Love and Treasure

by Waldman, Ayelet

  The harshness of her tone shocked him. All he could think to say was “Who is Horthy Miklós?”

  “Horthy, our regent. Who was supposed to protect us. He murdered us, not you. You liberated us. It’s not your fault my family is dead. It is your fault I am alive.”

  He realized then that he had misread her terribly, that what had passed between them had not been Ilona seeking comfort in his arms but just another punishment she had inflicted on herself.

  She owed her survival only to happenstance, but he was willing to take responsibility for the deaths of her parents and sister. He had not come in time. He had not joined the army until 1944, until after he’d graduated from college and received his commission. He’d waited until it was convenient, as the world had waited, choosing to let the Jews of Europe be a carcass thrown as a sacrifice to distract the wolf while the hunters took their time readying their bows.

  She kneaded her foot.

  “Does it hurt?” he said. “I have some aspirin in here.” He reached across her to the glove compartment.

  “No,” she said. “Not really. Not anymore. Why do you keep aspirin in your truck? Does your head hurt?”

  “Not today.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. A while ago.”

  “A while ago you had a headache?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you have a headache?”

  “What do you mean ‘why’? I just had a headache. I get headaches.” But he did remember why he had the particular headache that had led him to throw a bottle of aspirin into the glove compartment of his truck.

  She shook her head, the gesture somehow maternal, like a mother disappointed in her child’s lie. She waited. Jack could not bear the silence and foolishly filled it with words. “I was angry.”

  “And when you are angry you get a headache?”

  “Yes. Sometimes.”

  “What made you angry?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How was it nothing? It was enough something to make a headache.”

  “I had to do something I didn’t want to do.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Nothing is important. It’s all just days and work and here and there. But if you are so angry it gives you a headache, I want to know why.”

  He took advantage of a dip in the road to concentrate on unnecessarily shifting to a lower gear. The gears ground against one another, and he swore under his breath.

  She said, “What did you do? Did you punish someone?”

  “No.”

  “Did you kill someone?”

  “No. Jesus. No.”

  “So what happened, Jack, that made you so angry you had to take aspirin for your head?”

  “General Collins requisitioned a massive pile of crap for his house. That’s all.”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean ‘what’?”

  “What did he requisition?”

  “Just, you know. Dishes and glasses. Silverware. Stuff like that.”

  She considered this. She squeezed her foot again and then reached down for her shoe.

  By the side of the road lay a carcass of a cow. One of its legs stuck up in the air, and a blackbird perched on its hoof. As they drove by, the bird turned its dark bead of an eye on Jack. He scowled, and as if in answer the bird took off into the sky with a flap of its blue-black wings.

  She said, “Your general requisitioned this from you?”

  “From Price. But, yes. I filled the order.”

  “From your warehouse.”

  “Yes.”

  “But, Jack, the only things in your warehouse are from the train.”

  “There’s other stuff in the warehouse.”

  “There is?”

  When he had arrived at the warehouse with the train from Werfen, he had found a small amount of other goods stored there, mostly works of art that had been looted by the Nazis. He had marked those items and put them in a separate corner of the vast space.

  “Yes.”

  “So you gave him this other ‘stuff’?” Her voice added quotation marks around the word, and he wasn’t sure whether it was because it was unfamiliar or because she thought it an offensive term to use about the belongings of dead people.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Jack? You gave the general other things from the warehouse, yes?”

  It would be so easy to lie. But he wanted to tell her. He hated keeping what he was doing a secret from her, and he wanted her to know. He needed her to know.

  “I gave him things from the train.”

  She stared at him, aghast.

  “I had no choice, Ilona. I had to fill the requisition order. But I wrote it all down. I’ve written everything down, and the generals will give it all back. I’ll collect it myself.”

  “The generals? There have been more than one?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “A lot.”

  “A lot of the generals have taken things from the warehouse? Things from the Hungarian train?”

  “Yes. But I told you. I’m keeping an inventory. I write everything down, and I’ll get everything back.”

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When will you get it back?”

  “When it’s time for the U.S. Army to turn over the property.”

  “And when will it be time? You yourself told me that your army has decided that the Hungarian delegation gets nothing. When will it be time, Jack, to give it all back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Those are my dishes and my glasses and my silverware. My bracelets and my candlesticks and my … what? My fur! And my bicycle, Jack. They took my bicycle. Give it back to me! Give it all back!” Her voice rose steadily until by the end she was shouting. He thought of the cherry-red bicycle that he had brought her this morning, how happy he’d been when he’d painted it. How happy he’d imagined she’d be when he gave it to her.

  This had, he knew, nothing to do with the train and its contents, or the secret he’d kept from her about the generals and their requisitions. Ilona knew the limits of his authority. This had only to do with her sister. And with the foolishness of his delusion that he had and could provide her with any comfort.

  He pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. The truck rattled and shook on the rough gravel. He braked, stretching his arm out over her chest, to keep her from being flung forward into the windshield.

