlena’s, sporting a maroon, grease-splattered apron that read: Beware the cook.

  “Aleandro!” she shrieked. “What a surprise! Well, come on in, darling, let’s get you out of this heat!”

  “Hello, Sandra.” Aleandro kissed her hand, scanning the tiny parlor with its walls plastered with wood carvings bearing more sayings that made little sense to him: Home is where you make it and Not all those who wander are lost.

  “Ah, but you just missed them!” sang Sandra excitedly, closing the door behind them. “They’ve taken Hans to the weekend fair downtown, and I don’t expect they’ll be back until dark. But please make yourself comfortable. Surely, you’d enjoy an ice-cold lemonade.”

  Despite himself, Aleandro could not exactly disagree.

  A few minutes later, he felt a bit refreshed and settled into the same conversation he’d had with Sandra the last time she came to the city for a visit—mostly about Hans and how quickly he was growing up, some about the latest “perfect girl” she had for him.

  “You know, my bridge partner’s daughter is an artist herself.”

  Aleandro held back a comment, relishing the last few sips of lemonade and popping an ice cube into his mouth.

  Sandra continued, “Well, not an artist like you, not quite the same way, but she designs wedding cakes for La Neige Bakery in the city. And she’s tall and slim like you, Aleandro, an—”

  “Thank you, Sandra, that’s really very kind, maybe some other time. Because, you see, I will be traveling for a little bit now. In fact, that’s why I came today. To tell Rudolf.”

  “Ohhh, anyplace exciting?”

  “Hungary. I’m going back to the old country. Although I’m not sure how exciting it is at the moment. I’m going for work. It’s unavoidable.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard about all that’s been happening there. The capital is in a cold war.”

  “Yes, something like that. Which is why I didn’t tell Rudolf earlier. I knew that he’d object. And he would be right, Sandra, he would be right to object, because it is a bit… imprudent to go there now. But I must.” Then, catching himself in his monologue, which he’d rehearsed in his head for Rudolf, he frowned. “Sandra, would you happen to have a pen and paper? I think I’ll leave a note for Rudolf, if it’s okay. I have to get back to the city to pack tonight.”

  “Of course.” A moment later, Sandra appeared with a huge yellow pad and a ballpoint pen bearing the address of a bank. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.” She hovered around for a few moments, then, discouraged by the lack of attention, she ambled to the kitchen to finish her baking.

  My dearest Rudolf,

  By the time you find this note, I will be on a plane to Budapest. I know you steam with fury reading this first line, that you will think it a betrayal that I have not shared it with you sooner when everything in our lives has been shared to such minute detail. Perhaps it’s better this way. I know that you would try to talk me out of it, that you would enumerate a thousand reasons for which this is foolish, even dangerous, and I would be hard-pressed to argue with you otherwise.

  My reasons
haven’t changed. They are the same as they were in our last days in the camp, when I looked to America with such hope for a new and meaningful beginning. Part of that dream has been fulfilled thanks to you, yet I fear that it hasn’t made me the better man I’d envisioned becoming then. So I’m going. I’m going back to see if, after all this time, there is still a chance for me to start living in the full sense, to become that man you can be proud of in every way. Kiss Hans and Marlena for me. You guys are my family. I love you, my brother.

  Yours,

  Aleandro

  Content with his letter, he asked Sandra for an envelope, sealed it, tapped it on his knee, and placed it on the coffee table. Then he bid her good-bye and walked back onto the street with its scalding pavement, and farther to the train that would take him back to New York, and farther still to the plane that would bring him to where he hoped to find what he’d lost.

  30

  Budapest

  Autumn 1957

  FOR DAYS ALEANDRO HUNG AROUND the much-publicized Budapest exhibit. The rooms were crowded to capacity: patrons coming and going, the press, the dignitaries, the minister of culture posing with him endlessly, caterers offering him food and drinks, none of which he could manage to get down. His nerves were tied up like a bundle of wires, every movement around the room startling him, making him jolt. Would she come? He didn’t know. He didn’t even know if she would pay attention to any arts and culture news when the country was in such turmoil, and now his rationale seemed as flimsy as a tower of building blocks, a creation of child’s play. Still, he’d had no choice but to come. There was nothing that he expected, nothing that he hoped for, just a moment to set his eyes on her again.

  More than once, he thought he’d spotted her, each time his heart kicking against his rib cage, only to be plunged into a new well of bleakness. Now all he could do was drift through the crowd, smiling here and there for the cameras, shaking hands absentmindedly, his eyes searching.

  A young girl accompanied by an elderly woman in a fur coat, which seemed decisively out of place in Soviet Budapest, handed him a small bouquet of daisies. They were wrapped in paper and a bit wilted, but he was touched as much as thankful, for now, if Eva did come, he would have something to give her. He thought with dismay that he should have brought her a small gift, but what? What could he have possibly brought her? What was in his heart could not be expressed with gifts, and perhaps she would think it trite. Eventually, he handed the bouquet to one of the staffers to place in water and resumed strolling through the exhibit.

  Soft music played in the background. It soothed him, just a little, and to distract himself from his nervousness, he focused his attention on the people examining his paintings. It was always strange for him to see his paintings through the eyes of others, and usually, in such moments he felt vulnerable, but now he didn’t quite mind it. An elderly man in a drab suit was patting at his eyes with a handkerchief, running it over his temples. Noisily, he blew his nose in it, and Aleandro felt propelled to reach out. When he touched his shoulder, the man startled, and, recognizing Aleandro, a radiance came into his face.