  She was crying now, her whole body heaving. He had never seen her cry before, and it frightened him. He kept his arm across her chest, as though to protect her from a pending impact, and felt her breasts rise and fall. He tried to make himself reach out his other arm and clutch her to him. He wanted to smooth her hair and lick the tears from her eyes. He saw himself doing this so clearly, he felt her bird bones and the curls of her hair, he tasted the salt of her tears on his tongue. The image was so vivid that when she gave a last sob and wiped her nose and eyes with the back of her hand, he felt as if it was he who had soothed and comforted her, as if it was he who had dried her tears.

  He sat back in his seat, took an ironed handkerchief out of his pocket, and gave it to her. She rubbed her face clean and blew her nose. She folded the handkerchief into a small square and held it in her hand as if trying to decide what to do with it.

  He said, “I’ll give it to the laundress.”

  Wordlessly, she dropped it into his hand.

  • 10 •

  JACK SET ABOUT GETTING DRUNK the way he did most things, with method and a sense of purpose. He began immediately after taking Ilona home, before he’d even left the Hotel Europa. When he pulled up in front of the hotel, she said, “I don’t want to see you anymore.”

  He felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. No. Not punched. Shot. Her words were like bullets tearing through skin and muscle. She leaped down and he tore after her, begging her, pleading with her to w
ait, to stop, to talk to him.

  In the courtyard he grabbed her arm, and she shook him loose.

  “If you touch me again I will call out for help.”

  “No. No. Please,” he said. If he had been a different kind of man, he would have dropped to his knees, flung his arms around her ankles, kissed her ruined feet, begged her to stop, to be who she’d been yesterday, last week, last month.

  “I’m sorry,” she said gently.

  “Is it because I let them take the property?” he asked, though he knew it wasn’t. Or not merely. “I can get it back. I’ll just go and take it.”

  “It is nothing you did, Jack. I don’t want you, that’s all.”

  He watched her walk away, her hip swaying with her faint limp, the light from the bare courtyard bulbs catching her red curls, making them glow. And then she was gone. He turned and saw two men haggling over the price of a glass bottle of murky brew.

  “How much?” Jack said, stepping between them.

  The seller smiled and flicked his fingers at the buyer, who threw up his hands and stomped away, muttering under his breath. The seller held up four fingers, then put two to his lips, miming smoking a cigarette.

  Though he didn’t smoke, Jack always carried cigarettes to trade. He fished a crumpled pack out of his breast pocket, but the dealer shook his head, drew a square in the air, and again held up four fingers.

  “Four packs?” Jack said, not bothering to speak German.

  “Ja.”

  “Bullshit,” he said. He searched his pockets until he found an unopened pack. He held it out to the man.

  “Nein, nein,” the man said, insistently waving his four fingers.

  “Ah, go to hell,” Jack said, turning away.

  “Okay,” the man said, scurrying after him. “Okay, okay.”

  Jack lobbed him the pack of cigarettes and snatched the bottle. He climbed into the truck, and before turning the key in the ignition, pulled out the cork with his teeth. He spat the cork out of the window; he had no intention of needing it again. He took a long slug and gagged. The only thing what was in the bottle had in common with actual schnapps was the fire it lit at the back of his throat. It was fit only for a machine shop, for the stripping of furniture. By the time he reached the street where he lived, he had managed to choke down enough to cause him to stumble and fall as he was getting out of the cab of the truck. The bottle slipped from his grasp and shattered on the ground. The resultant blast of fumes burned his eyes and left him coughing.

  “Shit,” he said, halfway to laughing. Without getting up, he wiped dirt from his hands and checked the knees of his trousers for tears.

  An elderly Austrian couple walking by on the sidewalk passed him where he sat in the street. The woman clucked, shaking a finger. Her husband seemed about to offer Jack a hand, his expression more tolerant, but the wife took his arm and hustled him away.

  “Welcome,” Ball said as Jack staggered into the apartment. He was sitting at the dining room table with a bottle of authentic Sporer schnapps and a water glass. Ball filled the glass more than halfway and lifted it in a mock salute.

  “Prost!” he said, and knocked it back. He smacked the glass down on the table, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Grab a glass and join me, Lieutenant Wiseman. That’s a direct order.”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” Jack said, holding on to the back of a chair to steady himself.

  “Already in your cups, are you, laddie?” Ball had spent part of the war attached to a British intelligence unit with a Scottish cryptanalyst, and when he was drunk the ghost of that sodden Glaswegian returned to haunt his companions.

  “When did you get home?” Jack asked.

  Ball pushed back his sleeve and made a great show of looking at his wrist where his watch should have been.

  “That information appears to be classified,” he said. He picked up the bottle and held it up to the light. “Strictly need to know.”

  Jack found another glass and joined Ball at the table.

  “There’s a wee canny bairn,” Ball said, and filled his glass. “And what’re you drinking to, tonight, Hamish me lad?”

  “Nothing,” Jack said. He took a long sip of schnapps, light and mellow, with just a hint of fruit. Smooth going down. “Tonight Hamish the wee bairn is just drinking.”

  “Fair enough,” Ball said, and drained his glass. “As for me, tonight I am drinking to the good people of Munich,” Ball said. “May their black Nazi hearts burst in their motherfucking chests.”

  “To the people of Munich,” Jack agreed, and drank.