  “I, too, was in the camps,” he explained, tucking the handkerchief in his pocket. “In Belsen. Oh, Mr. Szabó, this work…” He was choked with emotion, and they stood there together, looking at the painting of a young boy, no different in age than his brothers might have been then. Naked from the waist down, he was squatting over a hole in the ground, and the tip of a bayonet was pointed directly at his shaved head. The guard holding it was not in the picture, for the focus of the painting was the boy’s eyes. In them, there was no terror or defeat, but rather something steely, indestructible. As if gazing right past them, into the future. As if knowing that a future beyond this would exist.

  Aleandro put his arm around the man’s shoulders. Even under the suit, they were sharp, thin. He knew people in this country had been struggling, that they were hungry, that they’d had to manage with rationed electricity, that since the revolution everyone lived in terror of arrest or persecution. And here was this man, weeping at his paintings.

  Perhaps coming here was the best thing he’d ever done. Whether he saw Eva again or not, it was still the best thing he’d done.

  He began to say something, but a movement caught his attention, and he turned away from the painting. There she was. He reached up to rub his eyes as if to convince himself she was real. No, this time he was not mistaken. He stood there watching her drift through the sea of people, and he placed his hand again on the man’s shoulder, this time to steady himself. He heard the stranger ask if he was all right, but he was already moving in her direction.

  She was just as beautiful as he remembered, as he’d envisioned a thousand times. No longer a girl but a woman, with a whisper of maturity in her delicate features, caution in her movements. Her face. The same face he’d painted in the days of his youth, those same luminous eyes that had haunted him for over a decade. She was wearing a dark trench coat, something loose and too big for her frame, with a yellow scarf with pink roses tied over her hair.

  Another step. He felt like he was walking through water. She had not seen him yet, and she drew her head scarf away. The curls tumbled from underneath—darker, the color of bitter cherries—had she dyed her hair? Her hand drew to her throat as she inched toward the row of glossy black frames on one of the walls.

  Another swell of people came from behind her, and she disappeared from him. Panicked, he pushed through, offering apologies, and there she was again, whitewashed in the multitude of miniature spotlights illuminating the walls. At the disturbance, she turned, and there they were, staring directly at each other, their words silent, trapped in their throats.

  Aleandro.

  Eva.

  The room and everything in it dissolved. The Eva of his Sopron days, and of his Dachau days, his Eva, his eternal Eva, was standing before him, not in his imagination, but in flesh and blood. Stupidly, he realized how, in all the times he’d envisioned this moment, he never thought of what he would say to her.

  “Aleandro.” She spoke his name. It was suddenly real.

  “Eva. I’m so happy to see you.” His words, lost in the crowd, barely reached his own ears. “I prayed you would come.”

  She smiled, her cheeks red. She turned back toward the paintings, perhaps to hide her fluster. “I read about your exhibit in the paper, and I just had to see it for myself. Oh, Aleandro, you did it! You’ve made your dream come true. You don’t know what an amazing thing you’ve accomplished, and how happy I am for you.”

  Her back was still turned throughout the entire delivery, and he wanted to see her face, wanted to have her speak to him directly, but she wouldn’t turn to him. So he stepped beside her and brushed her hand with his. The silk of her glove snagged slightly on his calloused skin, and she gave a tiny chuckle, her hand sliding past.

  “I really couldn’t believe that was your picture in the paper,” she went on in a voice just a little more than a whisper. “I kept staring at it, thinking that I was dreaming. All this time, I thought you were… Well, I’m just so sorry for all of it, for all that you’ve had to go through. It’s unimaginable you’ve lived to see such things.” Finally, she faced him, and he was shocked to see that her eyes were brimming with tears. “And your brothers. Is it true, Aleandro? Is it true what I read?”

  “It’s true,” he said, and now his own eyes burned, for he knew how much she’d cared for them. Knew that while for him the pain had dulled over the years, she was acutely in its grip, and in that moment, he thought he’d never loved a person more.

  “Your paintings, Aleandro.” Her hand lifted, brushing the air separating them from the works as if to touch them from a distance. “They are astonishing. It’s like you’ve painted them from inside the canvas. They are laced with such honesty, such feeling…” She caught herself and stopped. “Well, I really should go. But I just wanted to tell you how much they’ve moved me.”

  Yet she didn’t budge, and
they couldn’t look away from each other, and it was as though all the years were erased between them, and they were sitting on the grass again holding hands, they were dancing around the fire, they were what they should have been before the war.

  “Please don’t go, Eva,” he found himself pleading. “Please stay awhile longer.” Only three sentences he’d spoken to her, and already he was begging her to stay. He couldn’t imagine her walking out.

  “I don’t want to keep you.”

  “Keep me? Keep me? It’s for you that I’m here, Eva.”

  Shaking her head, she looked away from him into the vastness of the room. “Why? Why would you say this to me after all this time?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Through her tears, a vague smile came. It was enough to make her bend.

  * * *

  They ended up grabbing a late-night bite after the exhibit just a few short blocks away, at the lavish if slightly dated Hotel Gellért, where Aleandro was staying. The restaurant was already closed, yet Aleandro had managed to get the maître d’hôtel to reset a table for them next to the terrace, with its glow of lampposts and lush canopy of rose vines. There was some wine, some fancy eclairs scrounged up from the kitchen, which Eva devoured with such fervor that it nearly broke Aleandro’s heart. She hadn’t had many sweets in the past year, she explained, drawing back self-consciously. It had been a very tough year, more so perhaps than in all the years since the war.

  “Tell me everything. Tell me about your life,” he asked.