  With an unsteady hand, Ball spilled more booze into their glasses. “And to our fellow pricks and SOBs in the good old U.S. Army.”

  “To all of us pricks and SOBs. What did we do now?”

  Ball had been sent to Munich to investigate a rumor that had made its way to the OSS via an informant who regularly reported on the moods and activities of his fellow camp survivors.

  “Are you sure I should be hearing this?” Jack said.

  “Oh, who cares?” Ball said. “I ask you, Jack, at this point, who the fuck cares?”

  The Munich Housing Office had assigned a number of apartments in what had once been a retirement village for members of the Nazi Party to a group of Jewish survivors of the camps. When the Jews attempted to move in, they found the apartments still occupied by their original tenants. Not only did the retired Nazis refuse to leave, they responded to the eviction order with lusty cries of “Heil Hitler” and threats of violence. When the bewildered Jews sought the assistance of a passing group of American soldiers, the GIs instructed the Jews to shut up before somebody put them back in Dachau where they belonged. Or so, at least, went the rumor.

  “Couldn’t be true, right?” Ball said. He rolled his glass between his palms. “Baseless slander.” He took another long gulp of the schnapps. He put on the voice, a patrician South Carolina baritone, he used when impersonating his commanding officer. “ ‘A hysterical canard concocted by a paranoid people so accustomed to persecution that they see anti-Semitism under every rock, Captain Ball.’ ”

  “It was true,” Jack said, gulping down his drink, refilling it from the bottle. He was stinking drunk and found that he quite liked it.

  “Of course it was true,” Ball said. “But that is nae the point of my tale, laddie. The point is that when I went to interview the director of the Munich Housing Office, to find out what happened, I couldn’t conduct said interview, because said director, Lieutenant, was busy enjoying the hospitality of our fine military police, who had arrested the director of the Munich Housing Office, you see, because they said he issued the eviction order against the retired Nazis without the right stamp.”

  Each took a long pull from his glass.

  “Now,” Ball said. “Your turn.”

  Jack managed a garbled recitation of Ilona’s rejection.

  “Oh, Hamish,” Ball said. “You sad, sorrowful thing.”

  Ball stood up. He grabbed the table to keep from swaying. “We need to go out.”

  “Out?”

  “Yes, sir. Out we go.”

  They barely made it down the hall stairs. Had they not run into Hoyle on the first-floor landing, they might well have admitted their incapacity, given up, and fallen asleep there in the hall. But in a rare moment of camaraderie, Hoyle threw an arm around each roommate and, one on either side, helped them down the stairs, up the road, and across the bridge over the river. Their goal was a bar where Hoyle claimed it was possible to get laid for the price of a beer and a pack of cigarettes.

  “Have you ever been laid, Wiseman?” Hoyle said.

  “Let me see. Yes, Lieutenant Hoyle, I believe I have. I believe that I got laid earlier this afternoon, in fact.” And for a moment Jack enjoyed pissing on the memory.

  “ ‘Earlier this afternoon’!” Hoyle bellowed, clapping Jack on the back. “You know, for a stuck-up Jew prick, you’re not so bad.”

  “For a stuck-up West Point prick, Hoyle,
you’re … well, you’re a stuck-up West Point prick,” Jack said, and Hoyle roared even louder.

  By now they had reached the bar of the legendarily low-priced women, a dismal, underground room furnished with little more than a beer tap, a row of stools, and a fat bartender who stared at them with a sullen expression and a filthy towel draped over his shoulder. There were no women in the place at all, at any price. There were only a few men, each sitting alone and nursing a beer.

  Jack was furiously disappointed. He’d been intent on erasing the afternoon with an encounter the uglier and more meaningless the better.

  “Whiskey!” Hoyle said, slamming his fist on the counter.

  “No whiskey,” the bartender said. He pronounced it vis-key, with a pause between the syllables.

  “Yes, whiskey!” Hoyle said.

  “Beer,” the bartender insisted, taking three earthenware steins from beneath the counter. He filled the glasses with a thick, dark brew and scraped off the foam with a knife. Jack watched the foam subside. Once the level of the beer had dropped below the lips of the steins, the bartender filled and scraped them again. Jack reached for one of the steins, but the barman shook his head, filled them a third time, scraped the foam, and only then slid one across the counter to him.

  There was not enough food in the city to feed even half the population, people scrambled for bread and milk, and Ilona greeted the cans of Spam he brought her as though they were filet mignon, but the bars had reopened, and the beer was good, even though they sold it at prices only the Americans could really afford. He licked the foam mustache from his upper lip.

  “S’good,” he muttered to Hoyle.

  “Damn right, it’s good,” Hoyle said, taking a long swallow, then holding one hand over his belly and belching loudly.

  Jack snorted into his glass, sending foam all over the counter.

  “Laddies,” Ball said, reviving his brogue. “Laddies, to us! Long may we rule.”

  Jack and Hoyle hoisted their glasses in the air. “To us!” they shouted.

  Jack clicked his stein against Ball’s, but by now he was far too drunk to have any sense of distance or strength. He knocked Ball’s stein hard enough to send beer sloshing over the sides, drenching both his arm and his friend’s.